Covenant (47 page)

P
lease,” Malik said, “we can work something out.”

Malik struggled like a trapped insect pinched between Rafael’s finger and thumb, the assassin twisting the pressure-point grip on Malik’s elbow. Malik felt himself spun around again and marched to where the sniper rifle lay by the window. A knee slammed hard into his legs and dropped him with a crack onto his knees. Rafael shoved him over onto his front and drove a knee into his back, grinding his ribs against the tiles. Malik’s hands were yanked behind his back and bound tightly with electrical cord.

“This was Stone’s idea,” Malik said desperately. “He’s lost his mind.”

Rafael said nothing.

“You don’t have to do this.”

Rafael remained silent, binding Malik’s ankles and then removing his shoes and socks.

“Stone is out of control,” Malik said, “but we can stop him.”

“You can plead, bargain, and beg all you want,” Rafael said softly, “but rest assured that you’ll not be leaving this room alive, and your passing will not be pleasant.”

Malik struggled to control himself.

“You don’t have to do this.”

“No, I don’t have to do this,” Rafael agreed. “But I am going to, I’m going to enjoy every moment of it and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Something trickled out onto the tiles beneath Malik’s body as he felt hot fluid spilling down his legs.

“Please,” he gasped.

Rafael moved across and squatted down beside him.

“Tell me,” he whispered, “what is MACE really doing out here?”

Malik, wracked with dread, dribbled as he blurted out an explanation.

“They are trying to resurrect some kind of alien that they found out in the deserts. We wanted nothing to do with it, but Patterson insisted that he be allowed to—”

“Who is Patterson?” Rafael demanded.

“Kelvin Patterson, the head of the American Evangelical Alliance,” Malik spluttered.

Rafael slowly reached down and from his waistband produced a slim, long blade with a needle-sharp tip. Malik whimpered and shivered as he caught a whiff of a pungent odor staining the breeze, that of his own feces and urine.

“Now,” Rafael said quietly, “you’re going to tell me everything, from the very day you joined MACE. If you hide anything or fail to answer any of my questions, I will kill you. Begin.”

Malik told him. Everything. Of Byron Stone’s plan, of the fossils and the girl, of Bill Griffiths and the Bedouin and Israel and the profits from weapons and abductions. When he was done, Rafael looked at his watch.

“Let me go,” Malik begged, still trembling and with tears now blurring his eyes.

Rafael looked down at him and nodded. “Very well.”

A pitiful wave of relief and gratitude flooded Malik as Rafael turned and reached out for his wrist bonds. The assassin suddenly pressed down hard, and Malik’s breath caught in his throat as he felt something pierce the base of his neck, a quiver of motion that was gone as soon as it had arrived. Malik’s body stopped trembling as though a switch had been flicked. The assassin leaned back on his haunches.

“I would pity you, were you not such a coward.”

Malik managed to crane his head around to look at him. “What have you done?”

Rafael leaned forward, raising one hand and revealing the blade now smeared with dark blood. Malik heard a pitiful sound crawl from his own larynx as Rafael spoke.

“You are paralyzed for what little remains of your life. I’ve severed your spinal cord between the fourth and fifth vertebrae. Enough remains intact for you to breathe and speak, but little more.”

Malik tried to move his body. Nothing happened. Tears scalded his face as he cried out in despair, only for Rafael to shove a pungent-smelling sock into his mouth.

Malik watched helplessly as Rafael reached down, searching his body and retrieving his cell phone. Then Rafael turned to the sniper rifle, pushing it forward to poke out of the window and tying a length of thread to the trigger, unwinding it as he backed away. Malik could see that the rifle would be easy to see from outside the open windows, as would his body lying prone behind it.

Malik screamed through the sock lodged in his mouth as sweat streamed down his face and prickly heat stung his skin. Rafael looked down at him for a few moments, an expression of absolute calm on his dark features, and then he turned and walked out of sight.

Moments later, the apartment door closed behind him.

B
yron Stone settled into the plush leather seat of the SUV and picked up the phone, dialing a number and listening as the line clattered with digital activity, the scramblers coding and decoding the signal before allowing the line to connect.

“General Aydan,”
came the gruff voice on the line, sounding as though it were coming through a microphone rather than a mouthpiece.

“General, how are you?”

“I have been looking for you, Mr. Stone.”
Byron felt a ripple of alarm twist his guts.
“Where is your remaining Valkyrie UAV?”

“Airborne, somewhere over Jerusalem, I believe. We have identified a potential insurgent target in Wadi al-Joz that we think should be neutralized with a—”

“We’ve taken control of the Valkyrie,”
the general interrupted sharply.
“Where are you?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Stone muttered. “That UAV is private property and you have no right to—”

“Our men are on site in Wadi al-Joz and we have it on the authority of one Dr. Damon Sheviz that MACE is responsible for the security of illegal experiments there. Where are you, Mr. Stone?”

Byron Stone sat in dumbfounded silence for a long moment, staring wide-eyed at the city passing by outside.

“The man is insane,” he stammered. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“We have also found explosive devices like those described by Ethan Warner in the possession of your men,”
the general muttered angrily down the line. A long pause followed.
“Where are you, Mr. Stone?”

