"I don't think any of the men need to be reminded of that, sir, especially after they heard the details of what we're going to do to those people today. But I have to tell you, a lot of the men are wondering about the method. I mean, it makes my skin crawl. Why not just stand them up in front of a firing squad and be done with it? I've been in war before, sir, and I can tell you that doing things like this only strengthens the resolve of your enemies."

Pulling his sunglasses down over his nose, the commander studied the sergeant's face as they turned off the road into the field. "I think you'd be wise not to say anything else, Sergeant. We have our orders and we're going to see them through. If you're not up to this you need to let me know now."

The sergeant stared straight ahead without answering as the vehicle rolled to a stop in front of a tall wooden platform that had been constructed the day before. Bundles of firewood were stacked beneath the rough planking of a crude floor at the top of a wooden staircase, and standing off to the side, a man dressed in camouflage and wearing a black hood was holding a lighted touch, its black smoke rising into a cloudless sky.

Stepping out onto the dry grass covering the field, the commander walked around the platform, testing the strength of the stairs and running his hands over the stacks of firewood before motioning to the sergeant standing at attention by the vehicle. "Have the men take up their defensive positions and then bring out the prisoners."

Hesitating for a moment, the sergeant locked eyes briefly with the commander before finally speaking into his radio. Instantly troops began jumping from the backs of the armored vehicles, while behind them, the sound of turbines roaring to life marked the progression of the tanks as they headed to opposite sides of the field in a maneuver designed to provide covering fire over the area around the platform. Overhead, two Blackhawk helicopters circled the nearby forest, their door gunners aiming their machine guns at the ground as they made visual sweeps of the forest below for any signs of movement as the troops spread out over the area below. The ground around the platform was now a killing field for anyone who foolishly tried to attempt a rescue of the prisoners.

As soon as the area was secure, the ramp at the back of the armored vehicle carrying the prisoners thumped against the dry ground and the three bound prisoners shuffled from the vehicle, blinking in the sunlight as they stared up at the wooden platform. Looking over at Abbas and Colette, a shudder ran down Demir's spine. This isn't really happening. It's all just a dream. They only did things like this in the Dark Ages!

But unfortunately for the three prisoners, the Dark Ages had apparently returned to the world, for Demir felt the very real point of a bayonet against his back as they were prodded toward the looming platform that towered above their heads.

Reaching the steps, Abbas felt his legs grow weak with fear. Up until now he had thought this had just been some great misunderstanding. What had they done wrong? They hadn't kidnapped anyone. Colette had been held against her will, and she had asked them to drive her to Foix. Now she too had been condemned to die. For what? This was lunacy. Surely reason would prevail at the last moment and the whole thing would be called off by someone who saw the insanity of their situation, but as he saw the man with the torch step closer to the firewood beneath the platform, he stumbled on the bottom stair. His legs were failing him as he tried to remain calm for the sake of the other two, and as he blinked up into the white orb of the sun shining down over the platform, he began to pray as he started his fatal climb.

What was that hymn Colette was humming behind him? Abbas had heard it before in Christian missionary churches in Turkey. Nearer my God to thee! That was it. He had always enjoyed listening to the soothing tone of the hymn, but now its meaning struck him like a hammer as he stumbled again on the top step and shuffled out onto a platform and faced three wooden stakes sticking up through the floor.

Below him he could see over two hundred soldiers, their weapons pointed outward toward the surrounding forest as the other two prisoners were led to the stakes. Behind them, the commander climbed the steps and stopped a few paces away from Colonel Demir. It looked like he was studying the prisoners' faces for any sign of emotion, but Demir's brown eyes only blinked back at him from a mask of indifference.

"You're a military man, aren't you?" the commander asked, wiping his brow as the sun's rays beat down on the site. "I can tell by your bearing."

"And you are a disgrace," Demir shot back. "You're about to burn three innocent people, and your only excuse will be to tell us that you are only following orders. I've met officers like you in the past. Your so-called leader is nothing more than a terrorist, and you are nothing more than a lap dog!"

