by Ted Dekker
“What are you doing? We can’t build a fire.”
“A small one,” he said. “We’re in a gully—and it’s dark; they won’t see the smoke.” He returned with matches. “Just a small one, Rebecca.”
She folded her arms and watched him bend over the wood, blowing, until a nice flame crackled.
“It would be wonderful to have some hot tea, don’t you think?” he asked.
“You have tea?”
“The monks gave me tea in the desert. I’m sure it’s still in the pack.”
Fifteen minutes later they sat next to the fire, eating sweet bread and drinking an herbal tea that tasted like grass from black tin mugs. They hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours, and they devoured the food quickly.
A very soft but permanent smile molded Caleb’s face, she thought, as if being in her presence suddenly made him nervous. Something had passed between them while she dismounted the camel. Something that she knew she would have to throw to the wind in the morning, when they entered the real world. But something that she couldn’t dismiss right now. She felt as shy as he, and to be honest she liked the feeling.
Caleb suddenly stood and began to clap and sway, grinning from ear to ear. “Do you like to dance, Rebecca?”
She chuckled, surprised at his sudden courage. “I’m not sure I’ve ever danced like that.” She looked around at the dark, instinctively.
“I used to dance as a child,” he said. “God dances, you know.”
“God dances?” She couldn’t help smiling with him. “I’ve always pictured him as a little more reserved than that.”
“No, humans are more reserved than that. Not God. He quiets us with his love, and then he dances and sings over us with delight. That’s what the prophet Zephaniah wrote. You know Zephaniah?”
“Yes, of course. He wrote that? I’m surprised you didn’t get it from Father Hadane.”
Caleb stopped his swaying and settled to his seat. “Yes, Hadane told me about Zephaniah. He also talked about David, who danced around the Ark. Surely you know about David.”
“Yes.”
“That’s why the tribe danced. An old tradition from the days they guarded the Ark.”
Rebecca folded her legs to one side and leaned on her arm. She watched the fire lick at the black night. “Don’t you think Father Hadane was just a bit . . .” She paused, searching for the right word. “Odd?”
“Father Hadane is like John the Baptist,” Caleb said. “The Baptist lived in the desert like Hadane. The monks don’t eat crickets and honey, but the flour cakes come close enough, don’t you think? Or maybe you can identify more with Elijah—your own prophet. Hadane is like Elijah.”
“And what does that make you?” she asked.
“That makes me Elisha.”
“Elisha, huh? When was the last time the world saw an Elisha?” Caleb looked at her, smiling. They held their gaze for a moment before she broke off.
“What cliff are you stepping off, Rebecca?”
“Cliffs again. I try to avoid cliffs, actually. Not good for the legs.” It occurred to her that she didn’t just like Caleb; she liked Caleb very much. Not only his innocence and his warm smile, but the quirky way he talked about his cliffs and his love for God.
“Perhaps you should look for a cliff to jump off,” he said. “It might change the way you believe. And then you would find a new love.”
“Yes, because belief is love,” she finished for him. She looked up across the fire. “What about me? Do you believe in me?”
The tone of her voice must have caught him off guard, because he blinked and sat immobilized. What was she thinking, asking such an obvious question?
“Yes,” he said softly. “I think I’m starting to.”
Except for the crackling fire and a slight breeze, the night was very quiet. She didn’t know what to say.
Caleb suddenly stood. “We should get some rest. It’s getting late and we should leave in a few hours.” He pulled both bedrolls from the camels and returned, dropping hers at her feet.
“I will wake you,” he said. And then he walked for a boulder, spread out his blanket, and lay down.
38
Avraham drove the truck back up the hill, to where he and Zakkai had left the others an hour ago—in the rocks overlooking the small harbor just south of Massawa, Eritrea. Zakkai sat next to him, bright-eyed for a change. And well he should be—they had just boarded the expedition ship and found it untouched.
They were going home to Jerusalem.
