DECEMBER 4, 5:30 P.M.
SHISUR
THEY WERE still on his tail.
Painter saw the glow of his pursuers back in the sandstorm. He lumbered forward, eking out as much speed as possible, which was approximately thirty miles per hour. And in the current teeth of this storm, this was a high-speed chase.
He checked both side mirrors. One truck tracked on each side. He caught the barest glimpse of his hunters: two loaded flatbed trucks. Despite their loads, they moved faster than he could, but they also had to compensate for the terrain. He, on the other hand, aimed the twenty-ton tractor in one direction, trundling over anything in his path, riding up one dune and down another.
Sand obliterated all sight lines. If this were a blizzard, it would be described as a whiteout.
Painter had set the tractor’s cruise control. He checked its other features. It had a radar dish, but he didn’t know how to operate it. He did find the radio. His initial plan had been to travel as close to Thumrait Air Base as necessary and contact the Omani Royal Air Force. Someone would listen. If he had any hope of rescuing the others, he had to blow his cover and alert the government here.
But the trucks had set him on a course away from the base, deeper into the storm. He had no chance to swing around. The other trucks were too fast.
As he climbed a monstrous dune, an explosion thundered on his left side. Shrapnel and a wave of sand struck that side like a bitch-slap from God Himself.
An RPG.
For a moment, an awful grating sound tore at the treads.
Painter winced, but the tractor rode through it, grinding away whatever had clogged its gears. It moved up the long slope.
Another explosion, this time directly behind him. The noise was deafening, but the armor plating proved its mettle…or in this case, its poly-carbonate steel and Kevlar. Let them take potshots at him. The wind and storm would surely throw off their aim, and the tractor’s armor would do the rest.
Then he felt a sickening lurch.
The tractor’s treads still spun, but Painter’s speed slowed. The M4 began to slide. He suddenly realized what his hunters’ bombing had intended—not to take out the twenty-ton tractor, but to make it lose its footing.
They were bombing the slope, triggering an avalanche. The whole slope was sliding backward, taking the tractor with it. He switched off the cruise, popped the clutch, and kicked to a lower gear. He slammed the accelerator, trying to regain traction in the slippery slope.
No luck. He just churned himself into the loose sand.
Painter braked the tractor, fishtailing the back end, then hit reverse. He fled with the sand now, swimming with the riptide in the avalanche. He turned the tractor until he was parallel with the slope, the tractor tilting dangerously. He had to take care not to roll it.
He pushed the gear into neutral, braked, then back into first. The tractor moved forward again, now surfing down the slope, running along its flank, finding good traction and speed. He raced down to the bottom. The trucks gave chase, but they ran into the toppling sand and had to slow down.
Painter reached the end of the dune and cut around the corner.
He was done running from these fuckers.
He positioned the tractor to run straight, then reset the cruise.
Letting go of the wheel, he made sure the tractor continued its course. He then retreated quickly to the back. He found his own launcher. He loaded one of the rocket-propelled grenades, balanced the long tube on his shoulder, and crossed to the back hatch of the tractor.
He kicked the door open. Sand blew in, but not too fiercely as he was traveling into the wind. He stared out behind him. He waited until he spotted two glows, rounding the last dune, coming at him again.
“Come to Papa,” he mumbled, and aimed.
He set the crosshairs and pulled the trigger. The launcher exploded with a whoosh. He felt the backwash of heated air as the grenade rocketed away.
He watched the red fire of its trail, a shooting star.
The hunters spotted it, too. Painter saw them both wheel to either side. Too late. At least for one of them. The grenade exploded. Painter enjoyed seeing one of the glows shoved high into the air and explode into a fiery ball, shining brightly in the darkness. It crashed back into the sands.
The other truck had vanished. Hopefully, in its haste, it had bogged down among the dunes. Painter would watch for it.
He returned to his seat and checked both side mirrors. All dark.
With a moment to breathe, Painter opened the stolen laptop. Slowly pixels charged and bloomed to light on the dark screen. He prayed the batteries held. The schematic of the area reappeared. Painter stared.
Oh, God, there was no blue marker.
Panic prickled. Then the familiar tiny spinning blue ring appeared. It had taken an extra minute for the wireless feed to pick up again. Safia was still transmitting. He checked the scrolling coordinates. They were still changing. She was moving. Alive. He hoped that meant all the others were safe as well.
He had to get to her…to them. Though the implanted transceiver could not be removed—it was tamper-proofed to blow unless deactivated—he could get Safia out of Cassandra’s range, get her to a surgeon and demolition expert.
As he stared, he realized only the Z-axis coordinates were changing. That axis measured elevation or depth. The negative number was growing smaller, approaching zero.
Safia was climbing up. She was almost on the surface. She must have found a back door out of the caves. Good girl.
As he watched, he frowned. The Z coordinates passed zero and continued to climb into the positive numbers. Safia had not only reached the surface. She was climbing higher.
What the hell?
