The Devil Colony

Chapter 25

“What you’re doing violates both state and federal law,” Nancy Tso said.

Painter ignored her threat as he used a dagger to dig out the last of the mortar that sealed the slab of sandstone over the blowhole.

Nancy Tso stood, fists on her hips, at the edge of the field of petroglyphs carved into the chasm floor. Kowalski guarded her, holding the ranger’s pistol in his hand. Earlier, he’d relieved the woman of her sidearm before she knew what was happening.

“I’m sorry, Nancy,” Hank Kanosh said. “We’re trying to be as careful as we can.”

Proving this, Hank picked out a broken chunk of mortar from the spiral artwork on the slab, flicked it clear, and gently brushed fine sand from the moon-and-star symbol in the center.

Kawtch sniffed after the tossed bit of mortar, as if this were a game.

Painter continued to scrape and dig, sweating under the sun, his exposed neck burning. After another five minutes, the plate began to vibrate under his palm.

Hank felt it, too. “You must’ve gotten it loose. The air blowing up from below is starting to rock the slab.”

Painter agreed. He worked around the edges, on his knees, and searched until he found a decent-sized gap where he could wedge the knife blade under the rock’s lip. The block’s edges angled inward, like a rubber stopper. He pushed down on the dagger’s hilt and pried the stone up slightly. It was about four inches thick, too heavy for Hank to lift on his own.

He lowered it and waved to Kowalski. “Give me a hand with this.”

“What about her?” Kowalski thumbed toward the park ranger.

Painter sat back on his heels. He needed the woman’s cooperation, which meant he needed to be honest with her, to let her know the gravity of the situation. “Ranger Tso, I’m sure you’ve heard about the volcanic eruptions up in Utah and over in Iceland.”

The angry creases around Nancy’s eyes and the hard set to her mouth did not relax. She just glared at him.

“What we’re searching for here is related to both of those disasters. Many people have died, and many more will die, too, unless we get answers. Answers that may lie below.”

She shook her head, scoffing. “What are you talking about?”

Hank answered, “The Anasazi. We happen to have evidence that the volcanic activity today is directly related to the destruction that gave rise to the Sunset Crater and the annihilation of the Anasazi in the area. I can’t go into much further detail, except that the symbols we showed you — the moon and star carved into the slab’s petroglyph — are clues to that tragedy.”

“If we’re going to save lives,” Painter pressed, “we have to keep moving.”

She stared from Painter to Hank and back again. Finally, she sighed, the deep creases fading — somewhat. “I’ll give you both a little latitude. For now. But be careful.” She held out her hand toward Kowalski. “Can I have my weapon back?”

Painter studied her, reading her body language, trying to judge if this was a ruse to regain her pistol. She seemed sincere, but ultimately they couldn’t keep watching their backs.

“Do it,” he instructed Kowalski.

Kowalski looked like he was going to refuse, but he finally flipped the gun around and offered the grip to the ranger. She took the weapon, held it for a long moment as they all waited, then promptly holstered it.

She waved Kowalski forward. “C’mon. I’ll help you.”

With Painter prying the stone up, it took all three to grip the exposed edge and pull the stone cork out of its hole. Balancing the slab up on its edge, Kowalski rolled it to the chasm wall and leaned it there.

“Satisfied?” he asked Nancy, brushing his hands on his pants.

She refused to respond and turned to the hole. Painter fished out a flashlight from his pack and pointed it down. The beam illuminated a wide shaft, angled steeply as it dropped away.

“They’re steps,” she said, awed.

Steps was a generous term. Carved into the rock were distinct footholds, not much larger than would hold a toe or heel. Still, it was better than nothing. They wouldn’t need ropes.

Kowalski joined them, leaning over the opening. “Phew.” He waved a hand in front of his face. “Stinks.”

Hank nodded. “Sulfur. And warm. Unusual for a blowhole.”

Must be some geothermal activity below…

A disconcerting thought, but they had no choice except to continue.

He turned to Nancy. “Would you mind waiting here? If we’re not out within two hours, radio for help.”

She nodded.

“But please give us those two hours,” he stressed, fearing that as soon as they were gone, she’d call her friends at the park service.

“I gave you my word,” she said. “I’ll keep it.”

With his tail tucked between his legs, Kawtch backed away from the hole. The smell and strangeness must have spooked the dog. Painter couldn’t blame him.

Hank held out his dog leash toward the ranger. “Could you keep an eye on Kawtch, too, while you wait?”

“I don’t think I have much choice. He’s not going down there. Probably the smartest of all of us.”

With matters settled, Painter made a quick call to Sigma command, letting Kat and Lisa know the situation here. Once this was done, he ducked and climbed down into the passageway, careful to plant the heel of his boot into each carved hold. He didn’t want to go sliding down to oblivion. He led the way, pointing his flashlight. Kowalski manned the rear with another light.

The tunnel continued down a long way. After several minutes, the hole to the surface shrank to a tiny sunlit dot far behind them. Ahead, the way grew hotter, the air more foul. Painter’s eyes and nostrils burned, an unpleasant sensation that was only exacerbated by the steady wind blowing in his face. He didn’t know how much farther they could go before they’d have to turn back.

“We must be deep beneath the mesa,” Hank estimated. “At least a hundred feet. Feel the walls. The rock has changed from sandstone to the limestone that underlies most of the Colorado Plateau here.”

Painter had noted the change, too. How far down does this go?

Kowalski must have wondered the same. He sucked loudly on the tube to his water pouch, then spat it out and swore. “If we come across a guy with hooves, carrying a pitchfork, we haul ass out of here, right?”

“Or even sooner than that,” Hank said, coughing on the bad air.

Still, Painter trudged onward, until a steady hissing and gentle roaring reached his ears. The beam of his light revealed an end to the tunnel.

Finally.

“Something up ahead,” he warned.

He continued more cautiously, crossing the last few yards, and pushed out into a cavity that was both wondrous and terrifying in its beauty. He moved out of the way so that the others could join him.

Kowalski swore as he stepped out.

Hank covered his mouth, offering up a small, “Dear God…”

The tunnel emptied into a large cavern, tall enough to house a five-story apartment building. Overhead, the roof was perfectly domed, as if the chamber had been formed out of a bubble in the limestone. Only this bubble had cracked long ago.

To the left, a wide fracture high up the wall allowed a river to gush forth, pouring down into the cavern in a turgid fall — but it was not a river of water. From the crack, black mud boiled and flowed, popping and spewing a sulfurous steam, as it ran thickly downward. It pooled into a great lake that filled half of the cavern, fed additionally from a dozen trickles weeping out of smaller fissures in the wall. The pool then emptied into a gorge that split the cavern. Down that chasm, a river of seething mud, bubbling and roiling, swept past, until it vanished down a dark gullet on the far side.

“Amazing,” Hank said. “An underground river of mud. This must be one of the geothermal arteries flowing all the way through the Colorado Plateau from the San Francisco range of volcanic peaks.”

But they weren’t the first ones to discover this giant artery.

An arched bridge, built of long, narrow slabs of sandstone, all mortared together, spanned the steaming gorge. The pattern and design were readily identifiable as the handiwork of the ancient Pueblo Indians.

“How did anyone build that down here?” Kowalski asked.

Hank answered, “The old tribes of this region were phenomenal engineers, capable of constructing extensive and complex homes halfway up sheer cliffs. This bridge would be easy for them to make. Still, they must have hand-carried each of those thin slabs down here.”

The professor’s eyes went glassy — either from the sting in the air or from imagining such an engineering feat. Hank moved forward. A jumble of broken rock littered the cavern floor, but some ancient hand had cleared a path to the bridge long ago.

Painter followed, knowing the professor’s goal. A similar path threaded from the far side of the span to a tunnel opening in the opposite wall. It seemed that their journey through this subterranean world wasn’t over yet.

As they approached the bridge, the heat spiked to a blistering degree. The air grew nearly impossible to breathe as its sulfur content swelled. The only reason they’d made it this far was that the continuing breeze sweeping through the cavern flushed the worst of the toxins up the shaft behind them.

