SANDSTORM sf-1

by James Rollins

  He finished:

  I cannot stress enough that matters at your end must be investigated. Success of this mission will depend on cutting off further flow of intelligence. Trust no one. We will attempt to rescue Dr. alMaaz this evening. We believe we know where Cassandra’s group is taking the doctor. It appears they are headed to

  Painter paused, took a deep breath, then continued typing:

  the Yemeni border. We are headed there right now in an attempt to stop the border crossing.

  Painter stared at the letter. Numb at the possibility.

  Omaha waved to him from the neighboring computer. “They made the turnoff on the side road!”

  Painter hit the send button. The letter vanished, but not his guilt.

  “C’mon.” Omaha crossed to the exit. “We can close the distance.”

  Painter followed. At the door, he gave one final glance back to his workstation. He prayed he was wrong.

  13

  Footprints of the Prophet

  DECEMBER 3, 5:55 P.M.

  DHOFAR MOUNTAINS

  SAFIA STAREDout the window as the truck wound up a switchback through the mountainous hills. After they left the highway, asphalt had given way to gravel, which in turn disintegrated into a rutted red dirt path. They proceeded slowly, cautious of the deep gorge that shouldered the road to the left.

  Below, the valley flowed away in deepening shades of lush green, disappearing into shadows near the bottom as the sun set to the west. A scatter of baobab trees dotted the slope, monstrous trees with tangled, rooted trunks that seemed more prehistoric than specimens of the modern world. Everywhere the land rolled in shades of emerald, striped in shadows. A waterfall glistened between two distant hills, its cataracts sparkling in the last rays of the sun.

  If Safia squinted, she could almost imagine she was back in England.

  All the lushness of the high country was due to the annual monsoon winds, the khareef, that swept the foothills and mountains in a continual misty drizzle from June through September. Even now, as the sun set, a steady wind had begun to blow, buffeting the truck. The sky overhead had darkened to slate gray, canopied with frothy clouds that brushed the higher hills.

  The radio had been tuned to a local news channel during the ride up here. Cassandra had been listening for reports on the ongoing salvage operation on the Shabab Oman. Still, no survivors had been found, and the seas were again kicking up with the approach of a new storm system. But what dominated the weather reports was news of the fierce sandstorm continuing its sweep south across Saudi Arabia, heading like a freight train for the desert of Oman, leaving a swath of destruction.

  The wild weather matched Safia’s mood: dark, threatening, unpredictable. She felt a force building inside her, below her breastbone, a tempest in a bottle. She remained tense, tingling. It reminded her of an impending anxiety attack, but now there was no fear, only determined certainty. She had nothing, so could lose nothing. She remembered her years in London. It had been the same. She had sought comfort by becoming nothing, cutting herself off, isolating herself. But now she had truly succeeded. She was empty, left with only one purpose: to stop Cassandra. And that was enough.

  Cassandra remained lost in her own thoughts, only occasionally leaning forward to speak in hushed tones to John Kane up front. Her cell phone had rung a few minutes ago. She had answered it tersely, turning slightly away, speaking in a whisper. Safia heard Painter’s name. She had tried to eavesdrop, but the woman kept her voice too low, blocked by the babble of the radio. Then she had hung up, made two other calls, and sunk into a palpably tense silence. Anger seemed to radiate in waves from the woman.

  Since then, Safia kept her attention on the countryside, searching for places where she might hide, mapping the terrain in her head, just in case.

  After another ten minutes of slow trekking, a larger hill appeared, its top still bathed in light. The golden bell of a short tower glinted in the sun.

  Safia straightened. Job’s tomb.

  “Is that the place?” Cassandra stirred, eyes still narrowed.

  Safia nodded, sensing that now was not the time to provoke her captor.

  The SUV coasted down a final slope, circled the base of the mount, and then began a long climb toward the top, crawling up a switchback. A group of camels lounged beside the road as their vehicle neared the hilltop tomb. The beasts were all couched for a rest, kneeling down atop their knobby knees. A few men sat in the shadow of a baobab, tribesmen from the hills. The eyes of both camels and men followed the passage of the three trucks.

