Major Shamsi saw the huge troop-carrying choppers hovering over Masada to return light to a scene that had been plunged in darkness. Confusion continued to rush through him. Those were Israeli aircraft all right, but did that mean they were Israeli soldiers waging war on Yosef Rasin’s forces atop Masada? And if so, why wasn’t he informed? He grabbed for the radio yet again.
“Base, this is Major Shamsi. Come in. Over.”
“We read you, Major,” returned the voice he had heard over nine minutes before.
“All hell’s breaking loose here. Where are those troops?”
“They’re en route, Major. Your orders are to keep the area secure.”
“Secure? Secure from what? We need a drop on top of the mountain, do you hear me? There’s a situation — Wait … Who is this? Identify yourself.”
Static.
“Put Commander Herzel on now!”
More static.
“Damn!” Shamsi screamed to himself, tossing the useless mike down.
They’d been had!
He located his second-in-command nearby and pulled him aside.
“Take a jeep and get to a phone. Call base. Tell them what’s going on here. Do you hear me?”
The lieutenant looked confused. “But, sir, the radio, you—”
“Our frequency’s been jammed! No one besides us has any idea of what’s happening here!”
The troops Lace had held back had left a number of battery-powered lanterns behind in the cavernous water cistern, and Rasin arranged them in a semicircle around him to aid his final preparations. The cistern was located deep within the bowels of the mountain itself, accessible only by a steep flight of stone steps. As for firing the shells, there was a window high within the cistern’s south wall through which rain water had entered. That same window would now serve as the perfect exit route for his vaccine-loaded mortar shells.
Rasin checked the sights again. Mortars had been his specialty in the army, and that had been the very reason why he had opted for this means of release in the first place. Of course, firing them from the roof of the bathhouse was considerably different than angling the shots through a window-sized portal. Unhappy with the trajectory as presented, he had no choice but to prop up the mortar’s base precariously with a rock and his crumpled knapsack to achieve the angle of fire needed to pass through the opening.
Rasin worked fast, blessing the brilliance of Lace for holding a third of his troops back here in expectation of just this sort of eventuality. He now believed she was right about McCracken. No one else could have devised such a plan, and only Lace’s being present to anticipate it had saved his operation from ruin. But there was anticipation required on his part as well. His problems were still many and complicated. The mortar fire from the cistern would undoubtedly bring McCracken in his direction. Even if he managed to launch all twelve shells of the vaccine, what good would it do if he fell into the American’s grasp? His plan extended far beyond this night, beyond this place. He had to be able to escape.
Satisfied at last with the position of the mortar, Rasin moved back toward the explosives Lace had left for him at the foot of the stone steps.
The fresh lights of the Sikorskys allowed the battle to resume on the northern face of Masada, with Hiroshi’s warriors seizing even more of an advantage. In centuries past the labyrinth-like maze of storehouses had served as an enormous system for the stockpiling of many years’ supplies of weapons, food, and other essentials for life. It seemed fitting to McCracken that Rasin’s troops had chosen this maze of passages and rooms to make their last stand.
By now virtually all of Hiroshi’s samurai would be moving to enclose them and make the battle hand-to-hand. Gunfire continued to rage, but Blaine could tell by the cadence that it was wild and desperate. Screams periodically punctured the night as another of Rasin’s army of cutthroats fell to the silent approach and deadly swords of the samurai.
Blaine continued moving about. Rasin himself would stay beyond the battle, working frantically to fire his vaccine somehow into the air. Blaine had already searched the entire confines of the bathhouse and various ruins along the north and northwestern fronts. Coming up empty, he found himself gazing down from the northern palace lookout station at the three tiers of Herod’s palace. The uppermost tier stood at the summit, with the middle terrace some sixty-five-feet below and the lowest forty feet beneath that. The view from all, especially the lowest, was clear and spectacular.
The perfect setting for Rasin to work his black magic.
Blaine rushed to the winding, modern, man-made stairway that snaked down the mountain to the various terraces. The bottom terrace was his target, and in that moment he was certain Rasin would be there.
Hiroshi slid through the ancient corridors of the storehouse, gliding so as not to disturb the rocks that might give away his approach. He held his cherished katana high overhead. It had been handed down through his family line for generations, fashioned in the Koto period of Japan, known for the greatest swords in history. Twenty-nine-and-a-half-inches of promised death, silent as it was sure.
One of Rasin’s guards spun out toward him from an opening leading to a storeroom. Hiroshi brought the flat edge of his sword down on his rifle barrel, the bullets blasting errantly as he whipped the edge back up against the man’s throat. The man slammed up against a rock wall, gurgling blood, and Hiroshi mercifully finished him with a thrust through his heart. The man slumped. The old sensei continued on.
His years meant nothing now. His ancestors had fought on battlegrounds not much different from this, sometimes in their own service and sometimes that of a lord. The rest of his warriors came from similar traditions, and they moved as he did through the storehouse maze. There were sporadic bursts of gunfire, followed almost always by screams from the gun’s wielder as the samurai sent another to his death. Hiroshi continued on, licking the sweat from his lips and smelling the rusty scent of blood on the air. The battle refreshed and recharged him. He had been gone from the life of his ancestors for too long. This was where he belonged.
Something made Hiroshi stop still in his tracks. His ears caught a crunching sound, like that of horses carrying men on the attack. He rushed to the low point of the wall and peered outward into the dusty spill of light made by the Sikorskys’ floods.
Soldiers! Fifteen, maybe twenty rushing across the empty plain northward toward the storehouses. Where had they come from? The situation was about to change markedly. Hiroshi could see in his mind his men being mowed down as these reinforcements swooped unexpectedly into the area to the rear of his men. He had feared just such a development as this.
“Blaine,” he called into his communicator. His back pressed against the nearest wall, he broke the rule of radio silence they had set for themselves. “Blaine, come in! Where are you?”
“Down on the northern terrace. What’s wrong?”
“Twenty of Rasin’s soldiers are charging from the south. We missed them.”
“Because somebody made us miss them, the same somebody who killed the lights. Goddamn it….” McCracken put his lips closer to the microphone in order to whisper. “Johnny, can you hear me? Come on, Indian, I need you.”
“I’m here, Blainey.”
McCracken was about to ask where when he was interrupted by the abrupt and continuous fire of automatic rifles.
The sole source of the fire was Johnny Wareagle. He held in each hand an automatic rifle loaded with double clips, and was blasting away at the newly revealed troops. The news of the missing complement of soldiers had bothered Johnny from the moment he first heard it. He knew from the start they had to be hiding, and he was heading toward the scattered buildings to the south when he saw the troops led by a huge woman in black.