Covenant A Novel

RAMON AIR BASE

NEGEV DESERT, ISRAEL


Twinkling like a galaxy amid the immense black universe of the Negev, the lights of the sprawling air base glowed blue and orange as they traced the lines of taxiways and a broad runway stretching out into the dark wilderness. Cavernous hangars loomed against the night sky, one of them with its immense doors open. Within, small groups of men worked feverishly with fuel lines and sensors, cables and satellite communication dishes.

In their midst sat an aircraft with a sleek triangular shape, looking like a fighter plane and coated in matte black paint. But there was no space for a pilot, the cockpit replaced by a sharply angled nose sheathed with dark glass that contained a multitude of cameras and sensors. The legend MACE was stenciled down the fuselage in stealthy graphite gray, and beneath it a single word: valkyrie.

“Clear for engine start!”

Technicians and soldiers alike backed away as the unmistakable whine of a turbine engine issued from the aircraft’s exhaust. It reached a crescendo and then settled down to a steady whistle, a series of navigation lights flickering on the wing tips as the unmanned aerial vehicle rolled out of the hangar toward the huge runway nearby.

The men watched as it turned onto the airstrip as though guided by an artificial intelligence. With a sudden howl from the engine it lurched forward, accelerating and lifting off into the darkness. The whine faded as the gently blinking lights rose up into the night sky, and then even they were extinguished.

Utterly invisible and with its small turbine engine almost inaudible as it climbed above two thousand feet, the UAV turned toward the distant Mediterranean.

MACE

JERUSALEM


Spencer Malik watched as the technicians operated the controls of the Valkyrie, one flying the aircraft and the other monitoring the weapons and guidance systems. A large screen in the office before him showed a pixelated, green-tinged image of ramshackle buildings and dusty streets illuminated by sporadic streetlights. The image jerked and lurched under the high zoom of the camera as the Valkyrie bobbed and bounced on wind currents.

“We have the coordinates,” Malik said, watching over the technician’s shoulders and reading the figures from his cell phone to them. One of the young men tapped the coordinates into a computer, and the image on the screen snapped briskly to the right.

“It’s in Jabaliya, sir,” the technician reported. “Four buildings at those coordinates.”

“Get into position,” Malik ordered. “We will launch as soon as we’ve identified the most likely target.”

“Do we have assets on the ground?” the other technician asked.

Malik stood for a moment, an image of Rafael materializing in his mind. By now the Arab would almost certainly have infiltrated the required building in order to have sent the coordinates. With only empty or incomplete apartment blocks and shattered concrete hulks visible on the screen, it stood to reason that the prisoners were being held beneath ground. Nowhere to run.

“Our asset will have left the scene by now,” Malik replied with a grim smile. “Strike as soon as you have the target in sight.”





JABALIYA

GAZA


The cool caress of the night air was the sweetest thing that Ethan had ever experienced as he clambered from the tunnel. As he stood in the center of a shattered apartment block and sucked in a lungful of that air, surrounded by ragged towers of masonry that had once been the home of Palestinian families, he noticed a vast panorama of stars glittering in the heavens above him.

For the first time in his life, Ethan realized he was looking at those stars in a totally different way. The ancient pagan cults had got it right after all, worshipping nature and the heavens without ever realizing how close to the truth they’d actually been. Mankind was not alone.

“You can make your call from there.”

Ethan turned in the direction Mahmoud indicated, toward a concrete ramp that had once been the upper floor of the apartment block and now lay at a steep angle against the surface of the last remaining upright wall.

Ethan picked his way between blocks of rubble that littered the earth around him. He stepped up onto the ramp, climbing until he was some ten feet above the ground. He looked at his cell phone and glanced back at Mahmoud, giving him a thumbs-up. Mahmoud made no response, simply standing guard in the darkness.

Ethan sat down on the ramp and dialed a number into his cell phone, waiting for the line to connect. From his elevated viewpoint he could see the low roofs and haphazard streets of Gaza stretching away to the south between the skeletal remains of the building.

“Hello?”

“Doug? It’s Ethan.”

“Ethan!” It sounded as though Doug Jarvis had fallen out of bed. “Where the hell have you been? What happened to the daily call?”

