Covenant A Novel

Can we outrun them?”

Safiya’s voice was pinched with anxiety as she stared at the distant lights blinking an ominous red against the deep-blue evening sky.

“I don’t know,” Aaron said. “But whatever happens, they’ll be able to land wherever we do.”

Ethan moved across to the starboard side of the aircraft and looked at the lights that seemed to come closer with every passing second.

“They want the film I shot,” he said quickly. “Footage of atrocities against the Bedouin will see MACE in a Jerusalem court, and a successful conviction could open up a whole legal precedent for Israel.” Ethan turned to Aaron. “Ayeem’s son disappeared in the Negev and he thinks that MACE has something to do with it.”

“Where is Ayeem?” Safiya demanded.

“I left him there,” Ethan said. “As long as we’ve got this footage, there’s nothing that they can do to him without further implicating themselves. We have to get it back to Ambassador Cutler in Jerusalem. MACE is in possession of the remains that Lucy discovered and that implicates them in whatever’s happened to her.”

Safiya looked to her husband, who gripped the controls of the aircraft tighter in his chunky fists.

“We can’t land back at Herzliya. They’ll be onto us the moment we set down.”

Ethan ran a hand through his tousled hair, watching desert sand spill onto the floor of the fuselage.

“How close can you get us to Gaza?”

Both Aaron and Safiya stared at him in disbelief.

“Are you insane?” Aaron uttered. “Gazan airspace is restricted. If we deviate from our flight plan, the IDF will intercept us within moments.”

“That’s right,” Ethan replied. “You’ll be forced to land under armed escort and arrested either by the Israeli police or the army.” He jabbed a thumb in the direction of the helicopter. “Better that than have MACE’s goons waiting for you on the ground.”

Aaron shook his head, muttering something under his breath before glancing at Rachel.

“Are you okay?”

Rachel’s vacant gaze drifted across to meet the pilot’s, and for a moment she did not respond, as though she were a thousand miles away and had only just heard the question.

“I’m fine,” she whispered, her voice almost inaudible through their headphones.

Over the engine noise, the rhythmic thunder of the helicopter’s blades reverberated through the fuselage. A blinding white light suddenly pierced the interior, sweeping back and forth. Ethan shielded his eyes and looked away. A rush of static hissed and crackled, followed by a commanding voice.

“X-Ray Uniform Delta Seven One, reverse your course immediately and return to Bar Yehuda. That is an order, over.”

Aaron glanced over his shoulder at Ethan, who shook his head.

“They beat Ayeem and they shot at us. You don’t want to go back there.”

Aaron looked across at the helicopter, before reaching down and changing the radio’s frequency. “They’re speaking in English, so Israeli air traffic isn’t on their channel. Hold on.”

Ethan barely had time to grip his seat before Aaron yanked back on the control column. The de Havilland surged upward, sweeping up and over the helicopter while falling back as it lost airspeed. The helicopter jerked away, the pilot clearly surprised by the maneuver. Aaron dropped down behind the helicopter, the Beaver’s wings waggling in the slipstream. The helicopter pilot swerved left in an attempt to clear the de Havilland from his tail, but Aaron hung on grimly as Safiya deftly adjusted the throttles to compensate.

“Since when are you the Red Baron?” she snapped. “You can hardly shoot them down.”

“No, but they can’t shoot at us either.”

Ethan listened as Aaron began trying to contact Israeli air traffic control, but after several attempts he shook his head, cursing in Yiddish and turning to look at Ethan over the back of his seat.

“They’re blocking our radios, some kind of electronic countermeasures.”

Ethan felt a sluice of despair flood his guts. Ahead the sun had completely vanished, setting swiftly over the Mediterranean. The horizon was marked by a rapidly fading orange light and the earth below enshrouded in a blanket of darkness, while ahead a thousand tiny lights sparkled across the Gaza Strip and the town of Sderot.

Quite suddenly, the helicopter before them veered upward sharply in a rapid ascent and braking maneuver that the de Havilland could not hope to match. The sound of the powerful thumping rotors thundered past in the night sky above.

“They’re cutting in behind us,” Safiya said, straining in her seat to watch the helicopter settle in close behind them.

“They won’t shoot us down,” Ethan said. “They can’t take the risk of us having spoken to the controller before they blocked our radios.”

“Yeah, great, Ethan, except that we don’t know what they’re saying now,” Aaron pointed out. “They could be reporting us as having terrorists aboard, bombs, anything.”

