Covenant (34 page)

JERUSALEM

T
here are too many people.”

Spencer Malik watched the large screen before him showing a blazing building in garish shades of yellow and orange. The shapes of fleeing Palestinians littered the scene, some running away from the burning building, others paradoxically running toward it.

“They’ll come out of one of the adjacent buildings,” Malik said. “Just keep the camera steady.”

The technician flying the Valkyrie struggled to keep the aircraft in position.

“We’re running out of airspace, I’ll have to turn.”

Malik watched the screen intently, and spotted three figures sprinting away from the burning remains of the building. He squinted at the image, seeing the clothes that they wore, the way that they moved. For a brief moment, as the Valkyrie turned gracefully through the sky above them, he caught a glimpse of a pixelated but recognizable face.

“There they are.” Malik pointed to the small group of running figures, their forms blurred and indistinct through the sensitive night-vision cameras. “Take them out.”

The technician shook his head.

“We can’t be sure at this range.”

Malik smashed a clenched fist down on the table beside him.

“Kill all of them. That’s an order!”

The whine of the turbine engine howling behind Ethan and Rachel was suddenly broken by a loud clattering noise that echoed off the densely packed buildings around them.

“Get down!”

Ethan hit the ground behind Mahmoud as bullets whipped and cracked around them, churning the dust in wicked little bursts. Rachel slammed down alongside him, her long hair smothering his face. The sound of the turbine howled past overhead and vanished.

“This way!” Mahmoud said. “We must get out of sight!”

Mahmoud scrambled to his feet and turned right down a narrow alley. Ethan dragged his protesting body up again, Rachel struggling alongside him as they plunged down the alley in pursuit of Mahmoud. The Palestinian halted at the end, craning his neck to look up into the sky and listening intently.

“It’s coming back, you can hear it.”

Ethan strained, but could hear nothing save for the cries and shouts of alarm from around the burning building far behind them.

“We can’t keep running like this,” he said wearily. “There’s nowhere to hide.”

“They’ve used all of their missiles and have only bullets remaining now. In Gaza, there is always somewhere to hide from bullets.” Mahmoud smiled grimly. “Come, this way.”

They ran out into the street together, sprinting toward where the road ended in a T junction, splitting left and right and the way ahead blocked by a wall pockmarked with impact craters from artillery fire and bullets.

“There is another tunnel in the building at the end, on the left,” Mahmoud shouted as they ran. “It goes under the wall and comes out in open ground beyond.”

“They’ll see us emerge!” Ethan shouted.

“We have only to wait until their fuel is exhausted.”

Ethan turned, looking over his shoulder as the sound of the turbine whined back toward them.

“We’re not going to make it!” he shouted.

Mahmoud reached the door of the house at the end of the street and promptly slammed into it as it failed to open before him.

Ethan slid to a halt alongside Mahmoud, who banged against the heavy door with his fist.

“Don’t suppose you have a key?” Ethan muttered.

“It’s coming back!” Rachel called, and pointed back down the street.

In the faint glow of the flickering flames from the adjoining street, Ethan saw the Valkyrie descending toward them, its inky fuselage silhouetted against the hellish inferno beyond.

“There’s nowhere to go,” he uttered helplessly.

The Valkyrie howled down the street toward them, and Ethan turned to shield Rachel from its view, waiting for the crackling sound of its guns and the unimaginable impact of superheated bullets slamming into their bodies.

The sudden howl of a rocket deafened Ethan as a trail of white smoke screeched past their heads from behind the battered wall nearby. Ethan glimpsed a slender shape whistling up into the sky and then the Valkyrie vanished amid a blast of boiling flames and smoke before falling in ungainly flaming spirals into the street below.

Mahmoud stared in shock at the shattered UAV as a growling mechanical roar filled the air. Ethan sheltered Rachel against the locked door as the wall nearby suddenly crumbled, chunks of masonry and clouds of cracked cement spraying out over the street.

“Israel is coming,” Mahmoud muttered darkly, and placed one hand firmly on Ethan’s shoulder. “I must leave, but know this: I owe you a debt,
sadiqi,
that cannot be repaid with words.
Ma’assalama.
”

Ethan opened his mouth to reply, but before he could speak Mahmoud had sprinted away and vanished into the chaotic sprawl of Gaza’s alleys.

The roar intensified as an enormous tank rolled over the wall and onto the street, crunching over debris as its immense diesel engine snarled and smoked. Ethan stared at the troops wearing body armor and carrying assault weapons who were amassed around the vehicle. In the light of the distant flames, Ethan could see white discs marking the tank, each with a blue star in its center: the Star of David.

The tank drew up in the street and an Israeli soldier bearing the epaulettes of an officer moved quickly forward, his rifle pointed at them.

“We’re American,” Ethan called.

The Israeli officer hesitated, his expression alert and cautious. Ethan saw his eyes scan their bodies for any sign of explosive devices, a grim reminder of the threat to Israel from suicide bombers. Ethan’s ripped shirt betrayed the presence of no suspicious packages however, and the officer waved them forward.

“Ethan Warner?” the officer asked briskly.

“How the hell did you know we were here?” Ethan stammered.

“We got a call from Washington,” the officer said. “Follow me.”

Ethan led Rachel past the tank, its huge diesel engine idling now in the darkness, and knew that they would be safely escorted from Gaza. Doug Jarvis had come through once again.

“I need a direct line to the office of the commander of the Israeli Defense Force,” Ethan told the soldier as he directed them to an armored personnel carrier parked nearby. “There’s a lot I need to tell them.”

