by Ted Dekker
She had spent a good part of the last hour muttering prayers to God. Silly little prayers that sounded foolish in the face of her predicament. For all practical purposes, God had put her in this situation himself! She was heading north, and every turn of the tires on the blacktop groaned her insanity. And as far as she could figure, it was all God’s doing. The Nazarene’s doing.
A Muslim prayer call echoed over the hills, and Rebecca moved her foot to the brake. Where had that come from? There shouldn’t be any town anywhere near here if her geography was correct. She eased the Jeep forward at about thirty kilometers per hour. To her right, the eastern sky was orange over the Midia range. Another sound reached her ears—the clanking of metal against metal.
Tank tracks!
Rebecca slammed on the brakes and stopped in the middle of the road. A ring lingered in her ears. She held her breath and listened.
There it was again, the unmistakable sound of steel tank tracks. And beyond that, the Muslim prayer call. She spun around.
Nothing. The road was deserted.
“Caleb?” She shook him. “Please, Caleb.” His head lolled gently.
A deep-seated desperation swept through her chest. She sat immobilized behind the wheel, unable to think. The border was just ahead; she could feel it more than anything. It had taken her four hours to travel 250 kilometers, and she’d done it without meeting a single patrol. But her luck had run out. The inevitable waited.
Rebecca eased the clutch out and started the Jeep forward. She rolled another kilometer. The sound of the tank tracks hadn’t returned. Maybe, just maybe, the checkpoints were on a parallel road nearby or . . .
She’d come around a corner and the sight ahead made her jerk. Heat washed over her skull and spread down her back. The desert opened up to a wide basin. As far as she could see in either direction, hundreds of tanks lined the basin, facing north, like a huge herd of beasts. Division strength, at the very least.
She swerved on the road and then quickly pulled off, less than a hundred meters from the first tank. As many APCs and half-tracks were scattered among the M-60 tanks. Egyptian and Saudi. Thousands of soldiers crawled over the machines and leaned on their tracks. The road wound between them, without obstruction except for a single machine gun post facing Rebecca.
The Arabs had seen her already. They were staring in her direction.
Rebecca felt the first waves of panic lapping at her mind and she closed her eyes. Hold on, Rebecca. Hold on.
She opened her eyes. She’d been here before, only the last time it had been with Caleb, facing a ragtag outfit of soldiers. Now she was alone, facing a division of M-60 tanks.
One of the guards was waving her forward. He yelled something she couldn’t make out and a hundred soldiers faced her.
Her muscles refused to move. This was it. She was finally facing her death. She had found love and death in the same day.
Rebecca looked over at Caleb and swallowed. Now, facing death, she felt desperate for his power. Sorrow washed over her, and she thought she might start to cry again. Her mind skipped absurdly to a story she’d read about Jews walking innocently over a canyon cliff at Nazi gunpoint. She had wept when she’d read it, and the same sorrow filled her chest now.
“I was wrong about your God, Caleb,” she whispered. “I was wrong about the Nazarene.” The words sounded impossible on her lips.
Would you like to step off a cliff, Rebecca?
She looked up at the soldier who had his rifle pointed skyward now. A shot rang into the air and he yelled again, demanding she come forward.
A thought struck her. If Caleb had been protected by God in the desert, was it so that he could die today?
She sniffed and jammed the shifter into gear. The Jeep bounced back onto the blacktop and rolled for the tanks. Rebecca steeled herself with a set jaw.
“If your God shows up, I will follow him, Caleb,” she said through clenched teeth. “You hear me? I will follow your Christ.”
Another tear slipped from the corner of her eye. She slowed the Jeep to a crawl and continued forward. Fifty meters. Forty.
A gunshot split the air. The Jeep sagged to the right. Someone had shot her tire out.
For a brief moment Rebecca stared at the line of tanks without really seeing them. She set her jaw and climbed out without looking up. The soldier was yelling again, in a high pitch now, as if he were about to shoot her. She ignored him and rounded the vehicle. She pulled the passenger door open, shoved her arms under Caleb’s back and legs, and hauled him from the Jeep.
