Sandstorm (36 page)

Taking another step, he saw the alleyway bloom with light, blindingly bright through the goggles, burning the back of his eye sockets. He tore away the scopes.

“Don’t move.”

Painter froze. A man lay flat atop the wall of the ruins. He held a flashlight in one hand, a pistol in the other, both aimed at Painter.

“Don’t even twitch,” the man warned.

“Kane,” Safia moaned behind him.

Painter cursed silently. The man had been lying in wait atop the wall, spying from on high, waiting until they had moved into his line of sight.

“Drop your weapon.”

Painter had no choice. If he refused, he’d be shot where he stood. He let the pistol fall from his fingers.

A new voice called sharply from behind him, coming from the entrance to the alleyway. Cassandra. “Just shoot him.”

8:40 P.M.

O
MAHA CROUCHED
beside Coral as she finished checking the body on the ground. Barak covered them with his rifle. They were hidden at the edge of the parking lot, awaiting a chance to make a run across the open space.

Clutching his Desert Eagle, Omaha fought to keep his heart from hammering out of his chest. He seemed incapable of getting enough oxygen. A minute ago, he had heard pistol blasts from within the complex.

Safia…

Ahead, the parking lot was still lit by flaming pools of gasoline. A pair of helicopters swept by overhead, searchlights crisscrossing in a deadly pattern. Both sides had settled into a standoff. Only occasional spates of gunfire shattered the stillness.

“Let’s go,” Coral said, standing up, still shadowed by the limbs of the wild fig tree. Her eyes were on the skies. She watched a second pair of helicopters swoop overhead. “Be ready to run.”

Omaha frowned—then saw the grenade resting in her palm, taken from the dead guard at her feet.

She pulled the pin and stepped out into the open, her full attention on the skies. She pulled her arm back, leaning like a pitcher onto one leg. She held that stance for a breath.

“What are you doing?” Omaha asked.

“Physics,” she answered. “Vector analysis, timing, angle of ascent.” She threw the grenade with a wicked fling of her entire body.

Omaha immediately lost sight of it in the darkness.

“Run!” Coral dove ahead, following the momentum of her toss.

Before Omaha could even move, the grenade exploded overhead in a brilliant flash, lighting up the underbelly of the one-man craft. Its spotlight swung wildly as the concussion hit it. Shrapnel ripped into the belly. A piece must have struck its fuel tank. The copter blew up in a fiery bloom.

“Run!” Coral called again, urging Omaha to move.

Barak was already on Coral’s heels.

Omaha ran. Debris rained down off to the right. A piece of rotor impacted the ground with a thunking twang. Then the flaming bulk smashed into the tree line, casting up backwash of fire and black smoke.

He continued his flight across the lot. The other helicopters had swung away, scattering like a flock of startled crows.

Ahead, Coral reached the lone SUV. She flew into the driver’s seat. Barak hauled open the back door, leaving the front passenger seat to Omaha.

As his fingers closed on the door, the truck’s engine roared to life. Omaha had barely gotten the door open when Coral shifted into gear and hit the accelerator. Omaha’s arm was wrenched. He had to run and leap inside.

Coral had no time for stragglers.

He fell into the seat as a rifle blast exploded.

Omaha ducked, but the shot was not from the enemy.

From the backseat, Barak had shot out the truck’s moonroof. He used an elbow to crack away the shattered safety glass, then shoved his body up through the opening along with his rifle. He immediately began firing as Coral fought the steering wheel, spinning tires in the mud.

The truck slipped as she made a sharp turn toward the open gate in the compound wall. Wheels mired. The SUV struggled to move.

Another helicopter hove into view, blades angled steeply. Automatic fire flashed from its nose, chattering and digging a trough toward their mud-bogged vehicle. It would slice them in half.

Coral grabbed the stick, shoved the SUV into reverse, and jammed the accelerator. The SUV found traction again, barreled backward as the guillotine of bullets sliced just inches in front of the bumper.