The trip north had been relatively inconsequential, all things considered. Other than the altercation with Samuel, of course. Avraham had commandeered the satellite phone and called Solomon once in private, assuring him that they were making excellent progress. Rebecca was with them and unharmed, yes, but she couldn’t talk, not until they were safely on the ship. Solomon had assured him that the submarine would be waiting as promised.
Dr. Zakkai had hovered over the Ark like a concerned mother. He had expressed his outrage about Rebecca and Samuel on two separate occasions, but not with enough antagonism to warrant Avraham’s wrath in front of the others. The archaeologist was a scientist, after all, not a soldier.
The Israeli commando team left Ethiopia with four fewer soldiers than it had brought. That left nine, including Zakkai. Three of them sat in the cab; the rest, in the back, with the crate. They had only been stopped once, at a small Ethiopian post before the border, and the story of the burial had worked well enough, although Avraham wouldn’t have cared either way. They could have easily outgunned the three-man post.
Avraham steered up to the waiting soldiers and skidded to a stop, sending a cloud of dust into the morning air. “Get in. Keep the crate covered.”
They piled in and Avraham took them back down the hill.
The city of Massawa lay to the north, a gray carpet of concrete on the brown hills. A few dozen fishing vessels slept in the muddied port waters below them. Thankfully, no one had paid the archaeological vessel any mind since the expedition had left it a week earlier.
It took them twenty minutes to load the crate in the hold. A single beggar wearing a big, toothless smile watched them silently on the dock, unaware of the significance unfolding before his eyes. Zakkai tossed him a coin and the grin widened.
They pushed off, turned the forty-foot rig around, and steamed out to sea. The harbor slowly disappeared from sight.
Zakkai stared at the diminishing coastline. “The Ark will be in Jerusalem tomorrow.”
“We aren’t home yet,” Jude said, walking up. “If the Arabs had contact with their superiors, they’ve reported losing us by now. I’m surprised we made it this far.”
“But they have no idea that we have the Ark,” Zakkai said.
“Maybe, maybe not. But they had to have known we were after it. If they even suspect we have the Ark, they’ll be all over the sea.”
Avraham cut the power to a trickle and stepped from the pilothouse. “Which is why we’re meeting the submarine,” he said. “We should be approaching the rendezvous now, to the north. I want everyone here, watching. Call the others. Zakkai, take the front. The rest on the side.”
Within the minute they were standing in a line, peering over the rail for a sign of the submarine’s black hull on the surface. Avraham dried the sweat from his palms and slipped back into the pilothouse. He pulled the M-16 out from under the wheel and switched it to full automatic. Keeping the machine gun from view, he eased behind them. He’d rehearsed the move in his mind a hundred times; now his heart slammed in his chest with the realization that these men were soldiers who’d done nothing to deserve an execution.
“I don’t see a thing,” Jude said and began to turn.
Avraham lifted the barrel and pulled the trigger. A stream of lead crashed into Jude’s chest, slamming the soldier back over the railing. The others spun around, and Avraham pivoted his fire down the row, then back up it. Daniel ran for cover and Avraham cut him down midstride by the bulkhe
ad. Avraham jerked the gun back and sent a short burst into one of the others who was crawling over the side. He lifted the barrel, breathing heavy.
Zakkai’s feet slapped on the wood deck as he ran from the bow. “What’s happening?”
Avraham ignored him and methodically put one last bullet in each skull. The sight of the bloodied soldiers lying quietly suddenly struck him as obscene. These were Jews, not Arabs.
A splash sounded to Avraham’s right. Zakkai!
Avraham spun and ran for the bow. The archaeologist was nowhere in sight. He’d wanted him alive, but now Zakkai had gone overboard!
“Ahoy, there!” A bullhorn sounded on the starboard side and Avraham spun to it. The submarine bobbed in the waves, two hundred meters off. He froze on the deck.
“Ahoy!”
“Ahoy!” he shouted back.
He would have to forget Zakkai. How far could the man swim anyway? But the bodies on the other side had to go. Had the sailor seen his gun? No, he didn’t think so.
