Nate mumbled something.
“What?” the man asked, stepping closer.
A little more, Nate thought, and mumbled again, waving his hand in the air as if making a gesture. The man finally closed the distance, walking straight up to the window, and his eyes went wide when he saw the rifle in Tim’s hands.
Before the checkpoint guard could yell out a warning, Nate’s hand shot out of the window, grabbed him by the front of his robes, andpulled him hard into the door. The man’s head slammed off the top, stunning him. He was unable to raise his rifle as he was now pinned against the door in Nate’s iron grip, and his body blocked the line of sight of the other rifleman, preventing his partner from getting a clear shot at the people in the truck. Nate pulled out the pistol, pointed it at the other man, and fired three times, hitting him in the chest. He fell backward, his finger depressing the trigger on his rifle and firing a burst into the air as he tumbled into a small table containing a kettle and several glasses.
Simultaneously, Tim leaned out of the passenger-side door, quickly acquired the individual in front of the vehicle, and fired several shots in rapid succession. The man crumpled to the ground dead, a pool of blood instantly forming on the sand-covered road. The man still in Nate’s grasp was struggling, and Nate placed his legs on the floorboard for leverage and used all his might to fling him backward, away from the vehicle. As he did so, Nate heard several shots crack off behind him, and the man jerked back and fell to the ground. Nate looked in the rearview mirror to see Shane leaning out the window of the second vehicle with a rifle. They all scanned the area, looking for any more threats.
“Looks clear,” Tim said, as he opened his door and got out of the truck.
“You okay?” Nate asked Ana, as she once again pulled the garment off. She nodded feebly, though she looked pale. He couldn’t tell if it was from the stress of the situation or the shock of the violence that had just erupted around her.
“Ana,” Nate said, and gently turned her chin with his hand so that she was looking at him. “It’s over. We’re safe now.”
“I know,” she said, and gave a half-hearted smile. “I’m okay.” She looked back out the windshield and saw Tim pulling gear off the dead men’s bodies. “What is he doing?” she asked in shock. Nate didn’t lookat her, but watched as his friend methodically removed weapons and ammo from the dead men.
“Battlefield recovery,” he answered.
When operating deep behind enemy lines, Green Berets were taught to plus up their supplies through ambushes and other attacks. When clearing through an objective, anything of use was taken, as resupply was often unfeasible.
“Right,” she said, not convincing herself or Nate that she saw a difference between that and looting. Nate dismounted the vehicle and walked over to where Wally and Shane were helping Tim finish stripping the corpses.
“Who do you think they were?” Wally asked.
Nate had been the guy in charge of the team’s intelligence back in the day, and as such was most familiar with the various extremist groups in the region. He walked over to the nearest one and looked him over. The dead man wore no uniform or markings of any kind, but he carried a rifle and several extra magazines, which meant they were well stocked and supplied. Additionally, they had no vehicle, which meant they were likely dropped off locally, and there were no military facilities around here, nor did the Houthis come out this far from the big cities in the west.
“Probably Al Qaeda,” he said.
“Well, good riddance then,” Wally commented. Tim finally finished stripping the corpses and brought everything over in a pile.
“We’ve got three AKs, twelve magazines, and one cell phone,” he said.
“Leave the cell phone,” Nate said as they began loading everything into one of the trucks. “It’s useless to us, but you never know who else might be looking for it.”
“I also found this on one of these gangsters,” Shane said, holdingup a gold medallion on a chain. Nate snatched it out of his hands and studied it intently as Ana came out of the truck behind him.
“What is it?” she asked.
Nate rubbed the medallion on his pants in a fruitless attempt to clean the dust off and studied it in detail. The medallion was a disc, roughly four inches in diameter, and appeared to be made of solid gold. One side was blank, but on the other side was a relief of a man. The side profile and swirly design of the beard indicated it was more than likely Akkadian. As for the figure, it could have been a number of kings, but Nate had a guess as to which one it was.
“Akkadian. Probably circa twenty-two hundred BCE. And I think this is Sargon the Great,” he said in amazement. A bronze head recovered at Nineveh in 1931 was said to portray the first ruler of the Akkadian Empire. It disappeared when the Iraq Museum was looted in 2003, but pictures and replicas still existed. “The intricately patterned braid of the hair and beard, the Akkadian synthesis of naturalism and idealism, and the elongated oval face and well-defined jawline… definitely Sargon the Great.”
“Who?” Tim asked.
“Sargon the Great, the king who established the Akkadian Empire,” Nate said absently without taking his eyes off the artifact. “Not to be confused with Sargon the First of Assyria, who ruled nearly four hundred years later.”
“Naturally,” Shane mocked. “Who would make such a foolish mistake?”
Nate ignored him. “If thisterryfound the medallion here in the Arabian Peninsula, then that means that Ubar was still a functioning trade station during the time of Sargon the Great, approximately twenty-two hundred BCE. When compared with Ahmed’s coin, that means thatthe city must have been a prominent location over four thousand years ago!” he exclaimed.
“Damn,” Shane said. “Hopefully that means a lot of trading. Can you imagine how much treasure must be buried down there with that city?”
Nate smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “No, but I aim to find out.”
The sun was brutal as they dragged the bodies into a ditch, finished packing the gear into the trucks, and mounted back up. The road only continued on their heading for a few more miles, and when the Garmin GPS they had pre-plotted points into indicated, they turned off and headed straight north across the desert. The terrain reminded Nate of the desert in southern Syria, just dry ground filled with small, scraggly bushes and shallow divots. They drove fast, avoiding the larger ditches and occasionally slamming the brakes to avoid hidden obstacles. The second vehicle drove at an offset so as not to be blinded by the dirt trail kicking up behind the first.
They wanted to cross the border as soon as they could, and more importantly, put distance between themselves and the checkpoint they had just eliminated. If the men guarding the road were locals, then someone would be coming to check on them soon enough. And when that happened, the race would be on to find their killers.
