Jordan tried scanning the rooftops.
Another shot was fired, chipping the top of the planter where Alena’s head had been just seconds before. The trajectory told Jordan the shot was taken from one of the buildings of the Church of the Nativity.
“Tawaqqafa!” Cease! Stop! The police officers were closing in, guns drawn. A fourth shot ricocheted off the stones, forcing them to veer away.
Weizman materialized beside Jordan. “Come on!” he yelled. “Let’s go!”
He grabbed Taylor’s arm and stood up. The fifth shot fired caught Weizman in the back of the head, snapping his head back then flinging him forward to the ground. Jordan was beside him in seconds, rolling him over. His eyes were open, fixed, and a large exit wound gaped from the middle of his forehead.
“Jordan!” Taylor shook her arm, snapping her out of her stupor. “He’s gone.”
As an agent, she had seen dead people before, but she’d never seen anyone die. One moment he was there, telling her what she should do. The next moment he was gone. And they would all be joining him soon if she didn’t pull it together.
“What about Alena?” she asked.
“She’s still alive. We have to get out of here.”
“Grab her arm.” Jordan hooked her elbow under one of Alena’s armpits. Taylor did the same. “Go for the road on the count of three. One . . . two . . .” On three, Jordan started running, firing her weapon into the air at the same time. The crowd panicked. She and Taylor bolted toward Paul VI, the street to the north of the mosque, dragging Petrenko with them. Behind them, the PAS officers scattered, the crowd hindering their forward progress. It opened a window.
“Keep moving!” Jordan ordered.
An officer broke free of the mob. “Tawaqqafa!”
“Go, go!” she yelled.
They ducked around the corner of the mosque and ran along the road. Alena started coming around and struggled against them.
“Where to?” Taylor asked, plowing their way through a crush of men headed to the square to see what the commotion was all about. Others behind them followed in their wake.
“Just keep moving.”
Another shot rang out from Manger Square. Another surge of panic stirred the crowd. Ganani, Lotner, or a random shooter? All that mattered was that the chaos slowed down the officers behind them.
If Jordan remembered correctly, Paul VI was the main north-south artery into Bethlehem. The road intersected with Derech Hevron, skirted Rachel’s Tomb, and then joined with Sderot Manger. The three hundred checkpoint lay just beyond. They could take one of the roads that branched off and try to find refuge in one of the churches, but it could also make them easy to track.
“Turn into the souq!” Jordan yelled. “Into the market!” It was their best chance, and hopefully it was packed with tourists at this time of day. “One more block, on the left.”
The Bethlehem souq filled a small square between two main roads, Paul VI and Milk Grotto. Small souvenir shops in tented stalls created a maze where vendors hawked gold jewelry, olive wood carvings, handmade soap, and beautiful embroidery. For the tourist wanting a bargain, the souq was the place to go.
Jordan moved into the lead as they entered the market and slowed the pace as they wound deeper into the square. Reholstering her gun, she called com on the radio again.
“Have you found Ganani or Lotner?”
Neither of them had checked in.
Jordan switched channels back, this time hearing the chaos of the square and Taylor’s hard breathing through the open com.
The people in the market seemed oblivious to what was going on up the street. The buildings surrounding the smaller square muffled the sound of street traffic and must have blocked out the gunfire, too.
Reaching the center of the square, Jordan pulled up short in front of a small shop selling T-shirts.
“Do you have any money?” she asked Taylor.
He dug in his pockets and came up with one hundred shekels. Jordan snatched them out of his hand.
“Keep moving,” she said. “Take Alena and find a bench somewhere along the south wall. Wait for me there.”
Whatever the kidnappers had given the doctor seemed to be wearing off. She nodded at Jordan’s instructions. Taylor draped her arm around his shoulders, wrapped his arm around her back and propelled her forward into the marketplace.
Jordan rummaged through the selection of T-shirts, grabbing a blue one for herself and a bright red one for the doctor.
“May I help you?” asked the shopkeeper.
Jordan asked him how much.
“Eighty shekels.”
Jordan paid him and then waited for him to pick up another customer before slipping between a row of embroidered jilbābs and stripping the hijab from her head. Shaking out her hair, she pulled off Ganani’s black tee and wriggled into the T-shirt stamped “Bethlehem: The Holy Land,” with a wreathed circle depicting the four major holy sites of the city on the front. Tying the hijab around her waist, she moved through the stall and exited on the far side. The shopkeeper spotted her leaving and pointed to the red T-shirt in her hand.
“Forty shekels.”
“I’ve already paid,” she said, starting to walk away.
The shopkeeper raised his voice. “Forty shekels.”
“I told you—” she stopped herself short, realizing she was creating a scene. Digging in her pocket produced the change from Taylor’s hundred. “All I have are twenty. Will you take twenty shekels?”
“No. Forty shekels.”
“I need the T-shirt.” She held out the money. He grabbed for the shirt.
“Is something wrong here?” said a voice. Jordan turned to find a Bethlehem policeman stepping in to referee.