Ethan felt a new wave of panic flooding his stomach. Faced with the threat of a potential aerial suicide attack, there was no telling what the IDF might do. Without radio contact, they would most likely have a play-it-safe policy of blowing any suspicious aircraft out of the sky before it reached populated areas.

Ethan looked ahead to the sparkling lights of the Gaza Strip. The clattering of the engine and the rhythmic thumping of the helicopter blades reverberating through the fuselage rattled any remaining self-doubt from his mind. You’ve screwed it up, Ethan. Best thing he could do now was remove any responsibility from Aaron, Safiya, and Rachel before they were all caught.

“How far is it to Gaza now?” Ethan asked.

“Two minutes and we’ll be over Sderot,” Aaron replied quickly. “We could try for Yasser Arafat Airfield in southern Gaza but it’s not great for landing. The IDF bombed it years ago.”

“I can’t let them get hold of this footage. Take us as close as you dare to the Gaza Strip and turn north when we reach it.”

“What the hell are you going to do?”

Ethan reached out to the row of parachutes strapped to the rear of the fuselage.

“I’ll get out over the Strip and find my way back into Israel afterward.”

“You … can’t,” Aaron stammered, “it’s dark out there and you’ll have no way of seeing where you’ll land.”

“Nor will they,” Ethan said. “Besides, there’s a lot of open ground on the edges of the Strip near Nahal Oz.”

“Have you ever even used one of those before?” Safiya asked, gesturing to the parachute.

Ethan managed a meager smile that he hoped convinced them where it failed to convince him. “I was a Marine not an airborne soldier, but how hard can it be? Jump, pull, pray.”

From beside him, he could see Rachel watching as he slipped into the parachute harnesses and tightened them over his shoulders.

“This isn’t the best way to protect that footage,” she murmured. In the darkness, her features were lit only by the soft green glow from the instrument panel. “We could end up losing both you and the camera.”

“While I’m in Gaza I can find out if Lucy is being held there, and I know people who can help get me out again.”

Rachel got to her feet, swaying as the aircraft rocked through the night sky.

“Are you sure it’s Lucy who you’re going to be searching for?”

Ethan forced himself to look into her eyes without flinching.

“There isn’t anyone else there,” he said. “If there was, I would have found her before now.”

“How do I know that’s the truth?” Rachel said above the engine noise. “Selby and Woods showed you that photograph of your fiancée, and the first chance you’ve got you’re abandoning me to go running about in Gaza. How the hell is that supposed to help me find Lucy?”

“Israel wouldn’t let me into Gaza to find Joanna,” Ethan snapped, “just like they won’t let us into Gaza to find Lucy. This is the perfect opportunity. Are you willing to throw that away?”

Rachel glared at him, her mouth open to reply but no words coming forth. Ethan turned away and checked his harness before gripping the de Havilland’s interior door handle and looking ahead toward the cockpit.

“Ready?”

Safiya nodded, her dark eyes unreadable in the shadowy cockpit. Ethan turned and yanked the door open.

The night air blasted into his face, the aircraft yawing to one side as Aaron fought to overcome the sudden aerodynamic imbalance. Ethan peered over the edge of the fuselage as Aaron gained control and turned swiftly north. Streetlights flickered three thousand feet below, and out to the west Ethan could just make out the surface of the Mediterranean reflecting the night sky like a vast, shimmering mirror.

Aaron had timed his turn well, and was flying almost directly over the unpopulated wasteland between Gaza and Israel. Ethan shouted to Rachel above the buffeting wind.

“I’ll try to get back into Israel by the morning through Eraz. Inform the Foreign Ministry of what’s happened; they should be able to help me through.” Rachel nodded, her face strangely vacant. Ethan fixed her with a serious gaze, trying to assure himself that she understood him. “You’ll have to close the door behind me.”

Rachel edged across to the doorway. Ethan looked down at the twinkling lights of Gaza far below. He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a few deep breaths. Get a grip and do it. If you’ve got nothing, you’ve everything to gain.

Ethan crouched and then hurled himself out into the blackened void.

The windblast smashed into him, flailing his body as he spun away into the darkness. The howl of the Beaver’s engine and the shuddering blades of the helicopter vanished as he plunged downward. Ethan gripped the cord of his parachute and yanked hard.

The parachute rippled free as the cityscape beneath gyrated wildly through his vision, and then he heard a dull crack in the sky above and was yanked upright as the parachute blossomed open. He swung in absolute silence for a few moments before checking above him. The broad dome of the parachute glowed faintly against the inky night sky above.

