The Project 02 - The Lance Read Free

afternoon."
    Ronnie was the third member of Nick's team. He was just back from visiting his family on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. He'd been coaching Selena. Physical training, weapons, codes, the tricks of personal survival. All the things that might give her a chance to make it through the next year.
    Harker tapped her pen and looked at Nick. "You'll need a lot of time to clear security. You'd better get going."

CHAPTER THREE

    Carter sat with his back against the wall at a café in the New City, drinking espresso, watching the crowd. The night was warm. The pedestrian mall where King George and Ben-Yahuda streets and the Jaffa Road came together in Jerusalem was packed with people.
    For the Jewish people , Jerusalem was the center of the world. It was where the Messiah would some day appear. It was the place where God had commanded the building of His Temple, where every stone, pebble and grain of dust on the Temple Mount was sacred ground. Devout Jews all over the world recited prayers each day for the restoration of the Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.
    The most important shrines of Christianity were here. The tomb of Christ, the room of the last supper, the Garden of Gethsemane where Christ received the Judas kiss. The place where Pontius Pilate passed sentence. The place of crucifixion. Every Christian denomination in the world had a church or shrine somewhere in the Old City.
    For Muslims, the al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount was one of the holiest sites in Islam. The Mosque faced the Dome of the Rock, where they believed Muhammad had ascended to heaven on a winged horse to receive instruction from God. The Muslims had lost Jerusalem to the Israelis in the 1967 war. They wanted it back.
    Armies had fought over Jerusalem for three thousand years. T he narrow streets of the Old City had run ankle deep in blood more than once. Unless someone found a path to peace in the region, Carter figured the streets would run with blood again.
    He'd thought he was done with all that, with the blood, when he left the Marines. Now he worked for the Project. Even though he was a civilian, he was still waking up in war zones. He did his best not to think about it. Best thing, focus on the mission. It was why he was in Jerusalem on a perfect October evening. Someone had to do it.
    Carter drank his coffee and watched the crowd, tracking, reading expressions, looking for anything unusual. His eyes never stayed still. It was an old habit and it was why he was still alive. He never assumed he was safe. He never trusted appearances.
    A young woman in a red dress played an accordion nearby. She had long, dark tresses and she laughed while she played. A small group of smiling people stood in front of her, tapping their feet in time to the music. Children ran through the throng. Carter smiled.
    The night disappeared in violent white light.
    The blast sent Nick backward into the wall and down to the pavement.
    Everything went white. He was back in Afghanistan. He could smell the dust, hear the AKs firing, the explosions all around him. Then the white faded. The flashback faded. He could still hear the echoes of the AKs and smell the dry dust of the street. For a moment he didn't know where he was. Then he did.
    A pall of black smoke hung over torn b odies spread in a red smear across the plaza. A flat, dead silence filled his ears. Then the screaming started.
    A heavy café table lay on top of him. He pushed it to the side and got to his feet. The woman in the red dress lay crumpled and torn nearby, her accordion shattered and silent.
    B roken glass and smashed furniture littered the plaza. There was blood on him, but it wasn't his. Carter took a step and tripped. He looked down at a child's foot in a blue shoe. It was just a small foot. A piece of white bone stuck out of a pink sock.
    He bent over and threw up the espresso in a yellow brown stream. The acrid, coppery stench of blood poisoned the clean night air. He straightened