A second helicopter dove toward them.

Barak opened fire skyward. The copter’s searchlight shattered away. But it kept coming.

Still going in reverse, Coral spun the wheel. The car fishtailed in the mud. “Omaha, your left!”

While Barak was busy with the helicopter, one of the guards had decided to take advantage of his inattention. The man rose with his rifle on
his shoulder. Omaha leaned back in his seat. The SUV swung to face the man. No choice, Omaha fired his Desert Eagle through the windshield. He squeezed two more shots. The safety glass held, but fractured into spiderwebs.

The guard ducked away.

The SUV caught traction in the fresh mud and sped across the lot, still in reverse. Craned around, Coral expertly maneuvered the vehicle, aiming for the gate to the compound, going in ass backward, pursued by the helicopters.

“Hold on!”

8:44 P.M.

P
INNED IN
the alley, Safia stood between Painter and Cassandra. Ahead, Kane pointed his gun. Everyone had frozen for half a breath as the helicopter exploded behind them.

“Shoot him,” Cassandra repeated, staying focused.

“No!” Safia attempted to step around Painter, to shield him. Every movement flamed her shoulder. Blood ran down her arm. “Kill him and I won’t help you! You’ll never discover the secret at Ubar!”

Painter held her back, protecting her from Kane.

Cassandra pushed through the hedge. “Kane, you have your order.”

Safia glanced between the two armed assailants. She spotted a shift of shadows behind the man. Something rose from a crouch, sharing the crest of the wall. Eyes shone a feral red.

Painter tensed beside her.

With a growled roar, the leopard pounced on Kane. His pistol fired. Safia felt the shot whistle past her ear and strike the dirt with a thud. Man and cat tumbled off the wall, into the prayer room beyond.

Painter ducked, grabbed Safia’s arm, and swung her behind him as he turned to face Cassandra. He had a second pistol in his free hand.

He fired.

Cassandra leaped backward, crashing through the bushes. The bullet missed, clipping the corner of the tomb. She ducked to the side.

Next door, screams arose—bloody and sharp. It was impossible to discern man from beast.

Bullets ricocheted off the sandstone walls as Cassandra returned fire, staying low around the corner, shooting through the bushes. Painter
pushed Safia against the tomb’s wall, out of direct line of fire…at least for the moment.

“Make for the outer wall,” he urged, and shoved her down the alley.

“What about you?”

“She’ll follow us. The slope’s too exposed.” He intended to hold Cassandra at bay.

“But you—”

“Goddamnit,
go!
” He pushed her harder.

Safia stumbled down the alley. The sooner she reached safety, the sooner Painter could make his own escape. So she justified it in her head. But a part of her knew she was simply running for her own life. With each step, her shoulder throbbed, protesting her cowardly flight. Still, she kept going.

The exchange of gunfire continued.

In the neighboring ruins of the prayer room, all had gone deathly quiet, the fate of Kane unknown. More gunfire erupted from the parking lot. A helicopter flashed low overhead, whipping up the rain with its rotor wash.

Reaching the end of the alleyway, Safia lunged across the wet gardens toward the far wall. It was only four feet high, but with her wounded shoulder, she feared she’d never make it over. Blood soaked through the shirt.

From beneath a baobab tree, a camel appeared on the far side of the wall. It moved to meet her. It seemed to be the same camel that had sauntered past the tomb’s door earlier. In fact, it had the same companion: the naked woman.

Only now she rode atop the camel.

Safia didn’t know whether to trust the stranger or not, but if Cassandra shot at her, then the woman had to be on her side.
The enemy of my enemy…

The stranger offered her arm as Safia reached the wall—then spoke. It wasn’t Arabic or English. Yet Safia understood it—not because she had studied the language, which she had, but because it seemed to translate through her skull on its own.

“Welcome, sister,” the stranger said in Aramaic, the dead language of this land. “Be at peace.”

