Lopez didn't seem to be buying it though. "Still, why put one of your religion's most valuable artifacts in the enemy's camp?"
"Choosing Moloch's temple was a bit of pride I think," Rebecca explained. "Moses basically wanted to establish dominance. A kind of 'see who won' kind of thing."
"Like pissing in the enemy's pot," Lopez added.
Brandt shot a look at both of them.
"No disrespect, of course," Rebecca added. That had been the only way a practicing Catholic like himself and a card-carrying atheist like Rebecca could work. Or should she say, have worked. It was her respect of his faith. While she didn't share it, she could respect it. Which was more than he could say for Lopez, even though he came from a Catholic family a mile long. To say the corporal was going to have a long session in the confessional booth was an understatement.
"And Bunny is as familiar with this particular temple since it was one of Lochum's favorite anecdotes during first year Religions of Ancient Times class."
Brandt ground his teeth. None of this would be happening if he'd just put a damned leash on Bunny.
"Not your fault, Sarge," Lopez said. However, everything was Brandt's fault. It said so in the regulations. Lopez wouldn't let it go though. "Bunny was the least likely out of all of us to rabbit."
Brandt grunted.
"Oh come on," Lopez protested. "That was a damned good pun." The corporal turned to Rebecca. "Right?"
"Ricky..." Rebecca warned.
Before Lopez could retort, the group had to split up to go around three figures. A father, mother, and young girl. A family. They held hands, fleeing down the street until their lives had been struck down.
He didn't like what that portended for them.
"Got something," Harvish announced up ahead.
Thankfully Brandt broke from the conversation and joined his point man. Harvish pointed down to a set of steps. Footprints. Small and fresh. Just about Bunny-sized. Rebecca caught up and examined them, then looked up the flight of stairs.
"This is the way."
Giving the nod, Brandt fell in the back of the group as Harvish led them in Bunny's footsteps. Not good when the flighty redhead was guiding your path. With a measured pace, they climbed the steps.
Brandt glanced over his shoulder to find a rifle muzzle sticking out of the tower to the right. He turned to the left to find a matching gun out of the tower there. Would they be enough? Would the little "surprises" Lopez had left along their trail?
With the Disciples? Brandt seriously doubted it.
Rebecca carefully placed her foot on the next step. Each time she felt the salt edge give away, Rebecca felt a little queasy. Well, in honesty that wasn't the only thing that made her stomach churn. Littered on the stairs were prostrate worshippers. With their knees on the steps, they had laid their bodies over the upper steps, their hands clutched in desperation.
Once it had been clear that the city was under attack, its inhabitants had turned to their god, praying for deliverance. They did not find it.
As she mounted the last step, Rebecca found the temple's courtyard filled with more supplicants. Pulling her eyes from the grim sight, Rebecca sought the high walls of the temple itself. Even now, formed of minerals, you could see the intricate, devotional carvings. And each detailed their god, Moloch, nearly three times the height of a man. Most of the time the Gomorrahian god was represented by a man with a bull's head. Almost like a minotaur and a devil crossed together.
Farther up, at the top of the temple stood a towering statue representing the god himself. Moloch dominated from his high seat, arms crossed over his chest, glaring down upon his city. An angry god. A vengeful god.
Flames lapped around the base of his statue. No great surprise since fire was another hallmark of Moloch, especially since he demanded that families sacrifice their firstborn to his fire. Rebecca wasn't all that fond of current organized religions, but at the least there wasn't institutionalized human sacrifice. According to ancient records, these sacrifices were also considered entertainment. Not even Nero had gone that far.
In many ways, Rebecca could understand why Moses would instruct Joshua to hide the tablets here. To place God's word at the heart of this cruel ancient god's seat of power.
Ahead the temple's door was ajar with a small pile of salt from the large lock that Bunny must have forced open. Lopez's grin fell as he raised his weapon. Harvish ducked his head inside quickly and then came back out to report.
"There's light in there."
Then Bunny was in there. What had she found?
"Let's join the party then," Brandt ordered.
Rebecca watched Harvish slip past the temple door, then Lopez. Her feet stalled though. Brandt stood behind her, not moving. He didn't hurry her, but nor did he seem all that patient.
