Covenant A Novel

WADI AL-JOZ

WEST BANK, PALESTINE


Lucy lay adrift on a sea of delirium when a voice broke through the silence surrounding her.

“It is time.”

A figure moved into view as she opened her eyes, gray eyes gazing down at her and the white hair glowing in the light. The serene expression on that face chilled her even more than the cold surface upon which she lay.

“Sheviz.”

Damon Sheviz mocked her with an excruciatingly compassionate smile and turned to a bank of monitors.

“What happened to you?” she gasped in despair. “You were a scientist, once.”

“I still am,” Sheviz said without looking at her. “And I am on the verge of the greatest breakthrough in the history of mankind.”

Lucy felt horror caressing her senses like lice crawling under her skin.

“You’re a killer, nothing more. Whatever you’re doing, it’s not worth it.”

Sheviz looked at her seriously.

“The return of the Nephilim to the realm of mankind is my only remaining goal.”

“What’s a Nephilim?”

Sheviz’s face twisted into a grimace. “A pity that you understand so little, but don’t worry, everything is about to become crystal clear. I’ll explain what I’m going to do, and how you’re going to help me.”

“I’ll die before helping you,” Lucy spat.

“The process is simple,” Sheviz said as though he had not heard her last retort. “I will anesthesize you and connect you to this heart-bypass machine. I’ll then begin the process of cooling your core temperature down to around ten degrees Celsius before replacing your entire blood volume with a chilled saline solution.”

Damon Sheviz showed her a small test tube as he went on with delight.

“At the point when you are clinically dead, without a heartbeat or brain function, I will insert this fertilized egg into your ovary. With your body in hypothermic suspension, your immune system’s ability to reject foreign tissue will be hindered sufficiently for the egg to take hold on the lining of your uterus.”

Lucy felt a bolt of nausea lodge deep in her throat.

“Whose fertilized egg?”

Sheviz smiled.

“That of a Nephilim, a fallen angel. The specimen that you found will rise once again, cloned by me and carried by you, and God’s kingdom shall return.”

Lucy blinked, unable to comprehend the madness infecting Sheviz’s mind.

“Those remains are of a species not of this Earth,” she said slowly, carefully. “They’re not of an angel, they’re of an extraterrestrial species that—”

“Pah!” Sheviz sneered. “Only someone poisoned by secularism could be so blind to the truth. This, Lucy, is our history becoming our future. Imagine, the blood of God running in the veins of men once more, this godless age of filth and despair eradicated once and for all.”

Lucy lay back on the gurney, shaking her head. As a scientist she had no fear of dying, for there was nothing to fear in the unknown, only something new to be discovered. Blind faith instead feasted upon the bloated carcass of ignorance, gorged itself on fanaticism and dogma, and Sheviz was its ultimate creation.

“So this is what you did to the others?” Lucy uttered, trying to conceal her revulsion.

“No,” Sheviz said. “They gave their lives to span the ages that have passed since Genesis, to overcome the genetic divide between our ancestors and modern man. They made possible this chimeric linking of man and God, so that our holy covenant may be complete.”

Lucy realized that Sheviz’s mind had truly gone, entirely devoid of any sense of responsibility for the deaths that he had caused.

“You’re insane,” she said softly.

“The word of our Lord was spoken in this very land,” Sheviz insisted, “and science has done nothing but endorse the word of God.”

“How’s that?”

“Our common origin with the Nephilim, the children of God, as recorded in our bloodline. Think about it, Lucy: all of this time we have searched for evidence of God, and all of this time it has run in the veins of a lucky few, the descendants of the inhabitants of the Garden of Eden, of Adam and Eve themselves. How else can such pure blood, O-negative, have appeared without precedent six thousand years ago?”

Lucy spat out a cackling laugh.

“Evolution,” she said in terminal delight. “It’s rare because it’s a line from a common ancestor not diluted by genetic drift and random mutation. There’s nothing godly about it!”

“Evolution by natural selection is impossible,” Sheviz spat. “It is the same as a whirlwind passing through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 747—pure chance. Design by God is the only alternative.”

Lucy slowly shook her head.