He checked her position. She was 5.2 miles from his position. As he had already been heading in the general direction, he had only to adjust his course slightly, aiming directly for her.
He crept the speed up another five miles per hour.
Breakneck speed in the current conditions.
If Safia found a back door, so would Cassandra. He had to reach Safia and the others as soon as possible. He glanced back to the blue glow. He knew one other person was surely monitoring this transmission.
Cassandra…and she still had the portable detonator.
5:45 P.M.
SAFIA MARCHED up the long dark stairs, the others trailing behind her, climbing in twos, children and old or injured women. Kara carried their only flashlight, pointed it up the passage, casting Safia’s shadow ahead of her. They sought to put as much distance as possible between them and the war below. Echoes of the fighting still reached them. A continual gunfire.
Safia fought to shut it out. She ran a hand along the wall. Sandstone. The steps underfoot had been worn by countless sandals and bare feet. How many others had walked this same path? She imagined the Queen of Sheba herself climbing or descending these stairs.
As she ascended, Safia sensed time’s constriction, the past and present merging into one. More than anywhere, here in Arabia, the past and present blurred. History was not dead and buried under skyscrapers and asphalt, or even trapped behind museum walls. It lived here, tied intimately to the land, merging story and stone into one.
She dropped her fingers.
Lu’lu joined her. “I heard you speaking to your beloved.”
Safia didn’t want to talk about it. “He’s not…that was before…”
“You both love this land,” the hodja continued, ignoring her attempt at a protest. “You’ve let too much sand come between you. But such dust can be swept aside.”
“It’s not that easy.”
Safia stared down at her hand, where a ring once rested. Gone like a promise once made. How could she trust he’d be there when she needed him? It was a boy who left you. It is a man who kneels here now. Could she believe that? In contrast, she pictured another’s face. Painter. The way he held her hand, his quiet respect and comfort, even the agony in his eyes when he frightened her.
Lu’lu spoke, as if reading her mind. “There are many men with noble hearts. Some take a little longer to grow into theirs.”
Safia felt tears rising. “I need more time…to think things through.”
“You’ve had time. Like us, you’ve spent too much time alone. Choices have to be made…before we are left with none.”
As proof, a short way up, the storm’s rush of winds moaned across the opening at the top.
Safia felt a breath of it across her cheek. She felt drawn to it. After so long below, she wanted to be free of this prison of rock. If only for a moment. To clear her head.
“I’m going to check the storm,” Safia mumbled.
“I’ll come with you,” Kara said, a step behind her.
“As will I,” the hodja added. “I would see with my own eyes what the first queen saw. I would see the original entrance to Ubar.”
The three of them continued alone up the last flights of stairs. The winds grew stiffer, and sand swirled down atop them. The three pulled up hoods, scarves, and goggles.
Safia hiked to the top. The opening was a crack ahead. Kara clicked off her flashlight. The storm was lighter than the dark passage.
The exit stood a yard away. Safia spotted a crowbar leaning near the exit. Beyond the threshold rested a large flat boulder, partially blocking the way.
“The rock must’ve hidden the entrance,” Kara said.
Safia nodded. Captain al-Haffi’s men must have used the crowbar to pry the stone aside enough to pass through. Perhaps, if they outlasted the storm, they could all escape, push the stone back in place, and block Cassandra.
The fresh wind filled Safia with hope.
Even from here, the storm did not seem as dark as she remembered back at Shisur. Maybe the brunt of it was ending.
Safia bent through the crack but stayed sheltered behind the stone. Sand still covered the sun, but full night had become twilight again. She could see the sun again, a wan moon through the storm.
“The storm looks less severe,” Kara said, confirming Safia’s assessment.
Lu’lu disagreed. “Do not be fooled. These sands around Ubar are deceptive. There is a very real reason tribes avoid this area, calling it cursed, haunted, the sands of djinns and devils.”
The hodja led them farther out of the entrance.
Safia followed, the wind tugging at her cloak and scarf. She looked around. She realized that they were atop a mesa, some thirty or forty feet above the desert floor. It was one of countless rocky prominences that poked from the dunes. “Ships of the sands,” they were named by the nomadic tribes.
Safia stepped farther out, examining their perch. She recognized the shape of the mesa. It was the same as the sand painting at the palace. Here was where the first entrance to Ubar was discovered almost three millennia ago. She stared around. Both the citadel and the queen’s palace had been patterned after this mesa. The most precious of all the ships of the desert.
Beyond the mesa, the storm drew Safia’s eye. The swirling clouds in this area appeared strange. A mile or so out, the sandstorm darkened in bands, encircling the plateau. Safia could hear distant winds howling.
“It’s like we’re in the eye of a hurricane,” Kara said.
“It is Ubar,” Lu’lu said. “It draws the might of the storm to itself.”
Safia remembered how for a short time after the keys erupted and opened the gate, the sandstorm had seemed less intense.
Kara crept dangerously near one of the rims. It made Safia nervous.
