THE PROMISED WAR Page 9

  Rahab grew still. “You’re going to attack the Israelites.”

  “When they’re at their most vulnerable,” Hamas said. “I’m going to let Bin-Nun get half his people over. Then, when they’re split in two, half on the east bank and half on the west bank, we strike.”

  “‘We’?”

  “I’m going to kill their head, and then Moabite raiders will slay their tail in retribution for the slaughter of their women at the hands of the Levites,” Hamas announced. “Then we’ll finally rid this land of these locusts and I can accomplish what my parents’ pharaoh failed to do.”

  Deker could see the scenario that Hamas described vividly. He drew his sword back just a bit, overwhelmed with a desire to kill this swine right now, when the drop from the tip of his blade fell to the bowl and splashed softly on a grape.

  In that instant Rahab spoke loudly. “And if that doesn’t work?”

  Hamas didn’t seem to notice the splash or turn his face up to the pergola roof. Instead he picked another grape and stuffed it into his mouth and turned to Rahab.

  “I have a plan to save us in case we fail,” he mumbled with his mouth full. “Nothing I’d be stupid enough to share with you. Where did these spies say they were going?”

  “They didn’t,” she replied. “I don’t know which way they went. But from what you said, it seems plain that they’re going straight for the Jordan to report back to Bin-Nun. Think you can catch up with them?”

  “They’re dead already,” he promised her as he walked out

  of view and Deker heard a door open. Before it closed behind

  him, Hamas added, “Next time I see you, my flower, I’ll eat the sweeter fruit.”

  20

  It was a shell game as Rahab moved Deker from room to room, avoiding any Reahn soldiers until they finally reached the ground floor. There Rahab pulled back an ornate rug to reveal a trapdoor and stone steps. He followed her down the narrow steps to the cellar below her villa.

  Dust filtered down between the creaking wooden planks above, and Deker could hear the boots of the Reahn troops doing room checks. He looked down at the beaten earth below his boots and noticed it sloped upward to a small dark square in the far wall.

  “This way,” she told him.

  Rahab’s oil lamp illuminated a square tunnel opening in the wall. The bronze grillwork that had covered it lay on the floor.

  They ducked through the short tunnel that led to a larger cellar filled with grains and rows of ceremonial jars. Then Deker saw the human skulls on the wall with seashells for eyes. The faces had been made up with lime to create some semblance of life.

  “My other sisters,” Rahab said calmly, and continued on her way. “The jars have the smaller bones of newborns burned alive to Molech.”

  Between the strange odor of the preservatives in the jars and the scent of plants to mask it, Deker felt ill.

  “Your way out,” she said, pointing to the dark end of the room.

  Wooden steps rose up to a small alcove and a window, and Deker realized this cellar was actually inside the outer city wall. A shadow moved next to the window and a voice startled him.

  “I’ll take the cruel justice of Shittim to this so-called civilization any day,” said Elezar. He was already fastening a rope to the window while the girl who had taken him below looked on. “What took you so long?”

  Then Elezar saw Rahab in the light, still holding Deker’s hand, and did a double take at the resemblance to Rachel.

  “Rahab,” Deker told him. “She’s coming with us.”

  “No, I’m not,” she said, and Deker felt her yank away her hand. “I have family here. Hamas will kill them in retribution as an example to all in Reah for my betrayal.”

  Elezar tested the rope and seemed satisfied. “You heard the whore.”

  Elezar said it in English, but Rahab got the drift.

  “Abraham is my forefather too,” Rahab said in Hebrew, surprising Elezar. “And as Yahweh made a blood provision for Abraham to sacrifice instead of his son Isaac, so he will make provision for non-Hebrews.”

  “What do you know of Yahweh?” Elezar spat back.

