Текст книги "Sandstorm"

Автор книги: James Rollins

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 31 страниц)

Barak seemed to sense his question. “Whatever they are, they’re never good.” He set off down the hill after the others.

For a moment longer, Painter studied the monstrous storm, eyes stinging from the blowing sand. It was just beginning.

As he headed down the slope, his gaze cast off to the east. Nothing moved. The roll of dunes hid everything. A vast sea. But Cassandra and her team waited out there.

Sharks…circling and circling…

8:02 A.M.

SAFIA HADnot expected this mode of transportation, not from an ancient clan whose bloodline ran back to the Queen of Sheba. The dune buggy ramped up the sandy face, its huge knobby tires finding good traction. They shot over the crest, flew airborne for an extended breath, then landed solidly on the downward slope. Tires and shock absorbers cushioned their impact.

Still, Safia clung with her one good arm to the roll bar in front of her, like the security latch on a roller-coaster car. Kara held fast in the same manner, white-knuckled. Both women wore matching desert cloaks, hoods pulled up and secured with a sand scarf over their lower face, protecting skin from the scouring wind. They also wore polarized sun goggles, pinched over their eyes.

In the passenger seat up front, Lu’lu rode next to the Rahim driver, a young woman of sixteen named Jehd. The driver-or pilot, as the case was at times-held her lips in a firm, determined line, though a glint of girlish excitement lit her eyes.

Other dune buggies followed, each loaded with five of the clan women. They crisscrossed one another’s paths to avoid the sand cast up by the vehicles in front. To either side, flanking the buggies, rode a dozen sand bikes, motorcycles with ballooned wheels, chewing through the larger vehicles’ wakes, making huge leaps over the crests of dunes.

The caravan’s speed was born of necessity.

To the north, the sandstorm barreled toward them.

Upon leaving the subterranean warren of tunnels, Safia found herself on the far side of the Dhofar Mountains, at the edge of the Rub‘ al-Khali. They had crossed underthe entire mountain range. The passages they had traversed were old river channels, worn through the limestone bedrock.

Free of the tunnels, the buggies and bikes awaited them. Kara had commented on the choice of vehicles, expecting camels or some other less sophisticated means of transportation. Lu’lu had explained: We may trace our lineage into the past, but we live in the present.The Rahim did not live their entire lives in the desert, but like the Queen of Sheba herself, they wandered, educated themselves, prospered even. They had bank accounts, stock portfolios, real-estate holdings, traded in oil futures.

The group now raced toward Shisur, trying to beat the storm.

Safia had not argued against such haste. She did not know how much longer the ruse she had used to deceive Cassandra would last. If they were to gain the prize before Cassandra did, they would need every advantage.

Lu’lu and the others were counting on Safia to lead the way. In the hodja’s words: The keys revealed themselves to you. So will the Gates.Safia prayed the woman was right. She had used intuition and knowledge to lead them this far. She hoped her expertise would carry her the rest of the way.

In the front seat, Lu’lu lifted a Motorola walkie-talkie and listened, then spoke into it. All words were lost to the growl of motors and torrents of winds. Once done, she swung around in her seat-belt restraints.

“There may be trouble,” Lu’lu yelled. “The scouts we sent ahead report a small band of armed strangers entering Shisur.”

Safia’s heart leaped to her throat. Cassandra…

“Perhaps they are just seeking shelter. The scouts found a vehicle. An old van stuck in a camel wallow.”

Kara leaned forward, intense. “A van…was it a blue Volkswagen?”

“Why?”

“It may be our friends. Those who were helping us.”

Kara glanced to Safia, eyes hopeful.

Lu’lu lifted her walkie-talkie and carried on a brief conversation. She nodded, then turned to Kara and Safia. “It was a blue Eurovan.”

“That’s them,” Kara exclaimed. “How did they know where to find us?”

Safia shook her head. It seemed impossible. “We should still be careful. Maybe Cassandra or her men captured them.”

And even if it was their friends, a new fear clutched Safia’s heart. Who had survived? Painter had attempted to rescue her, risked all, stayed behind to cover her retreat. Had he made it out? The exchange of gunfire she had heard as she fled the tomb echoed in her head.

All answers lay at Shisur.

