THE PROMISED WAR Page 11

  “I was dispatched to Adam with earthmoving equipment and explosives if necessary to clear stones from the river and prove to the Jordanians that Israel wasn’t at fault,” Deker continued.

  “And what happened?” Elezar demanded.

  “We cleared the rocks but the water still didn’t flow. That proved to everybody that the real issue was the farmland on both sides of the river. It was siphoning off the water and causing the drought, turning the Jordan into the sick trickle of a stream that you and I know in our own time,” Deker said. “Still, I always had my doubts about how the stones got there in the first place.”

  “And now, I suppose, you know for certain?”

  “Yes, I do,” Deker told him. “I put them there.”

  27

  The next morning Deker and Elezar, along with the Judah Division officers Salmon and Achan, left the camp at Shittim and headed toward Adam. The small town was a good seventeen kilometers upstream from Shittim and a full day’s march. So they rode on camels instead of horses to cut the number of times they had to stop for water.

  The entire area was controlled by the Israelite tribe of Gad, which was going to commit its troops to the crossing into Canaan but keep the land east of the Jordan. Deker thought the choice ill-advised, as the Gadites would forever expose themselves to attack on three sides, whereas the tribes that crossed the Jordan and settled in Canaan would have the river to their east and mountains all around as natural barriers.

  But it wasn’t worth the fight to second-guess a Gadite. That much Deker could tell halfway along the march when they watered their camels at a small town in the low plains called Beth-Nimrah. More than two hundred armed Gadites were waiting to escort them the rest of the way to Adam. Big, burly warriors with rough beards and sheepskin caps, the Gadites clearly helped Bin-Nun’s army flex its muscle wherever it went. Their torn tunics looked like rags on their swarthy physiques, which revealed a definite penchant for body piercings but, oddly, no tattoos.

  Deker had tried to explain to Bin-Nun back at Shittim that this was going to be a small operation. But Bin-Nun would have none of it, insisting on a full contingent of Gadites to assist Deker in damming the Jordan at Adam. Furthermore, Bin-Nun had also insisted on not allowing Deker to carry his C-4 but instead entrusting the bricks to Achan and the detonators to Salmon.

  Only if they succeeded with the dam would Bin-Nun reconsider sending Deker on to Jericho with the rest of the C-4 that Kane the Kenite was holding on to. Such was the trust Deker had inspired with the general after his successful spy mission in Jericho.

  Some things never changed.

  “So I hear you got some milk and honey in the Promised Land,” Achan said, riding up on his camel beside him after they left the town. “And I hear she’s got money too.”

  The young Judean was starting to amuse Deker as a comic foil to his big and sober friend Salmon, who was leading the line at the front with Elezar and one of the Gadites.

  Deker dodged the question with a wink and asked, “Salmon still have a bug up his ass because he wasn’t the first to cross the Jordan?”

  “He thinks that General Bin-Nun has shown no faith in Yahweh by following your plan.”

  “So we should wait for the waters to dam themselves at Adam?”

  “If Bin-Nun wants the people to see that Yahweh’s favor rests on him as with Moses, yes,” Achan said. “Salmon believes you are stealing Yahweh’s thunder with your magic mud bricks.”

  “Is that all?” Deker asked.

  “He also says that the blazing star you wear proves we’re doomed. That we may well conquer the Promised Land, only to fall into the same evil as those whom Yahweh has brought judgment upon. Salmon’s feelings run deep like the Jordan.”

  For a moment Deker was tempted to give Achan some consolation to share with his good friend Salmon. But whatever else he was, he was no liar.

  “You got that right,” Deker said, and watched Achan’s face fall. “Tell Salmon I’ve seen the future of Israel, and this blazing star is it. Unless he prefers no future at all.”

  Achan’s shoulders slumped and they rode on in gloomy silence.

  Deker knew he could have spun a tale of a victorious future for Israel. But as he gazed at the yawning, rocky desert all around, he knew Israel’s future promised even more desolate wandering and backsliding than the past forty years in the Sinai Desert.

