THE PROMISED WAR

by Thomas Greanias

  It was the first five meters—that damn concrete revetment wall—that was the problem. Deker dropped his pack, pulled off his boots and tied them to his belt. Then he picked up the axe inside his sack that Kane had packed.

  “I need to stand on your shoulders,” Deker told Elezar, who nodded as he breathed harder and louder than Deker would have preferred.

  Elezar bent over and Deker climbed onto his back until he stood on his shoulders.

  The top of the revetment wall formed a tiny ledge at the base of the brick wall above. It was just out of his reach.

  Deker slid his hand behind his back to his belt and pulled out the axe. He raised it as high as he could, his feet shifting as Elezar moved beneath him, and hooked the axe head on the ledge. It held sufficiently for him to pull himself high enough to grab the ledge with his other hand.

  He could feel Elezar fall away from him. He then dropped the axe and grabbed the ledge with both hands, swinging one foot up. With three points of contact he was able to pull his entire body up, belly flat against the wall, arms spread wide.

  Deker caught his breath and slowly made his way up the wall, digging his fingers and toes into any solid crevice he could find. Some crevices were more solid than others, and at one point halfway up a brick gave way and he lost his footing, leaving him hanging by two fingers. He looked down to see the broken pieces crash to the ground, where there was no sign of Elezar.

  The sound of the falling brick must have alerted the sentries overhead, because he could see a couple of torches above him.

  “They just reinforced that section last season,” said a Reahn sentry, from what Deker could gather.

  “I’m not reporting it” was the reply of a second sentry. “Hamas might make me go out and fix it.”

  A third sentry laughed. “Afraid some Hebrew is going to reach up from the shadows and grab you by the ankles and drag you down to hell?”

  It was a thought. But Deker was too far down the wall for that, and still hanging by his two fingertips while his foot searched for a toehold. With immense relief he found one a moment later. Once he was sure the sentries were gone, he continued to work his way up the ragged brick wall until he could see the shape of an open square window above him.

  He paused, sweat dripping into his eyes, and realized that he could be wrong about this window, despite what he had told Bin-Nun. It might not be the same window that Rahab had lowered him out of.

  Lord, help me, he prayed, knowing full well that he had already committed himself at this point to entering this window. Before Deker had even thought to pray, the good Lord would have had to rearrange the entire architecture of Jericho to suddenly make this Rahab’s window if he was wrong. Which seemed ludicrous to Deker. I’ll never have the faith of Abraham.

  Cautiously, he raised himself up so he could look inside. But it was too dark to make out anything. He listened for a moment. Then, detecting no sound, he crawled through the window and into the cellar hewn out of the city wall.

  With immense relief he realized that this was, indeed, Rahab’s cellar. He took a breath, said a silent prayer of thanks and began to look for the rope that Rahab had used to let them down before so he could help Elezar up.

  He found the rope coiled in a corner among the jars and skeletons. He never thought he’d be so happy to see those Reahn skeletons again. He picked up the rope and turned toward the window to let it down for Elezar.

  But as he moved toward the square of stars, a big shadow moved in front of the window. A feeling of blind panic seized Deker as all the skeletons in the room seemed to step toward him.

  Then the grillwork behind him opened and he saw a hooded figure holding an oil lamp. The hood came down and he saw Rahab, dressed much more modestly than during their first encounter.

  “Rahab,” he said, starting toward her.

  But she said nothing, looking over his shoulder.

  Her oil lamp flickered and Deker looked around the dimly illuminated cellar. He was surrounded by four Reahn soldiers.

  They must have been waiting for me as soon as they saw the pillars of fire go up at Gilgal and knew the Israelites had crossed the Jordan.

  Rahab pointed at him and told the soldiers, “This is the Hebrew spy.”

  38

  Deker watched Elezar haul himself through the window. He looked relieved to set his feet on solid ground until he saw the four Reahn soldiers behind Deker.

  “Rahab’s brothers,” Deker told him. “We’re good.”

  Rahab said, “They were all conscripted into the Reahn army as teens. Their uniforms disguise their hearts. We aren’t all what we seem.”

  With a steely gaze Elezar asked, “How is this good, Deker?”

  “They’re going to get me into the fortress to plant the C-4,” Deker said. “They know the weak spots in the wall. I’m going to plant two charges with timers—one short and one long—to blow the walls. Fortress wall first, city wall second.”

