DECEMBER 4, 12:02 P.M.
UNDERGROUND
SAFIA HURRIED down the spiraling ramp, leading the others. The crash above them had thrown them into a panic. Debris rolled and skittered from above: glass, rocks, even a broken rim of metal. The last had rolled like a child’s hoop, skimming around the spiral, through the mass of folk in flight, and down into the depths.
Omaha followed it with his flashlight until it vanished. The noise above subsided, echoing away.
“What happened?” Safia asked.
Omaha shook his head. “Painter, I guess.”
Kara marched on her other side. “Barak and Coral went back to check.”
Behind them marched Danny and Clay, backs loaded with gear. They held flashlights. Clay held his with both hands, as if it were a lifeline. Safia doubted he’d ever volunteer for a field expedition again.
Beyond them marched the Rahim, similarly encumbered with supplies and packs. Only a few flashlights glowed. Lu’lu, bent in discussion with another elder, led them. They had lost six women during the fighting and bombing. Safia saw the raw grief in all their eyes. A child wept softly back there. As insulated as the Rahim were, a single death must be devastating. They were down to thirty, a quarter of them children and old women.
The footing suddenly changed underfoot, going from rough glass to stone. Safia looked down as they wound around the spiral.
“Sandstone,” Omaha said. “We’ve reached the end of the blast range.”
Kara shone her light back, then forward. “The explosion did all this?”
“Some form of shaped charge,” Omaha said, seemingly unimpressed. “Most of this spiraling ramp was probably already down here. The trilith chamber was its cork. The bomb simply blew its top away.”
Safia knew Omaha was simplifying things. She continued forward. If they had passed the transition from glass to stone, then the end must be near. The sandstone underfoot was still wet. What if all they found was a flooded passage? They’d have to go back…face Cassandra.
A commotion drew her attention. Coral and Barak trotted up to them. Safia stopped along with the others.
Coral pointed back. “Painter did it. Dropped a truck over the entrance.”
“A big truck,” Barak elaborated.
“What about Painter?” Safia asked.
Coral licked her lips, eyes narrowed with concern. “No sign.”
Safia glanced past the woman’s shoulder, searching.
“That won’t keep Cassandra off our tail forever. I already heard men up there digging.” Coral waved forward. “Painter bought us time, let’s use it.”
Safia took a deep shuddering breath. Coral was right. She turned and continued down. No one spoke for another turn of the spiral.
“How deep are we?” Kara asked.
“I’d say over two hundred feet,” Omaha answered.
Around another bend, a cavern opened, about the size of a double garage. Their lights reflected off a well of water in the center. It jostled gently, its surface misty. Water dripped from the ceiling.
“The source of the water flume,” Omaha said. “The shaped charge of the explosion must have sucked it up, like milk through a straw.”
They all entered the cavern. A lip of rock circled the well.
“Look.” Kara pointed her light to a door on the far side.
They marched around the well.
Omaha placed his palm on the door’s surface. “Iron again. They sure like smelting around here.”
There was a handle, but a bar was locked across the door’s frame.
“To keep the chamber pressure-sealed,” Coral said behind them. “For the explosive vacuum.” She nodded back to the well of water.
Far above them, a crash echoed down.
Omaha grabbed the locking bar and pulled it. It wouldn’t budge. “Goddamnit. It’s jammed.” He wiped his hands on his cloak. “And all oily.”
“To resist corrosion,” Danny said. He tried to help him, but the two brothers fared no better. “We need a crowbar or something.”
“No,” the hodja said behind them. She nudged folk aside with her walking stick and stopped beside Safia. “The locks of Ubar can only be opened by one of the Rahim.”
Omaha wiped his hands again. “Lady, you’re more than welcome to try.”
Lu’lu tapped her stick on the bar. “It takes someone blessed by Ubar, carrying the blood of the first queen, to affect such sacred artifacts.” The hodja turned to Safia. “Those who bear the gifts of the Rahim.”
“Me?” Safia said.
“You were tested,” Lu’lu reminded her. “The keys responded to you.”
