“Ana, wake up,” he said. “Ana?”
Ana opened her eyes and took a second to grasp her bearings. When she finally focused on Nate’s face, she smiled. “Hey, stranger,” she said, and sat up.
“Easy,” Nate cautioned, but she ignored him.
Her eyes transitioned from Nate to their surroundings beyond him, and her expression morphed into one of disbelief. Nate followed her gaze and had the same startled reaction, his eyes widening in bewilderment. The hole in the ceiling was growing ever bigger, gobbling up the land above as sand streamed down into the cavern. The distance to the opening must have been at least five hundred feet. They were fortunate to have ridden down along a sloped angle, as a straight fall likely would have killed them. He looked off into the distance, and even in the growing light he couldn’t see an end to the cave, merely more water. The cavern must have been more than a mile wide, and he couldn’t even speculate at the length.
“This is amazing,” Ana said, her big brown eyes even larger as they drank in the subterranean structure.
“It sure is something,” Nate agreed, scanning the area.
“The largest-known cave in the world is Son Doong in Vietnam. It’s two hundred meters high, one hundred fifty meters wide, and nine kilometers long. But this… it easily beats Son Doong in width and height. I can only imagine the length.” Ana continued to stare in wonderment, climbing unsteadily to her feet. Nate put out a hand to help her balance.
“It’s not only an underground river system. There’s a whole underground lake down here,” he said.
Ana leaned down, scooped up some of the water, and took a small sip. “It’s fresh! The underground river serves as an aquifer, cleansing thewater before it’s deposited here. Then the coral limestone must create a natural cistern.”
“Could this have supplied a city of tens of thousands of people?” Nate asked.
“Depends on the depth, but it’s likely,” Ana said. “Today, this could provide a significant water source for the Saudis. The amount of fresh water down here could be used to transform the entire region from a wasteland into an agricultural hub.”
“Amazing,” Nate marveled, his breath coming out as a cloud of vapor and hanging in the cool subterranean air.
“I don’t suppose you guys saw anybody else on the way over?” Tim asked, snapping Nate back to the present.
“No,” Nate answered. “But if we all landed here, they can’t be far.” They were all combat divers and were all skilled in the water, so he had no doubt they would have survived, so long as they weren’t knocked unconscious like Ana.
The hole continued to grow, lighting up more of the cavern as it did so. Off in the distance another cropping of land slowly materialized out of the darkness that appeared significantly larger than the one they were standing on.
“Over there,” Nate pointed. It was about five hundred meters away. Tim nodded.
“Let’s go check it out.”
Nate turned to Ana. “Are you up for a little swim?” She shivered briefly but nodded.
Doing a quick pat down, Nate was amazed to find that both his knife and the pistol remained on his person, but his rifle was long gone. A quick glance at his friend told him that Tim was completely unarmed.
“Let’s be cautious,” he said. “I’ve got John’s Glock, but we don’t know how many of those soldiers fell down here with us.”
The three of them waded into the cold water until the bottom fell away beneath them, then began swimming toward the shoreline. It took nearly fifteen minutes to reach their destination and they approached cautiously, lying in the surf and listening for any sounds of danger. Nate shivered in the frigid water, and he was certain that Ana must be freezing, though she said nothing. Satisfied that there was no overt threat, the three of them came ashore.
“Wally! Shane!” Tim hissed in a voice barely above a whisper. At first there was nothing, and he repeated the call several times.
Eventually a whisper returned from close by. “Here!”
They followed the sound to a small ditch several meters away. Wally and Shane were lying in it, and they trained rifles on them as they approached, Shane holding a Mosin-Nagant and Wally an AK-47, which he propped up on his medical bag.
“We thought you guys were dead,” Nate said as they lowered their weapons.
“Ditto,” Shane replied. “Where the hell are we?”
“According to Ana, the largest cave in the world,” Tim replied.
“Cool,” Shane said. “So how do we get out?”
Nate pondered the question. The landmass they were on appeared to continue running what he assumed was north, and he wondered if it might not lead them to a solution. The ground here was different than where they had just come from, not slippery rock like it was part of the cave. Rather, it seemed like solid ground, dirt covering a hard surface beneath. Nate looked up at the hole hundreds of feet above them. Sand was still pouring through, not whole pieces of earth.How had this gotten here?
He reached down with his hand and gently brushed some of the dirt and sand away. Very quickly, his fingers found an edge, followed by another. He squatted down and began furiously moving dirt aroundwith both hands, exposing the edges. The rest of them stared at him as if he were losing his mind.
