Covenant

73

Spencer Malik strode into Wadi al-Joz even as the distant sound of small-arms fire echoed off the ancient stone walls around him. He quickened his pace, and saw IDF cordons ahead near the entrance to the quiet little street where the MACE warehouses stood.

The Israeli Defense Force had moved swiftly. Malik didn’t know how the operation had become exposed, and could only assume that everything had unraveled in Washington somehow. It mattered little. Soon, it would all be over.

He carried a bag filled with vegetables bought from a local market nearby, and he wore traditional Palestinian dress that helped to conceal his features and detract attention from himself. Among the vegetables in the bag was a large pistol, just in case anyone attempted to stop him in his mission.

Malik turned, entered a familiar apartment building, and climbed up the stairwell, slipping the pistol out of the bag and setting the safety catch to Off. The stairs opened out onto a single corridor that held four doors, two on each side, marked with hastily scrawled numbers on bits of paper tacked to the cheap wood.

He moved silently between the doors, seeking the first on the left, and hugged the wall alongside it. He looked down at the thin strip of daylight beneath the bottom edge of the door for several moments, waiting to see any telltale moving shadows crossing the light. None came.

“Rasheed, keef halak? How are you?” he whispered through the door.

There was a brief pause before a reply came.

“Salaam. Enter.”

Malik opened the door and entered the apartment to see a Palestinian standing over a sniper rifle mounted on a tripod facing a broad open window. The weapon was pointing down to the MACE warehouse visible below on the street.

“Salaam, Rasheed,” Malik said. “You have done well.”

Rasheed nodded and backed away from the rifle as Malik put his pistol into a shoulder holster and lay down behind the rifle, sighting through it. Even as he did so, he saw the doors to the MACE warehouse open and figures appear in the bright sunlight, escorted by IDF troops. Malik settled in behind the weapon, gripping the trigger and controlling his breathing.

He saw Ethan Warner and Rachel Morgan lingering just inside the building, along with surgeon Damon Sheviz. Malik smiled, and aimed carefully at Ethan’s head. He heard Rasheed’s footsteps behind him.

“Time, Mr. Warner, for you to become another tragic statistic,” Malik said. “Which one shall I kill first, Rasheed?”

Malik flinched in shock as Rasheed’s face smashed down onto the tiles alongside him, his nose exploding in a burst of blood as the Arab’s eyes stared lifelessly into his. Malik reached down for his pistol, yanking it from its holster as he jumped to his feet and turned to see an Arab in traditional Bedouin dress flash toward him in a blur like a phantom, the apartment door still swinging open from where he had slipped silently inside.

An iron-hard forearm clubbed Malik’s pistol to one side, and before he could react the equally hard edge of one hand scythed across his throat. Malik felt his eyes bulge as he staggered backward and tripped over the sniper rifle, crashing down onto his knees.

Malik, choking and his eyes flooding with tears, scrambled for the door of the apartment. A tiny, sharp pain pierced the underside of his elbow and Malik gasped as his body twitched and jerked uncontrollably as though electric currents were rocketing through his tendons. Another hand clamped across his face, yanking him up before pinning his back to a wall.

The Bedouin glared at him, and Malik’s bowels flipped as he stared into Rafael’s eyes. A blade flickered in the light as Rafael whipped it up against Malik’s neck, the cold steel resting on the pulsing thread of an artery.

“Salaam,” Rafael whispered. “We shall work together, you and I.”