Nexus Point

1

The helo swooped low, its turbine engines whining with the descent as it made its way along the crest of a jagged ridge of weathered rock. All about them the desert was broken by fantastic shelves of striated stone erupting from a barren plain. The sun cast an amber hue on the red and black stone as they circled, painting the landscape in dark shades of scarlet and orange.

“How you got permission for this is beyond me.” Paul Dorland was seated in the comfortable back seat of the helo next to Professor Nordhausen, his long time friend and associate.

“It wasn’t easy,” said the professor over the noise of the engine. “The Jordanian government isn’t very fond of Americans these days—not after the mess we created in the region with that business in Iraq. It took some doing, Paul, but I pulled on a few favors I was owed by associates in the Middle Eastern Archeological Society. They have digs going on out here all the time: the Buller excavations at Aliba, the resources project out at Kerak, the Madaba Plains outfit near Tel Jalul—just to name a few. I convinced them to slip one more permit through the system, that’s all. If you want to get anything done in this world you never make much fuss about it. Just be as inconspicuous as possible. “

“And the helicopter?” Paul tightened his grip on the arm rest as the chopper swirled about, low to the ground now for its landing.

“Money talks, my friend.” Nordhausen smiled at him. “Particularly out here in the middle of nowhere. I rented this rig for one thousand dollars. It belongs to an independent oil drilling concern about fifty klicks east of here in the volcanic flats region.“

Paul nodded, as he ran a long fingered hand through his medium brown hair. The professor had enlisted him in this safari over a month ago, saying that it would be a good excuse for him to get out of the office and see a bit of the world. Paul had seen quite enough, but he was only too glad to join his comrade. He secretly loved the desert climes, and had looked forward to getting decked out in his khaki explorer clothing, complete with a floppy canvas archeologist hat that sat on his lap while he struggled to force some order on his hair.

Nordhausen smiled at him. “Why do you bother to try and comb that mop?” he asked with a hint of a tease in his voice. “You need a haircut.”

“Easy for you to say,” said Paul. Nordhausen had lost his battle against a steadily receding hairline long ago. Paul still rinsed out the emerging gray and tried to keep some sense of order on the top of his head. In this instance, he gave up, and put his canvas hat back on in disgust.

“You say you have people working out here in this heat?”

“Three interns,” said Nordhausen. “It’s a wonderful way to get some experience. Many students would jump at the opportunity. “

“But how did you arrange the passports, travel expenses and visas?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Paul. You act as though no one ever does anything but sit at home and watch TV. Jordan issues at least a thousand reciprocal student visas through the university. You hire them, tell them where they’re going, buy them a plane ticket and they do all the rest. It’s really quite simple.”

Paul nodded, turning his gaze to the rocky desert floor beneath them. They were hovering in a gentle downward glide, and soon the downdraft of the chopper began to kick up dust and debris.

“There!” Nordhausen leaned across Paul to point out his window. “See the campsite?”

“I don’t remember it looking like this,” said Paul.

“Of course not. There’s been plenty of erosion in these landforms over the years. You won’t recognize anything, but believe me, this is the place. I got the numbers from Kelly’s data run on the first breaching point. This was the only hill within walking distance, so I put my people in here with some nifty ground penetrating radar, and they found it!” The professor rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

The helicopter landed with a gentle thump, its bright silver blades whipping up a cloud of reddish dust. The pilot, an Arabic man, turned and flashed the two men a toothy smile from under the headset of his flight helmet.

“Wait for us,” Nordhausen yelled over the deafening noise. “We won’t be long.”

The pilot indicated thumbs up and the professor unlatched his door. “Come on!” He yelled at Paul over the swirling din.

The two men leapt out, hunching low to evade the rotating blades as they gradually slowed. Once they were away from the helo they saw three shadows emerge from the sheen of dust. The interns were out to welcome them, two young men and a woman, all of college age and decked out in khaki shorts and pith helmets.

“Greetings, professor!” The woman was the first to speak, brown ponytails tossing about under her helmet as she ran up.

“Good day, Janice. How are things going?”

“Everything is fine here, sir. “

The two men came up and there were introductions all around. “Paul Dorland,” said the professor as he draped his arm over Paul’s shoulder. “He was with me when we found the damn thing. Paul, this is Bill here with the good looks and that’s Bob with all the muscle. Now then: we haven’t much time. I’ve only got this bird for another six hours, and we have a long way to go yet. Is everything ready?”

“We have it isolated and mounted on a sturdy pallet,” said Janice.

“Was the extraction difficult? Is it well protected?”

“Came out with no trouble at all,” said Bill. “We used acetone to strengthen the tendril areas, and got a good plaster on the main segment. The moorings and cables are all in place. All we have to do is hitch everything up.”

Nordhausen clapped his hands together. “Fantastic! Let’s get started. I’ll help you two with the cables. Janice, why don’t you show Paul the dig site. I’m sure he’ll have a few fond memories.”

They started away from the helo, off through the subsiding dust until they came to the low edge of a shelving ridge. The site was very clean, well marked with stakes and string, and cleared of all the broken desert stone that had been eroding from the shale and basalt landforms for centuries. Paul saw the bundled pallet with thick mooring cables attached to the corners as the other men began dragging the lines toward the undercarriage of the helo. He was only vaguely aware of the woman trailing in his wake. She was saying something about the dig site and the weather, but Paul wasn’t listening. An inner eye was replaying scenes in his head now as he scanned the landforms about him, and he had a prickly sensation of déjà vu.

It was here, he thought. I was here…

The recollection of the swelling billows of smoke and soot in the sky returned to him. He could almost smell the sulfur in the air and hear the cold crunch of his footfalls on the iridium laced ground gravel when they climbed the ridge, sixty-five million years ago. They were the first men to travel in time, but an error in the calculation had sent them careening into the deeps of the later Cretaceous, millions of years off their target date. In spite of that, the spatial numbers had been dead on target. They were supposed to land in the desert of old Palestine, now modern day Jordan, but when they arrived they found themselves marooned on the volcanic debris of a recently reclaimed seabed—right smack on the KT boundary, the line that marked the end of the Cretaceous and the doom of the Dinosaurs.