“It’s nothing to do with chance and everything to do with time. You cite your God as the designer of everything because you say complex life can’t exist without a designer, yet who designed your designer? If everything complex that exists requires a designer, then your theory collapses beneath the weight of its own contradictions: it fails miserably because it cannot explain the origin of your designer, who must be complex to have designed everything in the universe in the first place. Your God, by your own definition, cannot exist.”

Sheviz’s eyes flew wide and spittle flew from his lips as he seethed, too lost now in the throes of fervor to speak. He reached across to a table nearby and produced a syringe tipped with a wicked-looking needle.

“Time for you to make history, my dear,” he intoned. “You will help me because if you don’t, then the experiment might fail and you’ll lose your life. For your own sake, Lucy, let’s work together.”

“Like hell,” Lucy muttered.

“We have cloned the blood of a Nephilim, but it has been rejected by all previous subjects, despite their being universal recipients carrying the AB blood group. Why is this?”

Lucy remained silent, staring at the ceiling. Sheviz smiled coldly.

“Allow me to motivate you further,” he said, and held out a photograph above her head.

Lucy gasped as she saw a black-and-white shot of her mother. Sheviz didn’t give her the chance to speak.

“Your mother, my dear, is in the company of my associates. If you do not comply with my demands, perhaps she will become the next subject of these experiments.”

Hot tears stung Lucy’s eyes.

“Leave her alone,” she hissed.

“Then tell me what I need to know.”

Lucy squeezed her eyes shut, struggling against the tide of despair that washed over her.

“It’s not just about blood groups,” she uttered. “The species you’ve cloned has evolved on a different planet. It isn’t a Nephilim, it’s an alien species and its tissue cannot be grafted onto any species on Earth. There is no way to do it without killing the patient!”

Sheviz slowly shook his head, tutting as he slipped the needle into her arm.

“One more time, Lucy. I want you to imagine this needle slipping into your mother’s body. Now, tell me how to overcome the cellular rejection.”

Lucy swallowed, blinking away tears and with them her resolve.

“You need to induce donor nonresponsiveness using hematopoietic chimerism,” she whispered harshly. “That’s how real scientists have cloned donor cells in the past.”

“Go on,” Sheviz said.

“Introduce the donor stem cells into the bone marrow of the recipient, where they will coexist with the recipient’s stem cells. Bone marrow stem cells give rise to cells of all hematopoietic lineages.”

Sheviz gasped, slapping his forehead with his spare hand.

“Of course,” he uttered. “Through the process of hematopoiesis. We were using leukodepletion of the blood to remove the recipient’s white blood cells to reduce alloimmunization, but it wasn’t enough to prevent immunoshock.”

“Lymphoid progenitor cells are created,” Lucy continued in a whisper of self-loathing, “and move to the thymus where negative selection eliminates the reactive killer T cells. The existence of the donor stem cells in the bone marrow causes donor reactive T cells to be considered native to the body and undergo apoptosis, or programmed cell death. There is no further rejection of the new genetic material.”

Damon Sheviz smiled down at Lucy as she looked away in disgust.

“Congratulations, my dear,” he said, shaking his head. “You’ve solved the mystery of why one of my patients in Washington DC survived: his lineage came from Ethiopia, and there are some tribes living there who originated in the Levant. He was already carrying native T cells, and they protected him long enough for the genetic material we inserted to begin taking effect. Now the next subject will not die from the procedure, but shall be our crowning glory.”

A sudden crackling noise erupted from beyond the darkness of the room, like hailstones hammering on a tin roof. It was a moment before Lucy realized that it was the sound of gunfire coming from outside.

Sheviz withdrew the needle from her arm, and Lucy realized that perhaps someone had finally found her.





WADI AL-JOZ

WEST BANK, PALESTINE


Keep low and stay behind me,” Ethan said to Griffiths.

The fossil hunter grunted in reply as they hugged the side of a low wall. Aaron Luckov, the sawed-off shotgun cradled in his grasp, led the way.

Even as they were coming within firing distance of the two MACE guards, Ethan saw one of them press his finger to his ear and frown in concentration as he listened to a message presumably coming through an earpiece he was wearing. Ahead, Aaron Luckov moved out to the right as Ethan saw the two guards suddenly reach for their weapons.

