“Well, has anyone seen it?” Wilde asked skeptically, still not convinced Ahmed wasn’t playing a joke on him.
“No, my friend,” Ahmed responded matter-of-factly. “It is lost to the sands.”
That was it. It was just that simple to Ahmed. Wilde should have stopped and moved on. It was not worth risking offense to Ahmed, but he was genuinely curious. Ahmed’s tall tale of a lost civilization had stirred the academic buried deep inside the bearded commando.
“Ahmed, I believe they found Ubar in Oman several years ago.”
The Saudi vigorously shook his head. “No, they found a tradingpost. The trade routes always went around the peninsula.” He held up a finger. “But there was one that cut through the Rub’ al Khali. And in the center of that route, Ubar. A place to rest. A place of great wealth.” He seemed very certain of this fact.
“I don’t understand how—” Wilde started, but Ahmed cut him off.
“My friend. My tribe is from this region.” He made a circle around the area on the screen with his finger. “My ancestors have told tales of this place for generations. A city of great wealth and prosperity. Allah struck them down for their wickedness, destroying the city. It is written in the Qur’an, and it is written in the stories of my people.”
Wilde tried to look conciliatory, but Ahmed could tell he was not convinced. The Saudi officer made the Arabwaitmotion with his hand and without speaking a word hurriedly left the tent. Wilde leaned back and considered everything Ahmed had just told him. The lost city of Ubar was a well-known tale. Not only was it written about in the Islamic faith, but it also played a prominent role in a tale fromOne Thousand and One Nights, also known as theArabian Nights. However, so did Aladdin and his genie, so there was that. Still, the possibility of a lost city buried in the desert was enticing, and he could see why the idea of it excited people.
Although his team’s operational tempo was fairly high with little downtime between deployments, Wilde had been steadily working toward a master’s degree in archaeology. He specialized in Near Eastern archaeology, and as such was well versed in the story of Ubar. The people of the ‘Ad tribe had built a great city along the Incense Route where they traded frankincense and other luxury items. The city grew in prominence and riches, so much so that they became greedy and vain and defied Allah. The Prophet Hud came to warn them to change their ways, but they refused to listen, and so Allah smote the city from above. Ubar was the Western name that modern historians applied tothe city, but ancient Arabic texts referred to it as Iram of the Pillars, which was thought to refer to the towers of the city, although others interpreted it to mean actual pillars.
It was suggested that the Wabar craters in Saudi Arabia were created by the same destructive force that rained down on the city and caused it to sink into the sands. Others believed the meteorite fell too late to have caused the destruction, though the issue was widely debated. St. John Philby, the famous British Arabist, recorded the craters in 1932 when he searched for the city without success, though at the time he mistook them for an ancient volcano. Bertram Thomas, another British explorer, had expressed interest in the city after his local guides told him the legends, and T. E. Lawrence had planned a trip to search for the city using airships but died before ever getting the chance.
The city remained pure conjecture until a research team located a site in 1992 in western Oman that they deemed to be the true Ubar. It was a city with walls and towers that sat along the ancient trade routes. Ironically, they had found the location using the same method Wilde was using now, satellite imagery of camel trails. It was generally accepted by the academic community to be Ubar, although much speculation still existed. There was also debate over whether it was in fact Ubar, but that the Iram of the Pillars referenced in historical texts was a separate city that had remained lost to time. Wilde wondered if the research team had followed the ancient trade routes into Saudi, or if they had even had access to them.
As he pondered these questions, Ahmed returned and walked back into the tent with a purpose, striding right up to Wilde. Without saying a word, he looked around briefly as if wishing to conceal his actions, then pulled a silk handkerchief from his pocket. He gently unfolded it and Wilde noticed a small object concealed in its folds as the lightshanging from the ceiling glinted off its surface. Ahmed hesitated before placing it gently into Wilde’s open hand.
Wilde looked down to see a gold coin sitting in his palm. He glanced back up at Ahmed before moving to inspect the coin. It certainly looked and felt like real gold. He examined it more closely and could vaguely make out raised shapes on both sides. The coin was well worn, and he assessed that it was very old and very valuable. There was what appeared to be a head on one side, though it was too faded to make out any great detail. Flipping it over, his breath caught in his throat and his eyes widened in amazement. Raised cuneiform characters adorned the opposite side.