“Things got complicated and we were compromised before I could contact you,” Ethan said quickly. “I don’t have much time, so just listen.”

“Go ahead,” Jarvis replied.

“Lucy’s disappearance isn’t just to do with fossil hunters: it’s got something to do with an American security company called MACE: Munitions for Advanced Combat Environments. They’ve been operating out here for some time and have the ear of the Israeli Defense Ministry. It was their people who stole Lucy’s discovery and they presumably know what happened to her and her team.”

“MACE,” Doug echoed. “Haven’t heard of them.”

“There’s more,” Ethan said quickly. “They’re responsible for atrocities against the indigenous population of Bedouin in the Negev and I have it on film. Unfortunately, they know this and have been trying to recover the incriminating evidence, and they’re not shy of shooting first and asking questions later.”

“Christ, Ethan! Is Rachel okay? Where are you?”

“Rachel’s fine,” Ethan assured him. “We’re in Gaza. We were chased here by MACE operatives and we’re trying to get back into Israel. I need you to contact the IDF and clear us a passage through the Erez crossing by dawn our time.”

“You’re in Gaza?” Ethan could hear the concern in Doug’s voice. “Who are you with?”

“It’s a long story,” Ethan replied. “Let’s just say that we know that insurgents did not abduct Lucy or anyone else in her team.”

There was a pause on the line before Jarvis spoke again. “Look after my daughter, Ethan.”

“I’ll have her out of Gaza by dawn, I promise. I need you to look into MACE, see if you can find out what connections they have to the fossil black market, or anything that might give us some perspective on what the hell they’re really doing out here. Look for any connection that you can find with something called the American Evangelical Alliance, a church in DC that owns the company.”

“Consider it done,” Jarvis said.

Ethan was about to speak when he noticed Mahmoud leap with feline agility onto the edge of the ramp and stare up into the night sky. The Palestinian’s face contorted as though he was straining to hear something, and then with an urgent grimace he waved at Ethan to follow him.

“Doug, I’ve got to go,” Ethan said, standing and running down the ramp.

“Why, what’s happenin—”

Ethan had barely managed to shut the phone off when Mahmoud grabbed him and hurled him toward the tunnel entrance. For a brief moment Ethan heard a strange humming noise.

“What’s happening?”

“Get down!”

In an instant the entire area around Ethan lit up in a blinding flare of unimaginable brightness. His eyes automatically shut, an image of ruined buildings seared onto his retina amid blazing light as a blast of superheated air slammed into him like a freight train.





Ethan felt his body propelled sideways through the air as an enormous explosion radiated out from a nearby building. He slammed into the ground backward, felt the breath blasted from his lungs as he crashed into a slab of shattered brickwork. He rolled away instinctively from the painful assault on his eardrums as the darkness plunged down around him once more.

He lay for several seconds with his arms over his head, curled into a fetal ball in the rubble as the pain in his ears subsided to a torturous ringing echo of the infernal blast. He rolled over, lifting his arms from his head and trying to force his eyes to focus.

The entire adjoining building had been obliterated, a burning wasteland of vaporized rubble and debris cast wide by the explosion. The few shattered walls that remained standing looked like the carcasses of rotting animals burning from within. From the stygian darkness above fell a rain of glowing embers that spiraled down around him.

Ethan blinked into the flames, and saw a figure moving with them, the flames curling around her body like snakes. For a moment he thought Rachel had been caught in the blast, but then he saw blond hair shining in the light of the fires, saw Joanna standing on the edge of the darkness. Ethan staggered to his feet as his legs quivered beneath him, and struggled toward her, the searing flames ahead stinging his eyes.

“This way!”

Mahmoud leaped from nowhere through the clouds of cement dust and falling embers, his hair and face caked with dust. He grabbed Ethan’s shoulder and yanked him away from the fire.

“What are you doing?” the Palestinian demanded.

Ethan saw the phantom image of Joanna spirited away on the crackling flames before him. Above the humming in his ears he heard the cries of Palestinians fleeing in the darkness, the screeching of women and the haunting cries of children awoken by the blast. Nausea poisoned his innards and swelled into his throat, and he jolted forward as a thin stream of bile splattered into the darkness at his feet.