Safia flashed back to the rainy tomb of Job. She remembered waiting for the spear and bust to point toward Ubar. Nothing had happened at first. She had been wearing work gloves. Kane had carried and placed the spear in the hole. It hadn’t moved. Not until she wiped away the rain, like tears, from the bust’s cheek with her bare fingertips. Not until she touched it.
Then it had moved.
And the cresent horns of the bull. Nothing had happened until she had examined them, sparking a bit of static electricity. She had ignited the bomb with the brush of a finger.
Lu’lu nodded her forward.
Safia numbly stepped up.
“Wait.” Coral pulled out a device from her pocket.
“What’s that?” Omaha asked.
“Testing a theory,” she said. “I was studying the keys earlier with some of Cassandra’s electronic equipment.” Coral waved for Safia to continue.
Taking a breath, Safia reached out and gripped the bar with her good hand. She felt nothing special, no spark. She tugged on the bar. It lifted freely. Shocked, she stumbled back.
“Damn,” Omaha gasped.
“Oh, this impresses you,” Kara said.
“I must’ve loosened it for her.”
Coral shook her head. “It’s a magnetic lock.”
“What?” Safia asked.
“This is a magnometer.” Coral lifted her handheld device. “It monitors magnetic charge. The polarity of that length of iron changed as you touched it.”
Safia stared down at the bar. “How…?”
“Iron is highly conductive and responsive to magnetism. Rub a needle with a magnet and you pass on its magnetic charge. Somehow these objects respond to your presence, some energy you give off.”
Safia pictured the spin of the iron heart atop the marble altar of Imran’s tomb. It had moved like a magnetic compass, aligning itself along some axis.
Another crash sounded above.
Omaha stepped forward. “However it got unlocked, let’s use it.”
With the bar free, he grabbed the handle and tugged. The oiled hinges swung easily. The door opened on a dark descending staircase carved into the stone.
After closing and blocking the door, Omaha led the way with the flashlight, Safia at his side. The rest of the party followed.
The passage was a straight shot, but steep. It led down another hundred feet and emptied into a cavern four times larger than the first one. A pool filled this chamber, too, dark and glassy. The air smelled odd. Damp for sure, but also a trace of ozone, the smell that accompanies a thunderstorm.
But none of this held Safia’s attention for more than a moment.
Steps away, a stone pier stretched into the water. At the end floated a beautiful wooden dhow, an Arab sailing ship, thirty feet long. Its sides glistened with oil, shining brightly in the glow of their flashlights. Gold leaf decorated rails and masts. Sails, useless here but still present, were folded and tied down.
Murmurs of awe rose among the group as they gathered.
To the left, a wide watery tunnel stretched away into darkness.
At the prow of the dhow rose the figure of a woman, bare-breasted, arms chastely crossed over her bosom, face staring down the flooded tunnel.
Even from here, Safia recognized the figure’s countenance.
The Queen of Sheba.
“Iron,” Omaha said at her side, noting her attention. He focused his flashlight on the boat’s figurehead. The statue was sculpted entirely in iron. He moved toward the pier. “Looks like we’re going sailing again.”
12:32 P.M.
AT THE bottom of the sinkhole, Cassandra stared at the mangled body. She didn’t know how to feel. Regret, anger, a trace of fear. She didn’t have time to sort it out. Her mind spun instead on how to put this to her advantage.
“Haul him up top, get him into a body bag.”
The two commandos lifted their former leader from the wreckage of the tractor. Others climbed in and out the back end, salvaging what could be found, setting the charges to blow apart the bulk of the smashed vehicle. Other men hauled debris out of the way, using the dune buggies.
A pair of commandos unreeled a long wire through a gap in the wreckage.
All was in order.
Cassandra swung to the sand cycle and mounted it. She tightened her muffler and goggles, then set off topside. It would be another fifteen minutes until the charges were set. She sped up the path and climbed out of the sinkhole.
As she cleared the rim, the force of the sandstorm spun her around. Fuck, it had already grown stronger. She fought for traction, found it, and raced to the command base sheltered inside one of the few cinder-block buildings still standing. The parked trucks circled it.
