THE PROMISED WAR Page 7

  “It won’t be long before they figure out what happened to the patrol,” Elezar whispered as they walked. “You’re going to have to make your assessments quickly if we’re to have any hope of getting out before the gate closes.”

  Deker nodded. Like everything else in this world, Jericho paradoxically struck him as smaller than he had envisioned and yet more formidable just the same. Jericho’s mound looked to be barely eight acres if that, maybe the size of six square blocks in modern midtown Manhattan.

  “I’ve got the pop count here at three thousand—maybe four thousand during the day when it swells from workers and tradesmen from the surrounding areas,” Deker said, applying the ancient numerical ratio of five hundred people per urban acre. “That gives us a troop count of anywhere between eight hundred to fifteen hundred tops.”

  Elezar must have detected the dismay in his voice, because he asked, “Meaning what, exactly?”

  “Meaning who needs Yahweh when you outnumber the Reahns ten to one?” Deker replied.

  “Maybe Bin-Nun should even the odds by instead attacking Hazor to the north with its population of thirty thousand,” Elezar said in an icy monotone. “You forget we’re but two men in this city of three thousand. That’s fifteen-hundred-to-one. You like those odds? And what about the mysterious ‘shadow army’ that Caleb and Bin-Nun are so worried about? Their ranks, if they exist, could number like the stars in the heavens or the grains of sand in the sea.”

  Deker said nothing and looked up at the sheer fortress wall that rose above them like a stone monolith with nothing but a horizontal slit near the top for still more faceless slingers and archers. Beyond it, the city’s signature spire tower rose higher still. Even if the Israelites could ladder over the city wall in superior numbers, they’d be blocked by this even more immense wall inside, surrounded by the spearmen and soldiers on the ramparts above.

  “Ladders are no good,” Deker reported. “The first five meters of that concrete revetment wall will kill them before they even reach the rest of the city wall. All the while, the archers on the ramparts have clear shots from every angle. Then there are the four main towers, two along the lower city walls and two more along the upper fortress walls. On top of that, there’s the fifth tower rising above the entire city.”

  They could barely see the glint of spears moving back and forth on the ramparts as they walked. Above them was the second line of sharpshooters atop the fortress wall and, above them all, the stone spire.

  Tunneling was out too, Deker could see. The city wall extended belowground, thanks to its concrete skirt, and the city itself sat on a mound inside. As for a sneak attack through the sewer system, the drainage holes were too small for a man to crawl through, and the main well for freshwater, just to their south, had to drop fifteen meters to the natural spring below. It was guarded with its own platoon of Reahn troops and topped with iron crossbars like the main gate. A huge circular stone the size of one of those monster dolmen slabs back at Shittim sat nearby, and Deker expected the Reahns used it to seal off the well any time they closed the main gate.

  “You look and I’ll listen,” Elezar said.

  They joined the foot traffic moving between the market district and the commercial district on the city’s south side. Deker noted the large number of metalworkers, carpenters and masons. They would be the ones who reinforced the walls whenever earth tremors or water damage eroded their foundations. Then there were the tanners, potters, tailors, bakers and cheese makers he would have expected. One small winery employed workers to stomp on grapes. Their hands had been cut off. Theft was no more tolerated here than bribes.

  Most striking to Deker was the grain. It was everywhere: overflowing from jars, drying in stalks on rooftops, being carried back and forth in baskets. This was the harvest in the land of milk and honey. The people were shoving grain into every silo and orifice in the city. And the flow of a water chute from the fortress above suggested massive water cisterns of the kind found on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

  “Everything looks fine, but I smell fear,” Deker said. “They’re pretending like there’s no threat of an invasion. But they’re preparing for one just the same.”

  “That’s good,” Elezar said.

  “No, that’s bad. Because they have enough grain and water to outlast an Israelite siege for years.”

  The reality was that, at first glance, Deker didn’t see how Bin-Nun could avoid taking Jericho without suffering massive casualties. The losses in such a so-called victory would break the back of his war machine, demoralize the Israelites and open them to attack by Jericho’s stronger neighbors in Canaan.

  The walls had to come down first, somehow. There simply was no other way. And yet, the longer their shadows grew from the setting sun, the taller and more impregnable those walls appeared.

  Elezar seemed to read his mind. “So, could you bring down the walls with your C-4?”

  “I thought that was Yahweh’s job.”

  “Maybe we are God’s hand.”

  Deker asked, “How did the walls come down in Scripture?”

  “The book of Joshua says the walls fell outward, not inward, and the Israelites marched single file up into the city.”

  Deker nodded as he looked around. The trick was ultimately going to be to find a compromised or hollow part of the upper wall and plant the C-4. That would steer the rest of the wall in the proper direction as it collapsed. If he did it right, he could actually use the avalanche set off by the wall cascading down the sloping city to take out a portion of the lower wall to boot. And if he was truly brilliant, the resulting collapse of the city wall would create its own ramp over that lower concrete wall at the bottom.

  “It’s possible,” Deker said. “In theory, it’s no different than dropping a high-rise in Tel Aviv. But it’s still a huge job and requires careful planning. We need to get a look inside that upper fortress.”