“There’s a lot the Ministry of Foreign Affairs needs to tell
you,
” the officer replied, turning and pressing a pistol to Ethan’s chest as another soldier grabbed his wrists and bound them in handcuffs.

“What are you doing?” Rachel demanded.

“Ethan Warner, you are under arrest,” the officer said briskly. “I suggest that you reconsider your alliance with him, Ms. Morgan. He won’t be in this country by the morning.”

ROOM 517, HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING
CONSTITUTION AVENUE, WASHINGTON DC

K
elvin Patterson stared at his appearance in the smoked-glass windows of Senator Isaiah Black’s twin duplex suite in the Senate building. He looked tired, older than his years. Maybe the late nights were wearing him down, but this one was important enough to justify. He straightened his tie and smoothed his hair before retaking his seat.

In years gone by, men like Senator Black would have flocked to his church, eager to be seen to worship with the vigor of times gone by. No more. Now, such men considered themselves more powerful than him, more powerful even than God. From his viewpoint he could see the marble facade of the Hart Senate Office Building that led into a cavernous ninety-foot-high central atrium populated by milling crowds of diplomats, civil servants, and tourists. Walkways bridged the spaces above the atrium on each of the building’s nine stories. Dominating the ground floor was a fifty-foot-high sculpture in black aluminum,
Mountains and Clouds
, suspended from a ceiling above that allowed natural light to illuminate the building.

A monument to power, and all of it before the eyes of a God they sullied with their arrogance. Patterson had been forced to cancel his press conference in light of the changing polls, and now found himself waiting on Senator Black’s doorstep like any other citizen, begging for a chance to be heard.

As Patterson watched, a long black limousine pulled up outside the building and a tall man in a dark suit got out, surrounded by staff wearing earpieces and sunglasses. Senator Black strode into the Hart Senate Building surrounded by a maelstrom of journalists, broadsides of camera flashes and salvos of questions bombarding the senator’s entourage as they wound their way through the atrium below.

Greater than God, Patterson thought to himself as Senator Black dismissed the wolves of the press with a bright smile, a wave, and a slick one-liner that dispersed the journalists with a trickle of laughter.

Patterson stood, and watched as the elevator nearby signaled the senator’s imminent arrival.

“Pastor,” the senator greeted him as he stepped from the elevator, his staff on either side of him, “I didn’t expect to see you before the rally tomorrow.”

Patterson shook his hand, following Black into the suite and closing the door behind him.

“Something came up.”

They sat down on opposite sides of the senator’s desk.

“What can I do for you?” Black asked.

“I take it that you have seen the news?”

Senator Black smiled at the pastor. “It would appear that the opinion polls have shifted considerably.”

Patterson concealed a sudden ripple of displeasure that twisted deep within his belly.

“In our favor, Senator?”

Isaiah Black leaned back in his chair. “In mine.”

Patterson watched as the senator tossed a newspaper onto the desk to face him. It was folded so that the opinion polls were uppermost. Patterson scanned them with a renewed sense of dismay.

“The polls are unreliable, the people fickle.”

Isaiah Black shook his head. “Yesterday they were reliable, according to you.”

Patterson felt his features twist into something between a smile and a grimace.

“It would be unwise to act with haste on such dismissable statistics.”

The senator shook his head slowly.

“The people are voting with their feet, Pastor. New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and others are placing economic concerns, foreign policy, and climate change far above any theological interests. The mood of the nation is changing.”

“Do you think that Texas, Alabama, and Ohio will do the same?” Patterson challenged.

“No,” the senator responded. “And I don’t give a damn if they do or not, because the conservative vote remains in the minority. The point, Pastor, is that I’m in a dominant position in the primary campaign with or without your support.”

Patterson lost the ability to maintain the grin slapped across his face.

“Do you really think that you can afford to lose the voting block that I control? Can you afford to spout your arrogance when I could block your campaign in a half-dozen swing states? This is the voice of God that you’re turning your back on.”

“It’s the people of America who are turning their backs, Pastor,” Black responded. “On you.”

Patterson struggled to prevent himself from clenching his fists.

“Go down to the Reflecting Pool, stand before the granite wall there, and see the images of our soldiers—Americans who fought for the ideals we preserve, who fought for God and for country and for us to be here in this land fighting for what we know to be true. Read the words imprinted there.”

“‘Freedom is not free,’” Black recited the inscription.

Patterson spoke softly, trying to let the weight of his words carry their importance.

“‘If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.’ John, fifteen seven.”

Senator Black smiled without passion.

“‘Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.’ Revelation twenty-two seventeen.”

The ripple of despair stirred painfully now within Patterson’s belly. The senator before him may be poised upon the brink of a victory that could see him in just a few short months become the most powerful man on the Earth, an ally that Patterson could not afford to lose. Unfortunately, the senator was clearly aware of that.

“Do not quote so carelessly the words of the Good Book,” Patterson said, “if you are not prepared to follow them.”

“It’s not my choice.” Senator Black smiled with supreme confidence. “My purpose is to serve the people of this country, and if they are supporting policies that you disagree with, then it is up to you to change, not the people you claim to represent.”

So, it was naked power play. Patterson found himself pinned between third and fourth base with a ball in the air, nowhere to run, and not really sure how it had happened.

“A man of true principle stands rigidly by his beliefs,” he muttered.

“As have I,” Senator Black replied evenly, before sighing and offering his trademark ultraviolet smile. “Kelvin, we’re not moving forward here. You need me now, not the other way around. You might be able to swing voters down in places like Oklahoma and Arkansas, but not enough to influence the whole country. And what would you gain if you did? A presidency even more opposed to your moral convictions. Compromise is what you need.”