Cibola

Chapter 26

“Get as close as you can!” the Elder shouted over the whir of the rotors. He looked down at the surface of Angel’s Landing, taking in every detail. There was no sign of his people or Bonebrake. They must have found the way in. Where was it?

“The wind has picked up.” The pilot looked nervously at the roiling black clouds sweeping toward them. “And I think it’s only going to get worse. Are you sure you want me to leave you here?”

“You have your instructions.” The Elder grimaced as fat raindrops spattered the windscreen. “I will contact you when you are needed. In any event, I want you out of here before the local authorities are notified of our presence. Hopefully this storm is keeping people inside and you won’t be seen at all.”

“Yes, Elder.” The pilot grimaced and took them down. Strong winds buffeted the craft.

“Hold it steady,” the Elder said. The rocky peak seemed to grow larger as they hovered lower and lower, until they were almost touching.

“Now!” the pilot shouted.

The Elder leaped out, followed by twelve handpicked men, all armed with Kalashnikov RPK 74M light machine guns. It was perhaps overkill, but he was finished allowing Maddock and Bonebrake to make a fool of him. First it had been the call from Bradley, gravely injured, telling him that Bonebrake had killed three of Bradley’s men and escaped in their car. That made the second time the Indian had managed to steal a vehicle out from under the nose of the Dominion. Unable to contact Jarren, the Elder had then called that fool Ryan, who pretended everything was all right before finally admitting he had been instructed to find an artifact among Saul’s possessions. Apparently he had held something back from Ihara, and now she, Jarren, and their party were apparently lacking critical clues to the treasure. It had taken a simple hacking of Saul’s e-mail to confirm it, and to obtain the translation of the missing clue. The icing on the cake had been when Jedediah reported seeing a man and woman matching the descriptions of Bonebrake and Barnes climbing the trail to Angel’s Landing. Of course, he had made no effort to stop them. The Elder had given Ryan the task of killing Jedediah. A fitting punishment for them both, as Jedediah and Ryan were brothers. Then the Elder had killed Ryan. Ihara had supposedly taken care of Maddock, but he no longer believed it. Too much had gone wrong to trust in any of his underlings anymore.

A jagged fork of lightning sizzled through the air much too close for comfort, and a deafening thunderclap seem to shake the very stone upon which they stood. He turned and waved his arm at the pilot, who gave him the thumbs-up and maneuvered the craft up and away. The helicopter had almost cleared the peak when the world was ripped apart. A blinding flash, and an explosion as lightning shattered a dying pine at the cliff’s edge. The helicopter, already heeling over from the heavy wind, was directly in the path of the explosion. Chunks of tree tore through the spinning rotors, shattering the blades and sending shrapnel hurtling out in all directions. One of the deadly missiles cleanly decapitated Reuben, who was standing next to the Elder, but he did not notice; he was watching his helicopter tumble over the edge of the cliff and out of sight.

Rage boiled inside him, but he was its master. He stared for a moment at the empty space where the craft had been, listening for the explosion as it hit bottom. The fiery fate of the craft seared his determination. He would succeed where the others had failed.

Dane clambered up out of the tunnel into a warm, dark chamber. A strong animal odor immediately assaulted him. It was a heavy, oppressive smell, like that of a great cat. He shone his light around the cavern. It was oval in shape, with many ledges, crevasses, and overhangs cratering the walls. A steady stream of water poured down from a crack in the ceiling above, pooling in a circular indentation in the stone floor, likely created by centuries of falling water. All around him was the smell of wild animal.

He inspected the chamber, finding small bones, mostly those of fish or snakes, and lots of scat. The droppings were long and cylindrical, and tapered at the ends like that of a wolf or mountain lion, but free of the bits of fur you would expect to see from an animal that ate deer and small rodents. He didn’t know what these creatures were, but he had found their lair.

An angry snarl filled the cavern, and he whirled around to see three beasts out of a nightmare come hurtling out of one of the crevasses. He opened fire with his Walther, bringing down the creature in the lead. The other two beasts kept coming.

He leapt up onto a nearby ledge, turned, and pumped three more rounds into the second creature. Another shot went wild, and the third beast was scrambling up onto the ledge. Dane kicked him twice in the snout, sending him tumbling back to the ground. As it crouched, ready to spring, he put a bullet between its eyes.

He leapt down from the ledge and dashed toward the only tunnel that looked large enough for him to pass through. He hadn’t gone ten steps when another of the beasts came hurtling down the tunnel right at him. He stopped and squeezed off three shots before bringing it down. Five bullets left in the clip. Jade had hurried him out of the hotel so quickly that morning that he hadn’t even thought to grab any reloads.

The tunnel opened up into a yawing cavern. A stone bridge no more than three paces wide spanned the depths. Dane didn’t spare a glance at the darkness below, but dashed across, keeping his light on the ground in front of him.

He was halfway across when he again heard the snarling sound that told him the beasts were coming again. One burst out of the darkness ahead, and he fired once, twice, but the creature kept coming. A third shot and it fell mere yards from him. He had no time to breathe a sigh of relief because now the sound was behind him. He whirled about, bringing his Walther to bear.

