The Templar Heresy

40

Chris Bronson didn’t speak or understand Arabic beyond a dozen or so words, but as he stood in total blackness just inside the Western Wall Tunnel peering in through the open doorway, he believed that he understood the mood of the two or three men he could hear walking around inside the void.

They didn’t sound happy. In fact, they sounded hacked off and frustrated, which almost certainly meant that they hadn’t found what they were looking for.

And now they were heading his way. Back towards the open doorway.

Bronson straightened up and began to move backwards and to the side, to get out of view. But as soon as he did so, his left foot kicked one of the padlocks lying on the ground, the noise a dull but entirely audible thud.

Immediately, a torch beam speared through the open doorway into the Western Wall Tunnel. The light caught Bronson’s arm and shoulder as he moved sideways, and almost instantly destroyed his night vision. The light was followed in under a second by two shots — a ‘double tap’ — the technique used by professional soldiers the world over. The sound of the gunfire was deafening in the confined space.

By the time the shots were fired, Bronson was already out of view of the doorway, but the copper-jacketed bullets slammed into the solid stone wall on the other side of the tunnel and instantly ricocheted, hot shards of lead and copper flying in all directions, one carving a shallow furrow across his forehead.

As he started running, he could hear his feet thudding on the rock floor and his blood pounding in his ears. His torch beam was dancing across the walls and floors because now he absolutely needed to see where he was going. As he ran Bronson wondered if the firing had been a panic reaction to his presence, or if the shooter had expected the bullets to ricochet from the stone and hopefully injure him.

What he needed was somewhere to hide, because if he kept running down the straight section of the tunnel, they’d be able to cut him down the moment they stepped out from the void.

An archway beckoned on the right-hand side, and he dodged through it, swinging the torch beam around to get an idea of where he was, before extinguishing the light. Leaving the torch switched on would simply advertise his presence. He stood as motionless as he could, trying to steady his ragged breathing.

A moment later, the darkness of the tunnel was torn apart by the beams from three powerful torches as his pursuers stepped through the gateway and attempted to seek him out.

Bronson’s brief inspection had revealed a space perhaps twenty feet square, with stone walls, ceiling and floor, and entirely empty. As a place to hide, it was far from ideal. But there was nowhere else he could go. He was trapped.

It all depended on what the three men — and he was now certain because of the torch beams that there were at least three of them — decided to do next.

He heard quiet voices echoing along the tunnel, while the three torch beams continued to illuminate the passage outside Bronson’s temporary refuge. Suddenly, two of the torches were extinguished. The third continued to shine up the tunnel, but at a slightly changed angle, illuminating the wall closest to his refuge rather than the entire width of the tunnel. By doing that, the man with the torch was ensuring that his two companions, who Bronson guessed would already be making their way silently towards him, would not cast shadows that would give away their position.

He calculated he had perhaps fifteen or twenty seconds before the armed men would reach the entrance to the chamber. But he also realized something else. The moment the men stepped through the doorway, the light from the tunnel would be of no further help to them and they would be effectively blind as they moved towards him. They would have to then use their own torches both to see where they were going and to locate him.

That gave him a tiny window of opportunity — at least a chance to save his life and walk away — and that was a chance he was going to take.

Bronson crouched down and felt around on the floor. In a structure made entirely from stone there must, he rationalized, be the odd pebble or chipping or something. His probing fingers closed around a small piece of stone, about the size of a marble. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.

He heard a faint shuffling sound from somewhere in the tunnel outside, very close. Then another torch beam snapped on, the light shining through the archway, and moving left and right as the man holding it did his best to see inside the chamber.

Then the light was extinguished, leaving only the original torch beam shining. That meant that one or perhaps both of the men outside were about to come in and look for him.

Bronson gripped the length of rebar with his right hand, flattened his back against the wall on the right-hand side of the archway and held the pebble in his left hand, ready to lob it.

He sensed the presence of somebody before the dim light revealed the outline of a man dressed entirely in black and holding a pistol in his right hand.

Bronson knew he had just one chance.

He flicked the pebble into the far corner of the chamber at the precise moment the man stepped inside the room. The stone clattered on the floor and immediately the intruder turned on his torch, the beam seeking out the source of the sound while he raised his right arm, aiming the pistol towards that corner.

And then Bronson swung the rebar down with all his strength, a short vicious arc that connected with the man’s right arm about midway between his wrist and his elbow, instantly breaking both bones.

The man screamed, a high wailing sound that echoed from the walls. He dropped the pistol and the torch, the beam immediately extinguished when it hit the stone floor, his left hand reaching to support his right arm as he bent forward in agony.

But Bronson wasn’t finished. He lifted the rebar again, higher this time, and brought it down just as hard on the back of the man’s skull. The screaming stopped instantly and the man dropped to the floor and lay still. Dead, dying or just unconscious, Bronson didn’t know. Or particularly care. He’d been forced to choose between his life and someone else’s. And now he had a proper weapon.

The man outside in the tunnel switched on his torch in panic, obviously having heard the noises but without knowing what had happened. Then the torch beam illuminated the unmoving shape of his companion, and Bronson guessed he’d now be looking for a target.

He reached down and grabbed the pistol the other man had dropped. The weapon felt instantly familiar, and he identified it by touch as a Browning Hi-Power, a pistol he’d used frequently during his Army career. The safety catch was off and the hammer was all the way back, ready to fire.

The man outside must have realized the stupidity of switching on his torch, because doing so had instantly identified his location. As soon as the light appeared it was extinguished. An instant later, the other torch was also switched off.

In the darkness, Bronson crouched down beside the archway, adrenalin pumping through him, aimed the pistol more or less at where he thought the torch had been, and squeezed the trigger once. He didn’t want to risk a second shot because he didn’t know how many rounds were in the magazine, though from the weight of the weapon he guessed it was at least half full.

He heard a curse, the voice raised in anger rather than pain, and at the same instant two shots rang out, the faint muzzle flashes in the blackness showing that the shooter was already on the move, heading back down the tunnel towards his companion.

Bronson rose slowly to his feet and eased himself through the stone archway until he could look back down the tunnel. About forty yards away, near the open gate, he saw the outline of two figures, the intermittent glow of light from their torches as they flicked them on and off, obviously trying not to become targets, showing that they were heading away from him.

Forty yards is too far for accurate shooting with a pistol, and in any case Bronson would never have shot anybody in the back, so he stepped back inside the chamber and switched on his torch. The man he’d hit was lying in precisely the same position and in the light from the torch Bronson could see the black hair on the back of his head was soaked in blood. He inhaled deeply, steeling himself, and checked the pulse in the man’s neck, but found nothing.

He realized his hands were shaking and took a moment to compose himself. Better that the anonymous man — who had after all been carrying a loaded and cocked pistol and presumably had intended to use it — should be lying there dead than Bronson himself.

Very faintly in the distance he thought he heard the sound of approaching sirens, and knew he had to get out as quickly as possible. He placed the pistol on the ground within easy reach and quickly searched the dead man, recovering a handful of nine-millimetre bullets from his pocket and a wallet that only contained cash, and not that much of it. He pocketed the wallet, tucked the pistol into the waistband of his trousers and picked up the length of rebar. His fingerprints were certainly all over it, along with the blood of the dead man, and he couldn’t risk leaving it behind.

Then he stepped out of the chamber and back into the tunnel.