Sandstorm (17 page)

Memories overlay all she saw, as tenuous as the reflections in the smooth waters of the bay. Events long forgotten came alive: running the narrows with Kara, her first kiss in the shadow of the city walls, the taste
of cardamon candy, visiting the sultan’s palace, all atremble and in a new
thob
dress.

Safia felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cabin’s air-conditioning. Home and homeland blurred in her mind. Tragedy and joy.

Then as the plane angled toward the airport, Old Town vanished, replaced by the Matrah section of Muscat—and the city’s port. One side of the docks moored modern hulking ships, the other the slender single-masted dhows, the ancient sailing ships of Arabia.

Safia stared at the proud line of wooden masts and folded sails, in stark contrast to the behemoths of steel and diesel. More than anything else, this typified her homeland: the ancient and the modern, mixed together, but forever separate.

The third section of Muscat was the least interesting. Inland from the old town and port, stacked against the hills, rose Ruwi, the modern business center, the commercial headquarters of Oman. Kara’s corporate offices were there.

The plane’s course had mapped out Safia and Kara’s life, from Old Town to Ruwi, from riotous children playing in the streets to lives confined by corporate offices and dusty museums.

Now the present.

The jet dropped toward the airport, aiming for the stretch of tarmac. Safia leaned back into her seat. The other passengers gaped out the windows.

Clay Bishop sat across the cabin. The grad student bobbed his head in sync with the current digitalized tract on his iPod. His black glasses kept slipping down his nose, requiring him to push them back up repeatedly. He wore his typical uniform: jeans and a T-shirt.

Ahead of Clay, Painter and Coral leaned together, staring out a single window. They spoke in hushed tones. She pointed, and he nodded, fiddling with a tiny cowlick atop his head that had formed while he napped.

Kara folded back the door to her private suite and stood in the threshold.

“We’re landing,” Safia said. “You should sit down.”

Fingers flicked away her concern, but Kara crossed to the empty seat beside her and dropped heavily into it. She didn’t buckle her seat belt.

“I can’t ring up Omaha,” she said as introduction.

“What?”

“He’s not answering his mobile. Probably doing it on purpose.”

That wasn’t like Omaha, Safia thought. He could be dodgy sometimes, but he was all business when it came to the job. “He’s surely just busy.
You left him hanging out to dry. You know how touchy and territorial the cultural attachés can be in Muscat.”

Kara huffed out her irritation. “He’d better be waiting at the airport.”

Safia noted how large her pupils were in the bright light. She looked both exhausted and wired at the same time. “If he said he’d be there, he will be.”

Kara cocked a questioning eyebrow at her. “Mr. Reliable?”

Safia felt a pang, her gut wrung in two different directions. Reflex made her want to defend him, as she had done in the past. But memory of the ring she had placed back in his palm constricted her throat. He had not understood the depth of her pain.

Then again who could?

She had to force her eyes not to glance at Painter.

“You’d better buckle up,” she warned Kara.

12:53 P.M.

D
ANNY’S SNEEZE
was as loud as a gunshot, startling a pair of caged doves in a neighboring shop. Wings fluttered against bamboo bars.

Omaha watched the masked gunman turn toward their booth, stepping toward them. A yard away, Danny covered his nose and mouth and sank lower behind the tall earthenware urn. Blood ran freely down his chin. Omaha pushed to the balls of his feet, tensing, ready to leap. Their only hope lay in surprise.

The police sirens wailed, piercing now from their proximity to the market. If only Danny could have held back for another minute…

The gunman held his rifle shouldered, pointed forward, moving in a crouched stance, experienced. Omaha clenched his fists. He’d have to knock the rifle up, then dive low.

Before he could move, the robed proprietor of the shop shambled forward, into plain view. He waved a fan in one hand and wiped his nose with the other.

“Hasaseeya,”
he mumbled as he straightened some baskets over Omaha’s head, cursing his hay fever. He feigned surprise at seeing the gunman, threw up his hands, fan flying, and fell back.

The gunman gave a muffled curse, waving the old man back with his rifle.

He obeyed, retreating to a low counter, covering his head with his hands.

Off in the direction of the souk’s entrance, the squeal of brakes announced the arrival of the Omani police. Sirens whined.

The gunman glanced in their direction, then did the only thing he could. He stepped to the large urn sheltering Danny and shoved his rifle inside. And after a check around, he ripped off the mask and tossed it in, too. Then, with a swirl of a sand-colored cloak, the figure disappeared into the depths of the market, clearly planning on simply joining the mass of humanity.