“Come on!” Mahmoud shouted.

Ethan staggered along with him, trying to ignore the acid burning his throat as they stumbled across the broken remains of the building, illuminated now by the shimmering flames.

“Hurry, there will be more,” Mahmoud said as they reached the entrance to the tunnel.

Ethan clambered down the ladder on legs weakened from shock, Mahmoud following him underground once again into the cloying heat. Ethan reached the tunnel floor and turned to his right, regaining his senses as he jogged along the passage. He emerged into the subterranean chamber to see Hassim and Rachel looking panicked and confused.

“What happened?” Rachel asked.

“I don’t know,” Ethan said, guzzling water from his mug and turning to see Mahmoud join them in the tunnel.

“Air strike,” the Palestinian said urgently. “Somebody knows that you are here.”

“We have to get aboveground,” Rachel said, her features pale as she looked at the earthen walls surrounding them.

Mahmoud, his pistol held at the ready, gestured with a nod of his head to Hassim.

“Go, there is nothing more that we can do for you here. You must seek protection from Israel.”

Hassim was about to leave when the sound of thunder blasted through the tunnel.

Ethan had no time to react before the shock wave rushed down into the chamber, solid and unstoppable. Ethan felt himself hurled sideways as though clubbed by a giant baseball bat, saw Rachel flung to the ground in a blaze of confusion and noise. Hassim slammed sideways into a wall and crumpled to his knees. Mahmoud crouched before the blast, rolling over as dust and debris filled the chamber in a dense, choking cloud.

Ethan’s knees connected with the earth with a dull crack as grime filled his nose and throat. Fighting an instinctive panic, he struggled to get to his feet as the lights in the chamber flickered around him.


Rafael charged forward, his scarf wrapped across his face to protect him from the thick dust that swirled in diaphanous eddies down the tunnel toward him. Like a demon flitting through the catacombs of hell, he sprinted toward the light of the chamber as the second detonation thundered through the darkness, the walls of the tunnel shuddering beneath the blow. The light ahead flickered as the shadows of tumbling figures were cast through the glowing veils of dust.

Rafael rushed on with scarcely a pause, reaching into his pocket and producing a small pair of bolt cutters. As he reached the chamber he glanced left and right, then reached up to his left and with a single swift crunch sliced through the electrical cables running along the ceiling.

The light vanished, and he heard shouts of alarm from the chamber as the occupants were plunged into complete darkness.





The tunnel’s collapsed!”

Ethan heard Mahmoud’s voice shouting out to them, but in the darkness he could see nothing as grains of grit scratched across his corneas. His exhaustion suddenly overwhelmed him as he lost his balance and staggered, his darkened world gyrating and pitching. His voice when he called out was choked and raspy.

“Rachel? Hassim?”

For one long, terrible moment he heard no reply as he fumbled in the darkness with his hands outstretched. Something brushed his fingers, someone moving past him, and he heard the sound of rapid footfalls in the darkness.

“Rachel?”

“I’m here,” came her voice from another direction in the inky blackness.

Ethan flailed to his left, trying to stay upright.

“There’s a flashlight,” Mahmoud’s voice called out, “in the wall by the entrance.”

Ethan turned, guessing roughly where the entrance to the chamber was, and felt his way there with his arms outstretched. His fingers touched the walls of the chamber as he fumbled until he felt the wall vanish into the tunnel. Something brushed past him again in the darkness, disappearing almost before he had registered its presence.

“I can reach it,” he said, turning sideways.

Ethan struggled across to the opposite wall and groped in the blackness for several seconds until he found the recess where Mahmoud must have stored the flashlight. Quickly, he reached inside and grabbed a cylindrical object, turning as his thumb found a switch on the barrel. The beam burst into life, cutting a swathe of light through the cramped chamber.

Ethan blinked the grit from his eyes, sweeping the beam in Rachel’s direction. He saw her crouched beside the crates with Hassim, the scientist’s arms wrapped protectively around her.

“Get out of here, both of you!” Ethan shouted, pointing the flashlight beam down the tunnel to guide them.

Hassim lurched to his feet and hurried out of the chamber, with Rachel close behind.