After another ten minutes of dune racing, the small township of Shisur appeared over a ridge, in a slight valley, surrounded by the rolling desert. The village’s tiny mosque poked its minaret above the tumble of shacks and cinder-block buildings. The buggies all stopped below the ridgeline. A few of the women climbed out and up to the sandy crests. They dropped flat, their cloaks matching the sands, clutching sniper rifles.

Fearing a volley of accidental gunfire, Safia exited the buggy. Kara followed. She crossed up to the ridge. Caution drew her to hands and knees.

Across the village, she saw no sign of movement. Had they heard the approach of the dune buggies and gone into hiding, fearing the unknown group?

Safia surveyed the area.

To the north, ruins covered fifteen acres, surrounded by crumbling walls, excavated from the sands and reconstructed. Guard towers interrupted the walls at regular intervals, roofless stony circles, a story high. But the most dramatic feature of the ruins was its central citadel, a three-story structure of stacked stone. The castle perched atop a low hill that overlooked a deep ragged cleft in the ground. The hole encompassed most of the land within the walls. Its bottom lay in shadows.

Safia knew that the ruins of the hilltop fortress were only half of the original structure. The other half lay at the bottom of the hole. Destroyed when the sinkhole opened up under it, taking down sections of walls and half the castle. The tragedy was explained by the continual drop of the land’s water table. A natural limestone cistern lay underneath the city. As the water inside it dropped from drought and overuse, it left behind a hollow subterranean cavern that eventually collapsed in on itself, taking out half the city.

Movement drew Safia’s attention back to the village fifty yards away.

From a doorway below, a figure appeared, dressed in a dishdasharobe, his head wrapped in a traditional Omani headdress. He lifted a mug into the air.

“I just put a fresh pot on. If you want a cup of joe, you’d best get your butts down here.”

Safia stood. She recognized that flash of a rakish grin.

Omaha…

A flush of relief washed through her. Before she knew it, she was running down the slope toward him, eyes blurry with tears. Even as she ran, the depth of her reaction surprised her.

She stumbled across the gravel roadway.

“Hold it right there,” Omaha warned, backing up a step.

From windows and neighboring doorways, rifles suddenly bristled.

A trap…

Safia stopped, stunned, wounded. Before she could react, a figure swept out of hiding from behind a low wall, grabbed her, swung her around. A fist snatched a handful of hair and yanked back, baring her neck. Something cold touched her flesh.

A long dagger glinted, pressed.

A voice whispered with an icy ferocity. It chilled her more than the knife at her throat. “You took a friend of ours.”

Omaha stepped to her shoulder. “We spied you coming. I wouldn’t forget the face of someone who tried to kidnap me.”

“What have you done with Dr. al-Maaz?” the voice hissed at her ear as the dagger pressed harder.

Safia realized her face was still covered by scarf and goggles. They thought her one of the women, bandits perhaps. Breathless from fright, she reached up and pulled down her scarf and goggles.

Omaha did a double take. He gaped at her face, then lunged, and pushed the man’s arm away, freeing her. “Ohmygod, Saffie…” He hugged her tightly.

Fire flared in her shoulder. “Omaha, my arm.”

He dropped back. Others appeared in doorways and windows.

Safia glanced behind her. A man stood there, the dagger in his hands. Painter. She had not even recognized his voice. She had a hard time reconciling this man with her image of him. She still felt the blade against her skin, the fist twisted in her hair.

Painter backed up a step. His face shone with relief, but his blue eyes also glowed with an emotion almost too raw to read. Shame and regret. He glanced away, to the neighboring slope.

Cycles and buggies now lined the ridge, engines revving. The Rahim had been preparing to come to her rescue. Women, all dressed and cloaked like Safia, appeared around nearby corners of buildings, rifles on shoulders.

Kara stomped down the slope, arms in the air. “Everyone back down!” she called loudly. “It was only a misunderstanding.”

Omaha shook his head. “That woman doesn’t need to remove her mask. I’d recognize that screech of command anywhere.”

“Kara…” Painter said, stunned. “How?”

Omaha turned to Safia. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she managed to squeak out.

Kara joined them. She removed her scarf. “Leave her be.” She waved them off. “Give her some room to breathe.”

Omaha pushed back. He nodded to the slope. Warily the Rahim had begun to march down. “So who are your friends?”

Kara shrugged. “That may take some explaining.”

