THE PROMISED WAR Read online

  THE PROMISED WAR

  Thomas Greanias

  Deep beneath the ancient city of Jerusalem lies a secret that knows no bounds, devastating enough to reach across time. History’s greatest spy story begins here.

  For a millennium, Jerusalem’s Temple Mount has been at the center of war and death. There’s never been a time when blood wasn’t spilled upon this ancient, sacred site. Flash forward to present-day Jerusalem, where 35-year-old Israeli counterterrorism agent Sam Deker has just thwarted the most recent act of violence—an attempt by radical Palestinians to blow up the Dome of the Rock mosque and pin the blame on right-wing Orthodox Jews. The threat, however, is a diversion. Deker himself is the real target. He is captured and taken to neighboring Jordan, where he is tortured because of his deep knowledge of Israel’s most closely guarded state secret.

  Deker escapes with his comrade Uri Elezar, making it all the way to the border, only to be taken down at the banks of the Jordan River. This time, however, Deker wakes up in the middle of the ancient Israelite army on the eve of its historic siege of Jericho. Deker doesn’t know if he is dead, in some torture-induced psychosis, or really back in time. But General Bin-Nun has declared a colossal holy war, and he’s sending Deker and Elezar on a dangerous mission to spy on the Promised Land in advance of the invasion.

  For Deker, it’s his only hope to escape this genocidal hell. Then he finds himself in the arms of a beautiful enemy named Rahab, caught in a web of deadly betrayal, as he struggles to unlock the truth, secure Israel’s future and his own, and save the twenty-first century from The Promised War.

  THE PROMISED WAR

  Also by Thomas Greanias

  The Atlantis Revelation

  The Atlantis Prophecy

  Raising Atlantis

  THE

  PROMISED

  WAR

  A THRILLER

  Thomas Greanias

  To friends Mark and Melinda, Bill and Priscilla,

  Frank and Jeanne, Skip and Lara and all who have

  devoted their lives to breaking down the world’s walls of

  misunderstanding through their love and compassion to

  people of every race, color and creed.

  They did not gain possession of the land by their own sword,

  but by your mighty hand, because you favored them.

  —Zabur 44:3 (Psalm 44:3)

  1

  JERUSALEM

  The Dome of the Rock mosque rose like the moon behind the towering wall that surrounded the Temple Mount. Sam Deker cleared the top of the wall and dropped into the gardens below, a wraith in the night. He glanced at the illuminated hands of his Krav Maga watch. Seven minutes to three. He had told Stern fourteen minutes back at the van. He had used up six. Time was running out.

  Deker reached into his combat pack and pulled out a brick of C-4. He had enough bricks to take out half of the thirty-five-acre complex. If he had any doubts about this operation, now was the moment to turn back. He slipped the C-4 back into his pack and moved through the maze of trees and shrubs.

  The Temple Mount was the most contested religious site in the world. For Muslims, the eight-sided, golden-capped Dome of the Rock mosque protected the “noble rock” that they believed to be the foundation stone of the earth and the place from which the prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

  But religious Jews believed the rock was the place from which God gathered the dust to create the first man, Adam, as well as the site of King Solomon’s Temple. According to Jewish prophecy, it was also where a new temple would be built—once the Dome of the Rock was gone. Many of these Jews, like Deker’s fanatical superior officer, Colonel Uri Elezar, refused to set foot on such holy ground.

  None of this was a problem for Deker. He could care less. Deker had been recruited by Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet, precisely because he was a secular American Jew who had served with the U.S. Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan as a demolitions officer. Who better to protect the Temple Mount, he was told, than a twenty-six-year-old who specialized in the destruction of major structures and equally offended both sides of the religious divide?

  Deker followed the route he had planned well in advance, timing his steps with the movements of the Palestinian security guards of the Islamic Waqf, or religious trust.