  The same arid emptiness had swallowed his own soul long ago, Deker realized. His own pilgrimage to adulthood and later through several twenty-first-century wars had been marked by the same physical and spiritual wanderings as these Hebrews. He, too, had been prone to pursue anything but the faith of his fathers, intent instead to carve his own way through the world, consequences be damned.

  Now he wondered if his own future was as bleak as Israel’s, even if he ultimately did succeed in saving Rahab and razing the walls of Jericho. For the first time, he could appreciate Salmon’s angst. To win a war and lose your soul was no victory at all. Only his thoughts of Rachel’s and Rahab’s common faith in Yahweh gave him a sliver of encouragement. They saw hope for a world he had long thought hopeless, even if their hope wasn’t in humanity itself but in the mercy of the Creator who made them. Too bad the Creator had also apparently left them all to kill one another and make a hell on earth.

  Deker began to blink in the harsh glare of the sun as dust caked his face and sweat stung his burning eyes. They stopped briefly to water the camels and snack on wild figs. But there was little small talk, even among the Gadites. Every man seemed content to stay silent in his own thoughts, and Deker was no exception.

  The hours wore on and the sun dropped low until at last they came to Adam. The settlement wasn’t much to look at—a dozen widely dispersed huts with fire pits and pens for animals—and if Deker had blinked he would have missed it. Then they passed over a ridge between two hills at dusk to behold a massive field of dolmen monuments next to a narrow bend in the Jordan River. In the center was a small cluster of tents around a fire, where forty or so Gadites had pitched camp for them.

  Deker stared at the acres of dolmens all around. It was as if he were in the middle of Arlington National Cemetery, surrounded by thousands of tombstones. Suddenly Deker understood. The Gadites weren’t there to help him blow the riverbanks with his explosives. They were there in case he failed. They’d simply dam the waters with the dolmens.

  Salmon saw it too, and brought his camel around to Deker, scowling all the way over.

  “Behold the great faith of General Joshua bin-Nun,” Salmon said. “He trusts in Yahweh, yet leaves nothing to chance.”

  28

  The local Gadites greeted the arriving convoy with the sound of shouts and slinging of arrows into the air.

  “What’s all the fuss?” Deker asked Salmon.

  “They’re just blazing off for the hell of it,” Salmon said. “An annoying waste of ammunition. I’ve come to my wit’s end trying to explain to them that Kane’s smiths aren’t working night and day to manufacture arrowheads so they can shoot them off whenever they feel like it. But they consider themselves wild men of the mountains.”

  As they came down into the camp, more Gadites ran along beside them to take their camels. A fire burned in the center of the earthen floor, around which the arriving Gadites had clustered.

  “Food!” Achan declared.

  Deker saw that the Gadites had spread a rug on the ground in front of the fire for him and Elezar. A young Gadite offered him what looked like seasoned lamb sausage on a stick. The aroma, however, smelled foul to Deker and he politely declined.

  “You insult them,” Elezar said, joining the others in helping himself.

  Deker sat down and looked around the circle at the rough faces and curious eyes fixed on him. He decided to pretend he was back at Pink’s in Los Angeles and this lamb sausage was just a hot dog.

  Gingerly he took the stick on which the sausage was speared and bit off one end. The first sensation was his tongue burning
from the heat, but then the fat and spices exploded in his mouth and he realized these Gadite chefs could take on any Top Chef. Eagerly he devoured the sausage and accepted another.

  He wasn’t even halfway finished with his second before the Gadites peppered him and Elezar with questions.

  “What’s Bin-Nun doing down at Shittim?”

  “When is the invasion coming?”

  “Are you really angels of the Lord?”

  Elezar cleared his throat. “Tomorrow we will cave in the banks of the Jordan to dam the waters. Then you will see the power of Yahweh.”

  At that moment a sullen Salmon marched up with the detonators in his fist. He held them over the fire as if he were about to drop them into the flames.

  “Surely an angel of the Lord doesn’t need trinkets like these to work a miracle,” he said, his voice trembling.

  Deker glanced at Elezar, who neither approved nor disapproved of what was happening. In Deker’s mind, he was only encouraging the foolish Salmon. Slowly, Deker rose to his feet and faced Salmon.

