SANDSTORM sf-1

by James Rollins

  In the passenger seat up front, Lu’lu rode next to the Rahim driver, a young woman of sixteen named Jehd. The driver-or pilot, as the case was at times-held her lips in a firm, determined line, though a glint of girlish excitement lit her eyes.

  Other dune buggies followed, each loaded with five of the clan women. They crisscrossed one another’s paths to avoid the sand cast up by the vehicles in front. To either side, flanking the buggies, rode a dozen sand bikes, motorcycles with ballooned wheels, chewing through the larger vehicles’ wakes, making huge leaps over the crests of dunes.

  The caravan’s speed was born of necessity.

  To the north, the sandstorm barreled toward them.

  Upon leaving the subterranean warren of tunnels, Safia found herself on the far side of the Dhofar Mountains, at the edge of the Rub‘ al-Khali. They had crossed under the entire mountain range. The passages they had traversed were old river channels, worn through the limestone bedrock.

  Free of the tunnels, the buggies and bikes awaited them. Kara had commented on the choice of vehicles, expecting camels or some other less sophisticated means of transportation. Lu’lu had explained: We may trace our lineage into the past, but we live in the present. The Rahim did not live their entire lives in the desert, but like the Queen of Sheba herself, they wandered, educated themselves, prospered even. They had bank accounts, stock portfolios, real-estate holdings, traded in oil futures.

  The group now raced toward Shisur, trying to beat the storm.

  Safia had not argued against such haste. She did not know how much longer the ruse she had used to deceive Cassandra would last. If they were to gain the prize before Cassandra did, they would need every advantage.

  Lu’lu and the others were counting on Safia to lead the way. In the hodja ’s words: The keys revealed themselves to you. So will the Gates. Safia prayed the woman was right. She had used intuition and knowledge to lead them this far. She hoped her expertise would carry her the rest of the way.

  In the front seat, Lu’lu lifted a Motorola walkie-talkie and listened, then spoke into it. All words were lost to the growl of motors and torrents of winds. Once done, she swung around in her seat-belt restraints.

  “There may be trouble,” Lu’lu yelled. “The scouts we sent ahead report a small band of armed strangers entering Shisur.”

  Safia’s heart leaped to her throat. Cassandra…

  “Perhaps they are just seeking shelter. The scouts found a vehicle. An old van stuck in a camel wallow.”

  Kara leaned forward, intense. “A van…was it a blue Volkswagen?”

  “Why?”

  “It may be our friends. Those who were helping us.”

  Kara glanced to Safia, eyes hopeful.

  Lu’lu lifted her walkie-talkie and carried on a brief conversation. She nodded, then turned to Kara and Safia. “It was a blue Eurovan.”

  “That’s them,” Kara exclaimed. “How did they know where to find us?”

  Safia shook her head. It seemed impossible. “We should still be careful. Maybe Cassandra or her men captured them.”

  And even if it was their friends, a new fear clutched Safia’s heart. Who had survived? Painter had attempted to rescue her, risked all, stayed behind to cover her retreat. Had he made it out? The exchange of gunfire she had heard as she fled the tomb echoed in her head.

  All answers lay at Shisur.

  After another ten minutes of dune racing, the small township of Shisur appeared over a ridge, in a slight valley, surrounded by the rolling desert. The village’s tiny mosque poked its minaret above the tumble of shacks and cinder-block buildings. The buggies all stopped below the ridgeline. A few of the women climbed out and up to the sandy crests. They dropped flat, their cloaks matching the sands, clutching sniper rifles.

  Fearing a volley of accidental gunfire, Safia exited the buggy. Kara followed. She crossed up to the ridge. Caution drew her to hands and knees.

  Across the village, she saw no sign of movement. Had they heard the approach of the dune buggies and gone into hiding, fearing the unknown group?

  Safia surveyed the area.

