Covenant

27

Can 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.

“How far is it to Gaza now?” Ethan asked.

“Two minutes and we’ll be over Sderot,” Aaron replied quickly. “We could try for Yasser Arafat Airfield in southern Gaza but it’s not great for landing. The IDF bombed it years ago.”

“I can’t let them get hold of this footage. Take us as close as you dare to the Gaza Strip and turn north when we reach it.”

“What the hell are you going to do?”

Ethan reached out to the row of parachutes strapped to the rear of the fuselage.

“I’ll get out over the Strip and find my way back into Israel afterward.”

“You … can’t,” Aaron stammered, “it’s dark out there and you’ll have no way of seeing where you’ll land.”

“Nor will they,” Ethan said. “Besides, there’s a lot of open ground on the edges of the Strip near Nahal Oz.”

“Have you ever even used one of those before?” Safiya asked, gesturing to the parachute.

Ethan managed a meager smile that he hoped convinced them where it failed to convince him. “I was a Marine not an airborne soldier, but how hard can it be? Jump, pull, pray.”

From beside him, he could see Rachel watching as he slipped into the parachute harnesses and tightened them over his shoulders.

“This isn’t the best way to protect that footage,” she murmured. In the darkness, her features were lit only by the soft green glow from the instrument panel. “We could end up losing both you and the camera.”

“While I’m in Gaza I can find out if Lucy is being held there, and I know people who can help get me out again.”

Rachel got to her feet, swaying as the aircraft rocked through the night sky.

“Are you sure it’s Lucy who you’re going to be searching for?”

Ethan forced himself to look into her eyes without flinching.

“There isn’t anyone else there,” he said. “If there was, I would have found her before now.”

“How do I know that’s the truth?” Rachel said above the engine noise. “Selby and Woods showed you that photograph of your fiancée, and the first chance you’ve got you’re abandoning me to go running about in Gaza. How the hell is that supposed to help me find Lucy?”

“Israel wouldn’t let me into Gaza to find Joanna,” Ethan snapped, “just like they won’t let us into Gaza to find Lucy. This is the perfect opportunity. Are you willing to throw that away?”

Rachel glared at him, her mouth open to reply but no words coming forth. Ethan turned away and checked his harness before gripping the de Havilland’s interior door handle and looking ahead toward the cockpit.

“Ready?”

Safiya nodded, her dark eyes unreadable in the shadowy cockpit. Ethan turned and yanked the door open.

The night air blasted into his face, the aircraft yawing to one side as Aaron fought to overcome the sudden aerodynamic imbalance. Ethan peered over the edge of the fuselage as Aaron gained control and turned swiftly north. Streetlights flickered three thousand feet below, and out to the west Ethan could just make out the surface of the Mediterranean reflecting the night sky like a vast, shimmering mirror.

Aaron had timed his turn well, and was flying almost directly over the unpopulated wasteland between Gaza and Israel. Ethan shouted to Rachel above the buffeting wind.

“I’ll try to get back into Israel by the morning through Eraz. Inform the Foreign Ministry of what’s happened; they should be able to help me through.” Rachel nodded, her face strangely vacant. Ethan fixed her with a serious gaze, trying to assure himself that she understood him. “You’ll have to close the door behind me.”

Rachel edged across to the doorway. Ethan looked down at the twinkling lights of Gaza far below. He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a few deep breaths. Get a grip and do it. If you’ve got nothing, you’ve everything to gain.

Ethan crouched and then hurled himself out into the blackened void.

The windblast smashed into him, flailing his body as he spun away into the darkness. The howl of the Beaver’s engine and the shuddering blades of the helicopter vanished as he plunged downward. Ethan gripped the cord of his parachute and yanked hard.

The parachute rippled free as the cityscape beneath gyrated wildly through his vision, and then he heard a dull crack in the sky above and was yanked upright as the parachute blossomed open. He swung in absolute silence for a few moments before checking above him. The broad dome of the parachute glowed faintly against the inky night sky above.

He breathed a sigh of relief, and looked down.

The Gaza Strip beckoned, ten thousand darkened alleys and streets populated by a people who had been persecuted for over half a century. A land and a people he knew well, now less than a thousand feet beneath him. For a few moments, he found himself reveling in the silence of the night air, and realized that he had not slept for at least twenty-four hours. Not the first time, he reminded himself, his eyes itching as he became aware of his exhaustion.

The night breeze was blowing him slightly north and west. He began trying to judge his landing point amid the dense rooftops, perhaps half a mile north of where he was now and maybe five hundred feet below. A distant car horn sounded and Ethan looked out across the city. There, rows of headlights drifted in relative silence, but among them, two sets weaved and twisted through the darkness parallel to his course.

The de Havilland and the helicopter would have been an unusual sight above the Strip. As he had feared, he had been spotted. He would need all of his wits about him in order to negotiate a safe passage and not be abducted as Lucy Morgan and countless others had been, for only insurgents would move to intercept him with such reckless speed.

Ethan looked up to check his parachute one last time before his landing, and as he did so something caught his eye floating in the immense night above him. “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

A thousand feet above, just visible in the glow from Gaza’s feeble streetlights, another parachute blossomed against the night sky.