  Rahab translated what Deker was saying to the biggest and apparently the oldest of her brothers, who looked no older than twenty-four and whose rippling physique would have qualified him as a Mr. Universe contestant in the twenty-first century.

  Ram, as Rahab called her older brother, looked at him intensely, with all the passion of an eldest brother. His unspoken warning seemed to say, Mess with my sister and I’ll rip your head off. Then he turned to Rahab and said something in a deep, gruff voice.

  Rahab said, “Ram knows the disbursement of troops in the city, the checkpoints and roadblocks, as well as the layout of the fortress, secret gates and guard shifts. But he wants to know what assurances we have, if we help you now, that your soldiers won’t destroy us along with Reah?”

  Deker glanced at Elezar and in English said, “Nice to know that at least they think I’ll be successful.”

  “Tell her we gave her our word and that’s enough,” Elezar replied, going back to his original non-promise to her when she first helped them escape a week earlier.

  “Thank God even Bin-Nun is more principled than you.” Deker shook his head and turned to Rahab and said, “General Bin-Nun declares that you and all who are with you in your house will be spared on two conditions.”

  Rahab repeated this to Ram, who showed no change in expression, and looked at Deker eagerly with her dark, animated eyes. “Tell us these conditions and we will meet them.”

  “I will meet one of them for you now.”

  Deker was aware of Elezar’s death stare as he pulled out his dagger, cut a piece of the red rope on the floor and moved to the open window. He found one of the bronze hooks inside the top of the window used to keep grillwork in place. He fastened the scarlet cord to the hook and then closed the hook with one sharp, soft blow from his axe.

  Now Bin-Nun and his scouts would know from the start that she hadn’t betrayed him and everything was a go.

  “This is your blood on your doorpost, Rahab,” he told her. “This is the sign for our angels of death to pass over your house when they storm the city.”

  Deker watched her eyes grow wide and mouth drop as she heaved a sigh of relief and wonder. Truly, she considered this an answered prayer.

  “If this cord should be removed, however,” he warned her, “we will be blameless in your deaths.”

  Rahab nodded profusely and repeated everything to her brothers, who glanced at one another and nodded tentatively.

  “What is the second condition?” she demanded anxiously.

  “You must bring your entire family into this house or they will not be passed over and will be slaughtered with the rest of your people.”

  “You mean my mother and father and brothers?”

  “Yes,” he told her. “They will be spared.”

  “What about my brother Ram’s family?”

  Deker could hear Elezar groan behind him as he answered, “Them too.”

  “And my girls who work for me?”

  “Holy shit,” Elezar said. “Enough, Deker. One whore is enough
.”

  Deker ignored him. “All who belong to you, Rahab,” he said. “Bring them into your house. But do not tell them about our deal. Simply offer them refuge in advance of the siege.”

  Rahab again repeated everything to her brothers, who finally began to ease up. Deker realized she had probably negotiated quite a lot on behalf of the family for years and they’d trusted her on more than one occasion to secure the best terms on the deal points.

  “Remember,” Deker warned her again, “whoever ventures outside the door of your house into the street, his blood—or hers—shall be on his own head, and we will be guiltless.”

  Rahab nodded slowly, and Deker realized the deal had hit a snag.

  “Here we go,” grumbled Elezar.

  “We have a problem,” Rahab said. “Ram can get his family inside the house before the attack. But he must take his post on the walls when called or he will be labeled a deserter and they will look for him and his family.”

  “Then what’s he doing here right now?” Elezar shot back.

  “His shift starts soon,” Rahab said. “He’ll have to leave.”

  Elezar was suspicious. “How convenient that all of your brothers happen to be off duty just when we happen to climb through your window.”

  “Oh, these aren’t all my brothers,” Rahab said. “I have six more on duty right now.”

  “Jesus Christ, Deker!” Elezar cried out too loudly. “This is why Bin-Nun takes no prisoners.”

  The tension was palpable in the room, Rahab and her brothers listening carefully to see if Elezar’s bark had attracted any attention, however unlikely that would be from their location.

  Deker lowered his voice and said, “You want us to be captured, Elezar?”

  “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 this was where Ram said he would take them before they left Rahab’s cellar. Deker had pointed him in the right direction by suggesting they find a section of the wall where a gate once existed but had since been walled up. Ram said he knew of just such a section.

  Now the spire of Jericho’s giant stone tower gleamed like a minaret against the full moon as they crossed the fortress’s plaza. The iron door Ram was heading toward was on the opposite end of the plaza, in the middle of the north wall.