  They began searching for a second gate that connected the upper fortress with the lower city, and found what they were looking for at the end of the commercial district: a guarded bronze gate in the upper wall. The gate was open to reveal wide stone steps leading up to the fortress, where a massive temple, fountains, royal courtyard and government buildings could be glimpsed.

  But as they stepped toward the bronze gate, the blast of a horn sounded from a watchtower and a colored flag went up the stone spire. A platoon of shock troops emerged from the fortress and headed straight toward them.

  Leading the way was the little boy whom Deker had spared, his throat wrapped with some kind of bandage. He also had a black eye now, swollen shut. He was on some sort of leash, like an ancient bloodhound. His open and animated eye darted to and fro, looking for them, as if his life depended on it even more than when Elezar had held a blade to his throat.

  “They found the patrol,” Elezar said. “They know we’re here. We’re blown.”

  Deker turned away from Elezar’s accusing eyes as they beat a hasty retreat through the thinning crowds of the market square at dusk. They arrived just in time to see the main gate close with the clanking of chains and an earthshaking thud, sealing them inside.

  16

  Standing in the middle of the market square, Deker quickly saw they were blocked on three sides: by the advancing police troops from the city’s south side, the wall of the fortress to their west, and the closed city gate to their east. That left them only one direction of escape.

  “Rahab’s Inn,” Deker said. “It must be on the other side of the square.”

  He heard no argument from the purse-lipped Elezar as they disappeared into the twisting alleys of the city’s cramped north side. This part of town was further stratified, with the better housing uphill against the outside of the fortress wall above them and the slums pressed against the inside of the lower city wall.

  They hurried onto one of two main boulevards lined with palm trees that swayed in the darkening sky, then turned into an alley, emerging in another square. The evening
was alive with small groups of Reahns strolling about and filling up the taverns. If there was a nightly curfew, it was still a few hours away, and the inhabitants of the city had long ago made their peace with the presence of troops and police searches in their lives.

  “This is it,” Deker said, pointing to the red scarves hanging from the windows of the brothels around the square. “The red-light district. Wasn’t Rahab the hooker supposedly spared when Jericho fell because she tied a scarlet cord in her window so that the Israelite troops would avoid her house?”

  “Figures she’s the only thing you’d remember from Hebrew school,” Elezar quipped as he scanned the surroundings.

  “Not that it helps us,” Deker said. “Almost every window here has a red scarf.”

  It was a shabby but busy area dotted with fruit stands, sweetshops and taverns that encircled the square. Elezar made a beeline for an outside table stacked high with dates and pomegranates on one side and jars and cups on the other. The old Reahn woman behind the table didn’t even wait to pour them two cups of pomegranate juice.

  Deker downed the sweet juice in one giant gulp. He realized he hadn’t eaten all day, not since the night before in Shittim.

  Elezar played it better, taking a sip and nodding his appreciation before he placed the cup down, wiped his mouth with his hand and simply asked, “Rahab?”

  The woman seemed puzzled that any man would have to ask, but her eyes drifted to the four-story villa above a tavern and opposite what appeared to be the local police station. It was an open-fronted building with a courtyard on the square filled with straw chairs arranged under the trees.

  And packed under those trees, drinking the local ale, smoking the local weeds and playing a game with small pegs while they waited to be serviced, were a dozen Reahn officers.

  “We’re fucked,” Deker said under his breath.

  “For both our sakes, I hope you’re right, Deker,” Elezar replied. “Reahn custom prevents these men from barging into a woman’s room. They must ask permission to enter. Let’s go,” he said, and started for the inn.

  17

  Deker saw a lot of strange faces and could hear a number of different languages around the tavern as he and Elezar made their way through a large crowd of drunken Reahn soldiers and the bar wenches who served them. At the counter in back, the inn manager, a slight, dark man, looked visibly irked at being pulled aside on a busy night.

  “We’re looking for Rahab,” Elezar said.

  “You and everybody else,” the manager said, looking them over. “You don’t have the rank.”

  “Maybe this does,” Deker said, and removed from his neck the necklace with the crescent-shaped pendant that Caleb had given them and handed it to the manager.

  The manager frowned and looked up at him curiously. “Two specials for our guests,” he called to one of his bar wenches. He then disappeared into a back hallway while a young girl served them a couple of locally brewed drinks.

  Deker looked out over the tables to the plaza beyond, watching for trouble. Elezar’s ears, meanwhile, were up like antennae as they sipped their drinks. The brew tasted like a cross between beer and ouzo.

  “They’re all talking about Bin-Nun,” Elezar whispered. “The Israelites are undefeated in war and marching to Canaan. The bets are that he’ll hit Jericho first once the Jordan is past flood stage in a month or two. Then they’ll swarm Canaan like cockroaches. If only all the cities united with a national army, it would be the end of the vermin. If anyone can stop them, it’s Hamas. He’s got a secret army to defeat even Yahweh.”

  “What is it?” Deker asked.

  “Nobody knows. But some are worried Hamas is talking about doubling Reah’s offerings to Molech.”

  Before Deker could ask what that meant, the inn manager returned and said, “We’ve got rooms and girls for you both.”