“Do you think it’s safe to cross?” Kowalski asked, hanging back with Hank, who looked equally uneasy.

“This bridge has stood here for centuries,” Painter said, “but I’ll go first. Alone. If it looks okay, I’ll have you follow one at a time.”

“Be careful,” Hank said.

Painter intended to be. He stepped to the edge of the bridge. He had a good view down into the chasm. Mud bubbled and spat, splattering the limestone walls to either side of the gorge. It would be instant death to fall down there.

With little choice, he placed one foot on the span, then the other. He stood for a breath. Seemed solid enough, so he took another step then another. He was now over the gorge’s edge. Hearing sandstone grating slightly, settling a bit under his weight, he waited, swallowing his fear. Sweat trickled in streams down his back. His eyes watered and itched.

“Are you okay?” Kowalski called.

Painter lifted an arm, acknowledging that he was fine, but he feared calling out. This was foolish, of course. He continued onward, step by step, until finally he reached the far side and happily leaped to solid ground.

Relieved, he leaned down, resting his hands on his knees.

“Should we follow?” Hank yelled.

Painter merely lifted an arm and waved them over.

In short order, they all crossed and made it safely to the far side. After a moment to collect themselves, they headed toward the dark tunnel, leaving the muddy caldera behind them.

Once they reached the mouth of the passageway, they were rewarded with a cold breath blowing out of the tunnel. The air had a mineral tang, but it was a welcome respite from the sulfurous burn of the cavern.

Kowalski held a hand to the breeze. “Where’s this coming from?”

“Only one way to find out.” Painter led the way again.

Hank offered a more detailed answer as they headed down. “The cavern system must extend much farther underground. For a cave to breathe like this, it takes a great volume of cold air below.” He pointed behind him. “That hot cavern is drawing the chilled air upward, and the breeze continues from there to the surface, flushing that heat upward and out.”

Painter remembered the volume estimate of the cavern system beneath Wupatki’s blowhole. Seven billion cubic feet. He sensed that this was bigger. But how far down would they have to go?

The tunnel continued deeper, turning steeper in some spots, almost flat in others. But it never turned upward. The way also grew steadily colder. After another ten minutes of hiking, a pearly sheen of ice began to coat the walls, reflecting the beam of Painter’s flashlight. He remembered Nancy’s story of the icy lava tubes that lay beneath the cone of the Sunset Crater. The same phenomenon was happening here.

Soon, even their footing became more treacherous. Kowalski took a hard fall and cursed loudly. The breeze blew stronger, the icy chill burning Painter’s cheeks as readily as the sulfuric heat had some minutes ago.

“Is it just me,” Kowalski asked as he picked himself up, “or is anyone else thinking of the phrase when hell freezes over?”

Painter ignored him as his light revealed the end of the tunnel at last. He hurried forward, half skating on the slick surface. He slid into another cavern and stopped once again at the entrance, stunned by what he saw before him.

Kowalski whistled sharply.

Hank gaped in awe. “We’ve found them.”

Painter knew what he meant.

They’d found the Anasazi.

“It’s almost like watching a video game, n’est-ce pas?” Rafael asked.

He sat in the rear cabin of a surveillance helicopter — one of two aircraft borrowed at some expense from a private militia group who spent time patrolling the Mexican border for “narco-terrorists.” With heavily tinted bulletproof windows and engines idling, the two helicopters sat in the desert about a mile from the mesa.

The rear cabin of Rafe’s craft was equipped with two captain’s chairs that swiveled easily between a bench seat on one side and an entire wall of equipment, including digital recorders, DVD players, a bank of three LCD monitors, all of it tied into microwave receivers and cameras bristling on the outside.

On the center LCD monitor, a jangling view revealed a team climbing up a crack in the mesa’s side, aiming for the ruins on top. The feed came from Bern’s helmet-mounted camera, allowing Rafe to once again monitor the assault.

He turned his chair to face Kai Quocheets, who sat on the bench seat beside one of Bern’s teammates. She stared sullenly back at him with her arms crossed in front of her. Clearly still furious about his betrayal, she hadn’t said a word since they’d left the pueblos after the shooting of the two elderly Hopi natives. He felt a bit bad about that. He admitted to himself now that it had been a feckless act on his part, one beneath him, but he’d been sore from the ride to the pueblos and already in a foul temper over how the old woman had resisted his interrogation. He now truly believed the elderly pair knew nothing.

A waste.

And if the young woman hadn’t been so obstinate, he might have thrown her a bone, but instead he let her sulk.

So be it.

He turned around and faced the monitors. Bern’s team had reached the mesa’s top and circled to where the satellite feed had last spotted Painter Crowe’s team vanishing down another chute on the far side. The resolution had not been good enough to reveal anything more.

It hadn’t been hard to track the director of Sigma to this location. A few calls, a few interviews, and it was over, especially after Painter’s group posted trail permits with the National Park Service office. No names had been mentioned — but then again, how many three-man teams of hikers were headed into the deep desert with a dog? Descriptions were matched, and through the Saint Germaine family’s contacts in the scientific community, Rafe was able to gain access to a geophysical satellite and monitor the desert around the Crack-in-the-Rock pueblo.

After that, they had flown in from the unpopulated north side of the park. Once within a mile of the mesa, Bern’s team had off-loaded and headed out across the desert on foot.

Rafe leaned closer to the screen.

“Where is that chiant uncle of yours now?” he whispered to the monitor.

He watched Bern climb with the effortless grace of a true athlete, moving from stone to stone, carrying a heavy pack with a rifle ready at his shoulder. Rafe found his left hand rubbing his thigh in envy. He forced his fingers to curl into a fist. The best he could hope for in life was to live vicariously through others. As he was doing now. If he stared hard enough, blocked out other stimuli, he could be Bern for short periods of time.

His second-in-command slipped to the front of his team, assuming the point position. Bern was not one to let a subordinate take a risk he himself wasn’t willing to face. He edged over a pile of crumbling bricks, part of an ancient wall, and reached a hidden chute. Before he entered, a hand rose into view. Bern gave silent signals. Rafe interpreted them, repeating the hand signals on his knee.

Move quiet. On my mark. Go.

From the corner of his eye, he caught Kai’s reflection in one of the dark monitors as she shifted forward, trying to get a better look. She might act the disinterested, estranged niece, but Rafe noted how her breathing quickened whenever she overheard him talking about her uncle.

Or whenever he mentioned their other captive.

The boy — Jordan Appawora — was in the other helicopter, parked twenty yards away, a bit of insurance for Kai’s continued cooperation.

On the screen, Rafe could see Bern sliding carefully down the chute, ready for any contingency. He imagined the burning sensation of the sun on his face, the tightness in his chest as he restricted his breathing, the tension in his back and arms as he handled the heavy rifle.

Bern reached a turn in the chute and took a split-second peek into a blind chasm. That’s all the time that was required. There was an advantage to having a partner sitting on your shoulder. Rafe brought up the image again and froze it on his screen to study it more closely.

The chasm’s rock walls were wildly decorated with petroglyphs, but he found only a single living figure standing in the tight space. A woman, likely the park ranger who acted as a guide for Painter Crowe’s team. She stood with her back to the camera, holding a leash, staring down a hole in the ground.

Ah, so that’s where you went…

Rafe sighed. “You’re not going to make this easy, are you, mon ami?”

He lifted the radio to his lips. “Bern, looks like we must do this the hard way. We’ll have to make it personal in order to draw our quarry out.”

Rafe caught Kai’s reflection again as he gave the order.

“Take down the guard. We’re coming in.”

On the screen, Bern popped around the corner with his weapon raised.

The ranger must have heard something and started to turn. Bern’s rifle jerked silently on the screen, and the woman crumpled to the ground.

Kai gasped behind him.

Rafe reached to the other captain’s chair and found Ashanda’s hand. She had been sitting silently, a dark statue, almost forgotten, but never far from his heart. He gave her fingers a squeeze.

“I’m going to need your help.”

From the edge of the cavern, Hank stared at the frozen tomb of the Anasazi, preserved for centuries deep underground. He struggled to understand what he was seeing.