Anonymous.

Except Omaha had stared hard. He saw
her
face.

Mocha skin, deep brown eyes, a tattoo of a tear under the left eye.

Bedouin.

After a safe stretch, Omaha stepped out of hiding. Danny crawled to join him. Omaha helped his brother up.

The proprietor appeared, straightening his robe with pats of his hands.

“Shuk ran,”
Danny mumbled around his bloodied nose, thanking the man.

With the typical self-effacing custom of the Omani people, the man shrugged.

Omaha stripped off another fifty-rial bill and held it out.

The shopkeeper crossed his arms, palms facedown.
“Khalas.”
The deal had already been struck. It would be an insult to renegotiate. Instead, the old man crossed to the stack of baskets and picked one up. “For you,” he said. “Gift for pretty woman.”

“Bi kam?”
Omaha asked. How much?

The man smiled. “For you? Fifty rial.”

Omaha returned his smile, knowing he was being swindled, but he handed over the bill.
“Khalas.”

As they left the market and headed toward the entrance, Danny asked nasally. “Why the hell were those guys trying to kidnap us?”

Omaha shrugged. He had no idea. Apparently Danny hadn’t gotten a look at their assailant like he had. Not guys…
gals.
Now that he thought back on it—the way the others had moved—they might all have been women.

Omaha pictured the riflewoman’s face again. Skin aglow in the sunshine.

The resemblance was unmistakable.

She could’ve been Safia’s sister.

DECEMBER 2, 05:34 P.M.
SEEB INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

P
AINTER KEPT
pace behind the trundling cart of gear and equipment. The heat off the tarmac seemed to boil the oxygen right out of the air, leaving only a heavy dampness to sear the lungs. Painter fanned a hand in front of his face. Not to cool himself, an impossibility here, but simply to stir the air enough to catch his breath.

At least they were finally moving again. They had been delayed three hours, confined to the jet due as a result of the heightened security measures after the attempted abduction of one of Kara Kensington’s associates. Apparently the matter had been resolved enough to allow them to disembark.

Coral marched beside him, eyes scanning everywhere, wary. The only sign that the late-afternoon heat had any effect on his partner were the tiny beads of sweat on her smooth brow. She had covered her white-blond hair with a fold of beige cloth supplied by Safia, an Omani headdress called a
lihaf.

Painter squinted ahead.

The low sun cast shimmering mirages across the airfield and reflected off every surface, even the drab gray building toward which their group paraded. Omani customs officials in blue uniforms escorted the party, while a small delegation sent by the sultan flanked their sides.

These last were resplendent in the national dress of Omani men: a white collarless robe with long sleeves, called a
dishdasha,
covered by a black cloak trimmed in gold and silver embroidery. They also wore cotton
turbans of varied patterns and hues and leather belts adorned in silver. On these belts, each man wore a sheathed
khanjar,
the traditional dagger. In this case, they were Saidi daggers, pure silver or gold, a mark of rank, the Rolexes of Omani cutlery.

Kara, trailed by Safia and her graduate student, remained in a heated discussion with these men. It seemed the expedition’s advance men here, Dr. Omaha Dunn and his brother, were being held by the police. Details on the thwarted kidnapping were still sketchy.

“And is Danny all right?” Safia asked in Arabic.

“Fine, fine, my lady,” one of the escorts assured. “Bloodied nose, nothing more. He has already been attended to, let me assure you.”

Kara spoke to the head official. “And how soon can we be under way?”

“His majesty, Sultan Qaboos, has personally arranged for your transportation to Salalah. There will be no further mishaps. If we had only known sooner…that you personally would be accompanying—”

Kara waved his statement aside.
“Kif, kif,”
she dismissed in Arabic. “It is of no matter. As long as we won’t be delayed.”

A half bow answered her. The official’s lack of offense at her tart response spoke volumes concerning Lady Kensington’s influence in Oman.

So much for the low profile, Painter thought.

He turned his attention to Kara’s companion. Concern crinkled the corners of Safia’s eyes. Her momentary peace at the end of the flight had vanished when she heard of the trouble here. She clutched her carry-on luggage in both hands, refusing to load it and its ancient cargo onto the luggage cart.

Still, a determined glint shone in her emerald eyes, or maybe it was just the reflection of gold flecks in them. Painter remembered her hanging from the museum’s glass roof. He sensed a well of strength in her, hidden deep but still present. Even the land seemed to recognize this. The sun, glaring harshly off everything else in Oman, glowed upon her skin, as if welcoming her, casting her features in bronze. Her beauty, muted before, shone brighter, like a jewel enhanced by a perfect setting.

