just make out the surface of the Mediterranean reflecting the night sky like a vast, shimmering mirror.
Aaron had timed his turn well, and was flying almost directly over the unpopulated wasteland between Gaza and Israel. Ethan shouted to Rachel above the buffeting wind.
“I’ll try to get back into Israel by the morning through Eraz. Inform the Foreign Ministry of what’s happened; they should be able to help me through.” Rachel nodded, her face strangely vacant. Ethan fixed her with a serious gaze, trying to assure himself that she understood him. “You’ll have to close the door behind me.”
Rachel edged across to the doorway. Ethan looked down at the twinkling lights of Gaza far below. He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a few deep breaths. Get a grip and do it. If you’ve got nothing, you’ve everything to gain.
Ethan crouched and then hurled himself out into the blackened void.
The windblast smashed into him, flailing his body as he spun away into the darkness. The howl of the Beaver’s engine and the shuddering blades of the helicopter vanished as he plunged downward. Ethan gripped the cord of his parachute and yanked hard.
The parachute rippled free as the cityscape beneath gyrated wildly through his vision, and then he heard a dull crack in the sky above and was yanked upright as the parachute blossomed open. He swung in absolute silence for a few moments before checking above him. The broad dome of the parachute glowed faintly against the inky night sky above.
He breathed a sigh of relief, and looked down.
The Gaza Strip beckoned, ten thousand darkened alleys and streets populated by a people who had been persecuted for over half a century. A land and a people he knew well, now less than a thousand feet beneath him. For a few moments, he found himself reveling in the silence of the night air, and realized that he had not slept for at least twenty-four hours. Not the first time, he reminded himself, his eyes itching as he became aware of his exhaustion.
The night breeze was blowing him slightly north and west. He began trying to judge his landing point amid the dense rooftops, perhaps half a mile north of where he was now and maybe five hundred feet below. A distant car horn sounded and Ethan looked out across the city. There, rows of headlights drifted in relative silence, but among them, two sets weaved and twisted through the darkness parallel to his course.
The de Havilland and the helicopter would have been an unusual sight above the Strip. As he had feared, he had been spotted. He would need all of his wits about him in order to negotiate a safe passage and not be abducted as Lucy Morgan and countless others had been, for only insurgents would move to intercept him with such reckless speed.
Ethan looked up to check his parachute one last time before his landing, and as he did so something caught his eye floating in the immense night above him. “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”
A thousand feet above, just visible in the glow from Gaza’s feeble streetlights, another parachute blossomed against the night sky.
Rachel, close the door!”
Safiya’s voice was snatched away on the howling wind as she saw Rachel yank a second parachute from its rack on the fuselage wall, strapping the harnesses over her shoulders in the same way that Ethan had done.
Safiya glimpsed Ethan’s parachute billow open behind the de Havilland as she scrambled between the cockpit seats and rushed toward Rachel, grabbing her by the shoulders and holding her back.
“Don’t be a fool, sadiqati! You can’t jump!”
Rachel strained to break free. “My daughter could be down there!”
Safiya wrapped one arm across Rachel’s chest, leaning back so that her weight would prevent Rachel from leaping out. “Yes she could, but what good will it do her if you go and get yourself kidnapped, or worse?”
Unexpectedly, Rachel backed away from the opening and turned to face Safiya, gently breaking her grasp.
“You know why Ethan became the way he is?” Rachel shouted above the wind. “He’s half a person, isn’t he? Nothing like he used to be. I don’t want to end up that way.”
Safiya stared at her for a long beat, desperately searching for a reply, but she could find nothing. Rachel turned and without further hesitation hurled herself from the aircraft and plunged into the void.
Safiya watched her vanish into the darkness before hauling the de Havilland’s door shut, cutting off the noise. She staggered back