Sandstorm (45 page)
Authors: James Rollins
Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller, #Suspense, #Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Adventure, #Historical
Safia continued sweeping.
Was there any hope for them?
She glanced up to him, noting that he’d stopped.
He stirred and cleared his throat. “What are you doing?” he asked, and motioned to her sweeping of the floor. “The maid comes tomorrow.”
She sat back and patted the wall tilted above her head. “This is the southeast side. The slab of the trilith that represents the morning star, rising each day in the southeastern skies.”
“Right, I told you that. So?”
Safia had been working in silence for the past ten minutes, laying out the supplies Painter had lugged here, very methodically, her usual way of doing things. She had spent most of this time examining the keys. Whenever he tried to interject a question, she would hold up a palm.
Safia went back to her sweeping. “We’ve already determined which wall corresponds to which celestial body—moon, sun, or morning star—but now we have to figure out which
keys
match those celestial bodies.”
Omaha nodded. “Okay, and what are you figuring?”
“We have to think in a context of ancient times. Something Cassandra failed to do, accepting modern miles for Roman ones. The answer lies in that fact.” Safia glanced back to him, testing him.
He stared at the wall, determined to solve this riddle. “The morning star is actually not a star. It’s a
planet.
Venus to be specific.”
“Identified and named by the Romans.”
Omaha straightened, then twisted to look at the artifacts. “Venus was the Roman god of love and beauty.” He knelt and touched the iron spear with the bust of the Queen of Sheba atop it. “And here’s a definite
beauty.”
“That’s what I figured. So like at Job’s tomb, there must be a place to insert it. A hole in the ground.” She continued her search.
He joined her—but searched elsewhere. “You have it wrong,” he said. “It’s the
wall
that’s significant. Not the floor.” He ran his palm over the surface and continued his reasoning, enjoying the match of wits in solving this riddle. “It’s the slab that represents the morning star, so it is in the slab you’ll find—”
His words died as his fingers discovered a deep pock in the wall. Waist-high up the slab. It looked natural, easy to miss in the shadowy darkness. His index finger sank fully into it. He crouched there like the Dutch boy at the dike.
Safia rose up beside him. “You found it.”
“Get the artifact.”
Safia stepped over, grabbed the iron spear. Omaha pulled his finger free and helped her insert its end in the hole. It was an ungainly process with the wall angled. But they wiggled it into place. It kept sinking farther and farther. The entire haft of the spear was swallowed away, until only the bust was left, now hanging on the wall like some human trophy.
Safia manipulated it further. “Look how the wall is indented along this side. It matches her cheekbone.” She turned the bust and pushed it flush.
“A perfect fit.”
She stepped back. “Like a key in a lock.”
“And look where our iron queen is staring now.”
Safia followed her gaze. “The moon wall.”
“Now the heart,” Omaha said. “Does it belong to the sun wall or the moon?”
“I would guess the sun wall. The moon was the predominant god of the region. Its soft light brought cooling winds and the morning dew. I think whatever we’re looking for next, the final key or clue, will be associated with that wall.”
Omaha stepped to the north wall. “So the heart belongs to this wall. The sun. The harsh mistress.”
Safia glanced to the artifact. “A goddess with an iron heart.”
Omaha lifted the artifact up. There was only one place to rest it. In the small window cut into the northern slab face. But before settling it in place, he ran his fingers along the sill, having to stretch on his toes to feel the floor of the niche. “There are vague indentations in here. Like on the
wall.” “A cradle for the heart.”
“A lock and key.”
It took a bit of rolling around to find the match between the iron heart’s surface and the indentations in the sandstone. He finally settled it in place. It rested upright. The end plugged with frankincense pointed at the moon wall.
“Okay, I’d say that’s an important slab,” Omaha said. “What now?”
Safia ran her hands along the last wall. “Nothing’s here.”
Omaha slowly turned in a circle. “Nothing that we can see in the dark.”
Safia glanced back at him. “Light. All the celestial bodies illuminate. The sun shines. The morning star shines.”
Omaha squinted. “But upon
what
do they shine?”
Safia backed up. She noted again the abnormally rough surface of the wall, its pocked moonscape. “Flashlights,” she mumbled.
They each retrieved one from the floor. Safia took a post by the mounted bust. Omaha moved to the heart in the window.
“Let there be light.” Holding the flashlight over his head, he positioned its beam as if it were sunlight pouring through the window, angled to match the position of the plugged end. “The sun shines through a high window.”