“You should get back from there,” Safia warned, afraid a gust of wind might carry her over the edge.
“There’s a path down this side. More of a goat track. Maybe we could make it down. I can see three trucks below, about forty yards out. Captain al-Haffi’s transportation.”
Safia edged closer. She could not imagine trying to traverse a cliffside path in these winds. They gusted unpredictably.
Lu’lu agreed with Safia. “It is death to attempt those sands.”
Kara glanced back at the hodja. Her expression argued that it was just as dangerous to stay. Clearly Kara was willing to take the chance.
Lu’lu understood her thought. “Your father dismissed warnings of these sands, as you do now. Even after all you’ve seen.”
Her words only angered Kara. “What is there to fear?”
Lu’lu swept her arms out. “These are the sands of the nisnases.”
Both Safia and Kara knew that name. The black ghosts of the sands. It was the nisnases that were to blame for Reginald Kensington’s death.
Lu’lu pointed to the southwest. A small whirlwind stirred, twisting, a tornado of sand. It scintillated in the darkness, aglow with static charge. For a moment, it burst more brilliantly, then vanished.
“I’ve seen a dust devil like that,” Kara said.
Lu’lu nodded. “The nisnases bring the burning death.”
Safia pictured Reginald Kensington’s tortured body, locked in glass. It reminded her of the mummified citizens below. How were they connected?
Another devil bloomed off to the east. Another due south. They seemed to stir up from the sand and into the air. Safia had seen thousands of such whirlwinds, but never ones so brilliant with static charge.
Kara gazed out. “I still don’t under—”
Directly before them, a wall of sand blew up from below the mesa’s edge. They all fell back.
“A nisnase!” Lu’lu gasped.
The whirlwind formed just beyond the mesa, swirling in a sinuous column. Both Kara and the hodja retreated for the passage. Safia remained where she stood, mesmerized.
Vast waves of static charge swept up its length, chasing up from the sand and into the sky. Her cloak billowed, not from winds this time, but from the play of electricity in the air, crackling over her skin, clothes, and hair. It was a painful but somehow ecstatic feeling. It left her body cold, her skin warm.
She exhaled, not realizing she had been holding her breath.
She took a step forward, close enough to see the full breadth of the snaking whirlwind. Energy continued to jitter through the column. She saw the devil centered around one of the three vehicles. From her vantage point, she could see the sands around the truck forming a whirlpool beneath it.
She jumped a bit when something touched her elbow. It was Kara. She had strengthened her nerve to watch. Kara found and took Safia’s hand. In her touch, Safia sensed Kara reliving an old nightmare.
Beneath the truck, the sands began to darken. A burning odor wafted up to them. Kara’s hand clenched on Safia. She had recognized that smell.
The sands grew black. Molten sand. Glass.
The nisnase.
The energies in the whirlwind whipped wildly, glowing through the entire column. From their perch, they watched the truck sink into the molten pool, at first slowly, its rubber tires melting and popping—then there was a tremendous whoosh of static, the devil collapsed, and in the instant before it vanished, Safia watched the glass turn as black as nothingness. The truck fell away, as if through air. The black pit melted deeper into the sand, and the last winds swept fresh sand over it, wiping away all trace.
A ghost come and gone.
A moment later, a soft blast burped. The sand in the area bumped up.
“Fuel tank,” Kara said.
They both raised their eyes. More of the deadly whirlwinds were popping up all over. There had to be a dozen of them now.
“What’s happening?” Kara asked.
Safia shook her head. The encircling wall of storm had also grown blacker, contracting toward them, moving closer in all directions.
Lu’lu stared around them with a look of terror. “The other storm system from the coast. It has come, the two are feeding on each other, becoming something worse.”
“The megastorm,” Safia said. “It’s forming around us.”
More and more whirlwinds danced across the sands. Their glows were flames rising from the sands. It was a hellish landscape. The storm beyond grew blacker and wilder. It screamed now.
To move across those sands invited certain death.
Safia heard a sound closer at hand. A noise from her radio. She freed it from a pocket. Omaha had asked her to leave the channel open in case he needed to reach her.
She fished it out and backed toward the passageway.
A voice whispered through static at her. “Safia…if…can hear me…”
Kara leaned next to her. “Who is it?”
Safia pressed it to her ear, listening tightly.
“…I…coming…Safia, can you hear…”
“Who?” Kara asked.
Safia’s eyes widened. “It’s Painter. He’s alive.”
Some vagary of the storm’s static let his voice reach her clearly for a moment. “I’m two miles from your position. Hold tight. I’m coming.”
Static erased any further reception.
Safia pressed the send button and held the radio to her lips. “Painter, if you can hear me, don’t come! Do not come! Did you hear me?”
She released the button. Only static. He hadn’t heard.
She stared out at the netherworld of storm, fire, and wind.
It was death to travel those sands…and Painter was coming here.
6:05 P.M.
CASSANDRA CROUCHED with two of her men. Gunfire rattled and spat all around. After the first RPG blast had caught her off guard, Cassandra had entered the fray, moving into the wreck and tumble of the town.