“They’ve made us!” Luckov hissed.

Ethan saw the guards turn to face them, both handling machine pistols with military efficiency as a burst of semiautomatic fire shattered the hot morning air. Ethan flinched and ducked aside as from the corner of his eye he saw a parked vehicle’s windshield smashed into a web of cracked glass.

“Aaron, covering fire!”

Luckov popped up from behind the parked car and unloaded two rounds in the general direction of the MACE troops, who leaped desperately down into cover as a hail of buckshot hammered the warehouse doors.

Ethan lunged forward, reaching a low wall no more than twenty feet from the warehouse before he took aim and fired off four rounds at the brickwork behind which the guards had disappeared. Bullets whipped past in response, zipping and twanging as they ricocheted off the car beside him.

“Keep them down!” Ethan shouted to Aaron.

The Israeli popped up again, letting both barrels fly this time before rushing forward and ducking into a narrow alley almost opposite the warehouse. Firing by sections, Ethan and Aaron edged closer to the two men, flanking and pinning them down.

Aaron fired again, causing both guards to remain out of sight. Ethan was about to fire and advance when the doors to the warehouse suddenly burst open and four suited figures rushed out into the sunlight, firing as they moved. Ethan cursed, ducking back down as bullets shattered masonry all around him.

“Balls.”

Griffiths shot Ethan a dirty look.

“Cover Aaron!” Ethan shouted. “Try pulling the trigger!”

Griffiths angrily let fly a half-dozen rounds in the general direction of the warehouse as they began falling back.

“We’re outnumbered.”

Ethan cursed, retreating alongside Griffiths and firing as he went. Aaron Luckov was coming back toward them between bursts of automatic fire when the MACE vehicle appeared behind them, tires screeching as it pulled into the street.

“Enemy rear!”

Luckov’s warning was audible even above the clattering automatic fire.

Ethan whirled, firing off three rounds at the vehicle as it skidded to a halt and a half-dozen MACE troops dispersed from within and took up firing positions on either side of the street.

“We’re surrounded!” Griffiths shouted, his voice high in alarm.

“Stay low!” Ethan countered, shouting out across the street to Luckov. “Where does that alley go?”

Luckov fired a single shot that burst one of the front tires of the MACE vehicle before shaking his head at Ethan. Clearly, there was no escape to be had down the alleyway.

“Glad you thought this through!” Griffiths shouted.

Another hail of raking fire swept the street, and then suddenly everything fell silent. Ethan, crouched with Griffiths behind the crumbling bricks of a low wall, heard a voice call out.

“You’re outgunned and outnumbered. Step into sight with your hands where we can see them!”

Ethan looked across the street at Luckov, who held his gaze for a moment and then nodded slowly.

“They’ll kill us if we give ourselves up now,” Griffiths hissed.

“They’ll kill us if we don’t.”

Slowly, with one hand holding his pistol high for the MACE troops to see, Ethan stood up from the wall in plain view. One of the MACE guards shouted out again.

“And the other one, the bastard with the shotgun!”

Reluctantly, Luckov stepped out, his shotgun held above his head. As Ethan stepped out into the street, Griffiths stood and followed him until the three of them were standing in a row.

“Drop your weapons, slowly!”

The MACE guards came out into view, machine pistols pointed at the three men standing before them. Ethan recognized Cooper and Flint, the MACE guards he’d incapacitated the previous day, as he laid his pistol down, Luckov and Griffiths doing the same on either side of him.

“Now stand back three paces!”

Ethan and his companions did as they were ordered, acutely aware of the four MACE guards now standing behind them, having moved out of cover from the warehouse.

Agent Cooper walked forward, and a brittle smile cracked his jaw as he reached up and keyed his earpiece microphone.

“We’ve got them. What do you want us to do?”

There was a short pause, and then Cooper’s smile grew broader. He nodded, and then raised his machine pistol once again and pointed it at Ethan. His next order went out to the men standing behind Ethan.

“You four, get back into that warehouse and kill the surgeon and everyone else in there.”