Cuneiform was considered one of the earliest forms of written language, distinct from writings such as Egyptian hieroglyphics, and possibly older. Wedge-shaped impressions were made, generally on clay tablets, that served first as pictographs, in which each symbol represented an object, transitioned to logograms, or characters that symbolized whole words, and finally to phonograms, in which syllables or phonetic values combined to form words. Cuneiform had appeared somewhere around 3500 BCE in ancient Sumer, where modern-day Iraq lay, but was used by multiple civilizations in Mesopotamia over the centuries. While it made the identification of the coin’s origin difficult without deciphering the language, cuneiform had not been used by any peoples for thousands of years.
“Where did you get this from?” Wilde asked, slightly stunned as he turned over in his hand what appeared to be a very ancient coin.
“My father gave it to me. And his father to him. He found it on our tribal lands. There are more.”
“More coins?”
“Yes. Coins. Lamps. Gems. There are precious items throughout my tribe. We don’t sell them. We don’t trade them. They are very special to us.”
Wilde stared at the coin, mesmerized.Could it be true? Could there be a city of wealth buried in the desert?He reluctantly handed the item back, not eager to part with such a potentially fascinating piece of history. Ahmed ceremoniously wrapped it back up in his silk cloth and slipped it gently back in his pocket.
“But where, Ahmed?” Wilde asked. “Where did your family find it?”
Ahmed tapped the screen with his finger. “Ubar.”
CHAPTER TWO
It was late when Wilde walked out of the tent, and the humidity hung thick in the dark night sky. The lack of artificial illumination from the adjacent city resulted in a majestic display of stars above him, bisected by the silhouette of the Milky Way. He once again reflected on the beauty of this land and the secrets it held.
McBride was surely done with the gym by now. Even someone as motivated as he couldn’t spend four hours in there. Wilde would have to get up early and do leg day to save himself from his friend’s harassment, making tomorrow a two-a-day workout.
He had completed the KMZ file and written up the additional report on the trails, their historical significance, and the relevance to their current counterterrorism operations. While he worked, he turned over in his mind the unusual encounter with Ahmed. Wilde was both a born and trained skeptic, and yet something about the intensity with which the Saudi officer conveyed his tribal heritage stuck with him. The gold coin only added to the story’s credibility, which for all intents and purposes appeared authentic. But while Wilde had no reason to doubtAhmed’s sincerity, the idea that it was passed down through generations as an artifact from a lost city seemed almost too fantastical to believe.
Wilde was still wondering how many additional expeditions had been futilely launched to find the lost city when he was torn from his musings by the sound of automatic gunfire ripping through the still night air. He immediately turned to face the direction of the noise, his hand moving instinctively to the Glock 19 on his hip. The guard tower facing the road that ran south of the airport and away from the city had opened up with a long burst from a PKM machine gun. Then, nothing.
He held his breath and strained to listen through the silence. It was possible that the tower had fired at a ghost, or that it had been a negligent discharge by a member of their partner force, which happened occasionally. The Yemeni forces guarded the outer perimeter of the base, with the Saudi-led coalition soldiers overseeing them. The American and British teams had a small section of the compound in the inner cordon, and remained at twenty-five-percent alert status at any given time, with no more than three-quarters of the men sleeping at once. While they had to trust their partners with their lives, they didn’t need to take needless risks either. It’s why he knew that others on the team would be awake and investigating.
The tower opened fire again, followed by a second tower, with each putting sustained bursts downrange on an unseen target. Wilde knew immediately that it was no accident. Deforest came bolting out of the JOC, the tent flap flying wildly. He snapped his head around and looked at Wilde. “What the hell is going on?” he asked.
“No idea,” Wilde responded. “It sounds real, though. We’d better get to the war room.” Deforest nodded in agreement and the two set off.
The war room was a plywood shack reinforced with sandbags that contained a series of wooden cubbies that housed the team’s combat equipment. The soldiers carried their pistols with them at all times,and often their rifles, but the majority of their gear remained locked up when it wasn’t in use.
