Was he talking about the transmitter?
She glanced down at the computer screen again and saw that the image had changed. The Black Knight, still hanging in space about the Earth, was changing shape before her eyes, unfolding. Expanding. The change was rapid. She could already see the first hints of the sphere it would become.
Somehow, instead of shutting down the Black Knight, the reactivation of the transmitter had accelerated the process.
Or had it?
“Fallon!” Carter cried out, and then there was a loud, insistent banging sound as she beat her fists against the metal door.
Dourado barely heard. Her attention was fixed on the computer screen, but she wasn’t watching the live feed anymore. Instead, she was navigating into the archive of footage from earlier in the day. She entered the time code for one hour earlier. Then two hours. Three.
Each picture showed a different perspective, but there was one unchanging constant. The Black Knight itself.
Dormant.
Inactive.
The Black Knight had not posed any threat at all.
Not until thirty seconds ago.
Suddenly, she understood everything. She understood how the hacker had defeated the Tomorrowland network firewall, hijacked the robots and autonomous vehicles, and then melted away, leaving no trace.
Lazarus reappeared, dragging Carter after him. “Cintia. It’s starting.”
“I know,” she groaned. “They lied to us.”
He shook his head. “I’m talking about the robots. The carts. You need to get control of them. Move them away from the door so we can get in there.”
Even as he said it, she heard the rhythmic clanking sound of metal treads moving on asphalt in the distance, growing louder by the second. The construction robots had come out of hiding and were headed their way.
The hacker had made his move.
But there is no hacker, she realized. There never was.
She turned back to the computer, steeling herself for the life-or-death cyber-battle to come.
On the video player screen, the Black Knight began to shine with blinding, radiant solar energy, and Dourado knew that, on the far side of the world, the sun had just stopped moving.
TWENTY-THREE
There was another explosion, so close that the flash and the bang happened almost simultaneously, and a section of the ancient wall that had stood for more than a thousand years disintegrated in an eruption of rubble. The second blast confirmed that the first one had not been an accident.
The monastery was under attack.
Beams of light pierced through the smoke and dust, probing the interior and heralding the arrival of the attackers.
“Come with me,” Justin hissed. “Quickly.”
They had just rounded the corner of the Katholikon basilica, when the noise of gunfire reached Pierce’s ears.
Definitely an attack, he thought. So much for enduring peace.
Justin led them into a narrow alley behind the basilica and pointed to an enormous tree with long leafy vines growing from a raised bed. Pierce had noticed it during their earlier wanderings. It was the only one of its kind inside the walls. Even in the middle of a crisis, Justin could not forget who he was. “This is the bush from which God spoke to Moses. Behind it, there is a passage that leads out onto the mountain.”
“An escape route,” Pierce said. “Good thinking.”
Justin shook his head. “It’s the pilgrim’s path. A sacred route leading to the Cave of Moses, where he hid himself when beholding the glory of God. It is not meant for you, but…” He paused and crossed himself again. “When you are outside, you will see the path. Keep to it, for if you stray, you will in all likelihood wander the mountain until you freeze to death. The path will lead you to the cave. Hide there. If I am still alive when the sun rises, I will find you.”
He pointed to the tree again. “Go. May God keep you and watch over you.”
As if to underscore the urgency in his voice, there was another burst of gunfire. A section of wall high above them shattered, as a dozen bullets tore into the ancient stone. Pierce shielded his eyes with one hand until the debris stopped raining down. When he lowered his hand, Father Justin was gone.
Pierce climbed up onto the elevated soil bed and drew back the branches to expose what looked like a drainage hole. “Go!”
Gallo went first, clambering up and scurrying under the foliage, disappearing into the dark hole. Fiona was next, but as she brushed past him, Pierce felt a jolt, like an electric shock, pass through the branches and into his hands. He let go with a yelp and looked around for a moment, wondering what had happened. For a moment, he thought that one of the explosions had damaged a buried electrical line, but then he remembered that the power was out in the monastery.
Weird, he thought, and then he ducked under the vines and plunged into the passage. Whatever its cause, the shock did not reoccur.
Pierce’s headlamp revealed the smooth, baked-clay brick wall, Fiona’s backside, and not much else, but there was enough room for him to crawl on hands and knees without scraping his back against the ceiling. There was more sporadic shooting behind them, the noise of the reports distorted by the tunnel’s acoustics. Pierce tried not to think about the carnage they were fleeing, or the senseless hate that had motivated it. Maybe the terrorists would be content with vandalizing the monastery, sparing the monks’ lives.
He could hope.
The tunnel sloped downward for its full length, about a hundred and fifty feet, and then deposited them onto the desert floor at the foot of the south wall, facing the mountain slope. The walls muffled the sound of the ongoing assault, but Pierce knew the fortress would not contain the violence any more than it had protected those within.
He located the path Father Justin had spoken of, a well-trampled foot trail, dotted here and there with dark stains.
Blood.
He recalled what Justin had said about holy ground and taking off their shoes inside. The pilgrims who followed this secret route probably took that admonition very seriously.
As the grade increased, their pace faltered to a walk, and soon all three of them were struggling for breath. The monastery was a mile above sea level, and the summit of the mountain was at least another half-mile higher.
With their increased elevation, Pierce could see down into the monastery. Columns of smoke rose from two or three small fires, the rest of the darkness illuminated by occasional flashes of gunfire. Then he spotted lights outside the walls, a small group of men skirting the exterior of the monastery.
“Lights off!” he ordered the others, switching his own headlamp off as well.
Had they been spotted?
“Looks like we’re going to have to skip the Cave of Moses,” he said, keeping his voice low, barely louder than a whisper. “We’ll skirt along the base of the mountain and then double back. I doubt these guys will stick around much longer. I’m sure the Egyptian army has already heard about this, and the cavalry is on the way.”
“Do you think they’re here for us?” Fiona said.
“Possibly,” Pierce replied. “Maybe our cover story was too convincing. ISIS couldn’t pass up a chance to take UN hostages.”
Gallo spoke up. “George, what if this isn’t Islamic extremists? You heard what Brother Justin said about the charter of protection. No Muslim would defy the Prophet like that. What if they’re here because of what we’re looking for?”
“How would they even know?” Fiona asked.
It makes sense, George thought, and then he turned to Gallo. “You’re right. We have to consider what Felice discovered in Geneva. Somebody caused that. Intentionally. Maybe they’re trying to create a weapon, or maybe they just want to bring the apocalypse, but they have the resources to make it happen. Who’s to say they don’t have an army, too? If they’ve learned what we’re looking for and why, then they would want to stop us. Or take it for themselves. The question is, how would they even know about us in the first place?”