JAMES ROLLINS - SANDSTORM

She pulled the device’s trigger. The red lights spun and sandstone immediately began to crumble as the laser energy vibrated the crystalline structure. Sand and dust billowed out. Also shinier bits. Flakes of metal, red.

Iron shavings, Omaha realized, understanding now why the metal detector was constantly abuzz. The architects of this puzzle had mixed iron shavings with the sand in the rock.

Back at the wall, the beam acted like a tornado, furrowing through the sandstone as if it were soft dirt. With his flashlight held steady, Omaha watched. Slowly, a brighter glitter revealed itself within the stone.

A mass of iron.

Safia continued to work, moving the laser up and down. In a matter of minutes, an arch of horns appeared, seated atop the shadowy image.

“Definitely a bull,” Omaha agreed.

“Sada,” Safia mumbled, lowering the gun. “The moon.”

She walked over and touched the rack of embedded horns, as if making sure they were real. A shower of blue sparks erupted with the contact. “Youch!”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she said, shaking her fingers. “Just a static shock.”

Still, she backed a step away, studying the mounted horns on the wall.

The horns certainly appeared as a sharp crescent, protruding from the rock. Sand and dust cast from the excavation swirled into the chamber as the winds above grew suddenly more stiff, seeming to blow directly down through the hole in the roof.

Omaha glanced up. Above the sinkhole, the skies were dark, but something even darker stirred the air, sweeping downward. A light suddenly speared from it.

Oh, no…

SAFIA FOUNDherself grabbed around the waist and tackled to the side. Omaha dragged her into the shadows below the tilted slabs. “What are you-”

Before she could finish, a beam of bright light slammed through the hole overhead, casting a pillar of brilliance through the center of the trilith chamber.

“Helicopter,” Omaha yelled in her ear.

Safia now heard the vague beat of rotors against the dull roar of the storm.

Omaha held her tightly. “It’s Cassandra.”

The light blinked off as the floodlight swept away. But the thump of the copter’s rotors persisted. It was still out there, searching in the storm.

Safia knelt with Omaha. With the floodlight gone, the chamber seemed darker. “I have to alert Painter,” Safia said.

She crawled to the Motorola radio. As her fingers reached to its surface, another electric spark arced from radio to fingertips, stinging like a wasp. She jerked her hand back. Only now did she notice the escalation of static electricity. She felt it on her skin, crawling like ants. Her hair crackled with sparks as she glanced at Omaha.

“Safia, come back here.”

Omaha’s eyes were wide. He circled toward her, keeping to shadows. His attention was not on the helicopter, but fixed to the center of the chamber.

Safia joined him. He took her hand, shocking them both, hairs tingling.

In the center of the chamber, a bluish glow billowed where the helicopter’s beam had once shone. It shimmered, roiling in midair, edges ghostly. With each breath, it coalesced, swirling inward.

“Static electricity,” Omaha said. “Look at the keys.”

The three iron artifacts-heart, bust, and horns-shone a dull ruddy hue.

“They’re drawing the electricity out of the air. Acting like some lightning rods for the static charge of the storm above, feeding power to the keys.”

The blue glow grew into a scintillating cloud in the room’s center. It stirred to its own winds, churning in place. The keys shone even brighter. The air crackled. Traceries of charge coruscated from every fold of cloak or scarf.

Safia gaped at the sight. Sandstone was a great nonconductive insulator. Freeing the horns from the stone must have completed some circuit among the three. And the chamber was acting like a magnetic bottle, trapping the energies.

“We have to get the hell out of here,” Omaha urged.

Safia continued to stare, entranced. They were witnessing a sight set in motion millennia ago. How could they leave?

Omaha grabbed her elbow, fingers digging. “Saff, the keys! They’re like the iron camel at the museum. And now a ball of lightning is forming in here.”

Safia flashed back to the video feed from the British Museum. The ruddy glow of the meteorite, the cerulean roil of the lightning ball…Omaha was right.

“I think we just activated a bomb down here,” Omaha said, pulling Safia to her feet and shoving her to the collapsible ladder. “And it’s about to explode.”

As she set her foot on the first rung, the world flashed blindingly bright. She flinched, tightening in place, a deer in headlights.

The helicopter had returned, hovering directly overhead.

Death waited above…as surely as it did below.

PAINTER LAYflat on the roof of the cinder-block building. He had bundled his cloak tightly under his legs, the ends of his scarf tucked away. He didn’t want any telltale flapping of material to reveal his position.

He waited for the helicopter to make another pass over the town. He would get one shot. He had to assume the copter was outfitted with night vision. The muzzle flash would give away his position. He waited, the Galil sniping rifle at his cheek, resting on a bipod. The Israeli weapon, borrowed from one of the Rahim, had the capability to deliver a head shot at three hundred yards. But not in this storm, not with visibility so low. He needed the helicopter close.

Painter lay in wait.

The copter was up there somewhere, searching. An aerial hunter hidden in the storm. Any movement, and it would open fire with its double guns.

Painter noted the glow deeper in the storm, in the direction of the ruins. The second helicopter. He prayed that Safia and Omaha had kept their heads down. He had tried to radio them earlier, when he first suspected the danger, but something blocked the signal. Perhaps interference from the static charge of the storm. He attempted to reach them on foot, but the helicopters had swooped in, targeting anything that moved.

If there were birds in the air, then this was no small scouting party. Cassandra had somehow learned of her mistake and moved full forces in.

The radio in his ear whispered with static, the channel left open. Words formed out of the white noise. “Commander.” It was Coral, reporting in from the field. “As you suspected, I’ve hostiles coming in on all sides. They’re doing a building-by-building search.”

Painter touched his transmitter, trusting that the storm kept their words private. “The children and older women?”

“Ready. Barak awaits your signal.”

Painter searched the skies. Where are you? He needed to take out the helicopter if they were to have any hope of breaking through the noose around the town. The plan was to strike out west of the ruins, collecting Safia and Omaha along the way, risking the wild weather. Though the storm was growing worse with every minute, it could cover their retreat. If they left the ruins behind, perhaps Cassandra would be satisfied enough to make only half an effort to hunt them down. If they could get back to the mountains…

Painter felt a fury build in him. He hated to retreat, to hand Cassandra a victory here. Especially with the discovery of the secret chamber under the sinkhole. Cassandra would surely bring in heavy excavating equipment. Something lay down there. The Rahim were living proof of something extraordinary. His only hope was to abscond with Safia, delaying Cassandra enough for him to alert someone in Washington, someone he could trust.