Safia reached for the woman’s hand. Fingers gripped hers, hard and strong. She felt herself pulled up effortlessly. Pain lanced out, shooting down her wounded arm. A cry escaped her. Blackness closed her vision to a pinpoint.

“Peace,” the woman repeated softly.

Safia felt the word wash over her, through her, taking pain and the world with it. She slumped and slipped away.

8:47 P.M.

P
AINTER PULLED
the screen off the window beside his head. It was a flimsy affair. With his back pressed against the tomb’s wall, he fired his pistol twice, keeping Cassandra at bay.

He used his palm to slide open the window. Thankfully it was unlocked. He glanced down the alleyway and watched Safia vanish around the corner.

Dropping to a knee, Painter fired another shot, ejected his clip, grabbed another from his belt, and slammed it home.

Cassandra fired again. The slug struck the wall by his leg.

Where was another goddamn leopard when you needed one?

Painter returned a shot, then holstered his weapon. Without a second glance, he leaped up, boosted himself through the window, and fell in an undignified tumble into the tomb.

Inside, he rolled to his feet. His eyes discerned a central shrouded mound. He kept to the wall and circled the gravesite, his pistol back in his hand, aimed at the door. Crossing past the back window, he felt a wet breeze through it.

So that was how that bastard got the jump on me.

Painter glanced through the window, noting movement outside.

Beyond the wall, a camel turned away, heading down the far slope. A naked woman sat astride it, seemingly guiding it with her knees. In her arms, she cradled another woman. Limp, unmoving.

“Safia…”

The camel and its riders descended out of sight. A pair of leopards bounded from the dark gardens to the wall, then away, following the camel.

Before he could decide to pursue or not, Painter heard a scuff by the door. He dropped and turned. A shadow lay draped across the entry.

“This isn’t over, Crowe!” Cassandra called in to him.

Painter kept his pistol trained.

A new roar reached his ears. A truck. Barreling his way.

Shots fired. He recognized the retort of a Kalashnikov. Someone
from his own group. Cassandra’s shadow vanished, sweeping out of sight, retreating.

Painter hurried to the door, keeping his weapon ready. He spotted a discarded map on the floor. He reached down and crumpled it in a fist.

Out in the courtyard, one of the Mitsubishi trucks bounced through the gardens, digging ragged furrows. A figure protruded through the moonroof. A muzzle, pointed skyward, flashed. Barak.

Painter checked the rest of the yard. It appeared empty. Cassandra had retreated into hiding, outgunned for the brief moment. He stepped out of the tomb and waved the crumpled map.

Spotting him, the driver of the Mitsubishi swung sharply. Its back bumper aimed for him. He fell back inside to avoid getting hit. The SUV skidded to a stop, scraping paint off its side panels. Its backseat door landed abreast of the tomb.

He spotted Coral in the driver’s seat.

“Get in!” Barak called.

Painter glanced back to the tomb’s back window.
Safia…

Whoever had taken her, they had at least been heading away, out of immediate harm. That would have to do for now.

Turning back, he popped the handle, dove inside, and slammed the door. “Go!” he called to the front.

Coral jostled the SUV into forward gear, and the truck sped away.

A pair of helicopters gave chase. Barak shot at them from his topside vantage. The SUV raced toward the open gate. Coral leaned forward to peer through the cracked windshield.

They swept out of the complex, bounced over a muddy rut, momentarily airborne, then jammed back down. Wheels spun, caught, and the SUV sped toward the road and the cover of the heavy forest.

From the front, Omaha stared back at him, eyes lost. “Where’s Safia?”

“Gone.” Painter shook his head, unblinking. “She’s gone.”

DECEMBER 4, 12:18 A.M.
DHOFAR MOUNTAINS

S
AFIA WOKE
from slumber, falling. She threw her arms out, panic racking her body, as familiar as her own breath. Agony speared her shoulder.

“Calm yourself, sister,” someone said near her ear. “I have you.”

