Rasin reached out and dropped the final shell down the barrel.
The shell blasted outward when Blaine was ten yards from the start of the steps that led down into the water cistern. Holding the Uzi tight before him, he glided the rest of the way, not wanting to alert Rasin to his presence.
“Hold it right there!”
The call sounded from his rear and McCracken knew instantly it had come from an Israeli soldier. The sudden grinding sound of additional footsteps stopping against the rock surface told him the speaker had been joined by two others. He turned slowly, hands and Uzi in the air.
“Where’s your commander?”
“Drop your weapon!”
“Call your commander here now. Is it Isser? Call Isser!”
“Drop your—”
The speaker’s command was cut off when the figure of Johnny Wareagle crashed into him, spreading his arms to take down the two others as well. Blaine didn’t wait to see the rest. He rushed the final stretch to the entrance of the water cistern and was halfway down the stairs in the pitch blackness when he heard Rasin’s voice.
“I’ve been expecting you.”
McCracken stopped, searched for the voice’s point of origin.
“Rasin?”
“You shouldn’t have come down here, but since you have why not come all the way down?”
McCracken stopped at the bottom step. The pungent scent of mortar fire singed his nostrils. There was something wrong here, wrong with the scenario, wrong with where Rasin’s voice was coming from.
“I can’t see you.”
“You’d like to, wouldn’t you? You think you’ve won.”
“Plenty of people died here tonight. Nobody wins.”
“Israel can, now that I’ve released my vaccine. Israel can win at last.”
“Only if hundreds of millions more die. That doesn’t count.”
“You’ve spoken to Eisenstadt.”
“Give yourself up.”
“Sorry.”
McCracken finally pinned Rasin down to the far wall directly opposite him. But his voice had a strange echo, as if he were speaking down from a point on the wall.
Blaine realized what was happening in time to start his sprint back up the steep stone steps. Maybe Rasin didn’t hear or see him. Maybe he just had to say one last thing.
“Good-bye, Blaine McCracken.”
The explosion came as he cleared the final step and lunged headlong through the air to carry himself as far as he could from the cistern. The stairs crumbled instantly and the entire ancient structure trembled, as fragments of the walls cracked and splintered in the last instant before the cistern collapsed upon itself, leaving Blaine to gaze back at the rubble.
“He climbed out, I’m telling you,” Blaine insisted to Isser while Isaac looked on. “He must have had a rope ladder or something extended from one of the portals.”
“He hasn’t left this rock, that’s for sure. We’ll find him.”
“I want him when you do,” Blaine said bitterly, thinking of the news Wareagle had brought him about Hiroshi. “There’s a score to settle now.”
“We’ll settle it later.”
McCracken looked up with frigid eyes. “Just find him, Isser. I figure you might be able to handle that much. But you’ve got to take him alive. Otherwise we don’t find out where he stashed the cannisters of Gamma gas and we might be facing this whole scenario again real soon.”
“I’d rather not think about that.”
“You’d better.”
Blaine had barely finished the warning when one of the gunships fired up its engine, propeller and rotor blades springing to life.
“I didn’t authorize anyone to leave,” Isser said in puzzlement. “What the hell is …”
McCracken was already running, charging toward the chopper which was nearly ready for takeoff. He knew in that instant the huge woman in black leather would be at the controls, knew she would have disabled the other gunships to prevent pursuit as well.
A group of soldiers reached the readying chopper ahead of him and were blasted back by machine-gun fire coming from just inside the door. Blaine approached on an angle that kept him from the gunman’s sight, and was almost there when the chopper lifted off suddenly. At the last moment he leaped to grab hold of the chopper’s landing pod as it rose, but his hand slipped off the steel. He plunged back down to the dust of Masada with the gunship shrinking into the blackness of the night.
Chapter 29
Evira lay on the floor in her cell in the palace basement. Time had lost all meaning to her; she slept, she woke. There was little else to do. Kourosh lay against her, using her shoulder as a pillow. Occasionally in his sleep, the urchin would whimper and grab for her. Evira was more than happy to hug and soothe him, her own desperation eased in the process.
How long had it been since Hassani had finished with them, since the reports of McCracken’s death? At least one day, perhaps two or more. Evira didn’t know why they were being left alive, unless it was to let them starve slowly to death. In all the hours they had been there, no one had come with food or water. She had long gone beyond being hungry, even thirsty. Her strength had depleted, and with it her resolve. Hassani had won, Rasin too. McCracken was dead and she was here. How idealistic she had been to believe the two of them were capable of defeating the plans of two madmen on their own.
By her side, Kourosh whimpered again, long hair matted to his forehead by the sweat caused by the unremitting heat of the air about them. This boy had become her burden. Watching him die would be her punishment for how she had involved Blaine McCracken. The gods worked in strange ways, but always with method and purpose. She knew another day without food or water would bring severe pains and cramps to the boy. Such an awful way to die, feeling yourself wasting away. She had resolved that before her own strength ebbed too far she would end the urchin’s pain by killing him. It would be the last act of her suddenly feeble life and the hardest to fulfill.
Evira felt herself nodding off again and hoped for a long, dream-filled sleep this time. She wrapped her arm around the boy and held him close to her. Her eyes slid closed.
A sound from somewhere jarred her. How long had she been out, if at all? A dream, it must have been a dream that reached her in the state between consciousness and sleep.
No, the sound came again, that of metal being worked; a scratching, grating sound. Her ears tried to focus in, eyes useless in the near-total darkness of the basement prison.
Suddenly there was a loud echo of metal being forced aside. A wide beam of light darted haphazardly across the far wall. Men were entering through some secret passageway or tunnel. She remembered Kourosh describing it to her. But who were they? Why had they come?
The single beam became four. The beams were joined by voices exchanged in a whisper, someone giving instructions, a search underway.
They were looking for her!
Over here, Evira tried to say, but her mouth was too dry to push the words out. She forced up some saliva and cleared the refuse from her throat.
“Over here,” she managed hoarsely. “Over here.”
Instantly a pair of the flashlights turned in the direction of her cell.