  “I’m not interested in your girls,” Elezar scoffed.

  “Then I’ve got boys for you.”

  Elezar’s face turned red. “That won’t be necessary. I only want a room for the night and privacy.”

  “You, old and ugly, follow me,” the manager told Elezar, and then looked at Deker. “You, young and handsome, follow her. She’ll take you to Rahab.”

  The manager was pointing to a young girl no older than thirteen—a belly dancer, by the looks of her satin top, flowing pants, bells and glitter, and not a professional yet.

  As Deker followed the girl down a long hallway, he began to wonder what he would actually have to do with this woman Rahab in order to secure her help in escaping capture. Elezar had suggested she was likely two decades Deker’s senior, and old Caleb had warned from the outset that she was not to be trusted and should be treated only as their last resort. Apparently there was no such thing as a hooker with a heart of gold in this world, only a hooker with a heart for gold.

  Deker and the girl emerged into a cobbled courtyard surrounded by walls. One of those walls was the city wall itself, rising up five meters before his eyes. He could see a Reahn helmet and spear floating at the top.

  There was a gate at the far end of the courtyard and, on the right, stone steps leading to the upper levels of the villa, a level higher than even the city wall. This was where the girl stopped and allowed him to continue alone.

  As Deker climbed from one level to the next, a magnificent view unfolded below him. There were the catwalks and guards on the walls, and beyond the city he could see the dark hills to the north rolling beneath the moon.

  At the top of the steps he emerged onto a broad terrace. There was the scent of almond trees as he passed through an iron gate into a semitropical paradise. The sound of water was everywhere, splashing in fountains and gurgling in the conduits as it dropped from terrace to terrace between palm trees.

  In the center was a large divan with a rainbow of colorful pillows. To the side was a long table of jars and bowls of fruit beneath a pergola. The pergola had golden flax stalks piled on top, no doubt to dry during the day, which lent a Polynesian air to the terrace.

  Deker watched the door in the wall on the opposite side, waiting for Rahab to appear. But the door remained shut, and he walked over to the table beneath the pergola and helped himself to some dates. There he noticed one of the ornamental bowls was filled to the top with gold coins.

  Only then was he aware that she was already there. He put the dates down and turned to see her. She was standing at the balustrade of the terrace, looking out across the desert at the pillar of fire in the distance: the signal tower at Shittim.

  Her silhouette against the stars was a thing of beauty, and as his eyes adjusted to the nighttime, he could see her black mane of hair dropping between her bare shoulder blades.

  Elezar was wrong. This is a young woman.

  She was in some kind of silk wrap that rippled in the breeze, the moonlight revealing a flawless figure underneath. And when she turned to face him, he caught his breath.

  Rachel.

  The high cheekbones, the wide-set and intelligent eyes and the birthmark over her soft upper lip he could never forget. She could be nobody other than Rachel. Even the way her lustrous hair framed her perfect face was exactly the way he remembered her.

  Deker could feel her smoky gaze study him as she floated toward him, charging the air around her with palpable electricity. Then she unclipped the bronze clasp on her wrap, and he watched the silk fall like feathers to the tiles to reveal herself to him.

  She was wearing the necklace he had brought. The pendant dangled between her full breasts, round as the moon in the sky.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” she told him in Hebrew. Her voice was soft but confident.

  “Waiting for me?” he asked, astonished. “How long?”

  “My whole life,” she said, and then she kissed him with the most delicious lips he had ever tasted.

  18

  Deker stood there slack-jawed before this girl. And she was just a girl, perhaps only seventeen or eighteen, which was Rach
el’s age as he remembered her. But even Rachel hadn’t been this beautiful, and that alone bothered Deker. He began to wonder what sort of fantasy he now held in his arms. Everything inside him told him to run, but her lips felt warm to his as she kissed him again and placed his hands on her breasts. He dared not let go, afraid she might vanish before his eyes.

  She smiled as she lifted one of his hands and used it to lead him to her bed—the king-size divan strewn with pillows of assorted shapes and sizes. And without a further word they began to make love to each other under the stars, as if it were the most natural thing in the universe and they had known each other forever.

  Her body moved with a grace and in a way that suggested she had all the time in the world. His body responded in a way that suggested he would accept nothing short of eternity with her. She was bringing him to life, and he suddenly felt more awake than he had in years. He could feel his heart beating again, the blood coursing through his veins and pure electricity tingling across his entire body.

  Somewhere deep inside, the hard shell around his soul began to crack, light bursting through. The passion for life he had once shared with Rachel, the spontaneity he thought he would never feel again—that force of nature rose up inside him with a volcanic power that couldn’t be contained. He felt his spirit burst free into pure ecstatic flight.

  Only when it was over and they were back in each other’s arms on her divan beneath the starry sky, her long, soft legs draped over his own, did he realize that Rahab was not, in fact, his Rachel.

  Rahab was taller than Rachel, her raven hair a lighter chestnut color instead of the black he had first imagined. And, yes, more beautiful still. That this was what he should first notice deeply tormented him, and he looked into her eyes, bottomless black pools in which any man could easily drown.