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.”

He suddenly seemed to understand the deeper meaning in her words, the raw fear. He pulled her closer. She needed his strength. He gave it to her.

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.