THE PROMISED WAR

“The very next day, when the Israelite army first marched around our walls, six more Hebrews climbed into my window,” Rahab testified. “The dust kicked up by the Israelite army circling our walls blinded our sharpshooters and provided the Hebrews the cover they required.”

“And this event was repeated again each successive day until this morning, was it not?” Hamas asked her. “Every day another six Hebrew soldiers, under the cover of dust, would climb up our wall and into your cellar until all thirty-six had been assembled to carry out General Bin-Nun’s true plan to bring down our city.”

“Yes, General Hamas.”

Deker swallowed hard. So that’s why Bin-Nun had been so keen for him to secure a scarlet cord in Rahab’s window, Deker realized. It wasn’t to mark her house so invading troops could avoid it: it was to mark her window so these secret platoons could enter the city after him.

Hamas looked at him with hate-filled eyes and a triumphant smile. “A plan he kept secret even from this sorry spy and sacrifice before us this morning.”

“Yes,” Rahab said, still avoiding his gaze.

“And what exactly, Priestess Rahab, was Bin-Nun’s plan for this secret force of thirty-six men?”

Rahab now turned to Deker, with anything but hate and only sorrow in her eyes. “The plan was to sneak enough troops into the city through my window to create a force just large enough to rush our guards stationed inside the main gate, kill them and then open the gate for the Israelite invaders.”

Now the gasps and jeers finally erupted all around as the simplicity and audacity of the Hebrew treachery was revealed. And Deker was one of those who gasped, personally feeling the sting of betrayal not only from Rahab but more pointedly from Bin-Nun.

This was just like crossing the Jordan, Deker thought bitterly. Bin-Nun may have hoped for the best, but he had anticipated the worst. That meant he had expected Deker to fail all along with the C-4. So he instead used him to secure Plan B, which in all probability was Plan A from the get-go: sneak a covert force into the city and open the gates from the inside. Once inside, they could use battering rams to blow the walls outward. The very same plan that the ancient Greeks would use centuries later with their Trojan horse.

“And how far away is your home from the city gate?” Hamas pressed Rahab.

“It is only fifty cubits away.”

Hamas nodded. “So they could rush the gate from the inside in moments and catch our men by surprise.”

“Yes. As soon as they heard the signal this morning.”

“And what is that signal?”

“A ram’s horn, followed by a war cry.”

Murmurs everywhere, and Deker didn’t know if the sound was of relief that the plot had been exposed or the realization that the horn could blow at any moment and the assault would begin.

“So, at the sound of the war cry, the Israelites will rush our walls while the infiltrators rush our gate from the inside and open it to the invading Hebrew troops.”

“Yes, General Hamas. That was the plan.”

“Was the plan,” Hamas said with finality as he spat at the feet of Deker. “A plan I have crushed.”

Hamas let it sink in—for the king, the noblemen and military officers, and most of all for Deker, who got the distinct impression that this show was for his benefit. Not only had Hamas beaten him, but he had shown that Bin- Nun had never had any confidence in him whatsoever.

And it was all true, Deker knew. Had he just waited even a day, he would have been in Rahab’s cellar to see the six new men and learn the true plan. No, he had to go ahead to save these people about to slay him as they had slain the thirty-six and soon all of Israel.

A final gong sounded and King Alakh rose to deliver the official death sentence.

“They are the Hebrews, whom their God has cursed and with whom He is so angry that He will never again be satisfied,” the king said. “Israel is a warmonger to the nations, and now they are attacking us. Always they slap away the hands extended in peace and instead choose to kill everything that breathes before them.”

The jeers began to grow louder now as the king continued.

“For this Hebrew spy before us, death is a judgment of mercy,” the king cried out. “For he shall be a burnt offering to Molech, and his kind thereafter. May Molech feast on Hebrews for one hundred days!”

The crowd erupted into cheers as guards cut Deker from the obelisk and pointed him toward Molech with the tips of their spears. The heat from the metallic god was intense, and Deker doubted he would live to even see the inside of the furnace.

“People of Reah!” Hamas called, drawing out his sword and holding it high in the air. “With this sword I will smite the first Hebrew who falls against our walls. And with a new sword I will cut off the head of the last Hebrew alive: Joshua, son of Nun!”

The air seemed to crackle with electricity as Hamas turned to Rahab. For a wild moment Deker thought Hamas was about to throw her into the fire along with him.

“The Hebrews thought to buy your heart with gold,” Hamas said to Rahab for all to hear.

“They did, General Hamas,” she said, and then stepped aside to reveal her brother Ram behind her. He was carrying something in his arms. “They gave me this bowl of gold and silver coins to betray my people. I now offer these to my god Molech as a sacrifice, so you may melt them into the sword that will cut off the head of Israel forever.”

Ram offered the bowl up to the sky and turned to face Deker and Molech, and Deker’s throat caught at the sight of the black and red bowl—and a small unmistakable copper fuse sticking out from the coins.

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Deker sucked in his breath and felt his heart pound in his chest as he realized that the bowl of coins was really a frag bomb that Molech was about to devour. It would detonate once the fuse lit inside the Reahn god’s belly, destroying Molech and everybody else in the way of its exploding metal fragments.

The offering is a sign of her faith in Yahweh—and in me. She’s really offering me a way out.

In slow motion he saw Ram hand the bowl over to Rahab, and then she in turn brought it to him. By all appearances the Reahn priestess was giving the Yahweh-worshiping Hebrew his worthless bribe to take with him to his death in the belly of the almighty Molech.

But the look in Rahab’s eyes told Deker she knew very

well what this bowl of coins was supposed to do, or at least what she had been told it could do before the Israelites who gave it to her were captured and killed, some or all perhaps even by her brother Ram.

Rahab stepped right up to Deker, as close as she could, to hand him the bowl. She was chanting, it seemed, but she peered intently into his eyes. The crowd began chanting and roaring along with her, and as their volume swelled she suddenly dropped her voice and spoke to him.

“Samuel Boaz Deker, listen to me: the rest of your bricks are in my cellar,” she whispered in Hebrew as she handed the bowl over to him. “Elezar showed me how to push the button.”

The shock had barely registered in his brain before she pulled away and he stared at her in horror. She didn’t know that the C-4 exploded. She only thought it opened a wider door in a wall.

Elezar had arranged for her to blow up the lower city wall and take herself and her family out with it!

The bowl now weighed like death in Deker’s hands. He simply stood there in the middle of the plaza, flat- footed, waiting for Rahab to back off with Ram, motioning with his eyes back to the gate in the far wall from which they had entered. He couldn’t tell if they had made it, however, because the tip of a spear prompted him to turn his back to them and face Molech and his priests.

A drum roll began beyond view, and Deker took one inexorable step after another toward the towering monument of Molech, smoke bursting out his horns into the sky and stench-filled clouds of burnt flesh belching out his belly.