One last time he looked over his shoulder at the king and tribunal behind him with the entire palace guard. There was no sight of Rahab or Ram, although they could have remained just beyond his view.
He then felt the long spears at his back retract for a moment as the guards prepared to stab him hard and drive him headfirst into the furnace.
That was his chance.
He hurled the heavy bowl of coins in an arc into the great fire and dove to the side of the furnace, hitting the paving stones as a terrific explosion ripped open Molech’s belly and blasted a million metal fragments across the temple courtyard.
45
Deker felt the blast in his ringing ears and throughout his body as he struggled to get up. The great idol of Molech, now a creaking mass of metal, collapsed into a heap with a crash. What was once a god was scattered in pieces along with the shredded limbs and charred remains of its worshipers.
There was chaos everywhere as Deker scrambled for his C-4 bricks at the heavy table next to where the tribunal had been seated. The table had been blown back on its side and shattered. The king was dead, half his face blown off. The noblemen had been cut in two through their midsections. The shrapnel had fanned out a meter above the ground, cutting down anything that had been standing.
Deker’s memory flashed to what Hamas had told Rahab on her terrace the week before about the Angel of Death in Egypt. Something about natural gases rolling across the ground of Egypt to kill the firstborns as they slept. At least, that’s what Deker thought he had overheard from his perch in the pergola. Today in Jericho it was the reverse: death had felled everybody standing one meter above the ground—everybody but himself.
Deker scanned the courts. There was no sign of Hamas in the floating dust and ash. Nor of Rahab or Ram. But he found his C-4 bricks scattered behind the pieces of wood. He was able to find only eight bricks, each embedded with bits of metal, and only a single detonator still in one piece. It would have to do. He tore a bloody cape from a fallen Reahn guard, wrapped the C-4 bricks in it and threw it over his shoulder.
In spite of all the carnage around him, Deker knew he had done nothing to the wall that would advance the Israelite attack. He had to blow the north wall of the fortress.
And then somehow, someway, he had to get to Rahab’s and stop her from blowing herself up before the Israelites gave their war cry.
The curtain of debris parted to reveal the iron door to the barracks in the north wall. But it also exposed him to the archers on the ramparts above, who immediately started firing down on the only moving target below.
He made a run for it in the opposite direction, toward the octagonal spire at the south wall that rose over the fortress city. The entrance door was open, the bodies of three guards and two priests on either side. He dove inside just as dozens of arrows rained down behind him.
There were shouts above and he looked up to see that a spiral stone staircase inside the tower ran all the way up to the spire. Between the voices at the top and his position at the bottom, there was a doorway to the ramparts of the fortress wall. He might have just enough time to improvise and get out of there.
He reached out and dragged in the corpse with the least damaged military uniform and helmet and threw them on. Then he quickly unpacked his C-4 and wired the bricks to his detonator inside the octagonal base of the spire. He wiped his dirty arm across his sweaty face as he worked the fuse and prayed to Yahweh it was still good. He tried to set the timer to five minutes but it displayed only two—and counting.
He swore and jumped up the stone stairwell five steps at a time and ducked out the second-story door just as three Reahns from the tower came into view.
A second later he was outside on the ramparts of the southern wall lined with hundreds of Reahn spearmen and archers. He quickly turned to his right and headed toward the corner watchtower connecting the southern wall with the western wall when the lookouts began shouting after him.
“Go see what they want!” he barked to a couple of soldiers standing in his way, and then brushed past them to the rampart tower.
Instead of following the rampart path through the tower to the western wall of the fortress, he took two flights of steps down to the lower tunnel that ran below. He pushed his way through the reserves to the end, where he climbed another stairwell to reach the rampart of the tower connecting the western and northern walls of the fortress.
As he ran along the top of the northern wall, he looked down to his left and saw the north-side slums of the city below. He could pick out Rahab’s villa nestled next to the lower city wall, as well as the mass of Israelite troops out in the desert.
Shouts rang out and Deker looked ahead to see a vengeful Hamas marching straight toward him, a bloody sword in his hand and a black cape flying off the back of his body armor. Marching behind Hamas in lockstep were hundreds of Reahn guards. The rampart shook beneath their boots.
Deker looked behind him and saw a hundred more Reahn troops emerging from the west tower, hemming him in from that direction as well.
At that moment he knew his only means of escape was to make a flying eagle leap off the wall into the city below. He began scanning the rooftops for a pile of drying flax or barley to use as a landing pad. But his eyes kept drifting down to the panicked people running through the streets as the great dust cloud of the Israelite army rolled closer and closer to the city.
Then came the explosion from inside the fortress. Hamas and all his soldiers looked up in shock as the city’s great spire swayed in the sky like a giant stone palm tree, a huge gash at its base as if some divine axe had struck it.
Deker stared as the watchtower’s spire blocked the sun for a second and cast a dark shadow across the rampart before it began to topple like a falling tree. He stood very still, gauging the trajectory of the fall, and didn’t move.
Too late, Hamas and his Reahn guards along the middle of the northern rampart looked up to see their impending deaths. The spire crashed across the north wall, slicing clear through to the bottom before breaking into three pieces. A torrent of stones and dust billowed out from the abyss before him.
Hamas was gone, for good this time.
And then Deker heard the long blast of a horn like the trumpet of an archangel.
The Israelites were about to give their war cry.
46
Deker raced across the rooftops of the lower city toward Rahab’s, jumping down into the narrow alleys between the battened-down homes as arrows started flying from the fortress archers behind him. He made it to the red-scarf district, opened the gate in front of Rahab’s villa and ducked into the courtyard. The inn was deserted. He climbed down the steps to the cellar.
“Rahab!” he called out.
The door was ajar. He pushed it open and found Salmon and Achan on the floor, hands and feet lashed together, mouths gagged, eyes on fire. Rahab slipped from behind the door and rammed the tip of a sword between his shoulder blades.
“Turn around slowly or I’ll kill you.”
Deker slowly pivoted and saw her frightened look turn to relief as she dropped the sword and wrapped her arms around him and sobbed.
“Samuel,” she sobbed. “It’s all lies. I didn’t betray your friends.”
Deker grasped her firmly at the throat, catching her by surprise as he rammed her against the wall, next to the skulls of her own sisters.
“Then what do you call that on the floor?”
“Elezar said they were traitors.”
