Covenant

26

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.

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.