The Sacred Cipher (57 page)

Bohannon pulled himself into the open space.

“Your brother-in-law is a dolt.” Johnson projected the petulance of a child. His head
was bowed, the silent GPS unit in his lap.

“You’re just flat wrong, Doc,” Rodriguez snapped. “There’s no need to get your nose
out of joint. I simply don’t agree with your conclusions.”

“It is truly sad to discover your reasoning is so fatally flawed,” Johnson snarled.

Bohannon felt as if he had just been squashed by a steamroller. All he wanted to do
was lie down and go to sleep. That was out of the question. If he didn’t get between
Doc and Joe right now, his brother-in-law was likely to make coleslaw out of Doc’s
brains.

“Lighten up, Doc,” said Rodriguez, “I hear what you’re saying about the Huldah entrance
tunnel and the guy’s theory on the Temple location. But we’re hundreds of yards south
of where most archaeologists believe Herod’s Temple would have been located. I don’t
think we’re going to find anything around here. And we’ve got to get moving. There’s
probably only enough time for us to probe one site, and we’ve still got to find a
way to get out. We can’t waste our time on a site that is so obviously not a possibility.”

Bohannon slid between the two combatants, pulling himself to a sitting position.

“Look.” He was stunned by the raspy, weak sound of his voice. But his words matched
his physical state. “Joe’s right. We have one shot at this, maybe not even one shot.
If Ethan Larsen is right, our time is up. We’ve got one choice.

“But Doc could be right, too. Either we try to probe the area on the other side of
this wall, or we all agree that there’s another location that is more promising, we
get there as quickly as possible, and hope that we have enough time to send in the
cameras. So, what’s it going to be? Do we sit here arguing with each other, or do
we take advantage of the one chance we have?”

Bohannon rested his head against the wall and closed his eyes. “Personally, I think
we’ve come a long way and sacrificed too much to blow the one chance we have.”

“But that’s the challenge, isn’t it?” said Johnson. “How do we decide where to look?”

Bohannon opened his eyes. They were both looking to him for guidance.

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Bohannon felt desperation rising in his chest, bringing
fear as a companion. “We need a miracle.”

And he knew.

“Listen, I don’t know how to decide what to do, but I believe we can discover what
to do.”

The other two men looked in his direction. Understanding and agreement rose like an
underground sun. “We could pray. Will you pray with me?”

Johnson began to stammer his uncertainty, but Rodriguez was immediately at Bohannon’s
side.

“Let’s go. I’m willing to believe you’ll get the answer. I’ll join with you, but you’re
the guy who’s connected.”

They both looked at Doc.

“All right, I guess we don’t have much choice.” Johnson slid the short distance to
their sides.

God, this is weird
, Bohannon thought. Praying with an audience, a relatively unbelieving audience, but
an audience who, nevertheless, expect a miracle. No pressure there.

He closed his eyes.

He thought about the other times, the times he had called out to God in need, in pain,
in fear, in doubt, and how often God had given him answers in the past. And he was
confident, they had no other choice.

He set his heart.

He slowed his mind. He felt hands reach out for his.

“Father, I praise you for who you are, the God of heaven. And I thank you for your
faithfulness, to me and my family, over so many years. Father, I believe you are the
reason we are here. That it was your purpose and plan for us to be here. But we’re
lost right now. We don’t know what to do; we don’t know where to go; we don’t know
where to look to try and find this Temple, and we don’t know how to get out of here
without going to jail or losing our lives. We are at the end of ourselves, at the
end of this chase unless you show us the way. I don’t know what else to ask you, how
else to ask you, except that we are desperate for your help. We need an answer. We
need it now. Please, Lord, tell us what to do.”

There was silence in the small, open space they shared.

Bohannon lifted his face toward where he believed the sky would be.
Please, Father
, he breathed.

Bohannon got up off the floor and turned to Joe’s pack. While the others watched,
he opened the lower compartment and withdrew the camera mounted on tiny tank tracks.
“Bring the catheters and the video.”

The crevice was higher on this end, high enough that Bohannon could rest the mounted
camera on his hip. Bohannon pressed himself back into the crack from which he had
just come. He inched along, penetrating a few yards. He could hear Doc and Joe pushing
in behind him. Suddenly, he stopped, and looked up.

The shelf was there, just as he knew it would be, just as he had “seen” it during
his prayer. Bohannon poised the mounted camera on the shelf and, despite the close
quarters, quickly pulled himself up alongside it. His body wedged back against the
far wall, Bohannon looked up and saw the second shelf, and the opening above it, just
as he expected. Bohannon reached up, stretched, and tipped the camera mount onto the
second shelf. Climbing was relatively easy, the space so narrow he could lean back
against the far wall if necessary. Standing on the second shelf, he looked up, into
the opening. The camera mount went in first, he followed quickly. But before disappearing,
he peeked down into the crevice. Joe and Doc were watching from the bottom.

“Use the shelf, there’s two of them. There are plenty of handholds. And you can lean
against the far wall if needed. Follow me when you get up here.”

