“Follow me,” Painter said, and set off.
He kept his rifle shouldered but held a pistol in one hand.
As he rounded the corner of their shelter, a barrage of gunfire sounded from the ruins. Through the gloom, a floodlight flared. The second helicopter.
“Oh, God…” Kara said behind him, knowing what the gunfire meant.
Safia and Omaha had been found.
11:12 A.M.
RUN!”OMAHAscreamed as they ran across the floor of the sinkhole, but his words never reached his own ears. The rattle of guns was deafening. He pushed Safia ahead of him. They raced, blinded by the swirling sand, chased by a twin line of bullets chewing across the ground.
Directly ahead rose the western cliff of the sinkhole, shadowed from above by the citadel’s ruins. The wall was lightly scalloped, coved in. If they could get under the lip of rock, out of direct line of fire, they’d have some shelter.
Safia ran an arm’s length ahead of him, slightly encumbered by her sling, loping, the stiff winds tangling her cloak about her feet. Sand blinded. They hadn’t even had time to pull their goggles in place.
Moments ago, they had decided that the helicopter was the lesser of two evils. The powder keg building in the trilith chamber meant certain death. So they took their chances on the run.
The chatter of guns grew louder as the helicopter swept behind them.
The only reason they had survived this long was the sandstorm. The pilot fought to keep his craft trimmed in the winds. It buffeted and fluttered, a hummingbird in a gale, throwing off the pilot’s aim.
They fled for shelter, running blind.
Omaha waited for bullets to shred into him. With his last breath, he would push Safia to safety, if need be.
It wasn’t necessary.
The bullets suddenly stopped, as if the craft had run out of ammunition. The sudden silence drew Omaha’s attention over his shoulder, his ears still ringing. The helicopter’s floodlight angled away. The copter swept back.
With his attention turned, he stumbled over a rock, went down hard.
“Omaha…!”
Safia came back to help. He waved her off. “Get to shelter!”
Omaha hobbled after her, his ankle flaring with pain, twisted, sprained, hopefully not broken. He cursed his stupidity.
The helicopter retreated to the other side of the sinkhole. It had them dead to rights. They shouldn’t have made it. Why had it pulled back?
What the hell was going on?
11:13 A.M.
EAGLEONE,don’t hit the goddamn target!” Cassandra screamed into the radio. She banged a fist on the armrest of her seat in the M4 armored tractor. On her laptop, she stared at the blue glowing ring of the curator’s transceiver. It had blinked into existence a moment ago.
The gunfire had flushed Safia out into the open.
Eagle One answered, the pilot’s voice choppy. “I’ve broke off. There are two of them. I can’t tell which one is the target.”
Cassandra had radioed just in time. She pictured the pilot cutting down the woman. The curator was her best chance to quickly root out the secrets here and abscond with the prize. And the asinine pilot had almost mowed her down.
“Leave them both,” she said. “Guard the hole they came out of.”
Whatever cavern the curator had disappeared into had to be important.
Cassandra leaned close to her laptop, watching the blue glow. Safia was still in the giant sinkhole. There was nowhere she could go that Cassandra could not find her. Even if the woman vanished into another cave, Cassandra would know where to find the entrance.
She turned to the tractor’s driver, John Kane. “Take us in.”
With the engine still running, he shoved the gearshift. The tractor jerked, then trundled up the dune that hid them from the town of Shisur. Cassandra sat back, one hand on the laptop, holding it steady.
As they reached the dune’s summit, the nose of the tractor rocked high, then fell down the far slope. The valley of Shisur lay ahead. But nothing could be seen beyond a few yards of the vehicle’s xenon headlights. The storm swallowed the rest away.
All except a scatter of glows, marking the town. Vehicles on the move. A firefight between her forces and some unknown party still continued.
Distantly, echoes of sporadic gunfire reached her.
The captain of her forward forces had radioed in his assessment: They all appear to be women.
