his eyes almost burst from their sockets. Ethan gagged as he bolted forward over the blow, trying not to vomit as he strained to suck air back into his lungs.
“You may not,” his captor said simply, above the blood rushing in Ethan’s ears. “Who sent you here and why?”
Ethan sucked in another lungful of air, waves of nausea flushing and tingling like needles on his skin.
“Nobody sent us,” he gasped. “We were forced out of our airplane over Gaza.”
The Palestinian strolled across the room and grabbed a small chipped mug, dipping it into the open water canister and sipping from it as he returned to stand before Ethan.
“The airplane continued into Israeli airspace,” he said quietly. “It was not damaged so there was no reason to escape from it. I will ask you one more time. If you do not answer me properly, I will make you very sorry that you ever encountered me. Who sent you and why?”
Ethan shook his head, slowly gaining control of his breathing.
“Nobody sent us. We’re not Israeli. I’m American; so is Rachel. We were forced to jump from the airplane by an organization trying to stop us from reaching Jerusalem.”
The Palestinian looked across at his companion, who remained impassive, standing with his arms folded and regarding Ethan from behind a scarf that scarcely veiled a thick beard.
“That, my friend, would seem highly unlikely, would it not?” Ethan’s interrogator leaned close to him, the smell of tobacco thick on his breath. “If I were sitting where you are and you were questioning me, would you believe what you have just said?”
Ethan looked at the man and performed a rapid mental calculation.
“I’d wait and see what evidence turned up,” he said.
A cruel smile creased the man’s features. “Yes, so would I.”
He raised a hand and clicked his fingers. Instantly, the bearded man grabbed something from inside one of the nearby crates. Ethan recognized his rucksack. The Palestinian reached inside and produced Ethan’s camera, handing it to his companion.
The Palestinian held it to Ethan’s face.
“This, my friend, is my evidence.”
Ethan saw the screen change as the Palestinian cycled through the camera’s menu and selected a video. He felt a deep chill as he saw the film of Ayeem being beaten by the MACE guards out in the Negev Desert, his Bedouin companions held at gunpoint nearby.
They weren’t with us,” Ethan said quickly, aware of the sweat soaking his skin. “The man being beaten was our Bedouin guide, Ayeem. He was captured by those guards in the desert.”
The Palestinian’s features tightened as sheet lightning danced behind his dark eyes.
“And you filmed it. How do you say? Something for the folks back home?”
“I filmed it and then shouted out to them,” Ethan gasped. “If I had film of it, then they couldn’t kill Ayeem. They’ve chased us from that moment onward.”
The Palestinian sneered at him and stood upright, handing the camera back to his companion. They exchanged something and then he turned back to Ethan. Ethan saw one of the explosive devices he had stolen from the camp in the man’s hands. The Palestinian’s head blocked the light from the bulb. His voice was almost a whisper, but laden with an electric charge that crackled as he spoke.
“Each year, Israel attacks our homes with tanks and fighter planes. They kill innocent men, women, and children. They fire mortars at hospitals and United Nations buildings, and they shoot white-phosphorus rounds at fleeing Palestinians, burning them alive. They use remote- controlled drones to attack civilians hiding in buildings and then claim that they were being used as human shields.” He set the device down at Ethan’s feet and then reached down to his own waistband. From within it he withdrew a long, wickedly curved blade, a crescent of steel that glittered in the light. “My sister, my mother, my father, and two of my brothers were all killed during the wars that Israel has waged upon us, and I am not unusual in this. We all live among the ghosts of our murdered families.”
Ethan managed to drag his eyes away from the blade, looking instead at his captor.
“We did not come here to kill anyone,” he insisted.
The Palestinian looked at Ethan with an expression that was no longer angry but far beyond such a pitiful emotion. It was the look of a man who had descended through the worst dungeons of horror that mankind’s prodigious talent for inflicting pain could offer, and had returned fearing nothing, not even death itself.