The Eternity Project

38

KHAN YUNIS, GAZA CITY, PALESTINE



One year ago

She knew that her ordeal would soon be over.

Joanna heard little through the door of her cell, the guards more wary after she’d smashed the doctor’s face and check in, but she had managed to overhear snatches of conversation from further away in the building. The Americans visited only rarely now, maybe once a month, and their drawled-English voices were distinctive from the gentle lilt of Arabic.

Words, important words, had reached her. Old experiments over, new projects, huge discoveries in Israel’s deserts, problems. One word stood out to her, mentioned several times by different individuals: MACE. She knew the acronym from her work in South America with Ethan Warner: Munitions for Advanced Combat Environments, a major arms developer and supplier she had suspected of running an abduction racket in Mexico City, snatching the children of wealthy businessmen and then providing specialist teams to ‘find and rescue’ the unfortunate victims once more. She had almost pinned them down when threats to Ethan’s and her lives forced her to abandon the chase and them both to flee the city.

Now, the name of the company boiled through her mind.

Somehow, they were responsible for what had happened to her, she knew. The CEO of the company, an unpleasantly mercenary man by the name of Byron Stone, possessed close ties to the Pentagon and perhaps enough influence to persuade the CIA to pluck her off the streets of Gaza and help her to disappear for good.

Now, the snatched conversations and disconnected dialogue she overheard was sending her a warning loud and clear. Whatever was being worked on now did not involve her and that made her an inconvenience that would soon be removed, permanently.

The return of Doctor Sheviz a few days later confirmed her worst fears. His face had appeared at her door, smiling in at her with a look of smug satisfaction on his features.

‘How’s the nose?’ she had murmured.

Sheviz’s nasal bridge was even more hooked now than it once had been. The doctor’s smile did not slip as his icy little eyes looked her up and down.


‘Better now, thank you,’ he said. ‘But my condition will soon be of no consequence to you, I can assure you.’

Joanna shook her head, slowly. ‘It’s about time. I was getting bored. What’s it to be now? Thumb-screws? Waterboarding?’

Sheviz’s features glittered with malice.

‘Oh, nothing so barbaric, my dear,’ he replied. ‘I have found a new use for my procedures, one where the outcome is not dependent upon your willingness to convey your experiences.’

Joanna managed not to betray the deep chill of fear that sank inside her.

‘I wouldn’t bet on that.’

‘I would,’ Sheviz had replied cheerfully, ‘because you’re not supposed to survive. Only the condition of your blood is important to me now, Joanna. You’re to be a mere test subject.’

The doctor had smiled at her and slammed the observation slot closed. Joanna had wrapped her arms around her shoulders to fend off the chill that seemed to have enveloped her, and she resolved to find a way out of the building while she still had the chance.

That chance came just a few days later, when, to her surprise, she heard a rattle of gunfire from outside and the deep, reverberating thump of a rocket-propelled grenade that slammed into nearby buildings. A chorus of alarmed shouts and the sound of running boots echoed through the building, and, within moments, keys were rattling in the locks of her cell door.

Two men barged in, a third training a Kalashnikov on her as she was dragged out of the cell and hurried down the corridor outside. One of the men moved in behind her and grabbed her arms, forcing them together as he hurriedly bound her wrists with coarse rope as they rushed down the corridor.

Joanna pressed her clenched fists together for him, but angled them slightly apart and tensed her arms to produce a small gap between her wrists. The guard, concentrating on running and focused on the sound of gunfire outside, was either too busy to notice what she had done or more concerned with what was going on outside. Crucially, they did not make any effort to blindfold her.

She was hustled down a dusty stairwell that doubled back on itself twice before reaching a small foyer. Like many buildings in Gaza, the foyer was devoid of furniture or decoration, a shell of a building buried amidst so many others. More shouts from outside echoed through open windows, chattering machine-gun fire replying from nearby.

One of the guards reached a door and held onto the handle with one hand as he readied his weapon with the other. Joanna was jostled to the door, and all at once it was thrown open.

A brilliant-blue sky and blazing sun greeted her as she was shoved out into the heat, the searing air as fresh as roses to her and the caress of the sun as warm on her skin as her mother’s touch had once been. Her captors shoved her to the right, circling the outside of the building as the gunfire nearby increased. Joanna stumbled along with them, loosening her bonds as she went.

A car awaited, a dusty dark blue sedan.

The men shoved her toward it, and then one of them broke free and rushed across the street, reaching out for a door. Joanna felt her bonds slip past her knuckles as she ran amongst her captors, and she looked sideways at the man carrying a Kalashnikov beside her.

A terrific impact thumped into her chest, and, in a flash of light and heat, she saw a white trail of smoke pointing directly at the sedan as it vanished into a fireball. The man holding the door was torn from it and hurled through the air to hit the side of the building, his arm still hanging from the car door as it was consumed by flames and smoke.

Joanna hit the ground on her back as thick black smoke filled the street. She rolled sideways and saw Israeli troops advancing down the street toward her, shifting from cover to cover and firing as they went.

Veils of smoke obscured them from her vision as she struggled to her feet.

The hard muzzle of an AK-47 jabbed her in the ribs and she turned to see one of her captors lying on the dust beside her, blood spilling across one of his eyes as he tried to force her to her feet. Joanna scrambled upright and, as the gunman stood, she shifted position into his blind spot and pushed the rifle aside with one hand as she stepped in and slammed her knee up into the gunman’s groin with all the fury she had harbored for so many long years.

The gunman doubled over as a great rush of air blasted from his lungs. Joanna turned and rammed her knee up into the man’s throat, collapsing it as he toppled onto his side in the dust. She grabbed the rifle’s barrel, holding it to one side as she lifted one foot and smashed it down repeatedly across the man’s face until the rifle dropped away and he lay silent and still before her on the ground.

Clouds of drifting smoke and the heat of the nearby flames spilled across her as she backed away from the body.

Then she turned and fled into the warren of Gaza’s alleys and streets before the Israeli troops burst onto the scene. It was possible that they were her saviours, sent to liberate her, but, as her own government had to have had a hand in her imprisonment, so another government could not be trusted to have her best interests at heart.

Joanna kept running until she could no longer hear the sound of gunfire behind her.