It made no sense. Still, Cassandra remembered the woman she had chased through the back alleys of Muscat. The one who had vanished in front of her. Was there a connection?
Cassandra shook her head. It no longer mattered. This was the endgame, and she would not tolerate anyone thwarting her.
As she watched the show of lights in the darkness, she lifted her radio and spoke to the leader of her artillery. “Forward battery, are you in position?”
“Yes, sir. Ready to light the candles on your order.”
Cassandra checked her laptop. The blue ring of the transceiver persisted in the sinkhole. Nothing else mattered. Whatever they sought lay among the ruins, with the curator.
Raising her gaze, Cassandra stared at the shimmer of wavering lights where the town of Shisur lay. She lifted her radio, called the forward troops, and ordered a pullback. She then switched back to the artillery captain.
“Level the town.”
11:15 A.M.
ASPAINTERled the others out of the village and through the gates of the ruins, he heard the first whistle. It pierced through the storm’s roar.
He swung as the first shell struck the town. A fireball burst skyward, lighting the storm, illuminating a patch of the village briefly. The boom reverberated in his gut. Gasps rose around him. More whistles filled the air.
Rockets and mortars.
He never suspected Cassandra had such firepower at hand.
Painter fumbled for his radio. “Coral! Go dark!”
Whatever advantage of surprise they had gained by the sudden burst of vehicles from their hiding places had ended. It was time to evacuate.
Out in the town, the lights of the vehicles were all extinguished. Under the cover of darkness, the women were to retreat to the ruins. More rockets struck, blooming in wild spirals of fire, whipped by the winds.
“Coral!” he yelled into the radio.
No answer.
Barak grabbed his arm. “They know the rendezvous.”
Painter swung around. More concussions pounded his gut.
Over at the sinkhole, the gunfire from the second helicopter had gone silent. What was happening?
11:17 A.M.
SAFIA HUDDLEDwith Omaha under a lip of rock. The bombs rattled pebbles from the ruins of the citadel atop the cliff above them.
To the south, the dark skies glowed ruddy from fires. Another boom reverberated through the storm’s wail. The town was being destroyed. Had the others had time to escape? Safia and Omaha had left their radios down in the trilith chamber. They had no way of knowing how the others had fared.
Painter, Kara…
At her side, Omaha leaned most of his weight on his right foot. She had seen him take that spill while fleeing here. He had twisted his ankle.
Omaha mumbled through his scarf. “You could still make a dash for it.”
She was worn, her shoulder ached. “The helicopter…”
It still hovered over the sinkhole. Its floodlight had blinked off, but she still heard it. It swept a slow circuit over the sandy floor, keeping them pinned.
“The pilot broke off his attack before. He’s probably half blind by the storm. If you stuck to the wall, ran fast…I could even take potshots from here.”
Omaha still had his pistol.
“I’m not leaving without you,” Safia whispered. Her statement was not all altruistic. She squeezed his hand, needing to feel his solidness.
He attempted to free his hand. “Forget it. I’d just slow you down.”
She held harder. “No…I can’t leave your side.”
The helicopter swept by overhead, the bell beat of its rotor wash suddenly louder. It angled back over the center of the sinkhole, unseen, its path described by the beat of its passage.
She leaned into Omaha. She had forgotten how broad his shoulders were, how well she fit against him. Staring over his shoulder, Safia noted a flicker of blue across the sinkhole, a dance of lightning.
Oh, God…
She clutched Omaha harder.
“Saff,” Omaha mumbled, lips by her ear. “After Tel Aviv-”
The explosion blew away any further words. A wall of superheated air slammed them both against the wall, to their knees. A flash of brilliance, then all vision squeezed away.
Rocks rained around them. A tremendous crack sounded above. A huge boulder struck the sheltering lip and thudded into the sand. More stones fell, a torrent of rocks. Half blind, Safia felt it under her knees. A shift in the earth.