“Mahmoud?” Ethan called, sweeping the beam to his left.

“Get out of here,” Mahmoud called, “they’ll hit the building again! Go now!”

Ethan was about to turn and run when he remembered his rucksack.

“My camera,” he said, rushing forward and directing the beam at the chair where his belongings had been deposited. He stopped dead in his tracks as he saw that the rucksack had vanished. Mahmoud appeared through the dust clouds, his face wracked with anger.

“Go, now! To hell with the rucksack!”

Ethan remembered his fingers brushing across someone in the chamber before he’d found the flashlight, and a shiver rippled down his spine. He turned the beam around the chamber before pointing it down the tunnel. In the light, he saw a severed electrical cable dangling from the tunnel ceiling. Before either Ethan or Mahmoud could say a word, a scream echoed down the tunnels toward them.

“Rachel!”

Ethan sprinted out of the chamber toward her voice. He was almost halfway down the tunnel when he saw something large crumpled on the ground before him. He leaped over the body, glimpsing Yossaf’s bearded face slick with blood.

Mahmoud skidded to a halt beside the body, and then shouted after Ethan.

“Wait! We’re not alone!”

Another scream came from the darkness ahead and Ethan ran toward it, all thoughts of his own safety suddenly vanquished by the fear that something was happening to Rachel. He rushed into the small antechamber halfway down the tunnel, the bouncing flashlight beam illuminating Hassim and Rachel as they fled down the tunnel ahead, and then something slammed into Ethan’s stomach with immense force, voiding the air from his lungs. The flashlight spun from his grip as he fell to the ground, chunks of dust and grit filling his mouth.

He heard a shout of fury as he rolled onto his back, struggling against the pain swelling in his abdomen while he fought to regain his feet. In the diffuse, shifting light of the rolling flashlight beam he saw Mahmoud and a stranger locked in a furious exchange of blows, primal growls of rage and fear filling the tunnel as though wild animals were fighting for their lives.

Ethan struggled to his feet and rushed forward as Mahmoud was beaten back into the darkened tunnel beyond by his assailant. Ethan could see his rucksack on the attacker’s back and a bolt of fury coursed through his veins. He grabbed the bag and yanked the man backward with all of his might.

The attacker turned, shifting his balance with lightning speed and unstoppable force as he gripped Ethan with hands sheathed in black leather gloves. Ethan felt his body being propelled backward as the attacker turned Ethan’s advantage into his own and hurled him into the wall of the antechamber. Ethan’s skull smacked into the wall, jarring his vision as his teeth clashed in his jaw with a sharp crack. The man released Ethan as he fell, twisting so that Ethan felt his grip on the rucksack weaken and the fabric slip from his fingers. In an instant, the attacker vanished into the adjoining tunnel.

Ethan struggled to regain his balance, but almost instantly the tunnel was rocked as another blast slammed into the earth above his head. The walls of the tunnel crumpled around him, the light from the flashlight almost completely lost as the main chamber collapsed, clouds of dust billowing thickly through the tunnel. He heard a splintering sound as the desiccated timbers supporting the ceiling fractured beneath the blast, followed by an anguished cry from somewhere in the darkness.

“Mahmoud?”

Ethan’s own voice was feeble, his throat parched like the deserts above as he groped for the flashlight. He found it and turned the beam to see Mahmoud facedown before him in the mouth of the antechamber, shattered timbers and chunks of rock and earth piled high across the backs of his legs.

“Go!” Mahmoud spluttered angrily. “Get out!”

The ceiling of the chamber rippled, rocks and thick lumps of earth falling to shatter around Ethan’s feet as the timbers above his head groaned. A jagged crack in the ceiling snaked its way above his head and spilt streams of dust like dark water from its depths.

Ethan tossed the flashlight to one side and grabbed Mahmoud beneath his armpits, hauling with all of his strength. The Palestinian cried out as Ethan pulled, his teeth gritted and his eyes shut tight.

A timber as thick as Ethan’s thigh split above them, a cascade of crumbling dirt spilling onto Ethan’s head and shoulders. He ignored the falling debris, gagging for air as he repositioned his feet and pulled again on Mahmoud’s torso.