He breathed a sigh of relief, and looked down.

The Gaza Strip beckoned, ten thousand darkened alleys and streets populated by a people who had been persecuted for over half a century. A land and a people he knew well, now less than a thousand feet beneath him. For a few moments, he found himself reveling in the silence of the night air, and realized that he had not slept for at least twenty-four hours. Not the first time, he reminded himself, his eyes itching as he became aware of his exhaustion.

The night breeze was blowing him slightly north and west. He began trying to judge his landing point amid the dense rooftops, perhaps half a mile north of where he was now and maybe five hundred feet below. A distant car horn sounded and Ethan looked out across the city. There, rows of headlights drifted in relative silence, but among them, two sets weaved and twisted through the darkness parallel to his course.

The de Havilland and the helicopter would have been an unusual sight above the Strip. As he had feared, he had been spotted. He would need all of his wits about him in order to negotiate a safe passage and not be abducted as Lucy Morgan and countless others had been, for only insurgents would move to intercept him with such reckless speed.

Ethan looked up to check his parachute one last time before his landing, and as he did so something caught his eye floating in the immense night above him. “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

A thousand feet above, just visible in the glow from Gaza’s feeble streetlights, another parachute blossomed against the night sky.





Rachel, close the door!”

Safiya’s voice was snatched away on the howling wind as she saw Rachel yank a second parachute from its rack on the fuselage wall, strapping the harnesses over her shoulders in the same way that Ethan had done.

Safiya glimpsed Ethan’s parachute billow open behind the de Havilland as she scrambled between the cockpit seats and rushed toward Rachel, grabbing her by the shoulders and holding her back.

“Don’t be a fool, sadiqati! You can’t jump!”

Rachel strained to break free. “My daughter could be down there!”

Safiya wrapped one arm across Rachel’s chest, leaning back so that her weight would prevent Rachel from leaping out. “Yes she could, but what good will it do her if you go and get yourself kidnapped, or worse?”

Unexpectedly, Rachel backed away from the opening and turned to face Safiya, gently breaking her grasp.

“You know why Ethan became the way he is?” Rachel shouted above the wind. “He’s half a person, isn’t he? Nothing like he used to be. I don’t want to end up that way.”

Safiya stared at her for a long beat, desperately searching for a reply, but she could find nothing. Rachel turned and without further hesitation hurled herself from the aircraft and plunged into the void.

Safiya watched her vanish into the darkness before hauling the de Havilland’s door shut, cutting off the noise. She staggered back into the copilot’s seat.

“You sure you don’t want to go as well?” Aaron uttered. “I don’t know how the hell we’re going to explain this when we land.”

Safiya shook her head slowly, glancing at the helicopter’s lights flashing in the darkness off their starboard wing.

“We will tell the authorities that nobody boarded at Bar Yehuda, that it is all a mistake.”

“You think they’ll believe that?” Aaron snorted.

“They’re more likely to believe that than the truth.”


Ethan grabbed the guidance cords of his parachute, yanking them sideways as he aimed for a yawning chasm of pitch blackness near a tight knot of apartment buildings. A single, flickering streetlight intermittently illuminated what might once have been a school nearby, now obscured by rubble and litter and hemmed in by two buildings bearing the scars of artillery strikes. On the night air wafted the salty odor of the nearby ocean, tainted with the acrid stench of sewage that ran openly along the gutters of Gaza’s streets as dark, thick, and dangerous as the shadows that concealed it.

The inky blackness loomed up swiftly and Ethan braced himself for the impact, pulling down on the cords at the last moment to slow his descent as he belatedly considered the possibility that he could end up breaking either his legs or pelvis. The unforgiving concrete rushed past as his feet slammed into the ground. He managed to run a few paces and then rolled, hitting the ground hard amid a cloud of dust that clogged his throat.

The parachute fluttered down beside him as he struggled to his feet, unclipping his harness and hauling it in. He turned and looked up into the sky. The second parachute was drifting down toward him but clearly wasn’t going to hit the same spot. He could detect slight movements as the jumper tried desperately to control their descent.

Voices sounded in the darkness, a flourish of urgent Arabic closing in on him from nearby. Shouts echoed from the main road on the other side of the derelict buildings as a car screeched to a halt and its doors slammed. Heavy feet pounded the earth.