Fighting continued, but her team was making steady progress.
She stared through the sights of a rifle and waited. The cluster of blocky homes lay before her, limned in shades of emerald and silver through her night-vision goggles. Having also employed an overlay of infrared, she watched a red blob move beyond a glass wall, near a corner. One of the enemy.
She studied the silhouette. Her target carried a tube on his shoulder, blazing like a small sun. Fiery hot. One of the launchers. She had instructed her men to focus their attention on such objectives. They had to eliminate the enemy’s long-range capabilities.
By the wall, her target shifted, moving out into the open, positioning the grenade launcher.
Cassandra centered her crosshairs on the hottest part of the enemy’s body—the head. She squeezed her trigger. Just once. That’s all she needed.
Through the infrared, she saw the spray of fire blossom outward.
A clean shot.
But some twitched reflex fired the launcher.
Cassandra watched the RPG blast away, blinding on her scopes. She rolled to her back, dazzled. The grenade sailed high overhead, the aim way off course, as the enemy’s body fell backward.
Angled toward the roof as the grenade was, she lost sight of it against the brilliant display of electrical discharges storming across the ceiling. She flipped away the infrared overlay and toggled off the night-vision mode. Through the regular lenses, the roof still blazed. The display had grown more violent, filling the entire cap of the dome. Small arcs of electricity speared out like bolts of lightning.
Across the lake, the misfired RPG exploded. It had struck the far wall, opposite the city. She focused the telescopic view.
Fuck…She could not catch a goddamn break.
The grenade struck the wall above the tunnel leading into the cavern. She watched a section of the glass wall tear away from the rock behind it, along with a portion of the tunnel room. It collapsed, sealing the tunnel.
Their exit was now blocked.
She rolled to her stomach. The surface team would just have to dig them out. The immediate concern was to secure this town, capture Safia, and extract the prize here. She flipped her infrared overlay back over her goggles’ lenses.
It was time to continue the hunt.
Her two men had gone forward already to check the body and confiscate the launcher. They were ready to move on.
Cassandra paused to check her electronic tracker.
Safia lay a short distance ahead. Red triangles, the beacons from her team, closed on her position from all directions.
Satisfied, Cassandra almost pocketed the device, but the elevation reading alongside the blue glowing ring caught her eye. She froze. That didn’t make sense.
Cassandra stared up again at the blazing roof. If the reading was correct, Safia was on the surface. Was there another way out?
She touched her throat mike and sent out a general alert over the open channel, reaching every man. “Close in now! Full run! Leave no one alive!”
Cassandra rose from her position and joined her men.
“Let’s finish this.”
6:10 P.M.
OMAHA HEARD the cry from Captain al-Haffi, in Arabic. “Pull back to the stairs! All forces retreat to the exit.”
Omaha crouched with Coral, Danny, and Clay. They had taken up a position inside the courtyard of the palace. A grenade blasted twenty yards away. They all pressed against the wall.
“We have to go,” Clay said.
“I’d love to,” Omaha said. “Just tell that to the two men around the corner.”
They were pinned down in here. They had been for the last minute. Moments ago, Omaha and Clay had run into the courtyard from one direction, Danny and Coral from the other. Both teams chased by commandos. Now all four were pinned down.
A standoff.
Only Cassandra’s soldiers had an advantage: sophisticated scopes that seemed to track their every move.
“We should pull back into the palace,” Coral said, slapping a fresh magazine into her pistol. “We’d have a better chance of losing them.”
Omaha nodded. They made a dash for the palace entrance.
“What about Captain al-Haffi and the others?” Clay asked as they ducked inside. “They might leave without us.”
Omaha crouched on one knee, gun pointed toward the courtyard. Coral took his flank, Danny and Clay behind them.
“Leave where?” Omaha asked. “I’d rather take my chances out here than in the cramped stairwell. At least here we have some elbow—”
The shot pinged off the wall by his ear. Glass shattered, needling the side of his face. “Damn…”
More bullets chewed. Omaha dropped flat next to Coral. Danny and Clay retreated into the far room. The only reason Omaha was still alive was that the iron-and-glass statue of the palm holding the sphere in the courtyard’s center had blocked a direct shot into the entrance.
Across the courtyard, one of the commandos ran into view, angling to the side, a grenade launcher on his shoulder, pointed at the door of the palace. Bullets continued to pepper, suppression fire for the artillery soldier. A gutsy move. Something had lit a fire under Cassandra’s team in the last few minutes.
Coral twisted around and aimed her pistol at the man with the grenade launcher. She was too slow.
The gods above were not.
From the roof, a dazzling bolt of energy struck the ground near the man, crackling for a half a breath, searing the retinas. It was not true lightning, just an arc of energy between the roof and floor. It did not blast a crater. It did not even knock the man down.
It did much worse.