  After a last switchback, the walled tomb complex appeared, consisting of a small beige building, a tiny whitewashed mosque, and a handsome garden courtyard of native shrubs and flowers. Parking was merely an open stretch of dirt in front, presently empty because of the lateness of the day.

  As before, Kane settled the truck to a stop, then came around to open Safia’s door. She climbed out, stretching a kink from her neck. Cassandra joined them as the other two SUVs parked and the men unloaded. They were all dressed in civilian clothes: khakis and Levi’s, short-sleeved shirts, polos. But all the men wore matching windbreakers with the logo for Sunseeker Tours, all a size too big, hiding their holstered weapons. They quickly dispersed into a loose cordon near the road, feigning interest in the gardens or walls. A pair had binoculars and scanned the immediate area, turning in a slow circle.

  Except for the road leading here, the remaining approaches were steep, almost vertical cliff faces. It would not be easy to flee on foot.

  John Kane went among his men, nodding, bowing his head in last-minute instructions, then returned. “Where first?”

  Safia motioned vaguely to the mosque and vault. From one tomb to another. She led the way through the opening in the wall.

  “Place looks deserted,” Kane commented.

  “There must be a caretaker somewhere about,” Safia said, and pointed to the steel chain that lay loose beside the entrance. No one had locked the place.

  Cassandra signaled to two men. “Search the grounds.”

  Obeying, the pair took off.

  Cassandra led the way after them. Safia followed with Kane at her side. They entered the courtyard between the mosque and small beige vault. The only other feature of the complex was a small set of ancient ruins near the back, neighboring the tomb. An ancient prayer room, supposedly all that was left of Job’s original home.

  Closer by, the door to the tomb lay open, unlocked like the gate.

  Safia stared toward the doorway. “This may take some time. I don’t have the slightest idea where to begin to look for the next clue.”

  “If it takes all night, then it takes all night.”

  “We’re staying here?” Safia could not keep the surprise from her voice.

  Cassandra wore a hard-edged expression. “For as long as it takes.”

  Safia swept the courtyard with her gaze. She prayed the caretaker had been careless in locking the place up and had already left. She feared hearing a gunshot somewhere out there, marking his death. And what if other pilgrims came later? How many more would die?

  Safia felt conflicted. The sooner Cassandra had what she wanted, the less chance that other innocent folk would die. But that meant helping her. Something she was loath to do.

  With no other choice, she crossed the grounds and entered the crypt. She had an inkling of what needed to be found-but not where it might be hidden.

  She stood a moment in the entryway. The crypt here was smaller than Nabi Imran’s tomb, a perfect square. The walls were painted white, the floor green. A pair of red Persian prayer rugs flanked the grave mound, which again was draped in silk shawls imprinted with passages from the Koran. Beneath the cloths was the bare dirt in which Job’s body was said to have been buried.

  Safia made a slow circle around the mound. There was no marble headstone as there had been at Imran’s tomb, only a scattering of clay incense burners, scorched black from frequent use, and a small tray for visitors
to leave gifts of coins. The room was otherwise unadorned, with the exception of a wall chart listing the names of the prophets: Moses, Abraham, Job, Jesus, and Muhammad. Safia hoped they wouldn’t need to track all these men’s tombs on the road to Ubar. She ended back at the entrance, none the wiser.

  Cassandra spoke at the door. “What about that iron heart? Can we use it here?” As before, she had brought the silver case and had set it outside the door.

  Safia shook her head, sensing that the heart would not be significant here. She exited the chamber, slipping between Cassandra and Kane.

  As Safia stepped outside, she realized she had walked through the tomb in her shoes. She had also left her hair uncovered. She frowned.

  Where was the caretaker?

  She eyed the grounds, fearful for the man’s safety, again hoping he’d already left. The winds had kicked up, scurrying through the yard, bobbing the heads of a row of daylilies. The place appeared deserted, displaced in time.

  Yet Safia sensed something…something she could not name, almost an expectation. Maybe it was the light. It cast everything-the neighboring mosque, the edges of the walls, even the hard-packed gravel of the garden path-in stark, flat detail, a silver negative held over a bright light. She sensed if she waited long enough, all would be revealed in full color and clarity.