"Isn't this what you wanted?" he asked quietly.
Yes, it was.
Looking up at the towering bull god, Rebecca realized that this was actually it. She truly might find the rest of the Ten Commandments within this ancient ruined city. Her hands trembled uncontrollably.
After her last adventure in that cave under Rome, her life had become not her own. Fundamentally her world beliefs had shifted. She was not the same woman as before she discovered those secrets.
And here she was at the threshold of another. Her feet balking at taking on another ancient mystery. Yet here it lay. Ripe for the picking.
Never had the old adage been so true.
Be very careful what you wish for.
Brandt entered the temple with more than a little trepidation. Very little had to do with the Disciples surely on their way. It had more to do with sulfur smell in the air. Even without the retched odor, the place reeked of evil.
From the depictions of their cruel god to infant skeletons fused into the walls of the temple, Brandt wanted nothing to do with this place. It reminded him too much of that Capuchin crypt. Steeped in depravity, nothing good could come of this place.
Harvish stopped and pointed to an interior door cracked open. Artificial light streamed from the inner chamber. That had better be Bunny. Off his signal, Harvish moved into the inner temple and the rest followed swiftly behind.
To Brandt's surprise, the interior wasn't a testament to this false god. Instead the place was...trashed. Huge statues of the bull god were shattered nearly beyond recognition. What Brandt could only assume was the sacrificial altar was now nothing more than a pile of salt.
Bunny turned at the sound of their entrance, answering the question they all had. "I found the temple like this."
Then it must have been Joshua. Even though charged with hiding the tablets in this vile temple didn't mean he had to like it. Every instance of the false god had been scrubbed from the walls. The shrine completely devoid of Moloch's influence.
"Are they...?" Rebecca asked as she mounted the dais to join Bunny.
The younger woman moved aside to reveal a pillar of salt. Upon its surface lay the remains of the two tablets.
Tears flooded Brandt's eyes. He had to blink them back before they spilled out. He'd never felt God's presence more than standing in this blasted temple. Hidden for millennia, God's word was equally true now as it was the day upon the Mount when it had been written.
Taking only a second to indicate to Lopez to watch the door, Brandt stepped up onto the dais, joining the women.
Bunny had already put the fragments from St. Basil's into the puzzle. Rebecca was busy fitting the stone chunks that Lopez and Davidson had retrieved from the chalet into the pattern.
Once added, the two tablets sat nearly complete, only a few minor chips missing.
The completed tablets were a wonder to behold. And not just for the weight of their history but in their complexity. There were bold passages and then dozens of other, smaller writings surrounding them. Script practically filled the entire surface of the stone. So many more of God's words than any had imagined before. He hadn't just given them the Ten Commandments. He'd given them ten upon ten upon ten commandments.
Rebecca's fingers traced the largest of the passages.
"Be all that read these words know they come from the hand of your God. They are that which is all that has come before, that is now, and will forever be."
Rebecca pulled her finger back, feeling as if she were eavesdropping on a message not meant for her. Her eyes scanned the rest of the tablet. There appeared to be more writing on the stone than was within the Old Testament. No matter if you believed the words were inscribed by God himself, this was the single most complete contemporaneous document to Moses's time ever discovered.
She looked over to Brandt, his eyes glazed over in tears. No matter her doubt. He believed. You could see it in his ragged breath and wide open eyes as Brandt tried to take it all in, body and soul.
"There's more," Bunny interjected. "Farther down there's a set of prophecies. I couldn't quite make them out before, but with the tablet assembled..."
Rebecca's eyes were drawn back to the pedestal as Bunny read from a passage off to the side that wrapped around to the back of the stone.
"Know I will come into the world. Not as your Lord God but as the Messiah. I shall walk amongst you. Heal you. I shall touch the head of a lion and call a lamb to my side. I shall..."
Bunny's finger reached the edge of the stone. Rebecca tilted her head and continued the passage. "I shall hear your sins and cure them. I shall come in the form of..."
She reached the bottom of the stone. "We're going to need to turn it over to read the rest."
"Okay," Lopez said, "Then do it."
