They were standing around uneasily by the base of the keep—Gracie, Finch, Dalton, Brother Ameen, and the abbot. An expectant hum of voices reverberated across the plain, beyond the monastery’s thick walls. Closer by, the imam’s hateful voice droned on from the people carrier’s radio, an angry, never-ending call to arms that was echoed on countless other radios outside the walls. “Yeah, that’ll look real good,” Finch commented wryly. “American troops flying in to safeguard a Christian holy man in a sea of angry Muslims. That’ll clinch the hearts-and-minds battle right there.”
“We need to get Father Jerome out of here,” Gracie said.
“I agree,” Finch said, “but how?”
“What about bringing a chopper in to whisk him out?” she asked.
“Where’s it gonna land?” Finch queried. “There’s nowhere wide enough for it to put down, not inside the monastery’s walls.”
Gracie pointed up at the keep. “What about up there?
Finch shook his head. “The roof ’s not strong enough. It’s hundreds of years old. There’s no way it can hold the weight. And I don’t think winching him out is gonna work either. He’s too old to take that, and even if he could, someone could take a potshot at him.”
Dalton slid a forlorn nod over at the keep behind them. “So what do we do? Bunker down?” He pointed up at the keep’s second-floor drawbridge, sitting above them. “This thing still work?” he asked the abbot, only half-joking. The fortified keep, with its food stores, water well, library, and top-floor chapel, had been used as a refuge in times of attack, but that hadn’t happened in over a thousand years.
“No, but . . . we should just stay here and wait for the security forces to arrive. They’re bound to send them in now. Besides, there aren’t just Muslims out there,” the abbot reassured them. “A lot of them out there, they’re our people. Christians. They’ll defend Father Jerome if they have to.”
“I’m sure they would, but that’s not the point,” Gracie pressed. “It’d be better to get him out of here before anything like that happens.
To make sure it doesn’t.”
“There might be another way out,” Brother Ameen offered.
All eyes turned swiftly to him. “How?” Gracie asked.
“The tunnel,” he said, turning to the abbot with a questioning look.
“There’s a tunnel? Where to?” Gracie asked.
“It goes from here to the monastery closest to us—the one we drove past on the way in.”
“The Monastery of Saint Bishoi,” the abbot confirmed.
“What, the one across the field?” Gracie was pointing northeast, trying to visualize the second monastery’s relative position from when she’d last seen it, from the roof of the qasr.
The abbot nodded. “Yes. The tunnel is older than this monastery. You see, our monastery was built over what was once the monk Bishoi’s hermitage, the cave he used to retreat to. Because of the constant threat from invaders, the monks decided to build an escape route from Saint Bishoi’s monastery, and they chose his old cave as the exit point. Years later, as the danger receded, a small chapel was built over his cave, and that small chapel eventually grew into this monastery.”
“You think it’ll still get us there?” Finch asked.
“The last time anyone went down there was years ago, but it was clear then. I don’t see why it should be any different now,” the abbot replied. “We haven’t had any earthquakes or anything like that.”
Gracie glanced doubtfully at Finch. Still, it was all they had.
“If we can make it across, can we get a car to drive us from there? Discreetly?” she asked.
The abbot thought about that for a moment, then looked around at the driver of the Previa and the others, smoking nervously as they listened to the radio. He stepped over to Yusuf and spoke to him in Arabic. Yusuf replied, then the abbot turned back to Gracie. “Yusuf’s brother-in-law also drives a car like his. If he can use your phone to call him, we can get him to meet you at Bishoi.”
“Okay, but then what? Where do we go?” Dalton asked. “The embassy?”
“It’ll be the same thing there,” Ameen put in. “Maybe even worse. It’s safer to fly him out of the country.”
Finch frowned, thinking ahead, stumbling over the logistics. “Easier said than done. Does Father Jerome even have a passport?”
“We have to sneak him out,” Gracie opined. “If anyone sees him, it’ll get complicated.”
“He can use my passport,” the abbot offered. “With his robe on and with his hood down, they won’t look too