She skidded to a stop, propped the bike against the wall, and hopped off.
She strode through the door.
Injured men sprawled on blankets and cots. Many had been wounded from the firefight with Painter’s strange team. She had heard the reports of the women’s combat skills. How they appeared out of nowhere and vanished just as easily. There was no estimate even on their numbers.
But now they were all gone. Down the hole.
Cassandra crossed to one cot. A medic worked on an unconscious man, taping a last butterfly suture over the cheek laceration. There was nothing the medic could do about the big lump above his brow.
Painter might have the nine lives of a cat, but he hadn’t landed on his feet this time. He had struck a glancing blow to the head. The only reason he lived was the loose sand along the inside rim of the sinkhole, cushioning his fall.
From the heavy-lidded glances from her men, they weren’t so appreciative of Painter’s good luck. They all knew of John Kane’s bloody end.
Cassandra stopped at the foot of the cot. “How’s he doing?”
“Mild concussion. Equal and responsive pupils. The bastard’s only knocked cold.”
“Then wake him up. Smelling salts.”
The medic sighed, but obeyed. He had other men, his own men, to attend to. But Cassandra was still in charge. And she still had a use for Painter.
12:42 A.M.
SO WHAT do we do?” Omaha asked. “Row? Get out and push?”
From the bow of the boat, he stared back. The entire company had boarded the fanciful dhow. Barak hunched over the ship’s tiller. Clay knelt and scratched at a bit of the gold leaf. Danny and Coral appeared to be studying the structure of the rudder, leaning over the stern and staring down. The Rahim spread out, examining details.
The dhow was even more impressive up close. Gold leaf adorned most every surface. Mother of pearl embellished knobs. The stanchions were solid silver. Even the ropes had gold threads woven into them. It was a royal barge.
But as pretty as it was, it was not much use as a sailing vessel. Not unless a stiff wind would suddenly blow.
Behind Omaha, Kara and Safia stood at the prow, flanking the iron figurehead of the Queen of Sheba. The hodja leaned on her walking stick.
“So touch it,” Kara urged Safia. The hodja had recommended the same.
Safia had her good arm crossed under her sling, her face lined with worry. “We don’t know what will happen.”
In her eyes, Omaha saw the flash of fire from the trilith chamber’s eruption. Safia glanced to the new crew of the dhow. She feared endangering them, especially by her own hand.
Omaha stepped to her side. He placed a hand on her shoulder. “Saff, Cassandra is going to be coming down here, guns blazing. I’d personally rather take my chances with this iron lady than with that steel-hearted bitch.”
Safia sighed. He felt her relax under his palm, surrendering.
“Hold on,” she whispered. She reached out and touched the shoulder of the iron statue, the way Omaha was touching her. As her palm made contact, Omaha felt a slight electric tingle shiver through him. Safia seemed unaware.
Nothing happened.
“I don’t think I’m the one to—”
“No,” Omaha said, cutting her off. “Hold firm.”
He felt a gentle tremble underfoot, as if the waters under the ship had begun to boil. Ever so slowly the boat began to move forward.
He swung around. “Free the ropes!” he called to the others.
The Rahim moved swiftly, loosening ropes and ties.
“What’s happening?” Safia asked, keeping her palm in place.
“Barak, you got the tiller?”
Near the stern, the man acknowledged this with a wave of an arm.
Coral and Danny hurried forward. The tall woman lugged a large case.
The boat’s speed gently increased. Barak aimed them toward the open mouth of the flooded tunnel. Omaha raised his flashlight and clicked it on. The beam was lost in the darkness.
How far did it go? Where did it go?
There was only one way to find out.
Safia trembled under his palm. He stepped closer, his body next to her. She didn’t object, leaning back slightly. Omaha could read her thoughts. The boat hadn’t blown up. They were still okay.
Coral and Danny were bent over the side of the boat again, their flashlights shining. “Can you smell the ozone?” she said to Omaha’s brother.
“Yeah.”
