Covenant (17 page)

The camp below them consisted of two large khaki tents pitched at the base of the low cliffs amid a scattering of desiccated trees. Beside the tents were parked two Humvees and a small white jeep. On the far side of the camp, six men in black uniforms sat idly on wooden crates playing cards and smoking, assault rifles scattered around them.

“Is this the site?” Ethan asked.

“Yes,” Ayeem confirmed. “Several of us saw Lucy’s camp while we were traveling out on the plains. You could see her lights for miles at night.”

“Probably why she was found so easily.”

Rachel looked at Ethan sharply. “She was hardly expecting to be abducted.”

“Out here, you need to expect just about anything.”

Ethan retrieved a pair of small binoculars from his rucksack and focused them on the camp. He saw shovels, two pickaxes, and a number of buckets scattered on the hot earth near the tent closest to the cliff face.

“Why are they digging?” he asked Ayeem. “They haven’t built entrenchments, and if they’re guarding a perimeter, then why are they camped against the escarpment?”

“I don’t know,” the Bedouin said.

Ethan handed the binoculars to Rachel and pulled a camera from his rucksack. “I’m going down for a look.”

Ayeem gestured to their right.

“There is a narrow track used by foxes and ibex that leads down to the floor of the plain. You must tread carefully.”

“What happens if they find you?” Rachel asked, somewhat concerned.

Ethan checked his camera and then shrugged. “What can they do? Arrest me?”

“If they find you and this is reported back to the Israeli Defense Force, it may stop them from helping us.”

“They’re not helping us,” Ethan said, making for the track. “That’s why we’re here. MACE’s charter is to guard Israeli assets, not dig up the desert while they’re at it.”

“Wait,” Ayeem said, placing an arm gently but firmly on Ethan’s shoulder.

Ethan saw the old man looking out across the desert. There, walking directly toward the camp, a small group of Bedouin men were appearing through the rippling haze. Ethan grinned.

“A distraction, to give us some time,” the Bedouin said.

Before Rachel could protest further, Ethan slipped over the edge of the slope.

E
than quietly moved across to his right where a precarious ledge of sandstone jutted out from the main wall of the cliff. Thirty feet below, he could see the MACE tents rippling in the hot wind that scoured the desert plain.

A sense of doubt slithered through Ethan’s belly as he hesitated on the slope. Maybe Rachel was right: if the MACE guards spotted him, this would be over before it had begun. Still,
if you’ve nothing to lose
… Ethan took a breath, and moved down the slope.

The sedimentary rock was loose and offered precious little in the way of footholds. Ethan knew that if he dislodged rocks any larger than his fist, he would immediately be detected. Judging every footstep, he edged along the ragged pathway, descending with one eye fixed upon the soldiers.

One of them stood up and Ethan froze. The soldier seemed to be looking almost straight at him as he stretched his arms and scratched the back of his neck with one hand before retaking his seat at the game. Ethan crept forward and began to descend behind the two largest tents. Out of the sight of the camp guards, Ethan moved quickly down to the foot of the cliff and crouched to listen for sounds from within the camp.

The fabric of the tents rumbled and snapped in the wind. Ethan strained his hearing but could detect nothing. He moved across the rear of the nearest tent and peered across the camp. The soldiers were out of sight, but he could see one of the Hummers and the little white jeep nearby.

Ethan moved slowly out into the bright sunlight and across to the tent’s flaps. A fine breeze of sand particles gusted through the camp, whispering against the fabric. He shielded his face, turning sideways beside the entrance to the tent, and peered in between the flaps. Seeing that the gloomy interior was devoid of people, he slipped inside.

It took several seconds for Ethan’s eyes to adjust after the blazing sunlight. The interior of the tent throbbed with heat like an oven. Through the gloom he began to make out more digging tools scattered around and, in the center, a deep excavation.

Ethan knelt at the edge of the cavity, looking down at the unmistakable structure of a huge humanoid skeleton imprinted in the rocks of ages. This was where Lucy had discovered the remains, and he wondered why MACE would have gone to such lengths to conceal the site.

He took out his camera, shooting a dozen images of the cavity from various angles before moving back toward the entrance to the tent. If this tent contained the location of Lucy’s discovery, Ethan wanted to know what was in the other large tent opposite.

He reached the flaps and eased them aside, and his heartbeat shuddered as he looked straight into a pair of eyes.

“Jesus,” he muttered.

“It’s in the other tent,” Rachel whispered, and jabbed a thumb over her shoulder.

“You shouldn’t be down here,” Ethan told her, slipping out of the tent.

“Whose daughter is it who’s gone missing?” Rachel shot back.

A radio squawked beside him as the trooper laid down a winning hand, directing a hawkish grin at his companions from beneath his thick beard.

“Full house.”

A muted chorus of obscenities drifted from his companions as they tossed their hands into the center. The trooper gathered a handful of cash and then picked up the radio.

“Venom, go ahead.”

“Venom, this is Sentinel. We have information that your position may be compromised.”

The trooper’s eyes flicked across the nearby camp. “By whom?”

“A journalist, Ethan Warner. Is the compound secure?”

“My men are patrolling it as we speak,” the trooper lied.

“Report back when you can confirm.”

The trooper dropped the radio and picked up his rifle. “Spot check. Let’s go.”

Instantly, the other five men got up, checking their rifles. They were about to disperse when one of them looked out across the desert and raised an eyebrow. “Er, Brad? Boss?”

