THE PROMISED WAR Read online

  It was Molech incarnate.

  23

  Deker pulled out his sword and swung at Molech, sending the head of the bull floating away down the cave on two legs. But this Molech was slow and wobbly, and Deker soon tackled him to the dirt. He pulled off the bull’s head and saw the ravaged face of a Reahn soldier, or rather a former soldier. It looked like the man had tried to cut away a military tattoo from his shoulder.

  “Who are you?” Deker demanded in ancient Hebrew.

  The man’s eyes went wide, but not in fear. He began blabbering in the dialect of the Reahns, but Deker couldn’t understand him.

  “He wants to know if you’re really a Hebrew,” said a voice from behind that Deker immediately recognized as Elezar’s.

  “And where the hell have you been?” Deker demanded.

  Elezar stepped forward with a torch. “Finding an exit. There’s a cave that leads out the back of the mountain and down into a valley. It will take us a day to reach the Jordan, but if we avoid the Reahn scouts at the fords, we should be able to swim across and make it back to Shittim by the following day.”

  The would-be Molech nodded slowly to confirm to Deker what Elezar said.

  Elezar bent over the man and examined him under the light of his torch. “This man is dying,” Elezar said. “Look at his pupils, his pale-blue skin. No wonder the Reahn army cut him loose. We should let him die and go our way.”

  “A little late for that,” Deker said, and shoved the man up into a seated position against the cave wall. “Ask him what he’s doing running around playing Molech.”

  Elezar exchanged words with the man, who grew animated as he spoke quickly and waved his hands until he tired and they fell to his sides. Then the words came more slowly but clearly.

  “He says his name is Saleh,” Elezar translated. “General Hamas forced him to wear this real, hollowed-out head of a bull and roam the caves to scare local villagers so that in times of trouble they would avoid seeking refuge here and instead turn to the walls of Jericho for protection.”

  Deker asked, “And what did this guy do to deserve this kind of duty?”

  “Saleh says nothing. Hamas raped his wife and then offered up the daughter she bore to the great statue of Molech inside Jericho. The daughter was burned in the temple ovens. Then Hamas made Saleh a digger in the trenches outside Jericho where they leave the sick and the dead to rot until the sun peels the skin off their bones. He did this for months until one day there were no more sick—besides himself, at that point.”

  Deker frowned. “What do you mean? There are always sick people.”

  “Not in Jericho anymore,” Elezar said. “According to Saleh, Hamas proclaimed that Molech had healed all the sick and blessed Jericho with divine health and prosperity. That’s when Hamas sent Saleh to work the caves for the sake of the straggling believers in the outer valley. To keep them more scared of Molech than Yahweh. He is glad to see that the army of Yahweh has finally arrived and that at last the disease of Molech will be destroyed.”

  At that moment Saleh grabbed Deker by the shoulders with his gnarled hands and looked at him with his pale eyes, the light of life visibly fading. He babbled something unintelligible before his hands weakened and let go of Deker.

  “He said to burn the Reahns,” Elezar said. “Burn them all

  to hell.”

  24

  By noon the next day Deker and Elezar had safely crossed the Jordan and made it back to Shittim. After a quick debrief with old Caleb, some rest and supper, Deker sat silently in the command tent while Elezar delivered his assessment of Hamas and the morale of his troops to General Bin-Nun and his top forty officers.

  “Yahweh has surely given the whole land into our hands,” said Elezar, concluding his official report. “All the people are melting in fear because of us.”

  Not a word about Rahab, Deker thought, but that would be remedied soon enough. He would do everything in his power to persuade Bin-Nun to send them back to Jericho before any attack. He had to get back to Rahab and make things right for her—and Israel.

  It was the junior spy’s turn now, and as Elezar turned the presentation over to Deker he fixed his gaze with a look that warned him not to make trouble. God’s holy angels could not be split in their report, because heaven was not a house divided, and Bin-Nun wasn’t looking for anything other than a rubber stamp for his invasion.