“Look how the water’s steaming where the iron meets it.”
Curiosity drew all their eyes.
“What are you guys doing?” Omaha asked.
Danny pushed back up, face flushed. “Research.”
Omaha rolled his eyes. His brother was forever a science geek.
Coral straightened. “There’s some catalytic reaction going on in the water. I believe it was triggered by the iron maiden. It’s generating some propulsive force.” She leaned over the rail again. “I want to test this water.”
Danny nodded, a puppy wagging his tail. “I’ll get a bucket.”
Omaha left them to their science project. Right now, all he cared about was where they were going. He noted Kara eyeing him…no, him and Safia.
Caught staring, Kara glanced away, toward the dark tunnel.
Omaha noted the hodja doing the same. “Do you know where this is taking us?” he asked the old woman.
She shrugged. “To the true heart of Ubar.”
A silence settled over the boat as they continued down the long, dark throat. Omaha stared up, half expecting a night sky. But not here.
Here they sailed hundreds of feet under the sand.
12:45 P.M.
PAINTER WOKE with a start, gasping, choking, eyes burning.
He attempted to sit up but was shoved back down. His head rang like a struck bell. Light burned icily. The room shuddered. He rolled to the side and vomited over the edge of a cot. His stomach clenched again and again.
“Awake, I see.”
The voice chilled the feverish pain from his body. Despite the glare and pain of the sharp lights, he faced the woman at the foot of his bed. “Cassandra.”
She was dressed in dun-colored fatigues with a knee-length poncho, belted at the waist. A hat hung by a cord behind her, a scarf around her neck. Her skin glowed in the light, her eyes shining even brighter.
He struggled to sit up. Two men held his shoulders.
Cassandra waved them off.
Painter slowly sat up. Guns pointed at him.
“We’ve got some business to discuss.” Cassandra dropped to one knee. “That little stunt of yours cost me most of my electronics. Though we were able to salvage a few things, like my laptop.” She pointed to the computer resting on a folding chair. It displayed a SeaWiFS satellite map of the region, with live feed of the sandstorm.
Painter noted the scrolling weather data. The coastal high-pressure system off the Arabian Sea had finally crossed the mountains. It was due to collide with the sandstorm in the next two hours. A megastorm of sea and sand.
But none of that mattered now.
“There’s no way I’m telling you anything,” he croaked out.
“I don’t remember asking you anything.”
He sneered at her. Even that hurt.
She shifted to the laptop and touched a few keys. The screen contained an overlay of the area: town, ruins, desert. It was monochrome, except for a small blue ring, slowly spinning, a quarter inch in diameter. Below it, coordinates along the X-, Y-, and Z-axes changed. A live feed. He knew what he was looking at. It was a signal from a microtransceiver, a system designed by his own hand.
“What have you done?”
“We implanted Dr. al-Maaz. We dared not lose track of her.”
“The transmission…underground…” He had a hard time making his tongue work.
“There was enough of a gap in the wreckage to lower a weighted thread antenna. It seems once we spooled enough wire we were able to pick up her signal. There must be good acoustics down there. We’ve lowered booster transmitters. We can track her anywhere.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
Cassandra returned to his bed. She had a small transmitter in her hand. “To inform you of a small modification in your design. It seems with a bit more battery, you can ignite a pellet of C4. I can show you the schematics.”
Painter’s flesh went cold. “Cassandra, what have you done?” He pictured Safia’s face, her shy smile.
“There’s just enough C4 to blow out someone’s spine.”
“You didn’t…”
She raised one eyebrow, a gesture that used to excite, quicken his heart. Now it terrified him.
Painter clenched fistfuls of sheets. “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
“How cooperative. But again, Painter, I don’t remember asking you any questions.” She held up the transmitter and glanced to the screen. “It’s time to punish you for your little stunt today.”
She pressed the button.
“No!”
His scream was lost in a monstrous explosion. It felt as if his heart had detonated. It took him a breath to understand.
Cassandra smiled down at him, deliciously satisfied.
Laughter rose raw, with little true humor, from the men in the room.
