Still two blocks from the riot, Decker's pulse suddenly quickened as the pop of rifles firing rubber bullets was replaced by a far more familiar but deadly sound, which Decker recognized from his time in Vietnam as the crack of live ammunition. At first there were just a few shots, but the number grew. The sound echoed around them in the distance; then Decker realized that what he was hearing was not an echo. From the streets around them, in every direction, hundreds of shots were being fired. Decker's first response was to look for cover, but that same reporter's curiosity which sometimes caused him to do things he wasn't proud of, now drove him on toward the conflict. Tom readied his camera for the scene that awaited them. Then suddenly the guns were silent and the streets were filled instead with sounds of weeping and cries of pain. On the street before them, more than fifty Palestinians lay dead or wounded. Above the cries, an order went out and was repeated to unload live ammunition and to reload rubber bullets. Israeli soldiers ran from storefront to storefront, routing any Palestinians they found huddled together. Showing some mercy, they ignored those individuals in the street aiding the fallen.
Near where Decker stood, a young boy, perhaps eleven or twelve years old, held the head of a dead man in his arms. As Decker watched, an Israeli soldier came near the boy. He was staggering and bleeding heavily from a rock-inflicted wound above his right eye. In anger and grief the boy abandoned caution and reached for the first thing he could find: a brick, broken in half, with corners rounded from being thrown so many times already.
The soldier seemed dazed and unaware of the boy until he was only a few yards away. Through his tears the boy hurled the brick with very poor aim at the soldier, hitting him in the right shin, which sent him into a fit of pain. Grasping his leg and seeing the boy running away, he raised his rifle. With blood dripping from the wound above his eye, he took aim. As he did, the boy approached the corner of the building where Decker was standing. Decker reached out and grabbed the boy, pulling him from harm's way just as a bullet whizzed by. The sound of the shot made it clear to both Decker and to the Israeli soldier that he had fired live ammunition. In his dazed state he had failed to respond to the order to reload rubber bullets.
Decker held tightly to the boy, who was struggling to get away. After a moment he stopped fighting. The soldier did not pursue the boy. Soon the riot was over. All that was left was to count the casualties, clean up, and start over.
Decker and Tom asked the boy, who spoke some English, where he lived. The boy responded that he was from Jenin, a town several miles from Jabaliva and Gaza City. Apparently the riot had been an organized effort which brought Palestinians in from towns throughout Israel. Decker told the boy that they would take him back to his home in Jenin.
Tom continued taking pictures of the destruction while Decker carried the boy piggyback along the route the riot had followed. When they arrived at the car, Dean and Asher were waiting for them.
"What do you have there?" asked Asher.
"A witness," answered Decker. "He lives in Jenin. He was recruited to come here today for the riot. That's how they managed to stir up such a large crowd: they recruited extras from outside. If we take the boy home we might be able to get a lead on who the organizers were." It was a long shot, but Decker didn't want to have to depend on Asher's generosity to help get the boy home.
The previously crowded car now felt like the Washington subway at rush hour. The boy did his best to direct the Americans to his home, and after losing about forty minutes to bad directions, they finally stopped in front of his cement slab house. Decker and Tom went to the door with the boy and deposited him with his mother. The boy hugged her around the waist and began speaking to her. Seeing her tears, Decker guessed that the dead man the boy had been holding must have been his older brother. Through her tearful attempts to speak, they ascertained that she spoke almost no English. Nevertheless, it was evident that she realized that they had helped the boy.
"If we're going to get any of this in Monday's edition we've got to get back to the office now," Bill Dean called to them from the car. "You can follow up on this later."
Back at the hotel Decker and Hank Asher compared notes while Bill Dean and Tom contacted Israeli officials on the phone for their reaction to the riot and the killing of the Palestinians. When they completed their report they e-mailed it to the United States.
At six o'clock that evening Decker and Tom took Asher and Dean to Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv for their flight home to the U.S. After several months covering the Middle East, they were looking forward to a few weeks at home. Before they boarded their plane, Decker pulled Bill Dean off to the side. "Bill, let me ask you a sort of strange question," Decker began. "You've been over here for a while. If you overheard a conversation in which the people talking said 'Petra must be protected,' what would you think they were talking about?"
"Hmm… " Dean began thoughtfully, "You hear so many strange things around here. I guess it depends on who said it. 'Petra' is Greek for rock, so they might have been talking about a lot of things. They could have meant the Rock of Gibraltar at the entrance of the Mediterranean Sea. Or, if the people talking were Muslims, I'd guess they were talking about the Dome of the Rock. But those are both pretty cryptic references. There's an ancient city called Petra in Jordan, but it's been abandoned for centuries. It's mainly just a tourist attraction now. There's also a reference in the Bible where Jesus refers to the rock on which he would build his church. So, I suppose they could have been Christian zealots referring to protecting the church from some perceived devil or false doctrine or something. That's really all I can think of right off the bat. I don't know if that helps you any. What's this all about, anyway?"
Decker shook his head. "At this point I really don't know. If I come up with anything, I'll tell you when you get back from your vacation."
For the next week things seemed strangely quiet compared to their first day on the job. Israel braced for a Palestinian response to the shootings, but it was slow in coming. There were a few small disturbances, and the strike by Palestinian workers and shopkeepers continued, but there was nothing that the Israeli authorities couldn't handle. On the international scene, a United Nations vote to condemn the Israeli action in Jabaliva passed by a large majority, with the United States abstaining. Decker and Tom found plenty of time to engage in such things as taking out the trash and airing out the rooms.
Tom, who seemed to be more interested in sightseeing than Decker, picked up brochures on all the historical and religious places to visit that they had missed on their whirlwind tour with Joshua Rosen. Decker looked over a few of them, making mental notes of where to take Elizabeth and the girls when they arrived the week before Christmas. Since Decker's stay in Israel would last into January, Elizabeth thought this would be an excellent opportunity to take advantage of an otherwise bad situation, and spend Christmas with Decker in the Holy Land.
At about four in the afternoon of their eighth day, Tom returned from visiting one of Jerusalem's many shrines and sat down just as the phone rang. On the other end was a man whose accent gave him away as a Palestinian. "I need to speak to the American, Asher."
"I'm sorry he's not here," Tom responded. "May I help you?"
"Tell the American, 'Many dogs shall weep tonight, but their tears will find nowhere to fall.'"
"What?" Tom asked. "What are you talking about? What does that mean?" But the man had hung up.
"What was that?" Decker asked, responding to Tom's excited but puzzled expression.
"I don't really know," he answered. "I think it must have been one of Hank Asher's informants; either that or a kook."