8:22 A.M.

OPEN DESERT

CASSANDRA STEPPEDup to her tent, a U.S. Army desert survival model, meant to withstand winds up to eighty miles per hour. She had reinforced it with a wind-and-sand shield on the windward side of the tent.

The team here had similar accommodations. The larger transport trucks had also been positioned as a windbreak.

At her tent, Cassandra shook sand from her fatigues. She wore a wide-brimmed hat, tied down around her ears, a scarf over her face. The winds gusted now, snapping tent lines, causing sheets of sand to course underfoot. The sandstorm rumbled like a passing freight train.

She had just returned from a final inspection of their deployment, ensuring all the copters were battened down. The men had already planted the GPS beacons to fix their position, coordinated with the fixed orbital satellites. Feed should be flowing into her computerized mapping system.

Cassandra had a couple hours before the static electricity of the sandstorm would threaten the electronics, requiring them to be shut down. Plenty of time to intercept the data from the LANDSAT satellite as it focused on her GPS beacons. The satellite’s radar had the capability of delving sixty feet under the sand. It would give her an overview of what lay underfoot. Some indication of where to begin digging. As soon as the sandstorm blew itself out, her team would set to work with dozers and backhoes. By the time anyone was aware of their excavation, they’d be long gone.

That was the plan.

Cassandra pushed through the tent flap. The interior of the tent was spartan. A cot and a duffel. The remainder of her tent was an elaborate satellite communication system. She had other electronic gear stored in carryalls.

She crossed to the laptop computer and used her cot as a seat. She linked to JPL in Houston and fed the proper authorization to access LANDSAT data. The pass should have been completed five minutes ago. The data awaited her. She tapped the keys and began the download.

Finished, she sat back and watched the screen slowly fill with an image of the desert. She spotted her trucks, tents, even their trenched latrine. It was the survey pass. Perfect alignment.

A second image slowly fed into her laptop. The deeper scan.

Cassandra leaned in closer.

The terrain stripped away to display a different conformation, revealing the bedrock under the sand. It was a fossil of a different time, preserved in limestone. While most of the terrain was flat, it was etched by an old riverbed coursing along one corner of the image. It drained into an ancient lake bed buried under their site.

Cassandra studied the landscape, a snapshot from another time.

She saw nothing significant. No meteor crater, no artifact that intrigued.

She sat back. She would forward it to a pair of geologists on the payroll with the Guild. Perhaps they could read more into it.

A noise at her tent flap drew her attention around.

John Kane limped into her tent. “We’ve picked up Dr. al-Maaz’s signal.”

Cassandra swung to face him. “When? Where?”

“Eight minutes ago. It took another few minutes to get a fix. Her signal blipped into existence ten miles west of here. By the time we triangulated, she’d stopped moving. She went to ground about six miles from here.”

He hobbled over to the map on her worktable and tapped. “Right here.”

Cassandra leaned next to him, reading the name. “Shisur. What’s there?”

“I asked one of the techs at Thumrait. He says it’s where the old ruins of Ubar were found. Back in the nineties.”

Cassandra stared at the map. Her lines in blue and red still looked fresh. The red circle marked her present position. She put her finger on the circle and followed the red line backward.

It crossed Shisur.

She closed her eyes. Again picturing the curator’s expression when Cassandra had drawn the circle. She had continued studying the map. Her eyes had been distant, calculating in her head.

“The goddamn bitch…” Cassandra’s finger on the map closed to form a fist. Anger burned through her. Yet deeper down, a flash of respect flared.

John Kane stood with his brows crinkled.

Cassandra stared back at the LANDSAT image. “There’s nothing here. She fucked us. We’re at the wrong place.”

“Captain?”

She faced Kane. “Get the men up. We’re heading out. I want the trucks moving in the next ten minutes.”

“The sandstorm-”

“Fuck it. We’ve just enough time. We’re moving out. We can’t let ourselves get pinned down here.” She herded Kane toward the doors. “Leave the equipment, tents, supplies. Weapons only.”

Kane swept out of the room.

Cassandra turned to one of her carrying cases. She snapped it open and removed a handheld digital radio transmitter. She flipped it on, dialed in the proper frequency and channel to match the curator’s implanted transceiver.