  This much had been obvious to Deker as soon as they had reached the Judah Gate at the western entrance to the camp. The Judah Division had been at the eastern end of the camp when they had left for Jericho. While they were gone Bin-Nun had rearranged the order of the camp and troops, pitching it toward Jericho. But he had kept the signal tower with its cloud by day and fire by night east of the camp to fool both the Moabites and Reahns into thinking the camp was still pitched toward Mount Nebo. In so doing, he had shaved a good two or three days off their prep time in breaking down the camp to move out in battle column.

  Deker stood up before the clay model of Jericho that he had made. With a thin rod he pointed to and explained the fortifications of Jericho, detailing the composition of the walls, depth, height and defenses.

  “You saw what I did with my magic mud bricks to the old stone monument,” he began, and got nods and murmurs of approval from some of the commanders, although Bin-Nun and his defense contractor Kane remained stone-faced. “I can do the same to the walls of Jericho.”

  “But what are your mud bricks against those great walls?” asked Salmon from the back of the tent. He was standing in the outer ring of aides, who were supposed to be seen and not heard; but his offense was taken in stride, as it seemed to be the thought on all the commanders’ minds.

  “I only have to blow out a section of the wall for you to enter, not the whole thing, and I’ve got enough mud bricks. It’s like

  cutting a tree to make it fall in a particular direction. Let me

  show you.”

  He took his rod and tapped a spot on the north side of the upper fortress wall that he had specially prepared. The section fell like a drawbridge over the tops of the roofs to the lower city wall. Then he tapped the top of that lower wall and it, too, fell like a drawbridge to the reed mat.

  There were murmurs all around, and a clear desire for further explanation.

  “We don’t have to bring down all the walls to enter the city,” he told them. “Two pinpoint blasts—one in a weak section of the upper fortress wall and another in the lower city wall—will do the trick. The first blast will not only open the upper fortress wall, it will bring down the bricks on top of the buildings below like an avalanche, all the way down to the city wall. It may even be enough to smash through the lower city wall. But just in case, I will have a second blast to blow that wall in two. The bricks that spill down to the ground will create a slope that will enable you to climb over the lower revetment wall and into the city. From there you can climb straight up into the fortress, one after the other.”

  The commanders were amazed and delighted.

  All except for Bin-Nun.

  “You still have not solved the problem of gaining entrance to the city to plant your explosives,” the general said. “By your own assessments, the walls are insurmountable, and you’ll never pass through the main gate again. You fooled the guards once. But you can be sure they won’t make that mistake again, or Hamas will make them pay for it with their lives.”

  Deker glanced at Elezar, who instantly knew where he was going, and warned him with his eyes not to go there. “There is another way, General,” he said. “A way to pass through the walls.”

  Bin-Nun stared at him and told his commanders, “Leave us.”

  25

  One by one the commanders cleared the tent, none looking back, until besides him there was only Bin-Nun, Elezar and Salmon, whom Bin-Nun allowed to remain.

  Deker cleared his throat and said, “I was with the granddaughter of the woman who gave you refuge in Canaan forty years ago. I gave her the necklac
e her grandmother gave you before she died.”

  Bin-Nun closed his eyes. Elezar stared.

  “Her name, too, is Rahab, and as her grandmother did for you, so Rahab gave us refuge and helped us escape Jericho. In return, I promised that we would spare her life and those of her family.”

  Elezar said nothing but did not dispute it, including their promise to spare her.

  “Through her window in the north wall of Jericho, Elezar and I can get back into the city and plant the explosives,” Deker said.

  “If she doesn’t betray us,” Elezar finally chimed in. “There could be a contingent of Reahn soldiers waiting for us. We can’t trust a whore.”

  “She saved our lives,” Deker cut in.

  “By lying to her authorities,” Elezar shot back. “She is neither truthful nor trustworthy.”

  Bin-Nun seemed to wrestle with it for a moment, but then shook his head.

  “Elezar is right. It’s too risky. I cannot afford to let you go back and get caught. Before, you knew little. Now you know much. If you are captured, Hamas would have you, your explosives and our plans.”