“And the morning star shines low on the horizon,” Safia said, kneeling by the bust, aiming her beam in the direction of the bust’s gaze.
Omaha stared at the moon wall, lit askance by their two light sources from two different angles. The imperfections of the wall created shadows and crevices. A form took shape on the wall, painted with these shadows.
Omaha squinted. “It looks like a camel’s head. Or maybe a cow’s.”
“It’s a
bull
!” Safia stared at Omaha, her eyes bright embers. “Sada, the moon god, is depicted as a bull, because of the beast’s crescent-shaped horns.”
Omaha studied the shadows. “But then where are the bull’s horns?”
The animal on the wall had nothing between its ears.
Safia pointed to the supplies. “Get me that while I hold the light.”
Omaha placed his flashlight in the window, resting it beside the iron heart. He crossed to the gear and grabbed the device that looked like a shotgun, only with one end belled out like a satellite dish. Safia had specifically asked Painter to bring it. He was anxious to see how this worked.
He passed it to her, taking her post with the flashlight.
She strode to the center of the room and pointed the laser excavator. A
circle of red light appeared on the wall. She fixed it above the shadow figure, between the ears.
She pulled the device’s trigger. The red lights spun and sandstone immediately began to crumble as the laser energy vibrated the crystalline structure. Sand and dust billowed out. Also shinier bits. Flakes of metal, red.
Iron shavings,
Omaha realized, understanding now why the metal detector was constantly abuzz. The architects of this puzzle had mixed iron shavings with the sand in the rock.
Back at the wall, the beam acted like a tornado, furrowing through the sandstone as if it were soft dirt. With his flashlight held steady, Omaha watched. Slowly, a brighter glitter revealed itself within the stone.
A mass of iron.
Safia continued to work, moving the laser up and down. In a matter of minutes, an arch of horns appeared, seated atop the shadowy image.
“Definitely a bull,” Omaha agreed.
“Sada,” Safia mumbled, lowering the gun. “The moon.”
She walked over and touched the rack of embedded horns, as if making sure they were real. A shower of blue sparks erupted with the contact. “Youch!”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said, shaking her fingers. “Just a static shock.”
Still, she backed a step away, studying the mounted horns on the wall.
The horns certainly appeared as a sharp crescent, protruding from the rock. Sand and dust cast from the excavation swirled into the chamber as the winds above grew suddenly more stiff, seeming to blow directly down through the hole in the roof.
Omaha glanced up. Above the sinkhole, the skies were dark, but something even darker stirred the air, sweeping downward. A light suddenly speared from it.
Oh, no…
10:47 A.M.
S
AFIA FOUND
herself grabbed around the waist and tackled to the side. Omaha dragged her into the shadows below the tilted slabs. “What are you—”
Before she could finish, a beam of bright light slammed through the hole overhead, casting a pillar of brilliance through the center of the
trilith chamber.
“Helicopter,” Omaha yelled in her ear.
Safia now heard the vague beat of rotors against the dull roar of the storm.
Omaha held her tightly. “It’s Cassandra.”
The light blinked off as the floodlight swept away. But the thump of the copter’s rotors persisted. It was still out there, searching in the storm.
Safia knelt with Omaha. With the floodlight gone, the chamber seemed darker. “I have to alert Painter,” Safia said.
She crawled to the Motorola radio. As her fingers reached to its surface, another electric spark arced from radio to fingertips, stinging like a wasp. She jerked her hand back. Only now did she notice the escalation of static electricity. She felt it on her skin, crawling like ants. Her hair crackled with sparks as she glanced at Omaha.
“Safia, come back here.”
Omaha’s eyes were wide. He circled toward her, keeping to shadows. His attention was not on the helicopter, but fixed to the center of the chamber.
Safia joined him. He took her hand, shocking them both, hairs tingling.
In the center of the chamber, a bluish glow billowed where the helicopter’s beam had once shone. It shimmered, roiling in midair, edges ghostly. With each breath, it coalesced, swirling inward.
“Static electricity,” Omaha said. “Look at the keys.”
The three iron artifacts—heart, bust, and horns—shone a dull ruddy hue.
“They’re drawing the electricity out of the air. Acting like some lightning rods for the static charge of the storm above, feeding power to the keys.”
