Lopez frowned as she glanced at the pages.
“Well, all of them had families and, holy of holies, Alpha had thigh surgery in his early twenties after an automobile accident. The serial code matches the titanium pin pulled by Dr. Fry. The families have been informed and Fourth District PD is talkin’ to them right now.”
Tyrell felt a sinking melancholy as he considered the loss that the families would be feeling.
“What did they do for a living?”
“That’s the weird thing,” she replied. “Two of the guys worked construction, but Alpha was some big-shot scientist, a man named Joseph Coogan. He had a PhD in biochemistry and had worked at MIT of all places.”
Tyrell took a deep breath before heaving himself out of his chair.
“Let’s go and see what our survivor has to say for himself.”
NEW COVENANT CHURCH
IVY CITY, WASHINGTON DC
Kelvin Patterson sat in silence in the broad office that dominated the rear of the purpose-built church. Broad windows behind him looked out over the distant rolling plains of New Jersey beyond the surface of the Potomac River, the light reflected off the water shimmering across the wall of the office. The towering chrome crucifix dominated the wall to his right, looming over a small altar, while before him on his mahogany desk a monitor beside a large bronze eagle displayed a newsfeed showing Senator Isaiah Black being interviewed by jostling news crews outside the Capitol.
One of the hacks barged his way past the senator’s barrier of bulky security guards and shoved a microphone under his nose.
“Senator, how will you justify your association with the New Covenant Church after the inflammatory sermons conducted by its pastor were condemned by the wider church?”
Senator Black’s neon smile flashed like a lighthouse at the correspondent, but his eyes were hard as he spoke.
“Free speech is part of our nation’s Constitution. It doesn’t mean that I agree with the sermons or that they reflect my party’s policies.”
Patterson chewed on his lip, a habit born of irritation.
“Free speech is one thing, Senator,” the journalist shot back. “Incitement to hatred is something else. Analysts are saying that you’re walking a fine line between policy and popularity that could backfire if your party sees you as a liability.”
Senator Black stopped on the steps of the Capitol, turning to face the media mob from behind an impenetrable line of secret service agents who turned with folded arms and fixed expressions to bar the journalists’ way.
“I cannot choose who supports me, nor can I dictate what they should or should not say,” Black intoned smoothly with his hands extended out to his sides. “That would be a dictatorship, would it not? I can only say that the policies I have placed my faith in include a peaceful resolution to all conflicts in which the United States of America has an interest, and that I put my place in office above my personal beliefs.”
“Do you agree then,” another voice shouted from the mob, “with Pastor Patterson’s views on the Middle East?”
Patterson leaned forward as the mob suddenly fell silent, waiting for the answer from the senator to the pointed and unavoidable question. Isaiah Black took a deep breath, his hands falling to his sides.
“No, I do not. Conflict cannot ever be ended by further conflict, that much has proven true for decades, millennia even. War is the easy option, and there is nothing easy in office when it comes to diplomacy between nations divided.” He fired off a broadside smile again. “That’s why the Senate and Congress exist—to find other ways. We can be influenced by the American people, but not through their rhetoric, only through their vote. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Senator Black turned and hurried up the steps and into the Capitol, pursued by a wave of questions that broke against the shore of his security team. Patterson switched off the monitor, chewing his lip until it hurt before picking up his phone and dialing a number. The line connected on the second ring.
“Yes?”
“Black’s not going for it,” Patterson said simply. “Arrange a press conference for the rally, so that we can get our message out to as wide an audience as possible. We’ll take the voters away from that bastard and rip the rug out from under his feet.”
“That could be risky, Pastor. There’s no guarantee the people will turn away from him, regardless of what we do. He’s too well established, too well known.”
“So are we,” Patterson snapped. “Make it happen.”
NEGEV DESERT
ISRAEL
Ayeem watched as the three guards encircled him with their rifles pointed down at his prostrate form. One of them shouted a command and the old guide got slowly to his feet, his hands behind his head but defiance etched clearly into his features. Nearby, Ayeem’s Bedouin companions stood under the watchful gaze of the other three soldiers.
A tall bearded man walked up to Ayeem.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he rumbled. “Where’s Ethan Warner?”
Ayeem said nothing. The soldier smiled cruelly and then his rifle butt swung around with terrific speed to smash into Ayeem’s temple with a sickening crack that echoed off the cliffs around them. The Bedouin spun away from the piercing pain, crumpling onto the earth and clasping his head. Instantly, the younger Bedouin were shouting, trying to surge forward.
Ayeem felt rough hands grabbing his limbs and half carrying, half dragging his body away from the tents toward the edge of the camp, where they unceremoniously dropped him onto the dust.
The tall, bearded soldier removed his rifle and pulled off his shirt, his body muscular and his pale skin smothered in purple tattoos. Ayeem struggled to his feet and watched as the soldier raised his fists in a classic boxing stance. A faint ripple of laughter from the encircling guards drifted on the hot wind.
“What were you doing in the camp?”
