out,” he shouted. “Keep swerving to spoil their aim.”
Rachel obeyed, drifting the jeep left and right both to avoid obstacles and to evade the shots cracking the wind around them.
Ethan looked at the nearest Humvee, probably a hundred meters behind them but closing fast. The second was another hundred meters farther back and obscured in the dust trail of the first. He turned to look for landmarks from their journey out. The looming bulk of Masada’s buttress, crafted by the elements over countless millennia, jutted out above the plains a few miles to their right.
“We’ve got another three miles to go. We’re not going to make the airfield!” he shouted.
Rachel glanced over her shoulder, and Ethan saw the first sickly flash of panic in her expression. The jeep lurched as another shot ricocheted off nearby rocks and whipped past their heads with a metallic twang, Rachel losing control as she flinched.
Ethan grabbed the wheel, steadying it as Rachel recovered. Tears were falling down her cheeks now as she gripped the wheel, her knuckles white as bone.
“Stick with it,” Ethan encouraged above the wind, trying to ignore the guilt churning in his stomach.
He looked behind them.
The leading Humvee was within fifty meters now, two men in the front and one in the rear bearing a rifle that seemed to be pointing directly between Ethan’s eyes. The wind dashed a spurt of blue smoke from the barrel, and Ethan heard the shot zip past a few feet from his head as he ducked reflexively, banging his forehead on the headrest.
“Jesus!”
The sun ahead flared brilliantly as it sank toward the horizon and the shattered glass on his side of the windshield prevented him from seeing ahead clearly. He turned to Rachel.
“Swerve the jeep more tightly! It’ll blind them with dust in the sunlight and spoil their aim!”
Rachel again complied with near robotic efficiency, jerking the wheel to and fro. Ethan turned back to see thick dust clouds billowing outward behind them, and almost immediately he lost sight of the leading Humvee some thirty meters behind.
He looked ahead and again judged the distance. Too far. Another shot rang out, rocketing by with a supersonic crack somewhere above their heads.
“It’s not working!” Rachel screamed, ducking down but this time valiantly keeping control of the jeep.
Ethan looked about the jeep desperately, and saw the water canisters in the rear. Without further thought he scrambled into the back and unstrapped one of the canisters as he shouted above the wind.
“Straighten out, stop swerving!”
Rachel kept the wheel straight, and Ethan hefted the big canister onto the rear of the jeep, looking up through the diminishing clouds of dust behind them. He saw the Humvee surge into view barely twenty meters behind, and instantly he hefted the canister over the back of the jeep. The heavy plastic container bulged as it hit the desert floor, bouncing wildly.
The Humvee’s driver glimpsed the canister at the last moment and swerved violently to avoid it as it barreled past his wheels. The rifleman in the rear leaped aside as the canister struck the side of the Humvee and exploded in a dazzling burst of crystalline water that vaporized into spray on the wind.
Ethan unstrapped a second canister, but even as he did so the Humvee changed its position slightly, moving out to the left of the jeep’s track and pursuing it from a safer position.
“Damn.”
Ethan struggled back into the passenger seat, glancing over his shoulder at the Humvee, still twenty meters behind but closing, the face of the driver brightly illuminated by the setting sun. He could see that the soldiers were wearing sunglasses and that the man in the rear was reloading his rifle. Another few seconds and he would be too close to miss.
Ethan looked down at his rucksack. An insidious thought crept into his mind, and he pulled out his cell phone before looking across at Rachel again.
“When I tell you, turn hard right, understand?”
Rachel nodded once without taking her eyes off the desert ahead.
Ethan reached down into his rucksack and pulled out one of the explosive devices. Quickly, he pulled the detonating probe from within the plastic explosive, and then turned on the cell phone attached to it. The screen lit up and a simple menu appeared. In Hebrew.
“Christ’s sake.”
Ethan quickly cycled through the menu as he heard the Humvee’s growling engine closing on them. He changed the settings to English and then found what he was looking for. He grabbed his own phone, punching in the number