The blue glow grew into a scintillating cloud in the room’s center. It stirred to its own winds, churning in place. The keys shone even brighter. The air crackled. Traceries of charge coruscated from every fold of cloak or scarf.
Safia gaped at the sight. Sandstone was a great nonconductive insulator. Freeing the horns from the stone must have completed some circuit among the three. And the chamber was acting like a magnetic bottle, trapping the energies.
“We have to get the hell out of here,” Omaha urged.
Safia continued to stare, entranced. They were witnessing a sight set in motion millennia ago. How could they leave?
Omaha grabbed her elbow, fingers digging. “Saff, the keys! They’re
like the iron camel at the museum. And now a ball of lightning is forming in here.”
Safia flashed back to the video feed from the British Museum. The ruddy glow of the meteorite, the cerulean roil of the lightning ball…Omaha was right.
“I think we just activated a bomb down here,” Omaha said, pulling Safia to her feet and shoving her to the collapsible ladder. “And it’s about to explode.”
As she set her foot on the first rung, the world flashed blindingly bright. She flinched, tightening in place, a deer in headlights.
The helicopter had returned, hovering directly overhead.
Death waited above…as surely as it did below.
DECEMBER 4, 11:02 A.M.
SHISUR
P
AINTER LAY
flat on the roof of the cinder-block building. He had bundled his cloak tightly under his legs, the ends of his scarf tucked away. He didn’t want any telltale flapping of material to reveal his position.
He waited for the helicopter to make another pass over the town. He would get one shot. He had to assume the copter was outfitted with night vision. The muzzle flash would give away his position. He waited, the Galil sniping rifle at his cheek, resting on a bipod. The Israeli weapon, borrowed from one of the Rahim, had the capability to deliver a head shot at three hundred yards. But not in this storm, not with visibility so low. He needed the helicopter close.
Painter lay in wait.
The copter was up there somewhere, searching. An aerial hunter hidden in the storm. Any movement, and it would open fire with its double guns.
Painter noted the glow deeper in the storm, in the direction of the ruins. The second helicopter. He prayed that Safia and Omaha had kept their heads down. He had tried to radio them earlier, when he first suspected the danger, but something blocked the signal. Perhaps interference from the static charge of the storm. He attempted to reach them on foot, but the helicopters had swooped in, targeting anything that moved.
If there were birds in the air, then this was no small scouting party. Cassandra had somehow learned of her mistake and moved full forces in.
The radio in his ear whispered with static, the channel left open.
Words formed out of the white noise.
“Commander.”
It was Coral, reporting in from the field.
“As you suspected, I’ve hostiles coming in on all sides. They’re doing a building-by-building search.”
Painter touched his transmitter, trusting that the storm kept their words private. “The children and older women?”
“Ready. Barak awaits your signal.”
Painter searched the skies.
Where are you?
He needed to take out the helicopter if they were to have any hope of breaking through the noose around the town. The plan was to strike out west of the ruins, collecting Safia and Omaha along the way, risking the wild weather. Though the storm was growing worse with every minute, it could cover their retreat. If they left the ruins behind, perhaps Cassandra would be satisfied enough to make only half an effort to hunt them down. If they could get back to the mountains…
Painter felt a fury build in him. He hated to retreat, to hand Cassandra a victory here. Especially with the discovery of the secret chamber under the sinkhole. Cassandra would surely bring in heavy excavating equipment. Something lay down there. The Rahim were living proof of something extraordinary. His only hope was to abscond with Safia, delaying Cassandra enough for him to alert someone in Washington, someone he could trust.
And that certainly was
not
the command structure of Sigma.
Anger built in him, stoking a fire in his gut.
He had been set up. All of them had.
His mind flashed to Safia. He could still feel the beat of her heart under the blade he held at her throat. He had seen the look in her eyes afterward, as if he were a stranger. But what did she expect? This was his job.
Sometimes hard choices had to be made, and even tougher actions.
Like now.
With Coral’s report of forces moving into the town’s outskirts, they would be surrounded in minutes. He could no longer wait for the helicopter to show itself. It would need to be flushed out.
“Novak, is the rabbit ready to run?”
“On your go, Commander.”
“Rev it up.”
Painter waited, cheek against the gun, one eye peering through the telescopic lens, the other on the skies. A bright light burst down in the town, shining from an open doorway. Details were murky, but through his night-vision goggles, the light shone brilliant. A throaty engine growled and whined.
“Let her run,” Painter ordered.
“Rabbit’s loose.”