  For almost a thousand years the Waqf had served as the protectors of the Temple Mount, even after Israel captured Jerusalem in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Such was their status as the true guardians of Islam—and allegedly above the petty political interests of the modern Palestinian Authority, which claimed it had sovereignty over the site.

  Deker, however, knew the Waqf to be as political as any Muslim organization; it simply saw the Arab-Israeli struggle in terms of centuries, not decades. So far as the Waqf was concerned, Israel’s resurrection as a modern state in 1948 after three thousand years of exile was but a foul blot on the long scroll of history. Israel, meanwhile, decided it best to prevent unnecessary provocations by its own more zealous citizens. So not only did it allow the Waqf to continue to manage the Temple Mount, it even enforced a controversial ban on Jewish prayers there.

  When Deker finally reached the east wall of the Dome of the Rock mosque, he pressed his back against the blue ceramic tiles of the outer wall and peered around the corner. A Waqf guard was making his way across the vast plaza toward the other mosque on the Mount, the silver-capped Al-Aqsa. Deker waited until the guard passed under the ma’avzin arches and disappeared down the steps to the lower plaza. Then without hesitation he darted across the colonnaded entrance of the mosque and ducked inside.

  The Waqf officer in charge that night was rounding one of the titanic marble columns that supported the dome twenty meters overhead when Deker entered the mosque. The Palestinian managed to grab his radio, but before he could engage the device to transmit even a sound, Deker gave him a chop to the throat. He crumpled to the floor.

  Deker made sure the guard still had a pulse before he turned to his right and followed the plush ruby carpet to the steps that led down to a cave dedicated to King Solomon. A relic of the Crusades, the cave had been carved out by the Order of Knights Templar after they had converted the Dome of the Rock into their Templum Domini, or “Temple of Our Lord.”

  Medieval maps marked the cave as the “center of the world,” and the “well of souls” beneath it was said to have once served as the resting place of the legendary lost Ark of the Covenant. According to the ancient biblical account, the sacred Ark—an ornate box made of shittimwood and coated with gold—contained the original Ten Commandments, the tablets that God gave to Moses at Mount Sinai as the ancient Israelites wandered the desert in search of the Promised Land. Deker thought God—Yahweh to the Israelites—should have simply given Moses a map. It would have saved the Israelites forty years and countless lives.

  But the Knights Templar couldn’t hold the Temple Mount for long. A few years later it was back in the hands of the Muslim Waqf, where it had remained that past millennium.

  Recently, the Waqf had quietly begun a massive subterranean tunneling operation. The Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, feared that the Waqf was on the verge of discovering an ancient network of chambers and corridors deep beneath the mount that predated even the First and Second Jewish Temples. The front door to that network was none other than the well of souls beneath the Dome of the Rock.

  Adjan Husseini, the Palestinian head of the Waqf in Jerusalem, was kneeling facedown in prayer when Deker entered the cave. At the sound of Deker’s footsteps, he lifted his head and started at the sight of the C-4 brick Deker removed from his pack.

  Looking Husseini in the eye, Deker held the brick up and said, “Boom.”

  “Commander Deker.” Husseini r
ose to his feet. “Go ahead. Take the shot.”

  Deker put the C-4 brick back into his pack and took out his BlackBerry. Draping one arm around Husseini’s neck, he extended the other and snapped a photo with his phone’s camera. He then e-mailed it to Colonel Elezar.

  “It’s time-stamped,” Deker said, putting the phone away. “I copied you too.”

  But Husseini, eyes wide, was staring at the explosives and blinking LED displays inside Deker’s open pack, catching on that the C-4 charges were real. “You could have blown us all to bits!”

  Deker said, “I promised you that I would expose loopholes in your security in the hopes you’d finally relent and let us put up the electronic surveillance net.”

  “So you can spy on us.”

  “So we can better defend the Dome of the Rock from the ultra-Orthodox Jews who want to destroy it so that they can erect a Third Temple. Or from radical Palestinians who would pin the blame on Orthodox Jews. You’ve seen the intel. The threat’s real and it’s imminent.”

