Sandstorm (43 page)

Omaha frowned. “It’s only a remnant of the old well. Long gone dry. I’m sure it’s already been documented by other researchers.”

Painter moved closer as Omaha clicked a button on the monitor. A vague three-dimensional cross section of the terrain under the radar sled appeared on the monitor. It was conical in shape, narrow at the top and wider at the bottom.

“It’s only ten feet at its widest,” Omaha said. “Just an uncollapsed section of the original cistern.”

“It does look like a blind pocket,” Kara agreed.

Safia straightened up. “No, it’s not.” She faced Painter. “Did you bring that radiation detector?”

Painter lifted the case. “Got it.”

“Run the scanner.”

Painter opened the case, snapped the detection rod on the Rad-X scanner’s base, and activated it. The red needle swept back and forth, calibrating. A blinking green light steadied to a solid glow. “All ready.”

He slowly turned in a circle. What was Safia suspecting?

The red needle remained at the zero point.

“Nothing,” he called back.

“I told you—” Omaha started.

He was cut off. “Now check the cliff face.” Safia pointed to the rock wall. “Get close.”

Painter did as she directed, the scanner held out before him like a divining rod. Sand swirled around inside the pit, a mini–dust bowl, stirred by the winds overhead. He hunched over the scanner as he reached the cliff face. He ran the detection rod over the rock face, mostly limestone.

The needle shimmied on the dial.

He held the scanner more steadily, shielding it from the wind with his
own body. The needle settled to a stop. It was a very weak reading, barely shifting the needle, but it
was
a positive reading.

He shouted over his shoulder. “I got something here!”

Safia waved back. “We have to dig where the sled is positioned. Three feet down. Open the pocket.”

Omaha checked his watch. “We only have another twenty minutes.”

“We can do it. It’s just packed sand and small rocks. If several people dig at the same time…”

Painter agreed, feeling a surge of excitement. “Do it.”

In less then a minute, a ring of diggers set to work.

Safia stood back, cradling her arm in the sling.

“Are you ready to explain yourself?” Omaha said.

Safia nodded. “I had to be sure. We’ve been thinking about this all wrong. We all know the sinkhole opened under Ubar’s township and destroyed half the town, driving folks away in superstitious fear of God’s wrath. After this disaster, the last queen of Ubar sealed its heart, to protect its secrets.”

“So?” Kara asked, standing beside the
hodja.

“Doesn’t it strike you as odd that the gate was conveniently spared during the devastation here? That as the city folk fled, the queen stayed behind and performed all these secret acts: sealed the gate in such a manner that it has never been discovered, forged and hid keys at sacred sites of that time.”

“I suppose,” Kara said.

Omaha brightened visibly. “I see what you’re getting at.” He glanced to the diggers, back to Safia, grabbing her good arm. “We’ve been looking at this ass-backward.”

“Would someone care to explain it to us layfolk?” Painter asked, irritated at Omaha’s understanding.

Omaha explained. “The chronology has to be wrong. Chicken-and-egg scenario. We’ve believed the sinkhole was the
reason
Ubar was sealed.”

“Now think about it in a new light,” Safia added. “As if you were the queen. What would such a disaster matter to the royal house anyway? The true wealth of Ubar, the source of its power, lay elsewhere. The queen could’ve simply rebuilt. She had the wealth and the power.”

Omaha chimed in, the pair working as an experienced team. “The town was
not
important. It was only a mask hiding the true Ubar. A facade. A tool.”

“One turned to a new use,” Safia said. “A means of hiding the gate.”

Kara shook her head, clearly as confused as Painter.

Omaha sighed. “Something truly terrified the queen, enough to drive her from the wealth and power of Ubar, force her and her descendants to live a nomadic existence, existing on the fringe of civilization. Do you really think a simple sinkhole like this would’ve done it?”

“I guess not,” Painter said. He noted the excitement growing between Safia and Omaha. They were in their element. He was excluded, on the outside looking in. A flare of jealousy prickled through him.