The soldiers turned to look in the same direction at a small group of desert nomads strolling nonchalantly across the sands nearby.

“Christ’s sake,” Brad said angrily. “There’s not supposed to be anyone out here; it’s a goddamn desert.”

“What do we do?” asked one of the soldiers.

Brad glared at him.

“What the hell do you think we do? Go with Kelsey and Archer and check the camp. Saunders, Dev, stay here with me.”

Brad walked out to the Bedouin men, confronting them.

“This is a restricted area,” he said, raising a hand to halt them.

The six Bedouin stopped and looked at the bearded soldier before turning to look at each other. A swift exchange in Arabic flitted like desert birdsong between them before the tallest man looked Brad in the eye.

“Yes, it is. It is our home, and
you
are trespassing.”

Brad glanced across his shoulder at the two troopers behind him.

“Oh me, oh my, so sorry,” he uttered before sneering at the Bedouin with undisguised contempt. “Take a walk back the way you came,
Araboosh.
”

The Bedouins’ faces hardened at the insult and their apparent leader shook his head slowly.

“It is not polite to speak to us in this way,” he replied.

Brad grinned coldly, revealing an unsightly gold canine that glinted in the hot sun. “My apologies, let me rephrase it.
Piss off, Araboosh.
”

The young Bedouin hesitated a moment longer and then as one they lunged forward, hands gripping long, slim blades that appeared as if by magic from beneath their robes. Instantly, the two soldiers flanking Brad raised their rifles and the Bedouin came to an abrupt halt.

E
than moved across to the second tent and peered into the shadowy interior as Rachel led him inside.

The tent contained a number of boxes and crates, along with a satellite receiver dish and a small laptop computer. Ethan moved between the crates, glancing at plastic containers filled with brushes and small metallic trowels, a vacuum pump and plastic specimen jars, several of which contained what looked like bones. Ethan peered at one of the tags inside a jar alongside a small bone.

Right metacarpal.

Ethan slipped the small jar into his pocket.

“These are the tools of a paleontologist,” Rachel said. “This is Lucy’s equipment.”

Ethan nodded, taking a picture of the specimen jars and the array of equipment. He wondered why it had not been returned to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Beyond the smaller crates was another crate some nine feet long and three feet deep sitting on a pallet. Ethan moved across to it, reaching for the lid. He shared a glance with Rachel and then hefted it aside, and as he did so he felt a shock wave of surprise hit him.

A huge block of sandstone had been hewn from the living rock, probably using power tools, and placed in the crate. Ethan knew that scientists like Lucy did not use power tools to excavate ancient remains, preferring instead to diligently remove bones one by one and catalogue their type and position as they went along.

Entombed in the rock lay the skeletal remains of an enormous humanoid, nearly eight feet tall and powerfully built. Ethan stared in awe at the figure. At first glance the remains looked perfectly human to Ethan’s untrained eye, but he could remember Karowitz’s fossils. A gust of hot desert wind moaned through the tent as he stared down at the remains, encased beneath the earth for more than seven thousand years. Now, he saw the strangely oval eye sockets in a skull that was far too elongated to be human, the massive chest plate of fused bone splitting into ribs near the spine, the immense arm bones built for carrying muscle far greater than that of a human being.

“I’ll be damned,” he said.

“You still think Lucy was mistaken?” Rachel asked.

Ethan shook his head, taking photographs as Rachel gestured to the remains.

“Look at the skull cap,” she said. “It’s elongated, twice as tall as a human’s.”

“A bigger brain or something?” Ethan asked, snapping a shot of the skull. “Karowitz mentioned infrasound communication, like some dinosaurs.”

“That might explain it,” Rachel replied, “and there is a human practice going back thousands of years where the skulls of newborn infants are tightly bound, distorting them as they grow into exactly this kind of shape.”

Ethan frowned.

“Maybe some kind of religious practice?”

“Not likely,” Rachel said. “Such skulls have been found all across the ancient world: Incas in Peru, eastern Germanic tribes, Tahiti and Samoa in the South Pacific, the Atacamero culture, and others. Even the Egyptians practiced it: Tutankhamun, Nefertiti, and Akhenaten all show signs of skull deformation. Hippocrates mentions an entire population, the Macrocephales, who deformed their skulls in worship of ancient sky gods.”

“You think they did it to emulate these things?” he asked, gesturing to the remains.

“It’s possible,” Rachel said. “Why else go to such lengths for something as painful and dangerous?”

Ethan gently replaced the lid, and was about to leave when his eye caught upon several smaller boxes stacked near the rear of the tent. He moved across to them, squatting down and prying the topmost box open as Rachel examined Lucy’s specimen jars nearby.

Inside, a small block of a pale-colored material about the same size as a cigarette packet was encased in a transparent sack filled with a gel, the gel packed with ball bearings. A metal rod passed through the gel and into the block. Ethan’s eyes traced a wire fused to the end of the rod, running into a small device made from black plastic. From the device a second, thinner wire ran into the bottom of a cell phone.

“IED,” Ethan whispered to himself, suddenly feeling cold.

An improvised explosive device—the weapon of choice for insurgent groups across the world—it contained everything required in order to slice, puncture, dismember, or maim its unsuspecting victims. Ethan had seen a hundred such devices while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. What he had not seen was one so incredibly small and encased in the strange gel package.