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He jerked her to her feet and she handed him the phone, saying, “He dialed it. It connected. By the time I got it in my hands, it had connected.”

He said, “But it didn’t go off. It’s on a timer. He initiated the timer.”

A rock hit him in the shoulder, the crowd growing more and more angry. He whirled, seeing more people picking up stones. He said, “It’s got to be inside the Dome. He just came out of there.” He turned to the mob, his back to her, drew his baton, and shouted, “Go, go!”

She raced to the entrance, hearing the mob begin screaming at her“desecrating” the sacred space in an Israeli uniform. She entered the rotunda, the people inside shocked at her appearance. Some cowered, expecting tear gas and rubber bullets, like had happened across the compound in the Al Aqsa Mosque last year. Others with more courage began shouting at her. She looked left and right, the desperation beginning to grow. She had no idea how long the timer would run, and no idea where the Turtle had left the destructive device.

She ran around the rotunda, circling the Rock of Ascension, and the crowd began to follow her, now shouting at her in Arabic. She reached a stairwell leading down into darkness and took it, skipping down the steps three at a time, the people above following her.

She reached a small cavern with a family inside, the father holding a backpack in his hands, a ringing coming from it, the mother seeing her appear and wrapping her arms around her children.

Jennifer ran to the man and said, “Is that your backpack?”

Startled, he said, “No. It just began ringing. It was hidden below the rocks.”

She snatched it out of his hands, placed it on the ground, and ripped open the zipper just as the mob from above gathered the courage to storm down the stairs. The woman leading the procession saw her and began screaming, pointing her finger at the abomination of an Israeli policewoman inside the sacred area.

Jennifer ignored her, tossing out crackers, bottles of water, and sandwiches, exposing the six-pack of soda cans at the bottom, four daisy-chained together with a flip phone in the center. She gently opened the phone and saw a timer passing through one minute.

Holy shit.

The mob began to advance on her and she turned, shouting, “It’s a bomb! Get out of here! It’s a bomb!”

Her words split apart the rage of the crowd as if she’d dumpeda barrel of water on a match, the anger turning to fear. The crowd panicked, storming back up the stairs, trampling over each other to get away. The mother and father were left in the cavern, the children cowering in terror.

Jennifer looked at the device, trying to determine how to disarm it. She didn’t have the expertise to know if it had a fail-safe, and saw the clock ticking through thirty seconds. The children began crying and Jennifer looked at the mother, saying, “Don’t worry. It’s coming with me. You stay here.”

She stood up, the backpack in her hand, and raced up the stairs. She broke through the entrance to the Dome and saw that the Israeli police had stormed into the compound, all of them holding the crowd back, the smell of CS gas in the air, Aaron at the rear.

She ran to him and said, “I can’t disarm it, and it’s about to go off!”

He took the backpack, laid it on the ground, opened the zipper, and saw the clock counting down through ten seconds. His eyes snapped open and he said, “No time, no time, no time.”

He snatched up the backpack and began running through the crowd, smashing into people like a fullback going for the end zone, bashing them aside. He raced to the western edge of the compound overlooking the Wailing Wall and launched the backpack into the air, the ground two stories below full of Jewish worshippers.

It reached the apex of his throw and exploded, a nova of light and sound, the four shape charges going off harmlessly in the air, the explosion scattering the crowd below.

Aaron put his hands on his knees and began breathing heavily. Right behind him, Jennifer stopped running and did the same thing, gasping for air next to him. She bumped him with her hip and said, “Hell, I could have done that.”

He laughed and said, “It was a secret technique I learned in the Samson teams.”

They were both slammed to the ground by the Israeli police, the lieutenant of the force livid at his actions. The sergeant of the guard said, “I don’t know who these two are, but I have two of my men in their underwear downstairs saying they were assaulted.”

Chapter 81

Amena raised her glass of water and said, “Is it time for my toast? Is that what I’m supposed to do?”

She was jumping the gun a little bit, but it was only because she was about to split at the seams, overjoyed we were home. I said, “Not yet, honey. Not yet. Let’s order our food first.”

We were seated around a long table in a private room at Halls Chophouse, having dinner after the wedding ceremony. Halls was the best steakhouse in the city—actually the best steakhouse I’d ever eaten in—and the cost of paying for everyone here would verge on driving me to bankruptcy, but it was the least I could do since everyone had shown up once again for the wedding.

Luckily, the ceremony itself had gone off without a hitch. Jennifer hadn’t had to throw any hand grenades and I hadn’t made any embarrassing mistakes. We were now officially man and wife, even with her having a black eye that made the minister wonder if I was a wife beater.

She’d said she’d been hit by a door, which was about as lame a thing as possible, but it was better than saying she’d had her ass kicked by Israeli security after stopping a terrorist attack in Jerusalem as part of a top-secret U.S. counterterrorism Special Access Program. She was genuinely happy, which made me happy, and was all the more astounding considering the work it had required to get her and Aaron out of an Israeli jail on terrorism charges.

They’d been roughed up a little bit and had their phones confiscated, making it very hard for Shoshana and me to track them down. Luckily, Shoshana’s Mossad contact had finally come through, saying they’d been arrested as terrorists attempting to blow up the Dome of the Rock. Shoshana had lost her mind at hearing that, telling the Mossad in no uncertain terms what would happen if they weren’t released.

Aaron and Jennifer had simply taken their lumps, not saying a word, not wanting to compromise any ongoing activities. Their situation had been made worse—and better—when Jennifer was found with both an Israeli and United States passport. Worse because they’d assumed she was some sort of international terrorist, but better because the passport had been issued by the Mossad. When that came to light, the Mossad had interceded, not freeing them, but looking for a way out of the mess.