He stood quickly and forged ahead through the tunnel. There was nowhere to hide the body, and it could be discovered at any moment. Time was of the essence.
Ahead, somewhere beyond the turn in the tunnel, the sound of voices reached his ears.
What do you mean horrific?” Rachel asked, concern stretching her skin tightly across her features.
Hassim Khan massaged his temples. “You say that you went to Lucy’s dig site?”
“That was where I got the images on my camera.” Ethan nodded.
“I saw them,” Hassim said. “And the specimen that Lucy discovered was in a crate.”
“Yes, but it hadn’t been sealed yet.”
Rachel looked at Hassim. “What are you thinking?”
“We know that the remains alone are not reason enough for your daughter’s abduction: as you said, they could have left her there.”
“What about money?” Rachel said. “A ransom.”
Hassim shook his head.
“A sale of such remains would be almost impossible to coordinate without being detected by enforcement agencies, and a ransom would come with demands that we haven’t had.”
Ethan leaned back against the wall. “Bill Griffiths is a fossil hunter and he holds the only key to exposing this abduction for what it really is: a theft. He walked away from me when I offered him five million dollars.”
“What then, if not money?” Rachel asked Hassim, her fists clenched by her side.
Hassim stood, pacing as he spoke.
“Your daughter was one of several people to have vanished from that area of the Negev Desert. No remains have ever been found. All of those disappearances have occurred since MACE began working out here in Israel under the AEA’s control.”
“You think that the church is really behind it all?” Ethan asked.
“Their leader, a powerful pastor named Kelvin Patterson, has been a vocal proponent of using science to prove the existence of God, using his television and radio stations to promote his views. He believes that faith has proven itself impotent without knowledge, and is known to have conducted various experiments in the past with volunteers from his church in an attempt to discover the nature of the divine.”
“Experiments?” Rachel asked nervously. “What kind of experiments?”
Hassim’s voice was low, as though he regretted having to speak at all.
“The kind that require live volunteers. But if there are other experiments he wishes to conduct that are illegal, and he requires live bodies, then there are ways to acquire them.”
Rachel seemed to Ethan to be having difficulty breathing as she spoke.
“What might they do to Lucy?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But after what has happened to you both they’ll be keen to get the remains out of Israel before you can inform the authorities. Even a fossil hunter as well connected as Bill Griffiths will have difficulty in achieving that without some kind of specialist help.”
Ethan nodded. “He’ll need a company trusted by the Israeli government, just like MACE. I need to make a phone call.”
Hassim looked at Mahmoud as he emerged from one of the tunnels. The Palestinian shook his head.
“You can’t make a call from down here; we’re too deep for a signal and we can’t risk moving at night. We can get you to the Erez crossing at dawn.”
“What time is it?” Ethan asked.
“Two-thirty in the morning,” Hassim said, glancing at his watch.
“That makes it the middle of the afternoon in Chicago. If I can make a call, I can smooth the way for us.”
A look of displeasure creased Mahmoud’s features. “We should wait until Yossaf returns from checking the building.”
“As long as Yossaf is between us and the other exit, we have nothing to fear.”
Mahmoud glanced at Hassim, then sighed and nodded.
“We can use the opposite end of the tunnel and make the call from there. It leads to a building on the far side of the street.”
Rafael, crouched in the darkness, listened intently.
He did not need to see the faces of the people talking a few meters away, hidden from sight by the curving tunnel walls and the shadows. Arabic and American voices left him in no doubt that he was in the right place. The name of a man, Bill Griffiths, drifted to within earshot of his position, and he thought of the fossil hunter employed by Byron Stone and Spencer Malik.
Perhaps aid workers were secretly assisting insurgents? Or maybe journalists had gained access to the tunnels, an event not unknown near Rafah on the Egyptian border. Either way, Rafael would have to work swiftly and without endangering innocent lives.
Slowly, he edged back into the deeper darkness behind him, still with his knife clasped in one hand in case the possessor of the more threatening voice he had heard should choose to wander in his direction.
He turned, moving swiftly past the corpse of the man whose name he now knew had been Yossaf, and moved as swift as a leopard through the darkness toward the distant light ahead. He reached the ladder, pausing only for a few moments to listen for pursuers or for anyone lingering above him at the tunnel entrance before scaling the ladder and emerging into the building above.
He squatted down and reached into his pocket for a small device, the blue glow from the screen lighting his features with a peculiar radiance. The GPS device showed an image of the Gazan streets at the point where he had entered the tunnel. Rafael oriented the device to point north, read the coordinates at the top of the screen, and added two seconds latitude to the west and one to the north for the building the Palestinian had referred to.
Rafael reached again into his pocket for his cell phone, accessing the text menu, and typing in the coordinates from his GPS device. He quickly added a line of text to the message.
TARGET LOCATED, COORDINATES ABOVE.
STRIKE IN TEN MINUTES!!!
Rafael pressed the Send button, waiting until the message was confirmed as sent before pocketing the device and his GPS receiver.