  “No,” Deker told him, and then showed off his command of ancient Hebrew after a week of total immersion. “But apparently you do, big man, to stand up to an angel.”

  Salmon’s hand wavered over the flames. Any second Deker expected to see blisters forming on the skin.

  An alarmed Achan said, “Give the angel his flints for his magic mud bricks, Salmon! We’re under orders from Bin-Nun, under whom your father served.”

  “My father served Moses and the Lord God Yahweh!” Salmon cried out. “Moses needed no magic mud bricks, nor any angels to work miracles! He spoke to Yahweh face-to-face, and he parted the Red Sea with a stick!”

  Deker eyed Salmon’s white-red knuckles, looking for the first sign Salmon might let go. “Elezar, talk to me. What’s going on?”

  “Salmon is the son of Nahshon bin-Amminadab,” Elezar said in ancient Hebrew, so Salmon could understand the angels knew his family well apart from Bin-Nun. “He is a direct descendant of Judah and the brother-in-law of Aaron, brother of Moses. When Moses stretched out his staff on the banks of the Red Sea and the waters did not part, Salmon’s father entered the waters up to his nose and then the sea parted. This was more than twenty years before Salmon was born.”

  Deker now understood that Salmon had wanted to emulate his late father’s exploits and place of honor among the Israelites, but that he and Elezar had preempted that dream with their arrival.

  Salmon said, “Tell me, angel, is it true?”

  “Is what true?” Deker asked.

  “Everything our fathers told us,” Salmon said. “The Exodus—the plagues, the parting of the Red Sea.”

  Elezar said, “Of course it’s true, Salmon. Everything happened as your father said.”

  “Not you,” Salmon said. “I’m asking the bad angel.”

  The bad angel.

  Deker empathized with the young soldier. Everything Salmon had seen in the last few days—the bridge, the stones, the magic mud bricks, suspicious spies dubbed “angels”—was nothing at all like the Sunday-school stories Salmon, and Deker himself, had been taught growing up. Salmon’s world as a refugee in the desert was so paltry and brutish compared to his father’s big-budget Exodus, it was only natural for him to wonder if anything he had been taught ever happened.

  “I wasn’t there, Salmon,” Deker said. “Elezar is your angel of ancient history. I know only the future—or did. Everything is a bit up in the air right now.”

  Deker in that instant dove over the fire and tackled Salmon, slamming the back of Salmon’s hand with the detonators against the ground until the fist opened and they spilled out for Elezar to grab.

  “I serve Yahweh, the God of my fathers!” Salmon screamed. “We all serve Yahweh! We need no angels!”

  A fire log came down on Salmon’s head, knocking him out. Holding it at the other end was Achan. Deker got the distinct impression this wasn’t the first time Salmon had gone out like this.

  Deker sighed, looking sadly at the poor man sprawled in the dirt. Deker could relate to Salmon. After all, he himself had been questioning reality ever since his escape in Madaba. How could he fault Salmon for doubting his own reality?

  “Poor Salmon cannot compromise,” Achan explained. “That’s what makes him a warrior in battle but a fool around the fire.”

  29

  The following day Deker watched Salmon wake up on the west bank of the Jordan and get his bearings. Salmon frowned when he saw where he was—in a grapevine hold around a sycamore tree—and that the dam had been made below. Deker, meanwhile, looked down the long, dry riverbed to the south, where seventeen kilometers away a column of smoke rose into the sky.

  That was the signal from General Bin-Nun that the armies of Israel had successfully crossed over the Jordan.

  “Congratulations, Salmon, you’re on the other side,” Deker told him, and offered him a fig. “The land of milk and honey. Want some?”

  Salmon refused, seemingly determined to go on a hunger strike until he saw the hand of the Lord. “Have the Ark and the people crossed?”

  “See for yourself.” Deker pointed out the distant, distinctive pillar of smoke on the west bank. “I’m sure Phineas and his Levites dipped their toes in the Jordan as soon as the water table dropped below the top of the washout bridge.”

  “Some miracle,” Salmon said in defeat.

  “Yes. Actually, look over there at our dam.” Deker pointed it out to him. “See the mud between the boulders? See the small waterfalls? It’s beginning to break up under its own accord from the force of the water. I won’t have to use my magic mud bricks after all. The Jordan will be back at flood stage in no time.”

