The Jericho Deception: A Novel

by Jeffrey Small

  He moved to the base of the wall, put his palms on the first block that came to his waist, and pressed his feet off the ground. But when he bent his knee, his foot didn’t quite reach the top of the block. He dropped back to the ground and swore. He’d always thought the scrawny men with their yoga mats heading into the aerobics studio with the women were effeminate. Now, he wished for a little more flexibility.

  No matter, he thought, I’ll just power myself up. His upper body was stronger than that of his two targets combined. He pushed explosively with his hands as he jumped from the ground. His foot reached the edge of the block. A second later he balanced on the lip of the base block and reached for the next level. Then he encountered his second problem: the space where one block sat on top of the other was only about two inches wide. His tactical boots and thick fingers had difficulty finding holds, and he fought against slipping back to the ground. He plastered his body against the cool, smooth granite, turned his feet parallel to the wall, and dug his fingertips into the next ledge.

  Then the memories flooded back. Coronado. SEAL Indoc training. The cargo net. The images that flashed through his mind reopened the black void in his chest. He fought back the nausea that rose into his throat. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, focusing his attention on the cool stone underneath his fingers. He could do this. He was powerful. He was superhuman. He started to climb again. The climbing became easier with each block he ascended. Blood warmed his biceps and his quads.

  In the weight room, he was famous for the primal screams he emitted as he pushed out squats or hauled up dead lifts. Now, he tried to make as little noise as possible; his prey was so focused on looking upward that they hadn’t yet noticed him.

  He closed the gap to ten feet. Rachel Riley was directly above his head; Professor Lightman was to the left, a few feet higher. He eyed the slim ankle exposed under the leg of Rachel’s pants. In a moment he would jerk it hard enough to rip her fingers from their hold. The thought of wrapping his hand around her bare skin and then throwing her to her death caused a stirring in his loins. The anticipation even caused his headache to subside. He ignored the tightness that was beginning to develop in his fingers and forearms.

  Then she looked down and met his eyes.

  Ethan had developed a smooth flow to the climb. His limbs were loose; the wall felt familiar. He ascended slower than he did when he climbed at Yale because he didn’t want to leave Rachel behind, and, he reminded himself, because he didn’t have anyone belaying him. A slip to the stone below would be fatal.

  “He’s here!” Rachel’s high-pitched scream startled him.

  He cut his eyes to the right. She was one block below him, and Axe had appeared several blocks below her. The big man’s face was red, and sweat poured from his temples as he lumbered upward. His climbing technique was counterproductive. Axe pulled with his upper body rather than pushing with his feet.

  Ethan recalled his early climbing lessons. He’d had to overcome the mistake most men made when climbing: the tendency to overuse his arms. His instructor had explained that his legs were stronger and had more endurance. Climbing with one’s arms might seem easier for the first twenty feet or so, but then the smaller muscles would tie up, refusing to fire and stranding one halfway up the wall.

  Women were often more natural climbers. Rachel seemed to be proving the point. She climbed almost effortlessly, but too slowly. She took her time finding each hand- and foothold before moving to the next. At the rate she was ascending, Axe would catch her in less than thirty seconds.

  “Keep moving.” He tried to keep the panic out of his voice. “Look at me.”

  The fear in her face pained him. On the ground, he was no match for Axe, but on the wall he was confident he could elude the bulky man. But how can I help Rachel? The thought of what would happen if she didn’t out-climb her pursuer was too horrifying to imagine.

  “You’ve got it,” he encouraged.

  But then she made the mistake of looking down at her attacker again. She froze on the wall, her arms trembling. Oh God, he thought. PTSD. The trauma of being chased again by the man who’d kidnapped her in New Haven was paralyzing her.

  “Rachel!” he screamed.

  She glanced at him. The blood had drained from her face. She still didn’t move.

  “Rachel, I love you.” She blinked at the words that came impulsively from his lips. “You’re strong. You can do it. Just climb.”