  “I know that forty years ago Yahweh sent the Angel of Death to Egypt, and today he has sent Bin-Nun to Reah,” she said. “But Hebrews were spared if they painted their doorposts with blood and the Angel of Death passed over them. I want to be passed over too. So I beg you, swear to me by Yahweh, since I have shown you kindness, that you also will show kindness to me and my house. Give me a true token, and spare my father, my mother, my brothers and all that they have, and deliver our lives from death when you destroy Jericho.”

  “No,” said Elezar.

  “She’s saving our asses, Elezar,” Deker shot back, and then told her, “Our lives for your lives.”

  “Two conditions,” Elezar added in Aramaic, glaring at her. “One, neither you nor your family nor any of your sluts break your promise and talk about this business.”

  She nodded.

  “Two, expect no kindness from us until after the Lord has given us the land.”

  She nodded again, and as she did they could feel the walls shake.

  “What the hell is going on?” Elezar demanded.

  “They’re opening the gate for Hamas,” she told them.

  Deker stuck his head out the window and looked down the north wall twenty meters to the ground. The sound was coming from his right, and he looked east in time to see Hamas and his horsemen thunder out the main gate, only thirty meters or so out of view around the corner on the eastern wall. They were taking the main road toward the fords of the Jordan. Then the walls began to shake as the city gate closed again. Deker glanced up toward the top of the wall. The angle prevented him from seeing any Reahn guards, and hopefully the situation was the same for them.

  He pulled his head back into the cellar and told Elezar, “We’re good to go.”

  “Hamas and his riders will be scouring the fords up and down the Jordan,” Rahab told them. “Hide in the hills to the north for a few days. Hamas will think he missed you and return. Then it will be safe for you to cross over.”

  Elezar looked noncommittal, refusing to confirm or deny any of their plans with her. Then he spoke to Deker in English. “We go for the Cave of Temptation. No more than a couple of kilometers from here. We hide out and then report back.”

  Deker nodded. The cave was allegedly the place where in coming centuries Jesus Christ fasted and prayed for forty days when he was tempted by the devil. By the sixth century, various monasteries and churches had been built over the entrance. By the twenty-first century it was a major tourist attraction in modern Jericho. The tram left from practically where he was standing inside the city and floated directly to the cave entrance. Tonight they’d have to take a more circuitous route.

  Rahab said, “Now give me a sure sign that you will save us from death.”

  “The sign will be that you’re still alive after we lay waste to your city and leave it on the ash heap of history,” Elezar said, positioning himself in the window to rappel down the wall outside. “Deker, let’s go.”

  Deker looked her in the eye. “Your lives for our lives.”

  She nodded.

  Elezar shook his head. “I hope she’s fucking worth it, Deker,” he said, and disappeared out the window.

  It was now just him and Rahab left in the cellar, along with the quiet girl in the corner who had been invisible the entire time.

  “Hamas will suspect you lied to him,” Deker told Rahab. “Come with us.”

  “No,” she said. “You come back for me.”

  She looked at him in a way that told him that she had been saving her soul for him all along, even if she had been unable to save her body. Then she kissed him on the mouth and wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him tight.

  Something was released in Deker at that moment, a primal desire to love and protect her, body and soul, no matter what. Like he had always wanted to love and protect Rachel. He
didn’t want to let go of her, but knew he couldn’t protect her unless he did.

  “I will,” he promised as he moved to the window.

  The wind had died down and the desert was an empty sea. Holding the rope, he climbed over the ledge backward, feet planted against the wall below the window until he was staring back inside at Rahab.

  “Don’t worry about the rope,” she told him. “I’ll pull it up as soon as you reach the bottom.”

  Deker hesitated, the nagging sense that he was forgetting something. Something was off here, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. But time was running out.

  He rappelled down the outside of the city wall, stopping twice on the way down. Seconds later his feet hit the ground and he was staring at the concrete revetment wall at the bottom. But there was no sign of Elezar, who had already taken off for the hills.

  He gave the rope two sharp tugs and watched it disappear into the dark somewhere beyond view.