She held a finger over the transmit button. One touch and the C4 pellet in Dr. al-Maaz’s neck would explode, severing her spine and killing her instantly. She felt an overwhelming urge to press it. Instead she switched the unit off.

It was not compassion that held her hand. Safia had proven her prowess at riddle solving. Such skill might still be needed. But more than that, she didn’t know for certain if Painter was at the woman’s side.

That was important.

Cassandra wanted Painter to see Safia die.

17

Picking a Lock

DECEMBER 4, 9:07 A.M.

SHISUR

SAFIA SECUREDher goggles in place. “Does everyone have their gear?”

“It looks like night’s falling,” Clay said by the open doorway. They had boarded up the windows to the cinder-block building. They had chosen this particular home because it had a solid door to close against the winds. It also opened on the south face of the structure, away from direct assault by the storm.

Through the doorway, Safia could see that the morning sky had been swept away by higher-blowing sand, darkening the world to an eerie twilight. Dust clouds shadowed the sun. Closer at hand, channels of swirling sand swept along the alleys to either side of the home, eddying in front of the door. It was the leading edge of the storm. Farther out, the heart of the sandstorm moaned and roared, like some ravenous beast, gnashing through the desert.

They didn’t have much time.

Safia faced the group assembled in the plain room. Most buildings in Shisur were left open or unlocked. The seasonal residents simply stripped the place to the plaster before moving on, leaving nothing to steal, except for a few broken bits of pottery, a dirty cracked dish in the kitchen sink, and a handful of pale green scorpions. Even the curtains had been taken.

“You all have your assigned places to search,” Safia said. She had a map nailed to one wall. She had divided the site into five sections, one for each of their metal detectors scrounged from the ruin’s work shack. They had Motorola radios to keep in contact. Everyone, except the youngest children, had an assigned grid to help search, armed with pickaxes, shovels, and spades.

“If you detect something, mark it. Let your companions dig it out. Keep moving. Keep searching.”

Nods met her orders. All the searchers were outfitted in reddish brown desert cloaks, supplied by Lu’lu. Faces were muffled. Eyes shielded by goggles. It was like they were preparing to go underwater.

“If anything of significance is found, radio it in. I’ll come see. And remember…” She tapped the watch on the wrist of her slung arm. “After forty-five minutes, we all return here. The storm’s full brunt is due to hit in just under an hour. We’ll weather the worst of the storm in here, examine anything we find, and move on from there as the winds die down. Any questions?”

No one raised a hand.

“Let’s go, then.”

The thirty searchers set off into the storm. As the citadel was the most likely spot to search for the Gates of Ubar, Safia led a majority of the team members to the ruins of the fortress, to concentrate attention there. Painter and Clay lugged the ground-penetrating radar sled. Barak held the metal detector over his shoulder like a rifle. Behind him, Coral and Kara carried excavating tools. Trailing last, Lu’lu and the dune-buggy driver, Jehd, followed. All the other Rahim had broken up into teams to search the other grids.

Safia stepped around the corner of the cinder-block building. She was immediately blown back a step by a gust. It felt like the hand of God shoving her, rough-palmed and gritty. She bent into the wind and set off toward the entrance gates to the ruins.

She noted Painter studying the hodja.They had all exchanged their respective stories upon meeting, catching everyone up. Safia’s story was, of course, the most shocking and seemingly fanciful: a secret tribe of women, whose bloodline ran back to the Queen of Sheba, a line granted strange mental powers by some source at the heart of Ubar. Though Painter’s face was goggled and wrapped in a muffler, his very posture expressed doubt and disbelief. He kept a wary pace between Safia and the hodja.

They crossed out of the village proper and through the wooden gates to the ruins. Each party dispersed to its grid assignments. Omaha and Danny lifted their arms in salute as they headed toward the sinkhole below the citadel. With their field experience, the two men would oversee the search of the sinkhole. The chasm was another likely spot for a possible significant find, as a corner of the towering fortress had collapsed into the hole.

Still, Omaha had not been happy about his assignment. Since Safia’s arrival, he had followed her every step, sat next to her, his eyes seldom leaving her face. She had felt a flush at his attention, half embarrassment, half irritation. But she understood his relief at discovering her alive and didn’t rankle against his attention.