Ethan felt a sudden chill as the MACE soldiers dashed back toward the warehouse. He watched as Cooper and Flint raised their weapons to point directly at him, hungry for revenge.





Ethan inhaled once and closed his eyes.

A second passed.

Then another. Ethan felt himself drift into a weary oblivion, asleep on his feet.

“Hands in the air, nobody move!”

Ethan flinched and his eyes jolted open as the bellowed voice echoed loudly off the walls around him, and saw Cooper and Flint standing with their hands and weapons in the air, staring wide-eyed past Ethan. Ethan turned to see dozens of IDF troops tumbling down the street toward them, weapons trained on the MACE soldiers. Farther back, a huge troop transporter thundered into view.

The four soldiers running back to the warehouse dashed for the door and opened fire in unison at the massed Israeli soldiers. Ethan, Griffiths, and Luckov instinctively dove to the ground as the Israeli troops opened fire. Ethan watched as Cooper, Flint, and their companions flailed and jerked as bullets tore into their bodies, hurling them onto the road.

Ethan grabbed his pistol, rolling over and firing at the retreating MACE troops as they vanished into the warehouse. He sat up and shouted at the advancing Israeli soldiers.

“There are civilians inside the warehouse!”

The troops veered off en masse and plunged into the building in pursuit. To his surprise and horror, Ethan saw Rachel sprinting behind them as he struggled to his feet and rushed in after her.

“Rachel, get down!”

The bright sunlight vanished as Ethan plunged into the darkened warehouse.

Flashes of gunfire illuminated the shadows as though Ethan was trapped in a Hadean catacomb filled with warring demons. Figures ran with juddering strides in the muzzle flashes, weapons spitting flames and crashing like thunder around them.

Ethan glimpsed an IDF trooper toss something small between partitions of thin wood being shredded by the passage of supersonic bullets. He covered his eyes and saw a brief but brilliant flash of light that glowed red across his retinas, accompanied by a crack like a firework. He opened his eyes again and saw the IDF soldiers lunging between the partition walls, the flash-bang grenade having stunned the MACE troops. A single round burst through the splintered wooden partition and caught an IDF soldier clean in the center of his chest, hurling him backward into his companions.

The rest of the troops plowed onward. Ethan heard a scream of agony as a hail of bullets thudded into a MACE soldier’s body, his arms flailing like a grotesque puppet as he was hurled sideways into discarded pallets to lie with his limbs contorted at impossible angles. Ethan looked desperately about for Rachel, unable to pick her out in the confusion.

Suddenly, like the last rumble of a passing storm, the firing stopped. Ethan’s ears hummed in the silence as a high-pitched whistling echoed through his skull.

He looked ahead toward where a narrow doorway separated another partition wall, light that glowed from beyond spilling through the warehouse in a shaft filled with whorls of smoke and dust. Then a woman’s voice called out.

“Lucy?”

Ethan rushed through the darkness and dropped down behind Rachel, keeping a grip on her body armor as a determined-looking officer hurried to their side.

“All contacts down except one male in that room,” he whispered into his microphone before looking at Ethan. “Ethan Warner?”

Ethan nodded once.

“Lieutenant Jerah Ash,” the officer said by way of an introduction. “Thanks for starting World War III out here.”

A sudden cascade of bullets clattered all around the partition walls, leaving holes through which light beamed into the darkness surrounding them.

“Stay out of here!” a frail-sounding voice shouted out.

“Kill him!” screamed another, female voice.

“That’s Lucy!” Rachel cried out. “Don’t shoot!”

From the corner of his eye Ethan saw one of the IDF troopers train his weapon through the open doorway and take aim. A single round shattered the silence as it passed through his skull, flicking his head at right angles to his shoulders and snapping the spinal column like a twig.

“Stay the hell out of here! Get out of my laboratory!”

Rachel tugged at Ethan’s hand. “Let me go.”

“He’ll shoot you too,” Ethan hissed.

Lieutenant Ash called out toward Sheviz.

“You’re surrounded, it’s over. Come out with your hands up and we can talk about this.”

“You’re here to kill us both,” Sheviz hissed. “Do you take me for a fool?”

Rachel looked at Lieutenant Ash. “Let me go, he’ll know who I am.”