Rebecca stepped back though. This was too important to rush. "No, we've got to take rubbings of this side, then secure it all together so that we can turn the entire stone over and repeat the process on the other side."
Sure this was all a bit heady, but science was science. It didn't matter that they read them now. The contents had to be documented for all of mankind.
"Alright," Brandt said. "Then let's-"
An explosion sounded from farther out in the city.
Did Rebecca mention how absolutely awful the Disciples' timing was?
Aunush held the man down as he screamed, flinging himself from side to side. He must have hit a trip wire. His left leg was gone, just gone. That had been a precisely placed bit of C-4. The Chinese soldier tried to place a tourniquet on the stump, but the man flailed, spraying bright red arterial blood across the crisp white walls.
The damage though was the sound of his screams. Those the enemy could pinpoint.
Then a shot blasted next to her, putting a bullet directly between the eyes. The man slumped, quiet at last. Aunush looked up to find her sniper holstering his sidearm. At least someone was thinking.
"What are you waiting for?" Aunush snapped to the other men as she wiped the blood from her palms. They hurried back into formation, although she noted that the men gave the new point man a bit more berth than before. Just as well. During this end game caution might be their best friend.
The sniper offered his hand. Aunush accepted his gesture. The sniper swept her to her feet so quickly she was slammed into his chest. He did not move away as her breasts pressed up against him. Nor did she back from him.
Perhaps after they found the tablets, dispatched Brandt and Monroe, there might be a little time before she needed to tie up loose ends to explore the sniper one last time.
They were in Gomorrah after all.
Brandt pointed to the tablets. "Get those fragments stowed."
"But-" Rebecca tried to protest.
"Now."
You see, every fiber in her body wanted to fight the order, but he had to issue it. Rebecca opened her bag and placed the tablet fragments inside. Of course he also noticed that she slipped a fragment, the fragment she had just been reading, into her pocket. Something for a little light reading on the journey he guessed. He didn't care though, not if it got them moving more quickly.
She even shushed Bunny, overriding the younger woman's complaints.
These salt walls seemed too flimsy to stand up to a full-out attack, however Brandt was hoping the Disciples didn't have a full-out assault left in them. The Disciples might have gotten some fresh shock troops, however their leaders? The ones who had been on Brandt's ass since London? They had to be as tired as of this as Brandt was.
As another explosion sounded, this time much, much closer to the temple, the time for running was over. It was time to make a stand.
"Rebecca and Bunny," Brandt stated, "I want you both at the back of temple, behind that pile of rubble." Moloch might not have been worth much, however his cracked and toppled statues could stop some bullets for them. He grabbed the redhead by the arm as she passed. "And I swear if you try to bolt I will personally track you down-"
Bunny though had fire in her eyes. "And what? Trap me in a burning tomb? Let me die by fire?" She jerked her arm out of his grasp. "I did this for him. For Tolst and Lochum and every other person who sought the truth."
"The truth?" Brandt tried to contain his anger. He failed. "Your stunt has probably cost all of us our lives. Killing six more people. Our blood on your hands. How's that truth of yours now?"
She went to retort, but Rebecca pulled her away from the argument. "Come on."
He shouldn't have risen to Bunny's bait. He knew better. Civilians.
They were either trying to kiss you or kill you.
Nothing in between.
Davidson breathed in and out. Measured. Even.
The Disciples were approaching the temple. After so many booby traps they had certainly traveled with a more cautious pace. By his count they'd lost two men and two others were injured, slowing the entire team.
Or was that what the Disciples wanted him to think?
Underestimating them would be their undoing.
So Davidson waited. Waited until he had the leader, the she-beast, in his scope before he let loose with a shot. Killing off one or two more men would not swing the balance of the battle.
Again and again the woman and her sniper had outflanked them. But now his team had run out of room to maneuver. They needed a game changer. An event, a blow so profound it knocked the wind out of the enemy. Like losing his brother.
Davidson brushed aside the thought. Now was not the time to think of the past. Now was time to hunt.
Several men inched their way up the temple steps. The woman was nowhere to be found. Davidson forced himself to keep his breaths steady. It would not do to have a sharp inhale throw his kill shot off.