Painter, on the other hand, held back from her, dispassionate, clinical. He kept busy, listening to Safia’s story without any reaction. Something had changed between them, become awkward. She knew what it was. She forced her hand not to rub her neck, where he had held the dagger. He had shown a side of himself, a fierce edge, sharper than the dagger. Neither knew how to react. She was too shocked, unsettled. He had closed off.

Focusing on the mystery here, Safia led her team up a steep trail to the hilltop fortress. As they climbed, the entire system of ruins opened out around them. It had been a decade since Safia had last laid eyes upon the ruins. Before, there had only been the citadel, in disrepair, just a mound of stones, and a short section of wall. Now the entire encircling ramparts had been freed from the sands, partially rebuilt by archaeologists, along with the stumplike bases of the seven towers that once guarded its walls.

Even the sinkhole, thirty feet deep, had been excavated and sifted through.

But most of the attention had been devoted to the citadel. The piled stones had been fitted back together like a jigsaw puzzle. The base of the castle was square in shape, thirty yards on each side, supporting its round watchtower.

Safia imagined guards pacing the parapets, wary of marauders, watch-ful of approaching caravans. Below the fortress, a busy town had prospered: merchants hawked wares of handcrafted pottery, dyed cloths, wool rugs, olive oil, palm beer, date wine; stonemasons labored to build higher walls; and throughout the town, dogs barked, camels brayed, and children ran among the stalls, bright with laughter. Beyond the walls, irrigated fields spread green with sorghum, cotton, wheat, and barley. It had been an oasis of commerce and life.

Safia’s eyes drifted to the sinkhole. Then one day, it all came to an end. A city destroyed. People had fled in superstitious terror. And so Ubar vanished under the sweep of sands and years.

But all that was all on the surface. Stories of Ubar went deeper, tales of magical powers, tyrant kings, vast treasures, a city of a thousand pillars.

Safia glanced at the two women, one old, one young, identical twins separated by decades. How did both stories of Ubar hang together: the mystical and the mundane? The answers lay hidden here. Safia was sure of it.

She reached the gateway into the citadel and stared up at the fortress.

Painter flicked on a flashlight and shone a bright beam into the dark interior of the citadel. “We should begin our search.”

Safia stepped over the threshold. As soon as she entered the fortress, the winds died completely, and the distant rumble of the sandstorm dimmed.

Lu’lu joined her now.

Barak followed them, turning on the metal detector. He began to sweep behind her as if wiping away her footprints from the sand.

Seven steps down the hall, a windowless chamber opened, a man-made cavern. The back wall was a collapsed ruin of tumbled stone.

“Sweep the room,” Safia directed Barak.

The tall Arab nodded and began his search for any hidden artifacts.

Painter and Clay set up the ground-penetrating radar as she had instructed.

Safia swung her flashlight over the walls and ceiling. They were unadorned. Someone had lit a campfire at one time. Soot stained the roof.

Safia paced the floor, eyes searching for any clue. Barak marched back and forth, intent on his metal detector, searching floor and walls. As the room was small, it didn’t take long. He came up empty. Not even a single ping.

Safia stood in the center of the room. This chamber was the only inner sanctum still remaining. The tower overhead had collapsed in on itself, destroying whatever rooms lay above.

Painter activated the ground-penetrating radar, flicking on its portable monitor. Clay entered the room, slowly dragging the red sled over the sandy stone floor, pulling it like a yoked ox. Safia came over and studied the scan, more familiar with reading the results. If there were any secret basement rooms, they would show up on the radar.

The screen remained dark. Nothing. Solid rock. Limestone.

Safia straightened. If there was some secret heart to Ubar, it had to lie underground. But where?

Maybe Omaha was having better luck with his team.

Safia lifted her radio. “Omaha, can you hear me?”

A short pause. “Yeah, what’s up? Did you find anything?”

“No. Anything down in the pit?”

“We’re just finishing with the sweep, but so far nothing.”

Safia frowned. These were the two best spots to expect to find answers. Here was the spiritual center of Ubar, its royal house. The ancient queen would have wanted immediate access to the secret heart of Ubar. She would have kept its entrance close.

Safia turned to Lu’lu. “You mentioned that after the tragedy here, the queen sealed Ubar and scattered its keys.”

Lu’lu nodded. “Until the time was ripe for Ubar to open again.”

