SANDSTORM sf-1

by James Rollins

  The lanky graduate student, Clay Bishop, stood by one of the windows, ill at ease. A young serving girl offered to fill his wineglass. He shook his head. “La, shuk-ran,” he mumbled. No, thank you.

  Behind him, two men sampled a tray of varied hors d’oeuvres, traditional dishes of Oman, bits of braised meat, goat cheese, olives, and slivered dates. Dr. Omaha Dunn and his brother, Daniel. Cassandra knew all about their narrow escape earlier. Sloppy work on the part of the kidnappers.

  Still, she eyed the pair. She knew better than to underestimate an opponent. Defeat lay along that path. There could be strengths to this pair that bore watching.

  Omaha chewed around an olive pit. “While you were in the shower,” he said, sucking on the pit, “I checked the weather report on the local news. The sandstorm shut down Kuwait City, shoved a dune right down Main Street.”

  The younger brother made a noncommittal noise. He did not seem to be paying attention. His gaze followed a tall blonde as she entered on the far side of the room.

  Coral Novak, Sigma operative, her replacement.

  Cassandra turned her attention to her adversary. The woman’s coolness seemed too practiced, especially considering how easily she had been taken down at the museum, caught off guard. Cassandra’s eyes narrowed with distaste. This is who they thought to take my place at Painter’s side? Someone green to Sigma? No wonder things had to change.

  On the heels of the woman, Painter appeared. Tall, dressed in black slacks and black shirt, formal, yet casual. Even from her perch on the wall, Cassandra recognized his study of the room, circumspect, out of the corner of his eye. He was taking in all sights, analyzing, calculating.

  Her fingers tightened on the wall’s shards of glass.

  He had exposed her, threatened her position with the Guild, brought her low. She had been perfectly poised, spent years cultivating her role as a lead operative, earning her partner’s trust…and at the end, maybe even something beyond simple loyalty.

  Anger built in her chest, stirring bile. He had cost her everything, driven her out of the limelight, limiting her role to ops that required total anonymity. She rose from her spot and continued along the wall. She had a mission. One thwarted before by Painter, at the museum. She knew the stakes involved.

  She would not fail this night.

  Nothing would stop her.

  Cassandra worked around to the far wing of the palace, toward a lone light in the darkness at the rear of the building. She rose up on her toes and ran the last distance. She could not risk missing her target.

  At last, she settled before a window that looked down upon an unkempt garden. Through the steamy window, a lone woman reclined in a sunken bath. Cassandra scanned the remaining rooms. Empty. She listened. Not a sound.

  Satisfied, Cassandra aimed her grappling gun toward an upper balcony. In her left ear, she heard the woman mumble. It sounded groggy, a dream, a choked cry: “ No…not again… ”

  Cassandra pulled the gun’s release trigger. The hooks snapped wide and sailed through the air, spiraling a thin cable of steel behind. A tight zipping noise accompanied it. The grappling hooks sailed over the balustrade of the third-story balcony.

  Securing the hooks with a snug pull, Cassandra swung from the wall toward the garden below. Wind whistled. Dogs barked in a neighboring alley. She landed without breaking a twig and leaned against the wall beside the window, one ear cocked for the sound of alarm.

  Silence.

  She checked the window. It had been left cracked open a finger’s breadth. Beyond, the woman mumbled in her dreams.

  Perfect.

  8:18 P.M.

  S AFIA STANDS in the waiting room of a large hospital. She knows what is going to happen. Across the way, she spots the bent woman walking with the limp, entering the ward. Face and form covered in a berka. The bulge under the woman’s cloak evident now.

  …not like before.

  Safia lunges to cross the waiting room, frantic to stop what is going to happen next. But children crowd around her feet, clambering at her legs, snatching at her arms. She struggles to push them away, but they cry out.

  She slows, unsure whether to console or push forward.

  Ahead, the woman disappears into the mass of people by the desk. Safia can no longer see her. But the station nurse raises her arm, points in Safia’s direction. Her name is called.

  …like before.

  The crowd parts. The woman is spotlit in her own light, angelic, cloak swelling out like wings.