The glass under the man instantly transmogrified from solid to liquid, changing states in one breath. The soldier fell into the pool, up to his neck. The scream that burst from his mouth was a sound only heard in the deepest pit of hell, the scream of a man burned alive.
It cut short after an instant.
The man’s head fell backward, steam rising from his mouth.
Dead.
The glass was solid again.
The suppression fire died with the man. Others had witnessed it.
In the distance, the fighting continued, echoing with rifle blasts—but here no one moved. Omaha raised his gaze. The roof was on fire, filling the dome. Other bolts jumped between ceiling and floor. Somewhere across the way another scream erupted, a twin to the one heard here.
“It’s happening again,” Coral said.
Omaha stared at the dead man, buried in glass. He knew what she meant.
Fiery death had returned to Ubar.
6:12 P.M.
PAINTER BOUNCED in his seat as the twenty-ton tractor flew over a small dune. He could see nothing now. The visibility of a few yards had dropped to the tip of his nose. He was driving blind. He could be blithely aiming for the edge of a cliff and he’d never know.
A few minutes ago, the sandstorm had suddenly whipped up with a renewed ferocity. The buffeting winds sounded like giant fists striking the tractor. Painter’s head throbbed from the concussion of the forces.
Still, he continued blindly forward. His only guidance glowed on the laptop beside him.
Safia.
He had no idea if she heard his radio call or not, but she hadn’t moved since the broadcast. She was still aboveground…actually about forty feet aboveground. There must be a hill ahead. He’d have to slow once he was nearer.
A shimmer of reflection caught his eye. In the side mirror. The second pursuit vehicle. It was following the tractor’s larger lights. The hunter had to be as blind as he, following in his tracks, keeping to his packed path, letting him encounter any obstacles.
The blind leading the blind.
Painter continued. He dared not leave his post. The winds suddenly whipped even more savagely. For a moment, the tractor tilted up on one tread, then slammed down. Christ…
For some reason, a laugh bubbled out of him. The gibbering amusement of the damned.
Then the winds ended, as if someone had unplugged the fan.
The lumbering tractor rode out into more open sands. The skies even lightened from midnight to twilight. Sand still stirred, and winds did indeed still blow, but at a tenth of the velocity of a moment ago.
He glanced to the side mirror. A solid wall of blackness blanketed the view. He must have traveled completely through its heart and out the other side.
As he watched, he saw no sign of the pursuit vehicle, its glow lost in the total darkness. Perhaps that last burst of winds had flipped the sucker.
He focused forward.
His sight line stretched for a good quarter mile. In the distance he could see a shadowy prominence of dark rock. A desert mesa. He glanced at the laptop. The blue glow lay directly ahead.
“So that’s where you are.”
He kicked up the speed of the tractor.
He wondered if Safia could see him. Reaching out, he took the radio in hand. He kept one eye on the road. Throughout the region, mini-tornadoes whipped and snaked, joining desert to sky. They glowed with a cobalt radiance. Crackles of static charge spun up from the ground. Most stood in one place, but a few meandered over the desert landscape. He was close enough to see one etch down a dune face, sand coughing up around it. In its wake, it left a trail of black sand, a squiggled sigil, a pen stroke from some storm god.
Painter frowned. He had never seen such a phenomenon.
But it was none of his concern.
He had more pressing worries. He raised the radio to his lips. “Safia, if you can read me, let me know. You should be able to see me.”
He waited for a reply. He didn’t know if Safia still had one of their radios. It was the frequency to which he had set the tractor’s transmitter.
Noise burst from the receiver. “—ainter! Go! Turn back!”
It was Safia! It sounded like she was in trouble.
He hit the transmit button. “I’m not turning back. I’ve got—”
An arc of electricity leaped from the radio receiver to his ear. Yelping out, he dropped the radio. He smelled burning hair.
He felt a surge of static charge throughout the vehicle. Every surface shocked him. He kept his hands on the rubber-coated wheel. The laptop sizzled, then gave off a loud pop. The screen went dead.
The sound of a foghorn reached him, blaring, persistent.
Not a foghorn…a truck’s horn.
He glanced at the side mirror. From the storm’s black wall, the pursuit truck flew out into the open. The last winds slapped the back end. Its frame tilted, beginning to flip.
Then it was free. It struck the sands, the tires on one side, then the other. It bounced, skidded, and spun a full turn. But it was out of the storm.
Painter swore.
The truck’s driver must have been as shocked to be alive as Painter was to see him. The flatbed idled. It looked like hell. One tire was flat, the bumper was curled into a steel smile, the tarp over its load in back had been blown to one side, tangled amid the ropes.
Painter pressed his accelerator, racing forward, putting as much distance between himself and the truck. He remembered the RPG bombardment. He wanted a little breathing room, then he’d take care of this truck.
In the side mirror, the truck followed, limping after him.
Painter prepared to fight, setting the cruise.
Ahead the desert was a forest of whirling sand devils, glowing in the twilight gloom. They all seemed to be on the move now. He frowned. They were all moving in unison, some unearthly ballet.
