Covenant

76

Ethan flinched instinctively outside the warehouse as three sudden gunshots crackled out from somewhere above them.

“Sniper!”

Ethan heard Jerah Ash’s shouted warning as he grabbed Lucy and pulled her back into the building, huddling beside the door as he glimpsed a burst of blue smoke spurt from the uppermost window of an apartment block on the opposite side of the street.

“Any other way out?” he shouted back to Lieutenant Ash.

The officer leaned in and spoke into his microphone.

“Ground force six, under fire, Wadi al-Joz! Repeat, we’re under fire, requesting support!”

“Shots fired!”

The Israeli technician’s voice was edgy as he looked at the unfamiliar controls in front of him. “Building visual, quarter of a mile, camera ready.”

The operator of the Valkyrie drone turned the UAV toward the stacked buildings near the edge of the West Bank, spotting the tall apartment block on the corner of the street.

“Zoom in,” General Aydan said quickly, watching as a second operator manipulated the UAV’s camera controls, zooming in to the top level of the apartment block. One of the balconies was wide open. “There, zoom in there,” the general added.

The operator zoomed the camera close on the balcony, and instantly the shape of a man lying prone behind a smoking rifle wavered into view.

“Sniper in sight!”

“Fire! Fire now!”

Malik lay with his chin resting against the stock of the sniper rifle, his face feeling dry and sore as he stared at the shimmering heat haze cloaking the city. The acrid smoke from the rifle barrel had drifted away in the breeze after stinging his eyes and burning his throat, and he could see a distant pall of oily smoke rising where a car bomb had exploded.

He could hear sirens far away, and in a last moment of hope envisioned soldiers finding him trapped and paralyzed behind the rifle, which had clearly been fired not by his hand but by the thread Rafael had attached to its trigger.

He could feel nothing but could smell the stale odor of excrement soiling his legs as he lay helpless. He barely noticed the droning sound as it drifted on the breeze, but when he did he looked up and saw a faint glint of metal flashing in the sunlight against the stark blue sky above.

“Oh no,” he mumbled, “please no.”

The drone shuddered and a streak of white smoke accelerated toward him.

“Please, God, no,” he uttered, closing his eyes as something silvery flashed through the sky before him, and then everything vanished into a terrible inferno of flames and agony. Malik’s body was hurled through the air as the flesh was seared from his bones.

Rafael glanced over his shoulder as the apartment vanished within a roiling ball of flame, heard shouts of alarm from neighboring buildings, and saw thick coils of ugly black smoke spiraling upward from where once there had been a balcony.

A few of the IDF soldiers guarding the nearby cordon watched as the Valkyrie drone zoomed over their heads and disappeared. Rafael turned to survey the jumbled skyline of Jerusalem for a few moments before hurrying away down the street.