Safia picked up the thread. “Something terrified the royal family, enough that they wanted Ubar locked from the world. I don’t know what that event was, but the queen did not act rashly. Look at how methodical her preparations were afterward. She prepared keys, hid them in places sacred to the people, wrapped them in riddles. Does this sound like an irrational response? It was calculated, planned, and executed. As was her first step in sealing Ubar.”

Safia glanced to Omaha.

He filled in the final blank. “The queen deliberately caused the sinkhole to collapse.”

A stunned moment of silence followed.

“She destroyed her own town?” Kara finally asked. “Why?”

Safia nodded. “The town was only a means to an end. The queen put it to its final use. To bury Ubar’s gate.”

Omaha glanced all around the rim. “The act also had a psychological purpose. It drove folks away, frightened them from ever approaching. I wager the queen herself spread some of the stories about God’s wrath. What better way to hang a religious ‘Do Not Trespass’ sign on these lands?”

“How did you figure all that out?” Painter asked.

“It was only a conjecture,” Safia said. “I had to test it. If the sinkhole was used to bury something, then there must be something down here. Since the metal detectors discovered nothing, either the object was too deep or it was some type of chamber.”

Painter glanced at the diggers.

Safia continued, “As with the tomb sites, the queen cloaked clues in symbols and mythology. Even the first key. The iron heart. It symbolized the heart of Ubar. And in most towns, the heart of their community is the well. So she hid the Gate of Ubar in the well, buried them in sand, as the iron heart was sealed in sandstone, then dropped the sinkhole on top of them.”

“Driving people away,” Painter mumbled. He cleared his throat and spoke more clearly. “What about the radiation signature?”

“It would take dynamite to drop this sinkhole,” Omaha answered.

Safia nodded. “Or some form of an antimatter explosion.”

Painter glanced at Lu’lu. The
hodja
had remained stoically quiet the entire time.
Had her ancestors really utilized such a power?

The old woman seemed to note his attention. She stirred. Her eyes were hidden by goggles. “No. You cast aspersions. The queen, our ancestor, would not kill so many innocent people just to hide Ubar’s secret.”

Safia crossed to her. “No human remains were ever found in or around the sinkhole. She must have found some way to clear the city. A ceremony or something. Then sank the hole. I doubt anyone died here.”

Still, the
hodja
was unconvinced, even taking a step back from Safia.

A shout rose from the diggers. “We found something!” Danny yelled.

All their faces turned to him.

“Come see before we dig further.”

Painter and the others all shifted over. Coral and Clay stepped aside for them. Danny pointed his shovel.

In the center of the trenchlike hole, the dark red sand had turned to snow.

“What is that?” Kara asked.

Safia hopped down, dropped to a knee, and ran her hand over the surface. “It’s not sand.” She glanced up. “It’s frankincense.”

“What?” Painter asked.

“Silver frankincense,” Safia elaborated, and stood up. “The same as what was found plugging the iron heart. An expensive form of cement. It’s stoppered the top of the hidden chamber like a cork in a bottle.”

“And below it?” Painter asked.

Safia shrugged. “There’s only one way to find out.”

9:45 A.M.

C
ASSANDRA CLUTCHED
her laptop as the M4 high-speed tractor mashed over another small dune. The transport vehicle looked like a brown Winnebago balanced on a pair of tank treads, and despite its eighteen-ton weight, it chewed across the landscape with the efficiency of a BMW down the Autobahn.

She kept the pace reasonable, respecting the terrain and weather. Visibility was poor, only yards ahead. Windblown sand flumed all around, whipping off the tops of dunes in vast sails. The sky had darkened, cloudless, the sun no more than a wan moon above. She dared not risk bogging down the tractor. They’d never drag it free. So they proceeded
with sensible caution.

Behind her the other five all-terrain trucks traveled in the tracks of the larger tractor as it blazed a trail through the desert. In the rear were the flatbeds with the cradled VTOL copters.

She glanced to the clock in the corner of the laptop’s screen. While it had taken a full fifteen minutes to get the caravan moving, they were now making good time. They’d reach Shisur in another twenty minutes.