It was here.

They had struggled up the hill, straining to find any clue to identify their location. Nordhausen was stooping to collect odd fragments of glittering quartz and dead fern fronds. It did not take them long to realize the error. The discovery of a near perfect Ammonite fossil in the side of the hill had been the last deciding clue. They were lost in time.

Paul stared at the gaping hole in the ground neatly marked by string and small wooden stakes. Nordhausen had been talking about this project for months after their mission. He called it his consolation prize and urged Paul to come with him to recover the fossil. How he planned to get it through customs was a matter Paul never had a chance to discuss with him. When he first raised the question the professor had waved him off with a typical ‘don’t worry, Paul, it’s all arranged.’

The strange feeling swept over him again. Somewhere at the edge of this dig the two of them had sat on the ridge and built a small fire—the first fire ever made by human hands on earth. They had used the supplies Maeve had secreted away in their travel garb to brew a cup of coffee. That thought prompted him to turn to the young woman at his side.

“Find anything else in the area?”

“Sir?” The girl had been watching him closely, a bit confused by his initial silence.

“Anything on the perimeter of the dig site?” He was thinking that they might have uncovered evidence of the charred rocks they left in a small circle.

“There was one thing,” said the girl. “Very odd, in fact. We found an old tin cup, just there, at the lower perimeter of the dig site. It was extremely corroded and barely recognizable. Probably was left by someone a few centuries ago, because it was obviously not native to this strata on the rock formation.”

“Of course,” said Paul with an inward smile. That sealed it for him. The interns had found the very same tin cup that they had used to brew their coffee. Somehow it had managed to remain relatively intact in the dry desert climate, sleeping quietly in the limes and shale of the hill for all of sixty-five million years. He shuddered again, feeling as though he was walking on his own grave site, a resurrected ghost returning to the place where he had chatted idly with Nordhausen about the Alvarez Theory and the demise of the Dinosaurs.

“Come on, Paul! We’ve got to get moving!” The Professor was waving at him from the base of the helicopter. He could see that the rotors were beginning to turn again, and heard the whine of the engine.

“You joining us?” He smiled at the pleasant girl at his side.

“Oh, no sir. We’re taking a rover into Amman next week. The professor wants us to return the dig site to its original condition.

“I see,” said Paul. “Covering his tracks, is he? Well you’ve done a wonderful job here. This will mean a great deal to Professor Nordhausen.” He offered a brief handshake and then hurried off, listening to Robert’s animated chatter as the professor waved him on.

“Come on, Paul, stop flirting with the ladies and get in this thing before it raises a maelstrom in all this dust.”

They clambered inside the small craft, sealing out the billowing haze and quickly fastening their seat harnesses. Nordhausen gave the pilot a reassuring pat on the shoulder and the engine revved up to maximum for the takeoff.

“How heavy is it?” Paul strained to see the cables tightening to taut lines of woven steel as the chopper lifted off.

“God only knows,” said Nordhausen over the noise. “This fellow says he can haul a little over a ton, and I don’t think we’re pulling that much. Besides, we’ll be at a relatively low altitude, and the lift capability of the helo will be at its maximum.“ He leaned forward and handed the pilot something he had written on a scrap of paper. The man nodded and began fiddling with controls on his dash panel.

“What was that?” Paul was curious.

“Our heading,” said Nordhausen. “We’re going to swing out into the open desert for about twenty minutes, and then turn south by southwest at Wadi Safra. Another few hours should do the trick.”

“Do the trick? What do you mean another few hours? That will take us well beyond Amman.”

“Precisely.”

“Well, why waste the fuel? Are you sight seeing? Our plane leaves from Amman tomorrow. How do you plan to get this thing through customs?”

“You’ll see. Just leave everything to me, Paul. As a matter of fact, we’re going to fly over some of the most spectacular terrain on the globe in a few hours, so sit back and enjoy the ride. Wait until we get to Wadi Rumm—The Valley of the Moon! I hear there’s a series of natural rock formations the locals call ‘The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.’ How’s that ring to you, eh?” The professor flashed him a smile, clearly excited about his recovery of the book.

“What? Wadi Rumm is well south of Amman. Just east of Akaba.” Paul had never been there before, but he had spent hours pouring over maps of the region and he also remembered his history quite well. Lawrence often used the spectacular gorges of Wadi Rumm as a hide away during his raiding missions in 1917. He wrote about it all in the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, one of Paul’s favorite reads—particularly after his mission to the Hejaz the previous year.

“Yes, and we should be there in a little under two hours.“ Nordhausen smiled but Paul pursed his lips, suddenly suspicious.

“What are you up to, Robert?” He wished he had Maeve at hand, as she said that so much better than he could.

“Do you realize what we have, Paul? I was here last month, just before they started the extraction. The fossil is amazing! It may be one of the very few complete Ammonite fossils found anywhere—if not the only one. Why, you can even see impressions in the eye socket. It’s wonderful!”

“Yes, yes, it’s fabulous,” echoed Paul. “But what about customs? Are you telling me the Jordanians are just going to let you fly away with this thing, no questions asked?”

“Exactly,” said Nordhausen. “Why should they ask? I’m supposed to be working a wadi terrace site at Baidar. Hell, they’ve got plenty of Ammonite fossils, lots of them at Wala Mujib, not far from our dig. Why should they care about this one?”

“Are you kidding? You just said it was one of a kind. If this thing is in the pristine condition you describe, then they will damn well care about it. What’s going on here? Are you telling me you’re going to try and steal the damn thing?”

“No, not at all. We’re going to steal the damn thing! The two of us. We found it, didn’t we? Sixty five fucking million years ago, my friend! If that isn’t an argument for first rights, then what is?”

“Oh, God!” Paul put his hand on his forehead, clearly upset. It was another classic Nordhausen caper. Now, more than ever, he wished Maeve were here so the two of them could nail the professor’s ears to his head. “Are you crazy?” He burst out in frustration. “You mean to say this guy is some kind of smuggler or something?” Paul thumbed at the pilot who was oblivious of the argument heating up behind him in the passenger’s compartment.