She held up the device. “Sorry, I guess that was the wrong transmitter. This one controlled the charges placed in the tractor’s debris. My demolitions experts have promised me the explosives will clear a path to the tunnel. All it requires now is a little cleanup. We’ll be moving in within the next half hour.”
Painter’s heart still ached, thudding in his throat.
Cassandra pulled out a second transmitter. “This is the real one. Keyed to Safia’s transceiver. Shall we try that again?”
Painter simply hung his head. She would do it. Ubar was open. Cassandra had no further need for Safia’s expertise.
Cassandra knelt closer. “Now that I have your full attention, maybe we can have that little chat.”
1:52 A.M.
SAFIA LOUNGED, one hand on the iron figurehead, her hip leaning against the ship’s rail. How could she be so terrified, yet so tired at the same time? It had been a half hour since they all heard the explosion, coming from the direction of the spiral ramp.
“Sounds like Cassandra’s come knocking,” Omaha had said.
By that time, their boat had sailed far down the tunnel. Still, tensions had escalated. Many flashlights pointed backward. Nothing came. Safia could only imagine Cassandra’s frustration at finding them gone and faced with a flooded tunnel.
It would be a long swim if Cassandra and her team attempted to follow.
Though the dhow’s pace was only a bit swifter than a fast walk, they had been sailing now for over an hour. They had to be at least six or seven miles away, making a slow but regal escape.
With each passing moment, everyone relaxed a bit more. And who was to say if Cassandra had even been successful in clearing the blockage atop the ramp?
Still, Safia could not let go of another fear, one closer to her heart.
Painter.
What was his fate? Dead, captured, lost in the sandstorm. There didn’t seem to be any hopeful possibility.
Behind Safia, a few of the Rahim women sang softly, sadly, mourning their dead. Aramaic again. Safia’s heart responded, grieving.
Lu’lu stirred, noting her attention. “Our old language, the language of the last queen, dead now, but we still speak it amongst ourselves.”
Safia listened, taken to another time.
Nearby, Kara and Omaha sat on the planks, heads bowed, asleep.
Barak stood by the wheel, keeping them sailing straight as the course meandered in lazy S-curves. Perhaps the passage had once been part of an old underground river system.
A few steps away, Coral sat cross-legged, bent over an array of equipment, powered by batteries. Her face was limned in the glow. Danny helped her, kneeling at her side, face close to hers.
Beyond them, Safia’s eyes found one last member of their group.
Clay leaned against the starboard rail, staring forward. Barak and he had shared a cigarette a moment ago, one of the few left in the Arab’s pack. Clay looked like he needed another.
He noticed her attention and came to join her.
“How’re you holding up?” she asked.
“All I can say is that I had better get a good grade.” His smile was sincere if a bit shaky.
“I don’t know,” she teased. “There’s always room for improvement.”
“Fine. That’s the last time I take a dart in the back for you.” He sighed, staring into the darkness. “There’s a hell of a lot of water down here.”
She remembered his fear of the sea, flashing back to a similar chat by the rail of the Shabab Oman. That now seemed like a world ago.
Danny stood and stretched. “Coral and I were discussing that. About the sheer volume of water down here. There’s more than can be attributed to local rainfall or the water table.”
Omaha stirred, speaking with his head down. He had not been asleep, only resting. “So what’s the story then, hotshot?”
Coral answered, “It’s Earth-generated.”
Omaha lifted his head. “Say again?”
“Since the 1950s, it’s been known that there was more water within the Earth than can be explained by the surface hydrological cycle of evaporation and rainfall. There have been many cases of vast freshwater springs found deep within the Earth. Giant aquifers.”
Danny interrupted. “Coral…Dr. Novak was telling me about one spring found during the excavation for the Harlem Hospital in New York. It produced water at the rate of two thousand gallons a minute. It took tons of concrete to produce enough pressure to plug the spring.”
“So where the hell does all this new water come from?”
Danny waved to Coral. “You know it better.”