  “Rahab can be trusted,” Deker insisted. “Thanks to her, I learned Hamas’ secret plan to destroy you.”

  Bin-Nun looked dubious. “Everybody has a secret plan to destroy us. How do I know this plan is real?”

  “The plan is as real as the secret bridge you’ve built,” Deker said, fixing his gaze on Bin-Nun.

  The haunted look that Deker had seen in the general’s eyes before he blew the dolmen monument had returned as soon as Deker said secret bridge.

  “Hamas knows you’re going to cross the Jordan at flood stage and not wait,” Deker explained. “He also knows that, even with the secret bridge you’ve built, it will take three days for all Israel to cross.”

  Elezar stared, speechless for once.

  “Hamas intends to bait you for a day and then attack when Israel is only halfway across, General,” Deker went on. “He’s got the Moabites lined up to wipe out the rear here on the east bank.”

  Bin-Nun was quiet, all his plans flushed. Elezar was amazed, either because of the quality of the intel or because Deker hadn’t played the card until now.

  “But we can help you, General,” Deker assured him. “You show me this bridge you’ve built, and I’ll show you how I can get Israel across in one day. Then it will be too late for Hamas to attack you when you’re at half strength, and the Jordan will fall behind you like a wall to protect your rear from the Moabites. Then you’ll let me return to Jericho through Rahab’s window and bring down its walls.”

  26

  Looks like wonders have finally ceased, Elezar.”

  Deker and Elezar stood with Caleb, Salmon and Achan on the east bank of the Jordan under the stars, just a stone’s throw from the forward base and stone table where Caleb had first given them their instructions to spy out Jericho. Now they saw the secret ford that Caleb and his stonecutters had been hiding all along.

  “It’s an Irish bridge,” a shocked and dismayed Elezar said

  out loud.

  “I see the bridge,” Deker said. “What makes it Irish?”

  “During the British Mandate of Palestine in the early twentieth century, Irish engineers in the British army breached dry riverbeds with concrete blocks that would survive the spring floods and allow vehicles to cross over,” Elezar explained. “That’s what Bin-Nun’s army corps of engineers seem to have done here.”

  Deker was impressed. Caleb’s stonecutters had constructed their own ford across the bottom of the Jordan by layering one stone atop another to build it up under the water’s surface. Then they topped the whole thing off with twelve massive dolmen slabs, each about seven meters long. In so doing, they had created a platform wide and long enough for forty thousand troops and their families to cross the Jordan.

  “So much for the parting of the Jordan, Elezar,” he said. “This explains how the book of Joshua claims that the priests who bore the Ark of the Covenant stood on dry land in the middle of the Jordan until all the people had finished crossing the Jordan.”

  Elezar reluctantly had to agree, but still managed to look down his self-righteous nose at Deker with a glare. Elezar was still steaming over Deker’s “dishonorable circumvention” of his authority back at camp by revealing the deal with Rahab. That Elezar learned of the secret Hamas plan to cut them off at the river at the same time as everybody else only further infuriated him. “You’re untruthful, Deker,” he had fumed. “And you cannot be trusted.”

  Neither, it seemed, could Bin-Nun.

  “Bin-Nun leaves nothing to chance,” said Salmon from behind, and with more than a hint of bitterness. “Nor to Yahweh.”

  Salmon and Achan must have known about the bridge all along. Yet another reason for Bin-Nun to sub him and Elezar for the Jericho mission in case they were captured and talked.

  “Maybe,” said Deker. “But your bridge runs below the surface of the water. Your engineers miscalculated how high the Jordan would rise at flood stage.”

  The Jordan had a zigzag current where its shallowest depths were in the middle. The center of the bridge actually broke the surface of the water every now and then, but it was clear the flooding was worse than even Bin-Nun had accounted for, and much of the bridge was a good meter underwater.

  “The swift current is a concern to the Levites carrying the Ark,” said a squeaky voice.

  Deker turned to see Phineas, who seemed to have perfected the art of creeping up silently and unannounced. “If anything were to happen, it would break the morale of the people even before they set foot in the Promised Land.”

