Thomas Greanias - The Promised War

"He thinks that General Bin-Nun has shown no faith in Yahweh by following your plan."

"So we should wait for the waters to dam themselves at Adam?"

"If Bin-Nun wants the people to see that Yahweh's favor rests on him as with Moses, yes," Achan said. "Salmon believes you are stealing Yahweh's thunder with your magic mud bricks."

"Is that all?" Deker asked.

"He also says that the blazing star you wear proves we're doomed. That we may well conquer the Promised Land, only to fall into the same evil as those whom Yahweh has brought judgment upon. Salmon's feelings run deep like the Jordan."

For a moment Deker was tempted to give Achan some consolation to share with his good friend Salmon. But whatever else he was, he was no liar.

"You got that right," Deker said, and watched Achan's face fall. "Tell Salmon I've seen the future of Israel, and this blazing star is it. Unless he prefers no future at all."

Achan's shoulders slumped and they rode on in gloomy silence.

Deker knew he could have spun a tale of a victorious future for Israel. But as he gazed at the yawning, rocky desert all around, he knew Israel's future promised even more desolate wandering and backsliding than the past forty years in the Sinai Desert.

The same arid emptiness had swallowed his own soul long ago, Deker realized. His own pilgrimage to adulthood and later through several twenty-first-century wars had been marked by the same physical and spiritual wanderings as these Hebrews. He, too, had been prone to pursue anything but the faith of his fathers, intent instead to carve his own way through the world, consequences be damned.

Now he wondered if his own future was as bleak as Israel's, even if he ultimately did succeed in saving Rahab and razing the walls of Jericho. For the first time, he could appreciate Salmon's angst. To win a war and lose your soul was no victory at all. Only his thoughts of Rachel's and Rahab's common faith in Yahweh gave him a sliver of encouragement. They saw hope for a world he had long thought hopeless, even if their hope wasn't in humanity itself but in the mercy of the Creator who made them. Too bad the Creator had also apparently left them all to kill one another and make a hell on earth.

Deker began to blink in the harsh glare of the sun as dust caked his face and sweat stung his burning eyes. They stopped briefly to water the camels and snack on wild figs. But there was little small talk, even among the Gadites. Every man seemed content to stay silent in his own thoughts, and Deker was no exception.

The hours wore on and the sun dropped low until at last they came to Adam. The settlement wasn't much to look at-a dozen widely dispersed huts with fire pits and pens for animals-and if Deker had blinked he would have missed it. Then they passed over a ridge between two hills at dusk to behold a massive field of dolmen monuments next to a narrow bend in the Jordan River. In the center was a small cluster of tents around a fire, where forty or so Gadites had pitched camp for them.

Deker stared at the acres of dolmens all around. It was as if he were in the middle of Arlington National Cemetery, surrounded by thousands of tombstones. Suddenly Deker understood. The Gadites weren't there to help him blow the riverbanks with his explosives. They were there in case he failed. They'd simply dam the waters with the dolmens.

Salmon saw it too, and brought his camel around to Deker, scowling all the way over.

"Behold the great faith of General Joshua bin-Nun," Salmon said. "He trusts in Yahweh, yet leaves nothing to chance."

The local Gadites greeted the arriving convoy with the sound of shouts and slinging of arrows into the air.

"What's all the fuss?" Deker asked Salmon.

"They're just blazing off for the hell of it," Salmon said. "An annoying waste of ammunition. I've come to my wit's end trying to explain to them that Kane's smiths aren't working night and day to manufacture arrowheads so they can shoot them off whenever they feel like it. But they consider themselves wild men of the mountains."

As they came down into the camp, more Gadites ran along beside them to take their camels. A fire burned in the center of the earthen floor, around which the arriving Gadites had clustered.

"Food!" Achan declared.

Deker saw that the Gadites had spread a rug on the ground in front of the fire for him and Elezar. A young Gadite offered him what looked like seasoned lamb sausage on a stick. The aroma, however, smelled foul to Deker and he politely declined.

"You insult them," Elezar said, joining the others in helping himself.

Deker sat down and looked around the circle at the rough faces and curious eyes fixed on him. He decided to pretend he was back at Pink's in Los Angeles and this lamb sausage was just a hot dog.

Gingerly he took the stick on which the sausage was speared and bit off one end. The first sensation was his tongue burning from the heat, but then the fat and spices exploded in his mouth and he realized these Gadite chefs could take on any Top Chef. Eagerly he devoured the sausage and accepted another.

He wasn't even halfway finished with his second before the Gadites peppered him and Elezar with questions.

"What's Bin-Nun doing down at Shittim?"

"When is the invasion coming?"

"Are you really angels of the Lord?"

Elezar cleared his throat. "Tomorrow we will cave in the banks of the Jordan to dam the waters. Then you will see the power of Yahweh."

At that moment a sullen Salmon marched up with the detonators in his fist. He held them over the fire as if he were about to drop them into the flames.

"Surely an angel of the Lord doesn't need trinkets like these to work a miracle," he said, his voice trembling.

Deker glanced at Elezar, who neither approved nor disapproved of what was happening. In Deker's mind, he was only encouraging the foolish Salmon. Slowly, Deker rose to his feet and faced Salmon.

"No," Deker told him, and then showed off his command of ancient Hebrew after a week of total immersion. "But apparently you do, big man, to stand up to an angel."

Salmon's hand wavered over the flames. Any second Deker expected to see blisters forming on the skin.

An alarmed Achan said, "Give the angel his flints for his magic mud bricks, Salmon! We're under orders from Bin-Nun, under whom your father served."

"My father served Moses and the Lord God Yahweh!" Salmon cried out. "Moses needed no magic mud bricks, nor any angels to work miracles! He spoke to Yahweh face-to-face, and he parted the Red Sea with a stick!"

Deker eyed Salmon's white-red knuckles, looking for the first sign Salmon might let go. "Elezar, talk to me. What's going on?"

"Salmon is the son of Nahshon bin-Amminadab," Elezar said in ancient Hebrew, so Salmon could understand the angels knew his family well apart from Bin-Nun. "He is a direct descendant of Judah and the brother-in-law of Aaron, brother of Moses. When Moses stretched out his staff on the banks of the Red Sea and the waters did not part, Salmon's father entered the waters up to his nose and then the sea parted. This was more than twenty years before Salmon was born."

Deker now understood that Salmon had wanted to emulate his late father's exploits and place of honor among the Israelites, but that he and Elezar had preempted that dream with their arrival.

Salmon said, "Tell me, angel, is it true?"

"Is what true?" Deker asked.

"Everything our fathers told us," Salmon said. "The Exodus-the plagues, the parting of the Red Sea."

Elezar said, "Of course it's true, Salmon. Everything happened as your father said."

"Not you," Salmon said. "I'm asking the bad angel."

The bad angel.

Deker empathized with the young soldier. Everything Salmon had seen in the last few days-the bridge, the stones, the magic mud bricks, suspicious spies dubbed "angels"-was nothing at all like the Sunday-school stories Salmon, and Deker himself, had been taught growing up. Salmon's world as a refugee in the desert was so paltry and brutish compared to his father's big-budget Exodus, it was only natural for him to wonder if anything he had been taught ever happened.