  Husseini said nothing for a moment. A hole in the six-foot rock ceiling allowed a shaft of light from the mosque above to illuminate several small altars and prayer niches around the chamber. Deker could see Husseini’s eyes study him with bitter resentment through the haze of incense and flickering candlelight.

  “You knew from the start that we’d never agree to Israeli surveillance,” Husseini said. “Yet, you proceeded to pull this dangerous stunt only to humiliate us.”

  Husseini was baiting him now, stalling. Deker sensed a trap and realized he had no idea where the Waqf guards outside were at the moment. He thought of Stern back at the van. It was time to leave.

  “This security test isn’t nearly as dangerous as the weapons cache you’ve been stockpiling in the southeast corner under Solomon’s Stables,” Deker said.

  Surprise registered on Husseini’s face, although Deker wasn’t sure if it was real or manufactured by the man.

  “Oh, yes, we know about that,” Deker told him. “And that tunnel you’ve been digging right under this cave. If anyone is going to start the fire, it’s going to be you.”

  Husseini picked up a bronze candelabra and brought it down heavily onto the floor’s marble slab. It gave out a hollow thud, revealing the existence of a lower chamber, the well of souls. His face was an unreadable mask again.

  “Is that really your concern here tonight, Commander Deker? Or are you afraid we might find something that Israel has been hiding from the world? Wise men have long believed that a cosmic portal exists here, a tunnel through space and time that leads to paradise.”

  Deker paused. “Or maybe it’s the gate to hell.”

  Husseini was angry now. The expression on his face didn’t show it, and his voice was steady and subdued. But his words were bitter and sharp.

  “You think you’re so special, Deker—better than the rest of us. That you’re the human pin in a live grenade, standing alone between old Arabs like me and Jews like your Colonel Elezar. But know this: the Jews won’t stop until they have destroyed the dome above us. Armageddon is inevitable. It’s a time bomb that will go off. You can’t stop it. Just like you couldn’t prevent your girlfriend from blowing herself up with an explosive made by your own hands.”

  Deker felt the world give way under his feet at the thought of his Rachel and the horrible mistake he had made that had cost her her life. But he stood firm, emotionless in his expression, and turned to face Husseini, who picked up a ceremonial washbowl with a candle from the altar.

  “I’m told the device looked something like this,” Husseini said, stroking the red and black ceramic pattern. “You and your IDF masters intended to assassinate a Hamas militant inside the home of a Palestinian government official. But by some mystery known only to Allah, you mixed up the bowls, and the one with the explosive ended up in the hands of your beloved as she prepared to light her Shabbat candles to celebrate the first night of the Passover at the Western Wall. Mercifully, she perished the instant you hit your remote detonator. News reports said the six injured Jews around her took several hours to die.”

  In that second, Deker wanted to reach over and rip out Husseini’s throat. And he would have, if he didn’t know that’s exactly what Husseini wanted him to attempt.

  “The grief of your error must torment you every waking hour and haunt you in your sleep,” Husseini went on, the corners of his mouth turning into a slight smile at having gotten even the suppression of a reaction out of him. “Perhaps that’s why you can’t leave this place. To you it was always a holy pile of rubbish, but to her it was her faith and life. Now it’s her tombstone and you are a ghost stumbling in the graveyard of history. But it’s impossible to bring her back. We can’t change the past any more than we can change the future.”

  “That hasn’t stopped you from trying.” Deker produced a pottery shard he had found in an open trench at the base of the eastern wall. He pointed it like a dagger at Husseini’s chest. “Your bulldozers are destroying ancient First and Second Temple artifacts. As if you can erase Israel from history.”

  Husseini’s eyes flickered in fear for the first time that night as he looked at the shard in Deker’s hand, clenched so tight that Deker didn’t know he had cut himself until he felt a trickle of blood through his fingers. The Palestinian seemed to realize he had pushed Deker too far, but he stood defiant.