“Something like that.” Nordhausen had a grin on his face in spite of Paul’s rising temper. “We’ll be over Wadi Safra in a minute and then we make our turn to bypass Amman. To answer your earlier question, yes. We are sight seeing—that is if we get caught for any reason. But I don’t expect much trouble. It’s just a nice little jaunt through Wadi Rumm. The place gets all sort of tourist traffic like this and, once we’re in the gorge, it’s almost impossible to track us on radar.”

“Oh, crap!” Paul was really angry now. “This isn’t the U.S., Robert. We have no civil rights in this country. If we get caught, we’ll end up in a jail cell for twenty years! How could you do this?”

“With three interns and a helicopter, that’s how.” The professor was not phased by Paul’s argument. “And a ship, of course.”

“A ship?”

“Certainly. We disappear at Wadi Rumm and stay as low to the ground as we can after that while we make the run out to the Arabesque on the Red Sea.”

“The Arabesque?”

“Wonderful name, isn’t it? I had it registered that way, but it’s officially a freighter out of Yemen.”

“And you plan on landing this thing on the deck?”

“No, I’ve got a heavy duty net all set up in the main hold. All we have to do is get over the bay and ease this baby in. Then we scramble down a rope and it’s off to Port Sudan. The Crew will get the thing in a good packing crate on the way. We’ll just tuck it away in the hold and nobody will be the wiser.”

Paul was dumbfounded. He just stared at his friend with a blank expression on his face. “Just scramble down a rope? Damnit, Robert! Do you realize the war on terror is still going on, even if we did manage to prevent the disaster on Palma. There’s a US Navy task force in the Red Sea and here we go trying to smuggle Jordanian national property onto a ship bound for Sudan! You are crazy. Certifiably insane. I think that last time jaunt was enough to scramble your brain. Maeve was absolutely right about you.”

“Oh, please. This hasn’t got anything to do with the Time Meridian. OK, I’ll admit that my trip to London was a bit out of the ordinary—”

“That’s quite an understatement. It was risky! Very dangerous—just like this little scheme. Only this time you have implicated me.”

“Serves you right. Payback’s a bitch, eh Paul?”

“Payback? What are you talking about?”

“Aren’t you the one who dragged me off to the late Cretaceous in the first place?”

“You still harping on that? Blame Kelly, not me. I had no idea we were going to end up brewing coffee on the KT boundary.”

“Yes? Well I’m holding you accountable in any case. You were in on the discovery of this thing sixty-five million years ago, and so you’re in on this now.” He folded his arms, holding his ground even if he was beginning to feel a little guilty. “Don’t worry, Paul,” he began again. “I’ve got this whole thing planned. You’ll see.”

Paul was going to say something else, but he lapsed into a sullen silence, resting his chin on his fist and turning away to look out the window. Nordhausen went on for a while, offering more assurances and revealing a few more details of his plan: they were going to slip off the freighter in Port Sudan and catch a plane that was waiting on a small airstrip north of the city. The ship would make its innocent way to Houston, and they would reclaim their prize a month later at a warehouse on the wharf.

Paul wouldn’t say a word. He kept a stony silence for some time, and that, more than anything, began to wear down the professor’s arguments. Eventually Nordhausen lapsed into silence as well, until he finally spied the tawny cathedral spikes of Wadi Rumm in the distance. Tall pillars of ochre rock thrust up from the gorge in a setting that rivaled the Four Corners region of the US, or the Grand Canyon, for its natural beauty.

“Awesome, isn’t it?” Nordhausen tried to get Paul’s mind off the situation and interest him in the towering rock formations as the chopper lowered its altitude to slip into the gorge.

Paul said nothing. He remained frozen, as flinty as the wind sculpted canyons about them until Nordhausen swallowed his pride and apologized.

“OK, I’m sorry, Paul. I realize this wasn’t fair. And I wasn’t serious with that bit about payback earlier. Kelly botched the numbers on that first mission and it wasn’t your fault. At least we found the Ammonite! Now we’ve got the damn thing, and we’ll be over the Red Sea in half an hour. That puts us in international waters and safely out of the country. With any luck we’ll be in Port Sudan tomorrow night and I’ll treat you to a wonderful dinner at this little dive near the harbor. They’ve got some of the best seafood that I’ve ever—”

“Look there!” Paul had noticed something in the distance.

“Incredible, isn’t it?” The professor was gaping at the rock formations in the gorge, pleased that he had managed to get Paul to say something after more than an hour of silent treatment, but Paul was pointing at something else.

“See that aircraft over there?” He reached down under his seat to retrieve a small pair of binoculars. He was focusing in on the sighting while Nordhausen began explaining things away again.

“Probably just a tourist flight.”

“I don’t think so…” Paul was turning the knob to get a better focus. “Looks like another helo. That’s the RJAF. Lord! Now we’re in for it!”

“What do you mean?” The professor was reaching for the binoculars. “What’s the RJAF?”

“The Royal Jordanian Air Force,” said Paul with a deflated look on his face. “I knew something like this was going to happen. I just knew it.”

2

Paul squinted through his binoculars again. “Yup, that’s a Super-Puma, if I’m not mistaken. They fly search and rescue ops for the RJAF, and probably make border patrol runs as well, particularly in an area like this where the radar signatures are blocked. Now, what do you think they’ll do with us when they catch up?”

“What makes you think they’re interested in us?”

The professor was distracted by the squawk of the gain control on the radio. The pilot was adjusting his reception and speaking in Arabic, and the modulation of his voice spoke clearly across the cultural barriers—he was nervous. A moment later he leaned back and motioned to the two men in the cabin.

“Bad news,” he said with a thick Middle Eastern accent. “Very bad. Maybe we land soon.”

“What? Land?” Nordhausen was aghast. “No we can’t land. We’ve got a precious artifact hanging from the damn undercarriage.” He shook his head and gestured to the west where they could just make out the dim haze of Red Sea. “Go that way!”