She sighed, clearly bothered at the interruption. “An engineer and geologist, Stephen Reiss, proposed that such new water is regularly formed within the Earth by the elemental combination of hydrogen and oxygen, generated in magma. That a cubic kilometer of granite, subjected to the right pressures and temperatures, has the capability of yielding eight billion gallons of water. And that such reservoirs of magmatic or Earth-generated waters are abundant under the crust, interconnected in a vast aquifer system, circling the globe.”
“Even under the deserts of Arabia?” Omaha asked, half scoffing.
“Certainly. Reiss, up until he died in 1985, had over fifty years of success finding water at sites other geologists flatly predicted were impossible. Including the Eilat Wells in Israel that continue to produce enough water for a city of a hundred thousand. He did the same in Saudia Arabia and Egypt.”
“So you think all this water down here might be part of that system?”
“Perhaps.” Coral opened a tiny door in one of her machines. Safia noted a whiff of fog rise from it. A cooler of some sort. She fished out a tiny test tube with tweezers. She swirled it around. Whatever Coral saw deepened a frown.
“What’s wrong?” Danny asked, noting her reaction.
“There’s something strange about this water.”
“What do you mean?”
She lifted the test tube. “I’ve been attempting to freeze it.”
“So?”
She held up the plastic test tube. “In the nitrogen cooler, I’ve lowered the water’s temperature to negative thirty Celsius. It still won’t freeze.”
“What?” Omaha leaned closer.
“It makes no sense. In a freezer, water gives up its heat energy to the cold and turns solid. Well, this stuff keeps giving off energy and won’t solidify. It’s like it has an unlimited amount of energy stored in it.”
Safia stared past the dhow’s rail. She could still smell the ozone. She remembered the slight steaming in the water around the iron. “Do you still have the Rad-X scanner among the equipment?”
Coral nodded, eyes widening. “Of course.”
The physicist assembled the rod-and-base unit. She passed it over the test tube. Her eyes told what she found before she spoke. “Antimatter annihilation.”
She shoved to her feet and held the scanner over the rail, moving from midship toward Safia’s place at the bow. “It grows stronger with every step.”
“What the hell does it mean?” Omaha asked.
“The magnetism in the iron is triggering some annihilation of antimatter.”
“Antimatter? Where?”
Coral stared all around her. “We’re sailing through it.”
“That’s impossible. Antimatter annihilates itself with any contact with matter. It can’t be in the water. It would’ve annihilated with the water molecules long ago.”
“You’re right,” Coral said. “But I can’t dismiss what I’m reading. Somehow the water here is enriched with antimatter.”
“And that’s what’s propelling the boat?” Safia asked.
“Perhaps. Somehow the magnetized iron has activated the localized annihilation of antimatter in the water, converting its energy into motive force, pushing us.”
“What about the concern of it all destabilizing?” Omaha asked.
Safia tensed. She remembered Painter’s explanation of how radiation from the decay of uranium isotopes might have triggered the museum explosion. She pictured the smoking bones of the museum guard.
Coral stared at her scanner. “I’m not reading any alpha or beta radiation, but I can’t say for sure.” The physicist returned to her workstation. “I’ll need to do more studies.”
The hodja spoke for the first time. She had ignored the excitement and simply stared forward. “The tunnel ends.”
All eyes turned. Even Coral regained her feet.
Ahead, a soft flicker of light danced, waxing and waning. It was enough to tell that the tunnel ended ten yards ahead. They sailed forward. In the last yard, the roof became jagged like the maw of a shark’s mouth.
No one spoke.
The ship sailed out of the tunnel and into a vast subterranean chamber.
“Mother of God!” Omaha intoned.
2:04 P.M.
CASSANDRA HELD the receiver of the satellite phone tight to her left ear and covered her right to cut out the howl of the storm. She was on the second floor of the cinder-block building that housed their command center. The storm tore through the ashes of the town. Sand battered the boarded windows.
As she listened, she paced the floor. The voice, digitally altered, made it difficult to hear. The head of the Guild insisted on anonymity.
“Gray leader,” the Minister continued, “to ask for such special treatment during this storm risks exposure of our desert op. Not to mention the entire Guild.”