At last, the party reached the private terminal building, and doors opened into a cool oasis of air-conditioned comfort. It was the VIP lounge. Their stay at this oasis, however, proved brief. Customs routines were hastily dispatched upon the authority of the sultan’s retinue. Passports were glanced at, visas stamped—then the five of them were split between two black limousines: Safia, her grad student, and Kara in one, Coral and Painter in the other.

“It seems our company is not appreciated,” Painter commented as he boarded the stretch limo with his partner.

He settled into a seat. Coral joined him.

Up front, beside the limo’s driver, a beefy Irishman ran shotgun. He carried a prominent sidearm in a shoulder holster. Painter also noted a pair of escort vehicles—one in front of Kara’s limousine, the other trailing. Clearly, after the kidnapping, security was not to be neglected.

Painter slipped a cell phone from a pocket. The phone contained a scrambled satellite chip with access to the DOD computer net and housed a sixteen-megapixel digital camera with flash uploading and downloading.

Never leave home without it.

He drew out the small earpiece and fixed it in place. A small microphone dangled from the line at his lips. He waited as the sat phone transmitted a coded handshake signal that crossed the globe and zeroed in on one person.

“Commander Crowe,”
a voice finally answered. It was Dr. Sean McKnight, his immediate superior, the head of Sigma.

“Sir, we’ve landed in Muscat and are headed to the Kensington compound. I was reporting in to see if you’ve received any intel on the attack on the advance team.”

“We have the preliminary police report already. They were snatched off the street. Fake taxi. Sounds like a typical attempted kidnapping for ransom. Common form of raising capital out there.”

Still, Painter heard the suspicion in McKnight’s voice. First the trouble at the museum…now this. “Do you think this could be related to London?”

“Too early to say.”

Painter pictured the lithe figure vanishing over the museum wall. He could still feel the weight of Cassandra’s Sig Sauer in his hand. Two days after her arrest in Connecticut, she had vanished from custody. The police van transferring her to the airport had been ambushed, two men died, and Cassandra Sanchez had disappeared. Painter had never thought to see her again. How was she connected to all this? And why?

McKnight continued,
“Admiral Rector has coordinated with the NSA in gathering intel. We’ll have more in a couple hours.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Commander, is Dr. Novak with you?”

Painter stared over at Coral, who watched the scenery flash past. Her
eyes were unreadable, but he was sure she was memorizing her surroundings. Just in case. “Yes, sir. She’s here.”

“Let her know that the researchers over at Los Alamos were able to discover decaying uranium particles in that meteoric iron sample you found at the museum.”

Painter recalled her concern over the scanner’s readings on the sample.

“They also support her hypothesis that the radiation from the uranium’s decay may indeed be acting like some sort of nuclear timer, slowly destabilizing the antimatter until it is susceptible to electrical shock.”

Painter sat straighter and spoke into the phone receiver. “Dr. Novak also proposed that the same destabilization could be happening at the antimatter’s primary source, if it exists.”

“Exactly. The Los Alamos researchers have independently expressed the same concern. As such, your mission has become time critical. Additional resources have been allocated. If there is a primary source, it must be discovered quickly or all may be lost.”

“Understood, sir.” Painter pictured the blasted ruins of the museum gallery, the bones of the guard melted into the steel grate. If there was a mother lode of this antimatter, the loss could be more than such scientific.

“Which brings me to my last item, Commander. We do have pressing information that concerns your operation. From NOAA. They report a major storm system developing in southern Iraq, blowing south.”

“Thunderstorm?”

“Sand. Winds clocked at sixty miles per hour. A real barn buster. It’s been shutting down city after city, shifting dunes across roads. NASA confirms its path toward Oman.”

Painter blinked. “NASA confirms? How big is—”

“Big enough to be seen from space. I’ll forward satellite feed.”

Painter glanced at the digital screen on the phone. The screen filled in line by line from the top. It was a real-time weather map of the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula. The detail was amazing: the coastline, blue seas scudded with clouds, tiny cities. Except where a large, hazy blotch skirted the Persian Gulf. It looked like a hurricane, but one on land. A vast reddish brown wave even extended out over the gulf.

“Meteorological predictions expect the storm to amplify in severity and size as it travels south,”
McKnight narrated as the image refreshed the screen. The blotch of sandstorm swept over a coastal city, obliterating it.
“There’s chatter of a storm of the century brewing out there. A high-pressure system in the Arabian Sea is producing vicious monsoon winds, drawn into a low trough over the Empty Quarter. The sandstorm will hit
the southern deserts like a freight train, then be whipped up and fed by the monsoon tidals, creating a mega storm system.”

