unscathed and began to make his way along the base of the city wall when he heard shouting.
It was Ram, about a hundred meters out. He had fallen to his knees, his front and back shot full of arrows from both sides. He raised his sword to the sky one last time in defiance before an Israelite arrow struck him in the head and his helmet flew off before he fell back dead.
If he had any last words, Deker never heard them.
What he did hear was an unmistakable whistle, and he darted toward the gate as arrows began to rain down on him from the Reahns on the ramparts. He clung to the base of the wall as he ran toward the gate just around the corner.
Two arrows knocked him down, one in the shoulder, the other in the calf. He cried out as he landed face-first in the sand, flat on the nose that Hamas had smashed, and began to crawl meter by meter with one arm until he made it around
the corner.
He managed to prop himself up against the wall, just several meters away from the gate. He looked out to see the Israelites only fifty or so meters away now.
They were coming in waves.
The infantrymen used their shields to protect the slingers, who needed both hands to counter the fire of the Reahns on the walls.
An entire line of archers, meanwhile, had dug their shields into the ground and from behind them fired at the archers in the towers. But the heavy infantry charged ahead with battering rams and close-combat spears, sickle swords and axes to smite the Reahns.
Deker pulled out his pack of C-4 and hurled the whole wired package toward the gate. It landed in the middle, just in front of the portcullis, and then he pushed the detonator.
The explosion ripped the guts of the gate out like the god Molech vomiting out his demons. A giant cloud of smoke and dust mushroomed into the air.
Ears ringing and light flashing before his eyes, Deker peered into the cloud as he snapped off the arrows in his shoulder and leg. Then the curtain parted and he saw the troops pouring through.
49
By the time Deker limped through the gate, all he could see was the flash of swords and shields. The slaughter was well under way.
The unstoppable column of Israelites snaked through the north side of the town and up through the gash in the fortress wall caused by the fall of the city’s spire. People were shouting to one another but no words could be made out above the screams and shouts of battle.
From the summit, waterfalls of blood streamed down the fortress walls and into the city below, rivers of carnage floating along the streets past Deker’s boots.
The dead were already piling up.
Frightened Reahns ran helter-skelter, trapped inside the walls they had erected to protect themselves. From the towers the soldiers could only watch their families die before they, too, were struck and began to fall off the ramparts as the Israelites swarmed them.
But it was the Reahn families fleeing the inescapable wrath of Yahweh, their tragic faces white with terror, that haunted Deker. The foolish among them were still trying to carry their valuables in their fine but filthy garments. The brave, mostly mothers clutching their children, wound up cornered against stone walls and run through by the merciless blades of the invading Hebrews.
The only thing escaping the city that Deker could see was its treasures: one cart after another, filled with gold ingots and silver coins and jewelry, was being wheeled out through the gate by the Levites.
Deker didn’t see Phineas and suspected the priest had decided to contribute to the work of the troops in cleansing Jericho for its sins.
The Kenites, meanwhile, were lighting up bronze bowls with oil for the passing troops to dip their torches into so they could burn whatever was left of Jericho.
Deker stepped through the puddles of blood in the market square and headed toward Rahab’s to make sure she was safe. Then he noticed a team of Judeans with a small battering ram heading toward a door in the city wall that he hadn’t noticed before. It had a red cord hanging outside.
“Wait!” he yelled and raced to the door. “What are you doing?”
“Rahab the harlot and her family are to be spared,” the commanding officer replied. He looked a bit like Salmon, and Deker guessed he might be a cousin.
“This isn’t Rahab’s house,” Deker told them.
“But it’s in the city wall.”
“Her house is in the slums about fifty cubits ahead. A four-story villa overlooking a small square. You can’t miss it.”
“Then what’s this?”
Deker stared at the red cord and shouted, “I think it’s a trap!”
Sure enough, upon closer examination he saw a crude charcoal drawing on the wood.
“Stand guard out here,” he ordered the troops. “I’m going inside. You’ll block this door with carts and crates if you have to, but nobody comes out. If I don’t return by the count of five hundred, see that it burns with the rest of this city to the ground.”
He looked around to make sure the Judeans understood. They did, but clearly thought he was crazy and in no shape in his blood-soaked uniform to do much damage to anything as he unsheathed his sword.
“A sword may not slay this enemy,” a voice said. “You may need this.”
Deker turned to see old Kane step forward with his latest invention: an ancient Molotov cocktail. He held the jug with a fuse in one hand and a torch in the other.
Deker handed his sword to one of the troops and took the bomb and the torch. “A final gift to send me off, Kane? You shouldn’t have.”
Kane smiled proudly. Deker was actually going to miss the old warrior.
Deker didn’t know why, exactly, he was so sure that he wasn’t going to be walking out of the door he was about to enter. But he was sure.
“Salmon is with Rahab and her family,” he told Kane with emphasis. “I’ve told these troops where they are. See to it that they get safely outside the city before Bin-Nun torches it.”
Kane nodded. “Do your worst.”
Deker opened the door, slipped inside and closed it. He immediately heard the thuds and scrapes of carts and crates stacking up behind him. Then he turned and saw the secret fail-safe to Jericho that Hamas had been hiding all along.
50
Ever since Deker had heard about Jericho’s shadow army, he imagined something supernatural, like demons or, more likely, some superstition. Never did he expect it to be the city’s living dead.
Inside the dark tunnel, Deker immediately knew he was in the presence of thousands of bodies. The damp, rank air hung heavy with the putrid smell of rotting flesh, human waste and desperation. Now he understood why Rahab’s brother Ram had refused to even speak of it. If the soldiers packed inside the upper fortress walls represented a ring of strength, then whatever rotted inside these lower city walls represented a ring of death.
Deker held up his torch to see just what exactly he was smelling. The flickering light reflected a sea of bloodshot eyes staring from pinched, pallid faces: men, women, children, even animals. This was where Hamas had crammed Jericho’s sick and diseased, here inside the thick lower city walls.