  To the north, ruins covered fifteen acres, surrounded by crumbling walls, excavated from the sands and reconstructed. Guard towers interrupted the walls at regular intervals, roofless stony circles, a story high. But the most dramatic feature of the ruins was its central citadel, a three-story structure of stacked stone. The castle perched atop a low hill that overlooked a deep ragged cleft in the ground. The hole encompassed most of the land within the walls. Its bottom lay in shadows.

  Safia knew that the ruins of the hilltop fortress were only half of the original structure. The other half lay at the bottom of the hole. Destroyed when the sinkhole opened up under it, taking down sections of walls and half the castle. The tragedy was explained by the continual drop of the land’s water table. A natural limestone cistern lay underneath the city. As the water inside it dropped from drought and overuse, it left behind a hollow subterranean cavern that eventually collapsed in on itself, taking out half the city.

  Movement drew Safia’s attention back to the village fifty yards away.

  From a doorway below, a figure appeared, dressed in a dishdasha robe, his head wrapped in a traditional Omani headdress. He lifted a mug into the air.

  “I just put a fresh pot on. If you want a cup of joe, you’d best get your butts down here.”

  Safia stood. She recognized that flash of a rakish grin.

  Omaha…

  A flush of relief washed through her. Before she knew it, she was running down the slope toward him, eyes blurry with tears. Even as she ran, the depth of her reaction surprised her.

  She stumbled across the gravel roadway.

  “Hold it right there,” Omaha warned, backing up a step.

  From windows and neighboring doorways, rifles suddenly bristled.

  A trap…

  Safia stopped, stunned, wounded. Before she could react, a figure swept out of hiding from behind a low wall, grabbed her, swung her around. A fist snatched a handful of hair and yanked back, baring her neck. Something cold touched her flesh.

  A long dagger glinted, pressed.

  A voice whispered with an icy ferocity. It chilled her more than the knife at her throat. “You took a friend of ours.”

  Omaha stepped to her shoulder. “We spied you coming. I wouldn’t forget the face of someone who tried to kidnap me.”

  “What have you done with Dr. al-Maaz?” the voice hissed at her ear as the dagger pressed harder.

  Safia realized her face was still covered by scarf and goggles. They thought her one of the women, bandits perhaps. Breathless from fright, she reached up and pulled down her scarf and goggles.

  Omaha did a double take. He gaped at her face, then lunged, and pushed the man’s arm away, freeing her. “Ohmygod, Saffie…” He hugged her tightly.

  Fire flared in her shoulder. “Omaha, my arm.”

  He dropped back. Others appeared in doorways and windows.

  Safia glanced behind her. A man stood there, the dagger in his hands. Painter. She had not even recognized his voice. She had a hard time reconciling this man with her image of him. She still felt the blade against her skin, the fist twisted in her hair.

  Painter backed up a step. His face shone with relief, but his blue eyes also glowed with an emotion almost too raw to read. Shame and regret. He glanced away, to the neighboring slope.

  Cycles and buggies now lined the ridge, engines revving. The Rahim had been preparing to come to her rescue. Women, all dressed and cloaked like Safia, appeared around nearby corners of buildings, rifles on shoulders.

  Kara stomped down the slope, arms in the air. “Everyone back down!” she called loudly. “It was only a misunderstanding.”

  Omaha shook his head. “That woman doesn’t need to remove her mask. I’d recognize that screech of command anywhere.”

  “Kara…” Painter said, stunned. “How?”

  Omaha turned to Safia. “Are you all ri
ght?”

  “I’m fine,” she managed to squeak out.

  Kara joined them. She removed her scarf. “Leave her be.” She waved them off. “Give her some room to breathe.”

  Omaha pushed back. He nodded to the slope. Warily the Rahim had begun to march down. “So who are your friends?”

  Kara shrugged. “That may take some explaining.”

  8:22 A.M.

  OPEN DESERT

  CASSANDRA STEPPEDup to her tent, a U.S. Army desert survival model, meant to withstand winds up to eighty miles per hour. She had reinforced it with a wind-and-sand shield on the windward side of the tent.

  The team here had similar accommodations. The larger transport trucks had also been positioned as a windbreak.

