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 splashes 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.
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