The lieutenant glanced at the doorway and reluctantly nodded.

Ethan let go of Rachel’s body armor as she stood and walked into the light, her arms outstretched. As she moved, Ethan edged along beside her, careful to keep out of the surgeon’s field of vision.

“Mr. Sheviz, my name is Rachel Morgan. I’m Lucy’s mother, and these men are not here to kill you. Please, we need to talk.”

“Mom?” A frantic and disbelieving voice called.

A long silence ensued. Ethan listened intently as Damon Sheviz replied from somewhere within the room beyond.

“I want immunity,” he demanded. “I want a written letter signed by the prime minister.”

“You’re in no position to make demands!” Lieutenant Ash snapped.

“You’re in no position to give me orders!”

Rachel stood in front of the doorway, her arms outstretched.

“At least take me instead,” she called to Sheviz. “Whatever you’re doing will work just as well on me as it would on Lucy. Just let my daughter go!”

Ethan shifted position, raising his pistol as he heard Lucy shouting.

“Like hell! Shoot this bastard!”

Ethan, his hands trembling with fatigue, took a chance.

“You can’t win, Sheviz, it’s over,” he shouted. “If you don’t surrender now, you’ll die here.”

“Who is that?” Sheviz shouted back. “Who do you think you are to—”

Ethan fired three shots straight at the sound of the voice through the chipboard wall in front of him as Rachel dropped to her knees and covered her ears. He heard a sudden burst of automatic fire and a female scream coming from within the room as Lieutenant Ash thundered past with his troops, and he realized that he had missed.





A bright flash of light burst from the room as the IDF troopers tossed in a flash-bang to blind Sheviz. Ethan, his arms trembling, shifted position and peered through the doorway.

A man in a white coat lay beneath the writhing bodies of two IDF troopers, one of whom had wrestled a pistol from the man’s hands. Ethan glanced up as Lieutenant Ash reappeared in the doorway.

“God knows how but Sheviz is down and Lucy’s okay,” he said quickly.

Ethan felt a flood of relief as he lowered his pistol. Damon Sheviz glared at him with a fanatical expression, thick blood staining his shoulder.

“This is God’s work!” he spat in fury.

“We need him to tell us everything he knows and then get back to Jerusalem,” Ethan said.

Sheviz shook his head, his teeth gritted against the pain of his wound.

“I’ll die before I’ll tell you anything.”

Ethan watched as Lucy Morgan was carefully lifted from the gurney by two soldiers who set her onto unsteady legs in time for Rachel to fold her arms around her daughter. From somewhere deep within, Ethan felt a warmth radiate from the abscess of pain he harbored, and his shoulders sagged with relief as his eyes closed.

A hand clapped him on the shoulder, jolting him alert.

“I never thought I’d say this, but good work,” Lieutenant Ash said. “That was a hell of a shot.”

Rachel looked at him as she held her daughter and smiled as tears flowed like rivers from her eyes. Ethan could see that the spark of life had returned within them, glowing brightly once more.

He turned his attention to Sheviz.

“This man,” he said to Jerah Ash. “What do we do with him?”

Lieutenant Ash considered the surgeon before them.

“I want to know everything,” he said. “Now.”

“Go to hell,” Sheviz shot back.

The lieutenant took a pace toward him and slammed his hand around the surgeon’s neck, lifting him off the floor.

“Now.”

Sheviz choked for a moment until the soldier released him. Coughing, Sheviz shook his head.

“My allegiance is to God,” he rasped. “Anything you do I’ll report to the Court of Human Rights.”

“Like your victims could?” Ethan snapped. “What is MACE’s connection to all of this?”

Sheviz remained silent. Ethan turned to Lieutenant Ash.

“You’re answerable to the Court of Human Rights, as a soldier,” Ethan said. “But I was never here.”

Ash thought for a moment, and then looked at his fellow soldiers.

“Didn’t see a thing,” one of them said.

Sheviz looked at the troops, and his defiance crumbled into panic.

“You’ll never get away with it!” he stammered.

The soldiers silently filtered out of the laboratory, leaving Sheviz, Lucy Morgan, Ethan, and Rachel. Lieutenant Ash remained, glancing at a pile of videotapes stacked on a counter nearby.

