77
******
Enoch raced out to the jeep parked in the plaza and retrieved the spare Kevlar vest that one of the soldiers told him would be there. He hoped to see Amit, but there was no sign of him. Where could the commander have gone?
Then he quickly moved back inside and darted forward past the flatbed. There he caught a glimpse of the two crates covered in stone that Cohen had secreted beyond the security post. No doubt the hostage had been inside one of them. The second was large enough to hold just about anything—a harbinger of doom that anguished him. An attack against the Temple Mount could easily spark World War III.
Wasting no more time, he slid on the vest, then scrambled down the metal treads and entered the first leg of the Western Wall Tunnel, the large visitors’ hall. Staying close to the wall with his Jericho pistol directed straight ahead, he surveyed the area—or at least the section he could see. Five soldiers had already been taken down, two fatally with gaping head wounds; three others sprawled on the ground with critical wounds to their exposed extremities. Straight ahead, two soldiers had just managed to break open a security door blocking the entrance to the tunnel stretching north from the hall.
The chamber had turned into a shooting gallery, filled with bullets spraying wildly in all directions, the heavy smell of gunpowder, and deafening gun blasts.
Staying low and poking his head around the wall, Enoch could see that Cohen’s men had taken secure positions throughout the hall, behind piles of stone. Ten Israelis had them hopelessly pinned down and were tightening their perimeter. Most likely, if they couldn’t take them out, they’d certainly avoid explosives down here and start using tear gas to root them out. But Cohen’s gunmen weren’t letting up and their supply of ammunition seemed limitless.
There was no sign of the rabbi here. Odds were he’d made his way deeper into the tunnel.
Now the bullets started flying in Enoch’s direction, making him drop to the floor behind a broad tool chest. But these shots hadn’t come from inside the hall—they were strays from the second wave of fighting that had just erupted beyond the breached security door.
The first soldier through the door was already lying in a pool of blood, helmet blown clear off his head. The second had taken some pounding to his chest armor but was able to stumble back for cover before anything worse happened.
Enoch had a straight sight line into the tunnel, and he saw a man in a blue jumpsuit scramble deep into the passage and up some distant steps. To chase after the guy through the narrow channel was risky . . . make that stupid. But that’s what needed to be done—fast.
Luckily, the kid who’d taken some deep bruising to the ribs had already caught the attention of three others. He was pointing to the open door.
The three smoothly dropped back from the hall and filed into the tunnel.
The barrage of bullets was riddling the huge foundation stones. And the odds of Enoch catching a few with his brain were high.
But then he had an idea.
Enoch tested the tool chest’s wheels by nudging it a few centimeters. The sturdy casters were actually quite smooth. The lumpy stone floor, however, was a problem.
There wasn’t going to be a better opportunity than this, Enoch thought.
Snapping his gun into its holster, he opened the chest’s middle drawer enough to grip his left hand around the metal frame. He pushed it forward and crab-walked behind it, angling it sideways as he emerged into the hall.
The first rounds thwumped into the casing and clanged off some tools in the top drawer.
Rolling the chest was a much bigger challenge then he’d bargained for—the thing was heavy and clumsy, jerking side to side and jostling the tools inside fiercely enough to drown out the gun blasts.
More bullets pounded through, pushing the chest back into him and sandwiching him against the mount’s cold stone base. Then a neat line strafed directly overhead, so close it tousled his hair.
He cursed.
He looked to the security door. Only three meters to go.
Shoving the thing out again, he resumed rolling his makeshift shield, clattering louder than ever. When he’d reached the door, he abandoned the metal hulk.
He unholstered his Jericho and sprinted up the tunnel.
But he quickly slowed when he saw that just up the steps where the blue-suited gunman had fled, the IDF trio was engaged in another shooting match. What confused him was that they were firing through a huge hole in the mount’s foundation.
“Holy shit,” Enoch murmured. He cautiously pressed forward.
Then something horrible happened that didn’t give the Israelis any hope for escape.
Enoch barely saw it all go down.
It started when they began screaming and throwing themselves away from the hole. A split second later, a rocket-propelled mortar came streaming out at them, hissing as it cut through the opening. When it struck the wall opposite the hole, the entire tunnel came down on top of them.
The pulsing shock wave took Enoch airborne, his body striking a wall with appalling force, and flung him over a second low wall. Suddenly he was falling into blackness. Then a cold sensation crashed over his body.
78
******
First the gunmen came up from the hole to secure the area.
Cohen came next, pleased to see that the esplanade was empty. The commotion in the Western Wall Tunnel had brilliantly diverted all attention from the Dome of the Rock. There wasn’t a soldier or policeman in sight.
The stairwell opening was situated approximately midway along the esplanade’s eastern side. In the first century, this had been the outer confine called the Courtyard of the Gentiles—a public area outside the walls of the sanctified temple complex itself.