The creature was hurtling through the air, its gleaming white fangs shining in the darkness. He fell backward, firing as he went down. The beast hurtled past him, regained its feet, and leapt again.

Dane regained his feet, and as the monster flew toward him, he let his Walther fall to the ground and struck out with his open hand, catching it below its snapping jaws, striking in the throat with all his might. Sharp claws raked his shoulder and he caught a whiff of fetid breath as he knocked it back. Before it could spring again, he kicked it hard in the side with both feet, sending it tumbling over the edge and into the darkness.

He allowed himself only a moment to recover and holster his empty Walther before regaining his feet and continuing along the path. Whatever lay ahead, he would have to meet it with his bare hands.

“What’s our next clue?” Bones stood in the center of the pit, directly atop Fray Marcos’s symbol, letting his light play across the faces of the gargoyles. He couldn’t help but be amused at the way the moving shadows seemed to make them come to life.

“If you’ll stop playing for a minute, I’ll tell you,” Amanda said. “Under the stairs in the pit.” She turned and shone her light back toward the stairs they had just descended. “Under the stairs…”

“This is the other clue Jade doesn’t have,” Bones said. “If she made it this far, she probably went down that passageway over there, which means we’re ahead of her.” He inclined his head toward the tunnel on the other side of the pit. There was no way of knowing whether or not any of Jade’s party had survived the cave-in, but he held out hope that Maddock was alive and well, and somewhere in this warren of dark tunnels.

“I just don’t see anything ‘under’ the stairs,” Amanda said. “They hug the edge of the pit. It’s just solid stone. Maybe one of the steps comes up, or something.”

“Could be,” Bones said. He decided they should take the systematic approach. “Tell you what. We’ll start at the bottom. You check each step, I’ll work my way along the wall.”

The steps had been carved into the natural rock, and everything about them seemed solid. He ran his hand across the smooth surface, seeking an imperfection, a recessed area, anything that would indicate a doorway. He was just beginning to think they were in for a long day when his light fell on a sight they had somehow missed.

“Amanda, get down here!” Her hurried footsteps padded down the heavy stone, and she was at his side in seconds. “I was so busy checking out the gargoyles that I didn’t notice it.”

“Fray Marcos’s symbol,” she breathed. “Do you think…?”

“It’s got to be.” He said. “The entrance to this place was under the tenth step. The symbol here is…”

“Under the tenth step!” She squeezed his arm with delight. “I wonder why ten and not seven?”

“Who cares? Let’s go.”

The clover outline was carved in shallow relief, but the cross in the center was cut deep. A closer look revealed a thin circle two feet in diameter encompassing the symbol. Bones slipped his fingers into the grooves of the cross and twisted. Nothing. He tried again. Still nothing.

“Maybe counterclockwise?” Amanda suggested.

“What am I thinking?” he muttered. “Righty tighty; lefty loosey.” He changed his grip and heaved with all his might. The stone moved an inch, then another, and slowly began to turn until it had rotated ninety degrees and then stopped. Bones kept pushing, but to no avail. He stepped away from the wall, about to try out some of Crazy Charlie’s favorite Cherokee curse words, when a hissing sound filled the pit and the stone shot back into the wall with a pop like a champagne cork.

“They hermetically sealed it!” Amanda whispered. “You must have broken the seal and the suction pulled the stone through.”

“Glad I wasn’t still holding on,” Bones said, imagining tumbling down a dark tunnel with his fingers stuck in the disc like a drunken bowler on ten cent beer night. He shone his light through the hole and saw another set of stairs leading down into more blackness. He went headfirst through the opening, with Amanda close behind. From somewhere down below, a sound came like a whisper but, as they drew closer, grew to a roaring crescendo. Water. As they continued their descent, a hazy, green glow emerged in the distance, first as a fuzzy pinpoint of light, growing to an arched doorway ten feet tall.

They stepped out onto a walkway running above an underground river cutting through an oval-shaped cavern. Shining bands of green twisted in irregular paths through the natural rock all around them, giving the entire chamber an ethereal glow.

“What’s making it glow like that?” Bones asked. “It’s nothing biological; it’s in the rock.” He knelt to get a closer look at one of the glowing streaks. “Radiation?”

“Radioactive material doesn’t typically glow,” Amanda said. “But sometimes radiation can cause other minerals to glow. I wrote an article on it once.” She stood and took his hand as they paused, admiring the sight.

On the far end, water poured out of a clover-shaped opening forty feet up the wall, and tumbled over a series of seven terraces before emptying into the channel that flowed beneath them. The walkway on which they stood ran directly down the middle of the channel, ending at the seven-terraced waterfall.

“Where is all this water coming from?” Amanda asked.

“We’re pretty far below ground level,” Bones said, consulting his Pathfinder. “I suppose some sort of underground stream runs through here.”

“Well, this fits, at least. I think the next two clues go together,” Amanda said, taking out her notes. “’On the third terrace in the cave on the eastern side inside the waterfall.’ Looks like we’re going to get wet.”

“And to think I didn’t even bring my umbrella,” Bones said. “Who’d have thought we’d need one down here?”

From the stairwell behind them a cold voice spoke.

“I wouldn’t worry about that. You won’t be needing it.”