  Deker himself was eager to reach the new Israelite camp, grab the rest of his C-4 and finally save Rahab and blow the walls of Jericho once and for all. Then history would be right again—and maybe Israel and himself too.

  “‘Our people,’” Salmon muttered. “What do you know about our people?”

  “Only their future.”

  Salmon stared at the IDF dog tag with the Star of David emblem dangling from Deker’s sunburnt neck. “I see the future in your Blazing Star. If that is the seal of Israel, then our future is as bleak as Bin-Nun feared. We will conquer the Promised Land only to be conquered by the false gods of foreigners.”

  “These foreigners are your cousins, Salmon, and some of them fear and worship Yahweh.”

  “Like this whore you spoke of with Bin-Nun?” Salmon seemed singularly unimpressed.

  “Yes. Unlike you, this whore doesn’t need to see the miraculous signs of Yahweh to believe. Her faith is greater than yours.”

  “You offend me.”

  “That’s not too difficult,” Deker said. “But don’t worry. In three thousand years Israel will still have those like Phineas and Elezar to carry the Law around and enslave the people. Israel will still be surrounded by her enemies on all sides. People like Kane the Kenite will still give Israel weapons, even some that can incinerate cities in the blink of an eye like Sodom and Gomorrah.”

  They sat silently for a while watching the dam naturally break up from the pressure of the waters behind it. First the large chunks of mud broke off, and then came the waterfalls. The rocks would be swallowed up by the rising floodwaters and disappear.

  Deker then helped untie the young Judean from his tree and get him to his feet. “Salmon, would you care to lead us to the new camp Bin-Nun is setting up in the Promised Land? Believe it or not, he wouldn’t share the location with me in advance.”

  Deker’s gesture seemed to pick up Salmon’s spirit a bit, although the soldier tried not to show it over the course of the long and winding route they and the two hundred Gadites had to travel to avoid any trouble with long-range Reahn patrols.

  The day wore on, slowly giving way to night. The convoy stopped to rest, the Gadites pulling out dried dates and flatbreads from their packs, and supplementing their meager meal with fresh figs and other fruits they p
ulled from surrounding trees. After an insufficient amount of time to sleep, they rose before dawn and pressed on toward the new Israelite camp.

  As the horizon blazed red with dusk, they straggled down the rocky slope toward the Jordan and into the camp. Deker smelled smoke.

  They passed over a ridge and saw the plains below. Deker immediately knew something was horribly wrong. Hundreds of columns of fire and smoke billowed up into the night above the sea of tents. The last time he had seen anything like it was during his first tour of duty with American forces in Iraq.

  “We’ve been attacked!” he shouted, and raced ahead of the contingent behind him toward the inferno.

  30

  Deker jumped off his camel and raced down the hillside toward the new Israelite encampment, watching the columns of smoke rise into the setting sky, worried that the war for the Promised Land was over before it had even begun and that Israel’s future and his own were lost forever.

  His first hint that something was off was the Judean guards at the eastern edge of the camp. Unlike the Gadites back at Adam, they welcomed him not with shouts and arrows into the air but with bows trained on him until they saw Salmon, Achan, Elezar and the Gadites behind him with their banners.

  “Has Hamas struck?” Deker asked.

  “No,” said a guard. “As soon as the Amorite kings west of the Jordan and all the Canaanite kings along the coast heard how Yahweh had dried up the Jordan before us until we crossed over, their hearts melted in fear and they no longer had the courage to back up Hamas and face us! Yahweh reigns!”

  “Then what happened?” Deker demanded. “Where is the rest of the army?”

  But the guards preferred instead to report everything to Salmon in clipped words Deker couldn’t understand.

  As Deker left them and marched ahead toward the camp, he saw no men, only women with baskets full of grain picked in the Promised Land. Some were dumping their grain into four silos freshly dug into the side of a small hill. On the hill were six distinctive redbud trees, their thick, bent trunks ablaze with pink flowers. Beyond the hill was the rest of the camp: tents, tarps, stables and the distant plumes of smoke and fire.