  At her tent, Cassandra shook sand from her fatigues. She wore a wide-brimmed hat, tied down around her ears, a scarf over her face. The winds gusted now, snapping tent lines, causing sheets of sand to course underfoot. The sandstorm rumbled like a passing freight train.

  She had just returned from a final inspection of their deployment, ensuring all the copters were battened down. The men had already planted the GPS beacons to fix their position, coordinated with the fixed orbital satellites. Feed should be flowing into her computerized mapping system.

  Cassandra had a couple hours before the static electricity of the sandstorm would threaten the electronics, requiring them to be shut down. Plenty of time to intercept the data from the LANDSAT satellite as it focused on her GPS beacons. The satellite’s radar had the capability of delving sixty feet under the sand. It would give her an overview of what lay underfoot. Some indication of where to begin digging. As soon as the sandstorm blew itself out, her team would set to work with dozers and backhoes. By the time anyone was aware of their excavation, they’d be long gone.

  That was the plan.

  Cassandra pushed through the tent flap. The interior of the tent was spartan. A cot and a duffel. The remainder of her tent was an elaborate satellite communication system. She had other electronic gear stored in carryalls.

  She crossed to the laptop computer and used her cot as a seat. She linked to JPL in Houston and fed the proper authorization to access LANDSAT data. The pass should have been completed five minutes ago. The data awaited her. She tapped the keys and began the download.

  Finished, she sat back and watched the screen slowly fill with an image of the desert. She spotted her trucks, tents, even their trenched latrine. It was the survey pass. Perfect alignment.

  A second image slowly fed into her laptop. The deeper scan.

  Cassandra leaned in closer.

  The terrain stripped away to display a different conformation, revealing the bedrock under the sand. It was a fossil of a different time, preserved in limestone. While most of the terrain was flat, it was etched by an old riverbed coursing along one corner of the image. It drained into an ancient lake bed buried under their site.

  Cassandra studied the landscape, a snapshot from another time.

  She saw nothing significant. No meteor crater, no artifact that intrigued.

  She sat back. She would forward it to a pair of geologists on the payroll with the Guild. Perhaps they could read more into it.

  A noise at her tent flap drew her attention around.

  John Kane limped into her tent. “We’ve picked up Dr. al-Maaz’s signal.”

  Cassandra swung to face him. “When? Where?”

  “Eight minutes ago. It took another few minutes to get a fix. Her signal blipped into existence ten miles west of here. By the time we triangulated, she’d stopped moving. She went to ground about six miles from here.”

  He hobbled over to the map on her worktable and tapped. “Right here.”

  Cassandra leaned next to him, reading the name. “Shisur. What’s there?”

  “I asked one of the techs at Thumrait. He says it’s where the old ruins of Ubar were found. Back in the nineties.”

  Cassandra stared at the map. Her lines in blue and red still looked fresh. The red circle marked her present position. She put her finger on the circle and followed the red line backward.

  It crossed Shisur.

  She closed her eyes. Again picturing the curator’s expression when Cassandra had drawn the circle. She had continued studying the map. Her eyes had been distant, calculating in her head.

  “The goddamn bitch…” Cassandra’s finger on the map closed to form a fist. Anger burned through her. Yet deeper down, a flash of respect flared.

  John Kane stood with his brows crinkled.

  Cassandra stared back at the LANDSAT image. “There’s nothing here. She fucked us. We’re at the wrong place.”

  “Captain?”

  She faced Kane. “Get the men up. We’re heading out. I want the trucks moving in the next ten minutes.”

  “The sandstorm-”

  “Fuck it. We’ve just enough time. We’re moving out. We can’t let ourselves get pinned down here.” She herded Kane toward the doors. “Leave the equipment, tents, supplies. Weapons only.”

  Kane swept out of the room.

  Cassandra turned to one of her carrying cases. She snapped it open and removed a handheld digital radio transmitter. She flipped it on, dialed in the proper frequency and channel to match the curator’s implanted transceiver.