Then he felt it. A familiar lurch in the sand.
He had felt the same when the grenades had triggered an avalanche over the dune face. The shift of sands under his treads.
But he was on flat ground.
All around the whirlwinds danced, static electricity sparked, and the desert loosened under him. Against all odds, the twenty-ton tractor was becoming mired. His speed slowed. He felt its back end fishtailing. The tractor swung around, dragged by unknown forces. Then he was trapped, stopped.
His side window now faced toward the pursuit truck. It continued toward him, closing in on its wide, knobby sand tires. Then the sand under it became powder. It sank to its rims…then axle.
Bogged.
Both hunter and prey were trapped, flies in amber.
But this amber still flowed.
He felt it beneath him. The sand was still moving.
6:15 P.M.
SAFIA GAVE up on the radio. She could only watch in horror, alongside Kara and Lu’lu. It was a landscape out of a nightmare, a painting done by Salvador Dalí. The world melted and stretched.
She stared out at the whirlwinds, the deadly electrical discharges, pools of black sands, streaks of the same, carved out by skittering devils. The dusty clouds in the sky glowed from the amount of energy flowing into them, fed by the snaking columns of sand and static charge.
But that was not the worst.
For as far as she could see, the entire desert floor had begun to churn in one giant whirlpool, spinning around the buried bubble of Ubar. The sandstone mesa was a boulder in the current. But there were smaller rocks: Painter’s tractor and another truck, mired in the churning sands.
Whirlwinds closed in on the vehicles, etching the sand with molten fire.
A crash echoed to the left. A piece of the mesa tore away, tumbling into the sand, a glacier calving into the sea.
“We can’t stay here,” Kara said. “It’ll tear this island apart.”
“Painter…” Safia said. Her clothing sparked and crackled with discharges as she stepped toward the mesa’s edge. He had come to rescue them, driving to his doom. They had to do something.
“He’s on his own,” Kara said. “We can’t help him.”
The radio suddenly crackled in her hand. She had forgotten she was holding it. Painter…
“Safia, can you hear me?” It was Omaha.
She lifted her radio. “I’m here.”
His voice sounded distant, as if from another planet. “Something strange is going on down here. The static is arcing all over. It’s zapping the glass. Melting spots. It’s the cataclysm all over again! Stay away!”
“Can you get up here? To the stairs?”
“No. Danny, Clay, Coral, and I are holing up in the palace.”
A commotion by the tunnel drew her eye. Sharif climbed out.
Kara moved to meet him.
He pointed to the tunnel. “We’ve retreated to the stairs,” he said, panting. “Captain al-Haffi will attempt to hold the enemy off. You should—” His voice died as he suddenly caught a view of the desert. His eyes widened.
Another splintering crack erupted. Rocks crashed. The rim of the mesa crumbled.
“Allah, preserve us,” Sharif prayed.
Kara waved him back. “He’d better. Because we’re bloody damn well running out of places to hide.”
6:16 P.M.
CASSANDRA KNEW true terror for the first time in ages. The last time she had felt this gut-level fear was as a child, listening to her father’s footsteps outside her bedroom door at midnight. This was the same. A fear that gelled the insides and turned bone marrow to ice. Breathing was a talent forgotten.
She cowered inside a tiny glass building, more a chapel, enough for one person to kneel. Its only entrance was a short door that had to be ducked into. No windows. Past the door, the lower city spread below her.
She watched the continual arcing bolts of discharge. Some struck the lake, grew more intense, then sucked back to the roof, brighter for the effort, as if the storm above were feeding off the waters below.
The same was not true when it struck the glass. Every surface absorbed the strange energy, becoming a liquid pool, but only as briefly as a lightning flicker. Then it turned solid again.
She had watched one of her men succumb to such a bolt. He had been sheltering behind a wall, leaning on it. Then the bolt struck the wall. He fell through it, his support suddenly gone. The wall solidified again. Half his body on one side, the other half on this side. Between, he had been burned to bone. Even his clothes had caught fire, a human torch, on two sides of glass.
All across the city, the fighting had stopped. Men sought shelter.
They had seen the mummified bodies. They knew what was happening.
The cavern had gone deathly quiet, accept for the occasional gunshot by the back wall, where the enemy had sequestered itself in some passageway. Anyone who approached was shot.
Cassanda clutched her electronic tracker. She watched the spread of red triangles. Her men. Or those few that were left. She counted. Of the fifty on the assault team, only a dozen were left. She watched as another blinked out. A shattering scream fluttered through the city.
Death stalked her men.
She knew even such enclosed shelters were not safe. She had seen the mummified bodies within a few of the homes.
The key seemed to be movement. Perhaps the amount of static in the room was such that any stirrings attracted a bolt to stab out at it.
So Cassandra sat still, very still. She had done the same in her childhood bed. It hadn’t helped then. She doubted it would now. She was trapped.
6:17 P.M.