  He took off into the darkness. Only once did he stop and look back at the city, trying to pick out which window among several in the north wall was Rahab’s. But he wasn’t sure.

  Suddenly he realized what he had forgotten and Elezar most certainly had not.

  The scarlet cord.

  They were supposed to have told Rahab to tie a red scarf in her window as a sign to General Bin-Nun. Her rear cellar window in the city wall. Without that sign, the invading Israelite troops wouldn’t know which portion of the walls, let alone which home inside, to spare.

  Rahab was already dead.

  21

  The clouds had parted and the moon shone down on Deker like a beacon as he crossed the fields toward the cliffs of the Mount of Temptation. At any moment he expected a horn to sound and a rain of arrows to strike him down, or to fall into one of the many trenches dug around the city. But in less than twenty minutes he reached a pomegranate grove and could hear the roar of a creek at the base of the cliffs. He found the narrow goats’ path up the side of the mountain, but no Elezar.

  Deker swore and started his steep and winding hike along the eastern slope. A couple of times his boot slipped and he heard a waterfall of stones cascade down the cliff. The higher he climbed, the more he could see of the desert moonscape and Jericho below. All the while he thought of Elezar’s betrayal, seething with rage.

  There were a few dozen caves, and it took Deker an additional fifteen minutes to find Elezar by a small fire deep inside one of the larger caves. Elezar didn’t even bother to look to see who entered, although he cocked his ear when Deker removed the sword from his sheath.

  “So young Deker didn’t completely forget his years of Hebrew school back in the States,” Elezar said in a calm and even voice.

  “The scarlet cord, Elezar,” Deker said, putting the tip of his blade to the back of Elezar’s neck. “We were supposed to tell her to put one of her red scarves in her outside window, to mark her house for invading troops to spare. You left out that little detail. You left her to die for no other reason but your self-righteous religious sanctimony.”

  Elezar stiffened only slightly. “Six million reasons, Deker. Six million Jews.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The book of Matthew lists Rahab as part of the human lineage of Jesus,” Elezar said. “No Rahab, no Jesus. No Jesus, no Christianity. No Christianity, no Crusades, no Nazis, no Holocaust.”

  Deker paused, horrified at Elezar’s logic.

  “You’re assuming that those who do evil in the name of Christ in the future won’t simply create another religion to justify their slaughter of Jews,” Deker said. “You think that by letting Rahab get slaughtered you’re going to prevent the Holocaust? You don’t know that. But you do know that she’s also the great-great-grandmother of King David. You’re going to murder Israel’s greatest king and erase the Psalms from history. You’re insane!”

  Elezar sat calmly, tending to the fire with a small stick. “Rahab corrupted and poisoned Israel. You know this now just from the blazing star. The emblem of Israel isn’t even Jewish, confirming what Moses and Bin-Nun feared all along: the Israelites will conquer the Promised Land, only to take up the religious practices of its enemies. We can stop the infection now, before it enters our nation’s bloodstream. God deposed Saul and raised David. He can always find another king of the Jews. And we can make new Psalms. You said it yourself, Deker: if this is really happening, if we are really back in time, then history has already been changed. We make the most of it.”

  “This is so wrong, Elezar.”

  “No, Deker. This is the cry of six million Jews thanking us. This is God’s judgment on the Amorites or Reahns or whatever they want to call themselves. You saw the whoredom, the oppression and the infanticide. It’s been building for four centuries. We just happen to be the hand of God like the angels that nuked Sodom and Gomorrah. We have been chosen. You should be grateful.”

  Deker stepped around Elezar toward the fire, slowly drawing a white scratch with the tip of his blade across Elezar’s neck until its point rested at his throat. The slightest drop of blood formed out of the line where the skin had broken.

  “You make a mockery of our national character,” Deker said. “She trusted us, Elezar. She trusted Yahweh. She has more faith than any of you hypocrites. We gave her our word. We gave her our word, and now our word is worth shit. You betrayed our people, Elezar. You will make the world hate us.”

