The farther they walked, the colder it became. Bennett’s mind began wandering as they probed deeper into the tunnel. He wondered what had happened to Donovan and Harkin. How far had they gone? How close had they come? How had they died?
The cobwebs were thick in his face, suggesting that no one had been down here in quite some time. With any luck they had beat Farouk and his minions to the punch. On the other hand, they had no guarantee they were on the right track. All they really had to go on were the scribblings of a dead Syrian rabbi and the testimony of two rogue CIA agents willing to sell out their country for buried treasure that might not even be real.
Soon the granite below his feet began sloping downward at a fairly steep angle. Bennett steadied himself against the cold, wet walls, but behind him he heard Erin lose her balance and slam onto her back. With nothing to grab on to, nothing to break her fall, she began sliding, picking up speed as she plunged into the icy darkness. Instinctively, he reached out to grab her, but she was moving too fast. Her screams echoed through the tunnel chambers, silenced only by an enormous splash as she hit the surface of the springs below.
Erin gasped for air, but she needed more.
The bone-chilling waters seemed to suck all energy from her body. She thrashed around, desperately trying to regain her footing, but the weight of her pack began pulling her under. She was sinking — sinking fast — and she had no idea what to do. She expected to touch bottom any moment, but there was nothing there, nothing to grab on to, nothing to push off of.
Terrified, she wrestled with the backpack, trying to unhook it and get it off her back before she drowned. She finally managed to pry it loose and slip away, but she was still going down. She tried to kick off her boots, heavy and now waterlogged, but they were tied too tightly. She couldn’t get them off. The gun was gone. The pack was gone. Tens of thousands of dollars of Natasha’s gear was gone. And she was still sinking.
Bennett expected Erin to resurface any moment.
But there was no sign of her, just a mass of bubbles that were fading quickly.
With his adrenaline pumping, he moved with desperate caution, working his way down the sloped tunnel floor, trying to get to the water’s edge without slipping in himself. When he got to the bottom, he made his way around the edge of the pool to another tunnel that shot off to one side. He tore off his backpack and gloves and tossed them into the side tunnel, along with his gun. Then he quickly untied his boots, ripped them and his socks off his feet, and plunged in headfirst. The frigid water instantly numbed his hands and feet, and a shock of pain shot through his skull. The icy temperatures stung his eyes, and he was forced to close them. But it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The water was pitch-black. He wouldn’t have been able to see Erin if she had been just inches way.
His lungs screamed for oxygen. His hands grasped for his wife. Though he could barely feel his legs now, he kicked as hard he could, trying to close the gap.
Suddenly, finally, Erin felt her feet hit rock.
She bent her knees to cushion her landing and then sprang back up with all the force she could muster. Up, up she crawled, her legs flailing, her lungs burning, her body freezing, her heart racing. Out of nowhere, she felt Jon’s hand and felt hope jolt through her body like a charge of electrical current.
Bennett’s hands clamped on to Erin’s.
He had her and he would never let her go. But now he had another problem: how to stop his descent. He had to reverse course and pull her and himself back to the surface. But his weight and the added weight of their soaked clothing were making it almost impossible to gain upward momentum.
Suddenly, as they thrashed about in the murky darkness, they slammed against something. He felt a jagged shard of rock slice deep into his knee. He had almost no air left in his lungs. It was everything he could do not to scream out in pain. But instead, he wedged his foot into the side of the razor-sharp crag and used it as leverage to push his way up.
The pain in his foot shot through him like a knife. It was unlike anything he had ever felt before, worse even than when he had been shot a few years before. But it worked. A moment later, he felt Erin pushing off the edge as well, and soon they both burst to the surface, gasping for air.
But there was no time for rejoicing. Erin suddenly went limp. He dragged her to the side and scrambled up onto the rocky edge while still holding fast to her shirt and arms. Then, using every last ounce of energy he had, he pulled her out of the water and into the side tunnel and rolled her onto her back.
To his horror, he realized she wasn’t breathing.
44
An Israeli Apache gunship rose over the ridge.
It made a low sweep over the western slopes, its spotlight on and directed toward the ground. Was this a normal patrol, Natasha wondered, or were they hunting for someone? Were they hunting for them? Were the authorities on to them already?
Natasha was almost a mile from the tunnel opening. She was parked in a roadside rest area near Kibbutz Ein Gev, on the eastern shores of the Sea of Galilee. But she had a clear view of the Golan Heights, and she watched as the chopper made one pass and then another.
Forgetting the code words they had agreed upon, she grabbed the radio and whispered, “Guys, you there? We have a little situation up here. Come in, over.”
She waited a moment, but there was no response.
“Guys, seriously, we’ve got a problem. There’s an Apache sweeping back and forth over your location. I repeat, an Israeli gunship over your location. How much longer are you guys going to be?”
Bennett was now giving his wife mouth-to-mouth.
But nothing was working.
A minute went by, then another, but it felt like an hour. Bennett was begging God to let Erin live. She couldn’t die. She couldn’t leave him. Not here. Not like this. They’d only been married a few days. It wasn’t fair, he argued. Why would God do this to them? Why would He give them a taste of the happiness of being together and then rip them apart forever?
“Hey, guys, are you there?”
Natasha checked the frequency and the batteries and tried again. “Base Camp to Angel One, Angel Two, are you okay? Come in, over.”
But there was still no response, and now she began to fear the worst.
Suddenly Erin gagged.
Bennett turned her head, and she began vomiting uncontrollably.
But she was back. She was breathing. And he began to sob. He held her in his arms for what seemed like an eternity, rubbing her face and hands, trying to get her warm. His mind reeled. What was he supposed to do now? She obviously couldn’t keep going forward. But how in the world was he going to get her back to the surface?
He grabbed the radio. “Base Camp, this is Angel One, do you read me? Over.”
“Jon, it’s me,” responded a startled Natasha. “Are you okay?”
“Hey, hey, no names,” he insisted.
“Right, I’m sorry. I forgot. But where are you guys? I’ve been calling you forever.”
Bennett explained what happened.
“I’m afraid she’s slipping into hypothermia,” he said. “I need to get her out.”
“Jon, listen to me. If she’s hypothermic, you have to stabilize her. You can’t move her yet.”
There was silence for a moment; then Bennett said, “Did you hear what I just said? She’s unconscious. We need to get her out of here, and fast.”