  But she didn’t have the time.

  “What now?” Cassandra pressed, drawing her back.

  Safia turned. Beside the entranceway, a small metal door was affixed to the ground. She bent to the handle, knowing what lay beneath it.

  “What are you doing?” Cassandra asked.

  “My job.” Safia let her disdain shine through, too tired to care if she provoked her captor. She tugged up the door.

  Hidden below was a shallow pit, sixteen inches deep, dug from the stone. At the bottom was a pair of petrified prints: a large man’s bare footprint and a horse’s hoof.

  “What’s all this?” Kane asked.

  Safia explained, “If you remember my story of Job, he was afflicted with disease until God ordered him to strike his foot down and a healing spring was called forth.” She pointed into the stone pit, to the footprint. “That is supposedly Job’s footprint, where he struck the ground.”

  She pointed to the hole in the ground. “And there is where the spring bubbled up, fed from a water source at the foot of the hill.”

  “The water traveled uphill?” Kane asked.

  “It wouldn’t be a miracle otherwise.”

  Cassandra stared down. “What does the hoofprint have to do with the miracle?”

  Safia’s brow crinkled as she stared at the hoof. It was stone, too. “There is no story associated with it,” she mumbled.

  Still something tweaked her memory.

  Petrified prints of a horse and a man.

  Why did that sound familiar?

  Throughout the region, there were countless stories of men or beasts turning to stone. Some even concerned Ubar. She shuffled through her memories. Two such stories, found in the Arabian Nights collection-“The Petrified City” and “The City of Brass”-related the discovery of a lost desert city, a place so evil it was damned and its inhabitants frozen in place for their sins, either petrified or turned to brass, depending on the story. It was a clear reference to Ubar. But in the second story, the treasure hunters hadn’t stumbled upon the condemned city by accident. There had been clues and signposts that led them to its gates.

  Safia recalled the most significant signpost from this story: a sculpture of brass. It depicted a mounted horseman, who bore aloft a spear with an impaled head atop it. On the head, an inscription had been written. She knew the line from the story by heart, having done extensive research for Kara about Arabian mysteries:

  O thou who comest unto me, if thou know not the way that leadeth to the City of Brass, rub the hand of the horseman, and he will turn, and then will stop, and in whatsoever direction he stoppeth, thither proceed, for it will lead thee to the City of Brass.

  To Ubar.

  Safia pondered the passage. A metallic sculpture turning with a touch to point to the next signpost. She pictured the iron heart, aligning itself like a compass needle atop the marble altar. The similarity was uncanny.

  And now this.

  She stared into the pit.

  A man and a horse. Petrified.

  Safia noted how both the foot- and hoofprint pointed in the same direction, as if the man were walking his mount. Was that the next direction? She frowned, sensing the answer was too easy, too obvious.

  She lowered the lid and stood.

  Cassandra kept at her side. “You’re onto something.”

  Safia shook her head-lost in the mystery. She strode in the direction of the prints, walking where the long-dead prophet would have headed with his horse. She ended up at the entrance to the small archaeological site located behind the main tomb, separated from the newer building by a narrow alley. The ruins were a nondescript structure of four crumbling walls, no roof, outlining a small chamber ten feet across. It seemed once a part of a larger home, long gone. She walked through the threshold and into the interior.

  While John Kane guarded the door, Cassandra followed her inside. “What is this place?”

  “An ancient prayer room.” Safia stared up at the darkening skies as the sun sank away, then stepped over a kneeling rug on the floor.

  Safia walked to where two of the walls had crude niches constructed into them, built to orient worshipers about the direction in which to pray. She knew the newer one faced toward Mecca. She crossed to the other, the older niche.

  “Here is where the prophet Job prayed,” Safia mumbled, more to herself than Cassandra. “Always facing Jerusalem.”

  To the northwest.

  Safia stepped into the niche and faced backward, back the way she had come. Through the dimness, she made out the metal lid of the pit. The footsteps led right here.