Ethan turned and dashed into the first alley he could see that would take him in the same direction as the parachute above him, his own still bundled under his arm. He plunged into the shadows, tossing the parachute through a shattered doorway as he ran through the darkness, praying he wouldn’t break a leg on some unseen obstacle. Something crashed into his shin and he cursed through gritted teeth, staggering onward through the darkness.

The end of the alley broke out into another, larger passage running between two skeletal buildings emaciated by the rigors of war. Ethan checked both ways before sprinting between them. The parachute passed directly overhead, visible barely a hundred feet up in the narrow strip of night sky above, swerving left and right as it plummeted downward.

Ethan ran hard and burst out onto the edge of a dusty wasteland of unused foundations filled with jagged chunks of masonry, razor wire, and abandoned, burned-out vehicles.

The parachute was twenty feet above the center of the clearing, and Ethan knew for sure that Rachel was the jumper. Without real control she would almost certainly break bones if she hit the rocks.

“Rachel! Pull hard on both handles, now!”

He could just make out Rachel’s head turn to look at him, her expression of surprise, and then she yanked down on both of the handles. The parachute slowed rapidly and Ethan heard a thump that made him wince as Rachel hit the ground. Behind him, a fresh chorus of angry Arabic erupted from the darkness.

They had heard him.

Ethan dodged between the ragged boulders of concrete, careful not to catch himself on dense webs of rusting steel braces poking out like lances in the darkness. Ahead, he saw Rachel’s parachute rippling to the ground and a body lying inert in the darkness.

Ethan sprinted the last few meters and skittered down alongside Rachel’s body. To his relief she lay sprawled in the center of a large patch of coarse-grain sand and gravel. She sat upright as Ethan yanked off her harness.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I think so,” she murmured as though waking from a dream, and she stared at the soft sand beneath her. “That was lucky, wasn’t it?”

The shouts behind them became louder, and Ethan glimpsed swiftly moving figures obscuring the streetlight filtering through the alleys nearby.

“I wouldn’t call this lucky,” he said urgently. “Can you walk?”

With Ethan’s help Rachel struggled to her feet, and he quickly led her away from the pursuing voices, dodging between the rubble and detritus clogging their way. He kept low and headed for the silhouettes of derelict buildings.

“Where are we going?”

“Anywhere but here,” Ethan replied. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“I told you, there is nothing that I won’t do to find Lucy.”

Ethan didn’t reply, running instead toward another narrow alleyway that cut between the shattered hulks of the buildings ahead. The voices behind them were calling out to one another, short bursts of Arabic flowing back and forth like gunfire through the night. Another flurry of excited exclamations heralded the discovery of Rachel’s discarded parachute.

“Who are they?” Rachel asked.

“I don’t know and I don’t want to.”

“I thought you said you knew people who lived here.”

“I don’t know everyone! Come on.”

They plunged into the safety of the nearest alley, the choking stench of feces overpowering them in the confined spaces and the splash of puddles beneath their feet echoing through the darkness until Ethan slowed. Ahead, a brightly lit road was filled with the sounds of voices. He could hear music playing in the distance from one of the thousands of cafés scattered across Gaza. The figures of people walked past, strangers silhouetted against streetlights.

Ethan turned to look behind. He could hear the voices of their pursuers crossing the open ground, closing in on them. They would reach the alleyway within moments. He turned to Rachel.

“We’re going to stand out like a sore thumb. Just walk behind me and try to look normal.”

Rachel shot him an uncertain look, but Ethan turned and with a deep breath walked out into the street and turned immediately right.

The street was narrow, with ancient, battered cars and taxis parked haphazardly by the curbs. A cyclist rattled past and looked at them curiously as they made their way along the street, while a young boy sitting in a makeshift carriage being pulled by a mule stared openly at them as they passed. The music from a café on the opposite side of the street became louder, and Ethan could see from the periphery of his vision old men wearing traditional Arab garments sitting outside in the warm evening air smoking hookahs and drinking hot, sweet coffee. They stopped talking as Ethan and Rachel passed by on the other side of the street, watching them with intense gazes.

Ethan searched for a side alley that they could vanish into, and was rewarded with a dimly lit street twenty meters ahead and on the opposite side of the road.

“This way,” he motioned, crossing the street with purposeful strides, Rachel struggling to keep up behind him.

The music from the café behind them fell silent.

Ethan glimpsed a car pull into the street, headlights sweeping accusing beams toward them as they walked. The handful of people walking along the street suddenly disappeared in silence, drifting into houses as though obeying some unheard command. He glimpsed shutters on windows closing, saw the old men abandon their hookahs to vanish inside the café.

