The Dolphin class submarine sat on the surface in the Eilat docks, quiet except for the grinding of an electric crane that slowly hoisted a makeshift crate through its loading bay. A full moon shone from a dark sky, casting an eerie light over the sub’s black hull.
Of the dozen men who worked around the sub, most of them knew nothing about the contents of the crate. In fact, only the captain, Moses Stern, the first officer, a burly man whom they called Dan, and Avraham himself seemed to have any idea at all.
It was more than Avraham could have hoped for.
He watched the box swing towards the dock in its canvas sling. Water lapped gently against the steel hull three meters under the suspended sling.
Avraham was mildly surprised that half the members of the Knesset were not crowding the dock. David Ben Solomon at least. There were the six guards who waited with the army truck parked on the dock to take the Ark to Jerusalem, but they would hardly present any challenge. Goldstein’s ambush waited ten kilometers ahead, twenty men who would be attacking in the narrowest part of the road. These six would be easily overwhelmed.
Avraham’s greatest concern was avoiding the attackers’ bullets himself. If Goldstein’s men could follow simple orders and keep their fire away from the cab, he would be fine.
Captain Moses Stern strolled up beside him, arms behind his back, staring at the crate as it thumped softly to the concrete. Avraham had seen the man only once after his phone call to Goldstein, an hour earlier when they had first surfaced.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” the captain said.
“Yes. Hard to believe.”
“David Ben Solomon finally has his day.”
Avraham froze. Solomon? What did Moses Stern know about Solomon’s involvement?
Easy, Avraham. Everyone in Israel knows about Solomon’s obsessions.
“He has,” Avraham said. “I’m surprised he’s not here.”
“Believe me, if there was any way for him to be here without drawing unwanted attention, he would be. It’ll be hard enough to get it to him without half the Knesset pouncing.” Stern chuckled.
“Do you know him?”
“Solomon? Who doesn’t?”
Avraham forced a nod. His firearm hung at his hip, and he briefly considered taking control of the situation by force now. But that was ridiculous, of course. He hadn’t lost control of the situation.
“Actually, I know Solomon quite well,” the captain said. “I’ve sympathized with his ideas for twenty years. He’s a good man.”
Avraham swallowed. Waves of heat washed over his skull. Something was not right. “Yes. Yes, he is.”
“In fact, I talked to him just an hour ago,” the captain said. “He wanted me to tell you that there has been a slight change in plans.”
Avraham knew then that he’d been made. Solomon would have learned from the captain that Rebecca was dead, contrary to what he’d been told.
He eased nonchalantly to his right and nodded. A thousand voices screamed in his head. Two of them surfaced as options. The first was to accept the consequences of defeat. The second was to take the captain hostage and force the situation. He immediately opted for the latter.
Avraham jerked his pistol from his belt and whipped it around to face the captain. From the corner of his eyes he saw the three sailors behind him with rifles at their shoulders. The muzzles flashed simultaneously, like three rockets detonating at once.
The slugs took him in his right side, like a huge battering ram. In one instant he was thinking that he could at least kill the captain, and in the next the lead slammed into his arm and hurled him violently to the side. It occurred to him in midair that his shoulder was gone.
His world went black before he hit the water.
Rebecca had eluded Ismael and she was alive; that much was good. The Arabs had scoured the hills in search for her as night settled. She’d heard Ismael’s call to her—screaming that she was a witch and that he was going to kill Caleb slowly, like a pig. They were nine and she was one, he screamed, and sooner or later he would kill her as well. Like a pig. And then about four hours ago their sounds had faded to the north.
So then, Caleb was alive.
Or Caleb was dead and Ismael only wanted her to think he was alive to lure her in. Even if he was alive, he might be terribly wounded. Either way, Ismael was baiting her, daring her to come out.
It was there, huddled in the small crevice she’d found, that Rebecca first embraced the fact that she felt things for Caleb that she’d never felt for another man. It would have been one thing to feel sorrow at losing such a unique man of God. But to feel the impossible ache that gripped her heart and slowed her breathing—she knew that she loved him.