Turning, he gripped the ladder and once again descended into the tunnel.
RAMON AIR BASE
NEGEV DESERT, ISRAEL
Twinkling like a galaxy amid the immense black universe of the Negev, the lights of the sprawling air base glowed blue and orange as they traced the lines of taxiways and a broad runway stretching out into the dark wilderness. Cavernous hangars loomed against the night sky, one of them with its immense doors open. Within, small groups of men worked feverishly with fuel lines and sensors, cables and satellite communication dishes.
In their midst sat an aircraft with a sleek triangular shape, looking like a fighter plane and coated in matte black paint. But there was no space for a pilot, the cockpit replaced by a sharply angled nose sheathed with dark glass that contained a multitude of cameras and sensors. The legend MACE was stenciled down the fuselage in stealthy graphite gray, and beneath it a single word: valkyrie.
“Clear for engine start!”
Technicians and soldiers alike backed away as the unmistakable whine of a turbine engine issued from the aircraft’s exhaust. It reached a crescendo and then settled down to a steady whistle, a series of navigation lights flickering on the wing tips as the unmanned aerial vehicle rolled out of the hangar toward the huge runway nearby.
The men watched as it turned onto the airstrip as though guided by an artificial intelligence. With a sudden howl from the engine it lurched forward, accelerating and lifting off into the darkness. The whine faded as the gently blinking lights rose up into the night sky, and then even they were extinguished.
Utterly invisible and with its small turbine engine almost inaudible as it climbed above two thousand feet, the UAV turned toward the distant Mediterranean.
MACE
JERUSALEM
Spencer Malik watched as the technicians operated the controls of the Valkyrie, one flying the aircraft and the other monitoring the weapons and guidance systems. A large screen in the office bef
ore him showed a pixelated, green-tinged image of ramshackle buildings and dusty streets illuminated by sporadic streetlights. The image jerked and lurched under the high zoom of the camera as the Valkyrie bobbed and bounced on wind currents.
“We have the coordinates,” Malik said, watching over the technician’s shoulders and reading the figures from his cell phone to them. One of the young men tapped the coordinates into a computer, and the image on the screen snapped briskly to the right.
“It’s in Jabaliya, sir,” the technician reported. “Four buildings at those coordinates.”
“Get into position,” Malik ordered. “We will launch as soon as we’ve identified the most likely target.”
“Do we have assets on the ground?” the other technician asked.
Malik stood for a moment, an image of Rafael materializing in his mind. By now the Arab would almost certainly have infiltrated the required building in order to have sent the coordinates. With only empty or incomplete apartment blocks and shattered concrete hulks visible on the screen, it stood to reason that the prisoners were being held beneath ground. Nowhere to run.
“Our asset will have left the scene by now,” Malik replied with a grim smile. “Strike as soon as you have the target in sight.”
JABALIYA
GAZA
The cool caress of the night air was the sweetest thing that Ethan had ever experienced as he clambered from the tunnel. As he stood in the center of a shattered apartment block and sucked in a lungful of that air, surrounded by ragged towers of masonry that had once been the home of Palestinian families, he noticed a vast panorama of stars glittering in the heavens above him.
For the first time in his life, Ethan realized he was looking at those stars in a totally different way. The ancient pagan cults had got it right after all, worshipping nature and the heavens without ever realizing how close to the truth they’d actually been. Mankind was not alone.
“You can make your call from there.”
Ethan turned in the direction Mahmoud indicated, toward a concrete ramp that had once been the upper floor of the apartment block and now lay at a steep angle against the surface of the last remaining upright wall.
Ethan picked his way between blocks of rubble that littered the earth around him. He stepped up onto the ramp, climbing until he was some ten feet above the ground. He looked at his cell phone and glanced back at Mahmoud, giving him a thumbs-up. Mahmoud made no response, simply standing guard in the darkness.
Ethan sat down on the ramp and dialed a number into his cell phone, waiting for the line to connect. From his elevated viewpoint he could see the low roofs and haphazard streets of Gaza stretching away to the south between the skeletal remains of the building.
“Hello?”
“Doug? It’s Ethan.”
“Ethan!” It sounded as though Doug Jarvis had fallen out of bed. “Where the hell have you been? What happened to the daily call?”
“Things got complicated and we were compromised before I could contact you,” Ethan said quickly. “I don’t have much time, so just listen.”
“Go ahead,” Jarvis replied.
“Lucy’s disappearance isn’t just to do with fossil hunters: it’s got something to do with an American security company called MACE: Munitions for Advanced Combat Environments. They’ve been operating out here for some time and have the ear of the Israeli Defense Ministry. It was their people who stole Lucy’s discovery and they presumably know what happened to her and her team.”
“MACE,” Doug echoed. “Haven’t heard of them.”
“There’s more,” Ethan said quickly. “They’re responsible for atrocities against the indigenous population of Bedouin in the Negev and I have it on film. Unfortunately, they know this and have been trying to recover the incriminating evidence, and they’re not shy of shooting first and asking questions later.”