The world swirled into focus, midnight dark. She was propped against a couched camel, who chewed its cud with indifference. A woman loomed at her side, an arm under her good shoulder, holding her up.

“Where…?” she mumbled, but her lips seemed glued together. She tried to find her legs, but failed. Memory slowly returned. The fight at the tomb. Gunfire filled her head. Flashes of images. One face. Painter. She shuddered in the woman’s arms. What had happened? Where was she?

She finally found enough strength to stand, leaning heavily on the camel. Safia noted that her wounded shoulder had been crudely bandaged, wrapped to slow the bleeding. It ached with every movement.

The woman at her side, shadowy in the gloom, appeared to be the one who had rescued her; only now she wore a desert cloak.

“Help comes,” the other whispered.

“Who are you?” she forced out, suddenly noting the cold of the night. She was in some jungle grotto. The rain had stopped, but drops still wept from the canopy overhead. Palm and tamarind trees rose all around her.
Tangles of lianas and hanging gardens of jasmine draped everywhere, perfuming the air.

The woman remained silent. She pointed an arm.

A bit of fiery light pierced the jungle ahead, glowing brightly through the ropy vines. Someone was coming, bearing aloft a torch or lamp.

Safia had an urge to flee, but her body was too weak to obey.

The arm around her shoulder squeezed as if the woman had heard her heart, but it didn’t feel like she was attempting to hold Safia captive, only to reassure her.

In moments, Safia’s eyes acclimated to the gloom enough to recognize that the jungle immediately before her hid a rocky limestone cliff, thick with vines, creepers, and small bushes. The approaching light came from a tunnel in the face of the cliff. Such caverns and passages riddled the Dhofar Mountains, formed from the trickles of monsoon flows melting through the limestone.

As the light reached the tunnel entrance, Safia spotted three figures: an old woman, a child of perhaps twelve, and a second young woman who could’ve been the twin of the one beside her. All were identically dressed in desert cloaks, hoods thrown back.

Additionally, each bore an identical bit of decoration: a ruby tattoo at the outer corner of the left eye. A single teardrop.

Even the child who carried the glass oil lantern.

“She who was lost,” the woman at her side intoned.

“Has come home,” the elder said, leaning on a cane. Her hair was gray, tied in a braid, but her face, though lined, looked vital.

Safia found it hard to meet those eyes, but also impossible to turn away.

“Be welcome,” the elder said, speaking English, stepping aside.

Safia was assisted through the entrance, supported by the woman. Once she was through, the child led the way, lantern held high. The elderly woman kept behind them, thudding with a walking stick. The third woman left the tunnel and strode to the couched camel.

Safia was led onward.

No one spoke for several steps.

Safia, edgy with questions, could not hold her tongue. “Who are you? What do you want with me?” Her voice sounded petulant even to her own ears.

“Be at peace,” the elderly woman whispered behind her. “You are safe.”

For now,
Safai added silently. She had noted the long dagger carried in the belt of the woman who had left the tunnel behind them.

“All answers will be given by our
hodja.
”

Safia startled. A
hodja
was a tribal shaman, always female. They were the keepers of knowledge, healers, oracles.
Who were these people?
As she continued, she noted a continual wisp of jasmine in the air. The scent calmed her, reminding her of home, of mother, of security.

Still, the pain in her wounded shoulder kept her focused. Blood had begun to flow anew, through the bandage and down her arm.

She heard a scuffing sound behind her. She glanced over her shoulder. The third woman had returned. She bore two burdens, collected from the camel. In one hand, she carried the silver suitcase, battered now, that held the iron heart. And on her shoulder leaned the iron spear with its bust of the Queen of Sheba.

They had stolen the two artifacts from Cassandra.

Safia’s heart thudded louder, vision tightening.

Were they thieves? Had she been rescued or been kidnapped again?

The tunnel stretched ahead, continuing deep under the mountain. They had passed side tunnels and caves, angling this way and that. She was quickly lost. Where were they taking her?

