Contract with God aka The Moses Expedition

78

Andrea and Harel stopped at the entrance to the mess tent when they saw David Pappas running towards them. Pappas was carrying a bloody T-shirt and he seemed to be disoriented.

‘Doctor, Doctor!’

‘What the hell’s going on, David?’ answered Harel. She had been in the same bad mood ever since the water incident had made proper coffee a thing of the past.

‘It’s the professor. He’s in bad shape.’

David had volunteered to stay with Forrester while Andrea and Doc went to breakfast. The only thing that had delayed the demolition of the wall to get to the Ark was Forrester’s condition, although Russell had wanted to go ahead with the job the previous night. David had refused to open the cavity until the professor had had a chance to recover and could join them. Andrea, whose opinion of Pappas had gone from bad to worse over the past few hours, suspected that he was simply waiting for Forrester to be completely out of the way.

‘OK.’ Doc sighed. ‘You go ahead, Andrea. It doesn’t make sense for both of us to miss breakfast.’ She began jogging back towards the infirmary.

The reporter took a quick peek inside the mess tent. Zayit and Peterke waved back at her. Andrea liked the mute cook and his assistant but the only people sitting at the tables at that moment were two of the soldiers, Alois Gottlieb and Louis Maloney, who were eating from their trays. Andrea was surprised there were only two of them, because the soldiers normally had breakfast together, leaving only one lookout posted on the southern ridge for half an hour. In fact, breakfast was the only time she ever saw the soldiers together in one place.

Since she didn’t care for their company, Andrea had decided she would go back and see if she could help Harel.

Even though my medical knowledge is so limited I’d probably put a hospital gown on backwards.

Then Doc turned around and yelled: ‘Do me a favour, and bring me a large coffee, OK?’

Andrea put one foot inside the mess tent, trying to work out the best route to avoid the sweaty soldiers, who were leaning over their food like apes, when she almost banged into Nuri Zayit. The cook must have seen the doctor running back to the infirmary because he handed Andrea a tray with two cups of instant coffee and a plate of toast.

‘Instant coffee dissolved in milk, is that right, Nuri?’

The mute smiled and shrugged his shoulders to say it wasn’t his fault.

‘I know. Perhaps tonight we’ll see water springing from a rock and all that biblical stuff. Anyway, thank you.’

Slowly, making sure she didn’t spill the coffee because she knew she wasn’t the most coordinated person in the world, even though she would never admit it out loud, she headed for the infirmary. Nuri waved to her from the entrance to the mess tent, still smiling.

And then it happened.

Andrea felt as if a giant hand were lifting her up from the ground and throwing her six and a half feet into the air before flinging her back down. She felt a sharp pain in her left arm and a terrible burning on her chest and her back. She turned just in time to see thousands of small pieces of burning cloth falling from the sky. A column of black smoke was all that was left of what, two seconds ago, had been the mess tent. Up high the smoke seemed to mix with another much blacker smoke. Andrea couldn’t work out where it was coming from. Carefully, she touched her chest and realised that her shirt was covered in a hot sticky liquid.

Doc came running over.

‘Are you all right? Oh God, are you OK, darling?’

Andrea was aware that Harel was shouting even though she sounded far away due to the whistling in Andrea’s ears. She felt the doctor checking her neck and arms.

‘My chest.’

‘You’re OK. It’s only coffee.’

Andrea stood up carefully and saw that she had spilled the coffee over herself. Her right hand was still clutching the tray, while her left arm had banged against a rock. She moved her fingers, afraid that she had suffered more injuries. Luckily nothing was broken but her whole left side felt as if it were paralyzed.

While a few members of the expedition tried to put out the fire using buckets of sand, Harel concentrated on taking care of Andrea’s wounds. The reporter had cuts and scratches to the left side of her body. Her hair and the skin on her back had been slightly burned and there was a constant buzzing in her ears.

‘The buzzing will disappear in three to four hours,’ Harel said as she put her stethoscope back into her trouser pocket.

‘I’m sorry…’ Andrea said, almost shouting without realising it. She was crying.

‘You have nothing to be sorry for.’

‘He… Nuri… brought the coffee out to me. If I had gone inside to get it, I’d be dead right now. I could’ve asked him to come out and smoke a cigarette with me. I could’ve saved his life in return.’

Harel pointed to the surroundings. Both the mess tent and a fuel truck had been blown up – two separate explosions at the same time. Four people had been turned to nothing but ash.

‘The only one who should feel anything is the son of a bitch who did this.’

‘Don’t worry about it, lady, we have him,’ Torres said.

He and Jackson were dragging a person in handcuffs by the feet. They deposited him in the middle of the area by the tents while the other expedition members looked on in shock, unable to believe what they were seeing.