Byron Stone sat for a moment in catatonic silence and then promptly put the phone down. He leaned forward in his seat, tapping a button on a console beside him that activated the intercom with his driver.

“Get us to the airport at Tel Aviv immediately.”

What the hell’s happened?

One of the cell phones next to him rang loudly and he almost jumped out of his skin. He picked it up, half expecting to see the number of Israel’s Shin Bet or, worse, Mossad. Instead, Stone recognized the number as Malik’s and quickly answered.

“What the hell is going on?” he shouted down the line. “Is Rafael dead yet?”

There was a long silence, and in a moment of something that he might have considered precognition, a dread swelled in his belly.

“No, Mr. Stone, he is not yet dead.”

Ice water sluiced through Stone as he recognized Rafael’s voice.

“Where is Malik?” he asked, veiling his panic with feigned outrage.

“He is enjoying a ringside view of your downfall, one that is about to become much better.”

Stone turned cold as he realized the breadth of Rafael’s revenge, and through his fear probed a thin spark of fury.

“You’d better start running, Rafael. I’m going to make damned sure that my men and the IDF hunt you down. By the time they’re done with you there’ll be nothing left to—”

“I’m afraid that you have no time left for that.”

Stone was about to reply, but then heard the car phone ringing. He looked down at it in confusion. The screen wasn’t glowing, and the noise sounded somewhat muted as though it were coming from beneath the seat on which he sat.

Before he could even consider what was about to happen, Rafael’s voice spoke again.

“There were four missing IEDs taken by Ethan Warner from the encampment, Byron. I’ve returned them to you.”

“No!”

Stone lunged for his door handle as suddenly everything turned a bright and brilliant white before him and the universe ripped itself apart in his ears.

Rafael lowered a pair of cell phones from his ears as their signals were abruptly cut off by a sharp crackling noise. From somewhere outside in Jerusalem he heard a rolling boom that reverberated gently through nearby windows, rattling the shutters in their panes.

Casually, he turned to glance at the apartment door beside him. He gripped the roll of thread he held in his hand and yanked hard on it.

A shockingly loud report crashed out as a high-velocity round burst from the rifle within the apartment. Three more shots crackled on the hot morning air as Rafael yanked the cord, each seeming louder than the first and rolling in echoes across the ancient city.

Rafael snapped the thread off and sprinted down the stairwell, turning for the rear exit of the apartment block as distant shouts from apartments above pursued him. As he burst out into a narrow paved area and vaulted over a wall, he heard a whining sound drifting ghostlike through the hard blue sky above.

E
than flinched instinctively outside the warehouse as three sudden gunshots crackled out from somewhere above them.

“Sniper!”

Ethan heard Jerah Ash’s shouted warning as he grabbed Lucy and pulled her back into the building, huddling beside the door as he glimpsed a burst of blue smoke spurt from the uppermost window of an apartment block on the opposite side of the street.

“Any other way out?” he shouted back to Lieutenant Ash.

The officer leaned in and spoke into his microphone.

“Ground force six, under fire, Wadi al-Joz! Repeat, we’re under fire, requesting support!”

NORTHERN COMMAND (PATZAN)
JERUSALEM

“Shots fired!”

The Israeli technician’s voice was edgy as he looked at the unfamiliar controls in front of him. “Building visual, quarter of a mile, camera ready.”

The operator of the Valkyrie drone turned the UAV toward the stacked buildings near the edge of the West Bank, spotting the tall apartment block on the corner of the street.

“Zoom in,” General Aydan said quickly, watching as a second operator manipulated the UAV’s camera controls, zooming in to the top level of the apartment block. One of the balconies was wide open. “There, zoom in there,” the general added.

The operator zoomed the camera close on the balcony, and instantly the shape of a man lying prone behind a smoking rifle wavered into view.

“Sniper in sight!”

“Fire! Fire now!”

Malik lay with his chin resting against the stock of the sniper rifle, his face feeling dry and sore as he stared at the shimmering heat haze cloaking the city. The acrid smoke from the rifle barrel had drifted away in the breeze after stinging his eyes and burning his throat, and he could see a distant pall of oily smoke rising where a car bomb had exploded.

He could hear sirens far away, and in a last moment of hope envisioned soldiers finding him trapped and paralyzed behind the rifle, which had clearly been fired not by his hand but by the thread Rafael had attached to its trigger.

He could feel nothing but could smell the stale odor of excrement soiling his legs as he lay helpless. He barely noticed the droning sound as it drifted on the breeze, but when he did he looked up and saw a faint glint of metal flashing in the sunlight against the stark blue sky above.

“Oh no,” he mumbled, “please no.”

The drone shuddered and a streak of white smoke accelerated toward him.

“Please, God, no,” he uttered, closing his eyes as something silvery flashed through the sky before him, and then everything vanished into a terrible inferno of flames and agony. Malik’s body was hurled through the air as the flesh was seared from his bones.

Rafael glanced over his shoulder as the apartment vanished within a roiling ball of flame, heard shouts of alarm from neighboring buildings, and saw thick coils of ugly black smoke spiraling upward from where once there had been a balcony.

A few of the IDF soldiers guarding the nearby cordon watched as the Valkyrie drone zoomed over their heads and disappeared. Rafael turned to survey the jumbled skyline of Jerusalem for a few moments before hurrying away down the street.