From the building, a sand cycle burst forth. Its path was only evident as a brightness tearing down an alley between buildings. It zigzagged through the tangle of streets. Painter watched the skies to either side and above.
Then it appeared, diving like a hawk.
The helicopter’s guns chattered, flashes in the storm.
Painter adjusted his rifle, aimed for the source of the gunfire, and pulled the trigger. The recoil struck his shoulder like a mule kick. He didn’t wait. He squeezed off another three shots, ears ringing.
Then he saw it, a flare of flame. A heartbeat later, an explosion lit the storm. Fiery wreckage spat in all directions, but the main bulk tumbled in a steep path. It struck a building, burst brighter, then crashed into the roadway.
“Go,” Painter yelled into his radio.
He shouldered the rifle and rolled off the roof’s lip. The soft sand cushioned his fall. All around, engines ignited with rumbles and coughing whines. Lights flared. Bikes and buggies burst forth from alleyways, lean-tos, and out of doorways. One bike sped past Painter. A woman leaned over the bars, another sat behind her, rifle on her shoulder. The women would sweep a path ahead, guard their rear.
From the doorway, Kara appeared, carrying a girl in her arms. Others followed. Barak helped an old woman, followed by two others, supporting each other. Clay and Danny held children’s hands, one on each side. Not a whimper from the lot of them. Not even Clay.
“Follow me,” Painter said, and set off.
He kept his rifle shouldered but held a pistol in one hand.
As he rounded the corner of their shelter, a barrage of gunfire sounded from the ruins. Through the gloom, a floodlight flared. The second helicopter.
“Oh, God…” Kara said behind him, knowing what the gunfire meant.
Safia and Omaha had been found.
11:12 A.M.
R
UN!”
O
MAHA
screamed as they ran across the floor of the sinkhole, but his words never reached his own ears. The rattle of guns was deafening. He pushed Safia ahead of him. They raced, blinded by the
swirling sand, chased by a twin line of bullets chewing across the ground.
Directly ahead rose the western cliff of the sinkhole, shadowed from above by the citadel’s ruins. The wall was lightly scalloped, coved in. If they could get under the lip of rock, out of direct line of fire, they’d have some shelter.
Safia ran an arm’s length ahead of him, slightly encumbered by her sling, loping, the stiff winds tangling her cloak about her feet. Sand blinded. They hadn’t even had time to pull their goggles in place.
Moments ago, they had decided that the helicopter was the lesser of two evils. The powder keg building in the trilith chamber meant certain death. So they took their chances on the run.
The chatter of guns grew louder as the helicopter swept behind them.
The only reason they had survived this long was the sandstorm. The pilot fought to keep his craft trimmed in the winds. It buffeted and fluttered, a hummingbird in a gale, throwing off the pilot’s aim.
They fled for shelter, running blind.
Omaha waited for bullets to shred into him. With his last breath, he would push Safia to safety, if need be.
It wasn’t necessary.
The bullets suddenly stopped, as if the craft had run out of ammunition. The sudden silence drew Omaha’s attention over his shoulder, his ears still ringing. The helicopter’s floodlight angled away. The copter swept back.
With his attention turned, he stumbled over a rock, went down hard.
“Omaha…!”
Safia came back to help. He waved her off. “Get to shelter!”
Omaha hobbled after her, his ankle flaring with pain, twisted, sprained, hopefully not broken. He cursed his stupidity.
The helicopter retreated to the other side of the sinkhole. It had them dead to rights. They shouldn’t have made it. Why had it pulled back?
What the hell was going on?
11:13 A.M.
E
AGLE
O
NE,
don’t hit the goddamn target!” Cassandra screamed into the radio. She banged a fist on the armrest of her seat in the M4 armored tractor. On her laptop, she stared at the blue glowing ring of the curator’s transceiver. It had blinked into existence a moment ago.
The gunfire had flushed Safia out into the open.
Eagle One answered, the pilot’s voice choppy. “I’ve broke off. There are two of them. I can’t tell which one is the target.”
Cassandra had radioed just in time. She pictured the pilot cutting down the woman. The curator was her best chance to quickly root out the secrets here and abscond with the prize. And the asinine pilot had almost mowed her down.
“Leave them both,” she said. “Guard the hole they came out of.”
Whatever cavern the curator had disappeared into had to be important.