It can’t be…

Thick blue ice coated the walls, flooded the floors, and formed massive icicles that dripped like stalactites from the arched roof. Across the way, embedded half into the ice, stood a village frozen in time. The tumbled blocks of ancient pueblo homes climbed four stories high, stacked into a ragged pile, all draped and barred by more flows of ice. It was Wupatki reborn, only larger. But the residents here hadn’t fared any better. Blackened, mummified bodies sprawled frozen in the ice, looking as if they’d been washed from their homes. Clay pots and wooden ladders lay cracked and buried, mostly to one side of the cavern, along with tangles of blankets and woven baskets preserved in frost.

“There must have been a flash flood through here,” Painter said, pointing to the other tunnels that ran into and out of the cavern. “Drowned everyone, then froze over again.”

Hank shook his head. “First, their people died in fire… then by ice.”

“Maybe they were cursed,” Kowalski said with unusual somberness.

Maybe they were.

“Are you sure they’re Anasazi?” Painter asked.

“From what I can tell from the clothing, along with the architecture of the buildings and the unique black-on-white markings on the pottery, these poor people were some clan of the Anasazi.”

Hank stepped forward to bear witness. “These must have been the last survivors, those who escaped both the volcanic eruption and the slaughter. They must have fled Wupatki, tried to start a new home here, hidden away underground, the entrance protected by the small citadel above.”

“But who sealed the entrance?” Painter asked. “Why did they mark it with the moon-and-star symbol of the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev?”

“Maybe a neighboring tribe who was helping to hide this last bastion of the clan. They sealed it with a gravestone, engraving it with the mark of those who they believed brought such punishment down upon these people. A warning to others against trespass.”

Painter checked his watch. “Speaking of which, we should explore what we can, then head back up.”

Hank heard the disappointment in his voice. He must have been hoping to discover more than just an icy graveyard. They spread out, careful where they stepped. Hank was not ready to examine any of the bodies. He took out his own flashlight and set about searching the lowest levels of the pueblo.

He had to crack through fangs of icicles that blocked the door to squeeze inside. He found another body, that of a child, which had been washed into a corner like so much refuse. A tiny clawed hand stuck out of the ice, as if asking to be rescued.

“I’m sorry…” he whispered, and pushed on to a room farther back.

Frost and ice covered everything, reflecting the beam of his flashlight with a certain macabre beauty. But beneath that bright sheen lay only death.

As he searched deeper, he had a vague destination in mind, the true heart of the pueblo, a place to pay his respects. Ducking through a doorway, he stepped into an atrium-like space in the center of the tumble of rooms. Terraces led up, festooned in runnels of ice. He imagined children playing there, calling to one another, mothers scolding, kneading bread.

But he had to look only farther up to dash such musings. Massive ice stalactites pointed menacingly down at him from the roof. He pictured them fracturing and falling, spearing him clean through, punishing him for his intrusion into this haunted space.

But the dead gods of these people had other plans for this trespasser.

His gaze focused upward, Hank missed seeing the hole until it was too late. His right leg dropped into it. He screamed in surprise as he crashed through the manhole-sized opening. He scrabbled for the sides, losing his flashlight, but it was no help. Like a skater falling through thin ice, he could find no grip.

He dropped, plunging feetfirst, expecting to die.

But he fell only about the length of his body — then his boots hit solid ice. He stared down. The only thing that saved him from a broken neck, or at least a broken leg, was that the chamber he’d fallen into was half filled with ice. He reached down and picked up his flashlight, then stared up at the hole.

Painter called to him. “Hank!”

“I’m okay!” he shouted back. “But I need some help! I fell down a hole!”

As he waited for rescue, he swept his light around the chamber. The room was circular, lined by mortared bricks. He slowly realized he’d fallen into the exact place that he’d been hoping to find.

Some god, he was sure, was laughing with dark amusement.

He searched around. Small niches marked the wall, about at the level of the flooded ice. Normally the alcoves would be halfway up the chamber’s sides. A glint drew his attention to the largest niche, reflecting his light.

No… how could this be?

Shadows danced across the ice floor. He swung his light up and saw Painter and Kowalski peering down at him.

“Are you hurt?” Painter asked, out of breath, clearly concerned.

“No, but you might want to hop down here yourself. I’m not sure I should be touching this.”

Painter frowned, but Hank waved, urging him down.

“Okay,” Painter conceded, and turned to his partner. “Kowalski, go secure a rope and toss it down to us.”

After the big man left, Painter twisted around and dropped smoothly into the ice-flooded chamber. “So what did you find, Doc?”

Hank waved to encompass the chamber. “This is a kiva, a spiritual center of an Anasazi settlement. Basically their church.” He pointed his beam up. “They built them in wells like this. That hole we both dropped through is called a sipapa; to the Anasazi it represented the mythical place where their people first emerged into the world.”

“Okay, why the religious lesson?”

“So you’d understand what they worshipped here, or at least preserved as some sort of token to the gods.” He swung his light to the large alcove. “I think this object may be what the thieves stole from the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev—what led to the Anasazi’s doom.”

Painter stepped closer to the alcove, adding the shine of his own flashlight to the professor’s. Not that the object needed any better illumination. It shone brightly, without a speck of tarnish, just a thin coating of ice.

Amazing…

Within the niche stood a gold jar, about a foot and a half tall, topped by the sculpted head of a wolf. The tiny bust was perfectly detailed, from the tipped-up ears to the furry scruff of mane. Even the eyes looked ready to blink.

Moving his light down, he recognized a familiar writing inscribed across the front of the jar in precise and even rows.

“It’s the same writing found on the gold tablets,” Painter said.

Hank nodded. “That must be proof that this totem once belonged to the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev, don’t you think? That the Anasazi stole it from their cache.”

“Maybe,” Painter mumbled. “But what about the container itself? Am I wrong, or does it look like one those vases used by ancient Egyptians to hold the organs of their dead?”

“Canopic jars,” Hank said.

“Exactly. Only this one has a wolf’s head.”

“The Egyptians adorned their bottles with animals from their native lands. If whoever forged this jar did so in North America, then a wolf makes sense. Wolves have always been powerful totems here.”

“But doesn’t that ruin your theory about the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev? Aren’t they supposed to be the lost tribe of Israel from the Book of Mormon?”

“No, it doesn’t dash my theory.” Excitement rose in the professor’s voice. “If anything, it supports it.”

“How so?”

Hank pressed his hands to his lips, trying to control his elation. He looked ready to fall to his knees. “According to our scriptures, the gold plates that John Smith translated to compose the Book of Mormon were written in a language described as reformed Egyptian. To quote Mormon chapter nine, verse thirty-two. ‘And now, behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech.’ ”

Hank turned to face Painter. “But no one’s ever actually seen that writing,” he stressed, “because the original golden plates vanished after John Smith translated them. They were said to have been returned to the angel Moroni. All we know about this writing is that it was supposed to be a derivation of Hebrew, a variant that evolved since the time the tribe left the Holy Lands.”

“Then why call it Egyptian at all? Reformed or otherwise.”

“I believe the answers are here.” Hank pointed. “We know the tribes of Israel had complicated ties to Egypt, a mixing of ancestries. As I told you before, the earliest representation of the moon-and-star symbol goes back to the ancient Moabites, who shared bloodlines with both the Israelites and the Egyptians of the time. So when the lost tribe came to America, they must have had a heritage with a foot in each world. Here is that very proof, a pure blending of Egyptian culture and ancient Hebrew. It must be preserved.”

Painter reached for the jar. “On that we can agree.”

“Careful,” Hank said.

The base of the vessel was lodged a couple of inches into the ice, but that was not what worried the professor. They’d all seen what happened when someone mishandled artifacts left behind by the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev.

“I think it should be okay,” Painter said. “It’s been frozen for centuries.”

Painter remembered Ronald Chin’s contention that the explosive compound needed warmth to keep it stable, or extreme heat to destroy it. It only destabilized when it got cold. Still, he held his breath as he reached toward the wolf’s-head lid. He lifted it free, cracking through a thin scrim of ice, then shone his flashlight down inside.