“No, No…” The Arab pilot was clearly upset. He pointed at the distant aircraft. “Air Force. We land for inspection. Very sorry. Too bad, yes?”

“Too bad, NO!” Nordhausen was adamant. He kept shaking his head. “Ship waiting!” Then he realized that it was pointless to bandy half-grown English phrases with this man. He reached forward, his fingers twitching as he gestured for the pilot to hand him the radio microphone. “Let me have that thing and I’ll sort this business out.”

The pilot was clearly annoyed, but Nordhausen had hold of the mike and he thumbed it heavily as he began to speak. “Hello there, may I be of service?” He looked at the pilot. “Does this thing have a speaker? How will I hear them?” His gestures indicated what he wanted and the pilot flipped a switch to enable the cabin PA.

“You suppose they know any English?” He looked at Paul as he squinted at the radio handset mike.

Paul rolled his eyes. “You’re in luck. A Chinese pilot can’t land in Peking without knowing English. It’s the universal language of flight everywhere on earth. But what the hell do you think you’re going to tell them? Excuse me, gentlemen, but we’re making off with a national treasure.” He mocked the professor to dig in his point.

There was a wash of static on the speaker, an then they heard a voice, speaking English, but heavily accented.

“This is the Royal Jordanian Air Force Border Patrol. Who are you? What are you doing out here? Over.”

Robert thumbed the mike switch. “Archeology team,” he began. “We’re working a permitted dig out near Bailar Ridge. It’s all been cleared through the University of Amman.”

“I thought you said we were going to be tourists,” Paul hissed, but Nordhausen shushed him.

“This is better. A good lie always needs a hint of truth in it to be believed.”

There was a long silence before the signal came back.

“You are a long way from Bailar. Are you lost? Do you need assistance? Over.”

“Lost? No, we’re well on our way. No problem at all.”

Again a silence.

“You’re supposed to say over when you finish speaking,” Paul put in.

“Be quiet and let me handle this!” Nordhausen gave him the wide eyed look he was famous for when anyone dared challenge his assertions.

“What are you carrying? Over.”

“Carrying? Oh… We’re moving supplies to a dig party in Wadi Rumm. Returning borrowed equipment.”

“You are landing soon? Over.”

“Just long enough to off load this equipment. Then we’ll be heading north to Bailar again.”

“I assume, you have filed a valid flight plan. Please read us your number. Over.”

Robert instinctively cupped his hand over the mike as if the men in the other aircraft could hear him. He rasped out a question to Paul, who couldn’t help breaking into a smile with the scene. “What does he mean by that?”

“Don’t worry, they can’t hear us until you press the send button, Robert. And what he means is this: when you fly somewhere in a small craft like this you file a flight plan. They want your plan number so they can verify you. The jig is up, my friend.”

“Shit!” Nordhausen’s charade was beginning to unravel. The voice on the other aircraft came back again, more impatient.

“I repeat: What is your flight plan number, please. Over.”

Nordhausen had a desperate look on his face. “We never filed one.” He made his confession to Paul, but was still cupping the mike handset close to his chest. Paul just folded his arms and waited, letting the professor boil in his own stew.

Robert fiddled with the mike. “I say oh… fiver… two…” he was clicking the send button on and off as he spoke to deliberately break up his transmission.

“Say again, blue helo. You are breaking up. Over.”

“Must be… damn hills… Over.” Nordhausen was going to play his game for as long as he could. “Think we can outrun that thing, Paul?”

“A Super-Puma? Not a chance. Particularly with a ton of contraband dangling from the undercarriage.”

“Speed this thing up!” Robert gave the Arab pilot a rude gesture, but the man was very upset and kept shaking his head in the negative.

“This very bad,” he said with a pleading tone. “Maybe we land now, yes?”

“Absolutely not! I’m paying you a thousand dollars for this run. So get this thing moving!”

“Blue Helo, Blue Helo. We do not copy. Say again. Over.”

The professor was very frustrated now. All his careful planning was coming to naught on this single mischance, and he knew Paul would never let him hear the end of it. It was obvious to him that the men in the other aircraft were going to crank the scenario up a notch in a moment. He needed time, but what should he do?

“Radio bad…” he shouted at the mike. “Landing soon…. Have a nice day. Over and out.”

“Landing soon?” The pilot understood what he wanted to hear in any case, and began to lower his altitude.

“See here,” Nordhausen complained. “You pay no attention to that other helo and just get us out over the Red Sea.”

“No, no, no…” The pilot was shaking his head, sweat dampening his Arabic headdress.

“Yes, yes, yes. Go that way!” Nordhausen pointed. “Fast!” He rolled his hand over and over to illustrate his point, but the pilot wanted nothing more to do with him. Robert could see the man needed other persuasion, and the professor knew just what to do. He reached into a small haversack in the side compartment and, to Paul’s amazement, produced a Glock pistol!

“Allah u akbar…” There was obvious fear in the pilot’s eyes now as Nordhausen brandished the weapon. “You go to the sea!” he pointed the way. “Hurry! Go fast! What the hell’s a Super-Puma, Paul?”

Paul was aghast. “You are crazy. What are you doing with a gun?”

“What does it look like I’m doing, for God’s sake? I’m hijacking this man’s helicopter! Now what’s a Super-Puma, and how do you make our odds of reaching the coast before that thing catches up?”

Paul clasped both hands on the sides of his head, unwilling to believe this was happening. “What’s a Super-Puma? It’s a Eurocopter—One of the Big Cats, at least that’s what they call the military version. It’s big, but relatively fast, and has a mean bite. What’s a Super-Puma? How about forward mounted search radar, torpedoes, Exocet missiles on side mounted pylons—but don’t worry about those. They’re for killing ships like the Arabesque. They’ll probably just blast the hell out of us with those two nasty rocket pods… or perhaps they’ll just fly along side and riddle us with fifty-caliber machine gun rounds from the gun mount. That’s what a Super-Puma is, Robert! Now, what are you going to do with that sidearm? You going to take pot shots at the damn thing when it realizes we aren’t responding to military orders? We’re in some deep shit, my friend. This is crazy!”

