The cave-dwelling citizens had worshipped deities who had been vanquished long ago, their names now forgotten, their effigies defaced. It had been a trading post, selling its principal resource, fresh water, which came from frequent flash floods and was husbanded in a network of dams and cisterns. In centuries past, Petra had been home to thousands. The cold desert wind sidled through the crags and canyons of the abandoned city, never louder than a sigh. ''That's just what I'm trying not to think.'' ''Aye, but if it is,'' McAllister said, finishing his sentence, ''they have us in the ideal spot for an ambush.'' ''This can't be a trap,'' David said to Sergeant McAllister. They aimed their weapons in the direction an attack was most likely to come from, should one come: above. The paratroopers broke off into small units and found what cover they could in this smooth-bottomed natural amphitheatre. Sergeant Mal McAllister, his number two, relayed the order. He gave the order to his men to fan out in a defensive formation. On the steps of the Treasury, Lieutenant David Westwynter lowered his lance and checked his watch. Essentially a decorated cave mouth, it exuded a dusty silence, the breath of the ancient darkness within. Its colonnaded and porticoed entrance towered before the soldiers. ![]() Directly ahead lay the rendezvous point, a Romanesque temple hewn out of the face of a sandstone cliff and known as Al Khazneh, ''the Treasury''. Each man held his ibis-headed ba lance at the ready, reassured by the warmth he could feel through the handgrips, the charge of divine essence that glowed within the weapon. The path sloped steeply, uneven underfoot. The paratroopers moved carefully, wide-eyed in the near-total darkness of the gorge. ![]() Above, the sky was a distant strip of starshine, a glittering river meandering between black banks. In places it was so narrow they could barely walk two abreast. They filed through the Siq, Petra's eastern gateway, a sheer-sided gorge hacked out by a long-ago earthquake and smoothed by water erosion. Within minutes their chutes were buried and they were jogging towards Mount Hor and the dead city that nestled in its shadow, Petra. The twenty men turned into the wind and dropped to the desert floor as silently as thistle seeds, each making a perfect five-point landing. Night stretched itself over the eastern Arabian desert, the light from a clear full moon creating a finely filigreed landscape of silver and black.Īt an altitude of 1,000 feet a twin-engine Griffon-3 transporter plane released a stick of paratroopers in alternating door technique, ten on either side. The sun went down like a tin duck at a shooting gallery. Series: Age of Gods The Age of Ra James Lovegrove
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