Blinking red changed to yellow.

Fifteen seconds.

“There!” Masada pointed to the ancient casement wall along the north rim.

The pilot adjusted direction, approaching the target. Two of the soldiers knelt at the door, machine guns strapped to their chests, helmets secured, night-vision goggles turned on. They pulled on canvas gloves and grabbed the cables, ready to rappel down. A third soldier lay flat between them with a rifle, his eye at the scope. The rest of the team lined up inside the fuselage in full battle gear.

Colonel Ness peered into the night. “What’s that on top?”

The yellow light began to blink.

Five seconds.

The pilot adjusted course, slowing down.

Masada gazed through her night-vision goggles. “They rigged up some kind of a roof. It’s a sheet, or a tarp.”

“Take us lower,” Ness ordered the pilot, “level with the open end at the cliff.” He bent down and tapped the sniper’s helmet. “Find the youth, the one with the gun.”

As they hovered across from the room, Masada saw a figure standing at the open end, outlined from behind by a dim lamp.

“I see a skinny male.” The sniper shifted, tensed up. “Long hair. No mask.”

“That’s him,” Ness said.

Masada stabilized herself, staring hard through the greenish blur, disbelieving her own eyes.

“I don’t see a handgun.” The sniper adjusted his aim with the moving helicopter. “I’m going to lose him in three, two-”

Masada tried to yell, but her voice betrayed her.

“Go,” Ness said, “take him out!”

“No!” She let go of the goggles, which the wind snatched, and kicked the rifle just as a shot sounded. The momentum of her kick pulled her body out of the helicopter, into the darkness, the rotors shoving air at her back. Ness grabbed her arm, and she swung sideways, her head hitting something. The helicopter banked and flew in a wide arc over the ruins.