  She studied the niche. It was a solid wall of sandstone, quarried locally. The niche was a tumble of loose stone blocks, long deteriorated by age. She touched the inner wall.

  Sandstone…like the sculpture where the iron heart had been found.

  Cassandra stepped next to her. “What do you know that you’re not telling us?” A pistol pressed into Safia’s side, under her rib cage. Safia had not even seen the woman pull it free.

  Keeping her hand flat against the wall, Safia turned to Cassandra. It was not the pistol that made her speak, but her own curiosity.

  “I need a metal detector.”

  6:40 P.M.

  AS NIGHTfell, Painter turned off the main highway onto the gravel side road. A green sign with Arabic lettering statedJEBAL EITTEEN 9KM The truck bounced from the asphalt surface to gravel. Painter didn’t slow down, spitting a shower of stones onto the highway. Gravel rattled in the wheel wells, sounding distinctly like automatic fire. It heightened his anxiety.

  Omaha sat in the shotgun seat, his window rolled half down.

  Danny sat behind his brother in the backseat. “Remember, this piece of crap doesn’t have four-wheel drive.” His teeth rattled as much as the vehicle.

  “I can’t risk slowing down,” Painter called back. “Once nearer, I’ll have to go more cautiously. With the lights off. But for now we have to push it.”

  Omaha grunted his approval.

  Painter punched the accelerator as they reached a steep incline. The vehicle fishtailed. Painter fought it steady. It was not a vehicle suited for backcountry trekking, but they had no other choice.

  Upon returning from the Internet Cafй, Painter had found Captain al-Haffi waiting with a 1988 Volkswagen Eurovan. Coral was examining his other purchases: three Kalashnikov rifles, and a pair of Heckler amp; Koch 9mm handguns. All traded for the sultan’s stallion. And while the weapons were sound, with plenty of extra ammunition, the van would not have been Painter’s first choice. The captain hadn’t known they’d be leaving the city. And with time running short, they had no time to seek alternate transport
ation.

  Still, at least, the van could carry all of them. Danny, Coral, and the two Desert Phantoms sat crammed in the backseat, Kara, Clay, and Captain al-Haffi in the extra third row. Painter had attempted to dissuade them all from accompanying him, but he had little time to state his case. The others wanted to come, and they unfortunately knew too much. Salalah was no longer safe for any of them. Cassandra could dispatch assassins at any time to silence them. There was no telling where she had eyes, and Painter didn’t know whom to trust. So they stuck together as a group.

  He bounced the van around a tight switchback. His headlights swung about and blinded a large animal standing in the road. The camel stared at the van as Painter slammed on the brakes. They skidded to a stop.

  The camel glanced down at the vehicle, eyes shining red, and slowly sauntered the rest of the way across the road. Painter had to creep onto the shoulder in order to edge around it.

  Once past, he accelerated-only to brake again in another fifty feet. A dozen more camels filled the road, ambling along in no order, free-roaming.

  “Beep your horn,” Omaha said.

  “And alert Cassandra’s group that someone’s coming?” Painter said with a scowl. “Someone will have to get out and scatter a path through them.”

  “I know camels,” Barak said, and slid out.

  As soon as his feet hit the gravel, a handful of men stepped out from behind boulders and shadowed alcoves. They pointed rifles at the van. Painter caught movement in his rearview mirror. There were another two men back there. They wore dusty ankle-length robes and dark headdresses.

  “Bandits,” Omaha spat, reaching to his holstered pistol.

  Barak stood beside the open van door. He kept his palms bared, away from his weapon. “Not bandits,” he whispered. “They’re the Bait Kathir.”

  Bedouin nomads could distinguish various tribes at a distance of a hundred yards: from the way they tied their headcloths, to the colors of robes, to the saddles of their camels, how they carried their rifles. While Painter did not have this ability, he had educated himself on all the local tribes of southern Arabia: Mahra, Rashid, Awamir, Dahm, Saar. He knew the Bait Kathir, too, tribesmen of the mountains and desert, a reclusive, insular group prone to taking affront at the least slight. They could be dangerous if provoked, and very protective of their camels, more so even than they were of their wives.