Chapter Fifty-Five
Al Hadidah, Saudi Arabia
The sun crested the horizon as they approached their intended search area.
The temperature was already skyrocketing, and they were all soaked through with sweat.
The whole group had declined to rest and walked the last leg of the journey without a break, the excitement building in all of them.
Now, as they arrived at the area, they paused atop a large sand dune and surveyed the scene below.
The dunes had decreased in size as they went, save for the large one they currently stood upon.
Below them the desert floor was littered with black rocks, giving the terrain a spotted appearance.
“What is all of that down there?” Tim asked as he sat against his pack and sipped water from a Nalgene bottle.
“Black glass,” Ana said excitedly.
“In the desert?” Shane was confused.
“It’s from a meteorite,” Ana said. “This whole area was hit sometime in the past. There was a meteor seen over Riyadh four hundred years ago that may have impacted the area. When it did, the heat turned the sand to glass.”
“I thought Ubar disappeared thousands of years ago, not hundreds,” Shane said.
“You’re right,” Nate interjected. “The dating of the Wabar craters and the meteorites that caused it is disputed. Some people think it happened much earlier. Or perhaps more than once.”
“It’s true,” Ana conceded.
“For example, there’s conflicting evidence that the city of Tall el-Hammam in the Jordan Valley was destroyed by some type of cosmic cataclysm roughly thirty-six hundred years ago,” Nate continued.
“Like another meteorite?” Tim asked.
“Close,” Nate said. “They think it was actually a meteor.”
“What’s the fucking difference?” Tim asked.
“A meteor is an object that enters Earth’s atmosphere,” Ana clarified. “Usually it burns up on entry. When it impacts Earth’s surface, it’s called a meteorite.”
“Learn something new every day,” Tim mumbled to himself.
“In the case of Tall el-Hammam, the theory presented was that it was destroyed by an airburst,” Nate said. “The paper that claimed this was later retracted, mostly for procedural issues, but the theory still exists.”
“Like the Tunguska event back in the early twentieth century,” Tim added.
“Exactly!” Nate said excitedly. “In that case, a meteor exploded in the atmosphere and detonated with a yield of fifteen megatons, significantly more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima back in World War Two. In fact, some experts think an airburst is the explanation for the destruction of the biblical city of Sodom.”
“Another city destroyed by God for its wicked ways,” Tim noted.
“But there was no crater, right?” Shane asked.
“Right,” Ana said. “Airbursts like that don’t generally leave craters.”
“But imagine a large meteor detonating over the Jordan Valley,” Nate added. “It’s entirely possible that debris flung from that explosion could have made its way southeast to the deserts of Arabia.”
“Right, part of a larger system of debris that broke up entering the atmosphere,” Ana said. “One meteor could have detonated, but fragments could have easily made their way to impact solid ground if the event was big enough.”
“So not the same meteorites that caused the Wabar craters, then?” Shane asked.
“Could have been,” Nate confessed. “But there’s also the fact that we’re not at the Wabar impact site. It’s nearly twenty miles northeast of here.”
“Really?” Ana asked. “I didn’t realize there were impacts this far to the west.”
“No one did,” Nate replied. “Philby didn’t chart it, and there hasn’t been much scientific interest in it since then.”
“Why not?” Tim asked.
“Because no one is lining up to toil in the extreme heat of a remote desert to study meteorite impacts,” Ana said.
“Can’t say I blame them,” Tim quipped, squinting up at the rising sun.
“We are,” Nate said, “and we’re in the right place to start searching. You see there?” He pointed across the desert toward an almost imperceptible line. “Those are the ancient camel trails. They run from the east and then disappear in this area.”
“Where Ubar was supposed to have been,” Wally said.
“Precisely. And we’re standing over the underground river from the report that Ana provided.
The same one that feeds the treasure well down south where we refilled our jerry cans.
And somewhere out there to the north, along this line, is the well that Philby found.
” He stared out over the desert into the distance. “He was so close.”
Nate took his ruck off and opened the top to remove the drone he carried.
Shane had bought two DJI Mavic 3 Quadcopters.
They allowed a phone or tablet to be connected to the controller via the DJI Fly app, and the onboard Hasselblad camera sent back high-quality, real-time footage to the device within a fifteen-kilometer range.
It would provide them an aerial view that they otherwise could not have achieved.
Shane unpacked the second drone and began setting it up.
“So, what exactly are we looking for?” Shane asked.
“Anything out of the ordinary,” Nate replied. “A tower poking up out of the sand would be great, but I don’t think we’re going to get that lucky.”
“You’re better off looking for additional impact sites,” Ana added.
“Good call,” Nate agreed. “When Philby found the Wabar craters, he said they looked like black walls rising from the ground. We should start looking for something similar. We’ll go north from this location then split off. I’ll go east, you go west.”