“I already paid for this shirt once,” she said. “Now he wants me to pay him again.”
The shopkeeper spoke in Arabic. He told the policemen that she was trying to steal the shirt and had offered him twenty shekels.
“Why would you offer to pay him again if you had already paid?” The policeman narrowed his eyes at her. “Do you have a receipt?”
“No, he didn’t give me one.” Jordan forced herself to stay calm. He clearly hadn’t come from the square, but she couldn’t afford for the situation to escalate. Taylor and Alena were waiting for her, and then there was the matter of her gun.
“Forget it.” Jordan tossed the red shirt back onto the pile of T-shirts and started to walk away.
The shopkeeper let loose with another tirade about how the shirt was damaged, dirty now, and how she had to pay.
“Wait!” the policeman ordered.
Jordan stopped, feeling the awkward press of the leather holster against her thigh. Turning, she spotted a PAS officer entering the square, causing a whisper about a shooting in the square to move through the market like wind rustling through the leaves of a copse.
“If you don’t have the money, I must assume you planned on stealing the shirt. You will need to come with me.” The policeman reached for her arm.
They had passed the moment of reasoning, and Jordan was debating what to do next—run for it or pull her gun—when Taylor’s voice boomed in her ear.
“There you are. What’s taking so long?”
Jordan pointed at the shopkeeper. “This man is accusing me of trying to steal a shirt.”
Taylor stepped forward, looming over the shopkeeper. “You know that’s not true. She asked me for the money while you were standing right there. I watched her hand it to you. Are you trying to cheat your customers, the tourists who visit here?”
“No, no.” The shopkeeper waved his hands wildly. “I remember now.” He picked up the shirt and shoved it into Jordan’s hands. “Take it. Just take it and go.”
When the policeman turned to argue with the shopkeeper, Jordan and Taylor ducked away. They cut over two aisles and then doubled back to where Taylor had left Alena sitting on a bench in the shade.
“Thank you for helping me back there,” Jordan said.
“It was a good thing I could hear what was going on.” He tapped his earbud.
Jordan sat down on the bench next to the doctor. “How are you feeling?”
“Sick. Weak,” said Alena. “But I’m better than I was.”
Taylor, who’d been keeping watch, suddenly moved over beside them. “There are PAS officers moving through the crowd. We need to move.”
Jordan handed Dr. Petrenko the red T-shirt. “Put this on.” Standing, she pulled Taylor aside. “We need to separate.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m the one they’re looking for,” Jordan said. “Hopefully, they won’t recognize me. They saw three of us come in here. I want you and Alena to go out the back. Pretend you’re an American couple and your wife is sick. Take a cab. I’ll meet you back at the bus station in ten minutes.”
“Wait. What are you going to do?”
“I’ll head back the way we came in and hope I don’t run into that policeman again.”
A rumble traveled through the crowd behind them, and Jordan snapped her head around. “That’s our cue. Go. Keep the radio on.”
Taylor helped Alena to her feet, and the two of them disappeared into the throng of tourists. Once Jordan could no longer see her red shirt or Taylor’s head above the crowd, she moved to the far aisle and walked back west along the stalls. Within moments, the PAS officers appeared.
“Imshy,” go, ordered the man in charge. The captain signaled his men to fan out and then stood on his toes and looked over the heads of the tourists. His gaze tripped as it flitted over Jordan. She looked down, feeling his eyes linger before moving past.
“They are not here,” he said, speaking into his radio in Arabic. “We’ve lost them. You are sure no one has fled out the back?”
The answer was no, and Jordan didn’t eavesdrop on the rest of the conversation. Whomever he spoke to had not apprehended Taylor and Alena.
Moving quickly toward the street, she spotted a different officer guarding the entrance to the souq. Whoever had coined the phrase “the best defense is a good offense” had it right. It was time to engage the enemy. Jordan approached the officer.
“Which way to Manger Square?” She spoke loudly in English. He grimaced and then stepped to the side and pointed up the street that she and Taylor had carried Petrenko down earlier.
“However, the square is closed,” said the officer. “There has been trouble there. You must go around.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Nevermind that.”
“I need to catch a bus.”
He waffled on his position and then pointed back toward the mosque. “There is an alleyway to the left, just beyond the entrance to the square. You may go that way.”
She murmured a thank you and slithered past him, swishing her hips slightly as she moved away.
Reaching the entrance of the square, Jordan slowed. A black body bag lay on the ground where Weizman’s body had been, with one or two small cones marking nearby areas on the ground. A small contingent of officers huddled around, arguing about the trajectory of the fatal shot.
One of the policemen pointed toward the upper floors of the Armenian monastery.
“Hey.” Another of the Palestinians had spotted her. “Move along. This is police business.”
“Sorry,” Jordan said, turning away.
“Stupid American.”
Jordan took a last look at the bag. It could have been any one of them lying there. The gunman had appeared to be targeting Alena Petrenko. The way Weizman stood up, he must have thought so, too. The shot had caught him in his third eye. It was no mistake. Someone had wanted him dead, same as Alena. The question was, who?