By noon the next day Deker and Elezar had safely crossed the Jordan and made it back to Shittim. After a quick debrief with old Caleb, some rest and supper, Deker sat silently in the command tent while Elezar delivered his assessment of Hamas and the morale of his troops to General Bin-Nun and his top forty officers.
"Yahweh has surely given the whole land into our hands," said Elezar, concluding his official report. "All the people are melting in fear because of us."
Not a word about Rahab, Deker thought, but that would be remedied soon enough. He would do everything in his power to persuade Bin-Nun to send them back to Jericho before any attack. He had to get back to Rahab and make things right for her-and Israel.
It was the junior spy's turn now, and as Elezar turned the presentation over to Deker he fixed his gaze with a look that warned him not to make trouble. God's holy angels could not be split in their report, because heaven was not a house divided, and Bin-Nun wasn't looking for anything other than a rubber stamp for his invasion.
This much had been obvious to Deker as soon as they had reached the Judah Gate at the western entrance to the camp. The Judah Division had been at the eastern end of the camp when they had left for Jericho. While they were gone Bin-Nun had rearranged the order of the camp and troops, pitching it toward Jericho. But he had kept the signal tower with its cloud by day and fire by night east of the camp to fool both the Moabites and Reahns into thinking the camp was still pitched toward Mount Nebo. In so doing, he had shaved a good two or three days off their prep time in breaking down the camp to move out in battle column.
Deker stood up before the clay model of Jericho that he had made. With a thin rod he pointed to and explained the fortifications of Jericho, detailing the composition of the walls, depth, height and defenses.
"You saw what I did with my magic mud bricks to the old stone monument," he began, and got nods and murmurs of approval from some of the commanders, although Bin-Nun and his defense contractor Kane remained stone-faced. "I can do the same to the walls of Jericho."
"But what are your mud bricks against those great walls?" asked Salmon from the back of the tent. He was standing in the outer ring of aides, who were supposed to be seen and not heard; but his offense was taken in stride, as it seemed to be the thought on all the commanders' minds.
"I only have to blow out a section of the wall for you to enter, not the whole thing, and I've got enough mud bricks. It's like
cutting a tree to make it fall in a particular direction. Let me
show you."
He took his rod and tapped a spot on the north side of the upper fortress wall that he had specially prepared. The section fell like a drawbridge over the tops of the roofs to the lower city wall. Then he tapped the top of that lower wall and it, too, fell like a drawbridge to the reed mat.
There were murmurs all around, and a clear desire for further explanation.
"We don't have to bring down all the walls to enter the city," he told them. "Two pinpoint blasts-one in a weak section of the upper fortress wall and another in the lower city wall-will do the trick. The first blast will not only open the upper fortress wall, it will bring down the bricks on top of the buildings below like an avalanche, all the way down to the city wall. It may even be enough to smash through the lower city wall. But just in case, I will have a second blast to blow that wall in two. The bricks that spill down to the ground will create a slope that will enable you to climb over the lower revetment wall and into the city. From there you can climb straight up into the fortress, one after the other."
The commanders were amazed and delighted.
All except for Bin-Nun.
"You still have not solved the problem of gaining entrance to the city to plant your explosives," the general said. "By your own assessments, the walls are insurmountable, and you'll never pass through the main gate again. You fooled the guards once. But you can be sure they won't make that mistake again, or Hamas will make them pay for it with their lives."
Deker glanced at Elezar, who instantly knew where he was going, and warned him with his eyes not to go there. "There is another way, General," he said. "A way to pass through the walls."
Bin-Nun stared at him and told his commanders, "Leave us."