James Rollins - The Blood Gospel

They closed in on a familiar flat-topped mountain that climbed steeply out of the desert. She made out the white finger of the ramp that the Romans had built to finally breach its walls.

Masada.

It hadn’t even been on her list of possible sites. Masada had been thoroughly excavated in the sixties. Nothing new had come out of the site in decades. Tourists had been tramping all over it.

Perhaps the earthquake had uncovered something nearby. A Roman camp? Or the remains of the nine hundred Jewish rebels? Only thirty or so bodies had ever been recovered. They had been reburied with full military honors in 1969.

She craned her neck to get a better view. Unbroken sand stretched in all directions. No sign of activity around the base, but she spotted a large helicopter on the summit. That must be where she was headed. She sat straighter, eager to discover what required her immediate attention.

The priest moved almost imperceptibly, a slight shift of his handsome chin. So he still lived. She had forgotten to take him into account while guessing their destination. Though primarily a Jewish landmark, Masada was also home to the ruins of a Byzantine church, circa AD 500. The earthquake might have exposed Christian relics. But, if the Israelis planned to turn the relics over to the priest, why bring her in the first place? Something didn’t add up.

The helicopter descended toward the summit, kicking sand through the open doorway. She squinted against the hot grit and cupped her hands around her eyes. She should have brought protective goggles. And water. And dinner. And a backup phone.

She wished Perlman hadn’t taken her cell phone. Surely her students had reported in by now to let her know Heinrich’s condition. Otherwise … well, she didn’t want to think about otherwise. He had been at the site as her grad student. Whatever happened to him was her responsibility.

Erin brought her pinkie finger and thumb to her ear to pantomime the word phone .

Perlman fished it out of his pocket. He yelled over the noise. “Keep it off.”

“Yes, sir.” At this decibel level, he wouldn’t hear the sarcasm.

He handed the phone to her, and she stuck it into her back pocket. The second he turned his back, she intended to turn it on and check her messages.

The summit came into view.

She leaned out, searching below, stunned. It took her a thundering moment to understand what she was seeing.

Masada was … gone .

The walls, the buildings, the cisterns were piles of rocks. The casemate wall that had surrounded the fortress for thousands of years had been completely destroyed. Rubble stood in place of the columbarium and synagogue. The mountain had practically been cleaved in two. She had never seen such devastation up close.

The pilot slowed the engines, and they whined out in a lowering pitch as the skids scraped the top of the mountain and the helicopter settled to a stop.

She strained to see through the cloud of dust surrounding them. Black rectangles had been lined up near the edge of the plateau. They were too regularly shaped to be natural. Two people dropped a new one next to the others.

Body bags. Full ones.

Masada was one of the most popular tourist sites in Israel. It had probably been teeming with tourists when the quake struck. How many more lives had the cursed mountain claimed? Her stomach lurched again, but this time not from the helicopter.

A cool hand fell on her shoulder, and she jumped. The priest. He, too, must have noted the dead. Maybe she had been wrong all along. Maybe he was here to perform Last Rites or look after the dead at the behest of the Church.

She felt sick at the thought of how excited she had been a few minutes before. This was no archaeological site. It was a disaster scene. She wished that she were back in Caesarea.

Lieutenant Perlman jumped out and barked orders in Hebrew. Men spilled from both sides of the chopper and headed toward the body bags. They must have been summoned to collect the bodies. No wonder the officer had been so tight-lipped about it. She didn’t envy him his task.

The priest sprang out of the helicopter, graceful as a desert cat. His long cassock swirled in the rotor wash. He pulled his hood closer to his face and turned his head from side to side as if searching.

She fumbled with sweat-slick hands to unclip her safety harness. The floor seemed to lurch when she stood. She steadied herself against the seat back and took a few deep breaths. The Israelis had had a reason to bring her here, and she’d best calm down and find out what it was.

The priest turned and offered her help, gloved palm upturned in an old-fashioned, almost courtly gesture. It was certainly nothing like the way Lieutenant Perlman had hauled her out of the trench before she started this journey.

Grateful for the support, she took his hand. He released it the instant her sneakers touched the limestone.

The wind blew back his hood, revealing a pale face with high cheekbones and thick dark hair. A handsome man, for a priest.

“ Tot ago attero … ,” he murmured as he pulled his black hood back over his head, masking his face again. She translated his Latin words. So many lost.

The priest bowed before striding off purposefully, as if he, at least, knew why he was here.

She shielded her eyes and looked at the sun, already low in the sky. The sun set in about an hour. If they did not get the bodies removed by then, jackals would arrive. In spite of the heat, she shivered.

She forced her eyes to look at the ruined site, beyond the body bags, to figures dragging corpses from the rubble. Figures wearing sky-blue biohazard suits.

Biohazard suits for an earthquake?

Before she could ask why such a precaution was necessary, a tall soldier strode forward. He wasn’t wearing a biohazard suit. Comforting.

He headed straight for her. Even without the flag sewn on the shoulder patch of his khaki jacket, she would have known that he was American. Everything about him said apple pie: from his wheat-blond hair, shorn into an army standard crew cut, to his square-jawed face and broad shoulders. Clear blue eyes fixed on her, taking her measure in a single tired breath. She liked him. He seemed competent, and not inured to the tragedy he was dealing with. But what was the American military doing on an Israeli mountaintop?

“Dr. Erin Granger?”

So, he did expect her. Should she be relieved or even more worried? “Yes, I’m Dr. Granger.”

The soldier looked past her shoulder toward the priest, who headed away through the rubble. One eyebrow rose. “I wasn’t apprised of a priest coming here,” he said to Lieutenant Perlman.

The Israeli waved to two of his men and pointed to the priest before answering, “The Vatican requested Father Korza’s presence. A Catholic tourist party was here during the quake. It included a cardinal’s nephew.”

That explained the priest, Erin thought. One tragic mystery solved. The soldier seemed to agree with her assessment and faced her again.

“Thank you for coming, Dr. Granger. We need to hurry.” He headed away from the helicopter, aiming toward the worst of the destruction.

She jogged to keep up with his long legs, trying to focus on him and on her footing, not on the body bags. This morning these people had been as alive as she. She talked to keep from thinking. “I was pulled from a dig without a word of explanation. What’s going on here?”

“That sounds familiar.” His lips slipped into a tired grin. “I was in Afghanistan yesterday, Jerusalem a few hours ago.” He halted, wiped his palm on his sand-colored T-shirt, and stuck out his hand. “Let’s start over. Sergeant Jordan Stone, Ninth Ranger Battalion. We’ve been called in by the Israelis to help out here.”