“Christ, Ethan! Is Rachel okay? Where are you?”
“Rachel’s fine,” Ethan assured him. “We’re in Gaza. We were chased here by MACE operatives and we’re trying to get back into Israel. I need you to contact the IDF and clear us a passage through the Erez crossing by dawn our time.”
“You’re in Gaza?” Ethan could hear the concern in Doug’s voice. “Who are you with?”
“It’s a long story,” Ethan replied. “Let’s just say that we know that insurgents did not abduct Lucy or anyone else in her team.”
There was a pause on the line before Jarvis spoke again. “Look after my daughter, Ethan.”
“I’ll have her out of Gaza by dawn, I promise. I need you to look into MACE, see if you can find out what connections they have to the fossil black market, or anything that might give us some perspective on what the hell they’re really doing out here. Look for any connection that you can find with something called the American Evangelical Alliance, a church in DC that owns the company.”
“Consider it done,” Jarvis said.
Ethan was about to speak when he noticed Mahmoud leap with feline agility onto the edge of the ramp and stare up into the night sky. The Palestinian’s face contorted as though he was straining to hear something, and then with an urgent grimace he waved at Ethan to follow him.
“Doug, I’ve got to go,” Ethan said, standing and running down the ramp.
“Why, what’s happenin—”
Ethan had barely managed to shut the phone off when Mahmoud grabbed him and hurled him toward the tunnel entrance. For a brief moment Ethan heard a strange humming noise.
“What’s happening?”
“Get down!”
In an instant the entire area around Ethan lit up in a blinding flare of unimaginable brightness. His eyes automatically shut, an image of ruined buildings seared onto his retina amid blazing light as a blast of superheated air slammed into him like a freight train.
Ethan felt his body propelled sideways through the air as an enormous explosion radiated out from a nearby building. He slammed into the ground backward, felt the breath blasted from his lungs as he crashed into a slab of shattered brickwork. He rolled away instinctively from the painful assault on his eardrums as the darkness plunged down around him once more.
He lay for several seconds with his arms over his head, curled into a fetal ball in the rubble as the pain in his ears subsided to a torturous ringing echo of the infernal blast. He rolled over, lifting his arms from his head and trying to force his eyes to focus.
The entire adjoining building had been obliterated, a burning wasteland of vaporized rubble and debris cast wide by the explosion. The few shattered walls that remained standing looked like the carcasses of rotting animals burning from within. From the stygian darkness above fell a rain of glowing embers that spiraled down around him.
Ethan blinked into the flames, and saw a figure moving with them, the flames curling around her body like snakes. For a moment he thought Rachel had been caught in the blast, but then he saw blond hair shining in the light of the fires, saw Joanna standing on the edge of the darkness. Ethan staggered to his feet as his legs quivered beneath him, and struggled toward her, the searing flames ahead stinging his eyes.
“This way!”
Mahmoud leaped from nowhere through the clouds of cement dust and falling embers, his hair and face caked with dust. He grabbed Ethan’s shoulder and yanked him away from the fire.
“What are you doing?” the Palestinian demanded.
Ethan saw the phantom image of Joanna spirited away on the crackling flames before him. Above the humming in his ears he heard the cries of Palestinians fleeing in the darkness, the screeching of women and the haunting cries of children awoken by the blast. Nausea poisoned his innards and swelled into his throat, and he jolted forward as a thin stream of bile splattered into the darkness at his feet.
“Come on!” Mahmoud shouted.
Ethan staggered along with him, trying to ignore the acid burning his throat as they stumbled across the broken remains of the building, illuminated now by the shimmering flames.
&
nbsp; “Hurry, there will be more,” Mahmoud said as they reached the entrance to the tunnel.
Ethan clambered down the ladder on legs weakened from shock, Mahmoud following him underground once again into the cloying heat. Ethan reached the tunnel floor and turned to his right, regaining his senses as he jogged along the passage. He emerged into the subterranean chamber to see Hassim and Rachel looking panicked and confused.
“What happened?” Rachel asked.
“I don’t know,” Ethan said, guzzling water from his mug and turning to see Mahmoud join them in the tunnel.
“Air strike,” the Palestinian said urgently. “Somebody knows that you are here.”
“We have to get aboveground,” Rachel said, her features pale as she looked at the earthen walls surrounding them.
Mahmoud, his pistol held at the ready, gestured with a nod of his head to Hassim.
“Go, there is nothing more that we can do for you here. You must seek protection from Israel.”
Hassim was about to leave when the sound of thunder blasted through the tunnel.
Ethan had no time to react before the shock wave rushed down into the chamber, solid and unstoppable. Ethan felt himself hurled sideways as though clubbed by a giant baseball bat, saw Rachel flung to the ground in a blaze of confusion and noise. Hassim slammed sideways into a wall and crumpled to his knees. Mahmoud crouched before the blast, rolling over as dust and debris filled the chamber in a dense, choking cloud.
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