"Actually, you're speaking to him right now," the commander smiled as he pointed to a camera mounted to the railing around the top of the platform.

"He's watching this?" Demir screamed. "What a sick bastard!" Demir looked at the camera. "My God, this is your own mother here with us!"

The commander felt his hands begin to shake when he heard the word mother, but he had his orders. "Tie them to the stakes!"

A couple of young soldiers at the top of the platform began to approach the prisoners with lengths of rope in their hands but hesitated when they looked into their eyes.

"I said tie them to the stakes!" The commander was now visibly shaking.

"Any last words?" he shouted. The prisoners only stared back at him in disbelief, and when it was evident to him that they had no intention of speaking again, he turned on his heels and clomped down the wooden stairs. Looking over his head at the bottom of the platform, he walked over to the man with the torch. "How long will this take?"

With one swift motion, Cardinal Leopold Amodeo pulled the black hood from his head to reveal a pair of blazing green eyes. "As long as it takes for me to leave with the prisoners."

The commander took two steps backward, the shock registering on his face as he reached for his pistol. "You!"

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Commander." Leo's eyes narrowed as he thrust the lighted torch toward the commander's face. "Feels hot ... doesn't it?"

The commander's mind began to race as he dodged the burning torch and wisely decided not to draw his pistol. Surely this man-this cardinal-was stark raving mad. But there was something else-something in the eyes that caused him to pause.

"You and your men are sitting in the middle of a minefield, Commander," Leo said, stepping closer. "In case you're wondering, they are planted everywhere, and they can be remotely detonated at my command. Let me give you a little demonstration."

As Leo waved the torch over his head, the two tanks at the edge of the field exploded in mushroom-shaped towers of flame, leaving behind a pile of twisted burning metal that sent black columns of smoke rising into the clear blue sky. The commander's breathing began to come in short shallow gasps as he took another involuntary step backward and glanced around at his soldiers. Despite the cover provided by their camouflaged Kevlar helmets and curved sunglasses, the fear on their faces was clearly evident as they too began to back away toward their vehicles.

"What do you want?" the commander sputtered.

"Your prisoners, of course." Leo smiled. "You don't really want to burn these people, do you, Commander? I could see the hesitation in your eyes when you walked back down the stairs. You've followed your orders like a good soldier, but you've been defeated. It's time to step away."

"I would hardly call two explosions a defeat, Cardinal."

As soon as the words were out of his mouth another explosion vibrated the air, causing the commander to swirl around just in time to see one of his helicopters falling from the sky in flames. A second chopper skimming the trees suddenly rose up and turned sideways in an effort to flee, but it was too late. The commander saw a rocket streak from the forest floor, and a split second later the second chopper lay burning on the ground.

"Who's out there?"

"Friends," Leo smiled. "Face it, Commander. It's quite evident that you've lost this battle. Why not live to fight again another day? Is it worth losing your entire command over three people ... people you really don't want to kill in the first place?"

The commander's face contorted in rage as he appeared to lose control and reach for his pistol, but his hand never touched his weapon as an arrow struck him in the throat, sending him hurling backward over the hood of his vehicle. Cringing behind the hood, the sergeant looked on in horror as Leo approached him. "I guess you're in charge now, Sergeant. I'll make the same offer to you that I just made your commander. If you release the three people on the platform, you and your men will live to see your families again."

"Release them!" the sergeant shouted to the soldiers standing on the platform. "Now!"

The frightened young soldiers quickly pulled out their knives and cut the prisoners loose before jumping off the platform and running for cover behind their vehicles. There was something infinitely more terrifying about the stark reality of an arrow over the invisibility of a bullet, and whoever had just taken out their commander was obviously an expert archer who was surrounded by others equally proficient.

"Believe me, Cardinal, I never wanted to be a part of this anyway!" The sergeant shouted as he threw his weapon on the ground.