“I know it sounds excessive, Minister, but we’ve found the target. We are steps away from victory. We can be out of Shisur before the storm even ends. That’s if we can get those supplies from Thumrait.”
“And what assurance can you give me that you will be successful?”
“I stake my life on it.”
“Gray leader, your life has always been at stake. Guild command has been studying your recent failures. Further disappointments now would make us seriously reconsider our need for your future employment.”
Bastard, Cassandra cursed to herself. He hides behind his code name, sitting behind some goddamn desk, and he has the gall to question my competency. But Cassandra knew one way to spin her latest difficulty. She had to give Painter credit for that.
“Minister, I am certain of victory here, but I would also request that afterward I be able to clear my name. I was assigned my team leader. He was not of my own choosing. John Kane has mishandled and undermined my command. It was his lack of security that caused both this delay and his own death. I, on the other hand, was able to subdue and apprehend the saboteur. A key member of DARPA’s Sigma Force.”
“You have Painter Crowe?”
Cassandra frowned at the familiarity behind that tone. “Yes, Minister.”
“Very good, gray leader. I may not have misplaced my confidence in you after all. You’ll have your supplies. Four armored tractors driven by Guild operatives are already under way as we speak.”
Cassandra bit her tongue. So all this browbeating was for show.
“Thank you, sir,” she managed to force out, but it was a wasted effort. The Minister had already hung up. She shoved the phone down, but continued to pace the room twice more, breathing deeply.
She had been so sure of victory when she blew the tractor out of the hole. She had enjoyed tormenting Painter, breaking him so he’d talk. She now knew the others posed no real threat. A handful of experienced fighters, but also lots of civilians, children, and old women.
After the wreckage had been cleared, Cassandra had gone down the hole herself, ready for victory, only to discover the underground river. There had been a stone pier, so the others must have found some vessel in which to row away.
Alternate plans had to be made…again.
She had to lean on the Minister, but despite her frustration, the call couldn’t have gone better. She had found a scapegoat for her past failures and would soon have everything she needed to ensure her victory under the sand.
Calmer now, Cassandra headed to the stairs. She would oversee final arrangements. She clomped down the wooden steps and entered the temporary hospital ward. She crossed to the medic in charge and nodded.
“You’ll have all the supplies you need. Trucks are coming in two hours.”
The medic looked relieved. The other men heard her and cheers rose.
She glanced to Painter, half sedated, groggy on the bed. She had left her laptop near his bed. The blue light of Safia’s transceiver glowed on the screen.
A reminder.
Cassandra carried the transmitter in her pocket, extra insurance for his good behavior and cooperation.
She checked her watch. Soon it would all be over.
2:06 P.M.
KARA STOOD at the prow with Safia. She held her sister’s free hand as Safia somehow propelled the dhow with her touch. They had done it, found what her father had sought for so many years.
Ubar.
The dhow sailed from the tunnel into a vast cavern, arching thirty stories overhead, stretching a mile out. A massive lake filled the cavern to an unknown depth.
As they sailed the subterranean lake, flashlights pointed in all directions, spearing out from the dhow. But additional illumination was not necessary. Across the ceiling, scintillations of cobalt electricity arced in jagged displays while gaseous clouds swirled with an inner fire, edges indistinct, ghostly, ebbing and flowing.
Trapped static charge. Possibly drawn from the storm on the surface.
But the fiery display was the least cause for their amazement. Its glow reflected and dazzled off every surface: lake, roof, walls.
“It’s all glass,” Safia said, gazing up and around.
The entire cavern was a giant glass bubble buried under the sands. She even spotted a scattering of glass stalactites dripping down from the roof. Blue arcs glistened up and down their lengths, like electric spiders.
“Slag glass,” Omaha said. “Molten sand that hardened. Like the ramp.”
“What could’ve formed this?” Clay asked.
No one even hazarded a guess as the dhow continued its journey.
Coral eyed the lake. “All this water.”
“It must be Earth-generated,” Danny mumbled. “Or once was.”
