The Aleppo Code (The Jerusalem Prophecies) (55 page)

Now he felt pretty foolish for refusing Rodriguez’s offer.

“Where’s the line for the Log Flume ride?” Rizzo was swaying above the hole in the earth, his head bobbing and his legs flapping. “And after that, the Mad Tea Party ride.”

Rizzo flipped Whalen the lead cord and the ex-SEAL pulled him over to solid ground.

“C’mon. Move it. We need to get Bohannon out of that hole and get ourselves out of town.”

Vordenberg pulled Rizzo from the bosun’s chair and swung the arm back out over the foundation hole. “Go ahead. Drop it down.”

If he kept his thoughts on his aches and pains, Bohannon didn’t have to worry his mind or kick in his fear of what was coming next.

Rizzo’s singing had faded, and then stopped, as he got near the rim of the foundation.

Bohannon looked up. The harness was dropping like a stone. In a flash his heartbeat started racing, his breathing became labored, and he broke out in a clammy sweat that gave his body the shivers. He couldn’t remember how long he had been terrified of heights or why it had started. But he knew the next ten minutes would probably be the longest of his life.

The note was still tied to the cross-hatch of canvas strips that made up the bosun’s seat, but he remembered what it said without reading it again:
Sit still. Don’t move around. Stay in the middle of the seat.
“God, help me.”

Bohannon had the staff tightly pressed to his chest as he tried to hold every muscle in his body fixed in place. Eyes closed, he was thinking of anything to keep his mind off the ascent and what was below. Whether the Phillies’ aging lineup could manufacture one more run at the World Series, whether it was possible to make an ice cream better than Ben & Jerry’s chocolate, whether Jimmy Fallon could live up to the legacy of Jay Leno or Johnny Carson. It was working. Bohannon’s mind was half-a-world away. Maybe he nodded out. It had been a long time since any of them slept. Didn’t matter. He started back to consciousness, half in and half out of the harness. As he reached out with his left hand and grabbed the side of the harness, his right hand lost its grip on the staff, and it started to slide. His eyes flew open.

There was no substance, no structure to the bosun’s seat harness, just strips of canvas. Nothing to hold his body steady. Even the motion of reaching out with his left hand made the harness unstable.

All this in the split second it took for two things to happen: Bohannon clamped his knees on the staff like vise grips. And his open eyes stared into the void far below. Enough light to see the deep, not enough to see the bottom. Far. Down. His body tripped into a state he had visited many times before, whether he was watching a movie or standing on the edge of a cliff.

An electric current ran a loop between his shoulder blades and sent shivers of shock down his spine and into his legs. At the same moment, a wave of nausea filled his throat, and behind his eyes vertigo made him light-headed. They all combined to make Bohannon feel certain that he was about to launch himself, hurtling and screaming, into the pit.

Forget sitting still. Forget everything. Bohannon wrestled with dual realities of critical importance that flashed through his thoughts but supplanted his reason. Save the staff! Save yourself!
God, help me.

“Hey!” came a shout from above. “Grab the rope!”

The rope!

It was a moment of selfless decision. He let go with both hands. As his right hand grabbed hold of the shaft of Aaron’s staff, Bohannon’s left hand shot up, flailed about, then seized the knot where the rope was secured to the bosun’s seat … the rope to the surface … the rope that was secure. The seat rocked violently from the two desperate stabs that generated force in opposite directions. Bohannon still imagined himself falling into the abyss, but he strained every muscle in his left arm to pull himself deeper into the bosun’s chair, hand and knees squeezing the staff hard against his body.

Bohannon pressed his eyes shut, shivered in a breath, and held fast not only to the rope, but also to his lifeline.
Thank you, Lord.

A light breeze added to the chill of the desert night, and once Molluzzo switched off the sealed beam, only the stars and a crescent moon filtered the darkness.

Whalen helped Tom regain his balance, Annie on his opposite side, cradling Tom’s right arm, as he slipped out of the bosun’s chair at the rim of the foundation.

“We almost lost you there.”

“No sweat.” But Bohannon’s throat was as dry as the wadi that hid their tents. His voice croaked, and his words caught.

“You got him?”

“Yes, and I’m not letting go,” said Annie.

“Okay. We gotta get moving. James, break down the rig. I don’t want to leave any trace, anything that could be followed. Grant, night lights. Steve, pull out two of the H&K MP7s, one in the front vehicle with us, the other in the rear vehicle with Fred. Grab that 357-magnum Desert Eagle for you—we may need the punch. And give one of the longer gun cases to Bohannon for that stick.”

Gamal prepared his men as best he could. Three were with him, a few hundred meters south of the provincial police outpost at the main entrance to Babylon, Saddam Hussein’s re-creation of the Ishtar Gate. They were behind a small mound of sand, each on one knee. Their car sat behind them, the engine idling. One had come on a small motorcycle.

Two other men were at the back gate, though there were grave questions about the reliability of the battered Jeep they drove. And two were mobile, circling the ancient city on an all-terrain vehicle stolen from the police supply depot, but focusing primarily on the northern perimeter—the direction they expected the
National Geographic
team to take once they left the city.

Gamal cursed the dark, and the lazy police who failed to demand that the American photographers follow the rules and leave Babylon at dusk. The dark was as heavy as the heat of day, impenetrable where there was no light. But it was the lights that Gamal hoped for, the lights of the Americans’ vehicles leaving the city. The lights he would follow to their camp.

They gathered in a small knot between the first and second Rover, Whalen and his crew. Vordenberg and Atkins finished wiping down and oiling the guns, James Leonard was handing out charged batteries for the radios, and Molluzzo was done with his final check of the Rovers. The civilians were at the back of the last vehicle, surrounding Bohannon and staring at Aaron’s staff.

“We going to make a run for it?” asked Bowman.

“I don’t think so,” said Whalen, keeping the volume of his voice down. “Most of our gear is still at camp, and that belongs to
NG.
Besides, we can navigate back to camp because we know its coordinates.”

“Whoever was chasing these guys knows we’re around here somewhere,” said Atkins. “And this is their turf, not ours. The sooner we’re outta here the better.”

Whalen nodded his head. “I know, I know. But, look … we’re not going anywhere but camp until it gets light. The last thing we want is to be wandering around in this desert in the middle of the night, looking for a way to escape. We can’t use the roads. We don’t know if there is any chance of getting Bohannon and his team back to Baghdad. Even if we knew where we were going for sure, there are ISIS bands out there, marauding tribal raiders, and now more military. Civil war is about to engulf this country. Yes, we need to get out of here, and we need to get out quickly. The problem is figuring the right way to do that without getting us all killed in the process. So we get back to camp, try to get some sleep, wait until it’s light, and hope no camel-jockey stumbles across us in the dark. We need to understand our options and then try to pick the best one. For now, let’s see if we can get back to camp without picking a fight.”

Gamal toggled his radio. “Do you see anything?”

“Nothing has come through the back gate. No one has even come near it,” said a weary voice. “How long do we wait?”

“Until I tell you!” Gamal’s nerves were rattled, his anxiety growing. There had been no word from his men on Procession Street since they reported something moving in the shadows of twilight. They were good men. They would have contacted him if …

He radioed to the men in the all-terrain vehicle. “Hassan, do you see anything?”