"I believe you, my son," Leo said. "From now on I would recommend letting your conscience be your guide when someone gives you orders to murder innocent people."

Leo felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see a grinning Abbas holding a smashed camera with wires dangling from its base. "Are you OK, Abbas?"

"We are now that you're here, Cardinal. I think I'm beginning to see what Bishop Morelli meant when he called you God's Lion. What now?"

"We're leaving." Leo turned back to the sergeant. "Sergeant, I want you to get on the radio and tell all of your forces to stand down. Let them know your commander is dead and that you just lost two tanks and two helicopters. Also, remind them they're standing in a mine field, and if they want to live to see their families again they should lay down their weapons until we're out of the area."

"Yes, sir, Cardinal." As soon as the sergeant finished speaking into his radio the troops in the field began laying their weapons on the ground. Waving his torch in the air, Leo waited. Surrounded by soldiers who could change their minds at any minute, he continued to wait, sweat pouring down his face, until he heard the chop of rotor blades beating the air, and then, looking toward the north, he saw a tiny blue helicopter flying over the tops of the trees.

Breaking out over the open field, it flew toward the platform and circled the area before bouncing down to a hard landing a scant twenty yards away.

"Into the helicopter!" Leo shouted to the prisoners. "Run!"

Without waiting, Abbas grabbed Collette's hand as all four sprinted toward the chopper. As soon as they were settled into the back seat, Leo tapped Nava on the shoulder. With her eyes glued to the soldiers standing all around them, she twisted the hand throttle and lifted the helicopter into the air. Dipping down as she skimmed over the dry grass, she let the chopper gain speed before pulling up over the trees at the end of the field. Seconds later they crossed the main road as they gained altitude and headed north, leaving the stunned and bewildered soldiers back on the ground scratching their heads, while deep in the surrounding forest, the invisible force that had just attacked them melted away, disappearing like ghosts in the mist.

CHAPTER 68.

Sitting on the white sand bottom of the Mediterranean Sea midway between the European and African continents, the HMS Ambush was poised to make history. Pacing the rubber-coated metal deck of the control room, Captain Colin Moss peered at a screen displaying the clear color image of a vacant sea taken from a digital camera embedded at the tip of his periscope.

"Keep an eye on the surface," he said to the executive officer. "I want to make sure we don't fire a nuclear-tipped missile through the bottom of an oil tanker."

"Aye aye, sir," the officer answered. His eyes followed the captain as he descended a ladder and disappeared down into a narrow hallway that led to the missile room.

Walking through the tight confines of the two billion-dollar sub, Moss thought back to his last security briefing before they had sailed from their base at Gibraltar. The Israelis had been busy. Working with the Americans, they had uncovered a total of three of the giant quantum computers Adrian Acerbi's corporation had built over the past six months. Besides the one they had discovered under the palace in Babylon, another was concealed in the Swiss Alps beneath an old Cold War bunker drilled into the side of a mountain, while a new and even more powerful version of the original computer was now ensconced beneath the rolling sands of the Sahara Desert far from prying eyes.

But there was another thing that had been included in his briefing. In exactly one hour, the Americans were going to launch a secret missile from a sub in the Atlantic, only this missile didn't contain a warhead. Instead, it was topped with a small GPS satellite designed to send out coded messages that the quantum computers would interpret as routine communications traffic.

Since it was an experiment designed to see if the computers could be fooled, it was being launched from a sub so that its origin couldn't be traced back to the country that launched it. Most of the engineers and scientists involved gave it a twenty percent chance of surviving more than a few hours before Acerbi's computers discovered its real intention, but in that brief period of time it would provide real-time GPS launch coordinates to anyone who had the right codes to access it-and Captain Moss had the codes.

An hour from now he would test the system, and if he was receiving a signal, he and his crew had all voted to take out the three quantum computers with their nuclear missiles. Not only that, but the Israelis had also pinpointed a villa on the Caspian Sea inside the borders of the former Soviet Union where it had been reported that Acerbi was taking a brief vacation.

