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But beyond that, it made no sense.
Who put it here and why?
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She continued feeling around with her hands, her Uzi strapped to her side. She
crawled to her left but hit a stone wall. She crawled forward, but there, too,
was a stone wall. There was one behind her as well. To her right, though, she
finally found an opening.
That's when the shooting began.
Bennett couldn't see a thing.
He could hear someone creeping forward in the darkness and decided not to
wait. He pulled the trigger and the tunnel exploded. Fire and smoke poured out
of the barrel as he emptied an entire magazine, following the tracer rounds
onto his targets and watching at least two men drop to the ground.
Then the return fire started. Bennett rolled left, back into the relative
safety of the cavern. He fully expected to be hit by ricocheting rounds, but
when the shooting paused, at least for a few seconds, he was still alive.
Someone was reloading. He did, too.
"Erin, go you've got to go now!"
he shouted as he fumbled in the dark to eject one magazine and pop in
another.
But Erin had her own plans. Seizing the momentary lull, she jumped up and
aimed down the tunnel. She, too, unleashed an entire magazine firing directly
over Bennett's head before rappelling out of sight.
Bennett could barely breathe. A rush of adrenaline coursed through his body.
He pivoted and pulled the trigger again, and again bloodcurdling shrieks
erupted from the other end of the tunnel.
Four down, unknown to go.
Four of Mariano's men were down.
Two were dead. Two more were seriously wounded and losing blood fast. He had
only three men left, besides himself.
"Cover me,"
he said.
The tunnel again erupted in gunfire. Mariano fished a grenade out of his own
backpack. He pulled the pin, rolled it forward, and scrambled for cover as his
men
those who could move at least followed close behind.
The cavern ahead of them erupted in a ball of fire. The ground shook. The roar
was deafening, intensified by the sound waves echoing off rock walls in such
tight quarters.
Mariano got up quickly and dusted himself off. Then, stepping over the charred
bodies of men about whom he'd never given a second thought, he cautiously
worked his way toward the opening of the cavern, sweeping his pistol from side
to side. The air was thick with acrid fumes. He coughed. He waited a few
moments for the smoke to clear, and then he and his men turned on their
flashlights. But again, no one was there.
Erin scrambled to Bennett's side.
225
She threw her arms around him and checked for a pulse. He was alive. He was
breathing. But he was in pain from his fall. As quickly and quietly as she
could, she checked her husband's body for broken bones. She couldn't believe
he'd made it. He'd barely grabbed the ropes and begun descending into the
shaft when she heard the grenade rolling across the granite floor above them.
When it had gone off, he must have lost his grip and plummeted a good fifteen
feet before slamming face-first onto the pile of sand.
The force had clearly knocked the wind out of him, but he was going to be
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okay as long as they started moving now.
Bennett was covered with chunks of rock that had blown apart in the explosion.
Erin brushed them off, took him by the arm, and whispered in his ear, "Jon,
it's me. Are you okay?"
"I think so are you?" he replied.
"Come on," said Erin. "Follow me."
They continued racing down one tunnel and into the next. When they stopped to
get their bearings, they realized they were in another cistern of some kind,
perhaps thirty or forty feet in diameter. It was clearly man-made, carved out
of the limestone. Out from it fanned three tunnels like the spokes of a
wheel.
"We've found the waterworks," Natasha whispered as they huddled together and
charted their next move.
"What do you mean?" Bennett whispered, still trying to catch his breath.
"For years, scholars have believed there was an elaborate and complex system
of tunnels and aqueducts running underneath Jerusalem, dating back to hundreds
of years before Christ," Natasha explained, still keeping her voice low. `The
tunnels supposedly channeled water from the Gihon Spring and the winter [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]