The citadel was coming down.
11:21 A.M.
PAINTER HADreached the edge of the sinkhole when the explosion ripped up from there. The only warning: a flash of blue scintillation deep in the hole. Then a column of cerulean blue fire erupted from the chamber opening, lighting every corner, shoving back the storm both with its brilliance and its hot breath.
The ground shook underfoot.
He felt the rush of heat shoot by his face, straight up, confined by the walls of the deep sinkhole, but its backwash still buffeted him backward.
Cries arose all around him.
The jetted column of cerulean fire struck the last helicopter full in the belly, knocking it skyward, cartwheeling it. Its fuel tank exploded in a wash of red flame, dramatic against the blue. The wreckage of the helicopter scattered away, not in pieces, but in liquid jets of molten fire. The entire craft had melted within the bath of cobalt flame.
Next, from the sinkhole’s south rim, Painter watched the ruins of the citadel, perched precariously over the western edge, begin a slow tumble into the pit. And at the bottom, lit by the balefire flames as they petered out, two figures stumbled across the floor, rocks falling all around them.
Safia and Omaha.
11:22 A.M.
DAZED, OMAHAleaned on Safia. She had an arm under his shoulders. They fought through the sands. His eyes wept from the residual burn on his retinas, but vision slowly returned. First a glow formed, dull, bluish. Then he saw dark shadows falling around him, thudding into the sand, some bouncing.
A rain of rocks. A biblical curse.
“We must get clear!” Safia yelled, sounding as if she were underwater.
Something struck the back of his good leg. They were both thrown to the sand. A deep grumble rattled behind them, above them, an angry god.
“It’s coming down!”
11:33 A.M.
PAINTER RACEDheadlong down the path into the sinkhole.
To his left, the back half of the citadel spilled into the chasm. It groaned and rumbled. Pouring rock and sand into one end of the pit. Painter had witnessed a mud slide during a rainstorm, an entire hillside liquefying. This was the same. Only a bit slower. Rock proving more stubborn.
In snatches through the stormy gloom, he spotted Safia and Omaha scrambling away from the avalanche as it slowly spilled toward them, chasing them across the floor. They fell down again as Omaha was struck in the shoulder and spun around.
Painter would not reach them in time.
A throaty growl whined behind him and a shout: “Out of the way!”
The shout threw him around. A light flicked on, spearing him in the face. He was blinded, but he saw enough in that split second to dive aside.
The sand bike sailed passed him down the slope, spewing up gravel and sand. It leaped the path ten feet from the bottom, front wheel yanked up, rear knobby wheel spinning. It landed with a bounce, a twist, a crunch of sand-then tore off across the floor.
Painter continued down the path.
He had spotted the rider, bent over the handlebars. It was Coral Novak, cloaked and goggled, hood thrown back, white hair flagging behind her.
Painter gave chase, watching the cycle tear alongside the avalanche. Its headlamp flicked back and forth as Coral dodged around obstacles. Then she reached the pair, braking and skidding to them. He heard her shout.
“Grab tight!”
Then she was off again, shooting straight across the floor, away from the tumbling stones, hauling Omaha and Safia, who clung to the seat’s back, feet and legs dragging behind.
They raced clear of the rock slide.
Painter reached the bottom, well clear of the tumult of stone and sand. By the time he reached the floor, it was over. The collapse of the hill and fortress settled to a stop. The steep cliff was now a gentle slope.
Edging the wide delta of spilled rock and sand, Painter hurried to the idling bike. Safia had climbed to her feet. Omaha leaned one hand on the seat. Coral sat astride the bike.
They all stared at the hole in the ground ahead of them. It steamed and roiled, like some entrance to hell. It was where the trilith chamber had once opened. Only now it was ten feet across, blasted wide.
And bubbling with water.
The headlamp of the bike illuminated the steaming surface.
As Painter watched, the waters receded, draining away rapidly.
What was revealed held everyone silent.