The bearded soldier’s words hissed from behind thick, meaty fists. Ayeem stood before him, ignoring the pain bolting through his skull and the blood dripping from his forehead.
“Walking home.”
“This is a restricted area, and we don’t allow the unclean to pass here, Araboosh.”
The surrounding soldiers chortled and nudged each other. Ayeem glanced briefly up at the ridge, above him and to his left. He could just make out Rachel and Ethan watching him from there. He looked back at the soldier.
“This land belonged to my father. You have stolen it from us.”
“Screw you.”
The soldier jabbed one chunky fist with lightning speed at the Bedouin’s face to a cheer from his companions. The cheer fell flat as Ayeem ducked aside and out of range of the punch and nipped forward into the soldier’s left side. The Bedouin’s hand flicked out in a blur of motion, and with a squelch two bony fingers punctured the soldier’s eyeballs like needles through a water balloon.
The trooper screamed out, clasping his hands to his eyes and doubling over. Ayeem spun on one foot before the troops could react and drove his opposite heel hard into the side of the soldier’s knee. With a dull crack the man’s tendons snapped like dry twigs and the heavy body jerked sideways and slammed into the dust.
Ayeem turned to look at the closest of the soldiers, his voice calm. “What did you do to Ahmed? Where is he?”
The two soldiers glanced at each other, and then as one they plunged into the Bedouin amid a cloud of frenzied blows.
Ethan and Rachel scrambled to the top of the ridge and looked back down into the camp.
“What the hell was he doing down there?” Ethan asked.
“He must have deliberately distracted their attention,” Rachel hissed. “Do something!”
Ethan, his camera in his hand, was filming the exchange beneath them. He watched as Ayeem was picked up by two of the soldiers and held in their grasp. A third soldier drove his fist into Ayeem’s unprotected belly, the Bedouin guide crumpling over the blow and sinking to his knees. A flurry of cries went up from the other Bedou
in.
“For God’s sake,” Rachel uttered.
Ethan kept the camera on the scene below. “Go and start the jeep, now!”
“What for? Ayeem needs our—”
“Now!”
Rachel hurried away down the slope. Ethan turned to watch as Ayeem was once more dragged to his feet.
“Let him go.”
Brad’s voice crackled with a rage born of agony. The soldiers holding the guide complied at once, releasing Ayeem and backing away from him.
Ayeem watched as the towering soldier picked up his assault rifle from nearby, cocking the weapon and limping back toward him. Thick blood streamed from beneath his eyes, his features folding in upon themselves with pain.
“Brad, wait.”
One of the other soldiers raised a cautionary hand but the bearded man scowled at him. Ayeem took a last glance at the ridge, and then glared at the bearded soldier.
“Coward,” he uttered, loud enough for all to hear.
The soldier snapped the rifle up to point at Ayeem, and squeezed the trigger.
“Hey, you down there!” All six of the soldiers and their Bedouin prisoners turned to stare up at the ridge behind them. Ayeem saw Ethan wave at them and point to something he held in his hand. Even across the distance, the shape of a camera was clearly distinguishable. “See you on the news!”
With that he turned and fled out of sight.
“Oh shit,” someone uttered.
“Get after them!” Brad hollered.
Five of the soldiers turned and dashed toward the Humvees, leaping aboard them and starting the engines amid belching clouds of diesel smoke as the bearded soldier turned his rifle back to point at Ayeem. As the vehicles turned and accelerated away, Ayeem produced from beneath his robes a cruel blade that glittered in the late-afternoon sunlight.
“For Ahmed,” he whispered.
As the bearded soldier took aim Ayeem bolted forward, reaching out with one gnarled hand and bashing the barrel of the rifle aside. He saw a ripple of panic flitter across the soldier’s eyes as he realized what was about to happen.
Ayeem drove the needle-sharp blade deep into the soldier’s chest, sinking it to its delicately carved hilt. The soldier gasped, his eyes bulging and his cavernous pink mouth opening wide in a silent scream of indescribable agony.
Ayeem watched as the man sank to his knees, dropping his rifle and clasping the blade’s handle in his hands as dark blood poured from the wound through his thick fingers. The Bedouin turned his back on the dying man, and with a deceptively swift gait strode with his younger companions out toward the sanctuary of the endless plains.
Ethan scrambled down the slope and plunged into the depths of the wadi. He heard the jeep’s engine turn over as he hit the floor of the canyon.
Rachel was looking nervously over her shoulder as Ethan leaped into the passenger’s seat.
“Go!”
“What about Ayeem?”
“He’ll be fine as long as we’ve got this!” Ethan held up the camera. “Now drive!”
Rachel slammed the throttle down, the jeep lurching forward and bouncing violently across the uneven ground. Rachel jerked the steering wheel from one side to the other, swerving around boulders and thorn scrub as they hurtled toward the wadi’s entrance and the open plains beyond.