“What are those?” he demanded.

“We taped the procedures,” Sheviz said.

“Did you tape what you did to Ahmed Khan?” Ethan asked.

The surgeon’s eyes widened briefly.

Ethan moved to stand in front of him, reaching down beside him and picking up a scalpel that lay on a bench. He examined the cruel little blade as he spoke.

“If you fail to tell us everything, then I’ll make damned sure you lose your life. But I won’t have you killed, Sheviz. I won’t let them put you on trial or go through any legal process. I have a friend—Ayeem Khan—a Bedouin man who lives out in the deserts near Bar Yehuda. His son disappeared at the same time as Lucy, and from the same place. His name was Ahmed. You remember him, don’t you, Damon?”

Sheviz’s eyelid twitched. “I remember him.”

“Good,” Ethan said softly. “Ayeem is a popular man, with friends among the best and the worst of all Palestine. I promise that these soldiers and I will take you to Ayeem and show them that video, and he will take you to his Bedouin family.” Ethan paused for a long moment, letting the information sink in. “What they will do to you for weeks and months and years will be worse than a thousand deaths. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Sheviz stared at Ethan, taking in his uncompromising expression before speaking.

“I will help,” he said quietly.

Ethan nodded slowly. “Start talking.”

“I work for an organization in the United States called the American Evangelical Alliance. They called me some months ago to conduct experiments in America using DNA extracted from the fragmentary remains of a Nephilim, a fallen angel, that I discovered in Iraq three years ago. I had tried in the past to conduct genetic transfer studies, requesting through normal channels permission to conduct the procedures, but the Ethics Board of the American Medical Association refused me. I was due to return to Israel when the AEA stepped in and provided me with a cover for my work.”

“What connection does MACE have to all of this?”

“MACE provided me with security and equipment under the guise of experiments in battlefield trauma prevention. They did so in Washington DC at first and then here in Israel after it became too difficult to maintain secrecy.”

“The reason why scientists like Lucy disappeared from the Negev,” Ethan realized. “You abducted them when they found useful remains. What’s MACE’s endgame?”

Sheviz’s features screwed up in distaste as he spoke.

“They are bent on procuring the profits of war. MACE is here to sell their unmanned aerial drones to Israel. In order to assure their success, they are supplying explosives to the insurgent groups here to continue the war.”

“And the church provides the finance for your gruesome little experiments?” Ethan asked.

“Money,” Sheviz agreed, “equipment and premises from which to operate. We conducted several tests in America on drug addicts who were less likely to be reported missing, but they were unsuccessful. Only one subject survived but he was severely impaired afterward.”

Ethan felt himself recoil inwardly at the surgeon’s choice of clinical words. Tests. Subjects. Impaired.

“Go on.”

Sheviz spoke quietly.

“After the fourth patient succumbed it was decided that we could no longer use drug addicts and so I was secretly flown here by MACE in their private jet. We needed new material from which to extract fresh DNA. I had heard from contacts at the Hebrew University about Lucy Morgan working in the Negev and had followed her work closely. I advised that she might find fresh remains near Masada, where once Neolithic villages had existed. When she succeeded, I called in MACE to abduct her and secure the remains. I then used the finds as leverage to effect further abductions and obtain clean bodies.”

“And killed them in the process,” Lieutenant Ash snarled.

“What about the remains that Lucy found?” Ethan asked.

“Ah, yes,” Sheviz said, “a fine specimen of a Nephilim, a fallen son of God. I’ve found fragmentary remains in Iraq and India before now, but never a complete specimen. They are aboard a MACE jet at Ben Gurion airport, bound for the United States.”

Lucy Morgan eased herself away from her mother.

“You’ve found other remains?” she stammered.

Sheviz smirked at her despite his pain.

“You scientists, you think you know everything but you miss so much. Remains of Nephilim have been found before but discounted by science as aberrations or lost to history. My team and I have excavated such remains in the ruins of ancient cities several times in the past. We searched for years in the deserts, the jungles, and the mountains, only ever discovering fragmentary bones, but the DNA we extracted from them was unlike any terrestrial signature, the genetic code of God locked into them for all eternity. The evidence of angels, of the Nephilim on Earth, litters our earliest civilizations. They are out there right now, just waiting to be found by those of sufficient faith to locate them.”

