The Solomon Scroll

CHAPTER 34

Major Dov Yosef knocked on the open door of Colonel Cohen's office and went in.

"You wanted to see me?"

"The Americans are up to something. Sit down, Dov."

Dov sat. "What are they doing?"

"I just got a heads up from Mossad. Last night they sent a stealth helicopter into Saudi Arabia from one of their carriers stationed in the Gulf of Aden. It touched down briefly in the Habala Valley near the border with Yemen, then returned to the ship."

"An insertion," Dov said.

Cohen nodded in agreement. "Can't be anything else. The question is why insert a team into that part of the country? There's nothing of any importance there."

"They must be looking for something."

"I think they're looking for Solomon's tomb and the Temple artifacts."

"How were they detected?"

"Luck. We have a Saar 4 surveillance ship observing the American carrier group. They picked it up. Otherwise we'd never have seen it."

"If there's something there, we can't let them have it. It belongs to Israel. It's our sacred heritage."

"Yes."

Cohen paused. Dov waited while his CO thought it through. "Can we put a team on site?"

"There are no units in that area. We'd have to use an airdrop and it's certain to be detected by the Saudi air defenses. Even with their technology, the Americans were lucky."

"It would be difficult on such short notice. But we can't let them escape with whatever it is they find."

"Assuming they find anything."

"There's another option," Colonel Cohen said.

"Which is?"

"Wait until the extraction, intercept their chopper and force them down where we can make sure they're not carrying something they shouldn't."

"Force down an American helicopter? What if they decide to treat us as hostile? It would go badly."

"That would be a mistake," Cohen said.

"It wouldn't do us any good to shoot them down. Besides, relations are bad enough with Washington as it is."

"Politicians never change. It's been that way since the days of the pharaohs."

"We're still in the days of the pharaohs. They just don't wear fancy headdresses or build pyramids anymore."

"No, now they build libraries named after them," Cohen said.

Dov laughed. "What are we going to do about the Americans?"

"Keep an eye on them. I've already requested that one of our satellites be tasked to observe the area."

"How soon?"

Cohen looked at his watch. "It should be coming up now."

He tapped a key. The satellite picture appeared on his computer screen.

"There it is. The light's going. We won't be able to see much in another half an hour."

The light was still good enough for the two Israeli officers to see the Americans. One of them was on top of the hill, next to one of the rock columns. Three more crouched at the edge of the slope, looking down at a half-dozen vehicles below.

"You said the Americans came in on a helicopter. What are those trucks doing there?"

"Hang on a minute."

Cohen entered a few more keystrokes. The picture appeared on a large wall monitor.

"Mechanicals. Two heavy machine guns," Dov said. "That's not a Saudi patrol. Rebels?"

"Let me zoom in."

The camera lens on the satellite bore down on the six trucks and men standing outside the vehicles. The resolution was good. One of the men looked up at the sky as if he could sense the satellite looking back at him.

Dov swore. "Ben zona! I know him. That's Al-Bayati. He's a puppet for Tehran, one of our problems in Lebanon."

"He must be after the same thing as the Americans."

"He's getting back in the truck," Dov said. "They're going to drive up the slope. Go back to the top of the hill."

The camera zoomed out. They watched the four Americans. Now they were all at the edge of the slope.

"They're armed," Cohen said. "Looks like MP5s or something similar."

"They're going to need more than that against those machine guns. What do you want to do?"

"Do? Nothing, except watch what happens. Maybe they'll do us a favor and take care of our Lebanese friend for us."

"You don't think we should intervene?"

"Unless you can get a unit on site in the next five minutes, I don't think we can. Even if we could, it's in Saudi Arabia. That presents a problem."

"What if they find the tomb?" Dov said.

"Then they will have saved us a lot of work. If they manage to survive whatever happens, we'll find out who they are. Once we know that, we'll apply pressure until Washington tells us what we need to know."

"President Rice won't necessarily cooperate."

"He's been friendly in the past. If he won't, somebody else will."