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He felt a little stupid, rushing here to escape from a tunnel that he himself, as a Special Forces commander, would have ordered blocked. He took a seat on a rock, just resting in the darkness. He pulled out his phone and was surprised to see a signal.

He initiated the Zello app, pulled up the location for Michelangelo, and saw the icon in Jerusalem, just inside the Old City. He smiled and initiated a call. Mikey answered, and Garrett said, “How’s it going?”

“I’m here, but there are police all over the place. I can’t get into the Temple Mount.”

“Why not?”

“Apparently, there’s going to be some sort of Palestinian protest, and the Israelis have blocked the gates.”

Garrett almost took the Lord’s name in vain at the news. He said, “So how long is this supposed to go on?”

“The guard said they’ll open the gates in an hour or so if no protests materialize. Are you back in Tel Aviv?”

“Not yet, but I will be soon.”

“Do you want me to stay here? Or roll over a day?”

“Stay there. If it opens back up, do the hit. If not, we’ll roll over.”

He hung up, shaking his head at how hard this was becoming. It was almost as if God was thwarting his plans. Placing trials in front of him to see if he was worthy. And then he remembered Abraham’s story. That’s exactly what this was. He needed to prove he was worthy.

The thought gave him confidence. He stood up, moving quickly back down the tunnel. He’d leave here and travel to Eilat, coordinating with Michelangelo along the way. Mikey would be like the son of Abraham, sacrificed for the glory of God.

He entered the primary cave, seeing the railing with tourists taking pictures of the sea spray crashing into the grotto. He went behind them, heading to the exit, and saw another crowd of tourists enter the grotto. Inside the group were two people he recognized. Two people who struck the same unbridled fear in him that he’d felt in the tunnel.

Chapter 76

Highway 4 began winding up into the cliffs on the northern border of Israel, and then abruptly dead-ended, turning into a parking lot for an overlook, the place jam-packed with tour buses and other vehicles, the view out over the Mediterranean Sea incredible.

I pulled into the lot, not caring about the scenery. I said, “So this is it? What do we do now?”

Shoshana hissed, and pointed. The up-armored SUV was in the parking lot, the distinctive gouges in the driver’s window easy to see. And it was empty. She said, “He’s here. He’s trying to get to Lebanon.”

“How? How on earth would he do that here?” I pointed to a walkway along the shoreline leading to a cable car station, saying, “Is he going to take that into Lebanon? The crossing site above this is like Checkpoint Charlie in West Berlin. He’d have better luck sneaking out of a prison than trying to cross here.”

She said, “This grotto has an old railway from the British Mandate, before we even had a country. It connected Lebanon to Israel before the 1948 war of independence.”

I rolled my eyes and said, “So you guys never closed that down? How come Hezbollah hasn’t used it to flood Israel with weapons and men?”

“Pike, I don’t have that answer. What I know is he’s here, and I’m going to kill him.”

I said, “Hang on there, gunslinger, we need to—” Before I could finish my sentence, a young girl knocked on our window. I lowered it and said, “Yes?”

She said, “You’re American, too?”

I looked at Shoshana and said, “Yes, have you seen another American here?”

She pointed to Garrett’s SUV and said, “Yes. That man is also American. Are you together?”

I said, “We are, but we’re late. Where did he go?”

She became coy and said, “I’ll tell you the same thing I told him—if you buy six boxes of cookies, you get a free ticket on the cable car.”

“Is that where he went?”

She just looked at me. I would have made an evil joke about the Jewish propensity for a profit, but Shoshana cut that short, handing over a wad of shekels and saying something in Hebrew. The girl took the money, nodded, and said something back, then handed Shoshana twelve boxes of cookies and a couple of tickets.

The girl went back to her mother, and Shoshana said, “He’s in the grotto right now. Let’s go find him.”