  She held a finger over the transmit button. One touch and the C4 pellet in Dr. al-Maaz’s neck would explode, severing her spine and killing her instantly. She felt an overwhelming urge to press it. Instead she switched the unit off.

  It was not compassion that held her hand. Safia had proven her prowess at riddle solving. Such skill might still be needed. But more than that, she didn’t know for certain if Painter was at the woman’s side.

  That was important.

  Cassandra wanted Painter to see Safia die.

  17

  Picking a Lock

  DECEMBER 4, 9:07 A.M.

  SHISUR

  SAFIA SECUREDher goggles in place. “Does everyone have their gear?”

  “It looks like night’s falling,” Clay said by the open doorway. They had boarded up the windows to the cinder-block building. They had chosen this particular home because it had a solid door to close against the winds. It also opened on the south face of the structure, away from direct assault by the storm.

  Through the doorway, Safia could see that the morning sky had been swept away by higher-blowing sand, darkening the world to an eerie twilight. Dust clouds shadowed the sun. Closer at hand, channels of swirling sand swept along the alleys to either side of the home, eddying in front of the door. It was the leading edge of the storm. Farther out, the heart of the sandstorm moaned and roared, like some ravenous beast, gnashing through the desert.

  They didn’t have much time.

  Safia faced the group assembled in the plain room. Most buildings in Shisur were left open or unlocked. The seasonal residents simply stripped the place to the plaster before moving on, leaving nothing to steal, except for a few broken bits of pottery, a dirty cracked dish in the kitchen sink, and a handful of pale green scorpions. Even the curtains had been taken.

  “You all have your assigned places to search,” Safia said. She had a map nailed to one wall. She had divided the site into five sections, one for each of their metal detectors scrounged from the ruin’s work shack. They had Motorola radios to keep in contact. Everyone, except the youngest children, had an assigned grid to help search, armed with pickaxes, shovels, and spades.

  “If you detect something, mark it. Let your companions dig it out. Keep moving. Keep searching.”

  Nods met her orders. All the searchers were outfitted in reddish brown desert cloaks, supplied by Lu’lu. Faces were muffled. Eyes shielded by goggles. It was like they were preparing to go underwater.

  “If anything of significance is found, radio it in. I’ll come see. And remember…” She tapped the watch on the wrist of her slung arm. “After forty-five minutes, we all return here. The storm’s full brunt is due to hit in just under an h
our. We’ll weather the worst of the storm in here, examine anything we find, and move on from there as the winds die down. Any questions?”

  No one raised a hand.

  “Let’s go, then.”

  The thirty searchers set off into the storm. As the citadel was the most likely spot to search for the Gates of Ubar, Safia led a majority of the team members to the ruins of the fortress, to concentrate attention there. Painter and Clay lugged the ground-penetrating radar sled. Barak held the metal detector over his shoulder like a rifle. Behind him, Coral and Kara carried excavating tools. Trailing last, Lu’lu and the dune-buggy driver, Jehd, followed. All the other Rahim had broken up into teams to search the other grids.

  Safia stepped around the corner of the cinder-block building. She was immediately blown back a step by a gust. It felt like the hand of God shoving her, rough-palmed and gritty. She bent into the wind and set off toward the entrance gates to the ruins.

  She noted Painter studying the hodja. They had all exchanged their respective stories upon meeting, catching everyone up. Safia’s story was, of course, the most shocking and seemingly fanciful: a secret tribe of women, whose bloodline ran back to the Queen of Sheba, a line granted strange mental powers by some source at the heart of Ubar. Though Painter’s face was goggled and wrapped in a muffler, his very posture expressed doubt and disbelief. He kept a wary pace between Safia and the hodja.

  They crossed out of the village proper and through the wooden gates to the ruins. Each party dispersed to its grid assignments. Omaha and Danny lifted their arms in salute as they headed toward the sinkhole below the citadel. With their field experience, the two men would oversee the search of the sinkhole. The chasm was another likely spot for a possible significant find, as a corner of the towering fortress had collapsed into the hole.