He let out the breath he’d been holding. “Just as I thought. It’s empty.”

He passed the cap to Hank, then set about breaking the jar loose from the ice. With a few sharp tugs, it came free.

“It’s heavy,” he said as he replaced the cap. “I wager this gold is the same nano-dense material as the plates. The ancients must’ve used the metal to insulate their unstable compound.”

“Why do you think that?”

“The denser the metal, the better it retains heat. It might take longer to warm, but once this gold heats up, it would retain its warmth for a longer span of time. Such insulation would act like an insurance policy in case there were any sudden variations in temperature. It would also allow them additional time to get the substance from one heat source to another.”

Hank shook his head at such ingenuity. “So the gold helped these ancient people stabilize their compound.”

“I think this jar might have been one of their unused containers. But considering what happened at Sunset Crater, the Anasazi must have also stolen one that was full.” Painter turned the jar over in his hands. “And look at this. On the opposite side of the jar.”

Hank moved closer, standing shoulder to shoulder with him.

Inscribed on the back was a detailed drawing of a landscape: a winding creek, a steep mountain fringed by trees, and in the middle of it all, something that looked like a small erupting volcano.

“What do you make of it?” Painter asked.

“I don’t know.”

Before they could ponder it further, a rope fell heavily, coming close to knocking the jar out of Painter’s hands.

“Careful, Kowalski!” he called up.

“Sorry.”

Painter stepped under the opening and lifted the jar with both arms. “Come take this!”

Kowalski gladly took the prize and held it at arm’s length, letting out an appreciative whistle. “At least we found some treasure! Makes my bruised ass feel less sore.”

With a bit of effort, Painter and Hank climbed out of the kiva, and they all worked their way free of the frozen pueblo. Once out in the open cavern, Painter packed the gold jar, accepting the burden for the return trip, wrapping it next to the plates Kai had stolen. His pack had to weigh something like sixty or seventy pounds. He did not look forward to the long climb back to the sun, but there was no choice.

“We should head up before Nancy calls in the cavalry.”

As he turned to the tunnel, a dark shape came flying out the opening and shot past his legs, almost knocking him off his feet. Hank stumbled back in fear — then suddenly recognized a familiar friend.

“Kawtch?” the old man blurted out, surprised.

The dog hugged the professor’s legs, circling and circling, whining deep in his throat. The leash still hung from his collar, tangling up Hank’s feet. He dropped to a knee to calm his dog.

“Must’ve run away from Nancy,” Hank said.

“I think it’s worse than that.” Painter pointed his flashlight down at the ice. A dark crimson streak skittered across the surface, left behind by the dragging leash.

Blood.

Chapter 26

Hurry up and wait…

Monk kept forgetting that this was the motto of the military. He hated cooling his jets — in this case, literally. The three of them sat in the cabin of a Learjet 55 outside a private terminal at the Louisville Airport. It was an older model, but it got them here to Kentucky in one piece, and he appreciated these aged birds with a little air under their tails. He stared out the window, looking down the length of the white wings, searching the dark tarmac.

The trio was waiting for a military team from the U.S. Army Garrison over at Fort Knox to arrive and escort them to the Bullion Depository. They’d been here for over ten minutes. His knee began to bounce. He’d hated leaving Kat over at Sigma. She was starting to have cramps, which, with her being eight months along, set him on edge. She claimed it was just back spasms from sitting for long stretches, but he was nervous enough to interpret every bit of indigestion as a potential miscarriage or impending labor pains.

Kat had practically pushed him out the door for this trip, but not before a long embrace. He had kept one palm resting on her belly — as proud father, as loving husband, even as army medic, making sure she was doing well. He knew how frightened she’d been during the debriefing following the events in Iceland, though she kept her game face on the whole time.

But he knew better.

And now this evening hop to Kentucky. He wanted to get this over with and be back at her side ASAP. He loved missions, hated downtime, but with a baby due any day, he just wanted to be at her side, rubbing her feet.

Yes, he was that much of a man.

Monk pressed his forehead against the glass. “Where are they?”

“They’ll be here,” Gray said.

Monk fell back into his seat, glaring at Gray, needing someone to blame. The bird’s-eye maple interior of the jet was configured with four leather seats: two facing forward, two toward the tail. He sat directly across from Gray, while Seichan sat next to his partner, her bad leg propped up on the opposite chair.

“Do we even know what we’re looking for here?” Monk asked, not expecting an answer, just seeking to distract himself.

Gray continued to stare out the window. “Maybe I do.”

Monk’s knee stopped bobbing. Even Seichan looked over at Gray. Before the wheels had lifted off in D.C., the basic plan had been simply to pop in and take a look around Fort Knox. Not exactly the most brilliant strategy, but no one knew the mysterious source behind these radiating neutrinos. The anomalous readings picked up by the Japanese physicist might be significant, or they might not. The three of them were on a fishing expedition and had left home without their poles.

“What’s your idea?” Monk asked.

Gray picked up a folder tucked into the side of his seat cushion. He’d been reading through all the intelligence reports concerning this mission. If anyone could pick through miscellaneous details and come up with a pattern, it was Gray. Sometimes Monk wished his own mind worked that way, but maybe it was better it didn’t. He knew the burden often placed on his friend’s shoulders. He was more than happy to play the support role. Somebody had to haul out the garbage and make sure the dog got fed.

“I read over the physicist’s assessment again,” Gray said, and glanced up. “Did you know he has Asperger’s syndrome?”

Monk shrugged and shook his head.

“Guy’s a genius, likely a superb intuitive, too. He believed the small neutrino bursts he detected — here, out west, and in Europe — came from something closely related to, but different from, the compound that destabilized and exploded both in Utah and Iceland. He posited that the new substance might be a closely related isotope or maybe even a by-product of the explosive material’s manufacture. Either way, he’s convinced they’re connected somehow.”

“So what are you getting at?” Seichan asked, suppressing a yawn with a fist.

“Hear me out. The other ancient nanotech artifacts found inside that Indian cave were the strange steel daggers and those gold tablets.” Gray stared hard at Monk. “Painter has a couple of those gold plates with him out west.”

“Where the other readings were recorded,” Monk said, catching on.

“They also picked up a reading in Belgium, where the Guild team that we tangled with in Iceland originated. I’m guessing the Guild has one of those plates. Look at how hotly they went after Painter’s niece. Maybe their plate is secured in Belgium.”

Seichan lowered her injured leg and sat straighter. “And now all of us are heading to a gold depository.”

Monk thought he understood. “You think there might be some of those gold tablets hidden at Fort Knox.”

“No,” Gray corrected him, and tapped the file on the seat. “I’ve been doing research on the history of Fort Knox and the early United States Mints. Did you know Thomas Jefferson helped found the very first mint, located in Philadelphia? He even had a set of silver coins minted with his face that were sent with the Lewis and Clark expedition. But he also had gold coins minted.”

Monk tried to follow Gray’s train of thought, but it left him at the station.

“The Philadelphia Mint’s first director was a man named David Rittenhouse. Like Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson, the guy was a Renaissance man: clockmaker, inventor, mathematician, and politician. He was also a member of the American Philosophical Society.”

Monk recognized that name. “Like that Frenchman. Wasn’t Fortescue part of that group, too?”

Gray nodded. “In fact, Rittenhouse was great friends with Jefferson, like all the significant players involved in this affair. He was surely in Jefferson’s inner circle, a trusted companion.”

“Okay…” Monk said hesitantly.

“According to Fortescue’s journal, the Indian map was hidden by Jefferson.” Gray quoted from the diary by heart. “ ‘Ever crafty, Jefferson devised a way to preserve the Indian map, to protect it, yet keep it forever out of the hands of the faceless enemy. He would use the very gold to hide it in plain view of all. None would suspect the treasure hidden at the heart of the Seal.’ ”

Seichan got it before Monk. “You think Jefferson had Rittenhouse help him hide the map at the mint,” she said. “To hide it in plain view.”