For Moss, taking out the computers and Acerbi was a no-brainer. He would be ridding the world of a madman, but at the same time he was tormented with the fact that there was bound to be an Armageddon-like response by Acerbi's forces against whoever they felt was behind the attack. If the attack was somehow traced back to a British sub, he would be placing his own country in the crosshairs of an unimaginable retaliatory strike against an innocent population.

Just as in the Blitz of World War II, his people would be subjected to horrors he couldn't even imagine, but as a military man who had also sworn to protect his country, he felt that this first strike would sever the head of the dragon and spare his people even greater horrors he was sure lay ahead if he failed to act.

Agonizing over his decision, he entered the missile room of the sub and looked into the eyes of the crewmembers who had vowed to fight on alongside him. He felt the proud history of his ancestors calling out from their graves, urging him to defend the realm against the greatest threat it had ever faced in its long and storied history.

Only an hour to go. After he turned his key and pushed the button the missiles would fly, and the fate of his country and maybe even the world would be out of his hands. After checking on the men in the missile room, he backed out into the faux-wood hallway behind him and made his way to his cabin.

Only one short hour to make his decision. The words kept rolling over in his mind as he lay sweating on his bunk, drifting in and out of a sleep-like state, until finally, the gray phone on the wall beside him buzzed.

"Yes?"

"Targeting reports they have the GPS coordinates showing on their computers, sir."

Had it already been an hour? Had the Americans actually fooled Acerbi's computers?

Moss knew Acerbi probably had other computers hidden around the world, but at least he could take out the three they knew about. He had to act now, for there was no way of telling how long it would be until Acerbi's computers discovered the real purpose behind the launch of the new satellite.

Would he really be able to do this? Moss rose shakily from his bunk and made his way up to the control room. As he stood there contemplating the enormity of what they were about to do, he looked for some kind of hint on the faces staring back at him that he had gone mad, but all he saw was the raw determination of military men who understood the risks.

"Is everyone ready?" he asked, nodding to the executive officer. Because it took two keys to fire a nuclear missile, Moss was now dependent on his second-in-command to help him carry out their mission.

"Yes, sir," the exec said, producing a key that was hanging from a chain around his neck.

Without hesitating, Moss pulled his own key out from beneath his shirt. Taking deep breaths, the two men lifted separate, flip-up plastic covers and inserted their keys into matching red keyholes located six feet apart.

The sweat was beginning to stain the captain's shirt. "Targeting ... do we still have acquisition?"

"Aye aye, sir. Signal strength is strong."

"Turning keys!"

A deck officer repeated the command. "Aye, aye, sir ... turning keys!"

"Fire missiles numbers one, two, three, and four!" Moss shouted.

"Aye, missiles one, two, three, and four away, sir!"

All through the hull, the men could feel the shudder as each missile left its tube and shot to the surface, launching into the air before igniting and streaking skyward toward its target. As soon as they were all away, Moss turned away from his console and looked at his crew. Whatever resulted from their actions, he only hoped that history would judge him and his crew kindly.

CHAPTER 69.

As soon as Nava landed the little blue chopper at the base of the hill beneath the ruins of Lev's old castle, her passengers were out the door and running for the woods. Even though they had pulled off the impossible, they all knew they had just kicked a hornet's nest, and the hornets were already beginning to spread out across the land under the command of a new female commander who had just been dispatched to the area.

Circling high above the field inside a large command aircraft, Samantha Jennings blew a wisp of dyed red hair from her forehead and stared at a multi-colored display on her computer screen. Like some queen bee watching her hive at work, she studied the electronic situation map as reinforcements poured into the area, filling the roads below her with soldiers in armored vehicles while drones and helicopters crisscrossed the area in search of the prisoners who had just escaped in a tiny blue helicopter.

A fanatical devotee of Acerbi's new world order, Jennings had risen through the ranks of the officer corps after catching her leader's eye with a no-nonsense and sometimes brutal approach to her job. Not once had she failed at any task they had given her, and now, thanks to an incompetent commander on the ground, Adrian Acerbi's forces had just suffered an embarrassing defeat in an unimaginable turn of events.

