Thomas Greanias - The Promised War

"So, at the sound of the war cry, the Israelites will rush our walls while the infiltrators rush our gate from the inside and open it to the invading Hebrew troops."

"Yes, General Hamas. That was the plan."

"Was the plan," Hamas said with finality as he spat at the feet of Deker. "A plan I have crushed."

Hamas let it sink in-for the king, the noblemen and military officers, and most of all for Deker, who got the distinct impression that this show was for his benefit. Not only had Hamas beaten him, but he had shown that Bin-Nun had never had any confidence in him whatsoever.

And it was all true, Deker knew. Had he just waited even a day, he would have been in Rahab's cellar to see the six new men and learn the true plan. No, he had to go ahead to save these people about to slay him as they had slain the thirty-six and soon all of Israel.

A final gong sounded and King Alakh rose to deliver the official death sentence.

"They are the Hebrews, whom their God has cursed and with whom He is so angry that He will never again be satisfied," the king said. "Israel is a warmonger to the nations, and now they are attacking us. Always they slap away the hands extended in peace and instead choose to kill everything that breathes before them."

The jeers began to grow louder now as the king continued.

"For this Hebrew spy before us, death is a judgment of mercy," the king cried out. "For he shall be a burnt offering to Molech, and his kind thereafter. May Molech feast on Hebrews for one hundred days!"

The crowd erupted into cheers as guards cut Deker from the obelisk and pointed him toward Molech with the tips of their spears. The heat from the metallic god was intense, and Deker doubted he would live to even see the inside of the furnace.

"People of Reah!" Hamas called, drawing out his sword and holding it high in the air. "With this sword I will smite the first Hebrew who falls against our walls. And with a new sword I will cut off the head of the last Hebrew alive: Joshua, son of Nun!"

The air seemed to crackle with electricity as Hamas turned to Rahab. For a wild moment Deker thought Hamas was about to throw her into the fire along with him.

"The Hebrews thought to buy your heart with gold," Hamas said to Rahab for all to hear.

"They did, General Hamas," she said, and then stepped aside to reveal her brother Ram behind her. He was carrying something in his arms. "They gave me this bowl of gold and silver coins to betray my people. I now offer these to my god Molech as a sacrifice, so you may melt them into the sword that will cut off the head of Israel forever."

Ram offered the bowl up to the sky and turned to face Deker and Molech, and Deker's throat caught at the sight of the black and red bowl-and a small unmistakable copper fuse sticking out from the coins.

Deker sucked in his breath and felt his heart pound in his chest as he realized that the bowl of coins was really a frag bomb that Molech was about to devour. It would detonate once the fuse lit inside the Reahn god's belly, destroying Molech and everybody else in the way of its exploding metal fragments.

The offering is a sign of her faith in Yahweh-and in me. She's really offering me a way out.

In slow motion he saw Ram hand the bowl over to Rahab, and then she in turn brought it to him. By all appearances the Reahn priestess was giving the Yahweh-worshiping Hebrew his worthless bribe to take with him to his death in the belly of the almighty Molech.

But the look in Rahab's eyes told Deker she knew very

well what this bowl of coins was supposed to do, or at least what she had been told it could do before the Israelites who gave it to her were captured and killed, some or all perhaps even by her brother Ram.

Rahab stepped right up to Deker, as close as she could, to hand him the bowl. She was chanting, it seemed, but she peered intently into his eyes. The crowd began chanting and roaring along with her, and as their volume swelled she suddenly dropped her voice and spoke to him.

"Samuel Boaz Deker, listen to me: the rest of your bricks are in my cellar," she whispered in Hebrew as she handed the bowl over to him. "Elezar showed me how to push the button."

The shock had barely registered in his brain before she pulled away and he stared at her in horror. She didn't know that the C-4 exploded. She only thought it opened a wider door in a wall.

Elezar had arranged for her to blow up the lower city wall and take herself and her family out with it!

The bowl now weighed like death in Deker's hands. He simply stood there in the middle of the plaza, flat-footed, waiting for Rahab to back off with Ram, motioning with his eyes back to the gate in the far wall from which they had entered. He couldn't tell if they had made it, however, because the tip of a spear prompted him to turn his back to them and face Molech and his priests.

A drum roll began beyond view, and Deker took one inexorable step after another toward the towering monument of Molech, smoke bursting out his horns into the sky and stench-filled clouds of burnt flesh belching out his belly.

One last time he looked over his shoulder at the king and tribunal behind him with the entire palace guard. There was no sight of Rahab or Ram, although they could have remained just beyond his view.

He then felt the long spears at his back retract for a moment as the guards prepared to stab him hard and drive him headfirst into the furnace.

That was his chance.

He hurled the heavy bowl of coins in an arc into the great fire and dove to the side of the furnace, hitting the paving stones as a terrific explosion ripped open Molech's belly and blasted a million metal fragments across the temple courtyard.

Deker felt the blast in his ringing ears and throughout his body as he struggled to get up. The great idol of Molech, now a creaking mass of metal, collapsed into a heap with a crash. What was once a god was scattered in pieces along with the shredded limbs and charred remains of its worshipers.

There was chaos everywhere as Deker scrambled for his C-4 bricks at the heavy table next to where the tribunal had been seated. The table had been blown back on its side and shattered. The king was dead, half his face blown off. The noblemen had been cut in two through their midsections. The shrapnel had fanned out a meter above the ground, cutting down anything that had been standing.

Deker's memory flashed to what Hamas had told Rahab on her terrace the week before about the Angel of Death in Egypt. Something about natural gases rolling across the ground of Egypt to kill the firstborns as they slept. At least, that's what Deker thought he had overheard from his perch in the pergola. Today in Jericho it was the reverse: death had felled everybody standing one meter above the ground-everybody but himself.

Deker scanned the courts. There was no sign of Hamas in the floating dust and ash. Nor of Rahab or Ram. But he found his C-4 bricks scattered behind the pieces of wood. He was able to find only eight bricks, each embedded with bits of metal, and only a single detonator still in one piece. It would have to do. He tore a bloody cape from a fallen Reahn guard, wrapped the C-4 bricks in it and threw it over his shoulder.

In spite of all the carnage around him, Deker knew he had done nothing to the wall that would advance the Israelite attack. He had to blow the north wall of the fortress.

And then somehow, someway, he had to get to Rahab's and stop her from blowing herself up before the Israelites gave their war cry.

The curtain of debris parted to reveal the iron door to the barracks in the north wall. But it also exposed him to the archers on the ramparts above, who immediately started firing down on the only moving target below.