  Elezar looked up at Deker, fire in his eyes. “I’m saving our nation both now and in the future, Deker,” he said defiantly. “But you would show less devotion to your Jewish brothers than your foreign whores.”

  It was all Deker could do to hold himself back. “Damn you, Elezar. You know that little prick Phineas is going to run a blade through her if Hamas doesn’t beat him to it.”

  Elezar said nothing, and silence filled the cave.

  Then came the crunch of pebbles outside the entrance, and instantly they went on guard.

  “Hear that?” Elezar asked, cocking his ear.

  Deker nodded. “Could be goats.”

  “Or the sound of your beloved’s betrayal.”

  Elezar kicked dirt on the fire, and they quietly made their way to the mouth of the cave and looked outside.

  “There,” Elezar said, pointing.

  Immediately beneath them on the winding trail, a line of soldiers was moving toward their cave. Were it not for the glint of their spears in the moonlight, they would have been invisible against the cliffs.

  Deker said, “The famous shadow army?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Elezar said. “I told you she’d betray us.”

  22

  Deker edged close to the cave’s entrance and looked out. The troops with their torches were already halfway up the narrow path toward the cave. Another unit was coming down from the top of the mountain, where the Reahns maintained an outpost. He and Elezar were sandwiched in between.

  “We break into the open and we’re dead,” Deker whispered, listening to the voices of the troops as they drew near. “What does it mean ‘to feed them to Molech’?”

  “It means they’re going to turn this cave into an oven and burn us alive,” Elezar told him. “If we stay here, they could fry us.”

  “I don’t think we have a choice.” Deker peered back into the dark cave. “How far back does this cave go?”

  But Elezar had already vanished.

  Deker felt his way along the cave walls, penetrating deeper and deeper into the mountain. The farther he went, the colder it got. He found Elezar hunched over a small crawl hole from which Deker felt an even colder blast of air.

  “Now we’re animals crawling through holes,” Deker told him.

  Elezar said nothing and disappeared into the hole as the illumination of torches and the sound of voices behind him grew closer.

  “There!” shouted one of the Reahns, and the ground began to shake as the entire unit raced toward the back of the cave.

  Deker dove into the hole as sp
lashes of some tar-like substance hit his feet and slowed him down. Slithering as fast as he could, he looked back in time to see a torch at the mouth of the hole.

  “They’re in Molech’s Maze,” a Reahn said, his voice echoing through the narrow hole. “Any volunteers?”

  There were none.

  “Then we feed them to Molech.”

  The torch touched the mouth of the hole, and a giant fireball erupted and started chasing Deker through the tunnel. Soon the fissure sloped down, and he started sliding uncontrollably down the chute. He landed in the bottom of a larger cave as a blast of fire shot over his head and singed his hair.

  Deker took a deep breath and coughed in the smoky air. He tried to get his bearings before searching for Elezar. He might have escaped the frying pan only to land in the fire. The Reahn scouts obviously called it Molech’s Maze for a reason: a man could get lost in these caves and never come out.

  “Elezar!” he called out.

  There was no response.

  He started moving farther into the mountain, because he couldn’t go back the way he came in. A deep sense of doubt began to torment him. What if his infiltration and escape from Jericho were all for naught? What if he failed to return to Bin-Nun with his intel on Hamas’ plot to hit the Israelites as they crossed the Jordan? They could be slaughtered as soon as they touched foot on the west bank. What if he didn’t get back to Rahab before the Israelites hit Jericho? She’d die with the rest of the Reahns, and with her the Psalms of David and future kings of Israel.

  Deker prayed for the first time in a long while that this would not be the case. That Yahweh would reveal himself to him now.

  Deker was now aware of another presence in the cave with him. A large presence, bigger than a man. He could hear the deep, groaning breath of some creature. Slowly the outline of a shape became clearer as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, and Deker saw a giant hairy head with red eyes staring back at him from the face of a bull.