is,” she said. “Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done if . . .” “Looks like you handled yourself just fine without us,” Amit said, giving
the rabbi’s charred corpse a sideways glance.
“Us?” Charlotte could see only dead bodies.
The rumble of rotor blades was shaking the cupola again, much
closer now.
Then the second man materialized through an archway to her left.
When he saw that Amit had secured the area, he slung his Galil over his
shoulder and let out a whistle. “All clear below.”
As Enoch hopped the rail onto the rock and made his way over, a repulsed look twisted his face when he saw what had happened to Cohen.
Despite the grotesqueness of it all, he found himself moving closer to
inspect the body, and more important the magnificent glimmering relic
looming over it. “What in hell—”
“Don’t touch the box!” Amit yelled over to him.
Startled, Enoch immediately fell back a step and held up his hands.
“What the— ?”
“Sorry,” Amit softly replied. “It’s just that . . . well, you can see what
it did to the rabbi.” He’d barely glimpsed the rabbi go up in flames upon
contact with the Ark’s lid.
“Gotcha.” He cringed again. It appeared to Enoch that the rabbi might
have been the victim of intense radiation burn. His eyes suddenly went
wide and he pointed to the Ark. “Is it nuclear?”
“Something like that,” Amit said. “But if you don’t touch it, you’ve got
nothing to worry about.” That piece of Ark legend certainly seemed true.
“Right, Charlotte?”
She pictured the glowing bones inside the Ark. Moses? Her eyes went
back to Cohen’s charred corpse. Shaking her head, she didn’t quite know
how to respond.
“Ah. There’s one up here too,” Enoch blurted, pointing to the cupola’s
base where his gaze happened upon another discreetly mounted security
camera. “Have a look.”
Taking two steps closer, Amit craned his head until he saw the device’s
tiny lens glinting in the light. “Well, that should make things a bit more
interesting.” If the camera wasn’t just for show, the Muslims were sure to
have a field day with the footage.
“A camera downstairs got a great shot of me shooting up the Well of
Souls, too,” Enoch confessed. “That can’t be good.”
Both Amit and Charlotte looked at him and cringed.
“What were you shooting at?” Amit said.
Enoch’s cheeks immediately reddened. He shrugged, saying: “It was a
precaution.”
Amit’s eyebrows tipped up.
going to have one helluva a time spinning it all. Striding to the Rock’s
edge and clambering over the railing, he inspected the walls above the
ambulatory. Immediately he spotted another camera glaring down about
three meters behind the Arab he’d riddled with bullets. He groaned in
frustration.
“Another one?” Enoch yelled over.
“Yep,” he sighed.
“You did what you had to do,” Charlotte said. “If you hadn’t stopped