11:23 A.M.
CASSANDRA STARED,unblinking, through the windshield of the M4 tractor. A minute ago, they had watched a blue flash of fire shoot skyward. It had come from straight ahead.
In the direction of the ruins.
“What the hell was that?” Kane asked from the driver’s seat.
They had halted the tractor a hundred yards off. To the left, the town flickered with a dozen fires. Directly ahead, the ruins had gone dark again, lost in the storm.
“That was not one of our bloody mortars,” Kane said.
It sure as hell wasn’t. Cassandra glanced to her laptop. The glow of the curator’s transceiver continued to shine, though now it flickered, as if some interference fluttered its signal. What was going on over there?
She attempted to radio the only person who might know. “Eagle One, can you read me?”
She waited for a reply. None came.
Kane shook his head. “Both birds are down.”
“Order another two copters in the air. I want aerial coverage.”
Kane hesitated. Cassandra knew his concern. The storm, while already blowing fiercely, was only beginning to ratchet up. Its full might had yet to strike. And the coastal weather system was rushing up from the south, promising even wilder weather to come as the two systems collided. Outfitted as they were with only six VTOL copter sleds, to send up another pair risked half their remaining aerial force.
But Kane understood the necessity. They dared not conserve their resources. It was all or nothing. He passed Cassandra’s orders over his own radio. Once done, he glanced to her, silently asking her how to proceed.
She nodded ahead. “We’re going in.”
“Should we wait until the birds are in the air?”
“No, we’re armored.” She glanced over her shoulder to the men seated in the back compartment, Kane’s commando team. “And we have enough land support with us. Something’s happening over there. I can smell it.”
He nodded, shifted into gear, and kicked the tractor into motion. The lumbering tank ambled toward the ruins.
11:26 A.M.
SAFIA KNELTon one knee and reached a hand over the hole’s lip. She tested the heat with her palm. Winds tugged at her. Sand swirled in sweeps, but not as fiercely. The storm had abated slightly, a momentary pause, as if the explosion had sapped some strength from the gale’s force.
“Careful,” Omaha said behind her.
Safia stared down the hole at her feet. The waters continued to reced
e. It seemed impossible. As the waters had drained away, a glass ramp revealed itself, spiraling deep. The trilith chamber was gone. All that was left was glass, flowing downward in a corkscrew.
The entrance to Ubar.
Safia lowered her palm toward the ramp’s exterior, slowly, bringing it close to the glass. It still glistened with drops of water, radiant against the black surface, reflecting the bike’s headlight.
She felt no searing burn.
Daring, Safia touched a finger to the black glass. It was still warm, very warm, but it didn’t burn. She placed her palm flat. “It’s solid,” she said. “Still cooling, but the surface is hard.” She rapped on it to demonstrate.
Standing up, she reached a leg out and placed a foot on the ramp. It held her weight. “The waters must have cooled it enough to harden.”
Painter stepped toward her. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
Coral spoke, still astride her bike. She lowered the radio from her lips. “Commander, all Rahim are now gathered. We can bug out on your word.”
Safia turned to the upper rim, but it was lost in darkness. She glanced down the throat of the glass spiral. “This is what we came to find.”
“If we don’t leave now, Cassandra will bottle us here.”
Omaha joined them. “Where will we go?”
Painter pointed west. “Into the desert. Use the storm as cover.”
“Are you mad? This blow is just starting. And the worst is yet to come. What about that goddamn megastorm? Out in the open desert?” Omaha shook his head. “I’d rather take my chances with that bitch.”
Safia pictured Cassandra, the ice in her manner, the mercilessness in her eyes. Whatever mystery lay below would be Cassandra’s to exploit. She and her employer. Safia couldn’t let that happen.
“I’m going down,” she said, cutting off the argument.
“I’m with you,” Omaha added. “At least it’s out of the storm.”
SANDSTORM sf-1 Page 41
