Thomas Greanias - The Promised War

"And what is that, Elezar?"

"Clearly, Israel's fail-safe is biological in nature. Most likely a virus created from some ancient bone fragment infected with a disease that doesn't exist in the twenty-first century. By creating a vaccine from the beginning, the Jews can release the virus and kill as many Arabs as they like and save their own people. But now that we know the threat, we can find a way to neutralize it. Now it's the Jews who will die, all because of you. Not only have you lost the Promised Land in this reality, Deker, you've lost the promised war in ours."

Deker stared at the Byzantine mosaic on the floor: it was just like the one in the holding house in Madaba-if they had ever been in Madaba. His torture could have taken place anywhere, his delusion beginning with his alleged escape from his captors.

"You're wrong, Elezar. I didn't dream this up. I never wanted to be here, so how could I be open to your suggestions?"

"All it took was the ghost of your dear Rachel in the form of Rahab to make you pant like a dog and return to your vomit."

Deker yelled and swung his torch at Elezar, who ducked. "Was that real enough for you?"

"In your mind, yes," Elezar said calmly. "In reality, no. In reality I'm about to kill you. But before I do, I thought I'd let you in on a little secret you don't know."

Deker brought his torch over Elezar's head. "It will be the last thing you say."

"Remember that little explosive you prepared for the assassination of the Black Dove? The ceremonial bowl that your beloved Rachel accidentally blew herself up with?"

"You did it," Deker accused. "I know now."

"But it wasn't me, Deker," Elezar hissed in pure hatred. "I was under orders from the IDF. The IDF was worried about your impartiality with regard to all sides of the Temple Mount. They wanted to ensure that, if push came to shove, you'd ultimately come down on the side of the Jews, and your guilt over her death was just the thing to do it."

"That's a lie!" Deker shouted.

"Is it?" Elezar said calmly. "You know it's just the sort of dirty trick the Jews have been subjecting their people to for over three thousand years."

"I've got another one here for you," Deker said, and smashed his Molotov cocktail on the floor, igniting the grains and stores around them.

As fire began to engulf them, Elezar simply looked at Deker and said, "You know what you call an Israel without Jews? Palestine!"

"We are the Jewish people!" Deker screamed, his clothing bursting into flames. "We came to this land by a miracle! God brought us back to this land! We fight to expel the non-Jews who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land!"

Just then the ground shook like a great quake. Dust came down between the bricks above, and the walls began to collapse on top of them, burying them alive. And still Elezar shouted in the dark void, his words echoing in Deker's ears.

"From the river to the sea, Deker! A Palestine without Jews!"

The curtain of dust parted, and Deker stared as an unflinching Elezar stood brazenly before him even as his clothing caught fire. His mouth widened into a macabre smile as his hair burst into flames and he was completely engulfed by the inferno.

"From the river to the sea!"

A rock from above struck Deker in the head and he collapsed into the flames. Deker felt his own life seeping from his smashed body under the relentless avalanche of stone.

Dust in his eyes, he blinked at a shaft of light through the rubble. He felt a hot wind and watched it lift the ash to reveal a flash of metal hovering over him. For a second he thought it was the face of Molech come to drag him to hell.

But it was an unmanned RQ-1 Predator drone hovering over him like a modern Angel of Death. A single Hellfire missile remained beneath its right wing. Now the remote-controlled lens of the camera in its nose cone closed in on him and then opened again.

Then the metallic Predator flew away, leaving Deker to fall into the darkness and die.

Deker looked out the window from his hospital bed. The modern Abbell Synagogue in the plaza below with its famous stained-glass Chagall Windows depicting the twelve tribes of Israel told him that he was back in the present day at the Ein Kerem campus of the Hadassah Medical Center in southwest Jerusalem. Any further doubts were eliminated by the dozens of IVs, needle tracks and pangs of excruciating pain shooting up and down his battered body.

"You seem disappointed to be alive, Deker."

Deker turned to see a short, barrel-chested American in a suit standing by his bedside. It was the former U.S. secretary of defense, Marshall Packard, who more than anybody else was responsible for his transfer from the U.S. armed forces to the Israel Defense Forces several years ago. Deker now suspected the IDF had decided to return its defective merchandise to the Americans.

"The Temple Mount-" Deker said, but Packard cut him off.

"All is well," Packard assured him, then backtracked. "As well as anything concerning the Temple Mount and Jerusalem can be these days."

"And Elezar?"

"Died in the rubble by the time you were pulled out of that Palestinian house in Jericho." Packard showed Deker the display of his BlackBerry phone and played a video clip from the nose cone of the Predator drone. "The Hellfire missiles blew them back to the Stone Age."

Deker nodded. "So Elezar was the Black Dove?"

"Whatever his code name or real name might have been, Uri Elezar was definitely a PLO mole, placed inside the IDF decades ago, probably as soon as he hit puberty. Since the PLO went legit a few years back and other, more militant splinter groups began advancing the Palestinian cause through violence, we can only guess whom he really worked for when he died. We suspect it was a Jordanian cell group within an organization we call the Alignment. We could use your help fighting it when you feel better."

But Deker was still grappling with the reality that history had indeed changed. He had not made the mistake that had killed Rachel. It was Elezar who killed her. Elezar or, unthinkably, the IDF. Whatever the reality, his guilt now turned to anger. That an innocent like Rachel should suffer like that. That he should suffer still. Now the IDF was going to deny him the opportunity to confront them. They wanted him to go away, to no longer remind them of their own lapse with Elezar-or their own sin.

"When I feel better?" Deker asked. "I can barely feel anything. What did they inject me with?"

"A combination of isoniazid, rifampin, pyrazinamide, streptomycin and ethambutol," Packard told him. "You picked up extrapulmonary tuberculosis in that hellhole. We had to burn it to kill anything that could breathe from getting out and spreading it."

"TB?" Deker felt around his neck for his IDF tag and knew it was missing. "No. I'm not talking about all these IVs in my arms. I want to know what those Jordanian bastards did to me."

"They weren't Jordanians, officially, but some radical Palestinian Waqf faction," Packard said. "Somehow they had gotten ahold of a new U.S. interrogation protocol that the Jordanian GID has been testing for us on rendered terrorist suspects. What they did was inject you with a genetically engineered protein from a type of pond algae that's attracted to light. This virus infected certain neurons in your brain."

Deker touched his finger to his forehead. "I felt a splinter of light."

"That's the fiber-optic cable they threaded through your skull," Packard said. "It's what enabled them to send flashes of light directly into your brain. From there they could precisely target certain neurons with light and cause them to fire. They basically took control of your nervous system."