“Those remains aren’t the result of some biblical fantasy, no matter how much you want to believe it,” Lucy snapped. “That’s why your sick little experiments don’t work.”

“What’s a Nephilim?” Lieutenant Ash asked. “What’s this about?”

Ethan answered before Sheviz could speak.

“It’s just a fossil that has black-market value,” he said quickly. “These lunatics think it’s the remains of an angel. How were you doing this, Sheviz?”

“We used stem cells extracted from the Nephilim, reverse engineered to their embryonic state, to replace the nucleus of egg cells provided by Lucy Morgan. Our intention was to place those fertilized eggs in vitro into Lucy, inducing a viable pregnancy. She would carry the son of God in her womb, launching the Second Coming and the final solution to the covenant between man and God.”

“What the hell would MACE have to do with all of this?” the lieutenant asked.

Sheviz sneered at Lieutenant Ash as he spoke.

“MACE has been abducting people for years and hiding them away, before negotiating their release for ransom. They’ve made a tidy sum for themselves all over the world, mimicking insurgent groups and corrupt police forces, and use an assassin to erase any trace of their deception. I have heard them refer to him as Rafael.”

Ethan shook his head in disbelief. “I might have known.”

“That’s insane,” Lieutenant Ash said. “They’d never have gotten away with it.”

“Yes, they could,” Ethan said. “Desperate, wealthy parents make an easy target for predatory companies like MACE. They needed the extra income when the supply of arms contracts dried up in the United States after the Iraq War fiasco.” Ethan shook his head, amazed that he hadn’t thought of it before. “They wouldn’t have to worry about a damn thing unless someone looked into it and got too close, and then they’d have to …”

Ethan’s voice trailed off.

“Ethan?”

Rachel’s voice reached him as though from the other side of the universe. Ethan stared vacantly as an image of Joanna appeared in his mind’s eye, clearer and sharper than ever before, her face watching him from a crowded but blurred street. Her gaze was boring into his, driving into and through him with an unshakable, unbearable certainty.

The world shifted beneath his feet and he collapsed sideways, grabbing the edge of the gurney for support as his legs quivered beneath him. Rachel jumped up to his side, holding his shoulders.

“How long has MACE been working in Gaza and Israel?” Ethan asked Lieutenant Ash in a feeble voice.

“Four years, maybe five.”

Ethan looked at Damon Sheviz.

“Where else has MACE done this?”

“South America, maybe North America too.”

The doctor’s voice trailed off as Ethan spoke.

“Joanna was tracking the movements of hostage takers and guerrilla groups in Colombia, writing reports on the corruption of governments and police forces. We barely got out of the country after receiving anonymous death threats. Shortly afterward we came to Israel and Joanna began working on the same thing in Gaza and the West Bank.” Ethan looked at Lieutenant Ash. “She was sure that someone was behind the abductions, but she never got to the bottom of it.”

Rachel put her hand on his shoulder. “Maybe she did but never got the chance to tell you.”

Ethan’s voice was a whisper in his own ears as he looked at her.

“MACE. The Defense Intelligence Agency must have suspected them before we even left Washington. You were right. They weren’t interested in finding Lucy or Joanna, they just wanted the remains found and MACE investigated without arousing the suspicions of Congress.”

Rachel nodded slowly.

“MACE has strong connections with the administration,” she said. “The encumbent president’s campaign could be derailed if any evidence of MACE’s activities here were leaked to the press.”

“All lies lead to the truth,” Ethan murmured. He looked up, shaking himself from his sudden torpor. “We need to stop them, now.”

Lieutenant Ash nodded.

“We were tipped off,” he said to Ethan. “Someone let us know where Lucy was.”

“If that’s so,” Ethan said, “then MACE’s operation may be collapsing. We need to find Byron Stone.”

“I’ll radio General Aydan and let him know about this,” Lieutenant Ash replied. “Do we know where he is?”

Ethan looked at Bill Griffiths, who had walked into the room with Aaron Luckov.