  Her eyes narrowed. Her breath came in short bursts. She reached for the next higher block and pulled herself up despite the obvious terror she felt. She’s tough, he thought. He prayed it would be enough.

  Ethan moved up another block, still watching her. Then his hands groped a wide ledge—the one he’d seen from the ground. A plan began to form in his head.

  Axe had been so close he’d felt the heat from her body. But after the professor had yelled at her, she’d accelerated up the wall. She was petite—probably not more than a buck-ten—and she climbed with grace, like a dancer. Watching Lightman climb, though, caused the first seeds of doubt to enter his mind. The professor’s long limbs moved easily, spider-like. I’ve squashed plenty of spiders in my life, he comforted himself. Even if they were faster, they would eventually run out of wall.

  He paused, dug his toes into the rock, and shook out the fingers from his left hand. He breathed deeply, replaced his hand, and shook out his right. His forearms burned. He looked down for the first time since he’d started to climb. He fought off a wave of vertigo. He was twenty-five feet off the ground.

  He was used to pain in the gym, but this was different. He knew what would follow the burning that was spreading to his biceps. The burn was caused by lactic acid building up in his muscles at the same time his cells were converting their glycogen stores into energy. At the point when the glycogen was depleted, the cells would simply stop firing. Muscular failure. He would be unable to move. The same process had caused him to seize up on the SEAL cargo net.

  He pushed the fear from his mind, focused his attention back on his prey, and continued his climb. He paused again at the next level and took another deep breath, willing oxygen into his arms. His muscles—now engorged with blood—were starting to quiver. A normal heavy set for him was about twenty seconds in length, after which he’d rest several minutes to let his muscles recover before the next set—the perfect protocol to build mass. Climbing the wall had been the equivalent of four or five sets with no rest in between.

  “Goddamn it!” he yelled. He stared at his arms, willing his muscles to recharge. The sun burned the back of his neck. Sweat stung his eyes. He squeezed his eyelids closed. He didn’t dare release his hold to wipe them. The sprouting fear in his chest seemed to fill the abyss that had opened earlier. When he opened his eyes, the scene before him was blurry; sweat obscured his vision. The vertigo returned.

  As his eyes refocused, the wall appeared to transform. He was no longer climbing a rock-faced wall in Egypt, but a cargo net high off the ground on Coronado Island. He was back in his last week of SEAL Indoc training. The cargo net had failed him several times before, and he had little energy left in the muscle fibers of his forearms, but this time he wouldn’t give up. An ankle dangled just above his head.

  Lieutenant Mills had taunted Axe from the day he’d arrived, delighting in how creatively he could insult the “ballooned-up roid head.” The sinewy New Yorker sat on the telephone pole that ran across the top of the net, his legs dangling over each side. Axe was closer than he’d ever been. This time, he’d not only make it, he’d teach that son of a bitch a lesson.

  With the last of his strength, Axe exploded up two rungs of the net faster than he’d ever climbed before. He grasped the net with his right hand, whose fingers now worked like an old woman’s, and he thrust his left up toward the ankle. His cramped fingers tightened around the bare flesh. The lieutenant had narrow bones, not like the tree trunks Axe had for legs.

  He pulled on the ankle, determined to toss the man who ha
d taunted him the past weeks from the top of the mountain. He glanced at the lieutenant’s face. He wanted to see his look of fear and shock. But instead of encountering the lieutenant’s tanned cheekbones and salt-and-pepper crew cut, the vision before him almost caused him to fall backward off the net.

  The face was long and thin, and it seemed to transform as he watched. The eyes narrowed and elongated, forming diamonds bursting with coal-black pupils. The nose grew to a point as horns appeared out of a mass of hair that wriggled like a nest of worms. He felt his heart catch in his chest. He was no longer looking at Lieutenant Mills; he was looking into the face of Satan, the same Satan who’d plagued his dreams. But now the devil was real, and he had grabbed ahold of him. Axe’s fingers started to burn as if the skin of his hand were on fire.