OMAHA LAY flat at the entryway to the palace. The quiet pressed upon him. Beyond the courtyard, the firestorm worsened. Bolts crackled, shattering into brilliant forks. The dome shone like the corona of a blue-white sun.
Omaha watched and knew death was near.
But at least he had told Safia he loved her. He had made his peace. He would have to be satisfied with that. He glanced upward. He prayed Safia was safe. She had relayed another short message, describing the chaos upstairs.
Death above, death below.
Take your pick.
Coral lay with him, studying the storm. “We’re inside the world’s largest transformer.”
“What do you mean?”
They spoke in whispers, as if afraid to draw the sleeping giant’s attention.
“The glass cavern with its energized antimatter solution is acting like a massive insulated superconductor. It draws energy to itself like the iron camel did at the museum. In this case, it collects the static energy of any passing sandstorm, sucking it down from above. But as energy builds in the chamber, crossing some threshold, it must need to shed its excess energy, like lightning does during a thunderstorm. Only this is aimed from sand to sky, shooting upward again in immense discharges, creating those momentary blasts of deadly whirlwinds on the desert’s surface.”
“Like it’s draining its battery,” Omaha said. “But what’s going on in here?”
“A storm in a bottle. The megastorm is pouring too much energy down here. The bubble can’t discharge it fast enough, so some of it’s lashing back.”
“Zapping itself.”
“Redistributing charge,” she corrected. “Glass is a great conductor. It merely takes the excess energy it can’t discharge to the surface and passes it down to the floor below. The glass here captures the energy and disperses it. A cycle to keep the charge spread evenly throughout the entire glass bubble rather than just the dome. It’s that equilibrium of energy that keeps the antimatter lake stable during this storm. A balance of charges.”
“What about those pockets of molten glass?”
“I don’t think it’s molten glass. At least not exactly.”
Omaha glanced questioningly in her direction. “What do you mean?”
“Glass is always in a liquid state. Have you ever seen antique glass? The flowing streaks that slightly distort the clarity? Gravity affects glass like a liquid, slowly pulling it down in streams.”
“But what does that have to do with what’s going on here?”
“The energy bolts aren’t just melting the glass. They’re changing its state, instantaneously breaking all bonds, liquefying the glass to the point that it borders on gaseous. When the energy disperses, it resolidifies. But just for a flash, it’s in a fiery state between liquid and gas. That’s why it doesn’t flow. It keeps its basic shape.”
Omaha hoped this discussion was leading to some solution. “Is there anything we can do about it?”
Coral shook her head. “No, Dr. Dunn, I’m afraid we’re fucked.”
6:19 P.M.
THE FIERY explosion drew Painter’s attention to the mesa.
A truck parked near the sandstone prominence flipped in the air, spewing flaming fuel. One of the roving sand devils continued past it. It left a steaming trail of blackened sand.
Molten glass.
These sinuous columns of static charge were somehow discharging astronomical amounts of heat energy, burning their way across the landscape.
Painter remembered Safia’s warning over the radio before it shorted out. She had tried to warn him away. He hadn’t listened.
Now he was trapped inside the tractor as it slowly spun in a vast whirlpool of churning sand. For the past five minutes, it had carried him along, sweeping him in a wide arc, slowly spinning him in place. He was a planet orbiting a sun.
And all around death danced. For every whirlwind that blew itself out with a sharp discharge of static, another three took its place.
It was only a matter of time before one crossed his path, or worse yet, opened up under him. As he spun, he saw the other truck. It was faring no better. Another planet, smaller, maybe a moon.
Painter stared across the sands that separated them. He saw one chance.
It was a madman’s course, but it was better than sitting here, waiting for death to come knocking. If he had to die, he’d rather die with his boots on. He stared down at his naked form. He wore only his boxers. Okay, he’d have to forgo the whole boot dream.
He stood up and crossed to the back. He’d have to travel light.
He took a single pistol…and a knife.
Outfitted, he stepped to the back door. He’d have to be fast. He took a moment to take several deep breaths. He opened the back door.
The clear expanse of desert suddenly erupted yards away. A devil spun up from the sand. He felt the backwash of its static. His hair flumed around his head, crackling. He hoped it didn’t catch fire.
Stumbling back, he fled away from the back door. Time had run out.
He darted to the side door, shoved it open, and leaped.
Hitting the ground, he sank to his calves. The sand was damnably loose. He glanced over a shoulder. The devil loomed behind the tractor, crackling with energy. He smelled ozone. Heat pulsed from the monster.
Fleet feet, little skeet.
It was a nursery rhyme his father had often whispered in his ear when he was caught dawdling. No, Papa…no dawdling here.
Painter hauled his feet free from the sand and raced around the front end of the tractor. The whirlpool dragged at him, bordering on quicksand.
He spotted the flatbed truck. Fifty yards. Half a football field.
He sprinted for it.
Fleet feet, little skeet.
He ran, the rhyme a mantra in his head.
Across the sand, the truck’s door popped open. The soldier stood on the running board and pointed a rifle at him. No trespassers.