“I do. Then in 1937, the Philadelphia Mint was emptied, and its gold transported to Fort Knox by boxcar. There are reports from that time about the discovery of old bullion caches found deep in the Philadelphia Mint, gold going back to the colonial era. That gold was also moved to Fort Knox.”

“Which means the map might’ve been moved, too,” Monk said. “But how can we be sure? Wouldn’t someone have noted a map made out of gold, especially one stuck on chunks of mastodon bone?”

“I don’t know,” Gray said. “We’ll have to go look ourselves. But one last item. Fortescue described that Indian map as being made out of the same gold that would not melt, the same material as the inscribed tablets.”

Monk understood. “So if the tablets are emitting neutrinos, so would the map.”

Gray nodded.

Monk leaned back, selfishly appreciating how his friend’s unique mind worked. With such insight, they might all just get back to D.C. before midnight.

A squeal of brakes drew his attention back around. A large sand-colored Humvee pulled to a stop alongside the jet.

Monk pushed up. “Looks like our ride’s finally here.”

Could the map truly be hidden at Fort Knox?

Nagged by worries, Gray sat in the rear seat of the Humvee, staring out as the massive vehicle roared down the Dixie Highway and swung sharply to take the Bullion Depository exit. The armored beast also carried their escorts: four combat brigade soldiers from the U.S. Army Garrison at Fort Knox. When they reached the base’s main gates, passes and identification were shown and a guard waved them through. From there, the vehicle forged on through the warm evening, heading toward the country’s most guarded structure: the Fort Knox Bullion Depository.

Gray spotted the fortress ahead, lit up in the night like a granite prison, rising from a cleared field and ringed by fences. Sentry boxes guarded the gates, while four guard turrets rose from each corner of the depository, like stubby towers on a castle. He knew that once they were inside, there would be additional layers of countermeasures defending the premises against attack: alarms, cameras, armed guards, and more esoteric technology, like biometric analyzers, facial-recognition software, even seismic sensors. And that only accounted for the defenses that were generally known. The remaining defenses were classified. It was rumored that the facility could be flooded at a moment’s notice — whether by water, as was done at the Bank of France, or even by toxic gases.

Of course, reaching the ring of fortress gates meant first penetrating the hundred-thousand-acre military base surrounding the depository — a daunting task, considering the base’s numerous helicopter gunships, armored tanks, artillery, and its thirty thousand soldiers.

Gray stared down at his lap.

Entry was a difficult task unless you had the golden ticket.

The presidential order, folded and resting on his knee, bore a wax seal, both official and archaic at the same time. Freshly emblazoned across the front was the signature of President James T. Gant. The depository did not offer tours, visitors were forbidden, and only two U.S. presidents had ever set foot inside. The only way to enter the Bullion Depository was by presidential order. Gray knew that these papers had already been forwarded to the facility’s officer in charge. They were to meet the man at the main entrance.

Gray fingered the seal, wondering what would happen if he broke it before the officer in charge verified the paperwork. It would be a foolish act. It had taken all of Sigma’s resources to wrangle this document on such short notice. But then again, President Gant owed Sigma for saving his ass in the Ukraine, so his chief of staff took Kat’s call.

The presidential orders were specific, covering the three visitors for tonight only. He glanced across the seat to Seichan and Monk. According to the paperwork, they were allowed a single supervised tour of the vault, in order to search for a threat to U.S. national security and remove it from the premises. That was the full breadth of their authority. To step beyond it would be deemed a hostile act.

The Humvee made the turn onto Gold Vault Road. Even with their orders in hand, additional clearances had to be made at a fenced gate flanked by sentry towers. Eventually they made it through and drove down a long road to the front entrance of the fortress.

“Honey, we’re home,” Monk mumbled under his breath.

Gray’s friend reattached his prosthetic hand to its wrist cuff and flexed his fingers. On the thirty-mile drive to the depository, Monk had spent his time running a fast diagnostic on his new hand, clearly still anxious and needing to keep busy. Even after years of wearing the device, he still found it unnerving to see the detached prosthetic move all on its own, like some disembodied appendage from a horror movie. A wireless transmitter built into Monk’s wrist cuff could independently control the motors and actuators of the prosthesis, along with accessing the hand’s other unique features. Luckily, the guards up front missed that little freak show in the backseat.

At last, the Humvee pulled to a stop. A tall man in a navy-blue suit stepped out of the doorway and approached the vehicle.

He had to be the officer in charge. He was younger than Gray had expected, early thirties, with a blond crew cut and a swagger to his step that had Texas written all over it. He shook Gray’s hand in a firm but unthreatening grip.

“Mitchell Waldorf,” the man said with a slight drawl. “Welcome to the Depository. It’s not often we have visitors. Especially at this hour.”

A gleam of amusement sparkled in his gray-green eyes.

Gray made introductions and proffered their presidential orders. The man barely glanced at them and led them promptly toward the entrance, leaving their military escort outside. As they pushed through the doors into a marble lobby, Waldorf passed their orders to a uniformed man standing inside. There was nothing welcoming about the hulking black man’s countenance. Without a word, he retreated with their orders through a door marked CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD. Gray suspected their papers would undergo a thorough inspection and verification process. Kat had built up an ironclad cover story and supplied them with false IDs and badges — as agents of the National Security Agency. Hopefully, their paperwork would clear.

In the meantime, they had to undergo their own inspection.

“Latest security protocol,” Waldorf explained. “Just added two months ago. Whole body scanners. Have to be thorough nowadays.”

Stepping into the machine, Gray endured the millimeter-wave scan of his physique as a seated technician wearing a U.S. Mint police uniform studied the small screen. Other mint officers backed him up, but the facility looked lightly manned at this hour. Then again, most of the security measures were electronic in nature and hidden out of sight.

Once the scan finished, the technician waved Gray into the main lobby space. As he waited for the others, he stared at a display of a giant set of weight scales positioned against the back wall. They rose twelve feet high, supporting four-foot-wide pans. A bit farther down the hall rose the massive steel doors to the bullion vault itself. Above it rested the seal of the Department of the Treasury, made out of gold.

“You can’t bring that in here,” the technician said behind him.

Gray turned, expecting Seichan to be causing a ruckus at the security post. Had she forgotten about some dagger hidden on her body? It turned out, though, that the true source of the technician’s consternation was Monk.

His friend still stood within the cage of the machine and held up his prosthetic hand. “This is attached to me,” he complained.

“Sorry. If the scanner can’t penetrate it and clear it, it stays out here. You can wait back by the door or leave your prosthesis with us.”

“That’s our policy,” a gruff voice said behind Gray.

He turned to find that the captain of the guard had returned.

By now, Monk’s cheeks had gone scarlet. “Fine.” He worked the magnetic connections attaching his hand to the surgically implanted wrist cuff and tossed the prosthesis to another technician, who deposited it in a plastic bin. Monk passed the scan the second time and stalked over to join them all.

“I’ll have you know,” he said, “that such a policy is not even vaguely ADA compliant.”

The captain of the guard ignored this and introduced himself. “I’m Captain Lyndell. I’ll be accompanying you while you’re here. The officer in charge will answer any of your questions, but before we open the vault, I have a query for you: What exactly is the scope of the national security threat you’re investigating?”

“I’m afraid we can’t divulge that, sir,” Gray said.

The man didn’t like that answer.

Gray understood his frustration. He wouldn’t be any happier if this were his facility. “To be honest, the threat is likely minor, and we may have a challenge even identifying it. Any help you or Officer Waldorf can offer would be appreciated.”

This appeal to cooperation seemed to mollify the man.

Somewhat.

“Then let’s get this done.”

Lyndell crossed to the vault door and dialed in a long combination. Two more people waited to do the same. No single person ever had the complete combination to the lock. After the first two finished, the captain of the guard entered one last additional sequence.

A red light flashed to green above the dial, and the massive steel-plate door began to swing open on its own, all twenty tons of it. It took a full minute to part wide enough for the group to walk through.

“If you’ll follow me,” Waldorf said as he led the way inside. He clearly would be acting as their tour guide.

Lyndell prepared to follow behind, ready to keep a close watch on them.