She was in love. With a crazy man who’d been shot in the head.
Although to be honest she had never loved a man, so she had nothing to compare it to. But this desperation that raged through her at the thought of losing him definitely felt like something you would call true love.
She grunted, clenched her eyes, and shook her head. She was in an impossible situation. The first thing she’d learned in the army was that the mind does strange things in impossible situations. It was natural for her to feel this compulsion to bring Caleb back.
She was about 250 kilometers south of the border, a border that was lined with tanks, if Ahmed had been right. Ismael waited with Caleb somewhere between her and that border. And three days had passed since Avraham had taken the Ark. She had to get to Jerusalem. Nothing else mattered now.
Except Caleb.
Dear God, except the one man who might have been able to get her past the tanks. Except the one man that made her heart hurt and her head spin.
She grunted again and stood. Caleb, Caleb. You’ll be the death of us all. She took a deep breath and glanced at the bright moon. Dear God, save us. This was your doing, not mine. For a fleeting moment she wondered about praying to the Nazarene. Only for a moment.
Rebecca jogged in the direction the Arabs had gone, keeping low and in the shadows of the boulders. With each footfall a small piece of her courage returned. She had been trained for this by the best. She had been the best. Killing was still in her blood.
Do you want to step off a cliff, Rebecca?
I’ve been in free fall since mother died, she thought.
Ismael’s camp was three kilometers north, in a group of rocks west of the road. She heard them before she saw them, which meant that they meant for her to hear them. Ismael wasn’t a stupid man. And if they meant to be heard, they had set a trap.
Rebecca ducked behind a boulder and stilled her breathing. She had to get a weapon. There were two ways to do this: the smart way—the way she’d been taught, the way Ismael would obviously expect—or the mad way. The smart way was smart because it actually stood a chance of working. The mad way was mad because it didn’t. Which was why Ismael would not expect it.
Rebecca was getting used to madness.
By the carrying voices, the camp was fifty meters ahead, just beyond a group of tall boulders. A fire crackled, and she could see the smoke rising gray against the black sky. She isolated at least five unique voices, which meant that there had to be double that. Nine Ismael had said. Nine to one. And Caleb.
She picked up a rock the size of her fist and hurled it over the boulders into the camp.
It clattered noisily and the voices quieted immediately. She’d done this once in the Golan, behind enemy lines, but not alone. She had two other prisoners with her. However ugly, the strategy had paid off.
Rebecca waited one last desperate moment and then bolted out of her cover to the west. She screamed—a long chilling scream that tore through the air like a gargoyle’s howl. Ten long, screaming strides, nine more than she knew was sane, and she threw herself back the way she’d come. She rolled on the ground quickly and then scrambled on all fours to the same rock she’d come from.
A shot boomed somewhere behind her, lighting the night like a flashcube. They were shooting for the sound. She lurched to her feet, ran to the east, towards the road, and then cut north in a full sprint. Before they had the time to reorient themselves from the scream she was past the camp, on its northeast.
She screamed again, running west, and then reversed her direction as she had before, back to the road. But this time she cut for the camp instead of running past it. Her breathing came hard, in burning pants, but she had to approach them as quietly as possible, so she ran without taking deep breaths.
She palmed the bowie knife from her waist and rushed the camp, hunched low to the ground, praying that the Arabs were still fixated on the north and the south.
Rebecca sprinted around a boulder and saw the camp in a flash. They had built a fire and now stood with their backs to it, six of them. A body lay curled up on the perimeter, under a small rock ledge. Caleb.
Rebecca hurled her knife in a full run and took the last ten meters screaming at the top of her lungs. The knife struck a startled soldier in his sternum and he grabbed crazily for it. His rifle thumped to the ground.
Half of them spun and began firing wildly in her direction, but by then she was even with them. She snatched up the fallen rifle, leapt right over the fire, past the two men on the far side and into the boulders beyond. One of them yelled out in pain, shot by one of his companions.
