by a chorus of voices reminding him that he had sallied valiantly forth to free one lost soul and had succeeded only in incarcerating two more. Moron. An image of his father appeared unbidden in his mind.
“You should have learned by now, Ethan,” the great Harry Warner had said, wagging a thick finger at him, pale eyes glowering above the twisted bayonets of his broad gray mustache. “What the hell did you think you’d achieve resigning your commission and gallivanting around the globe with a damned camera? Why didn’t you get a proper job like everyone else? You wouldn’t have ended up in this goddamn mess!”
He should have stayed in Chicago and not gotten involved. Doug Jarvis had a lot to answer for. Yet despite everything, somewhere within his tortured soul there remained a spirit that had not yet been extinguished, like a pale candle flame flickering alone in an immense darkness. Maybe he had a bit more of his father’s indomitable gumption than he had realized. If you’ve got nothing, you’ve everything to gain. He could deal with this.
A brief burst of Arabic punctured the silence. Damn. The pale flame gusted out.
More voices from somewhere above—muffled, distant. A new and nauseating flush of panic churned within him. Having yearned to be freed, he now feared that they had come for him with murder in their minds. The gumption vanished. A deep thud startled him as heavy wood banged against the roof of his skull, and then he felt a sudden updraft of hot air being sucked from his prison as the trapdoor was yanked open. Rough hands grabbed him and hauled him from the hole. Ethan tried to stand but his legs would not respond and he sprawled awkwardly as unseen hands dragged him across the rough, uneven ground.
“Get up!”
Ethan struggled to his knees and somehow managed to command one of his tingling feet to shift beneath him. He staggered upright, swaying as stars of light sparkled in the darkness before his eyes.
“This way!”
A hand shoved him and he stumbled blindly forward, banging off the walls of the tunnel and dislodging chunks of earth and dust with his shoulders. He heard whispered exchanges from behind him and guessed that two men were following.
The air became slightly cooler, and the tone of the hushed voices changed as he emerged into what felt like a larger space. A hand grabbed his shoulder, turning him around and shoving him downward. Ethan slammed into a wooden chair that almost toppled backward beneath him. Before he could react he felt himself being bound again, this time to the chair itself, and for a brief moment he was almost comfortable as his weary body settled onto the chair.
A long silence ensued and he braced himself for any sudden impact. Something wrenched at the hood over his face and a harsh white light burst into his eyes. He blinked away from it, squinting and struggling to focus on his surroundings.
The room was surprisingly large, about five meters square and braced at the corners and the center by old but sturdy wooden pillars. The earthen ceiling was restrained by a simple latticework of timber beams, from which dangled a single unshielded lightbulb that illuminated the room with an unnatural glow. A handful of scattered crates and boxes lined the walls of the room, and in one corner two AK-47 rifles leaned against a large four-gallon water canister.
“Welcome.”
Ethan squinted up and to his right to see a pair of dark eyes observing him. A thick scarf covered the rest of the man’s face. He looked about twenty-five years old, his hair thick and black, coarse stubble peeking above the scarf. Ethan looked into those eyes and did not like what he saw there.
“Who are you?” he asked, already knowing the answer but eager to establish some sort of dialogue with his captors. Keep them talking, always keep them talking.
The dark eyes narrowed cruelly. “Are you that stupid?”
Ethan managed to hold the Palestinian’s gaze with a thin veneer of bravado.
“You don’t look like one of the good guys.”
The man leaned close to him. “You parachuted into Gaza from an Israeli airplane at night. You don’t look like one of the good guys either.”
“Where is Rachel?”
The features creased into a smile that conveyed no hint of warmth or comfort. “She remains well.”
“Let me see her.”
The man straightened, glancing at his companion before whirling and plunging his fist deep into Ethan’s stomach. A surge of air blasted from Ethan’s lungs as