  “I don’t know, Phineas,” Deker said. “It would be a shame to see the Ark float down the Jordan. But I’d rather enjoy watching you slip and fall on your fat ass.”

  Achan started to laugh but caught himself, assuming the stern look of the others.

  “We crossed the cliffs and canyons of the Wadi Zered to reach Shittim,” insisted old Caleb, who seemed to read Deker’s concern. “We can get all forty army contingents and forty thousand women and children across the Jordan. But it will take longer than the three days we allotted. The current is faster than we anticipated, and the floodwaters higher.”

  Caleb was waiting on him now for some kind of answer.

  “You get Kane to give me back my C-4, and I can get you all over the Jordan in one day,” Deker said.

  “One day?” Caleb repeated.

  Deker drew a groove in the ground with a stick to represent the Jordan. Then he put a rock in the center to represent the bridge.

  “In the American West, when a family wanted to cross a river, they brought their wagon upstream to break the current,” he said, knowing full well Caleb didn’t know what the hell he was referring to. But the old man got the idea. “We do the same upstream—say, at Adam, where the Jordan narrows. By blowing some rocks and caving the banks, we can dam the Jordan. That will slow the current, drop the water level and let you cross on dry ground, or bridge, so to speak.”

  Caleb and Phineas looked at each other for a moment and then slowly nodded. Salmon and Achan could not argue with the logic either. Elezar said nothing, but seemed to burn in anger at him all the same.

  “Now you’ll still camp on the banks for three days, but you’ll cross over in one,” Deker explained. “When Hamas sees your pillar of fire jump the Jordan that first night he’s going to shit his own bricks and call off his attack.”

  “And if he doesn’t?” Caleb pressed.

  “At least you’ll have your full army to fight.”

  Caleb was almost convinced, but not quite. “What about the Moabites hitting our rear guard?”

  “As soon as your last man is across the Jordan, you’ll send units back to haul out those dolmen slabs from the dry riverbed,” Deker said. “As soon as you send up a pillar of smoke to signal you’re all on the west bank, I’ll detonate a second blast up in Adam to blow the dam I created with the first blast. That will releas
e the floodwaters of the Jordan again. The force of that wave will wipe away what’s left of your bridge and drop a wall of water between you and the Moabites, keeping them where they belong on the east bank. It will also keep your people on the west bank from going wobbly when you attack Jericho. Because there will be no going back.”

  Caleb and the rest seemed to follow what he was saying, at least the gist of it.

  “This is the divine plan of Yahweh,” Phineas announced conclusively, almost reverently. “I will take this to Bin-Nun. He will tell the commanders to prepare the people to move out tomorrow. The Levites will lead the way.”

  “This is not the plan,” Salmon angrily muttered.

  “Good,” said Deker, ignoring Salmon and addressing Phineas. “And you’ll remind General Bin-Nun that he has Rahab the harlot to thank for this plan.”

  Elezar, however, was anything but pleased with the plan, though apparently for different reasons than Salmon. He saved his wrath for Deker until they were alone.

  “You’re a liar, Deker,” he said. “You pretend to be ignorant of Scripture and then propose we dam the Jordan at Adam. The book of Joshua says that’s exactly what miraculously happened, perhaps thanks to an earthquake.”

  “Or maybe the Israelites threw some boulders in,” Deker said, adding, “Really, I didn’t know.”

  “Tell me then how you came up with the idea,” Elezar pressed, refusing to let it go. “I suppose Yahweh personally presented it

  to you?”

  “Maybe,” Deker said. “My first year in the IDF, drought caused the Jordan River to recede to a level never seen before. This caused boulders to appear beside the Adam Bridge. It looked like a dam. Jordan accused Israel of stopping the flow of water so Israeli farmers could irrigate their crops while farms and tourism on Jordan’s side of the river withered.”

  Elezar’s angry eyes widened slightly, revealing he indeed recalled hearing something about the water crisis that had flared briefly between Israel and Jordan.