Rebecca ran to her right. Guns were still firing, chasing the sound of her echoing cry, but the boulders covered her retreat. She immediately doubled back. Back towards the camp, still in a fast run.
This time she dropped to her knees behind a large rock and brought the AK-47 to bear on the exposed camp. She was too winded to aim properly but at this range it would be difficult to miss. Her first shot ripped through them less than ten seconds after her first attack.
She killed four of them before they got off a single shot in her direction. The fifth was turning for her when she shot him through the chest.
Immediately, slugs smashed the rock around her. She heard the telltale puff from Ismael’s rifle to the south. Rebecca ducked and retreated into the night. She slid behind a group of low shrubs and lay on her back, panting as quietly as she could manage. Her lungs burned, and her heart felt like it was tearing itself loose, but she had survived without a scratch.
Ismael had not been in the camp.
A crouched form suddenly ran past her, straight for two Jeeps that she now saw for the first time. She rolled on her side and shot him in the back.
That was seven. Two more.
One of the Jeeps suddenly roared to life. She scrambled to acquire a target, but she couldn’t make out the driver. The vehicle spun out in a U-turn. Its tires squealed on the pavement and it tore south. The eighth soldier had gone for reinforcements. That left Ismael.
“Rebeccaaa!” Ismael’s voice echoed in the night. “Rebeccaaaa! Do you know what I see, Rebeccaaa?”
The sound of his voice made her skin crawl.
“No? I see a man in my scope, lying like a baby. Is this your man?”
He was talking about Caleb. Rebecca pushed herself to her knees.
“I am going to shoot him, Jew. I’m going to put a bullet through his skull. Unless you step out by the fire.”
She ran towards the sound of his voice and slid to her knees behind a boulder, frantic. He would do it! He had nothing to lose.
“You can’t face me like a man?” Rebecca yelled. “You’ve allowed a woman to beat you, and now you have to kill an innocent monk to force my hand?” The fire crackled. “Is this the Palestinian way?”
“You’re taunting me, Jew! You take me for a fool?”
“I’ll throw my gun out to the fire,” Rebecca said quickly. “I’ll come out unarmed if you come as well. I want to meet Hamil’s brother.”
He didn’t respond right away. The reference to his brother was an afterthought, but it worked.
“Throw your gun out.”
She inched around the boulder. “You’ll come out?”
“Just throw your rifle out, Jew.”
“Not until you agree.”
“I don’t need to agree. I have your monk an ounce away from death.”
“Yes, but you want to agree. You want to meet me face to face. You want to look in the eyes of the person who killed your brother and fooled you into thinking you were in pursuit of the Ark while the real Ark sailed safely to Jerusalem.”
That stopped him.
“You lie!”
“I don’t have the Ark, Ismael. Kill me and you achieve revenge, but you won’t stop the Ark.”
“Throw your gun out!”
“You’ll come out?”
“Yes.”
She heaved her gun into the camp and it landed on the sand with a dull thump.
“Step out,” he said.
“After you. I’m unarmed.”
“Step out or I shoot Caleb.”
Even as Rebecca stepped out, she knew it was suicide. Caleb might already be dead. And if he wasn’t, she couldn’t save him now.
She walked out slowly and spread her arms, anticipating the slap of a bullet. But there was no bullet. Ismael waited ten seconds and then came out of the rocks, holding a pistol on her. His dark wavy hair was short, and he wore a scruffy black beard.
His lips twitched. “Where’s the Ark?”
“I told you, I don’t have it.”
“I saw it.”
“You saw a wooden feeding box with a blanket over it.”
He stared at her for a long time. “Then we will go to war. This time the Arab nations are ready.”
The way he said it sent a chill down her spine. He at least believed it. The Arab nations knew at the very least. And he was right, it would be war, unless Avraham had done something else with the Ark.
“We don’t want war,” she said.