  Then the terrible creature opened its mouth, revealing sharp fangs and a fire-red throat. The scream that came next seemed to pierce Axe’s very soul.

  Ethan stood on a ledge forty feet off the ground. The height was unnerving, but he felt secure enough to shake his hands out by his side. He even had room to turn around. Several tourists had seen them and were pointing up from the ground. He didn’t have time to pay attention to them. He had a bigger problem. Axe was only inches from Rachel.

  He shuffled over until he was directly above her. She was only three feet below, a single block of stone away. He knelt and extended a hand.

  “Almost there,” he encouraged. “One more and then grab my hand.”

  Rachel’s lips were pursed in determination and sweat trickled down her temple, but she no longer displayed the fear she had earlier.

  Then he watched as Axe surged upward, propelled by an unseen force. The face of their pursuer was twisted in the expression of someone pushing through intense pain toward a goal he would stop at nothing to reach. With the metallic taste of fear on the back of his tongue, Ethan realized that Rachel wouldn’t make it to the ledge in time. The dread in his chest was overwhelming. But he couldn’t let fear prevent him from saving the woman he loved.

  He dropped to his stomach. The smooth stone was warm, but the ledge wasn’t wide enough for his torso. His right shoulder hung off the side; the sharp edge dug into his hipbone. He knew that a sudden movement to his right would cause him to plummet to the ground four stories below. He stretched his hand toward Rachel’s extended fingers. When he closed around her delicate wrist, her fingers cinched around his arm.

  The moment Ethan felt her weight, she was jerked downward. The force almost toppled him from his perch. He leaned with all of his strength into the wall. Whatever happened, he would never let go. Even if I’m pulled off the wall too, he decided.

  They’d only needed another fifteen seconds. Then she would have reached the ledge, where he could have protected her better. His plan had been to put his body between hers and their pursuer. When Axe tried to climb onto the ledge, he would have stomped on his fingers. But now his worst fear was realized. Axe had grabbed her ankle. He watched Rachel turn her head toward her attacker and let loose a scream of pure terror.

  He tightened his grip, feeling the strain from the tendons in his forearm to the muscles in his shoulder and neck. Then he noticed the headache that was starting in the back of his head.

  Please, God, not now.

  The fire from the devil’s ankle that was burning Axe’s hand was spreading down his arm and into his shoulder.

  The cargo net had beaten him before, but this time was different. This time God Almighty Himself had forsaken him. All of the sacrifices he’d made over his life—the suffering as a child, the dissolution of his parents’ marriage, the dedication to building his body into something that belonged on Olympus, the part he’d played in helping stamp out the misguided religion of the Middle East—had counted for nothing.

  “Where are you, God?” The plea from his lips didn’t even sound intelligible to him.

  But God didn’t answer; only Satan did, taunting him with his own terrible scream from above.

  He experienced the sensation of the last of the glycogen in his muscle cells burning out as if his body were melting. The slabs of muscle that had instilled fear and awe in smaller men as he walked past them on the street evaporated from his skeleton. The cargo net had won again. He would fall to the sand pit below. In the depths of his soul he wanted nothing more than to pull the creature that the lieutenant had become down with him. If he fell, he would take the devil with him.

  Just like on the night of Natalie’s death, Ethan hadn’t taken a Topiramate in some time. Environmental conditions—whether external, like the flashing lights of the drunk driver’s car, or internal, like the stress he was now experiencing—could trigger his epilepsy. A seizure now would condemn Rachel to her death. His fear exacerbated the oncoming headache. He wanted to will away the terror, to fight against his body, just as he was fighting against gravity by holding on to Rachel. Then a memory flashed through his head that felt out of place in his desperate struggle. He was sitting with Rachel in her room at the Monastery. She was taking his hands and explaining how by suppressing his pain, he only magnified it.