Bohannon turned on his hip. The opening was fairly regular, about a four-foot square,
rough enough to be natural but also having the look of being purposeful. Getting into
a crouch, he pulled the controller from his pocket, flicked on the power, and began
guiding the motorized platform ahead of him, crab-walking behind it. Amazed at the
little device’s effectiveness, Bohannon watched as the treads independently overcame
each obstacle, like twin snakes undulating across the floor, each at its own pace.

He turned on the small Maglite on the front edge of the camera assembly, helping to
break the growing darkness, and began following the camera’s progress more through
the small LCD screen on the controller than through his own limited eyesight. The
assembly moved forward rapidly, as if by its own volition, as if being called.

“Tom?” Joe’s question was reverential.

“Come on in,” he called softly over his shoulder. “Bring the equipment.”

One hand braced against a sidewall, the other holding the controller, his eyes now
glued to the screen, Bohannon inched ahead, stumbling at times, bumping against outcroppings,
but never taking his eyes off the screen. So, he saw the end of the tunnel in time
to slow and stop the mounted camera before it cracked into the rock face.

Look to your left
. He knew it would be there.

A slab of rock protruded from the left, about halfway up the wall. Under the overhang
was a hole, about a foot-and-a-half round. Not smooth and finished, but also not simply
a jagged, natural formation. The mounted camera fit into the hole, with little room
to spare. Enough, he knew. Then he waited.

To his left, Joe and Doc crawled along the shaft. Joe had the equipment bag with the
video catheters, hanging down his back from around his neck. Doc followed, the Pelican
Box strapped to his chest. Tom waited.

“What have you found?” Doc was breathless, but excited.

“Let me have the catheter tubes.” There was no time for conversation.

Rodriguez pulled three coils of tubing from the equipment bag.

Bohannon took the first. “Start connecting them together. We’re going to need all
three.” Turning to the camera assembly, Bohannon connected the front edge of the catheter
tube to a prepared clip, just below the lens of the mounted camera. The tubes were
really tubes within tubes, the probing camera at the front edge of the catheter able
to snake out from its housing.

Controller in hand, Bohannon inched the mounted camera along, inside the hole, which
almost immediately began sloping downward.
I wonder how reverse works
, he thought. “Get the video set up.” Momentarily glancing over his shoulder, he spotted
Doc unhooking the Pelican case. “You brought the satellite phone?”

Johnson, clearly consumed by what Bohannon was doing at the entrance to the hole,
looked down at the metal case as if seeing it for the first time. “I didn’t know what
we would need. General Larsen said not to let this out of our sight. I grabbed the
first thing . . . what are you doing there?”

“Wait, you’ll see.” Bohannon turned back to the controller screen. The mounted camera
was still slowly descending through the hole, apparently swinging in a gentle curve
toward the south. Joe had connected the first, and then the second catheter extension
and the last one was getting alarmingly short. Bohannon pressed his gaze into the
LCD screen.
Where is it? Where is it?

Stop
.

The word was so clear he turned to see who had spoken.

Only quizzical glances answered his questioning look. He lifted his thumb. He rotated
the joystick to the left. Smooth and dark, a small hole rested right at lens level.
Bohannon could feel Doc and Joe at his shoulders.

“What is that?” asked Johnson.

Bohannon changed his grip on the controller and began propelling the catheter’s camera
end out of the tube attached under the lens. Like a docking spaceship, Bohannon guided
the miniscule camera into the waiting hole. “Feels like an operation,” he said. More
and more of the slim tubing disappeared into the hole.

There was some rustling behind him. “The GPS has us located alongside the Huldah Gate
entry tunnel,” said Johnson. “The probe must be deeper, and farther south. Right where
. . .”

The eyes of all three men were glued to the LCD screen, drinking in the same image.
The catheter had just cleared the end of the hole, and Bohannon had quickly stopped
its progress. The image was faint. Bohannon turned up the illumination on the camera
tip, pushing it all the way to maximum. As the image emerged and cleared, none of
them breathed.

Beyond the end of the hole, a room opened up, a large, cavernous space. Inside the
space was a towering, ornate structure on a massive scale. Larger than anything Bohannon
had imagined, the Third Temple of God came to life in the glare of the amazingly bright
light emanating from the miniscule tip of the catheter tube. The light burst into
the cavern, and blasted back, reflecting gloriously off the golden columns that seemed
to fill the space.

“You see what I’m seeing, right?” Bohannon flipped a glance over his left shoulder.

Rodriguez slowly nodded his head. “I didn’t believe it. All this time, I didn’t really
believe it. I didn’t really think we would find it. But it’s here, wow, it’s really
here. And God, it’s beautiful.”

“It’s amazing,” said Johnson. “Look at the richness. I never expected it to be so
big . . . and so much gold. I’m amazed. How could they have done this? But there it
is, the Temple of God, right in front of our eyes. Can you move the camera any? Is
there any way to get a different view?”