The earth trapping the Palestinian shifted and then suddenly his body slid free, Mahmoud kicking back against the debris as Ethan hauled him clear and toppled over. Mahmoud scrambled to his feet and grabbed the flashlight, pulling Ethan upright by his shirt and shoving him down the tunnel ahead.

The timbers behind them plunged down with a terrific crash as Ethan ran through the darkness, the tunnel ahead lit only by the wavering beam of Mahmoud’s flashlight. He lurched to the ladder, grabbing the rails and hauling himself upward on legs that were quivering with fatigue.

Ethan finally reached the top and dragged himself out onto the concrete, and Mahmoud followed him up and out of the tunnel. Ethan, his lungs sore and aching, coughed heavily and saw clouds of fine dust puff out of his chest. He barely had the strength to get onto his hands and knees, and as he did so he felt his stomach plunge in dismay.

“No.”

Rachel was sitting with her back to the wall and her hands over her mouth. She was staring at a body lying on the opposite side of the hatch from Ethan, just in front of the open door of the building. Ethan wiped the grime from his eyes with the back of his hand, and realized that the body belonged to Hassim Khan.

Ethan struggled to his feet and joined Mahmoud, who crouched down next to the scientist and searched for a pulse. Ethan looked down and saw Hassim’s eyes vacant and empty. Behind his head, thick blood leaked into cracks in the concrete.

Rachel looked at Ethan.

“Someone stabbed him,” she said, alternately angry and horrified. “A man had locked the doors. Hassim fought him for the key.”

Ethan felt a bleak sense of desolation overwhelm him.

“Whoever he was, he took my camera and the explosives.”

Mahmoud gently closed Hassim’s eyes and then stood, turning to face Ethan.

“His death will not be in vain. Allah willing, he will be in paradise, but we must get outside. They may bomb this building too.”

Ethan helped Rachel gently to her feet and followed Mahmoud in an unsteady run out into the night air.

To their right across the street a large building burned. Palestinians milled about in the light from the flames and pointed at Ethan and his companions. Before Ethan could orient himself to the world around him, a humming sound drifted through the streets from somewhere above. Palestinians immediately scattered in all directions as the sound reverberated between Gaza’s crumbling walls.

Mahmoud grabbed his shoulder.

“They are coming, run!”

Ethan took Rachel’s hand in his and turned, breaking into a run. Behind them, the humming sound became louder, as though some unspeakable prehistoric creature was swooping down from the inky blackness above.





JERUSALEM


There are too many people.”

Spencer Malik watched the large screen before him showing a blazing building in garish shades of yellow and orange. The shapes of fleeing Palestinians littered the scene, some running away from the burning building, others paradoxically running toward it.

“They’ll come out of one of the adjacent buildings,” Malik said. “Just keep the camera steady.”

The technician flying the Valkyrie struggled to keep the aircraft in position.

“We’re running out of airspace, I’ll have to turn.”

Malik watched the screen intently, and spotted three figures sprinting away from the burning remains of the building. He squinted at the image, seeing the clothes that they wore, the way that they moved. For a brief moment, as the Valkyrie turned gracefully through the sky above them, he caught a glimpse of a pixelated but recognizable face.

“There they are.” Malik pointed to the small group of running figures, their forms blurred and indistinct through the sensitive night-vision cameras. “Take them out.”

The technician shook his head.

“We can’t be sure at this range.”

Malik smashed a clenched fist down on the table beside him.

“Kill all of them. That’s an order!”


The whine of the turbine engine howling behind Ethan and Rachel was suddenly broken by a loud clattering noise that echoed off the densely packed buildings around them.

“Get down!”

Ethan hit the ground behind Mahmoud as bullets whipped and cracked around them, churning the dust in wicked little bursts. Rachel slammed down alongside him, her long hair smothering his face. The sound of the turbine howled past overhead and vanished.

“This way!” Mahmoud said. “We must get out of sight!”

Mahmoud scrambled to his feet and turned right down a narrow alley. Ethan dragged his protesting body up again, Rachel struggling alongside him as they plunged down the alley in pursuit of Mahmoud. The Palestinian halted at the end, craning his neck to look up into the sky and listening intently.

“It’s coming back, you can hear it.”