  No, Safia mouths. She has no air to speak, to warn.

  Then a blinding explosion, all light, no noise.

  Sight returns in an instant-but not hearing.

  She is on her back, staring as silent flames race along the ceiling. She hides her face from the heat, but it’s everywhere. With her head turned, she sees children sprawled, some aflame, others crushed under stone. One sits with her back to an overturned table. The child’s face is missing. Another reaches toward her, but there is no hand, only blood.

  Safia now realizes why she can’t hear. The world has become one scream stretched to infinity. The scream comes not from the children, but from her own mouth.

  Then something…

  …touched her.

  Safia startled awake in the tub, choking on the same scream. It was always inside her, trying to get out. She covered her mouth, shaking out a sob, holding everything else inside. She trembled in the cooling water, arms hugged around her breasts. Tight. Waiting for the echo of the panic attack to subside.

  Only a dream…

  She wished she could believe it. It had been too forceful, too vivid. She still tasted the blood in her mouth. She wiped her brow but continued to tremble. She wanted to blame her reaction, the dream, on her exhaustion-but that was a lie. It was this place, this land, home again. And Omaha…

  She closed her eyes, but the dream waited, only a breath way. It was no mere nightmare. All of it had happened. All of it was her fault. The local imam, a holy Muslim leader, had tried to deter her from excavating the tombs in the hills outside of Qumran. She had not listened. Too confident in the shield of pure research.

  The year before, Safia had spent six months deciphering a single clay tablet. It suggested a cache of scrolls might be buried at the location, possibly another sepulcher of the famous Dead Sea Scrolls. Two months of digging proved her right. She uncovered forty urns containing a vast library of Aramaic writings, the discovery of the year.

  But it came with a high price.

  A fanatical fundamentalist group took offense at the defilement of a Muslim holy place. Especially by a woman, one of mixed blood, one with close ties to the West. Unknown to her at the time, Safia was targeted.

  Only it was the blood and lives of innocent children that paid the price for her hubris and gall.

  She was one of only three survivors. A miracle, it was described in newspapers, a miracle she had survived.

  Safia prayed for no other such miracles in her life.

  They came at too high a price.

  Safia opened her eyes, fingers clenched. Anger warmed past grief and guilt. Her therapist had told her this was a perfectly natural response. She should allow herself to feel this fury. Still, she felt ashamed of her anger, undeserving.

  She sat straighter. Water splashed over the tub’s edge and washed across the tiles, leaving a trail of jasmine petals on the floor. The remaining petals sloshed around her bare midsection.

  Under the water, something brushed against her knee, something as soft as a flower, but with more weight. Safia tensed, a rabbit in headlights.

  The waters settled. The slick of jasmine petals hid the depths of the tub. Then slowly a lazy S-curve disturbed the layer from beneath.

  Safia froze.

  The snake’s head surfaced through the petals, a few clinging to its mud brown head. Gray eyes turned black as the protective inner eyelid pulled down. It seemed to be staring right at her.

  Safia knew the snake on sight, spotting
the telltale white cross atop its crown. Echis pyramidum Carpet viper. All Omani children knew to watch for its mark. The sign of the cross meant death here, not Christian salvation. The snake was ubiquitous in the region, frequenting shady spots, found hanging from limbs of trees. Its venom was both hemotoxic and neurotoxic, a fatal combination, from bite to death in less than ten minutes. Its ability to strike was so broad and swift that it was once thought to be capable of flight.

  The meter-long viper swam through the tub, aiming for Safia. She dared not move or risk provoking it. It must have slipped into the water after she fell asleep, seeking moisture to aid in the shedding of its skin.

  The snake reached her belly, rising a bit from the water, tongue flicking the air. Safia felt the tickle on her skin as it sidled even closer. Goose bumps traced down her arms. She fought not to shiver.

  Sensing no danger, the viper beached onto her belly, slithered upward, and slowly crested her left breast. It paused to flick its tongue again. Scaled skin was warm on her own, not cold. Its movements were muscular, hard.

