The Aleppo Code (The Jerusalem Prophecies) by Terry Brennan Read Free Book Online Page B

Nolan’s lifeless body in Sammy Rizzo’s arms and of the plain wooden casket, covered with an American flag and mounds of flowers, in the tranquil pathways of the Garden Tomb.
    When they reached the Agrippas Road, Annie and Joe came alongside as they waited for a solitary delivery truck to pass, then crossed together, entering the quiet and empty open market, headed northeast.
    When two men dressed in black stepped out from the side of a darkened vegetable stall, the veil of grief and guilt was swept from Tom Bohannon’s mind.
    Bohannon nudged Joe with his elbow, grabbed his wife’s hand, and plunged deeper into the shadows and echoes of the empty Machane Yehuda.
    “C’mon, this way. Quick.”
    Running, his damaged shoulder in a sling and his battered body objecting to each stride, Bohannon led them down a narrow alley between the stalls.
    “Tom … what are …” Annie’s halting words were trumped by Rodriguez.
    “I saw one of them.”
    Bohannon skidded to a stop as the alley opened to one of the main thoroughfares of the massive, covered market. “There are two more.” Breathing deep to slow the flood of adrenaline surging through his veins, Bohannon peeked around the corner of the empty stall in one direction. Rodriguez cast a glance the other way.
    “Maybe I’m being paran—”
    A man in black appeared at the far end of the aisle. Behind them, from the alley, they heard a whistle.
    “Go!”
    Rodriguez now in the lead, Bohannon pushed Annie in front of him as they raced across the aisle and dove into the darkness of the alley on the far side. Their pounding feet echoed off the shuttered stalls, but they heard other footsteps, as well.
    Bohannon’s brother-in-law was pushing on every door he passed, the former basketball player barely breaking stride. When one door on the right yielded, Rodriguez nearly fell through it.
    “Here, quick.”
    With his good arm, Bohannon pulled his wife into the darkness that smelled of fish and salt as Rodriguez pushed the door closed behind them and fumbled for the latch.
    “We can’t stay—”
    Running feet passed the door, Rodriguez’s shoulder keeping it firmly closed.
    During the day, and well into most evenings, Jerusalem’s sprawling Machane Yehuda market and its covered aisles overflowed with bodies jockeying to avoid collisions with each other and bulging bags of produce and fish, bread and cheese that hung from the end of almost every arm. Far removed from sunset, it was now Sabbath in Israel and the shops were long closed, the aisles empty, the shadows silent. The running feet had stopped.
    “We need to find a way out,” whispered Rodriguez. Pressing the rusted bolt in place, he pulled over a large wooden box that was next to the door and wedged it under the doorknob.
    “Over here.”
    Bohannon turned in the direction of his wife’s hushed words. Annie stood leaning against another door in the middle of the back wall of the stall. “It’s quiet.”
    They huddled together around the metal door. “Probably not a main corridor,” she whispered.
    “We’ve got to chance it,” said Bohannon. “They’ll figure out we ducked in somewhere along that alley.”
    Annie nodded, turned to the metal door, caressed the bolt to slip it out of its latch, and cracked the door open so Bohannon could peek outside. It was a narrow little passage, barely four feet wide, nearly impenetrable because of stacked crates alternating on either side. “Storage space,” he whispered. “Looks like it runs behind this entire row of shops.”
    “A way out?” Annie’s lips brushed his ear.
    Someone rattled the other door.
    Annie was out first, squeezing her body through the tight space as she moved to the left, uphill, away from the alley. Bohannon followed closely behind and, his hand on her arm, edged around Annie in the dark. He was hoping for an escape route and hoping not to knock over any of the assorted boxes standing in precarious rows.
    Ahead of him, the darkness