It was a black mark she knew her boss could not afford to let stand, and under her helmet she bit her lip as she maneuvered her forces from the cat bird's seat of a large jet aircraft packed with electronic surveillance equipment designed to give her and her crew instant live pictures of events unfolding on the ground and in the airspace around them. Her rising star within Acerbi's growing army depended on the total destruction of those who had just outsmarted her master's forces in the field below, and she was going to make sure the outcome pleased him. In short, Commander Samantha Jennings had blood in her eyes.

Twenty miles away, inside the ruins of Lev's castle, Alon and Gael were briefing their men on the coming battle. If everything had worked according to plan, Acerbi's forces would have assumed that the attack on the field had come from the north, and they would be showing up any minute now. Looking through his binoculars, Alon could see a column of armored vehicles headed in their direction over a road that led through endless vineyards full of workers picking grapes. There was no doubt that Acerbi's men had tracked the flight path of the helicopter to the ruins, and just to make sure, Nava had purposely left the little blue chopper parked out in the open so their pursuers would have no trouble locating them.

"What do you think, Moshe?" Alon said, hunkering down behind a three-foot thick wall.

"It's going to be close. I mean, we're inviting them to hit us with everything they have. They know we have remotely-controlled mines and stinger missiles that can shoot their choppers out of the sky, so we'll be hit by smart bombs from high altitude jet fighters, which means that we'll probably never even hear the attack coming. I imagine they'll also use a few bunker-busting bombs to destroy the network of tunnels below us, so you'll be seeing a real fireworks display in the next few minutes."

Crawling up behind them, Lev and Leo looked out over the valley below. "Some of Gael's men are in position to make a few diversionary raids against some of Acerbi's outposts to the north of here. It's the best we could do, but I'm concerned that it won't be enough to drain all of the assets he's pouring into this valley. We weren't counting on the fact that their response to this situation would be so out of proportion."

Alon adjusted his binoculars and stared into the distance. "It looks like they're sending in an entire division. They must not have anything better to do and all the manpower in the world to do it with."

Scanning an empty-looking sky, Leo felt a tap on his shoulder. "Here's your new clothes, Cardinal," John said, handing Leo a bundle of loose-fitting clothing. "Better change now. I think it's time we got out of here."

Ten minutes later, bombs started raining down on the old castle, and when the evening breeze that swept down from the mountains began to clear the smoke, the hill the castle had once occupied and the land surrounding it all the way to the river resembled the powdery cratered surface of the moon.

Surveying the damage from above, Samantha Jennings gave the burly male officer at her side a high five as she radioed the captain in charge of a column of armored vehicles on the road leading to the site. "You can move in now, captain. Can you see anything from your position?"

"Nothing could have survived that, Commander ... even if they were underground."

"Any sign of their people trying to escape across the river?"

"No ma'am. Just some terrified-looking workers in the fields nearby."

"OK, tell your men not to approach them. We don't want the general populace to think we're here to harm them." Jennings threw her head back in laughter. "I don't want to be responsible for alienating some of the best wine makers in the world. I have dinner plans in Paris next week. Send in your search teams and try to identify the ...

Before she could finish her sentence, a red light began flashing on her console. "Hold on a minute, Captain. I've got flash traffic from Mr. Acerbi."

Keying her microphone, the commander tried to conceal the excitement in her voice as she answered the call in her most professional monotone. "Good afternoon, sir. I've got good news for you."

Seated along a row of consoles surrounding her, the other officers watched her expression change as her eyes widened and her face became flushed.

"Yes, sir. Right away, sir!" Leaning back in her seat, Jennings sat frozen as she stared blankly at the red flashing light on the console before it blinked off. "Wow!"

Seated next to her, the burly officer pushed his headset away from his ears and leaned in close. "What is it, Commander? What did Mr. Acerbi just say to you?"