  Safia kept her own muscles tight, rigid. She dared not breathe. But how long could she hold her breath?

  The snake seemed to enjoy its perch, unmoving, settling atop her breast. Its behavior was so odd. Why didn’t it sense her, hear her heartbeat?

  Move… she willed it with all her might. If only it would retreat across the room, find some corner to hide, give her a chance to climb from the bath…

  She found the need for air growing into a sharp pain in her chest, a pressure behind her eyes.

  Please, go…

  The viper sampled the air again with its red tongue. Whatever it sensed seemed to content it. It settled in for a rest.

  Tiny stars danced across Safia’s vision, birthed by the lack of oxygen and the tension. If she moved, she died. If she even breathed…

  Then a shift of shadows drew her eye to the window. Condensation steamed the glass, making the view murky. But there was no doubt.

  Someone was out there.

  8

  Snakes and Ladders

  DECEMBER 2, 08:24 P.M.

  OLD TOWN, MUSCAT

  WHERE THEhell’s Safia?” Omaha asked, checking his watch.

  It was ten minutes past the time they were all supposed to gather for dinner. The woman he had known in the past was painfully punctual, something drilled into her at Oxford. It was her attention to detail that made her such an accomplished curator.

  “Shouldn’t she be here by now?” he said.

  “I had a bath drawn for her,” Kara announced as she stepped into the room. “A maid just went up with fresh clothes.”

  Kara entered, resplendent in a traditional Omani thob gown of flowing red silk with gold filigree embroidered along the hems. She abandoned any headdress, leaving her auburn hair free, and wore Prada sandals. As always, to Kara, a line had to be drawn between the traditional and the fashionable.

  “A bath?” Omaha groaned. “Then we’ll never see her this evening.”

  Safia loved water in all its forms: showers, fountains, flowing taps, dips in streams and lakes, but especially baths. He used to tease her, attributing her fixation to her desert past. You can take the girl out of the desert, but never the desert out of the girl

  With this thought, other uninvited memories intruded, of long baths shared, limbs entwined, laughter, soft moans, steam off water and skin.

  “She’ll be along when she’s ready,” Kara warned, protective, drawing him back to the room. She nodded to the household butler. “We’ll be serving a light Omani dinner before we head out in a couple of hours. Please sit.”

  Everyone found seats, dividing into party lines. Painter and Coral sat on one side, along with Safia’s graduate student, Clay. Danny and Omaha took seats on the other. Lastly, Kara settled on the lone chair at the head of the table.

  Upon some unseen signal, servants paraded through a set of swinging doors from the kitchen hallway. They bore aloft covered trays, some held above their heads on a single palm. Others carried wider trays in both arms.

  As each platter was lowered to the table, the servant stepped deftly back, lifting the lids to expose what lay beneath. It was all clearly choreographed.

  Kara named each dish as it was revealed. “ Maqbous …saffron rice over lamb. Shuwa …pork cooked in clay ovens. Mashuai …spit-fired kingfish served with lemon rice.” She named a handful of other curried dishes. Amid the feast were plates of thin, oval breads. They were familiar to Omaha. The ubiquitous rukhal bread of Oman, baked over burning palm leaves.

  Kara finally finished her introductions. “And lastly, honeycakes, one of my favorites, flavored with the syrup from the native elb tree.”

  “What…no sheep’s eyes?” Omaha mumbled.

  Kara heard him. “That delicacy can be arranged.”

  He held up a conciliatory palm. “I’ll pass this time.”

  Kara waved a hand over the spread. “Tradition among the Omani is to serve oneself. Please enjoy.”

  The group took her at her word and proceeded to spoon, spear, ladle, and grab. Omaha filled a cup from the tall pot. Kahwa Omani coffee. Deadly strong. Arabs might shun alcohol, but they had no qualms about caffeine addiction. He took a deep sip and sighed. The bitter tang of the thick coffee was softened by cardamom, a distinct and welcome after-taste.

  Conversation centered initially on the quality of the fare. Mostly murmurs of surprise at the tenderness of the meat or the fire of the spices. Clay seemed content to fill his plate with honeycakes. Kara merely picked at her food, keeping a watch on the servants, guiding with a nod or turn of her head.