He ran for the bloodied bodies and heaved them overboard, praying that his inability to see the sub meant they could not see him. The bodies were heavy dead, but he managed. He ran for the pilothouse and saw that the sub was edging closer. He stripped his bloodied shirt. He shoved the throttles forward and steered the ship in a wide circle, back towards the sub. Zakkai was nowhere in sight. He had to keep the sub away from the bodies, in the event they bobbed back to the surface.
The sub parked off the starboard side five minutes later.
Avraham waved to the captain, who now stood on the submarine’s deck. “Thank God, you came!”
“Where are the others?”
“Dead. I barely made it.” He looked at the horizon, frantically. “We have to hurry! I think the Arabs know that I took the ship.”
The captain hesitated. “They’re all dead?”
“Yes. For the sake of God, hurry!”
“You have the . . . the Ark?”
“Yes. In the hold.”
The captain ducked, spoke into the hatch at his feet, then rose. “Drop your anchor. We’ll be right over.”
Avraham had just enough time to push some canvas over the bloodied deck, rip the wires from the back of the radio, and drop his freshly fired gun over the far railing. He lowered a ladder for four sailors who boarded from a large inflatable they’d deployed.
It took them thirty minutes to off-load the Ark and set it into the submarine through the loading bay. He stayed aboard the ship, hurrying the crew and doing his best to keep them from exploring.
Captain Moses Stern, commander of the new Dolphin class diesel-electric submarine, one of only three in Israel’s navy, wore a perpetually proud smile. Whether it was for his sub or the Ark, Avraham couldn’t tell, but he disliked the man immediately. Yet he had made it, hadn’t he? He took a calming breath and let the crew secure the Ark in the sub’s hold.
“Is it advisable to leave a crew to take the ship home?” Captain Stern asked as they cinched the last tie-down.
“No. Impossible! They’d be forced to talk if they were captured. We can’t risk it. You can retrieve the ship later.”
“Then we leave immediately. And I wouldn’t worry too much, my friend. We don’t exactly have a lot of competition in these waters. Syria has four submarines, but three of them are in the Mediterranean. And even if they weren’t, it wouldn’t matter. Theirs are hardly more than floating tubs.”
He grinned and turned. “Make ready to dive,” he barked.
Rebecca and Caleb came to the dirt road midmorning, after several hours of sleep and six more hours of crossing uncharted territory, talking comfortably about small things. Their exchange from the previous night had lingered in her thoughts, a sweet aftertaste that drew her mind more to him and less to the mission. But now they had come out of the desert, and to Rebecca it felt like stepping out of a fog into reality once again.
“Do you know where it goes?” Rebecca asked, looking up and down the wide, dusty swath. A veritable freeway by Eritrean standards.
“It leads to Massawa,” Caleb said.
“Massawa! How far?” She walked her camel onto the flat road, relieved and eager. They hadn’t seen a single sign of civilization for over a day, and yet Caleb had managed to lead them to their precise destination.
“Five kilometers,” he said.
“Good. We can be there in an hour.”
“No, we can’t take the road,” Caleb said.
She turned back, stunned. “What? What do you mean we can’t take the road? We’re five kilometers from Massawa!”
“But we’re not going to Massawa.”
He turned his camel to the east and began to walk it. The camel with the trough tied to its back followed him on its tether.
“Please. Why do you have to be so impossible?”
He ignored her and continued up the hill.
In that moment she thought she could strangle him. “Caleb! Stop!”
He stopped. But he didn’t look back.
“Let’s at least talk this through. I have to get to Massawa—you know that as well as I do. Avraham’s out there somewhere with the Ark of the Covenant and only God knows what he’s planning.”
Caleb turned in his saddle. “You’re right, only God knows. You should follow me, Rebecca. You should definitely follow me.”
“Then at least tell me why. We’re practically on the edge of Massawa and you want to head back into the hills?”
“You no longer trust me?”
She was too frustrated to answer.