The car accelerated toward them with a squeal of scorched tires.

“Go, now!

Ethan shoved Rachel toward the alleyway, running after her as the car bore down on them, its screaming engine battering the night air. He looked over his shoulder to see the doors opening as it skidded to a halt ten meters away, men leaping from the vehicle with weapons in their hands. Hoods, boots, bandanas and balaclavas, dark and glowering eyes filled with hatred and anger.





Ethan plunged into the alley behind Rachel, running hard as they dashed between the narrow walls, dodging abandoned litter and leaping the rusting carcass of an old bicycle. Rachel burst out into another street, this one narrower still, looking left and then right as Ethan rushed out behind her.

Another café to their left stood with chairs abandoned outside on the pavement. A pram with a missing wheel lay on its side on the opposite side of the road, and somewhere above them a series of window shutters slammed shut. At both ends of the street, cars accelerated toward them.

Ethan turned and saw the shapes of men rushing toward them through the alley. He felt his guts twist deep inside him as panic fluttered through his chest. The cars screamed up to them, armed and masked men leaping from the interiors with assault rifles in their hands. Ethan moved closer to Rachel, and realized that he had failed to protect her.

“Game’s up,” he said.

In the abandoned street Ethan raised his hands, watching as a group of fifteen or so men poured out of the alley behind them, AK-47s in their hands and unimaginable thoughts running through their minds.

Within seconds Ethan and Rachel were surrounded by shouting Palestinians, several of whom began punching the air and firing loud staccato shots from their rifles into the night sky. Ethan placed a hand on Rachel’s forearm and squeezed it as reassuringly as he could.

“We’ll be okay,” he whispered.

From behind him, a gruff voice shouted out in broken English, “Get on the ground, hands on your head!”

“We’re American,” Ethan said, “and we’re looking for—”

Something hard cracked across the back of his legs and he collapsed, his knees smashing painfully on the unforgiving concrete. He had just enough time to see Rachel being grabbed by two men, and then a musty-smelling sack was shoved over his head.

Jerusalem




“We lost them.”

Spencer Malik stood behind a MACE technician operating a computer and two monitors, one of which was filled with the face of a helicopter pilot glowing in the light of his instruments.

“How the hell can you lose a damned airplane?”

“They bailed out,” the pilot explained. “Israeli air traffic control ordered us to cease jamming their signals. We saw two ’chutes go down somewhere in the Gaza Strip. We’re tracking them with cameras but they’ve been grabbed, probably by insurgents. We’re having trouble keeping them in sight outside of Gaza airspace.”

“Does air traffic know that anyone has bailed out?”

“Not yet. My guess is that whatever they’ve been up to, the pilots are not going to admit anything to the IDF. Best we’ll get is a detention and questioning, but we can’t prove a thing.”

Warner had the camera footage, Malik reasoned, and his priority was getting it back to Israel without MACE being able to intercept him. Now, Malik had to find the little bastard before he managed to get to any of the crossing points on the Gazan border. Byron Stone was due to arrive soon, and if Israel got hold of the footage, heads would roll. He had the distinct impression that his would be first.

“Let the aircraft go,” Malik said quickly, “stay on the refugees.”

Malik looked down at the technician.

“How soon can we have a Valkyrie drone over the Strip?”

“An hour,” the technician replied, “but it would have to be cleared by Israel first.”

Malik nodded, looking at the helicopter pilot. “Relay the camera’s tracking data here.”

The pilot said something over his intercom to a crew member in the rear of the helicopter. Instantly, a grainy image from a night-vision camera appeared, following a convoy of four cars through the streets of Gaza.

Malik watched the screen for several seconds before making his decision.

“Track them to their destination. Mark the coordinates and relay them here. I’ll organize clearance for the UAV.”

“Roger that.”

The helicopter pilot’s image vanished, and the technician turned to look up at Malik.

“Israel’s not going to give us UAV clearance over the Gaza Strip easily.”

Malik looked thoughtfully at the screen. Having a foreign-owned, built, and armed unmanned aerial vehicle marauding over Gaza wasn’t going to be a walkover, but Israel’s deeply ingrained xenophobia had served MACE well in the past.

“Get all of the video data downloaded to my workstation. All Israel needs to know is that we’re tracking terrorists who may pose a threat. Enhance anything that may give that impression from the footage and remove everything that suggests otherwise.”