Nordhausen had a desperate look on his face. He ran his forearm over his brow as he worked the situation through. “Now what…” he breathed.

“Now what?” Paul was still firing his salvo. “Let’s see: grand theft, piracy, smuggling, hijacking, armed assault, failure to yield, and navigating without a valid flight plan. This thing started off with an infraction and has mushroomed into a life sentence for the both of us. Congratulations, professor. You’ve got your Ammonite.” He folded his arms again, sullen and angry at the fate that had overtaken them. It appeared that the other aircraft had exactly that in mind. It was getting closer, gaining on them with each passing moment.

Nordhausen was finally forced to admit his defeat. “Alright, alright. Then land the damn thing.” He looked out the window, secreting the Glock back into his satchel. To his surprise, he caught sight of a small group of men on camels in the wadi below. “There!” He shouted, grasping at this one last straw before they sank. “Land there—near that little caravan! But be careful. You have to hover and then move off to one side so we don’t hit the cargo.”

“Yes, yes…” The pilot saw where he was pointing and was only too glad to comply.

As they descended, the Jordanian Air Force unit closed on their position, still high overhead. Nordhausen tried one last trick, hoping to persuade them that their delivery run was innocuous. He spoke into the radio mike again. “All’s well, RJAF. We see our dig team below… making our delivery now… Thanks for the escort. Over.” He crossed his fingers as the pilot maneuvered to land, deftly sidestepping as he set the precious cargo down first and then jogged off to the left in a powered hover.

The wild plume of dust and haze threw a mask over the whole scene below, but Nordhausen knew he had to play his ruse out to the hilt. “OK, Paul. I’m going out to talk to those buggers. You stay here and keep this pilot company.” Then to the pilot he said: “And you wait here, yes? One thousand dollars!” he reminded him of the hefty investment he had in this excursion.

The pilot gave him a nervous grin, nodding his head in the affirmative. Nordhausen opened his door and was out of the helo, bending low as he ran toward the small string of camels. There were three men, and their animals were fitted with light packs. Two wore traditional Arab robes and headdress, but the third had a pith helmet on, and the professor thought the man looked Western in appearance. They were staring at Nordhausen with blank expressions as he approached.

Paul watched the scene unfold, amazed at the mess they had gotten themselves into. He saw how Robert played to the chopper overhead. First he strode boldly up to the man with the pith helmet and extended his hand in greeting. Then he looked up at the Jordanian Air Force chopper, waving warmly as if wishing them a fond farewell. The Puma hovered for a time, and, to Paul’s great surprise, it turned slowly away and started back up the gorge.

“Well I’ll be…”

At that moment he heard the helo engines revving up again and saw the Arab pilot pull hard on the line release handle. The primary mooring cable snaked loose with a dry metallic rattle and Paul felt the small bird begin to lift off. It was immediately clear to him that this pilot had every intention of abandoning Nordhausen and his illegal cargo, and making off while he could.

“Wait!” Paul shouted over the rising din, but the Arab pilot paid him no heed. Paul had the barest moment to decide what to do. Should he fish out the professor’s Glock pistol and become a party to the hijacking? The chopper began to move gently upward.

“Damn it, Nordhausen!” Paul swore. “I should leave you here with your Ammonite and –“ he moved on reflex, doing exactly the opposite of what his words expressed. He lunged to grab their supply satchels and squirmed out of his seat harness.

“Hold on, will you? I’m getting off too!”

The pilot was more worried about the other helicopter, looking warily over his shoulder as he began to apply more power to the engine. Paul had his door open in a second and leapt to the hot sand in a whirlwind of blowing dust. Then the small blue helo lifted up, with a final burst of power, and began to edge away from the landing site. The thrumming of its engine increased, and the craft angled quickly north. Paul hunched on the ground until the downdraft subsided. He coughed, rubbing the soot from his face and eyes as he started to struggle up onto his feet. Nordhausen was at his side in an instant.

“You idiot!” he was yelling at Paul as he pulled hard to get him on his feet. “I told you to keep an eye on that bastard!”

“No, you’re the idiot here,” Paul shot back angrily. “Did you expect me to threaten him with your pistol? The man is scared shitless. He’s lucky that Puma crew is lazy today. Maybe they were low on fuel. I just can’t imagine them leaving us without an inspection. Why, your little ruse could have just as easily been interpreted as a drug delivery or something. We should all be heading for a jail cell in Amman by now.”

“Well we aren’t. My ploy worked. They thought we were telling the truth!”

“You better hope your pilot keeps his mouth shut or the RJAF will be back here in a heartbeat. Now, what are we going to do, drag your Ammonite fossil another twenty miles to the coast, build a raft with palm fronds and float the damn thing out to your tramp steamer?”

Nordhausen was still caught between his anger and the elation he felt at escaping the scrutiny of the authorities. “That no good scorpion! I should have known better.”

“Well, it serves you right,” said Paul. “Stick a pistol in someone’s face and you generally get a bad reaction.”

Nordhausen noticed the satchels. “Good, at least you had the presence of mind to grab the supplies.” The professor was quickly transitioning in his thinking and wondering how to proceed. He had to secure the fossil first. They could easily cover it with sand to keep it from prying eyes. Then they could hitch a ride with these camelmen and—

When he turned to look for the small caravan it was gone. While the professor hurried over to Paul to drag him up from the swirling dust of the downdraft, the wayfarers had spurred their camels and loped off around the rim of a tumbled rock formation. They were gone. Nordhausen’s jaw dropped with the discovery, and he immediately shouted at the top of his lungs. The only sound that returned was the haranguing echo of his own voice resounding from the canyon walls. It was worse than anything Paul could have said. He had blown the mission completely now, and he threw his canvas hat down in disgust, settling to rest on the bundled shape of the Ammonite fossil.

