Rafael crouched at the bottom of the ladder, enveloped in near pitch-blackness but for the glow of a low-watt lightbulb flaring some ten meters down the narrow, craggy walls of the tunnel.
He crept away from the ladder, careful to avoid the electrical cables secured with lengths of string that ran along the upper-left corner of the tunnel. The smuggling tunnels were periodically bombed by Israel, and as a result the Palestinians bothered little with such trivial concerns as electrical insulation.
The heat clung like a blanket to Rafael’s skin as he edged forward, holding his knife in a loose grip. He had no idea how many men might be hiding down in the tunnels, nor how they were armed. If he encountered anyone, they would have to be dispatched quickly and silently.
The harsh light of the bulb ahead obscured the tunnel beyond, preventing Rafael from seeing more distant threats. A small fly buzzed lazily around the light, entrapped beneath the earth. Rafael kept his gaze downward, sensing for movement ahead on the upper periphery of his vision as he ducked beneath the bulb. He crouched to avoid casting long shadows down the tunnel, and then peered ahead into the gloom.
Perhaps five meters or so ahead the tunnel turned right, to where a faint patch of light glowed from some unseen source. Rafael observed a particularly large cable entombed in the wall of the tunnel and guessed he was beneath the streetlight he had seen, the tunnel’s electrical supply spliced into the mains. That would mean that the tunnel indeed terminated beneath the houses at the opposite end of the street. He recalled that several were abandoned buildings, the skeletal remains of Palestinian homes and businesses pounded into oblivion by Israel.
He crept toward the curve in the tunnel and was halfway there when a flicker of a shadow drifted across the patch of light. Rafael froze and crouched down again.
The shadow began moving toward him.
Then he heard the footfalls. Urgent synapses fired across his brain, thoughts too rapid to process yet crystalline in their clarity. The shadow moved toward me. Footsteps, heavy, male. Moving slowly.
A chunky figure with broad shoulders and a thick neck appeared in the tunnel, the unmistakable shape of an AK-47 rifle cradled loosely in his grip. Rafael crouched down, concealed in the darkness between the two light sources. Don’t move. Movement is much more dangerous than staying still.
The figure lumbered closer, the footfalls growing louder and heavier, thumping rhythmically with the rolling beats of Rafael’s heart. Move without fear, without tension, without compromise. Breathe. The body now blocked the light from beyond completely, looming to fill Rafael’s field of view.
He relaxed his body and mind, exhaling a ghost’s breath as he did so.
Rafael lunged upward and forward even as the man’s eyes registered the form crouched in the tunnel before him. Rafael’s blade flickered in the weak light and plunged into the man’s throat with a quiet, crisp rasp.
The man’s cry gargled somewhere below his thorax, lost forever as the blade crossed his windpipe and severed his spinal column just above the third vertebra. Rafael caught the man as he fell, his body crumpling onto the ground in the center of the tunnel. He quickly slammed his hand over the man’s bearded mouth, slipping the blade out of his throat as he yanked the head to one side and jabbed the steel upward into his skull. A faint crackling of splintered bone just behind and below the ear, and the body jerked with a series of diminishing spasms before falling still. The undignified odor of spilled feces tainted the hot, stale air as Rafael slipped the blade out of the lifeless skull.
He stood quickly and forged ahead through the tunnel. There was nowhere to hide the body, and it could be discovered at any moment. Time was of the essence.
Ahead, somewhere beyond the turn in the tunnel, the sound of voices reached his ears.
What do you mean horrific?” Rachel asked, concern stretching her skin tightly across her features.
Hassim Khan massaged his temples. “You say that you went to Lucy’s dig site?”
“That was where I got the images on my camera.” Ethan nodded.
“I saw them,” Hassim said. “And the specimen that Lucy discovered was in a crate.”
“Yes, but it hadn’t been sealed yet.”
Rachel looked at Hassim. “What are you thinking?”
“We know that the remains alone are not reason enough for your daughter’s abduction: as you said, they could have left her there.”