“Something you want to share with the group?” Tim asked.
“It’s stone,” Nate said excitedly. “Paving stones. This is a walkway, a street. It’s engineered. Constructed.”
“Meaning?” Tim asked. Nate stared up at the group, a look of awe on his face.
“Meaning,” Nate said, “there might be a city down here.”
Novikov slowly got to his feet and dusted himself off, glad that he had sent men forward and held back with the rest. He had not expected an explosion, let alone one of such magnitude. He’d lost several men, but that was the least of his concerns at this point. A sinkhole had opened and begun swallowing the land at an alarming rate. He led his group of men back to the vehicles and they pulled off a safe distance until the ground stopped falling away.
The sandstorm still raged outside, making the task more difficult, but they were able to monitor the situation until he deemed it safe to return to the area. When they did, what they found was truly amazing. Novikov stared down into a gaping hole that must have been the size of several soccer fields. Several hundred feet below he could make out the sparkle of water.
This was exactly what he had been sent here to stop, he thought to himself. His employers did not want the existence of this water getting out. They had discovered it months ago while drilling for oil. It was an illegal survey operation, and the company hadn’t informed the Saudi government that they were conducting probing research before purchasing oil rights. When they found water, they immediately recognized the significance of it and sought to prevent that information from being releasedto the world. The Saudi government would never entertain selling the land for oil rights if they knew a massive underground river existed.
But what they had found during the probe was smaller, not a whole sea, which is what it appeared like to him now as he stared at an unending surface of water. It was an amazing sight, and a stark contrast to the desolate desert landscape that he now stood upon.
But he wasn’t here to gaze at contrasting marvels of nature. Nor was he meant to question the actions or motives of his employer. He had a job to do, which was to ensure that Wilde and his entire expedition were dead. It was possible that the sinkhole created by the blast had taken care of them as well, although he couldn’t guarantee it. His men had swept the surrounding area and found no traces, so it was likely they fell into the hole as the terrain collapsed in on itself.
But if there was even a chance that they survived, he had to check. He couldn’t go back to the ones who wrote his checks with that type of uncertainty, and so he ordered his men to bring the trucks up to the edge and use the winches to lower lines down. They would rappel in and check out the scene below.
The men did as instructed, carefully walking in front of the vehicles to ensure the ground would support the weight. They attached climbing ropes to the winches and sent lines down into the abyss. Swiss seats were made to support their weight as they used the lines to test the depths of the cave, and chem lights and powerful flashlights were used to illuminate the way down.
Novikov geared up alongside them. He would set the example and show the men they had nothing to fear. And if Wilde was still alive somewhere down there, he would find him and gut him like a fish.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
A city?” Tim asked. “You mean Ubar?”
“Maybe,” Nate murmured. He dusted off several stones and was intensely fixated on them. There was something familiar about the construction, but he was having difficulty reconciling the anachronistic paradox in his mind.
“What is it?” Ana asked, coming up behind him.
“Look at the construction of this road,” he said incredulously. “It appears almost Roman in design.”
“Maybe they shared technology,” Wally offered. “You did say the city would have been a melting pot for different cultures.”
“Sure,” Nate said. “But there’s no references to the city in Roman history, and they kept meticulous records. It’s likely the city may have fallen out of existence before the Roman Empire was even created.”
“So you’re saying that someone else beat the Romans to discovering advanced roadway construction?” Ana asked.
“Or the Romans inherited it from them,” Nate responded absently, lost in thought.
“What makes you say that?” Tim asked.
“The first Roman roads were built around three hundred BCE. Everything points to Ubar as having been much older.” Nate pointed at the cracks between the paving stones. “Do you see the seams here? The Romans built roads in much the same way we build patios today. Large stone slabs calledsummum dorsumwere set into a base layer of concrete. That’s what you see between the stones. Underneath were several layers of sand and gravel calledrudus, and then the base layer of foundation stones, orstatumen.”
The group took a closer look at the road as he pointed to a section that was missing a paving stone. “You can see on the damaged portions therudus, which in Rome was a layer of rubble bound with lime mortar. Rudimentary forms of concrete were used back in ancient Egypt around three thousand BCE, mostly a mix of gypsum and lime. But the Romans were the first recorded to use something close to what we’d call modern cement.”
“Until now,” Tim concluded.
“Right,” Nate conceded. “There’s so much history that’s been lost over time. The Romans were able to build wonders like the Colosseum and the Pantheon using concrete. If a city like this had access to similar technology, there’s no telling the things they could have accomplished.”
“Well, all roads leadsomewhere, don’t they?” Tim asked. Nate smiled. The old saying wentAll roads lead to Rome. Perhaps this road led somewhere different.
“You’re right,” Nate replied, and traced the stone road back the way they had come. It led into the water. Just below the surface the water was clear enough to show the stones without the presence of dirt on them. Wally came forward and clicked on a flashlight, handing it to him.
“Nate,” Wally said, tapping him on the shoulder and pointing into the water. “Look.”
The angle they swam in on must have caused them to miss it entirely, but as he shone the flashlight out over the water, he could make out columns rising above the surface. They were interspersed every twenty feet or so on either side of the road, and ran at a downward slope before disappearing entirely.