The echo receded and there was nothing but the dry, hot wind to comfort them now. They were alone in Wadi Rumm, over twenty miles from the coast and obviously unwelcome guests, from the reaction of the camelmen. The irony of the moment finally struck Paul and he burst out laughing.

“What’s so damn funny?” Nordhausen was in no mood for jest.

“Well it’s just that you look exactly like you did the first time we were in this desert—sitting there on the Ammonite with a bewildered, angry expression on your face. And you’re probably wondering the same thing: how the hell are we going to get back now? Am I right?”

Nordhausen glared at him and Paul relented. “OK, we got ourselves into quite a mess here. I’ll let you off the hook. We had better do something about concealing the fossil. Then we can find shelter from this damnable sun. Thank god we have at least three days food and plenty of water in the satchels. I’d run after those camels, but I don’t think they have any intention of helping us. What a scene!” He laughed again, until Nordhausen’s sullen demeanor began to melt and a wry smile played over his features. The professor rubbed the stubble on his chin and put his hat on to shield his bald head from the searing sun.

“Let’s get started,” he said halfheartedly. There’s a couple of dig shovels on the pallet. Damn that Arab pilot! I should have stuck that pistol right up his snout!”

3

They were some time, laboring to scrape the sand away from the sides of the bundled fossil until it slowly subsided into a depression in the dunes. By the time they had heaped enough sand to conceal it, they were both tired and drenched with sweat. The heat was merciless, and they were already drawing heavily on the supply of water from the satchels.

“Thank God!” said Paul as he threw down his shovel and collapsed on the sand. “I’m exhausted.”

“No shit!” Nordhausen was breathing heavily, his shirt and canvas hat well soaked with the effort of their labors. “I think we’ve covered the damn thing well enough. Give me some water, I’m dying in this heat!”

“Take it easy,” Paul cautioned. “We only brought a few liters with us and who knows how long we’re going to be out here.”

“Don’t worry,” said Nordhausen, intent on swilling the water down. He ran a forearm over his brow and took a last swallow of water from the canteen, his eyes clearly betraying the fatigue and anxiety that had taken hold of them. The water was going to be a problem, unless they found a spring or well soon, and they had exhausted themselves with the digging. Now they had to find shelter and get out of the sun, or they would soon join their ammonite fossil for eternity, just another pair of bleached skeletons swallowed by the desert. The Professor immediately expressed his concern.

“This sun is killing me,” he breathed.

“We better head for the canyon wall,” Paul concurred. “With any luck we might find a cave or some other protected area. Then we can decide just how four or five liters of water is going to sustain us here.”

“God!” Nordhausen was finally realizing the depth of their dilemma. “I know there was a Camel Corps station built around an old fort somewhere in the area, and there are occasional Bedouins leading small tour groups. Someone will come along… but, on second thought, I don’t think we should count on help from the locals. The police ride about on camels here too, and we don’t want to attract any undue attention.”

“Right, so we’ll just wait until we’re desperate, I suppose.”

“Oh, don’t worry about the water. There are natural springs running from the rim of the canyon, and we should be able to find something soon enough. Remember? This was Lawrence’s hiding place. In fact, there was a well watered spring with a little punch bowl out on Jabal Rumm where Lawrence used to soak himself during their layovers here.” He rubbed his hands together at the thought. “Just what I need right now. Come on. Let’s find shelter and rest up until sunset. If we decide to move then we’ll have to trek it by night and sleep by day, just like Lawrence did in the movie.”

“What?”

“You know—when they crossed the Sun’s Anvil in the Nefud, on the way to Akaba.”

Paul shook his head. “Well they had camels, if you recall, and to drift off and slip from the saddle was as good as a death sentence. They knew better than to test the desert by day. Can we walk twenty miles in a single night? We’d be lucky to make one or two miles an hour in this terrain.” He paused, searching about them for a moment.

“Will you look at this place?” Paul had finally taken the time to survey their surroundings. They were in a wide valley, perhaps two miles across, and rimmed by sheer sandstone formations that seemed to thrust up from the undulating pink sand of the valley floor, like behemoths breaking through the swell of the ocean. The lower base of some formations was surrounded with a tumbled scatter of granite boulders and rock. Closer to the walls of the canyon there were more varied rock formations, well weathered, with near horizontal striations indicating their obvious sedimentary origins. The rosy sands swept up to the base of these formations, like waves washing against a ragged coastline. They gave the whole canyon the impression of a narrow bay, awash in flowing pink sand accented by lighter drifts of white that seemed to undulate along the lower terrain, like lines of frothy waves making their way to the shore. Over all, the great mass of Jabal Rumm rose to the imposing height of some 1500 feet, its sloping top lording over the canyon with a quiet regard. The valley had an eerie, awesome beauty about it, much like the Grand Canyon in Arizona, only on a smaller scale.

“Yes, this is the most beautiful location on the whole plain of Jordan,” said Nordhausen. “There’s an old fort out here somewhere, with ruins of a Nabataean Temple nearby.”

“Naba what?”

“They were an ancient people who lived in the region dating back to a thousand years BC. They built Petra, if you are familiar with that site. It was the center of a quiet little empire that had settlements hidden all through the region, with secret caches of water and a strategy of economic trade as their primary means of wielding power. This particular region was a meeting spot for caravans carrying incense from Arabia and Persia up to the King’s Road and Petra. The Nabataeans put quite a strangle hold on the Romans at one time. The temple ruins in this region probably date from that period, perhaps the 1st century BC. Tourists used to visit them, but they’ve been largely ignored in recent years. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find something interesting!”

“Something interesting? You going to try and make this an archeological dig? And what about your ship? Isn’t the Arabesque expecting us soon? I must say, Robert, this was one wild ride.” Paul shielded his eyes as he looked around. “We’re well north of the main body of the Red Sea here. If we go due west we’ll hit the Gulf of Akaba. Is that where your ship is waiting?”