Finally the air seemed to freshen, growing stronger, the scent of jasmine richer. The passage lightened ahead. She was led forward. A wind flowed down the throat of the tunnel, coming from up ahead.

As they rounded a bend, the tunnel dumped into a large cavern.

Safia stepped into it.

No, not a cavern, but a great bowl of an amphitheater, the roof of which, high overhead, bore a small opening to the sky. Water flowed through the hole in a long, trickling waterfall, draining into a small pond below. Five tiny campfires circled the pool, like the points of a star, illuminating the flowering vines that wreathed the room and hung in long tangles from the roof, some reaching the shallow bowl of the floor.

Safia recognized the geology. It was one of the countless sinkholes that peppered the region. Some of the deepest were found in Oman.

Safia gaped.

More cloaked figures moved or sat about the chamber. Some thirty or so. Faces turned toward her as the party entered. The illuminated cavern reminded Safia of the thieves’ cave from the story of Ali Baba.

Only these forty thieves were all
women.

All ages.

Safia stumbled into the room, suddenly weak from the trek, blood running hot down one arm, the rest of her body shivering.

A figure rose by one of the fires. “Safia?”

She focused on the speaker. The woman was not dressed like the others. Safia could make no sense of her presence here. “Kara?”

1:02 A.M.
THUMRAIT AIR BASE, OMAN

C
ASSANDRA LEANED
over the chart table in the captain’s office. Using a satellite map of the region, she had re-created the curator’s map. With a blue Sharpie marker, she had drawn a line from the tomb in Salalah to the one in the mountains, and with a red marker, a line from Job’s tomb to the open desert. She had circled their destination in red, the location of the lost city.

Her present position, Thumrait Air Base, lay only thirty miles away.

“How quickly can you have the supplies ready?” she asked.

The young captain licked his lips. He was the leader of the Harvest Falcon depot, the USAF’s source of supplies and war materials for its bases and troops throughout the region. He carried a clipboard and tapped items off with the tip of a ballpoint pen. “Tents, shelters, equipment, rations, fuel, water, medical supplies, and generators are already being loaded into transport helicopters. You’ll be supplied on-site at zero seven hundred as instructed.”

She nodded.

The man still wore a frown as he studied their place of deployment. “This is the middle of the desert. Refugees are funneling into the air base hourly. I don’t see how placing an advance camp out there will help.”

A gust of wind rattled the asphalt shingles atop the building.

“You have your orders, Captain Garrison.”

“Yes, sir.” But his eyes looked little settled, especially when he glanced out the window to the hundred men lounging on packs, checking weapons, wearing dun-colored sand fatigues, no insignia.

Cassandra let him have his doubts as she headed to the door. The captain had received his orders, passed through the chain of command from Washington. He was to aid her in outfitting her team. Guild command had orchestrated the cover story. Cassandra’s team was a search-and-rescue unit sent to help refugees fleeing the coming sandstorm and to aid in any rescue during the storm itself. They had five all-terrain trucks with giant sand tires, an eighteen-ton M4 high-speed desert tractor, a pair of
transport Hueys, and six of the one-man VTOL copter sleds, each fitted and lashed to open-bed four-wheel-drive trucks. The overland team would leave within the half hour. She would be accompanying them.

Exiting the command depot for Harvest Falcon, Cassandra checked her watch. The sandstorm was due to slam into the region in another eight hours. Reports were coming in of winds gusting to eighty mph. Already the winds here, where the mountains met the desert, were kicking up.

And they were heading into the teeth of the storm. They had no choice. Word had come from Guild command, some hint that the source of the antimatter could be destabilizing, that it could self-destruct before it was discovered. That must not happen. Timetables had been accelerated.

Cassandra searched the dark airfield. She watched a lumbering British VC10 tanker touch ground off in the distance, illuminated by landing lights. Guild command had shipped in the men and additional equipment yesterday. The Minister had coordinated with her personally after the firefight last night. It was damn lucky she had learned the location of the lost city before losing Safia. With such a significant discovery, the Minister had been grudgingly satisfied with her performance.