Cassandra leaned close to her laptop, watching the blue glow. Safia was still in the giant sinkhole. There was nowhere she could go that Cassandra could not find her. Even if the woman vanished into another cave, Cassandra would know where to find the entrance.
She turned to the tractor’s driver, John Kane. “Take us in.”
With the engine still running, he shoved the gearshift. The tractor jerked, then trundled up the dune that hid them from the town of Shisur. Cassandra sat back, one hand on the laptop, holding it steady.
As they reached the dune’s summit, the nose of the tractor rocked high, then fell down the far slope. The valley of Shisur lay ahead. But nothing could be seen beyond a few yards of the vehicle’s xenon headlights. The storm swallowed the rest away.
All except a scatter of glows, marking the town. Vehicles on the move. A firefight between her forces and some unknown party still continued.
Distantly, echoes of sporadic gunfire reached her.
The captain of her forward forces had radioed in his assessment:
They all appear to be women.
It made no sense. Still, Cassandra remembered the woman she had chased through the back alleys of Muscat. The one who had vanished in front of her. Was there a connection?
Cassandra shook her head. It no longer mattered. This was the endgame, and she would not tolerate anyone thwarting her.
As she watched the show of lights in the darkness, she lifted her radio and spoke to the leader of her artillery. “Forward battery, are you in position?”
“Yes, sir. Ready to light the candles on your order.”
Cassandra checked her laptop. The blue ring of the transceiver persisted in the sinkhole. Nothing else mattered. Whatever they sought lay among the ruins, with the curator.
Raising her gaze, Cassandra stared at the shimmer of wavering lights where the town of Shisur lay. She lifted her radio, called the forward
troops, and ordered a pullback. She then switched back to the artillery captain.
“Level the town.”
11:15 A.M.
A
S
P
AINTER
led the others out of the village and through the gates of the ruins, he heard the first whistle. It pierced through the storm’s roar.
He swung as the first shell struck the town. A fireball burst skyward, lighting the storm, illuminating a patch of the village briefly. The
boom
reverberated in his gut. Gasps rose around him. More whistles filled the air.
Rockets and mortars.
He never suspected Cassandra had such firepower at hand.
Painter fumbled for his radio. “Coral! Go dark!”
Whatever advantage of surprise they had gained by the sudden burst of vehicles from their hiding places had ended. It was time to evacuate.
Out in the town, the lights of the vehicles were all extinguished. Under the cover of darkness, the women were to retreat to the ruins. More rockets struck, blooming in wild spirals of fire, whipped by the winds.
“Coral!” he yelled into the radio.
No answer.
Barak grabbed his arm. “They know the rendezvous.”
Painter swung around. More concussions pounded his gut.
Over at the sinkhole, the gunfire from the second helicopter had gone silent. What was happening?
11:17 A.M.
S
AFIA HUDDLED
with Omaha under a lip of rock. The bombs rattled pebbles from the ruins of the citadel atop the cliff above them.
To the south, the dark skies glowed ruddy from fires. Another
boom
reverberated through the storm’s wail. The town was being destroyed. Had the others had time to escape? Safia and Omaha had left their radios down in the trilith chamber. They had no way of knowing how the others had fared.
Painter, Kara…
At her side, Omaha leaned most of his weight on his right foot. She had seen him take that spill while fleeing here. He had twisted his ankle.
Omaha mumbled through his scarf. “You could still make a dash for it.”
She was worn, her shoulder ached. “The helicopter…”
It still hovered over the sinkhole. Its floodlight had blinked off, but she still heard it. It swept a slow circuit over the sandy floor, keeping them pinned.
“The pilot broke off his attack before. He’s probably half blind by the storm. If you stuck to the wall, ran fast…I could even take potshots from here.”
Omaha still had his pistol.
“I’m not leaving without you,” Safia whispered. Her statement was not all altruistic. She squeezed his hand, needing to feel his solidness.
He attempted to free his hand. “Forget it. I’d just slow you down.”
She held harder. “No…I
can’t
leave your side.”
He suddenly seemed to understand the deeper meaning in her words, the raw fear. He pulled her closer. She needed his strength. He gave it to her.
The helicopter swept by overhead, the bell beat of its rotor wash suddenly louder. It angled back over the center of the sinkhole, unseen, its path described by the beat of its passage.
She leaned into Omaha. She had forgotten how broad his shoulders were, how well she fit against him. Staring over his shoulder, Safia noted a flicker of blue across the sinkhole, a dance of lightning.