Our driver Giora inches tentatively into the gloom. Three minutes. Five. How long can Manning’s engine run at these temperatures without coolant? How long can Manning and Rachel keep functioning before they go into heat shock?

Ben-David and I can see Manning and Rachel in snatches, half depixelated on the dash tablet.

Suddenly Manning’s head lurches wildly out of the frame.

The Humvee’s cab upends.

MANNING

Quicksand!

Manning and Rachel are lifted out of their seats and pressed against the overhead. The cab rotates ninety degrees onto its side. We hear steel bolts snapping. Manning and Rachel are flung powerfully into the windshield.

The Humvee stops with a violent wrench. Manning and Rachel rebound off the dash and windshield.

In Ben-David’s cab, a red light starts to flash on the tablet screen linked to Manning’s Humvee. An automated voice repeats:

AUTOMATED VOICE

MAYDAY! MAYDAY! All stations, MAYDAY!

The Humvee has stopped on its side.

ME

Manning! Manning, can you hear me?

I’m bawling into the mike on the convoy system and into my own phone.

No response.

The gun turret behind and above Manning and Rachel bangs open with a thunderous clang. Rachel, hanging on to the steering wheel with both hands, barely keeps herself from being flung rightward over the center console. Manning in the passenger seat is bowled sideways into the armored window of the starboard door.

The Humvee is pinned at the foot of a collapsing dune. The right-hand door is buried against tons of sand, the driver’s door submerged beneath the dune caving in from above. Rachel struggles against its subsiding weight.

Manning manages to clamber over the high, boxy console. He squeezes his body between Rachel and the steering wheel, seating his shoulders against the door. Planting both soles against the console’s left inboard edge, he pushes upward against the doorframe with all his strength.

A weight of tons presses from above.

No hope.

Manning falls back.

Sand pours into the cabin through the open hatch of the gun turret. For moments Manning and Rachel struggle to climb over the seatbacks, seeking the last avenue of escape—through the opening of the turret.

The collapsing dune seals this.

Darkness. I keep calling Manning’s name. A flashlight switches on. The interior of the Humvee’s cab is sealed like a tomb. INT TEMP 145°.

RACHEL

We’re going to die here.

Manning lets himself topple rightward and down, onto the passenger-side doorframe, which has become the vehicle’s floor.

In Ben-David’s cab I can see Manning, illuminated by Rachel’s flashlight, groping across the instrument panel. At once the Mayday call shuts down.

MANNING

(from comm channel)

Amos . . . Dewey, if you can hear me . . . do NOT attempt rescue. I say again . . . DO NOT enter this section of ground. It’s unstable. Our vehicle has plunged into a sinkhole. A dune has collapsed on top of us.

Manning instructs me, at all costs, to get Ben-David to Gehenna.