Covenant (20 page)

Rachel again complied with near robotic efficiency, jerking the wheel to and fro. Ethan turned back to see thick dust clouds billowing outward behind them, and almost immediately he lost sight of the leading Humvee some thirty meters behind.

He looked ahead and again judged the distance. Too far. Another shot rang out, rocketing by with a supersonic crack somewhere above their heads.

“It’s not working!” Rachel screamed, ducking down but this time valiantly keeping control of the jeep.

Ethan looked about the jeep desperately, and saw the water canisters in the rear. Without further thought he scrambled into the back and unstrapped one of the canisters as he shouted above the wind.

“Straighten out, stop swerving!”

Rachel kept the wheel straight, and Ethan hefted the big canister onto the rear of the jeep, looking up through the diminishing clouds of dust behind them. He saw the Humvee surge into view barely twenty meters behind, and instantly he hefted the canister over the back of the jeep. The heavy plastic container bulged as it hit the desert floor, bouncing wildly.

The Humvee’s driver glimpsed the canister at the last moment and swerved violently to avoid it as it barreled past his wheels. The rifleman in the rear leaped aside as the canister struck the side of the Humvee and exploded in a dazzling burst of crystalline water that vaporized into spray on the wind.

Ethan unstrapped a second canister, but even as he did so the Humvee changed its position slightly, moving out to the left of the jeep’s track and pursuing it from a safer position.

“Damn.”

Ethan struggled back into the passenger seat, glancing over his shoulder at the Humvee, still twenty meters behind but closing, the face of the driver brightly illuminated by the setting sun. He could see that the soldiers were wearing sunglasses and that the man in the rear was reloading his rifle. Another few seconds and he would be too close to miss.

Ethan looked down at his rucksack. An insidious thought crept into his mind, and he pulled out his cell phone before looking across at Rachel again.

“When I tell you, turn hard right, understand?”

Rachel nodded once without taking her eyes off the desert ahead.

Ethan reached down into his rucksack and pulled out one of the explosive devices. Quickly, he pulled the detonating probe from within the plastic explosive, and then turned on the cell phone attached to it. The screen lit up and a simple menu appeared. In Hebrew.

“Christ’s sake.”

Ethan quickly cycled through the menu as he heard the Humvee’s growling engine closing on them. He changed the settings to English and then found what he was looking for. He grabbed his own phone, punching in the number of the bomb’s cell phone before resetting its menu and plugging the detonator back into the explosive.

Rachel watched him from the corner of her eye. For a moment he thought that she was looking at him, but then realized that she was looking past him. Ethan turned to see the Humvee drawing alongside, three grim-faced soldiers glaring at them. The rifleman in the rear slowly brought his weapon to bear.

Ethan swallowed thickly as a prayer that he hadn’t heard since his school days passed unbidden through his mind. He pressed dial on his cell phone.

“Turn right!”

Rachel yanked the jeep’s wheel over and the vehicle surged sideways across the plain, sending up a billowing cloud of dust between them and the Humvee. Ethan hurled the explosive device across the void between the two vehicles, watching it land in the rear of the Humvee as it struggled to match their turn. The rifleman in the rear tumbled backward and out of the vehicle, his shot flying wild and high above their heads. The two soldiers in the front took one look at the tiny device rattling around in the back and instantly leaped from their seats, hitting the desert floor hard amid roiling clouds of dust.

“Straighten out and get down!” Ethan shouted, pointing back toward the sunset.

Rachel jerked the jeep back onto its original course, as Ethan heard the dial tone suddenly beep in his ear. He grabbed Rachel’s head and forced it down with his hand.

A crackling blast ripped the sky behind them as the Humvee was torn apart from within. Ethan turned to see the vehicle lurch out of control across the desert floor, hitting an angular chunk of rock and spiraling into the air to crash onto its back amid a cloud of twisted metal and spinning tires.

“Keep going!” Ethan shouted.

Rachel fixed her gaze ahead as Ethan strained again to look behind them.

The second Humvee was pulling up alongside the wreckage of the first, and he could see three specklike figures hauling themselves out of the dust and staggering toward it. He judged the distance to the airfield and allowed himself a brief sigh of relief.

“We’ll make it, but only just.”

Ahead against the brilliant canvas of the setting sun he could make out the shape of the low stone buildings scattered on the edge of the airfield. He pointed to the left of the runway.

“Head for that part,” he shouted to Rachel. “Aaron landed into the wind from that direction, so he’ll have to take off into the wind too.”

Rachel guided the jeep toward the end of the runway, seeing the familiar silhouette of the de Havilland Beaver sitting on the tarmac with its engine running. Rachel pulled the jeep up alongside the airplane as Ethan vaulted from the passenger seat and grabbed his rucksack, looking out across the desert to see the remaining Humvee trailing a spiraling vortex of sun-gilded dust as it raced toward them.

He grabbed Rachel’s unsteady hand as she staggered on legs weak with fatigue and fear.

“Come on!”

Together, they ran around to the port side of the de Havilland, jumping aboard as Aaron shot Ethan a questioning look over his shoulder from the cockpit.

“What the hell happened out there? We heard a blast! Where’s Ayeem?”

“I’ll explain on the way,” Ethan shot back as he slammed the airplane’s door shut. “Get us out of here!”

Aaron turned without another word as Safiya pushed the throttles to the firewall. The airplane responded instantly, surging forward and gathering speed along the runway. Ethan held on to his seat, peering through the opposite fuselage windows for a glimpse of their pursuers.

The Humvee had turned to attempt to intercept the aircraft, but Ethan could see that they wouldn’t make it. The Beaver swayed and gyrated and then soared into the air, leaving the runway behind them as they climbed out into the brilliant evening sky.

Ethan strained across to peer out of a window, and saw the Humvee slowing down and drawing away from the airstrip, a tiny dot of black against a glowing golden desert tiger striped with long shadows.

Safiya raised the aircraft’s flaps and turned around in her seat to look at Rachel, who sat in stony silence, tearstains coursing through the dusty grime coating her face. Safiya shot Ethan a harsh look.

“What the hell happened?”

Ethan wiped the grit from his eyes, squinting against the glare of the sunset blazing through the windshield.

“We got into the camp but the MACE guards caught Ayeem. I think he was covering for us. There was some kind of argument between them and Ayeem’s friends, and then the guards started to give him a beating. I managed to film it and then drew their attention away. They chased us out here, shooting all the way.”

Safiya glanced at Aaron, and then back at Ethan.

“We’ll get you back to Jerusalem and get you cleaned up before we figure out a way of explaining all this.”

Beside her, Aaron shook his head. “This isn’t over yet. They’ve got backup.”

Ethan looked in the direction that Aaron indicated with a severe nod.

Far out to the north against the darkening skies, the flashing navigation lights of a helicopter blinked toward them on an intercept course.

C
an 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.