She was not.

She pictured Painter crouched in the alley between the ruins and the tomb. The sharpness of his eyes, the crinkles of concentration, the way he moved so swiftly, pivoting on one leg, sweeping out his gun. She should have shot him in the back when she had the chance. She risked hitting Safia, but she had lost the woman anyway. Still, Cassandra hadn’t shot. Even when Painter swung on her, she had paused a fraction of a second, falling back instead of pushing forward.

She clenched a fist. She had hesitated. She cursed herself as much as she cursed Painter. She would not make that mistake a second time. She stared across the acres of tarmac and gravel.

Would he come?

She had noted that he had stolen her map during his escape, along with one of the vehicles, her own truck. They found it abandoned and stripped of gear, buried in the forest a few miles down the road.

But Painter had the map. He would definitely come.

Yet not before she was ready for him. She had plenty of manpower and firepower to hold off an army out there. Let him try.

She would not hesitate a second time.

A figure appeared from a small outbuilding near the parked trucks, her temporary command center. John Kane strode toward her, his left leg
stiff in a splint. He scowled as he stomped to her side. The left side of his face was sealed with surgical glue, giving his features a bluish tint. Beneath the glue, claw marks slashed across his cheek and throat, blackened with iodine. His eyes glinted brighter than usual in the sodium lights. A slight morphine haze.

He refused to be left behind.

“Cleanup was completed an hour ago,” he said, tucking back his radio mike. “Assets have all been cleared out.”

She nodded. All evidence of their involvement with the firefight at the tomb had been removed: bodies, weapons, even the wreckage of the VTOL copter sled. “Any word on Crowe’s crew?”

“Vanished into the mountains. Scattered. There are side roads and camel trails throughout the mountains. And heavy patches of forest in all the deep valleys. He and those sand rats have tucked their tails and gone into hiding.”

Cassandra had expected as much. The firefight had left her team with limited manpower for a proper pursuit and search. They had to take care of their own wounded and clear the site before local authorities responded to the fiery attack. She had evacuated in the first airlift, radioing Guild command of the operation, playing down the chaos, highlighting their discovery of the true site of Ubar.

The information had bought her life.

And she knew to whom she was indebted for that.

“What about the museum curator?” she asked.

“I have men patrolling the mountains. Still no trace of her signal.”

Cassandra frowned. The microtransceiver she had implanted on the woman had a range of ten miles. How was it possible that they hadn’t picked up her signal? Maybe interference from the mountains. Maybe it was the storm system. Either way, she’d eventually expose herself. She’d be found.

Cassandra pictured the small pellet of C4 incorporated into the transceiver. Safia might have escaped…but she was dead already.

“Let’s move out,” she said.

1:32 A.M.
DHOFAR MOUNTAINS

G
OOD GIRL,
Saff,” Omaha mumbled.

Painter stirred from his post by the road. What had the man discovered?
With his night-vision glasses, he had been watching the dirt track. The Volkswagen Eurovan stood parked under a stand of trees.

Omaha and the others gathered at the back of the van, the tailgate ajar. Omaha and Danny were bent over the map he had stolen from the tomb site.

Next to them, Coral had been inventorying their supplies, pilfered from the back of Cassandra’s SUV.

Downslope from the tomb, they had run into Clay and Danny, frantic about Kara’s disappearance. They had found her rifle in the road, but no sign of the woman herself. They had called and called for her, but no answer. And with Cassandra on their tail and helicopters in the air, they could not wait long. While Painter and Omaha searched for Kara, the others had hurriedly shoved all the supplies from the SUV into the Eurovan, then drove the SUV over a steep slope. Painter feared Cassandra would track them with its GPS feature, just as he had.

Additionally, the Eurovan was unknown to her. A small advantage.

So they had taken off, hoping Kara had kept her head low.