Still, she kept an eye on the screen. Two display windows were open on it. One was a real-time feed from an NOAA satellite that tracked the path of the sandstorm. She had no doubt they’d reach the shelter of the oasis before the full storm struck, but just barely. And of even greater concern, the coastal high-pressure system was on the move inland, due to collide with this desert storm in the next few hours. It would be hell out here for a while.

The other screen on the monitor displayed another map of the area, a topographic schematic of this corner of the desert. It diagrammed every building and structure in Shisur, including the ruins. A small blue spinning ring, the size of a pencil eraser, glowed at the center of the ruins.

Dr. Safia al-Maaz.

Cassandra stared at the blue glow.
What are you up to?
The woman had led her off course, away from the prize. She thought to steal it out from under Cassandra’s nose, using the cover of the storm. Smart girl. But intelligence carried you only so far. Strength of arm was just as important. Sigma had taught her that, pairing brawn and brain.
The sum of all men.
Sigma’s motto.

Cassandra would teach that lesson to Dr. al-Maaz.

You may be smart, but I have the strength.

She glanced to the side mirror, to the trail of military vehicles. Inside, one hundred men armed with the latest in military and Guild hardware. Directly behind, in the tractor’s transport bed, John Kane sat with his men. Rifles bristled as they performed the deadly sacrament of a final weapons inspection. They were the best of the best, her Praetorian guards.

Cassandra stared ahead as the tractor ground its way inevitably forward. She attempted to pierce the gloom and windswept landscape.

Dr. al-Maaz might discover the treasure out there.

But in the end, Cassandra would take it.

She glanced back to the laptop’s screen. The storm ate away the map of the region, consuming all in its path. On the other display window, the
schematic of the town and ruins glowed in the dim cabin.

Cassandra suddenly tensed. The blue ring had vanished from the map.

Dr. al-Maaz was gone.

9:53 A.M.

S
AFIA HUNG
from the caving ladder. She stared up at Painter above. His flashlight blinded her. She flashed on the moment in the museum when she hung from the glass roof and he was below her, encouraging her to wait for security. Only now their roles were reversed. He was on top; she was below. Yet once again, she was the one hanging above a drop.

“Just a few more steps,” he said, his scarf whipping about his neck.

She glanced to Omaha below. He held the ladder steady. “I got you.”

Bits of crumbling frankincense cascaded around her. Boulders of it lay around Omaha’s feet, and the air in the subterranean chamber was redolent with its aroma. It had taken only a few minutes with pickaxes to perforate into the conical-shaped cave.

Once they had broken through, Omaha had lowered a candle into the cave, both to check for bad air and to light the interior. He then went down the collapsible ladder, inspecting the chamber himself. Only when he was satisfied did he let Safia climb down. With her injured shoulder, she had to loosen her left arm from her sling and carry most of her weight with her right.

She struggled the rest of the way down. Omaha’s hand found her waist, and she leaned into his grip gratefully. He helped her to the floor.

“I’m all right,” she said when he kept a hand on her elbow.

He lowered his hand.

It was much quieter out of the wind, making her feel slightly deaf.

Already Painter had mounted the ladder, coming down, moving swiftly. Soon three flashlights shone across the walls.

“It’s like being inside a pyramid,” Painter said.

Safia nodded. Three rough walls tilted up to the hole at the top.

Omaha knelt on the floor, running his fingers across the ground.

“Sandstone,” Safia said. “All three walls and floor.”

“Is that significant?” Painter asked.

“This is not natural. The walls and floor are hewn slabs of sandstone. This is a man-made structure. Built atop bedrock of limestone, I imagine. Then sand was poured around the outside. Once it was covered, they
plugged the hole at the top and covered it with more loose sand.”

Omaha stared up. “And to make sure no one found it by accident, they dropped the sinkhole atop it, frightening everyone away with ghost stories.”

“But why do all that?” Painter asked. “What’s this supposed to be?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Omaha grinned at him, looking suddenly striking to Safia. His goggles lay draped under his chin, his scarf and hood thrown back. He had not shaved in a couple of days, leaving a bronzed stubble over cheek and chin, his hair stuck up in odd places. She had forgotten how he looked in the field. Half wild, untamed. He was in his natural element, a lion on the veldt.

All that came to her with only the flash of his grin.