Pandora's Ark Read Free Page A

Sanctuary Chapel in Saint Mary of Zion's Church in Axum, Ethiopia, only to find the Ark to be a duplicate. He also traveled to Elephantine, Egypt, and to locales throughout the Arab world only to uncover replicas ranging from the poorly
fabricated to adequate imitations.
    The last remaining location to excavate lay beneath
the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which had been declared by Israeli and Arab
factions as their sovereign territory. But in reality it remained a
region in limbo since the United States refused to acknowledge the land as
strictly Israel’s, even though it remained under their control.
    For over a year al-Ghazi had quietly worked his way
beneath Jerusalem by stitch-boring a lengthy tunnel. And though the process was
quiet, it was still vulnerable to detection. With acquired and detailed notes
and possible GPS coordinates acquired from Iranian intelligence, he spent many
long nights calculating within certainty the Chamber’s precise location.
    Once they had drilled to within one hundred yards
of the location, and in fear of alerting the Israelis by the vibrations meted
out by the drills, they labored tediously with pickaxes and shovels from that
point on, the momentum becoming glacially slow.   
    However, al-Ghazi’s patience would soon prove to be
fruitful.
    Day after day and night after night the pickaxes
swung. And al-Ghazi watched as his hands never touched an instrument of labor.
After all, he was a high-ranking lieutenant with al-Qaeda.
    He had been involved with planning several attacks
against Israeli and American objectives, as well as anyone associated with
either faction. Prior to Bin Laden’s assassination in Pakistan, he had been asked by the former leader to plan out and head the excavation for
the Ark. For what reason he didn’t know, nor did he dare ask questions.
    The man was tall and lean, wearing clothes that
were always immaculately clean and pressed, even within the tunnels where dirt
seemed to constantly flow through the air, but somehow repelled by the man who
never seemed to get dirty or sweat. His face was thin, his beard meticulously
shaped, and his eyes appeared dark and moody and filled with a quiet intensity.
However, he was patient to the core, which was a deadly concoction when mixed
with a black desire to kill for a cause.
    Standing over a table bearing maps and compasses,
the air around him cloyingly thick and hot, the chamber beneath the ground in
which he stood lit only by a string of bulbs that offered feeble lighting at
best, he seemed unaffected as he studied the details of the mapped progress.
Lines had been drawn in red, noting that they were nearing the Temple Mount. With the progress using pickaxes, he considered at best another two to three
months if they worked around the clock.
    The man clenched his jaw, the muscles working. It
was the only sign of his impatience, thus far.
    A worker, skinny and dirty with the grime of earth,
entered the chamber with a pickaxe in hand, his breathing labored. From his
point of view al-Ghazi seemed more like a shadow in the dim light. “Commander,
we broke through.”
    Al-Ghazi raised a brow in reservation.
“Impossible,” he said. “We still have thirty meters to go.”
    The man nodded. “We found a chamber.”
    Al-Ghazi ran a finger over the charts and numbers.
There was no way his configuration was incorrect. If there was an adjoining
chamber, then it was not within the schematics provided.
    “Have you looked inside?” he finally asked.
    The laborer nodded. “The light would only penetrate
so deep. But the area appears large.” The man bowed his head in homage to
al-Ghazi. “We thought it would be better if you entered first, since the glory
of the discovery is yours.”   
    When al-Ghazi passed the man he gave him a pat upon
the shoulder. “You considered well, my friend.”
    The tunnel leading to the opening in the wall was
well bored, the walls rough, but enough space to move freely about without
bending at