of his skin. He picked it up, half expecting to see the number of Israel’s Shin Bet or, worse, Mossad. Instead, Stone recognized the number as Malik’s and quickly answered.
“What the hell is going on?” he shouted down the line. “Is Rafael dead yet?”
There was a long silence, and in a moment of something that he might have considered precognition, a dread swelled in his belly.
“No, Mr. Stone, he is not yet dead.”
Ice water sluiced through Stone as he recognized Rafael’s voice.
“Where is Malik?” he asked, veiling his panic with feigned outrage.
“He is enjoying a ringside view of your downfall, one that is about to become much better.”
Stone turned cold as he realized the breadth of Rafael’s revenge, and through his fear probed a thin spark of fury.
“You’d better start running, Rafael. I’m going to make damned sure that my men and the IDF hunt you down. By the time they’re done with you there’ll be nothing left to—”
“I’m afraid that you have no time left for that.”
Stone was about to reply, but then heard the car phone ringing. He looked down at it in confusion. The screen wasn’t glowing, and the noise sounded somewhat muted as though it were coming from beneath the seat on which he sat.
Before he could even consider what was about to happen, Rafael’s voice spoke again.
“There were four missing IEDs taken by Ethan Warner from the encampment, Byron. I’ve returned them to you.”
“No!”
Stone lunged for his door handle as suddenly everything turned a bright and brilliant white before him and the universe ripped itself apart in his ears.
Rafael lowered a pair of cell phones from his ears as their signals were abruptly cut off by a sharp crackling noise. From somewhere outside in Jerusalem he heard a rolling boom that reverberated gently through nearby windows, rattling the shutters in their panes.
Casually, he turned to glance at the apartment door beside him. He gripped the roll of thread he held in his hand and yanked hard on it.
A shockingly loud report crashed out as a high-velocity round burst from the rifle within the apartment. Three more shots crackled on the hot morning air as Rafael yanked the cord, each seeming louder than the first and rolling in echoes across the ancient city.
Rafael snapped the thread off and sprinted down the stairwell, turning for the rear exit of the apartment block as distant shouts from apartments above pursued him. As he burst out into a narrow paved area and vaulted over a wall, he heard a whining sound drifting ghostlike through the hard blue sky above.
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!”
NORTHERN COMMAND (PATZAN)
JERUSALEM
“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.