Ethan strained, but could hear nothing save for the cries and shouts of alarm from around the burning building far behind them.

“We can’t keep running like this,” he said wearily. “There’s nowhere to hide.”

“They’ve used all of their missiles and have only bullets remaining now. In Gaza, there is always somewhere to hide from bullets.” Mahmoud smiled grimly. “Come, this way.”

They ran out into the street together, sprinting toward where the road ended in a T junction, splitting left and right and the way ahead blocked by a wall pockmarked with impact craters from artillery fire and bullets.

“There is another tunnel in the building at the end, on the left,” Mahmoud shouted as they ran. “It goes under the wall and comes out in open ground beyond.”

“They’ll see us emerge!” Ethan shouted.

“We have only to wait until their fuel is exhausted.”

Ethan turned, looking over his shoulder as the sound of the turbine whined back toward them.

“We’re not going to make it!” he shouted.

Mahmoud reached the door of the house at the end of the street and promptly slammed into it as it failed to open before him.

Ethan slid to a halt alongside Mahmoud, who banged against the heavy door with his fist.

“Don’t suppose you have a key?” Ethan muttered.

“It’s coming back!” Rachel called, and pointed back down the street.

In the faint glow of the flickering flames from the adjoining street, Ethan saw the Valkyrie descending toward them, its inky fuselage silhouetted against the hellish inferno beyond.

“There’s nowhere to go,” he uttered helplessly.

The Valkyrie howled down the street toward them, and Ethan turned to shield Rachel from its view, waiting for the crackling sound of its guns and the unimaginable impact of superheated bullets slamming into their bodies.

The sudden howl of a rocket deafened Ethan as a trail of white smoke screeched past their heads from behind the battered wall nearby. Ethan glimpsed a slender shape whistling up into the sky and then the Valkyrie vanished amid a blast of boiling flames and smoke before falling in ungainly flaming spirals into the street below.

Mahmoud stared in shock at the shattered UAV as a growling mechanical roar filled the air. Ethan sheltered Rachel against the locked door as the wall nearby suddenly crumbled, chunks of masonry and clouds of cracked cement spraying out over the street.

“Israel is coming,” Mahmoud muttered darkly, and placed one hand firmly on Ethan’s shoulder. “I must leave, but know this: I owe you a debt, sadiqi, that cannot be repaid with words. Ma’assalama.”

Ethan opened his mouth to reply, but before he could speak Mahmoud had sprinted away and vanished into the chaotic sprawl of Gaza’s alleys.

The roar intensified as an enormous tank rolled over the wall and onto the street, crunching over debris as its immense diesel engine snarled and smoked. Ethan stared at the troops wearing body armor and carrying assault weapons who were amassed around the vehicle. In the light of the distant flames, Ethan could see white discs marking the tank, each with a blue star in its center: the Star of David.

The tank drew up in the street and an Israeli soldier bearing the epaulettes of an officer moved quickly forward, his rifle pointed at them.

“We’re American,” Ethan called.

The Israeli officer hesitated, his expression alert and cautious. Ethan saw his eyes scan their bodies for any sign of explosive devices, a grim reminder of the threat to Israel from suicide bombers. Ethan’s ripped shirt betrayed the presence of no suspicious packages however, and the officer waved them forward.

“Ethan Warner?” the officer asked briskly.

“How the hell did you know we were here?” Ethan stammered.

“We got a call from Washington,” the officer said. “Follow me.”

Ethan led Rachel past the tank, its huge diesel engine idling now in the darkness, and knew that they would be safely escorted from Gaza. Doug Jarvis had come through once again.

“I need a direct line to the office of the commander of the Israeli Defense Force,” Ethan told the soldier as he directed them to an armored personnel carrier parked nearby. “There’s a lot I need to tell them.”

“There’s a lot the Ministry of Foreign Affairs needs to tell you,” the officer replied, turning and pressing a pistol to Ethan’s chest as another soldier grabbed his wrists and bound them in handcuffs.

“What are you doing?” Rachel demanded.

“Ethan Warner, you are under arrest,” the officer said briskly. “I suggest that you reconsider your alliance with him, Ms. Morgan. He won’t be in this country by the morning.”