James Rollins - The Blood Gospel

She ducked past the tent flap and held it open for Nate, who took off his hat as he stepped inside. Out of the sun’s glare, the tent’s interior felt several degrees cooler than the site outside.

A humming electric generator serviced a laptop and a dilapidated metal fan. The fan blew straight at Amy, a twenty-three-year-old grad student from Columbia. The dark-haired young woman spent more time inside the tent than out. Drops of water had condensed on a can of Diet Coke on her desk. Slightly overweight and out of shape, Amy hadn’t had the years under the harsh sun to harden her to the rigors of archaeological fieldwork, but she still had a keen technological nose. Amy typed on the keyboard with one hand and waved Erin over with the other.

“Professor Granger, you’re not going to believe this.”

“That’s what I keep hearing.”

Her third student was also in the tent. Apparently everyone had decided to stop working to study Nate’s findings. Heinrich hovered over Amy’s shoulder. A stolid twenty-four-year-old student from the Freie Universität in Berlin, he was normally hard to distract. For him to have stepped away from his own work meant that the find was big.

Amy’s brown eyes did not leave the screen. “The software is still working at enhancing the image, but I thought you’d want to see this right away.”

Erin unsnapped the rag clipped to her belt and wiped grit and sweat off her face. “Amy, before I forget, that child’s skeleton I’ve been excavating … I saw some unusual marks that I’d like you to photograph.”

Amy nodded, but Erin suspected she hadn’t heard a word she’d said.

Nate fidgeted with his Stetson.

What had they found ?

Erin walked over and stood next to Heinrich. Amy leaned back in her metal folding chair so that Erin had a clear view of the screen.

The laptop displayed time-sliced images of the ground Nate had scanned that morning. Each showed a different layer of quadrant eight, sorted by depth. The pictures resembled square gray mud puddles marred by black lines that formed parabolas, like ripples in the puddle. The black lines represented solid material.

Erin’s heart pounded in her throat. She leaned closer in disbelief.

This mud puddle had far too many waves. In ten years of fieldwork she’d never seen anything like it. No one had.

This can’t be right .

She traced a curve on the smooth screen, ignoring the way Amy tightened her lips. Amy hated it when someone smudged her laptop screen, but Erin had to prove that it was real—to touch it herself.

She spoke through the strain, through the hope. “Nate, how big an area did you scan?”

No hesitation. “Ten square meters.”

She glanced sidelong at his serious face. “Only ten meters? You’re sure?”

“You trained me on the GPR, remember?” He cocked his head to the side. “Painstakingly.”

Amy laughed.

Erin kept going. “And you added gain to these results?”

“Yes, Professor,” he sighed. “It’s fully gained.”

She sensed that she’d bruised his ego by questioning his skills, but she had to be certain. She trusted equipment, but not always the people running it.

“I did everything.” Nate leaned forward. “And, before you ask, the signature is exactly the same as the skeleton you were just excavating.”

Exactly the same? That made this stratum two thousand years old. She looked back at the tantalizing images. If the data were correct, and she would have to check again, but if they were, each parabola marked a human skull.

“I did a rough count.” Nate interrupted her thoughts. “More than five hundred. None larger than four inches in diameter.”

Four inches …

Not just skulls—skulls of babies .

Hundreds of babies.

She silently recited the relevant Bible passage: Matthew 2:16. Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men.

The Massacre of the Innocents. Allegedly, Herod ordered it done to be certain, absolutely certain, that he had killed the child whom he feared would one day supplant him as the King of the Jews. But he had failed anyway. That baby had escaped to Egypt and grown into the man known as Jesus Christ.

Had her team just discovered tragic proof of Herod’s deed?

2

October 26, 1:03 P.M., IST

Masada, Israel

Sweat stung Tommy’s eyes. Eyebrows would come in handy about now.

Thanks again, chemo.

He slumped against another camel-colored boulder. All the rocks on the steep trail looked the same, and every one was too hot to sit on. He shifted his windbreaker under his legs to put another layer of protection between his pants and the scorching surface. As usual, he was holding the group up. Also, as usual, he was too weak to go on without a break.

He struggled to catch his breath. The burning air tasted thin and dry. Did it even have enough oxygen? The other climbers seemed to be fine breathing it. They practically sprinted up the switchbacks like he was the grandpa and they were the fourteen-year-olds. He couldn’t even hear their voices anymore.

The rocky trail—named the Snake Path—twisted up the sheer cliffs of the infamous mountain of Masada. Its summit was only a handful of yards overhead, sheltering the ruins of the ancient Jewish fortress. From his current perch on the trail, Tommy searched out over the baked tan earth of the Jordan Valley below.

He wiped sweat from his eyes. Being from Orange County, Tommy thought he’d known heat. But this was like crawling into an oven.

His head drooped forward. He wanted to sleep again. He wanted to feel cool hotel sheets against his cheek and take a long nap in air-conditioning. After that, if he felt better, he would play video games.

He jerked awake. This was no time to daydream. But he was so tired, and the desert so quiet. Unlike humans, animals and bugs were smart enough to take cover during the day. A vast empty silence swallowed him. Would death be like this?

“Are you okay, honey?” his mother asked.

He startled. Why hadn’t he heard her approach? Did he fall asleep again? He wheezed out, “Fine.”

She bit her lip. They all knew he wasn’t fine. He yanked his cuff over the new coffee-brown blotch of melanoma that disfigured his left wrist.

“We can wait as long as you need to.” She plunked down next to him. “I wonder why they call it the Snake’s Path. I haven’t seen a single snake.”

She spoke to his chin. His parents rarely made eye contact with him anymore. When they did, they cried. It had been like that throughout the last two years of surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiation—and now through his relapse.

Maybe they’d finally look him in the face when he lay in his coffin.

“Too hot for snakes.” He hated how out of breath he sounded.

“They’d be snake steaks.” She took a long drink from her water bottle. “Sun-broiled and ready to eat. Just like us.”

His father trotted up. “Everything all right?”

“I’m just taking a break,” his mother lied, covering for him. She wet her handkerchief and handed it to Tommy. “I got tired.”

Tommy wanted to correct her, to tell the truth, but he was too exhausted. He wiped the cloth across his face.

His father started talking, like he always did when he was nervous. “We’re close now. Just a few more yards, and we’ll see the fortress. The actual fortress of Masada. Try to picture it.”