She faced them, with Caleb in her arms. He was too heavy to carry forty meters, despite her strength, but she no longer cared. It was a fitting end to the mad journey that had delivered her here. Caleb’s journey. They wanted her to stop, but she couldn’t stop. She had to get to Jerusalem, and Jerusalem lay beyond this line of soldiers.
Rebecca walked forward, towards the division of tanks.
The absurdity of it all struck her fullface and she had to force one leg before the other. She covered a third of the distance, and the valley seemed to have hushed for her journey. Her shoulders began to shake with a sob. She tried to hold the emotion back for a second, and then she surrendered herself to it. The tears flowed silently from her eyes like streams, dropping on the man in her arms.
She looked down into Caleb’s peaceful face and the sight made her cry harder. She lifted his head and kissed his cheek.
“Messiah, show your power to me,” she said aloud. “Jesus of Nazareth, have mercy upon me, a sinner.”
The heavens might have opened in that moment for all she knew, but to her it felt like a bucket of anguish had suddenly been dumped into her mind. It spread down her spine and into her chest and she threw her head back in a silent cry. She was facing death here with Caleb in her arms, but really she was dead already. Dead because she had rejected truth. The simple, unalterable truth that she’d denied the Messiah already. He was the Nazarene, wasn’t he?
She was suddenly crying aloud, slogging forward with this man in her arms. It was too much. She nearly lost her footing, but she hung on, wading against this sea of sorrow that flowed through her. The soldiers and tanks became a mere backdrop to her own drama.
“Dear God, forgive me,” she sobbed quietly.
Waves of warmth washed over her skin and she sobbed open-mouthed and unabashed, eyes still clenched. “Oh God! Oh Gaawwwd! Forgive me!”
It occurred to her that she might be headed in the wrong direction now, but the thought was lost to this overpowering emotion surging through her chest. This raw love. This passion born out of God’s heart. Out of the Nazarene’s heart.
The sound of sorrow swallowed her, and she thought that heaven itself was weeping with her. She leaned over and kissed Caleb’s cheek again. “I love you, Caleb. Oh, how I love you.” Perhaps she had been shot and was in heaven. Perhaps . . .
Rebecca stopped, swallowed. She looked past blurry eyes to her right. A large soldier dressed in tan desert garb was on his knees beside the road, head bent over, weeping.
Beyond him a tank stood with its huge gun aimed at the sky. The commander stared at her with long trails of tears down his cheeks.
The sound of weeping came from all sides. Rebecca turned slowly around, stunned by the sight that greeted her. By the hundreds men were lying slumped over their tanks, or kneeling on the ground, or lying in the sand, gripped by a sorrow that twisted their faces. Not a single man stood unaffected. The army of tanks had become a field of anguish. To a man the soldiers wept bitterly.
It was the Tower of Babel. It was a sea of tears, and God was parting that sea.
Rebecca turned north and walked forward as if on a cloud. This was real. She was not dead. If anything, she had come alive. She’d found a new world with new rules, and at its center was this man she had once despised. The Nazarene.
She began to cry again, and she cried for a long time, walking right past a division of tanks. With Caleb in her arms. Which might have
seemed impossible because of his weight, but was clearly not impossible. The huge weapons had armor of hardened steel, but the men who commanded them had become butter. It was as if anyone who looked her way felt what she felt and ended in a puddle of tears.
Rebecca didn’t know how long she managed to walk, but the army fell behind until only her own sobbing surrounded her. Three times she staggered and set Caleb down, exhausted and numb. Three times she picked him back up and walked on, dazed and disorientated. The army was back there, beyond a bend in the road. She could hear them still, a gentle sound of sorrow. She wanted to leave the sound, find some solitude. She wanted to be alone with her new revelation and with Caleb.
Her strength finally left her altogether, and she stumbled to the side of the road only to drop Caleb in the sand at a crossroads.