“At the present,” Waldorf said, “we’re storing around a hundred and fifty million ounces of gold here. That’s enough to forge a twenty-foot cube of solid gold. Of course, that’s not a very convenient method to keep it. That’s why we have the depository. It’s two stories high. Each floor is subdivided into smaller compartments. We’ll be entering the first floor, but there’s a basement level, too.”

Waldorf stepped to the side to allow them to enter and turned to Gray. “That means you’ve got a lot of ground to cover. If there’s any way to narrow that search, now’s the time to reveal it. Otherwise, we’ll be in here for a long time.”

Gray passed through the thick steel door and into a corridor that was broken into smaller vaults. Stacks of gold bars glinted inside them, piled from floor to ceiling. The sheer volume was daunting.

He pulled his eyes away and addressed Waldorf. “I guess the first question to ask is whether anything unusual is stored here, something besides gold.”

“What? Like vials of nerve gas, narcotics, biological agents? I’ve heard it all. Even heard we had the body of Jimmy Hoffa and the Roswell aliens in here. Now, in the past, the depository has stored some items of priceless historical value. During World War Two, we preserved the original copy of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution down here, along with the Magna Carta from England and the crown jewels from several European nations. But for decades, nothing’s really changed here. In fact, no gold has been moved into or out of the depository for many years.”

“Then tell me about the gold itself?” Gray asked. “I see lots of gold bars, but what about gold in other forms?”

“Well, sure. We keep individual gold coins and coin gold bars — made by melting coins together. Beyond the standard mint bars, we also have a mix of older bricks, plates, blocks, you name it.”

“Old gold bullion?” Monk asked, zeroing on target.

“Yes, sir. We’ve got bullion from every era of American history.”

Gray nodded. “That’s what we’d like to see. Specifically anything taken from the Philadelphia Mint that dates back to the colonial era.”

Waldorf’s easy demeanor hardened slightly. “Why would that be of interest to national security?”

“We’re not sure,” Gray said, which was basically true. “But we might as well start there.”

“Okay, you’re in charge of this hunting expedition. We’ll have to go down to the basement, where much of the gold hasn’t been moved since it was first hauled to Kentucky by railroad car.”

Waldorf headed to a set of stairs and led them down to the section of the vault that lay belowground. Gray again wondered if it was true that this place had been engineered to flood if there was a security breach. He pictured the vault filling with water and imagined drowning amid all of this wealth.

“This way,” their guide said, and strode purposefully along the corridor.

The vaults down here weren’t as neatly stacked as above, mostly because of the lack of uniformity in the size of the bars.

Waldorf waved ahead. “This whole section originally came from Philadelphia. We’ve got gold stored here that came from the very first stampings out of that mint. That’s kept in the compartment at the end. Follow me.”

When they reached their destination, Lyndell used a key to unlock the barred gate to the ten-foot-square space. It looked haphazardly packed — but it was also unfortunately full. One section of the room contained irregular rectangular blocks that looked like small anvils, another had stacks of square rods, a third had flat plates about the size of small lunch trays.

Gray stared with dismay, picturing waves of subatomic particles washing out of the space. If this was the right vault, how were they to find the needle in this golden haystack?

Never one to shirk from hard labor, Monk squeezed into the room and began to search around. His friend was more a man of action than deep introspection — and sometimes that temperament paid off.

“Hey, come look at this.” Monk pointed to one of the wide plates on a shorter stack. “It’s stamped with the Great Seal.”

Gray joined Monk, shoulder to shoulder. Crudely stamped into the center of the flat gold block was an outstretched bald eagle, clutching an olive branch and arrows.

“Remember what Fortescue wrote about the Seal,” Monk said.

Gray knew it well: None would suspect the treasure hidden at the heart of the Seal.

“Maybe he meant the Great Seal,” Monk added.

Gray studied the topmost plate. It was roughly fourteen inches by ten and about an inch thick. While there was no precise description of the old Indian map’s dimensions, it had been found lining a mastodon’s cranium. That meant it had to be fairly big — like these flat blocks.

He studied the room. There have to be over a hundred of these plates. Which one could it be? Did one of these plates — buried and hidden among the others — depict a crude map on its surface? There was only one way to find out. He would follow Monk’s example. It was time to simply use brute force.

Gray waved at the stacks. “Let’s start taking them out.”

Seichan stood to the side as Gray and Monk labored, carrying each gold block out of the small compartment and stacking them outside. Her bad leg precluded her from helping. But even healthy, she’d have struggled to lift one. Each weighed over seventy pounds.

She didn’t know how Monk managed the effort with only one hand.

By now, the two men had stripped out of their jackets and rolled up their sleeves. Their forearms bulged as they hauled the blocks out, one by one. Gray examined both surfaces, plainly looking for some evidence of a map. He’d also asked the two mint supervisors to let them do this alone. Cooperating, Waldorf and Lyndell had backed away a couple of compartments, talking in low whispers, but keeping a close eye on Gray and Monk’s efforts.

The captain of the guard looked darkly dubious.

And rightfully so.

They were halfway through the stacks with no success.

Gray came out with another plate. Seichan noted that his lips had gone bloodless and thin as he settled the plate to the pile. It wasn’t from the strain, but from frustration. He dropped to one knee to examine both sides, teetering the plate up on its edge. Sweat streaked his brow.

She limped next to him. “I’ll search this side, you take the other.”

“Thanks.” He eyed her over the top of the upended block. “Are we on a wild-goose chase here?”

“Your assessment sounded solid to me.” Seichan ran her fingertips over the gold surface, feeling for any evidence of a faint map. “All we can do is keep looking.”

“Anything on your side?”

“No.”

He manhandled the plate and settled it atop the others. He lowered his voice. “Something’s been nagging me. If Jefferson embedded the old map onto one of these plates, why didn’t someone see it? Comment on it?”

“Maybe the map wasn’t minted onto the plate, but into it.”

“What do you mean?”

“According to that French guy, the map was made of that nano-gold, a much denser gold that wouldn’t melt at normal temperatures. So to preserve and hide the map, why not pour regular gold over it, cover it completely? There’s no risk. If the map was needed later, you could always melt the ordinary gold off of it, since the nano-gold would require a much higher temperature before it softened.”

Gray raised a palm to his damp forehead. “You’re right. I should have thought of that.”

“You can’t think of everything.”

And you can’t take care of everyone.

She had noted him checking his phone regularly during the trip. The sun had set in D.C., and she knew he was worried about his father’s mental state.

“It was right there in Fortescue’s journal,” Gray said, kicking himself. “ ‘The treasure’s hidden at the heart of the Seal.’ ”

Monk called from the vault. “Better look at this.”

Gray and Seichan joined him inside the compartment, but it was cramped.

Supported by his one palm, Monk leaned over the next plate on the stack. He shifted back. “Look at this one’s seal.”

Seichan stared over Gray’s shoulder, feeling the dampness of his back through his thin shirt. She didn’t understand what had Monk all worked up, but noticed that the muscles across Gray’s shoulders tightened to hard rocks.

“That’s got to be the one,” Gray said.

“But there’s no map on it,” Monk argued. “I checked both sides.”

“You didn’t check inside it…” Gray said, glancing back to Seichan, his lips almost touching her cheek.

She tilted away to speak. “What are you two getting at? What’s so important about this block?”

Gray drew her forward, pulling her against him. He took her fingers and had her feel the sheaf of arrows clutched by the eagle. “There are fourteen of them.”

She turned to him. She remembered the crude sketch of an early rendition of the Great Seal, done when Jefferson and his allies were contemplating the creation of an Indian colony. It also had fourteen arrows.

“This has to be it,” Gray stressed.

“But how can we be sure?” Monk asked. “Shouldn’t we look through the rest of the stacks?”

Gray shook his head. “There’s a way we can double-check. If this plate is hiding a map at its heart, we should be able to tell by merely comparing its weight against one of the others in this series. The map — if it’s inside — is made of a denser material, so the plate holding it will weigh slightly more.”

“What about those giant weight scales we saw coming in?” Seichan said.

“Probably too crude, but we can ask Waldorf to help. With all of this gold around here, they must have a precise scale for measurement.”

