Thomas Greanias - The Promised War

He made a run for it in the opposite direction, toward the octagonal spire at the south wall that rose over the fortress city. The entrance door was open, the bodies of three guards and two priests on either side. He dove inside just as dozens of arrows rained down behind him.

There were shouts above and he looked up to see that a spiral stone staircase inside the tower ran all the way up to the spire. Between the voices at the top and his position at the bottom, there was a doorway to the ramparts of the fortress wall. He might have just enough time to improvise and get out of there.

He reached out and dragged in the corpse with the least damaged military uniform and helmet and threw them on. Then he quickly unpacked his C-4 and wired the bricks to his detonator inside the octagonal base of the spire. He wiped his dirty arm across his sweaty face as he worked the fuse and prayed to Yahweh it was still good. He tried to set the timer to five minutes but it displayed only two-and counting.

He swore and jumped up the stone stairwell five steps at a time and ducked out the second-story door just as three Reahns from the tower came into view.

A second later he was outside on the ramparts of the southern wall lined with hundreds of Reahn spearmen and archers. He quickly turned to his right and headed toward the corner watchtower connecting the southern wall with the western wall when the lookouts began shouting after him.

"Go see what they want!" he barked to a couple of soldiers standing in his way, and then brushed past them to the rampart tower.

Instead of following the rampart path through the tower to the western wall of the fortress, he took two flights of steps down to the lower tunnel that ran below. He pushed his way through the reserves to the end, where he climbed another stairwell to reach the rampart of the tower connecting the western and northern walls of the fortress.

As he ran along the top of the northern wall, he looked down to his left and saw the north-side slums of the city below. He could pick out Rahab's villa nestled next to the lower city wall, as well as the mass of Israelite troops out in the desert.

God, don't let them give the war cry.

Shouts rang out and Deker looked ahead to see a vengeful Hamas marching straight toward him, a bloody sword in his hand and a black cape flying off the back of his body armor. Marching behind Hamas in lockstep were hundreds of Reahn guards. The rampart shook beneath their boots.

Deker looked behind him and saw a hundred more Reahn troops emerging from the west tower, hemming him in from that direction as well.

At that moment he knew his only means of escape was to make a flying eagle leap off the wall into the city below. He began scanning the rooftops for a pile of drying flax or barley to use as a landing pad. But his eyes kept drifting down to the panicked people running through the streets as the great dust cloud of the Israelite army rolled closer and closer to the city.

Then came the explosion from inside the fortress. Hamas and all his soldiers looked up in shock as the city's great spire swayed in the sky like a giant stone palm tree, a huge gash at its base as if some divine axe had struck it.

Deker stared as the watchtower's spire blocked the sun for a second and cast a dark shadow across the rampart before it began to topple like a falling tree. He stood very still, gauging the trajectory of the fall, and didn't move.

Too late, Hamas and his Reahn guards along the middle of the northern rampart looked up to see their impending deaths. The spire crashed across the north wall, slicing clear through to the bottom before breaking into three pieces. A torrent of stones and dust billowed out from the abyss before him.

Hamas was gone, for good this time.

And then Deker heard the long blast of a horn like the trumpet of an archangel.

The Israelites were about to give their war cry.

Deker raced across the rooftops of the lower city toward Rahab's, jumping down into the narrow alleys between the battened-down homes as arrows started flying from the fortress archers behind him. He made it to the red-scarf district, opened the gate in front of Rahab's villa and ducked into the courtyard. The inn was deserted. He climbed down the steps to the cellar.

"Rahab!" he called out.

The door was ajar. He pushed it open and found Salmon and Achan on the floor, hands and feet lashed together, mouths gagged, eyes on fire. Rahab slipped from behind the door and rammed the tip of a sword between his shoulder blades.

"Turn around slowly or I'll kill you."

Deker slowly pivoted and saw her frightened look turn to relief as she dropped the sword and wrapped her arms around him and sobbed.

"Samuel," she sobbed. "It's all lies. I didn't betray your friends."

Deker grasped her firmly at the throat, catching her by surprise as he rammed her against the wall, next to the skulls of her own sisters.

"Then what do you call that on the floor?"

"Elezar said they were traitors."

"Elezar is dead."

"No, he's not. He left not long ago."

Deker was confused. "Where's the detonator?"

"Here." She held up her tight fist, her thumb on the button.

Slowly he lifted her thumb and then unfurled her fingers to see the detonator, and he cursed Elezar for thinking he could kill two birds-Rahab and the outer wall-with one stone.

"Untie them," he ordered, and Rahab quickly loosed Salmon and Achan, who worked his aching jaw as he rubbed his sore wrists.

Deker looked around and realized there were dozens of people huddled in the shadows of the cellar. They were all members of Rahab's family, or at least she had counted them as such. He hadn't noticed them before. The crushing gravity of the situation and lack of time pressed unbearably down upon him.

"Where are my mud bricks?" he demanded.

"In my hiding place," Rahab said.

She wiped some dirt from the earthen floor to show him a door with a thin knotted rope attached. She then lifted the door to reveal a small compartment with the explosives.

They were rigged to blow.

"Elezar," Deker cursed as he carefully deactivated the wiring and removed the bricks. "Where is he?"

"I don't know," Rahab said. "But he left you a sign. He said you would know what it means."

She pointed to the inside of the trapdoor she had propped up against the wall. Burned into it was the black outline of a dove.

The Black Dove.

Deker stumbled back on his feet, his mind reeling. As much as he hated Elezar, Deker-who questioned everything, even the legitimacy of the State of Israel itself-had never thought to question his loyalty as a Jew. And yet, the evidence was there all along that Elezar was the Black Dove, the legendary Palestinian mole within the IDF.

Suddenly it all made sense: the right-wing posturing, the image of a Jew beyond reproach, the finger-wagging at the less-than-Jews like Deker in the IDF. Most of all, it was now perfectly clear why Elezar wanted to eliminate Christianity-as well as the State of Israel before it could ever be born out of the Promised Land-by eliminating Rahab.

Worse than this revelation about Elezar was the realization that this was Deker's fault, the result of some deep, psychological defect on his part. He had been so wounded about what it meant to be a good Jew, so painfully aware of how much he fell short, that he couldn't see the hypocrisy and pretense of Elezar, who knew the Torah backwards and forwards. He was a zealot. Just not the kind of zealot that Deker had thought he was.

"What does it mean?" Salmon asked.

"Elezar has betrayed us all," Deker said as Reahn soldiers began to pound on the villa's doors outside. It would be only minutes before the Reahns stormed the cellar.