“The cliff I’m looking for is this way,” he said. “Maybe yours is as well.” He started the camel walking again.
Now Rebecca was facing an impossible decision. She could leave him and head into Massawa alone, or she could plunge back into the hills with him, trusting that he was onto something. That he would find his cliff.
She looked down the road, furious. It took her a full minute to make her decision, enough time for Caleb to reach the crest where he looked back and waited. To her, following him felt like falling off a cliff.
Dear God, you’ve abandoned me! This is no longer funny.
Rebecca grunted and kicked her camel for the hills. The startled animal broke into a gallop, nearly spilling her. Caleb started forward as she approached.
They walked side by side for several kilometers without speaking. If she wasn’t mistaken, they were heading in the direction they had come from.
“Aren’t we backtracking?” Rebecca finally asked.
“No. Not really.”
He made some clicking sounds and nudged the camel into a near trot. Rebecca followed suit and pulled up beside him again.
“We have to hurry,” he said.
“Why?” The terrain was changing she saw—more white sand, fewer rocks.
“We don’t have a lot of time. They’re very close.”
“Who’s very close?” Rebecca looked behind them. Nothing. “What are you talking about? Who’s very close?”
His camel started to trot and she pushed hers to the same pace. They bounded up a long hill. “Caleb, what’s going on? Tell me! What . . .”
They crested the hill and she pulled up. The sea sparkled blue two kilometers down the hill. But it wasn’t the water that had Rebecca’s heart lodged in her throat; it was the military compound on the shore. Barbed wire encircled eight or ten buildings and a single hangar. Two old Huey helicopters sat on cement pads; the blades on the further rotated slowly, as if it had just been fired up. She could see a dozen men, loitering about the grounds.
“An army base?”
“Yes,” he said calmly.
“You knew about this?”
“It’s been here for years.”
“What makes you think they will be friendly? They’re Eritrean!”
“They won’t be friendly.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? You knew we were headed for an Eritrean army base all along and you didn’t tell me?”
“
I didn’t think you would appreciate it.”
“And you’re right! This is crazy! We have to get back to the road!”
“That would be a mistake. The Arabs are behind us. Very near, I think.”
She looked back. “How do you know? Never mind!” She spun her camel around. “I’m going back.”
“Rebecca?” His voice sounded low.
Rebecca stopped and faced him.
“Do you believe, Rebecca?”
He was looking at her with his head tilted down, a faint smile curving his lips, tempting. His look reminded her of Hadane, speaking those same words as the Arabs galloped for their camp.
“Do you believe?” he repeated.
Before she could answer, Caleb kicked his camel and plunged down the hill towards the military compound, tunic flying like a cape. The trailing camel followed, honking in protest.
Panicked, Rebecca swore, jerked her camel around, and took off after him.
Ismael led the horses up the hill in a fast trot. The last camel dropping they’d passed was still steaming, and according to Hasam they were very near the sea. The tracker said he could practically smell the camels then, and for all practical purposes, so could Ismael. If not the camels, the Jew.
For nearly two days they had followed the tracks. Despite riding faster animals, they had been slowed by the darkness that first night, checking and rechecking the tracks. They would have caught the camels the following day if it hadn’t been for the short detour they’d taken for water. Horses might be faster, but they needed hydration. By the time the second night had fallen they were too tired to continue, and Ismael had allowed them to rest for six hours before continuing. Looking at the tracks now, he cursed the decision.
They pounded up the long hill, urging the horses into a gallop. His phone call to Abu last night had been a bad one. His father had literally screamed at him. And Ismael had screamed back. Evidently the Arab leadership of the whole Red Sea region now knew about the Ark and were on high alert. Their eyes were all on Ismael.
Then why didn’t they leave their palaces and fly their warplanes down here to take the Ark out, Ismael yelled. He could only do so much on these cursed horses. Abu had cut him off after swearing that he would put every square inch of the land and sea leading to Israel under guard. If Ismael couldn’t kill a couple of Jews, then he would do it himself.