Gray lifted the plate himself, guarding the prize. Monk and Seichan worked together to haul a second one, something to use for comparison. They hobbled over to Waldorf and Lyndell.

Gray explained what they needed but offered no reason as to why, which clearly irritated the captain of the guard.

Lyndell stepped between Monk and Seichan. He relieved them of their burden, lifting the plate as if it were made of wood. “Let’s go. There’s a weights and measures office in the hall outside the vault. The sooner we get this done, the sooner you’re all out of here.”

Following him, they paraded back up to the first floor and out the vault doors. They’d taken only a few steps into the hall when a cordon of armed U.S. soldiers accosted them, pointing rifles at their group.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Lyndell asked.

One of the mint officers stepped forward and held out a slip of paper to the captain of the guard. His other hand pointed at Seichan. “Sir, we’ve just received word. That woman’s a known terrorist, wanted by the CIA and several other foreign governments.”

Seichan went cold all over. Her cover had been blown. It made no sense. Her credentials had been perfect. She eyed the security station in the lobby. According to Waldorf, the whole body scan had been newly installed. Could it have triggered some alert, sending out a three-dimensional facsimile of her face and physique that matched a database somewhere, prompting this alarm? No matter the cause, the end result was the same.

All eyes — and weapons — swung to point at her.

The officer continued, “We were ordered to take her and anyone with her into immediate custody. To shoot if they resisted.”

Lyndell turned on them, his face flashing with vindication. “I knew there was something wrong about you all.” He pointed to the gold plate in Gray’s arms. “Officer, return all the gold to the vault immediately. Seal it up tight.”

Seichan turned to Gray, silently apologizing.

Waldorf swung toward Gray, ready to take the treasure away. He removed a pistol from a shoulder holster under his suit jacket, looking disappointed in them. As he stepped forward, he lifted the weapon quickly to the back of Lyndell’s skull and fired.

The blast made them all jump and duck.

Lyndell’s plate crashed to the floor, cracking the marble tile.

It was only the beginning. On Waldorf’s signal, four soldiers at the back of the cordon — the same four who had transported them from the airport — opened fire on the other mint officers. Bodies dropped. It was over in seconds.

A cold-blooded slaughter.

“You bastards,” Gray said.

Monk slid over to check Lyndell for a pulse. He lowered his hand and eyed the dead mint officers with equal dismay.

“Grab that gold plate,” Waldorf ordered the soldiers. “Move the prisoners into your vehicle. Take them to the rendezvous point.” He then pointed to his own leg. “Do it.”

One of the soldiers adjusted his rifle and fired, clipping the man in the thigh. Waldorf twisted and fell with the impact, letting out nothing more than a loud oof.

Seichan understood. They were making it look like Gray’s group had attacked the others and fled. Even the delay at the airport now made sense. She imagined the original escort team was dead in some ditch, replaced by these impostors. She stared over at Waldorf. She knew that the Guild had agents in all manner of secure facilities. How long had it taken Waldorf to snake his way into this position of power? Had the Guild been using the facility as their own personal bank?

Or were their doings more diabolical than that? Had the Guild always suspected something important was hidden at Fort Knox? They just couldn’t find it — until Sigma sniffed out the information for them.

We were used, she realized.

The Guild must have taken full advantage of the emergency to employ Gray’s unique talents and puzzle-solving abilities to do their work for them.

And now the enemy was preparing to run off with the prize.

Unarmed, she and the others could offer no resistance as one of the soldiers grabbed the plate from Gray. Three others kept their weapons pointed, ready to fire if there was any sign of a threat.

The soldiers marched them toward the entrance.

Seichan was under no delusions. She had betrayed the Guild.

Now they would exact their revenge.

Chapter 27

Kai clung to the rope with both hands as the sled under her was lowered from the hovering helicopter. Dust billowed up from below; winds from the roaring rotors whipped all around. She stared down as the top of the mesa rose up toward her, a dizzying view made worse by desert thermal gusts buffeting the sling.

“We’re almost there,” Jordan said.

He shared the aluminum swing with her. Both his eyes were blackened from the gun butt to his face, but he seemed oblivious to the pain. He kept one hand on the rope, too, but he had his other arm around her shoulders. She had never been a fan of heights — and was even less so now.

But at last, soldiers on the ground caught their sled and roughly unloaded them. Kai stood on shaky legs, glad to find Jordan’s arm still around her. At gunpoint, they were led to the chute she’d seen on the video screen earlier. It was a steep descent, but they had no choice.

Reaching the bottom of the chasm revealed a transformed space. A score of soldiers bustled about. Equipment and crates, several broken open, littered the space. Somewhere a drill was grinding into stone. She couldn’t figure out what was happening. In the middle of the chaos, she spotted a familiar figure.

Rafael Saint Germaine leaned on his cane, standing over a hole in the ground. She was pushed toward him from behind. He noted her approach.

“Ah, there you two are. Looks like we’re all in attendance now.”

A shape emerged from the hole, thick with black body armor and wearing a bulky helmet. Still, even without seeing his face, Kai knew it was the blond giant named Bern. When he did look up, she saw that his face was streaming with sweat, which dripped from his eyelashes and off his nose.

“Sir,” he said to Rafael, “we’ve got the ambush site locked down. We just need the bait.”

His gray-green eyes flicked toward Kai.

“Très bien, Bern. Then we’re ready. We’ll take them both down. No reason not to play all of our cards.”

Kai turned to Jordan. He had been staring to the side — toward a shape half covered in a tarp, booted legs sticking out. She again pictured the rifle shot that had taken out the park ranger and began to shake. Jordan turned, noting the focus of her attention, and stepped to block her view. He put his other arm around her and held her.

Impatient, Bern reached to rip them apart, but Jordan knocked his arm aside. Surprisingly, he was successful.

“We can move on our own,” Jordan said coldly, and helped Kai along.

They both knew where they were headed.

Down that black hole.

But what fate awaited them below?

Alone, Painter climbed up the remaining length of the passageway toward the cavern that contained the boiling mud fountain. He’d left Hank down below at the Anasazi tomb. Kowalski had Painter’s pistol in hand and had taken up position behind an ice-encrusted rock fall a few yards behind him.

Painter’s mind ran through various scenarios, doing his best to anticipate every eventuality, to think a dozen steps ahead of his opponent. He advanced unarmed. What was the use of a weapon? He and the others didn’t have enough firepower to lay down a barrage and storm their way out of this hole without getting killed. Instead, he needed to be smart.

He reached the end of the tunnel and stepped into the sulfurous, sweltering cavern. Again a mix of awe and gut-wrenching terror struck him as he viewed the surge of bubbling and roiling mud that flowed down the wall and across the cavern. The heat seemed worse than before, but maybe that was because of the chill of the tomb below.

Steeling himself for what was to come, he stepped out of the tunnel and into the open. Beyond the bridge, a spread of lamps revealed a tight knot of soldiers gathered on the far side. They weren’t trying to hide themselves. The enemy must have guessed that the fleeing dog had alerted their quarry.

Figures rose out of the rubble of dark boulders to either side of him, with rifles mounted at their shoulders. Painter held up his arms, palms open, showing he had no weapon, and continued forward. All he had on his person was his backpack with his flashlight secured to it. He hadn’t wanted anything in his hands to be mistaken for a weapon.

One of the soldiers attempted to enter the black tunnel behind him, to go after the others. The pop of a pistol discouraged him.

“I have a man at a bottleneck down the passageway!” Painter called out without turning. “He’s got plenty of ammunition and can pick you off one at a time. Stay back. I know what you want! We can settle this quickly!”

Painter continued forward, step by step, heading toward the bridge.

Across the way, a thin man broke from the knot of soldiers and moved toward the bridge, too.

One of the mercenaries accompanied the man forward. Painter recognized the commando who’d shot Professor Denton back at the university lab. He pictured the blood on the dog leash. It was smeared on his pants where he’d wiped his hands. That was another death he knew he could lay at that soldier’s feet.

I’m sorry, Nancy… I should never have involved you.

