to be seen, and while the two opposing groups hadn’t collided, it was clear that the plain could erupt into violence at any moment.
Gracie fretted. It can’t last. They’re going to be at each other’s throats any minute now. Which was why Father Jerome had agreed—reluctantly—to leave. He was the lightning rod. And if he left, perhaps the storm could be avoided.
She watched as the abbot pushed the people carrier’s door shut. He peered in through the dark, tinted glass and gave them a small farewell wave, his face etched with concern. Father Jerome returned the wave with a forlorn look. He seemed even more lost now than he had in the cave.
The abbot waved to two monks manning the gate. They nodded and pulled its huge doors open. As the ancient cedar leaves pivoted inward slowly, creaking on their rusty hinges, a rising cacophony gushed in with them as the crowd outside took note and sprang to life.
Gracie’s pulse quickened as she heard the ambient noise rise around her. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, staring out of her window, the combination of the car’s powerful air-conditioning and the musty smell of incense from Father Jerome’s cassock making her feel even more heady.
“Time to rhumba,” Dalton said, shifting his camera from the side window and aiming it forward.
Gracie swallowed hard.
The old people carrier lurched forward and charged out of the gate. It advanced quickly along the monastery’s wall, and almost immediately, people started swarming across the scrub and converging on it. As the van cleared the perimeter wall and turned down the road that led away from the monastery, the crowd around it swelled. Countless hands reached out, trying to stop their escape. Yusuf had to slow down as the wedge of clear space ahead of him disappeared. With his hand pressed against the horn, he managed to keep going another thirty yards or so at a sputtering crawl before coming to a complete stop, blocked by a wall of people.
Gracie leaned over and looked out past Yusuf and Dalton, who was panning his camera around to capture the pandemonium all around the van. Desperate faces were pressed against the Previa’s tinted windows, calling out Father Jerome’s name, trying to see if he was inside, pleading for him to talk to them. They rattled the door handles, fighting the locks, their pained, intense features distorted from being squeezed against the van, their sweaty, dusty hands streaking the windows. Father Jerome shrank into his seat as he darted nervous glances left and right at the faces that looked all the more threatening behind the dark glass.
“We’ve got to go back,” Finch urged Yusuf, “we’ve got to get back to the monastery.”
“We can’t,” Gracie said as she craned her neck back and saw the mass of bodies pressing against the car from all sides, the loud thumps against the roof and windows echoing like war drums. “We’re boxed in.”
AT THE EDGE OF THE CROWD, on a small rise by the crumbling remnants of an old wall, three men in a canvas-topped pickup truck surveyed the unfolding chaos with great interest through military-issue, sand-colored, high-powered binoculars.
As the people carrier disappeared behind the swarm of bodies, Fox Two watched and decided it was time to act.
He signaled his men with a curt hand.
One of his men peeled up a corner of the canvas top, enough to expose the tripod-mounted, drumlike device that lurked underneath. Another man, positioned behind it, looked through its targeting scope and aimed it at the scrum of men crowding the back of the Previa.
He double-checked the settings on the device.
Then he hit the trigger.
THE CRUSH OF PEOPLE pressed against the people carrier recoiled back for the briefest of moments, as if struck by an unseen force, their faces contorted in discomfort and pain, their hands rising to block their ears.
The effect only lasted a second, but it was long enough for Finch to catch it—as did Brother Ameen. As the mob jerked back, a crater of clear space opened up behind the Previa.
Brother Ameen caught Finch’s eye—both their faces were locked in confusion—then he pointed back frantically and yelled, “Go back,” to Yusuf.
The driver and Gracie swung their heads back and spotted the opening.
“Back. Go back now,” Brother Ameen shouted again.
Yusuf hesitated.
“Let’s go, come on, back up,” Gracie yelled at him, also pointing back fiercely.
The driver nodded reluctantly, slammed the car into reverse, and—with his hand still on the horn—eased the car backward. The men flinched back in surprise,