“MACE has a private jet, a Gulfstream V550, waiting to leave Ben Gurion International.”

“Then let’s get out of here,” Ethan said. “I need to stop that jet from taking off.”

“What about him?” Lieutenant Ash asked, jabbing a finger at Sheviz.

Ethan turned to the lieutenant and whispered in his ear.

“Ayeem Khan lives near Bar Yehuda,” he said simply. “Don’t forget the videotape.”

Lieutenant Ash turned and called to his men.

“Time to move out!”

Lucy Morgan moved to stand before Ethan.

“I’m coming too,” she said.

“This could be dangerous,” Ethan said, “and I don’t know if—”

“I wasn’t asking,” Lucy snapped. “I want to see these bastards go down, understood?”





Spencer Malik strode into Wadi al-Joz even as the distant sound of small-arms fire echoed off the ancient stone walls around him. He quickened his pace, and saw IDF cordons ahead near the entrance to the quiet little street where the MACE warehouses stood.

The Israeli Defense Force had moved swiftly. Malik didn’t know how the operation had become exposed, and could only assume that everything had unraveled in Washington somehow. It mattered little. Soon, it would all be over.

He carried a bag filled with vegetables bought from a local market nearby, and he wore traditional Palestinian dress that helped to conceal his features and detract attention from himself. Among the vegetables in the bag was a large pistol, just in case anyone attempted to stop him in his mission.

Malik turned, entered a familiar apartment building, and climbed up the stairwell, slipping the pistol out of the bag and setting the safety catch to Off. The stairs opened out onto a single corridor that held four doors, two on each side, marked with hastily scrawled numbers on bits of paper tacked to the cheap wood.

He moved silently between the doors, seeking the first on the left, and hugged the wall alongside it. He looked down at the thin strip of daylight beneath the bottom edge of the door for several moments, waiting to see any telltale moving shadows crossing the light. None came.

“Rasheed, keef halak? How are you?” he whispered through the door.

There was a brief pause before a reply came.

“Salaam. Enter.”

Malik opened the door and entered the apartment to see a Palestinian standing over a sniper rifle mounted on a tripod facing a broad open window. The weapon was pointing down to the MACE warehouse visible below on the street.

“Salaam, Rasheed,” Malik said. “You have done well.”

Rasheed nodded and backed away from the rifle as Malik put his pistol into a shoulder holster and lay down behind the rifle, sighting through it. Even as he did so, he saw the doors to the MACE warehouse open and figures appear in the bright sunlight, escorted by IDF troops. Malik settled in behind the weapon, gripping the trigger and controlling his breathing.

He saw Ethan Warner and Rachel Morgan lingering just inside the building, along with surgeon Damon Sheviz. Malik smiled, and aimed carefully at Ethan’s head. He heard Rasheed’s footsteps behind him.

“Time, Mr. Warner, for you to become another tragic statistic,” Malik said. “Which one shall I kill first, Rasheed?”

Malik flinched in shock as Rasheed’s face smashed down onto the tiles alongside him, his nose exploding in a burst of blood as the Arab’s eyes stared lifelessly into his. Malik reached down for his pistol, yanking it from its holster as he jumped to his feet and turned to see an Arab in traditional Bedouin dress flash toward him in a blur like a phantom, the apartment door still swinging open from where he had slipped silently inside.

An iron-hard forearm clubbed Malik’s pistol to one side, and before he could react the equally hard edge of one hand scythed across his throat. Malik felt his eyes bulge as he staggered backward and tripped over the sniper rifle, crashing down onto his knees.

Malik, choking and his eyes flooding with tears, scrambled for the door of the apartment. A tiny, sharp pain pierced the underside of his elbow and Malik gasped as his body twitched and jerked uncontrollably as though electric currents were rocketing through his tendons. Another hand clamped across his face, yanking him up before pinning his back to a wall.

The Bedouin glared at him, and Malik’s bowels flipped as he stared into Rafael’s eyes. A blade flickered in the light as Rafael whipped it up against Malik’s neck, the cold steel resting on the pulsing thread of an artery.

“Salaam,” Rafael whispered. “We shall work together, you and I.”