He grunted and she dropped down beside him, horrified that she might have hurt him.
“Caleb? Caleb, are you okay?”
She stroked his hair and fresh tears blurred her vision.
“Oh, Caleb . . .”
His eyes fluttered open.
45
General Nasser of the Syrian air force slammed the phone down in its cradle. “The Israelis are calling up their reserves!”
“You’re absolutely positive?” Abu Ismael demanded. “One report doesn’t necessarily—”
“Not one report. Five reports. The call has gone out. Every hour that goes by now we lose our advantage.”
Abu stalked across the war room, furious that it had come to this. Ismael hadn’t checked in for nearly two days. The last he’d heard, his son was tracking the Ark into Saudi Arabia. For all he knew he was dead. The thought sat like lead in his gut.
“Colonel Muhammed Du’ad’s men are in place around almost every target we outlined,” he said.
“It’s too early,” Nasser said. “We don’t have independent verification that the Ark is even in Jerusalem, much less that they have any mandate to retake their Temple Mount. I don’t think we would have the support from Egypt to attack without confirmation.”
“No, we wouldn’t. But we do have this mobilization of theirs—that’s confirmation that they’re concerned enough to risk war. They know that they can’t keep mobilization on this scale secret. We have far too many operatives throughout Israel. And still they do it. Why? Because they have the Ark, and they know that Ismael knew they had the Ark. They can only assume we know as well. So we do have our confirmation.”
The logic wasn’t ironclad, but the information on which wars were based rarely was. Where are you, Ismael? What do you know, my son?
“We can’t attack their air bases, Abu. What if we’re wrong?”
“Then we are wrong! Perhaps it doesn’t matter. We’ve looked for an excuse for fifty years, and now we have one. Does it really matter if the excuse is based on mistaken information? Israel can’t coexist with the Arab states. That is what matters.”
“Now you sound like your son. We’re not the Hamas. The last time we went into Israel, we came out with our tail between our legs. And they didn’t have nuclear weapons then.”
“And we didn’t have an air force to speak of then.”
“Without Egypt, we still don’t.”
Abu glanced at the man. “Don’t let the king hear you say that. Besides, we have Egypt. And we also have forty thousand armed men inside Israel’s borders, around their towns.”
“You’re forgetting that it was I who drew up this plan in the beginning. But it’s dependent on complete surprise. Something we’ve evidently lost.”
“And if we have lost it, can’t we still win?”
They had discussed it many times before, but never with true intent on the table. General Nasser sighed. “If . . . if we are absolutely sure about Egypt’s total commitment, and if . . . if the PLO proves to be more than a scattered band of poorly trained civilians, then yes, I think so. But it would require a full assault without compromise from any of our friends.”
“Exactly! And if we don’t mobilize immediately, then we will remove the option of a full assault from the table. We have to at least put our forces in a position to attack. The Israelis are doing nothing less.”
“If we mobilize, they will see it.”
“They will, but they still need time to gear up their military machine. Twenty-four hours, at least. And even then we stand a chance at a face-off. We have no choice, Nasser. We must mobilize.”
They stared at each other for a few long seconds. “Egypt will agree?”
“Yes,” Abu said. “Absolutely.”
“And Colonel Du’ad will refrain from attacking?”
“Unless we give the word,” Abu assured him.
“The plan was flawless the way I drew it up,” Nasser said, closing his eyes. “Now this. Every time an Arab belches, the Jews seem to know.” He swore. “Okay. Okay. Then we mobilize. I’ll inform the king.”
“Immediately,” Abu said.
“Immediately.”
Abu snatched up his phone and punched in a number. He waited for the answer, trying his best to ignore the surge in his pulse. A voice filled his ear.
“Yes?”
“President Al-Zeid, this is—”
“I know who you are.”
“Yes, of course. They’ve called in their reserves. We believe that we should mobilize immediately.”
Silence followed.
“Sir?”