Coral seemed not to hear him. “If it’s all enriched with antimatter…”
The possibility chilled them all into silence. They simply watched the play of energies across the ceilings, mirrored in the still waters.
Finally, Safia let out a soft gasp. Her hand dropped from the shoulder of the iron figurehead and covered her mouth.
“Safia, what—”
Then Kara saw it, too. Across the lake, a shore appeared out of the darkness; it rose from the waters and spread back to the far wall. Pillars of black glass stretched from floor to ceiling, hundreds, in all sizes. Mighty columns, thin spires, and unearthly twisted spirals.
“The thousand pillars of Ubar,” Safia whispered.
They were close enough for further details to reveal themselves, lit by the reflected glow of the electrical display. From out of the darkness, a city appeared, glinting, shining, shimmering.
“All glass,” Clay murmured.
The miraculous city climbed the shore, stretching high up the back wall, scattered among the pillars. It reminded Kara of the seaside towns found along the Amalfi coast, looking like a child’s toy blocks spilled down a hillside.
“Ubar,” the hodja said at her side.
Kara glanced back as all the Rahim knelt to the deck. They had returned home after two millennia. One queen had left; thirty now returned.
The dhow had stopped after Safia lifted her hand, drifting on momentum.
Omaha stepped to Safia’s side, encircling her with an arm. “Closer.”
She reached again to the iron shoulder. The craft sailed again, moving smoothly toward the ancient lost city.
Barak called from the wheel, “Another pier! I’ll see if I can take us in!”
The dhow angled toward the spear of stone.
Kara gazed out at the city as they drew nearer. Flashlight beams leaped the distance, adding further illumination. Details grew clearer.
The homes, while all walled of glass, bore adornments of silver, gold, ivory, and ceramic tile. One palace near the shoreline had a mosaic that appeared to be made out of emeralds and rubies. A hoopoe bird. The crested bird was an important element in many stories about the Queen of Sheba.
They were all overwhelmed.
“Slow us down!” Barak called as they approached the pier.
Safia released her hold on the iron statue. The dhow’s pace immediately dropped. Barak slid the craft easily alongside the pier.
“Tie us up,” he said.
The Rahim were again on their feet. They leaped to the sandstone pier and tied lines to silver stanchions, matching the ones on the royal dhow.
“We are home,” Lu’lu said. Tears brimmed her eyes.
Kara helped the old woman back to the center of the ship so she could step from boat to pier. Once on solid ground, the hodja waved Safia to her.
“You should lead us. You have returned Ubar to us.”
Safia balked, but Kara nudged her. “Do the old lady a favor.”
Taking a deep breath, Safia climbed from the dhow and led the party to the glass shore of Ubar. Kara marched behind Safia and Lu’lu. This was their moment. Omaha even held back from rushing forward, though he did keep darting his head left and right, trying to see past the two women’s shoulders.
They reached the shore, all flashlights ablaze.
Kara glanced up and around. Distracted, she bumped into Safia’s back. She and the hodja had suddenly stopped.
“Oh, God…” Safia moaned.
Lu’lu simply fell to her knees.
Kara and Omaha stepped around them. They both saw the horror at the same time. Omaha flinched. Kara took a step back.
A few yards ahead, a skeletal, mummified body protruded from the street. Its lower half was still encased in glass. Omaha shifted his flashlight’s beam farther up the street. Other such bodies sprawled, half buried in the roadway. Kara spotted a single desiccated arm poking up out of the glass, as if drowning in a black sea. It appeared to be a child’s hand.
They had all drowned in glass.
Omaha moved a few steps closer, then jumped to the side. He pointed his flashlight down to where he had just stepped. His beam penetrated the glass, revealing a human shape buried below, burned to bone, curled within the glass under his feet.
Kara could not blink. It was like her father.
She finally covered her face and turned away.
Omaha spoke behind her. “I think we just discovered the true tragedy that drove the last queen of Ubar out of here, sealing the place, cursing it.” He moved back to them. “This isn’t a city. It’s a tomb.”