Thomas Greanias - The Promised War

Stern, thought Deker as another wave of guilt washed over him again.

"Who knows what you've told them?" Elezar went on. "Even you don't seem to know. Our business isn't over, Deker. You will answer for this failure in security."

"What failure in security, Elezar? You getting captured?"

"No, fool. You're the lowest in the chain of command with knowledge of the fail-safe. They're going to use whatever you told them along with your breach of the Temple Mount tonight as a pretext for their own attack and pin the blame on us."

It was bad, Deker knew, worse than he could comprehend at the moment. Still, they had to keep moving, and that meant ignoring the hot-blooded Elezar's commentary second-guessing everything he did. He had grown used to it over the years. "Let's go," he said, grabbing his BlackBerry and explosives pack.

They moved quickly down the outside corridor, the hum of the air-conditioning heavy in the air, and slowed down at intersections with other hallways. But they encountered nobody else and reached a metal door. Deker slid the heavy metal bolt aside and paused. He eased the door open, heart beating as it scraped too loudly against the stone step, and they stepped out into the night.

The horizon was a moonscape dotted with squat, whitewashed concrete boxes, rooftop satellite dishes and minarets. But there was also the unmistakable silhouette of an old Byzantine church on a hill.

Deker's heart sank. They were much farther from freedom than he had hoped.

"We're in Madaba," he told Elezar. "'City of Mosaics.'"

"Jordan? How do you know?"

"The mosaic on the floor inside-they're in half the old houses here. And St. George's Greek Orthodox Church over there. It has that famous tiled mosaic map of Palestine on the floor. Most Christian town in Jordan. Very tolerant."

"For Christians and Muslims," said Elezar, "not for Jews like us. Not if bad elements of the GID are involved."

"If we're lucky, we can reach the border in twenty-five minutes," Deker said, working his BlackBerry. "But I can't get a signal on my phone, and the GID is going to know we've escaped in five, if they don't already."

Deker checked his pack for his Jericho 9mm, but it was missing. The memory of his last moments struggling in the service van flitted across his brain, and he realized his gun was probably back in that van. His zipped his pack closed with a yank of frustration, then set off down the stone steps toward the street, Elezar behind him.

Deker crept close to the wall, slowing at the end of the alley to motion Elezar to pause while he peered into the street. He felt naked without his gun, vulnerable and angry. And his head pounded. His eyes should have adjusted to the dark by now, but his vision seemed dull and blurry. When a car came down the street, Deker pushed his back against the whitewashed wall, squeezing his eyes shut tight as the beam of the headlights cut through the darkness and seared his brain. He waited for the car to pass, and for both the light and pain to recede.

Deker stepped cautiously into the deserted street and made his way down the sidewalk, concealing himself in doorways and behind hawkers' stands closed up for the night. They hadn't gone two blocks before he heard voices and smelled tobacco. Two men stood talking to each other, leaning against the wall of a darkened restaurant. And beyond them in the alley sat a black S-Class Mercedes.

"I've got the one on the left, you've got the one on the right," Deker said, his body going cold as they moved forward, the iron discipline of the IDF kicking in. He hit the guard on the left with a blow to the back and then across the Adam's apple. Elezar simply grabbed the head of the other guard and with a twist snapped his neck. Both men were on the ground without a sound.

Elezar lifted a phone off the driver and tossed Deker the car keys. "You drive!"

Deker threw open the driver's-side door and jumped behind the wheel, Elezar sliding in shotgun. Deker gunned the engine and shifted into drive, running over an empty fruit cart on the way out of the narrow alley. He switched on the headlights and swung by the roundabout, onto the main road heading north out of town.

Deker blew past the turnoff to Amman a mile outside Madaba and cut across the desert in the opposite direction, anxious to avoid roadblocks. In order to secure extraction, they had to contact the Israelis before they reached the Allenby Bridge at the Jordan River. But so far Elezar had no luck finding a wireless signal.

"You've got to let our side know we're coming," Deker said. "No private vehicles are allowed to cross the Allenby. We're as likely to die from Israeli bullets as Jordanian."

"I would if this Arab piece of shit worked." Elezar banged the phone he had lifted from the Jordanians against the dashboard. "Just drive."

Deker's mind, still a jumble of images from his torture, was racing faster than the stolen Mercedes. This mysterious Arab organization had penetrated the Waqf, perhaps now controlled it, and was planning to blow the Temple Mount. No doubt they would leave the Dome of the Rock standing and blame the failed attempt on Jewish extremists-specifically, him and Elezar. Riots would ensue and the Palestinians would declare Jerusalem, at least the Old City, as the capital of a new Palestine. Arab nations, and probably the Russians and Chinese, would instantly recognize the new nation, much as President Truman of the United States recognized the State of Israel in 1948. At that point, arms would flow into the new Palestine, further threatening Israel's existence and making it even more of an isolated fortress than it already was.

Unless the Tehown was activated.

But the legendary fail-safe required an artifact Israel did not officially possess, one that Deker had buried beneath the Temple Mount. And so far as Deker knew, the Tehownwas more pedestrian than this cosmic gate or tunnel the Jordanian imagined. Now Deker was beginning to wonder if, in fact, he knew as much as he and his dead captors thought he did.

The speedometer showed 120 kilometers, but the Mercedes felt as if it was dragging. Or maybe it was the lingering effects of his torture. The flashes of light seemed burned into his retinas, as if he had stared into the sun too long. Even now, in the dead of night, he couldn't blink the brightness away. The needle marks on his arm also concerned him, and he wondered what sort of chemical cocktail was coursing through his veins.

Deker looked out his window and was at once both reassured and troubled to see the black cutout of Mount Nebo soaring above the Jordan Valley as they crossed into what in ancient times was known as the plains of Moab.

"Mount Nebo is where Moses viewed the Promised Land," Elezar lectured authoritatively, as he often did. "You can see the Jordan Valley, Jericho and the Judean hills beyond."

Deker had been to Nebo's summit with Rachel. The two of them used to hike the canyons of the Wadi Mujeb nature reserve off the King's Highway to the south. They had planned to come back one day.

"You know who Moses is, Deker, don't you?" Elezar asked with condescension in his voice.

Despite Deker's many demolitions and decorations in heroic service for Israel, Elezar had never considered him to be a "true Jew." That's because Deker grew up an American Jew on the coddled Westside of Los Angeles. Not like Elezar, twenty years his senior, who was raised in the Jewish settlements of the West Bank, knowing his family could be wiped out in an instant.

"Just because I'm not an observant Jew like you doesn't mean I'm entirely ignorant of our history, you self-righteous ass."

Deker long ago had lost patience with self-appointed holy warriors like Elezar. At one time the IDF was led by men like Deker: secular, Western and educated. Now it was controlled by religious nationalists like Elezar. But just because Elezar was anointed with oil by Brigadier General Avichai, the IDF's chief rabbi, and liked to wave the holy Torah around, it didn't make Elezar or his fellow former Golani Brigade officers the official representatives of the Jewish people.