  Omaha studied her while sipping his kahwa

  She was thinner, more wasted than when last he saw her. Kara’s eyes still shone, but now appeared more fevered. Omaha knew how much effort she had invested in this trip. And he knew why. Safia and he had kept few secrets…at least back then. He knew all about Reginald Kensington. His portrait stared down at Kara from the wall behind her. Did she still feel those eyes?

  Omaha imagined he’d be no better if his own father had vanished into the desert, sucked out of this world. But thank God, it required his imagination to fathom such a loss. His father, at eighty-two, still worked the family farm back in Nebraska. He ate four eggs, a rasher of bacon, and a pile of buttered toast each breakfast and smoked a cigar each night. His mother was even more fit. Solid stock, his father used to brag. Just like my boys

  As Omaha thought of his family, his brother’s sharp voice drew his attention from Kara. Danny was elaborating on the escapade of the midday abduction, using his fork as much as his voice to tell the story. Omaha recognized the flush of excitement as he relived the day’s events. He shook his head, hearing the bluster and swagger in his younger brother. Omaha had once been the same. Immortal. Armored in youth.

  No longer.

  He stared down at his own hands. They were lined and scarred, his father’s hands. He listened to Danny’s story. It had not been the grand adventure his brother related. It had been deadly-serious business.

  A new voice interrupted. “A woman?” Painter Crowe asked with a frown. “One of your kidnappers was a woman?”

  Danny nodded. “I didn’t see her, but my brother did.”

  Omaha found the other man’s eyes turning to him, a piercing blue. His brow furrowed, his gaze concentrating attention like a well-focused laser.

  “Is this true?” Crowe asked.

  Omaha shrugged, taken aback by his intensity.

  “What did she look like?”

  This last was spoken too quickly. Omaha answered slowly, watching the pair. “She was tall. My height. From the way she handled herself, I’d say she had military training.”

  Painter glanced at his partner. A silent message seemed to pass between them. They knew something they weren’t telling. The scientist faced Omaha again. “And her appearance?”

  “Black hair and green eyes. Bedouin descent. And oh, a small red teardrop tattoo by one eye�
��her left.”

  “Bedouin,” Painter repeated. “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve worked this region for the past fifteen years. I can tell individual tribe members and clans apart.”

  “Which tribe was the woman from?”

  “Hard to say. I didn’t get a long enough look at her.”

  Painter leaned back, clearly the thread of tension in him broken. His partner reached for one of the honeycakes, placed it on her plate, and ignored it. Neither exchanged a glance this time, but something had been resolved.

  “Why the interest?” Kara asked, voicing Omaha’s own thought.

  Painter shrugged. “If it was a random abduction for profit, then it probably doesn’t matter. But if not…if it was connected to the museum heist in some manner, I think we should all know who to keep an eye out for.”

  His words sounded reasonable enough, practical and scientific, but Omaha sensed something deeper lay behind his expressed interest.

  Kara let it drop. She glanced to her diamond Rolex. “Where is Safia? Surely she’s not still in the bath?”

  09:12 P.M.

  SAFIA KEPTher breathing shallow.

  She had no phobia of snakes, but she had learned to respect them while exploring dusty ruins. They were as much a part of the desert as the sand and wind. She sat perfectly still in the bath. The waters cooled as she waited…or maybe it was the fear chilling her.

  The carpet viper draped over her left breast seemed to have settled in for a good long soak. Safia recognized the roughness of its outer skin. It was an old specimen, making the shedding of its skin especially difficult.

  Again movement caught her eye, beyond the window. But as she searched, the darkness lay still and quiet.

  Paranoia that often preceded a panic attack, an all-consuming anxiety that saw threat and danger where none existed. Her attacks were more commonly triggered by emotional stress or tension, not physical threats. In fact, the surge of adrenaline from immediate danger was a good buffer against the electric cascade of a panic episode. Still, the strain of outwaiting the viper had begun to wear thin the veneer of Safia’s buffer.