“Of course you don’t. Israel will be destroyed. We, however, do want war. You have butchered our people long enough. It’s time for you to leave Palestine.”
The form to her right suddenly moved. Caleb groaned and then lay still.
“Don’t move,” Ismael said, waving his gun at her. “Don’t worry, your monk won’t awaken. If he wasn’t such a perfect lure, I would have finished him off on the road,” Ismael said. “Instead I’ve drugged him. But now he’s no longer useful, is he?”
“Drugged him?” She took a step towards him.
Ismael casually fired a shot into the sand by her feet. “I thought I told you not to move.”
“Why should I care? You’re going to kill me anyway.”
“Yes. I’m going to kill you.”
“Then at least let me die with some dignity. My whole life love has evaded me—you know how that is. But now I’ve found that love. In this man.”
The words sounded funny coming from her. It was an awkward moment. Her focus shifted from Ismael to Caleb. He’d rolled on his back so that his face shone in the moonlight. Blood had dried on his forehead. His hair lay in tangles, and his chest moved with his breathing. Suddenly she wanted desperately to be with him. To care for him. If there was only one thing she would do in this life, it would be to make sure that he lived.
What a fool she had been to deny her love! Her eyes filled with tears and she blinked.
Ismael slipped a knife from his belt and walked over to Caleb. “You want to die with dignity? Like my brother died?” He stood over Caleb wearing a wicked grin. “He has a pretty face, this one.”
The blood in Rebecca’s head throbbed hot.
Ismael began to kneel, and she began to panic. His gun was trained on her, unwavering, and his finger was already tense on the trigger, but in that moment she lost the ability to care what any of that meant. Her world simply exploded.
“Hamil told me who your real father was,” she said.
His eyes momentarily narrowed in confusion.
Rebecca dove forward in that moment, while he was distracted by her absurd claim.
Ismael’s gun boomed. Pain ripped through her right shoulder. She staggered to the right and launched herself at him. Ignoring the gun, which boomed again, missing clean, she went for his head with a blind fury she hadn’t felt since first understanding that her mother had been murdered. Her palm slammed against something soft and Ismael went limp.
She pulled her arm back and smashed his face again with every ounce of her strength before he could fall. His face had changed shape. He collapsed in a heap, lifeless. She stood over him, panting. Her vision returned and she saw that his nose had been shoved back into his head.
Rebecca dropped to her knees and brought trembling hands to Caleb’s face. “Oh, Caleb. Dear Caleb, I am so sorry.” She shoved her hands under his back and pulled at him. But her arms felt like rubber, and she only managed to fall back down on him.
She lay her cheek on his chest and began to weep. Deep in her belly a dam seemed to break. Two weeks of sorrow and desperation rushed from her eyes. And love. Yes, and love.
She sobbed uncontrollably, letting her tears wet his tunic. She felt dirty and wicked next to his heaving chest. But his gentle breathing worked through her like a salve, easing the pain. He was alive.
She lifted her head and kissed his chin and then his cheek. “I love you, Caleb. I love you!” The bullet had only nicked his head; she saw that now. She felt her shoulder, relieved to find only a surface wound.
A gentle rumble floated on the air, and she thought he might be groaning again. It came again, from the south.
The soldiers!
Rebecca scrambled to her knees, grabbed him behind his neck and his knees, and hoisted him from the ground. He was heavy, but her military training had given her the strength of most men. She heaved to get her arms under him.
Carrying him like a sack of potatoes, she stumbled across the camp and struck for the Jeep beyond the rocks. The rumbling grew louder, and she ran as best she could, staggering, lugging his weight.
She reached the military Jeep, eased Caleb into the seat, fired it up, and bounced onto the road just as the first headlights poked over the hill. But they hadn’t seen her. She knew that because they stopped behind her at the camp, just as she took the first corner.
She blazed into the night with Caleb slumped next to her. Alive, for the moment. But far from home.
She began to cry again. It was hopeless.