He signaled his men with a curt hand.
One of his men peeled up a corner of the canvas top, enough to expose the tripod-mounted, drumlike device that lurked underneath. Another man, positioned behind it, looked through its targeting scope and aimed it at the scrum of men crowding the back of the Previa.
He double-checked the settings on the device.
Then he hit the trigger.
THE CRUSH OF PEOPLE pressed against the people carrier recoiled back for the briefest of moments, as if struck by an unseen force, their faces contorted in discomfort and pain, their hands rising to block their ears.
The effect only lasted a second, but it was long enough for Finch to catch it—as did Brother Ameen. As the mob jerked back, a crater of clear space opened up behind the Previa.
Brother Ameen caught Finch’s eye—both their faces were locked in confusion—then he pointed back frantically and yelled, “Go back,” to Yusuf.
The driver and Gracie swung their heads back and spotted the opening.
“Back. Go back now,” Brother Ameen shouted again.
Yusuf hesitated.
“Let’s go, come on, back up,” Gracie yelled at him, also pointing back fiercely.
The driver nodded reluctantly, slammed the car into reverse, and—with his hand still on the horn—eased the car backward. The men flinched back in surprise, widening the opening behind the Previa.
“Keep going,” Gracie insisted, scanning in all directions. “Get us back to the gates.”
The Previa gathered momentum, Yusuf taking advantage of the faltering crowd and keeping his foot down. They swerved around the bend at the far corner of the monastery, and the going got easier as they rushed up its long perimeter wall, still in reverse gear and chased by the frenzied horde. Fighting broke out as people lashed out and grabbed at each other, with Father Jerome’s followers trying to block the followers of the Islamic firebrands from getting to the van. The Previa kept moving, slipping past the tangle of fists and blood, finally making it to the monastery’s gates, which swung open just as it reached them. Yusuf skillfully managed to thread the Previa through the opening before the gates slammed shut and blocked off the crazed posse’s advance.
They all tumbled out of the car in a daze, hearts thumping, veins drowning with adrenaline. Dalton was still filming, capturing every moment of their escape.
“Let’s go up there,” Gracie yelled to Dalton and Finch, pointing up at the keep that stood next to the gate, jutting in from the perimeter wall. Finch nodded and said, “Let’s get the Began up,” lifting the compact satellite dish out of the Previa. “The guys on the outside are getting this live.”
Gracie turned to Father Jerome. “Please go inside, Father. You need to be somewhere safe, away from the gate,” she cautioned. She glanced at the abbot, whose grave face nodded with agreement.
Father Jerome didn’t seem convinced.
He didn’t acknowledge her words. He seemed distant, his mind preoccupied elsewhere. He was staring beyond her, beyond the gate even, at the people crowding it and shouting out his name, and seemed curiously calm.
“I need to talk to them,” he finally said, his voice settled and certain.
His eyes traveled back to Gracie and to the abbot. Then, without awaiting further words, he stepped away from the car and headed toward the keep.
“Wait, Father,” Gracie called out as she rushed in after him, closely followed by the abbot and Brother Ameen.
“I must talk to them,” Father Jerome insisted, without turning or stopping as he reached the narrow staircase and began marching up its stone steps.
They followed him across the second-floor drawbridge, into the keep and all the way up until they reached the top floor. The rickety wooden ladder still stood there, in a corner of the chapel, poking out through the small hatch. Moments later, they were all standing on the roof.
Gracie, Finch, and Dalton inched forward for a peek at the crowd below.
The scene below was unnerving. Hundreds of people were massed against the gates of the monastery, chanting, shouting, waving their hands and pumping their fists into the air, starved for a response, looking nervously over their shoulders as, behind them, the violence was growing, the pockets of fighting spreading like wildfire, threatening to engulf the entire plain.
Dalton got the live feed hooked up while Finch got through to Atlanta on the satphone. Gracie grabbed her earpiece and mike, mentally running through what she would soon be telling a world audience while watching the old priest as he stood by the hatch, staring ahead at the edge of the roof twenty feet in front of him, the only barrier between him and the clamoring mob below. From where he was standing, he could hear them, but he couldn’t see them yet. The abbot and the young monk were talking to him, pleading with him not to expose himself in that way, telling him someone below could easily have a weapon and might take a shot at him. Father Jerome was having none of it. He was calmly shaking his head, a strange mix of resolve and fear radiating from him. His arms were hanging down listlessly, his fingers straight, his sandaled feet idle. He turned his head sideways and met Gracie’s gaze, and, with the smallest, most stoic of nods, he started moving forward.
Gracie turned in alarm to Finch and at Dalton. They were huddled by the small, cross-topped dome that occupied a corner of the otherwise flat roof. Dalton had his camera up and was tracking the priest in a low crouch. Finch gave Gracie the sign that they were live. Gracie held up the mike but felt momentarily dumbstruck as she edged forward, tracking the old man, who soon reached the edge of the roof.
He stood there and looked down, and the crowd erupted in a mix of whoops and cheers and angry shouts. The throng pressed forward, calling his name out and waving, the euphoria of the faithful at the front of the mob only riling even more those opposed to Father Jerome’s appearance, and the fighting farther back gained in intensity. Shouts of “
Father Jerome stared down at the raging maelstrom below, beads of sweat trickling down his face. Slowly, he raised his arms, stretching them high and wide in a welcoming gesture. Again, as his mere appearance had done a short moment earlier, the gesture only seemed to polarize the crowd below even more and fuel the fighting.
“Please,” he yelled out in an Arabic that was heavily accented, “Please, stop. Please stop and listen to me.” His pleas could hardly be heard over the chaos raging below, and had no effect on the commotion. With rocks still pelting the wall of the keep and flying wildly past him, he remained steadfast and shut his eyes, his face locked in deep concentration, his arms held high—
—and suddenly, the crowd gasped in shock. Gracie saw people pointing upward—not at the priest, but higher up, at the sky above him, and she spun her head up and saw a ball of light, perhaps twenty feet or so in diameter, swirling over the priest. It hovered there for a moment, then started to rise directly above him, and as it did, it suddenly flared up both in size and in brightness and morphed into the sign, the same one she’d seen over the ice shelf. It now blazed overhead, a massive, spherical kaleidoscope of shifting light patterns, its lower edge hovering no more than twenty feet or so directly above Father Jerome.
The throng below just froze, rooted in place, entranced, staring up in openmouthed awe. The stones stopped flying. The brawls ended. The shouting died out. The sign was just there, shimmering brilliantly, rotating very slowly, almost within reach, closer now than it had been over the research ship, its radiant lines and circles mesmerizing.
Dalton was lying on his back at the very edge of the roof, filming the sign and panning back down to get the crowd’s reaction. Gracie was still crouching near him, fifteen feet or so away from Father Jerome, who had his head tilted back and was staring up at the blazing apparition above him, dumbfounded. The camera swung back, stopping momentarily to settle on Gracie. She stared into the dark abyss of the lens, tongue-tied. She wanted to say something, she could feel the whole world watching, hanging on the edge of their seats, willing her to tell them what it felt like to be there, but she couldn’t do it. The moment was simply beyond words. She looked up at the