“Jesus.”

“It’ll be hell out there for a while.”

“What’s the timetable?”

“The storm should reach the Omani border by the day after tomorrow. And current estimates expect the storm system to last two or three days.”

“Delaying the expedition.”

“For as short as possible.”

Painter heard the command behind the director’s words. He raised his head and glanced toward the other limo. A delay. Kara Kensington was not going to be pleased.

6:48 P.M.

C
ALM DOWN,”
Safia urged.

They had all gathered in the garden courtyard of the Kensington estate. High limestone walls of crumbling plaster dated to the sixteenth century, as did the idyllic frescoes of climbing vines that framed off arched landscapes and seascapes. Three years ago, restoration work had returned the frescoes to their full glory. This was the first time Safia had seen the finished product with her own eyes. Artisans from the British Museum had overseen the details here, while Safia had supervised from London via digital cameras and the Internet.

The pixilated photos failed to do justice to the richness of the colors. The blue pigments came from crushed mollusk shells, the reds from pressed rose madder, as had been originally done in the sixteenth century.

Safia took in the rest of the gardens, a place she had once played in as a child. Baked red tiles lined the grounds, amid raised beds of roses, trimmed hedges, and artfully arranged perennials. An English garden, a bit of Britain in the center of Muscat. In contrast, though, four large date palms dotted each corner, arched and shading a good portion of the garden.

Memories overlapped reality, triggered by the perfume of climbing jasmine and a deeper sandy scent of the old town. Ghosts shifted amid the dappled tiles, shadow plays of the past.

In the center of the courtyard, a traditional Omani tiled fountain with an octagonal reflecting basin tinkled brightly. Safia and Kara used to swim and float in the fountain’s pool on especially hot and dusty days, a
practice frowned upon by Kara’s father. Safia could still hear his amused bluster, echoing off the garden walls, as he returned from a board meeting to find them lounging in the fountain.
You two look like a pair of beached seals.
Still, sometimes he would take off his shoes and wade in with them.

Kara stalked past the fountain with hardly a glance. The bitterness in her words brought the present back in focus. “First Omaha’s adventure…now the bloody weather. By the time we’re under way, half of Arabia will know of our excursion, and we’ll not have a moment’s peace.”

Safia followed, leaving the unloading of the limos to the others. Painter Crowe had announced the dire meteorological news upon his arrival. He’d kept his face neutral. “It’s a shame you can’t buy good weather,” he had finished glibly. He seemed to so enjoy goading Kara. Still, after all the roadblocks Kara had erected to keep the two Americans from this expedition, Safia could hardly blame him.

Safia caught up with Kara at the arched entry to the old palace, a three-story structure of carved and tiled limestone. The upper levels were adorned by shaded balconies, supported on ornate columns. Sea blue tiles lined all inner surfaces of the balconies, calmingly cool to the eye after the blinding glare.

Kara seemed to find no comfort in coming home, her face tight, the muscles of her jaw tense.

Safia touched her arm, wondering how much of her shortness of temper was true frustration and how much was chemically induced. “The storm’s not a problem,” she assured her friend. “We were planning to travel to Salalah to examine Nabi Imran’s tomb first. It’s on the coast, away from any sandstorms. I’m sure we’ll be there at least a week anyway.”

Kara took a deep breath. “Still, this mess with Omaha. I’d hoped to avoid too much notice—”

A commotion at the gate interrupted. Both women turned.

An Omani police car, lights silently flashing, pulled to a stop alongside the pair of limousines. The rear doors opened and two men climbed out.

“Speak of the devil…” Kara mumbled.

Safia found it suddenly difficult to breathe, the air gone heavy.

Omaha…

Time slipped slower, paced by the dull beat of her heart in her ears. She had thought she’d have more time to prepare, to settle in, to steel herself for the meeting. She felt an urge to flee and took a step back.

Kara placed a hand on the small of her back, supporting her. “You’ll be fine,” she whispered.

Omaha waited for his brother—then the two of them crossed between the black limos. Danny’s face bore two black eyes, his nose bridged by a bandaged splint. Omaha had an arm on his brother’s elbow. He wore a blue suit, jacket tucked in the crook of his free arm, white shirt rolled up at the elbows, stained with dirt and dried blood. His gaze lingered a moment on Painter Crowe, eyes traveling up and down his form. Omaha nodded in wary greeting.