“Sounds good,” Shane acknowledged.
With the batteries in and the devices started, the drones lifted smoothly off the ground and began their search patterns.
There were four batteries for each drone, which gave forty minutes of flight time apiece, or a little over two and a half hours total.
The batteries could be recharged using solar panels, but that would take a while.
They would need to make the most of their time, which is why they worked in tandem covering twice the terrain in the same amount of time.
Nate saw mostly sand dunes, interspersed with black glass and small iron deposits.
The desert was an ever-changing organism, as the sands blew in from the Mediterranean to the southeast. It continuously covered and uncovered things out in the wasteland, and they would need as much luck as they would skill to find a clue. And a keen eye, which Ana had.
It was after their first battery swap that she noticed something Shane had missed.
“Go back,” she told him. “No, to the east.” He did as she asked. “There!”
“What is it?” Shane asked her, but she ignored him.
“Zoom in there. Can you swing around to the south?” Once again Shane did as she instructed.
Nate had stopped what he was doing and moved closer. Ana seemed very excited about something.
“What is it?” he asked her.
“I’m not sure yet. One moment, habibi,” she said, using the Arabic pet name for “darling.” She had done it reflexively and it made him smile.
“Hey, habibi,” Tim said in a less congenial tone, “we have a problem. Two, really.”
“What is it?” Nate sighed.
“Well, in all your aerial archaeology you probably failed to notice the dark cloud rolling in from the west.”
“Cloud?” Nate turned to peer in the direction indicated. Tim had eyes like a hawk. It was a long way off, but now that it had been pointed out, he could clearly see it. Dust clouds.
“A haboob?” he asked, using the Arabic word for “sandstorm.” Tim nodded.
“Well, shit.”
“Looks to be about an hour or so out, maybe less,” Tim said.
“Probably less,” Nate agreed.
“Unfortunately, that’s the least bad problem at the moment.”
Nate looked quizzically at him, and Tim handed over the binoculars and pointed off into the distance.
He lifted the optics to his face and scanned to the south in the direction his friend had indicated.
He could make out three trucks, likely Land Cruisers.
They were traveling in a tight convoy and unmistakably headed in their direction.
This was going to present a bigger problem than the sandstorm, though perhaps one might help offset the other.
“Let’s hope they lose us in the sandstorm,” he said, hitting a button on his tablet that commanded the drone to return to his location.
“Still only a temporary fix,” Tim countered. “It looks like we might have another fight on our hands. Only I’m not sure we can win this one.” His face was grim.
“We’ve had worse,” Nate said.
Tim grinned. “That’s true.”
“Nate!” Wally yelled. “We need you over here, mate!”
Nate groaned internally. He felt like he was being pulled in multiple directions, and he didn’t yet have a good answer to any of the problems they faced.
Their time to locate the city had just been dramatically reduced.
And even if they did, both the storm and the unknown convoy would be on top of them within the hour.
He walked over to the other side of the dune and found Wally.
“We’re gonna have company,” Nate said, and nodded toward the south.
“Bloody hell,” Wally said, then sloshed his way through the sand to Tim.
“What’s going on?” Nate asked Shane, who had Ana nearly climbing over his shoulder.
“Ana found something,” he said.
“It’s here, look.” She pointed to the screen excitedly.
Nate peered over Shane’s other shoulder and looked at the image on the screen. He was staring at a top-down view of the desert floor, with the drone several hundred feet in the air.
“What am I looking at?”
“Right?” Shane asked in confusion.
“It’s here.” Ana pointed to a sand dune. “Notice anything strange?”
Nate thought about it for a second. “It’s facing the wrong way,” he said finally.
“Exactly. Winds come from the northwest and push the sand to the southeast. This dune is in the complete opposite direction. Now, if we fly closer and look at it…” She nudged Shane, who obliged.
The screen showed the ground moving closer, before circling around to the southwest side of the dune. When the drone reached near ground level, Nate could clearly see what had Ana so excited, and he inhaled deeply. There were walls of black glass pushing nearly forty feet into the air.
“It looks exactly how Philby described the Wabar craters in 1932!”
“It’s definitely a meteorite impact,” Ana said. “That’s clear from the striations of the glassed sand. This one is much more intact, though, not covered up by the sand.”
Ana’s geological expertise had helped them to quickly ascertain a solid starting point from which to begin searching for the city.
If it was here, the terrain feature she had discovered may well have been the impact that caused the metropolis to sink beneath the sands. But it also gave him another idea.
“Mark the location and call the drone back,” Nate said. “We need to get down there. There’s a sandstorm and a convoy of trucks full of armed men both coming this way.”
“Shit,” Shane said as he recalled the drone. “I hope you have a plan.”
“As a matter of fact,” Nate said, “I think I do. Do you still have those explosives?”