THE PROMISED WAR

“We’re all but captured already, Deker, what with you bringing half the city into our little operation.”

“That’s why Ram here is taking me into the fortress tonight,” Deker told them all.

Rahab gasped. “Bin-Nun is attacking tonight?”

“No. I am. With these.”

Deker pulled out his C-4 bricks.

Rahab and her brothers looked completely mystified.

“Go ahead, Deker,” Elezar goaded. “Explain your magic mud bricks to her. See what big Ram thinks of staking his life on something you can’t demonstrate to him until you actually bring the walls down.”

“These bricks create fire to melt your walls,” he told them all, neglecting to mention that such a feat normally required hundreds of small shots and far more than six days to prep, and that was with robust computer technology to control and time the blasts to the millisecond.

Rahab translated.

“How can this be?” Ram demanded. “You have only fifteen bricks and our walls contain thousands upon thousands.”

“I only have to melt a section of a wall, not the whole wall,” Deker explained. “It’s like cutting down a palm tree to make it fall in a particular direction. If you can help me find the weakest part of the northern wall of the fortress, I can melt the bricks at the bottom. All the bricks on top of it will collapse and avalanche down the slope and maybe break through the lower city.”

“So what you’re really saying is that you’re going to blow the walls tonight if you can,” Elezar said, challenging him before Rahab and her brothers.

Deker said, “If Reahn security proves tougher than expected and forces me to plant one well-placed blast to bring down both walls at once, then yes, I have to take the shot.”

“That’s not the plan,” Elezar said, careful not to tip off the six-day timetable to Rahab and her brothers.

“And Bin-Nun told you this when?” Deker asked. “I recall you missing the first half of my conversation with him out in the fields.”

“It’s in the bloody Hebrew Bible, you ignoramus. But I forgot. You don’t read.”

Elezar was standing by the window for effect, the pillars of fire in the distance, the threat of Yahweh’s coming wrath palpable to Rahab and her brothers.

All Deker could think of right now was the bowl in his pack that Kane had given him, and the memory of how he had failed to save Rachel. He wouldn’t fail Rahab.

Deker lowered his voice and spoke in English. “The longer we wait, the more we risk exposure and capture by Hamas,” he reasoned. “It’s use them or lose them with the C-4 bricks.”

“That’s not your reason, Deker. You want to blow the walls so that Rahab and all the Reahns can escape. Once they see their defenses fall, they’re going to run. That’s not Bin-Nun’s plan.”

“Bin-Nun’s plan is to murder every man, woman, child and animal.” Deker looked at Rahab and said, “Plans change, Elezar. You said so yourself.”

Elezar spat on the ground and straightened up by the window. “What are you doing, Commander?” he demanded of him in English, pulling rank on him.

“The Israelites are talking more than holy war . . . Colonel,” Deker said, without the respect he knew his superior officer demanded. “They’re talking genocide as a strategy to strike the fear of God into their enemies. To do that, they’ll kill everything that breathes.”

“So you think that if you blow the walls now, you’ll put the fear of God not just into the Reahns but all the cities of Canaan.”

“They’ll surrender like Japan did after the Americans dropped the atom bomb, and Israel will have her Promised Land without the genocide,” Deker explained. “Maybe this will generate some kind of good karma in the future and spare our people centuries of worldwide hatred and even the Holocaust you want to prevent.”

“Maybe even save Rachel in the future?” Elezar added.

Deker nodded. That was exactly what he was hoping for. “Think, Elezar: we can stop the forever war between Jews and Arabs and the rest of the world.”

“You’re a fool, Deker. Your arrogance might not only get us killed here in this time, but it could also prevent us from even being born in the future, maybe even prevent the birth of Israel as a nation. You’re the genocidal maniac, Deker, not Bin-Nun. Stand down.”

Deker knew there was nothing Elezar could do to stop him now, so he ignored him and turned to Rahab. “So what now?” he asked in Hebrew.

“Ram will take you inside the fortress to set your signal,” she told him, and looked over his soiled clothing. “Where is your uniform?”

“We left them behind to avoid detection when we approached the walls.”

She matched him up with one of the other brothers, Rah, and they stripped and switched. Rah then gave him his identification card, a square of bronze with an official seal on it along with his engraved serial number: 3,257.

Deker showed Elezar the card and then looked at Rah: “You are number 3,257?”

Rahab translated and Deker suddenly seemed to understand the gist of their language when Rah spoke.

“I am,” said Rah, with a What’s it to you? inflection in his voice.

“Then there are at least 3,257 soldiers in Reah?”

“Ten thousand,” Ram answered.

“Ten thousand?” Deker repeated to make sure he understood correctly, too easily expressing his surprise and spooking Rahab, Ram, Rah and the rest in the cellar. Then, aware of the stares, he got ahold of himself and took a breath. “The shadow army, of course.”

Hamas had certainly evened his odds with Bin-Nun’s 8,000 troops. No, he had done more than that. Suddenly the prospect of blowing the walls wasn’t enough. Not if Bin-Nun was expecting to confront 1,500 Reahn troops inside the city, only to be swarmed by 10,000. How could he have missed the count so badly on his first visit? Where had Hamas hidden them?

“What’s wrong?” Rahab asked him, and Deker could see her concern, but there was also a flicker of shame in her eyes that confused him.

“Nothing,” Deker said, and strapped on his explosives pack. “I’d like to see this shadow army with my own eyes.”

Ram nodded. “I’ll take you now.”

“Deker,” Elezar said sternly. “We’re supposed to wait.”

“You wait here,” Deker said, and gave Elezar five C-4 bricks and detonators and kept ten for the fortress wall.

Elezar seemed surprised that he would entrust him with the explosives. But Deker knew that if he succeeded in bringing down the upper fortress wall, these bricks weren’t necessary. Faced with such a breach, the Reahns would surely pour out the main gate and flee. If he failed at the upper wall, he’d at least have some backup below. And if he was captured, the Reahns wouldn’t have the remaining explosives.

“Once I’ve set the charges at the fortress and established the direction of destruction, I’ll come back and we’ll set the rest here farther north along the city wall that lines up with the first blast,” he concluded. “Then we’ll blow this whole thing open. Tonight if we can, later if we must.”

39

Deker followed Ram past the blocks of darkened houses toward the fortress, smelling only suspicion and fear on the surface streets of Jericho. The citizens were holed up inside with their families, while the soldiers outdoors floated like shadows on the dim walls above and in the empty squares below.

In almost no time Deker followed Ram straight through the fortress gate. Not one guard dared stop the big Reahn and what appeared to be one of his many brothers nipping at his heels—such was Ram’s reputation—and Deker began to appreciate even more the tangled web Rahab had spun just to make it this far to save her family.

Deker’s plan to bring down the fortress involved setting off a blast in a weak spot in the northern wall, and