“So the gate wasn’t destroyed when the sinkhole opened.” That was a bit of luck. Too much luck.She pondered this, sensing a clue.

“Maybe we should bring the keys here,” Painter said.

“No.” She dismissed this possibility. The keys would only become important once the gate was found. But where, if not at the citadel?

Painter sighed, arms crossed. “What if we tried recalibrating the radar, heightened the intensity, searched deeper.”

Safia shook her head.

“No, no, we’re looking at this all wrong. Too high tech. That’s not going to solve this puzzle.”

Painter had a slightly hurt look. Technology was his bailiwick.

“We’re thinking too modern. Metal detectors, radar, grids, mapping things out. This has all been done before. The gate, to survive this long, undisturbed, must be entrenched in the natural landscape. Hidden in plain sight. Or else it would’ve been found before. We need to stop leading with our tools and start thinking with our heads.”

She found Lu’lu staring back at her. The hodjawore the face of the queen who had sealed Ubar. But did the two share the same nature?

Safia pictured Reginald Kensington frozen forever in glass, a symbol of pain and torment. The hodjahad remained silent all these years. She must’ve dug up the body, taken it to their mountain lair, and hidden it away. Only the discovery of Ubar’s keys had broken the woman’s silence, loosened her tongue to reveal her secrets. There was a pitiless determination in all this.

And if the ancient queen had been like the hodja,she would have protected Ubar with that same pitiless determination, a mercilessness that bordered on the ruthless.

Safia felt a well of ice rise around her, remembering her initial question. How did the gate conveniently survive the sinkhole’s collapse?She knew the answer. She closed her eyes with dawning dismay. She had been looking at this all wrong. Backward. It all made a sick sense.

Painter must have sensed her sudden distress. “Safia…?”

“I know how the gate was sealed.”

9:32 A.M.

PAINTER HURRIEDback from the cinder-block building. Safia had sent him running to fetch the Rad-X scanner. It had been a part of the equipment taken from Cassandra’s SUV. Apparently Cassandra had even demonstrated it to Safia back in Salalah, showing her how the iron heart bore a telltale sign of antimatter decay, to convince Safia of the true reason for this search.

Along with the Rad-X scanner, Painter had discovered an entire case of analyzing equipment, more sophisticated than anything he was acquainted with, but there was a hungry gleam in Coral’s eye as she had looked at the equipment. Her only comment: “Nice toys.”

Painter hauled the entire case. Safia was onto something.

The storm fought him as he passed through the wooden gate and into the ruins. Sand peppered every exposed inch of skin, wind tore at his scarf and cloak. He leaned into the wind. The day had turned to twilight. And this was only the front edge of the storm.

To the north, the world ended in a wall of darkness, flashing in spidery crackles of blue fire. Static charges. Painter smelled the electricity in the air. NASA had done studies for a proposed Mars mission to judge how equipment and men would fare in such sandstorms. It wasn’t the dust and sand that most threatened their electronic equipment, but the extreme static charge to the air, formed from a combination of dry air and kinetic energy. Enough to fry circuits in seconds, create agonizing static bursts on skin. And now this storm was swirling up a giant squall of static.

And it was about to roll over them.

Painter ducked toward the low hill, burrowing through the wind and blowing sand. As he reached the area, he headed down instead of up, following the steep trail that descended into the sinkhole. The deep pit stretched east to west along its longer axis. On the west end, the citadel sat atop its hill, maintaining a vigil over the sinkhole.

Safia and her team crouched on the other side, at the eastern end of the chasm. By now, the Rahim had gathered, too, around the rim of the pit. Most lay flat on their bellies to lessen their exposure to the wind.

Ignoring them, Painter slipped and slid down the sandy path. Reaching the bottom, he hurried forward.

Safia, Omaha, and Kara were bent over the monitor of the ground-penetrating radar unit. Safia was tapping at the screen.

“Right there. See that pocket. It’s only three feet from the surface.”

Omaha leaned back. “Clay, drag the radar sled back two feet. Yeah, right there.” He bent over the monitor again.

Painter joined them. “What did you find?”

“A chamber,” Safia said.

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

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

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

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

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

Painter lifted the case. “Got it.”

“Run the scanner.”

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

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

The red needle remained at the zero point.

“Nothing,” he called back.

“I told you-” Omaha started.

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

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

The needle shimmied on the dial.

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