  “Keeping your dead lover’s memory alive doesn’t change the fact that Jerusalem has always been an Arab and Islamic city,” Husseini said, sticking with the party line to the end. “This piece of pottery you are waving at me is a plant. No Jewish temple ever stood here.”

  “Right,” Deker said, placing the bloodstained shard on the small altar as a souvenir of this encounter. “Neither did I.”

  “Would that were true,” Husseini told him. “But a man at war with himself can’t keep the peace forever. You have a gift for destruction. You cannot suppress the expression of your nature forever. You will set the fire, not us. Because you are the fire. A tool to be used by your masters.”

  Deker wiped his bloodied hand on his trouser leg, gave him a slight bow and turned toward the cave entrance. He then vanished up the steps, leaving Husseini to his prayers.

  • • •

  Three minutes later—and six minutes later than he had promised Stern—Deker rappelled over the eastern wall and landed on the roof of a yellow Caterpillar backhoe loader parked against the base. He jumped off and raced down the slope of the Muslim graveyard abutting the wall, weaving his way through the tombstones toward the parked Gihon Water and Sewage Company service van.

  He stopped the second he saw the cracked windshield and unmistakable bullet hole.

  Deker whipped out his Jericho 9mm pistol from his pack and rushed to the driver’s side of the van, aiming his Jericho through the window with one hand as he threw open the door with the other. Stern was slumped over the wheel, motionless. Deker felt sick with rage. He pushed Stern’s head with the steel nose of his gun. The head rolled to the side, lifeless, revealing a bloody hole in the temple.

  A flash in the driver’s-side mirror caught Deker’s eye and he glanced back to see a black van barreling up from behind. In the same motion, Deker jumped into the Gihon van, pushed Stern’s corpse away and slid behind the wheel. He heard the squeal of brakes and the crash of boots on the ground. As he turned the ignition and shifted gears, the glass behind him shattered.

  He felt a prick in the back of his neck and he lurched forward into the dashboard. His head hanging down, everything spinning, he saw Stern’s twisted face staring at him before everything exploded in a burst of light.

  2

  The flash of light faded and Deker woke up to a nightmare of pain and confusion. His head was being knocked to and fro by the butt of a gun. He blinked his eyes open to see his superior officer, Uri Elezar, handcuffed and hanging upside down on a Nazi-style “Boger swing” with a rod behind his knees, his mouth open in agony. But Deker couldn’t hear anything. Th
en another whack to the head opened his ears, and something like the whine of a jet engine filled his head before it faded into an irritating ring and Elezar’s screams filled the room.

  “We are the Jewish people!” Elezar shouted. “We came to this land by a miracle! God brought us back to this land! We fight to expel the non-Jews who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land!”

  Deker watched a large figure standing next to Elezar strike the soles of his blackened feet and his back with a truncheon. Elezar cried out, and Deker saw drops of blood from Elezar’s cut forehead hit the tile floor. The floor was covered with white powder, possibly salt, and underneath Deker could see a Byzantine mosaic.

  “We are the Jewish people!” Elezar again rasped loudly. “We came to this land by a miracle! God brought us back to this land! We fight to expel the non-Jews who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land!”

  A large face with dark hooded eyes appeared in front of Deker, and a hand reached out and snatched the silver Star of David hanging around Deker’s neck and dangled it before his eyes. The IDF insignia in the center came in and out of focus. Then a hand snapped his head back, thick fingers pulled his eyelids apart and a hot beam of light blinded him.

  A voice in English with a thick Arab accent said, “Still with us, Jew? Maybe we’ll have better luck with you.”

  The accent of his torturer, the farruj-style beating of Elezar and the mosaic on the floor suggested to Deker that the enemy in the room was the General Intelligence Department, or GID, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan’s powerful spy and security agency. All of which didn’t make any sense, as Jordan was at peace with Israel and a proven ally of the United States in the war on terror. But it told him was that he wasn’t getting out alive.