Thomas Greanias - The Promised War

But the stab of betrayal that Deker felt didn't come from Elezar but from himself. Deker now had to question everything. Because if he missed this, what else had he missed his entire life?

In his mind he went back to the beginning, to what Elezar could have been doing while he was testing the Temple Mount. Could Elezar have actually been the one who killed Stern? Then he went back even further in his memory, to when he had first met Elezar after the botched attempt on the Black Dove that killed Rachel.

Jesus Christ, he thought. Elezar killed Rachel.

Deker felt an ominous wind blow in through Rahab's cellar window, and a chill ran up his back as what he had been waiting for came a second later with the force of a desert storm.

The war cry of the Israelite army.

Elezar had left him with an unwinnable dilemma: blow himself up with Rahab and her family in order to open the city to the Israelites, or risk the defeat of General Bin-Nun and the Hebrews as they smashed themselves against the impregnable wall.

Rahab sensed trouble. "What's wrong, Samuel?"

Deker moved to the window and looked out at the Israelite troops rushing toward them. He then ran his fingers down the scarlet cord hanging in the window.

Bin-Nun doesn't know his thirty-six-member special-ops team is dead, Deker thought. He thinks they're going to open the main gate from the inside.

Another voice said, "Deker?"

This time it was Salmon talking.

Deker turned to him and said, "My plans have failed, Salmon. I did not trust Yahweh like Rahab or you or Bin-Nun. But there may yet be a way to accomplish the divine plan. You must see to it that Rahab and her family are spared."

Salmon tried to exude confidence before Rahab, but there was a cloud of doubt behind his eyes. "Where are you going?"

"To blow the main gate," Deker said as he packed the C-4 in his bag.

"You'll be slaughtered as soon as you walk out the front door," said Ram as he entered the cellar, out of breath. "We're holding them off, but you'll never get past them alive. And you'll never take out the contingent at the gate, even if we all joined you."

"I know," Deker said, and grabbed the coil of rope and moved to the window. "That's why I'm going to blow the gate from the outside."

"It's still suicide," said Ram. "If the Reahn archers don't kill you, your own advancing troops might."

"It's the only way," said Deker, suddenly calm as he gazed into Rahab's dark eyes. "It's the right way."

"There must be another way," Rahab begged him. "Yahweh has a plan."

Deker felt the throb in his throat. He never wanted to leave her. But he remained resolute. "I'm sorry, Rahab, but I believe I am the plan."

Rahab's eyes unlocked from his and darted over his shoulder. "Ram!"

Deker turned in time to see Ram at the window, about to climb out.

"I can no longer protect us from our own people if the Israelites fail," Ram told them. "And if the Israelites succeed, I cannot protect you from them. But these Hebrews can."

And then Ram vanished into thin air.

Deker rushed to the window and looked down to see Ram land on the ground and pull out his sword. With a shout, Rahab's big brother ran out alone against the thousands of oncoming Israelites.

"He's drawing the attention of the Reahn archers on the ramparts!" Salmon yelled, shoving his way next to Deker. "Now is our chance!"

"My chance," Deker told him. "You have to stay here with Rahab and keep Israel's promise."

Salmon began to protest, but Deker cut him off. "There's no time, Salmon. If you fail, her blood is on our hands, and the hands of all the kings of Israel."

Rahab rushed to him and threw her arms around him as if to keep him from leaving.

There was no time for proper good-byes, so Deker removed his IDF tag from his neck and gave it to Rahab. "This is the token of my promise to you," he said. "Your family will be safe at Gilgal tonight, and you can return it to me then." She put it on over her heart and clutched the star in her hand, as if she were willing herself to believe him.

With one last look at her, Deker sprang out the window.

Deker slid down the rope amid a flurry of arrows from Reahns on the ramparts above. He hit the ground unscathed and began to make his way along the base of the city wall when he heard shouting.

It was Ram, about a hundred meters out. He had fallen to his knees, his front and back shot full of arrows from both sides. He raised his sword to the sky one last time in defiance before an Israelite arrow struck him in the head and his helmet flew off before he fell back dead.

If he had any last words, Deker never heard them.

What he did hear was an unmistakable whistle, and he darted toward the gate as arrows began to rain down on him from the Reahns on the ramparts. He clung to the base of the wall as he ran toward the gate just around the corner.

Two arrows knocked him down, one in the shoulder, the other in the calf. He cried out as he landed face-first in the sand, flat on the nose that Hamas had smashed, and began to crawl meter by meter with one arm until he made it around

the corner.

He managed to prop himself up against the wall, just several meters away from the gate. He looked out to see the Israelites only fifty or so meters away now.

They were coming in waves.

The infantrymen used their shields to protect the slingers, who needed both hands to counter the fire of the Reahns on the walls.

An entire line of archers, meanwhile, had dug their shields into the ground and from behind them fired at the archers in the towers. But the heavy infantry charged ahead with battering rams and close-combat spears, sickle swords and axes to smite the Reahns.

Deker pulled out his pack of C-4 and hurled the whole wired package toward the gate. It landed in the middle, just in front of the portcullis, and then he pushed the detonator.

The explosion ripped the guts of the gate out like the god Molech vomiting out his demons. A giant cloud of smoke and dust mushroomed into the air.

Ears ringing and light flashing before his eyes, Deker peered into the cloud as he snapped off the arrows in his shoulder and leg. Then the curtain parted and he saw the troops pouring through.

By the time Deker limped through the gate, all he could see was the flash of swords and shields. The slaughter was well under way.

The unstoppable column of Israelites snaked through the north side of the town and up through the gash in the fortress wall caused by the fall of the city's spire. People were shouting to one another but no words could be made out above the screams and shouts of battle.

From the summit, waterfalls of blood streamed down the fortress walls and into the city below, rivers of carnage floating along the streets past Deker's boots.

The dead were already piling up.

Frightened Reahns ran helter-skelter, trapped inside the walls they had erected to protect themselves. From the towers the soldiers could only watch their families die before they, too, were struck and began to fall off the ramparts as the Israelites swarmed them.

But it was the Reahn families fleeing the inescapable wrath of Yahweh, their tragic faces white with terror, that haunted Deker. The foolish among them were still trying to carry their valuables in their fine but filthy garments. The brave, mostly mothers clutching their children, wound up cornered against stone walls and run through by the merciless blades of the invading Hebrews.

The only thing escaping the city that Deker could see was its treasures: one cart after another, filled with gold ingots and silver coins and jewelry, was being wheeled out through the gate by the Levites.