Sacred Stone

“Mr. Seng is in charge,” Hanley said. “Good luck.”

The team began to filter out of the conference room, each holding a large cardboard box. Hanley stopped Nixon as he passed.

“Do you have the rope ladder?” he asked.

“It’s here in this box on the top.”

“Okay then,” Hanley said, following him down the hall to the rear deck.

Hanley watched from the rear deck until the two boats were loaded and had set off the short distance toward shore. Then he walked back inside to check on Murphy and Lincoln.

“WHERE AM I going to drop you off?” Adams asked.

“We’re going right to the Dome of the Rock,” Cabrillo said. “By then the team from the Oregon will have arrived.”

“Then what?”

“Let me explain,” Cabrillo said.

A couple of minutes later, when Cabrillo had finished, Adams whistled lightly. “With all the high-tech toys the Corporation has in its arsenal it’s come down to this.”

“It’s like a high-wire act in the circus,” Cabrillo agreed.

THE TEAM FROM the Oregon climbed off the helicopter on a closed street near the Dome of the Rock. Israeli tanks blocked all the side streets nearby and Israeli army platoons were sweeping the streets and the mosque of people. Crowds of Palestinians, not knowing their revered shrine was in jeopardy, began to protest and the Israelis had to keep them back with water cannons.

Seng led the team to the entrance to the mosque. “Spread out and take your positions,” he told his team. “Kevin, make sure the rope is in place first.”

“Yes, sir,” Nixon said as the team trotted off into the mosque courtyard.

Seng turned to an Israeli army officer standing nearby.

“I need hoses attached to the fire hydrants on all sides and then run inside the mosque,” Seng said. “Make sure we have enough hose to reach anywhere inside we want.”

The officer began shouting orders.

HICKMAN FLEW ALONG over the Mediterranean. He was filled with a sense of a life at an end. And the life had been a failure. All his riches, the fame, and successes meant nothing in the end. The one thing he had wished to do right he had butchered. He had never been a good father to his son. Preoccupied with grandiosity and infused with a self-importance that allowed no other human being to come too close, he was never able to allow the love of a child for a parent to penetrate his shell.

Only Chris Hunt’s death had caused it to open.

For Hickman the stages of grief had stopped at cold hatred. Anger toward a religion that fostered fanatics who killed without qualms, an anger toward the symbols they cherished.

Soon those symbols would be gone—and while Hickman would only see the first fruits of his labors, he knew he would die happy in the knowledge that the rest would soon crumble.

It would not be long now, he thought, as he glimpsed the first sight of the coastline.

Not long until Islam was ripped asunder.

NIXON AND GANNON unpacked a rope ladder from a cardboard box and quickly stretched it out on the courtyard alongside the Dome of the Rock. There was no way it would be long enough.

“I’ll open the backup,” Nixon said, cutting the tape on a second box with his knife and pulling out the second coiled ladder. “How are you with knots?”

“I own a sailboat,” Gannon said, “so I guess I qualify.”

Gannon began to splice the ends of the two ladders together. Around the Dome of the Rock, the other members of the team began to remove large plastic bags containing white powder from other cardboard boxes.

Near the entrance by the Silsila Minaret, Seng watched as the Israelis pulled hoses through the opening. “Leave them there,” Seng ordered. “My people will take them the rest of the way inside.”

Walking to all four sides of the massive mosque complex, Seng repeated the instructions. Soon, teams from the Corporation began pulling the hoses inside.

“Okay,” Gannon said a few minutes later, “it’s all together.”

“Now we need to start at this side and carefully coil it up,” Nixon said.

With Gannon pulling, Nixon formed the ladder into an orderly pile.

MURPHY STARED AT the trajectory lines on the computer screen, then turned and stared at Hanley. “Is there any budget on this little party?” he asked.

“None,” Hanley said.

“Good,” Murphy said, “because this little barrage is close to a million if you want guaranteed success.”

“Go big or go home,” Hanley said.

Lincoln was staring at a track line that showed the inbound DC-3. “Let’s hope this course remains the same,” Lincoln said, “and that what you hypothesize is true.”

“From the angle of his camera,” Hanley said, “it seems like he’s going to come in low for the drop. That would make the destruction of Abraham’s Stone more visible. If he dropped it from up high, he’d need to have the camera lens set on wide-angle and it wouldn’t give the picture much detail when it shattered.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Lincoln said. “I’m worried about the second pass.”