“The ship? Oh, we can forget about her for the time being. The rendezvous was supposed to be taking place right now. They’ll only wait a few hours before pulling up anchor and moving on. I’m afraid our charter on the Arabesque will have to be a write-off. Looks like we’re going to miss our dinner in Port Sudan tomorrow night as well. Shit! I shelled out fifteen hundred bucks for the charter flight to Cairo.”

“Cairo?”

“We couldn’t fly out of Amman, so I got tickets from Cairo. Thought we’d take a peek at the sphinx while we were there and—“

“Stop right there.” Paul held up a warning hand. “I don’t think I can stand to hear what you had planned for that little excursion. Well, get up. We’d better get started. It’s hot as hell out here.”

“I’m losing about five thousand bucks on this fiasco,” Nordhausen continued in his complaint.

“Serves you right.” Paul rubbed a bit of salt in the wounds as they started away toward the canyon edge. “Well then how do you propose to get us home, Robert?”

Nordhausen flashed him a smile. “Akaba! We’re going to follow in Lawrence’s footsteps, my friend. It’s the only settlement with air or sea connections nearby, and I think twenty or thirty miles should get us there.”

“Akaba? That’s going to be a very hard trek.”

“Well if Old Moses could make it on his way to the Wilderness of Zin, then we should do just fine.”

They were some time making their way over the rivulets of sand and small islets of crumbling rock. With each step the imposing formations of the canyon wall grew nearer, and they made their way to a deeply cloven sector that promised good shelter and shade from the sun. They were very tired when they reached it, after little more than a mile, and Paul had great misgivings about the long trek ahead of them to Akaba. When they reached the folded face of the rock, it was clear that neither one had any intention of beginning that journey soon.

“Let’s work our way into this rock face,” Nordhausen suggested. “The further back we get the cooler it is likely to be. Some of these fissures reach into the canyon walls for hundreds of feet or more. They’ve been eroding out for millennium.”

“That way looks promising.” Paul pointed at a gaping aperture where two large rock formations met in a fragmented collision. They climbed up over the large ochre boulders at the base of the fissure, and saw that the way did indeed wind into the hillside for some distance. It was just wide enough for two to walk abreast in the beginning, but the striated walls of smooth russet stone soon began to close in on them, and they took to single file, with Paul in the lead. His thin, angular frame had little difficulty negotiating the narrower spots, though Nordhausen complained as he squeezed around a turn in the fissure, hoping it would not dead-end on them.

It was already much cooler, which was the only consolation they had from the trek thus far, apart from the spectacular scenery. It was not long before Paul noticed the fissure beginning to widen out, opening on a sand drift the led up a gentle hill to the mouth of a cave.

Nordhausen hustled up behind him and was pleased to see the yawning portal ahead of them, wreathed in shadow. “Come on then,” he said, urging Paul on. “Are you worried about bears, or bandits? We’d be lucky to find anything else alive out here for miles—aside from those bastards on the camels. I wonder who they were?”

“Probably a small touring party.”

“But that fellow I was playing to—you know, the one with the pith helmet on. He looked European.”

“Some whacky college professor on sabbatical—or out to raid the nearest archeological dig site and make off with national antiquities perhaps?” Paul flashed a smile at his companion to let him know he would not labor the issue.

“This looks like a good spot to camp for the night,” said Nordhausen.

They were inside the mouth of the cave now, a leaf shaped feature scored into the rock that climbed some fifty feet over head. The professor leaned back, staring up at the cathedral of beautifully shaped stone. Colors of amber and rusty rose swirled along the contours of the cave walls to meet in a hard line, high above them. The ground was still sandy in places, with small rocks scattered on the floor of the cave.

As the professor began to clear an area to settle in, Paul took a moment to wander about the cave, working his way deeper into the fissure until he was lost in shadow. A moment later his voice echoed in the still chamber, resonant with a hint of urgency. “Nordhausen! Come here. I’ve found something!”

The professor gave a disconsolate sigh. “What? My, God, Paul. Let’s get some food going. Get over here and stop fooling around, will you?”

“No. You’ve got to see this. It’s weird!”

Robert shook his head, but he knew his friend well enough. He would have to humor him if he wanted to get a campfire going any time soon. “All right,” he said. “But what are we eating?”

He worked his way to the back of the cave, edging around a few large rocks thrusting up from the ground. He was hungry, and tired, and in no mood for Paul’s whimsical discoveries. Oddly, there was a passage at the back of the cave that sloped down at a steep angle.

“Paul?” The professor squinted in the deepening gloom. “Where are you?”

“Down here! Come on, it’s not far. Just keep following the passage, and keep to the right.”

Nordhausen pressed on, grumbling to himself as he went and feeling his way along the smooth rock as the darkness surrounded him. It was very cool. At least he could take some comfort from that. Soon he caught a glimmer of light, and realized that Paul had a small flashlight with him up ahead. He hurried on.

“Now what in the hell are you talking about—“ he stopped short when he saw what Paul was pointing at. There was a wide pool of water ahead, shimmering with a curious green hue in the light of Paul’s flashlight. “What did I tell you!” Nordhausen was exonerated. “All the water we need. It should be nice and cool! Just what I was hoping for. Probably one of those Nabatean water caches I was talking about.”

“Guess again,” said Paul. “It’s quite warm—almost hot. There must be a hot spring under this area. The ambient air temperature couldn’t produce this heat.”

Nordhausen was at his side at last, stooping to test the temperature with his hand. “Ouch! Why didn’t you warn me?”

“You would have tested it for yourself anyway,” Paul smiled. “But the temperature is not the only odd thing. Look at this!” Paul flicked off his flashlight and the darkness surrounded them. A moment later Nordhausen was amazed to see the entire pool of water glowing softly with an eerie green luminescence.

“Very strange,” he whispered. “ Is there something in the rock here?”

“No, I think it’s bio-luminescence,” said Paul.

“Bio-luminescence? I thought that was found mainly in the deep oceans.”

