Deker sucked in his breath and felt his heart pound in his chest as he realized that the bowl of coins was really a frag bomb that Molech was about to devour. It would detonate once the fuse lit inside the Reahn god's belly, destroying Molech and everybody else in the way of its exploding metal fragments.
The offering is a sign of her faith in Yahweh-and in me. She's really offering me a way out.
In slow motion he saw Ram hand the bowl over to Rahab, and then she in turn brought it to him. By all appearances the Reahn priestess was giving the Yahweh-worshiping Hebrew his worthless bribe to take with him to his death in the belly of the almighty Molech.
But the look in Rahab's eyes told Deker she knew very
well what this bowl of coins was supposed to do, or at least what she had been told it could do before the Israelites who gave it to her were captured and killed, some or all perhaps even by her brother Ram.
Rahab stepped right up to Deker, as close as she could, to hand him the bowl. She was chanting, it seemed, but she peered intently into his eyes. The crowd began chanting and roaring along with her, and as their volume swelled she suddenly dropped her voice and spoke to him.
"Samuel Boaz Deker, listen to me: the rest of your bricks are in my cellar," she whispered in Hebrew as she handed the bowl over to him. "Elezar showed me how to push the button."
The shock had barely registered in his brain before she pulled away and he stared at her in horror. She didn't know that the C-4 exploded. She only thought it opened a wider door in a wall.
Elezar had arranged for her to blow up the lower city wall and take herself and her family out with it!
The bowl now weighed like death in Deker's hands. He simply stood there in the middle of the plaza, flat-footed, waiting for Rahab to back off with Ram, motioning with his eyes back to the gate in the far wall from which they had entered. He couldn't tell if they had made it, however, because the tip of a spear prompted him to turn his back to them and face Molech and his priests.
A drum roll began beyond view, and Deker took one inexorable step after another toward the towering monument of Molech, smoke bursting out his horns into the sky and stench-filled clouds of burnt flesh belching out his belly.
One last time he looked over his shoulder at the king and tribunal behind him with the entire palace guard. There was no sight of Rahab or Ram, although they could have remained just beyond his view.
He then felt the long spears at his back retract for a moment as the guards prepared to stab him hard and drive him headfirst into the furnace.
That was his chance.
He hurled the heavy bowl of coins in an arc into the great fire and dove to the side of the furnace, hitting the paving stones as a terrific explosion ripped open Molech's belly and blasted a million metal fragments across the temple courtyard.