Ethan reached behind him into the backseat, shoving his camera into his rucksack and grabbing his cell phone. He struggled to dial as the jeep leaped and bucked, covering one ear as he listened to the dial tone in the other. Aaron Luckov’s voice sounded muted against the roar of the engine through the canyon around them.
“Ethan?”
“Aaron, get the plane started!”
“What’s happened?”
“No time to explain, just do it! We’re on our way!”
Ethan cut off the connection as the jeep burst from the wadi and followed the ancient river course that Ayeem had tracked on the journey in.
“Once we get back to the plane,” Ethan shouted above the wind, “we’ll be just fine.”
“Is this what you call looking for my daughter?” she shot back. “Those people could have helped us for all you know!”
“Those people,” Ethan replied, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder, “aren’t inclined to help anyone but themselves. The farther we get from them the better.”
“They’re the authorities!” Rachel protested, swerving the jeep with more violence than was necessary to avoid a scattering of rocks. “If we run away from them, we’ll become fugitives.”
“If we go back, we’ll become victims. They’re hiding something out here.”
“What on earth would they be hiding from anyone?” Rachel shouted. “This is insane.”
Ethan reached into his pocket and produced one of the explosives he had found in the camp’s tent.
“Do you know what this is?” he demanded. Rachel glanced at the device and shook her head. “It’s an improvised explosive, the type that terrorists use. All you have to do is call the number and boom, people die. You tell me what a company like MACE is doing storing boxes of these?”
Rachel, flustered and confused, shook her head.
“I don’t know, but it could be nothing to do with Lucy or what’s been—”
“The remains that Lucy found are back there!” Ethan shouted. “Whatever happened to her, MACE knows something about it. We need to get back and inform the Israeli Defense Force and Ambassador Cutler!”
Rachel turned back to the wheel and squinted in the brilliant sunlight that now streamed across the horizon as the sun began to set in the west. Ethan shoved the explosive devices into his rucksack and held on tightly as the jeep bounced through a shallow gulley and leaped up the other side, Rachel driving at near breakneck speed.
A deafening crack split the air above them like thunder. The windshield of the jeep flared with splintered fractures and exploded inward, showering Ethan with sparkling shards of glass. Rachel screamed, the jeep careening wildly before she brought it back under control.
Ethan turned in his seat, his bowels clenching reflexively as another rifle shot zipped past the jeep. Behind them in the distance, two Humvees bounded along the desert plains, trailing billowing clouds of dust into the evening sky.
“They’re shooting at us!” Rachel shouted above the howling wind.
Ethan felt a sudden concern for Ayeem Khan as well as for himself and Rachel as the possibility that he had severely miscalculated how far MACE would go began to weigh upon on his shoulders.
Ethan looked at Rachel as another shot zipped past overhead. Her face was ashen.
“Still want to go back?” he asked her.
Rachel shook her head as Ethan glanced over her for any signs of injury, but all that he found was a creeping veil of shock.
“Get out of the driver’s seat,” Ethan commanded, moving to try and exchange places with her.
Rachel’s head whipped around to look at him, the wind flinging her black hair out behind her. Ethan froze as two clear green eyes glared at him.
“Like hell.”
Without another word, Rachel turned back to the barren plain ahead and accelerated the jeep until the engine wailed in protest.
Ethan slid back into his seat, straining to look behind him. Another two shots rang out, both of them striking the earth close to the jeep.
“They’re trying to shoot the tires out,” he shouted. “Keep swerving to spoil their aim.”
Rachel obeyed, drifting the jeep left and right both to avoid obstacles and to evade the shots cracking the wind around them.
Ethan looked at the nearest Humvee, probably a hundred meters behind them but closing fast. The second was another hundred meters farther back and obscured in the dust trail of the first. He turned to look for landmarks from their journey out. The looming bulk of Masada’s buttress, crafted by the elements over countless millennia, jutted out above the plains a few miles to their right.
“We’ve got another three miles to go. We�
��re not going to make the airfield!” he shouted.
Rachel glanced over her shoulder, and Ethan saw the first sickly flash of panic in her expression. The jeep lurched as another shot ricocheted off nearby rocks and whipped past their heads with a metallic twang, Rachel losing control as she flinched.
Ethan grabbed the wheel, steadying it as Rachel recovered. Tears were falling down her cheeks now as she gripped the wheel, her knuckles white as bone.
“Stick with it,” Ethan encouraged above the wind, trying to ignore the guilt churning in his stomach.
He looked behind them.
The leading Humvee was within fifty meters now, two men in the front and one in the rear bearing a rifle that seemed to be pointing directly between Ethan’s eyes. The wind dashed a spurt of blue smoke from the barrel, and Ethan heard the shot zip past a few feet from his head as he ducked reflexively, banging his forehead on the headrest.
“Jesus!”
The sun ahead flared brilliantly as it sank toward the horizon and the shattered glass on his side of the windshield prevented him from seeing ahead clearly. He turned to Rachel.
“Swerve the jeep more tightly! It’ll blind them with dust in the sunlight and spoil their aim!”
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.
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