Luckily Painter already had his pistol up. He fired and fired. There was no reason to spare the bullets. He squeezed and squeezed.
The driver fell backward, arms out.
The explosion behind Painter shoved him forward, face-first. A wave of fire seared. Spitting sand, he leaped up and away.
He glanced back to see the tractor on its side, on fire, its tank exploded by the heat of the devil as it expanded its reach. Painter pounded away. Flaming fuel rained down all around, splashing into the sand.
He simply ran, hell-bent.
Reaching the flatbed, he skipped the cab door, used the driver’s body as a stepping-stone, and scrambled into the flatbed in back. The tarp was still tangled in the ropes. He used his knife to slice the lashings. They were taut and popped like overstretched guitar strings. He kicked tarps and ropes aside.
He exposed what lay underneath. What he had spotted when the flatbed mired. One of the copter sleds.
This little skeeter found his wings.
6:22 P.M.
SAFIA HEARD the staccato firing of a pistol.
Painter…
She had been huddling just inside the stairway passage. Kara and Lu’lu kept guard with her. She had been pondering some way to escape the doom here. She sensed an answer, just beyond reach. A clue she was missing, letting fear frazzle through her. But fear was an old companion. She took deep breaths, inhaling calm, exhaling tension.
She thought about the mystery.
She remembered her thoughts on the way up here. How the past and the present were merging in countless ways. She closed her eyes. She could almost feel the answer rising inside her like a bubble in water.
Then the gunshots.
Followed by an explosion. Like the one that had taken out one of Captain al-Haffi’s trucks a minute or so ago.
Safia bolted back to the top of the mesa. A fireball billowed upward, shredding in the winds. The tractor lay on its side.
Oh, God…Painter…
She spotted a naked figure scrambling by the smaller truck.
Kara joined her. “It’s Crowe.”
Safia grabbed on to that hope. “Are you sure?”
“He really needs to cut his hair.”
The figure climbed into something in the back of the truck. Then Safia spotted the spread of collapsible rotors. She heard a distant whine. The rotors churned. A helicopter.
Kara sighed. “That man is resourceful, I’ll give him that.”
Safia noted a tiny whirlwind, one of the untethered ones scribing through the dunes, swing in a wide arc, aiming for the truck and copter.
Did Painter see it?
6:23 P.M.
PAINTER LAY flat on his belly in the sled. The controls were near his arms, one for each hand. He kicked up the rotor speed. He had flown helicopters during Special Forces training, but never one like this.
But how different could it be?
He yanked the right throttle. Nothing happened. He pulled on the left. Still nothing. Okay, maybe things were a bit different.
He pulled on both throttles and the copter lifted out of its cradle and into the air. He kept the throttles pulled and shot up in a wobbly arc, spun by the winds. The thump-thump of the rotors matched his heart, fast and furious.
As the copter swung, he caught a glimpse of a twister on his tail. It glowed and spat fire like a demon risen from hell.
Painter played with the controls, leaning right, left, and forward.
Forward was good.
He sped away, dipping too low, like sliding down a snowy slope. He attempted to get his nose up before he buried himself in the sand. He worked the throttle, rolled to the left, balanced it out, and finally found a way to bring the nose up.
Now he was aiming directly for a monstrously huge whirlwind.
He climbed higher and to the right—and successfully managed to spin himself in place while still flying toward the large devil. He felt his stomach flip. He dragged the left throttle, stopped the spin, and just managed to miss the devil.
But as a parting shot, the whirlwind spat an arc of static, zapping him. Painter felt the shock from the tip of his toes to his eyebrows.
So did the sled.
All power died. Instruments twirled. He plummeted, rotors churning uselessly. He switched all systems off, then back on again. Rebooting. A small whine answered, the motor coughed. Then died.
The mesa lay ahead. He aimed for it as best he could…which was at the side of its cliffs.
He rebooted again. The motor caught this time. The spinning rotors must have helped jump-start the engine. He pulled both throttles.
The copter climbed.
The cliffs rushed at him.
“C’mon…” he mumbled between clenched teeth.
As he reached the mesa, he caught a glimpse of its top. He willed the craft up another few inches. The landing skids brushed the edge of the lip, caught a bit, tilting the copter on its side. Rotors tore into stone.
They shattered away.
The sled compartment flipped high, and landed upside down atop the mesa. A lucky break. Painter banged his head, but he lived.
He popped the side hatch and fell out. He lay on the stone, panting, surprised to be alive. It was a good surprise.
Safia hurried over to him.
Kara followed, staring down at him, arms crossed. “Good effort, but have you ever heard of the phrase, ‘out of the frying pan, into the fire’?”
He sat up. “What the hell’s happening?”
“We must get to a safe place,” Safia said, helping him stand.
“Where?” Kara asked, taking his other arm. “The sandstorm is tearing apart the desert, and Ubar is on fire below.”
Safia straightened. “I know where we can go.”