“It is. But they’ve isolated some weird bacteria in surface water that has this sort of glow about it. I read some papers on this last year, in fact. There’s more.” Paul flicked on his flashlight again and leaned toward Nordhausen. He was showing him a thin medallion that he wore on a chain about his neck, and even in the yellow cone of light it, too, had a strange green glow.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a radiation dosimeter from the lab,” said Paul. “I must have forgotten to take it off before I left the hotel in Amman. Oh, don’t worry, the green indicates safe levels—not much more than you get from direct sunlight. But there is no sunlight here. So, what’s causing this?”

“Are you suggesting the water is radioactive?”

Paul flicked off the flashlight and the chamber was effused with the milky green glow again. “Something’s going on here,” he said. “I wonder if this is an Oklo reaction?”

“What the devil is an Oklo reaction?”

“It’s that paper I was telling you about. The French discovered it at a mine in Gabon, Africa. They were mining uranium at Oklo and shipping the stuff off to France when they found that one of the shipments was very depleted.”

“Depleted?”

“Yes. It had a very low concentration of the fissionable isotope U-235, and it caused quite a scare at the time. They thought someone had managed to extract the isotope illegally.”

“Extract it? From raw ore? That’s highly unlikely. They probably just got a bad shipment.”

“Not exactly,” said Paul, and Nordhausen sensed that he was about to get a physics lecture. “You see, the concentration in natural ore is always at a constant level of 0.72 percent. Nature is very cooperative in that, and it’s actually one of the key tests the Atomic Energy Security guys make on all shipments. Variation in that isotope is a safe watch principle to detect tampering.”

“So what did they find out?”

“Well, they sent a big inspection team to Gabon and scoured the Oklo site pretty good. They were convinced that something was afoot but, to their surprise, they found an odd natural process at work.”

“Natural process?”

“Yes. Uranium is soluble in water in the presence of oxygen, and they found a nice underground stream at Oklo, deep in the mine.”

“So the isotope was leeched out by the water?” Nordhausen was trying to leap ahead to the right stone as he followed Paul across the stream of his thought.

“No, it doesn’t work that way. Oh, you might get a few uranyl ions in the water, but nothing like what they found. In order to deplete the ore sample to the degree it was degraded the U-235 actually had to be consumed in some way—in a reaction!”

“How is that possible in a stream bed?” Nordhausen was not seeing the opposite shore yet.

“Bacteria!” Paul sprung the answer on him. “Some sort of algal microorganism in the water was finding a way to concentrate the uranium that did leech out of the rocks and, by God, they did their job so well that a reaction started.”

“What are you talking about? Don’t you need a reactor chamber and fuel rods and all kinds of power for that?”

“The fuel was there in the U-235, and the reactor chamber, or chambers to be more precise, were the bacteria! They concentrated the stuff and, when you get to a certain critical mass in any one place, a reaction starts—on a very low level, mind you, but very well controlled. In fact, they theorize that it might have been sustained for over a million years! Imagine that—a natural nuclear reactor providing sustained power. They measured the estimated electrical output at many kilowatts, sighed with relief that no terrorism was involved, and called the whole thing an Oklo reaction.”

“And you think this is a pool of radioactive algae?”

“Possibly.”

“Shit, there goes the drinking water—let alone the nice cool bath I was hoping for.”

Paul caught the green reflection of the pool in Nordhausen’s eyes as he spoke. “Come on,” he said, flicking the flashlight back on. “There has to be some stream feeding this pool. We’ll find other water around here if we look for it.”

It was not long before he spied a suspicious crevice deep in the throat of a side cave. It gleamed with a sheen of water that seemed to be oozing down from the ceiling of the cave.

“Probably a sink or punch bowl up there somewhere that has been collecting rainwater. I’ll bet our stream is on the other side of this gash. Here—hold the flashlight while I squeeze through.”

“Well, be careful,” Nordhausen warned him. “Suppose that leads into some deep underground aquifer of irradiated water! Now that I think of it, that might be just the thing to straighten you out.”

“Very funny,” said Paul. He was already up onto a low ledge and working his way into the glistening wet fissure.”

“Hold on,” said Nordhausen. “You’ll need a canteen if you find anything. Give me a second to fetch one. Do you think you can stand a moment here in the dark? I’ll need the flashlight to find my way back to our campsite.”

Paul was already through the crack, but he stuck his face out with a wry smile. “Well, get moving! I think your canteen will do quite nicely. You’ve practically emptied the thing on the walk in.”

“Right,” said Nordhausen. “I’ll just be a moment,” and he started off, the glowing beam of the flashlight wiggling away with him in the dark.

The professor had only been gone a few minutes when Paul noticed a faint green sheen emanating from the darkness ahead of him. As his eyes adjusted he could see that the same eerie phosphorescence was present here, and the fissure had simply opened to another deep hollow of the cave they were in. He thought he heard the faint sound of running water ahead, though the noise had an odd, distended timbre, as though coming from a great distance away. His curiosity led him forward a few steps. The sound increased with each halting footfall, and he suddenly caught the cool, moist flow of an updraft.

He leaned into it, relieved to feel the chill of the air on his body yet a bit surprised that a hot artesian spring would generate such a cool updraft. Wait until Robert feels this, he thought. It was obvious why the Arabs used this as a hiding place throughout their history. I wonder why no one ever documented this. Look how it glows. Natural underground air conditioning and lighting. What a find!

He was so elated with his discovery that he failed to see the chasm that was just underfoot. His next step dangled for a heart throbbing moment, looking for firm ground. Then he suddenly found himself plunging over the edge of a shadowy precipice in a convulsion of fear and anxiety.

He was falling. In a flash his mind leapt ahead to the image of an agonizing death on jagged rocks. The adrenaline animated his lanky frame and limbs in a fitful clawing motion as he plummeted into the depths, amazed at the prickly feeling that raised goose bumps on his flesh. There was a strange sensation—icy cold, and the milky green glow on the chasm walls rushed by in a dizzying wash of light. So this is what it’s like to die, he thought. A wave of nausea overcame him and he closed his eyes in terror, dreading the moment when his body would smash into the rocky bottom. And then he was amazed to feel the hard slap and splash of cold water when he plunged into a deep underground pool, terrified, yet alive and unharmed.