“And Jordan?”
“They have agreed to follow our lead.”
“Then we mobilize.”
“I thought you would agree.”
The president of Egypt kept the line silent for a moment. “They have it then?”
“We think so. It’s the only reason for their action.”
“May Allah grant us mercy,” the president said and hung up.
Rebecca wiped her eyes quickly and looked at him again. Caleb was staring up at her with wide green eyes.
“Caleb?”
He blinked but didn’t answer.
She gently pushed his hair from his forehead. “Are . . . are you all right? Can you hear me?”
“Rebecca,” he said softly.
She couldn’t help what she did next. He was alive and he had just spoken her name tenderly, and for some reason this simple fact flooded her with the desire to kiss him.
So she did. On the forehead.
“Caleb, I thought I might have lost you.” She pulled back. “You scared me to death.”
Caleb smiled. “Hello, Rebecca. Did I miss something?”
She laughed, short and full of relief. “Yes. Yes, I suppose you did. You missed my heroic rescue.” The grin faded from her mouth and she looked back to the south. “You missed the Nazarene’s rescue. I think you would have been impressed.” She looked at him again.
“And you missed . . .” How could she just tell him that she had fallen madly in love with him? What if he couldn’t return that kind of love? After all, he was a Christian from the deserts of Ethiopia and she was a Jew from Jerusalem. What if she had just imagined . . .
“I love you, Rebecca.”
Her heart wanted to burst. She looked deep into his eyes. “You do?”
“I have loved you from the first time you stomped off in the desert.”
They were holding their gaze, and Rebecca could hardly stand the warmth running through her chest.
“When I tried to kiss you?”
He grinned wide. “Yes, I think that did it.”
She stared at him. Was he serious? A giggle rose to her lips and she let it out in a burst.
He laughed in a way she’d never heard from him, more of a snort than a real laugh. It only made her giggle more. This was love, wasn’t it? This embrace of silliness. She impulsively kissed him again, this time lightly and on the lips.
He turned red and she knew that she had swept him off his feet.
“Ohhh, my head,” Caleb said, touching his wound.
She quickly removed his hand. “No, it’s okay; leave
it alone. It’s just a graze. We have to get some water.”
Caleb sat up and looked around.
“I felt the Nazarene’s power, Caleb,” she said.
He turned back. “You did?”
“Yes. I did.”
Caleb scrambled to his feet. “You did.” He covered his face with his hands. “Thank you, Father.”
Caleb suddenly froze. He pulled his hands down and spun to face the north. “We have to get to Jerusalem!”
The sound of cowbells reached faintly to them. Rebecca looked up the dirt road that intersected the highway. A cart was clip-clopping towards them, piloted by a man in rags.
She exchanged a glance with Caleb. “Yes, we have to get to Jerusalem.”
The cart pulled closer, and then stopped abreast of them. “Shalom,” the man said in an old crackling voice. He was a hundred if he was a day.
“Shalom,” Rebecca returned. “Do you know that there’s an Egyptian army gathered around the corner?”
The man looked to the south. “No. Is there?”
“Yes, there is. You shouldn’t be here.”
“And you? Why are you here?” The man spoke Hebrew.
Rebecca hesitated. “Where are we?”
“You are five kilometers from Eilat,” the man said and looked to the south again. “The Egyptian army, eh? Are we at war with the Egyptians?”
“No. No, I don’t think so. We’re in Israel?”
“Do I look like an Egyptian to you? Yes, we are just over the border which is around the bend where your army is gathered.”
Rebecca looked at Caleb, surprised. She must have crossed into Jordan before meeting the tank division! That’s why the drive had seemed so long. But what were Egyptian tanks doing in Jordan?
“Can you take us to Eilat, my friend?” Caleb asked.
“I just came from Eilat,” the man said.
Caleb smiled. That smile of his. The one that reached into the heart.
“But I would be happy to take you there,” the old man said, casting a last look south. “Very happy, despite losing a day’s wage.”