Three hundred and sixty-seven meters away, the Revolutionary Guardsman’s head exploded like a smashed pumpkin. The shot initiated a barrage of fire that chopped into the riders below. A few dropped, but Lourds and the woman remained alive. Davari had surely ordered that they be left unharmed.
The riders bolted to the right, heading for shelter behind a ridgeline. A horse went down before it reached safety, but the rider ran into the rocks.
The second wave of Mufarrij’s offensive lit up the night as his team fired flares into the midst of Davari’s people. The Revolutionary Guards drastically outnumbered the Saudis. The flares robbed the Ayatollah’s butchers of their night vision, preventing them from locating their enemies. It also kept the Guardsmen from firing on the American and the people with him.
Mufarrij searched among the bright landscape and shadows for his next target, found it, and fired again.
Lourds squatted behind a tall stand of rocks, holding the bridles of Miriam’s and his mount. Both the horses were mountain-bred Kurd stock, used to warriors and weapons. They shivered in the cold night air, but didn’t bolt when the gunfire began. For that, Lourds was thankful. If he didn’t end up shot dead in the next few minutes, he didn’t look forward to being dragged to death over the rocky terrain.
Adan dragged Foad to safety. Blood streamed from Foad’s leg, and he couldn’t put any weight on it.
Farther up the mountain, Miriam stood with both pistols in her fists, totally unlike any graduate assistant Lourds had ever seen. She also seemed to be talking to herself. Or maybe she was praying. That would have been the more understandable alternative.
Lourds didn’t know who had shot at them from the top of the mountain, but it now seemed that the two groups were battling it out. One group was limned by flares that burned their shadows out of harsh yellow-white light.
Suddenly, the sound of far-away bumblebees filled the air. Curious, Lourds glanced up and saw aerodynamic shapes zoom across the skies. For a moment he thought he was looking at something out of science-fiction movies because what was coming at them were scaled-down, futuristic flying machines.
In the next second, however, the machines did a lot more than just fly overhead. Flashes from machine guns and rockets lit up the sky. Bullets sprayed into the rocks along the ridgeline, smashing everything they touched, flesh and blood as well as stone. Missiles dug craters in the ground and blew bodies into the air.
Drones. Lourds recognized their handiwork now. Though he’d never seen them close-up before, he’d seen documentaries and read magazine articles on the next generation of aerial weaponry.
The advantage in the battle along the ridgeline shifted dramatically. The unmanned weapons slew mercilessly, like vicious monsters out of legend whose thirst for blood would not be slaked.
Davari ran for his life. He knew the drones were from the United States or the Israelis. No one else had that kind of technology. Instead of laying a trap, he’d been lying in one. In two, actually, because he suspected the people who’d fired on his men had been the Saudis. He didn’t think Mufarrij still lived — didn’t know how the man could have survived being shot in the head — but someone must have taken over his unit and come after Lourds.
Scrambling along the ridge, Davari headed for one of the armored vehicles, hoping he could get away. He reached the passenger door of one as it started rolling forward, and tugged on the handle, but it was locked.
Looking inside, Davari saw Von Volker at the wheel. The Austrian glanced over at him and laughed. Davari raised his pistol, wiping the smile from Von Volker’s face. The colonel fired, but the bullet only fractured the bullet-resistant glass and ricocheted away.
Laughing harder, Von Volker accelerated and drove away. Unable to keep up, Davari tripped and fell face forward just as he saw a drone fire a missile at the car. In an eye-searing instant, Von Volker died in the fiery hell unleashed by the remote-controlled weapon.
‘Who has the last laugh now?’ Davari lay in the shadows as the battle raged around him. There was nothing he could do to stop Lourds. They would already be making their way around the ridgeline on horseback. Even if Davari could get a car, he wouldn’t be able to trail them. They could make it into Turkey on horses now.
But Davari knew where they were heading. Lourds was going back to Jerusalem — and if he had solved the mystery of Mohammad’s Koran and the Scroll — the professor would only be going to one place — the Dome of the Rock.
Davari would be there waiting for him.
50
Lourds sat in the passenger seat of the rental car with his backpack at his feet. The morning heat was sweltering, and he felt sweat trickling under his shirt. The thobe, bisht, and keffiyeh he wore made the heat even more oppressive. Part of that was nerves, though.
Although he’d chafed to return to Jerusalem for the day and a half it had taken Miriam and him to get back there, now he was extremely nervous.
‘Having second thoughts?’ Alice sat behind the wheel. She was elegantly dressed, as befitting a happy widow.
Klaus Von Volker’s death was currently the subject of an ongoing investigation that investigators felt would tie back to his proclivities for black market weapons. The consensus was that one of Von Volker’s unhappy customers had blown him to smithereens — though enough of him was left over for identification. As a result, Alice wasn’t just getting what she’d absconded with. She was getting it all. And widowhood seemed to agree with her.
‘Oh, I’m well past second thoughts and into near panic.’
Alice reached over and took his hand. The dark sunglasses hid her eyes, but worry tightened her lips into a near frown. ‘You could let someone else do this.’
Lourds saw Miriam tense up in the backseat. He wasn’t sure if it was because of Alice’s suggestion or the casual familiarity the older woman showed with him. Lourds suspected it might be a combination of the two and knew he might have some explaining to do later.
Provided he survived the trip into the Dome of the Rock.
‘Who would I let do this?’ Lourds shook his head. ‘If I told the Israelis about this, and they got caught, it would turn into — at the very least — an international incident, if not a war. And I’m not interested in telling the Ayatollah that he might have the very objects that he killed Lev to obtain at his fingertips. That’s not going to happen.’
‘If you’re caught, they may kill you.’
‘If I’m caught, they’ll be killing a curious American professor of linguistics who wandered into a place he shouldn’t have been. That’s not an international incident.’ Lourds couldn’t believe he was talking so casually about his own death. He told himself he was worrying needlessly, that he wasn’t going to get caught.
After all, no one even knew to look for him — or Mohammad’s Koran and Scroll — there.
‘And if that should happen, you go to the United States embassy and give someone in the State Department all the information I’ve given you.’ Lourds had made copies of Lev’s journal and all the translations he’d rendered, including the map from the corner pieces.
‘I will. But I’d much rather you come back safe and sound, whether you find anything there or not.’
Lourds gazed out at the Dome of the Rock. The octagon-shaped building looked beautiful and benign in the morning sunlight. Built in the shape of a Byzantine martyrium designed to hold saintly relics, the Dome was covered with mid-Byzantine art. The colorful mosaics included blue, white, orange, yellow, and green Iznik tiles in ornate shapes, giving the building its unique, glassy appearance.