  He exhaled. I am terrified, he admitted to himself. He turned his attention to the physical sensations of fear in his body—not in the clinical way he’d done in the past, analyzing their biological origins, but instead by just feeling the physicality of them. He felt the pulse in his carotid artery expand and contract the skin on his neck. He noticed how each breath he took pressed his tight chest into the smooth stone of the wall that had stood for millennia. He felt the heat that radiated from every pore in his skin. The tension in his head began to ease. Then he focused on the sensation of his fingers wrapped around Rachel’s wrist. Rachel was not Natalie, and that afternoon in Luxor was not the rainy night three years ago in New Haven. His mind cleared.

  A roar from Axe snapped his attention to the bulky man, who was now teetering on the edge of the rock. If he fell while holding on to Rachel’s ankle, he would pull both of them from the wall too. Without taking his eyes off her, Ethan reached with his left to the stone above him, searching for something to hold on to. The sweat from his right hand and Rachel’s arm was loosening his grip.

  There! His fingers found a reveal in the rock. He dug them in, leaned to his left, and pulled her upward with his right. Maybe if he pulled hard enough, Axe’s grip would fail first. But the rock under his fingers must have been cracked, because it suddenly gave way. A chunk the size of a softball pulled off in his hand. Damn! He slid back closer to the edge. Rachel screamed again.

  They weren’t going to make it. The thought landed with cool detachment. He was past fear. Then a realization came to him.

  The rock!

  He now possessed a weapon. He would have one chance. The chunk of stone was heavy. His odds of hitting Rachel were about equal to those of hitting Axe, and he was using his left hand. But what other choice did he have? He held the rock over the side and lined it up with Axe’s beet-red face. He wouldn’t risk throwing it. Gravity should work for him.

  Rachel’s face was contorted with the effort of gripping his hand. They locked eyes.

  “Duck,” he said.

  When she did, he dropped the stone.

  The scene unfolded in slow motion. The devil’s fire in his hand and arm was as excruciating as the fire that had burnt his legs years before. But this time Axe was older and stronger. He could endure the pain. But Satan had other weapons at his disposal as well. The brimstone fell from heaven, blackening the sun. He flinched when he saw it, but his only defense was to blink his eyes closed. The impact to his forehead sent a shock down his spine as if he’d been struck by a bolt of lightning. The shock caused his right hand, the one holding his two-hundred-and-seventy-pound frame to the cargo net, to open. The pull of gravity drew him backward, beckoning to him from the earth below. The fire had spread to his head and seemed to radiate outward from his mind. He opened his eyes to see that he no longer held the devil’s ankle either; he’d released the beast.
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  He never felt the stomach-lurching sensation of his free fall to the ground. He seemed to float downward instead. The sensation was almost pleasant. As he dropped, the scene silhouetted by the blue sky transformed again. No longer was he falling from the cargo net on Coronado Island. He was dropping instead from a beige stone wall, part of the ruins of an ancient temple in Luxor, Egypt. The leg that dangled from the wall, the one that had belonged to the Dark One, was attached to the frightened but harmless-looking Rachel Riley. Professor Ethan Lightman was lying on a ledge above her, holding her arm.

  When the impact came, he experienced no pain. He felt as if he’d been hit with a giant pillow, one that suddenly and permanently obscured the vision above him.

  Ethan winced at the crunching noise as Axe’s head hit the stone forty feet below with a loud crack. He felt no pleasure in the violent man’s death. But he felt safe.

  The feeling of relief lasted for only a second, as the tendons connecting his arm to his shoulder were threatening to snap under Rachel’s full weight. Axe’s fall had pulled her other leg off the wall. If Ethan let go, she would meet the same fate Axe had. But he felt a strength like none he’d ever experienced before. His hand and Rachel’s arm were no longer two separate appendages joined by the force of their respective grips. He sensed how his body, Rachel’s, and the wall were connected with each other, just as the ripples of water he’d seen transform on the Nile had been connected to each other by the great river itself. The connection was as strong as the nuclear forces that bound the individual molecules within each of them. He knew intuitively that they would be okay.