Darkness narrowed his vision as he studied the helmeted giant.

But now is not the time for revenge.

That was clear enough. The commando was dragging a young man behind him, all trussed up and gagged. It was Jordan Appawora. Painter was not overly surprised to see the young man here. He’d already worked out in his head that someone had to tip off the Guild team to his location in Arizona. That left few choices.

Outnumbered, he had to get their attention and gain some control.

“I’m not going for a weapon,” Painter called out, and slowly reached to the open side pouch in his pack. With one hand, he carefully extracted the two gold tablets and held them aloft. “I believe this is what you came after, yes?”

From across the bridge, the thin man eyed Painter suspiciously, clearly struggling to figure out what angle was being played here. After a long breath, he simply relaxed with a shrug, perhaps deciding he still had the upper hand.

“Monsieur Crowe, my name is Rafael Saint Germaine.” His accent was French, cultivated, with just a touch of a Provençal lilt, placing his origins somewhere in the south of France. He pointed a cane. His arm shook with a very fine tremor, which continued down the length of the cane. The palsy was unusual for someone so young, likely something he’d been born with, made worse by the climb down here and the heat. “I believe I will take those from you.”

“Of course,” Painter said. “But you can have them freely. As a sign of good faith.”

Still, a soldier stalked up from behind and tore them from his grip.

The Frenchman motioned for the soldier to hurry over, but his focus never left Painter. Despite the air of frailty about the man, a dark cunning shone from his eyes. Painter dared not underestimate him. A hunted animal was most dangerous when it was wounded, and this man had been wounded since birth. Yet, despite that, he’d survived amid a group that tolerated no weakness — and not only survived, but thrived.

Rafael examined the plates. “Such generosity is most confusing. If I may be blunt, I expected more resistance. What is to stop me from killing you right now?”

Weapons were cocked behind him.

Painter took another step forward, stopping at the edge of the bridge. He wanted to make sure this man understood.

“Because,” he said, “that was a sign of my cooperation. Because what we found down below makes the worth of those two plates pale in comparison.”

The man cocked his head, turning his full attention to Painter.

Good.

“May I?” Painter asked, reaching to the open pouch on the other side of his pack.

“Be my guest.”

Reaching inside, Painter removed the sculpted top of the gold jar they’d found. He held up the wolf’s-head totem.

The man went weak at the knees at the sight of it, barely catching himself with the cane, slipping into French in surprise. “Non, ce n’est pas possible…”

“From that reaction, you must know what we found.”

“Oui. Yes.” The man struggled to collect himself, raw desire shining in his face.

“At the moment another of my companions is far below. If I don’t return, he is ready to cast the gold bottle into another boiling mud pit, where the sludgy current will carry it away forever.”

The man trembled, frustrated, but his eyes also danced with the challenge. “Fair enough. What are your terms?”

“Your men will pull back from this side of the bridge. I want the boy as a sign of your goodwill. Then I will go below and fetch the jar. After that, we will make our final trade.”

“For what?”

“You know very well what I want.” Painter let some of the fierceness he’d been suppressing leak out. “I want my niece.”

Très intéressant…

It seemed these negotiations had suddenly become far more challenging and exciting. Breathless, Rafe stared at the sculpted gold lid. He indeed knew what it represented. Such bottles had the potential to be the Holy Grail of nanotechnology, a key to a lost science of alchemy that promised a vast new field of industry and a source of incalculable wealth. But more than that, it would allow his family to buy their way further up the hierarchy, to rise perhaps as high as the one surviving True Bloodline.

And it would be the brittle-boned son who brought home that glory for the Saint Germaine lineage. Nothing must stop this from happening.

Rafe turned to Bern. “Do as he says. Pull your men back. Free the boy and send him over the bridge.”

His second-in-command looked ready to argue, but knew better. The prisoner’s hands were cut free, the gag ripped away.

“Go,” Bern ordered, giving him a push.

The youth fled across the bridge, skirting around the soldiers who were returning from the other side. Once he reached Painter, the pair bowed their heads for a time, then the young man nodded and headed toward the far tunnel.

That left just one last demand.

Rafe held up his arm. Another soldier hauled Kai Quocheets forward. Gagged, she struggled with her bound wrists. Her eyes grew large when she spotted Painter.

At the same time her uncle rushed forward, ready to help her. He stumbled several steps out onto the bridge, allowing his guard to drop. Half blind with an avuncular need to defend his niece, Painter threw off his backpack, letting it dangle from his wrist… and only then did Rafe realize his own mistake.

Oh no…

Painter read the understanding in the Frenchman’s eyes. It took all of his strength to pull his attention away from Kai. He had seen the deep bruising on Jordan’s face. It had set his blood to pounding in his ears.

Had they hurt Kai as well?

Such questions would have to wait.

Instead, he stopped on the bridge. He’d taken only a few steps, but that put him out over the chasm, yet still well enough away from the hostile party on the other side. He kept his arm out. The heavy pack dangled from his fingertips over the gorge. The steam burned his exposed skin while bathing his arm in yellowish clouds of toxins. The river below hissed and gurgled.

“You already have the gold jar with you,” Rafael said, his voice a mix of dismay and respect. “You’ve had it all along.”

Painter reached out over the chasm and unzipped the pack’s main compartment. He let the gold shine out. “Shoot me, and it drops into the river below. If you want this treasure, you’ll let my niece go. Send her across the bridge. Once she’s safely in the tunnel behind me, I’ll throw the bag to you.”

“And what guarantee do I have that you’ll do as you say?”

“You have my word.”

Painter refused to break eye contact with Rafael, not to intimidate but to make his intention clear. He was being honest. There was no subterfuge, no clever plan. He had to risk everything to get Kai to safety. Kowalski had a good spot from which to defend them. Rafael would likely flee with his prize, rather than try to dig the others out of that hole. Kai would have a chance to live.

But that didn’t mean Rafael wouldn’t order his men to shoot Painter after he tossed the package. Anticipating this, he would do his best to retreat to the shelter of the boulders and work his way back to the tunnel himself.

It wasn’t a great plan, but it was all he had.

Rafael kept staring back at him, doing his best to read his enemy. Finally, he nodded his head. “I believe you, Monsieur Crowe. You are right. We can end this like civilized men.” He gave Painter a slight bow. “Until we meet again.”

The Frenchman turned and motioned for his men to free Kai. They undid her hands. Painter watched. Still gagged, she had a wild-eyed stare — but she was not looking at him.

She was looking behind him.

Because of the bubbling of the muddy river, he hadn’t heard the approach until it was too late. As he turned, he felt a telltale tremble in the sandstone trusses of the span as someone’s feet pounded onto the bridge. He got a glimpse of a tall dark shape hurtling toward him. A shoulder hit him low in the rib cage, lifted him off his feet, and slammed him to the stone bridge, knocking the wind from his lungs. Strong fingers ripped the backpack from his grasp. Then the figure flew past him.

He twisted around to see a woman sprint to the far side and reach Rafael. As promised, the Frenchman had pulled back his men. Painter should have been more specific.

The tall black woman — a veritable Amazon — handed Rafael the bag.

“Merci, Ashanda.”

Painter knelt on the stone span, defeated.

Rifles pointed back at him, but instead of ordering him shot, Rafael waved his men to retreat. He matched gazes with Painter. “You’d best be off that bridge, mon ami.”

With a nod to the side, one of his soldiers raised a transmitter and twisted a dial on it. A resounding blast sounded from under the span. The far side of the bridge exploded in a blast of sandstone and mortar. Deafened, blinded, Painter fell back and rolled off the bridge’s end and onto solid rock.

He raised himself up on his hands and knees to see Rafael and his group retreating for the surface on the far side. The remaining span of the bridge crumbled apart and crashed with mighty, muddy splashes into the river below, churning up more sulfur and heat.

As Rafael reached the tunnel, he held Kai by the shoulder. He took off her gag and called to him. “So she can say good-bye!”

Kai had to be held up by the tall commando. Her voice was a wail of fear and grief that ripped into his belly. “Uncle Crowe… I’m sorry…”

Then she was hauled up the tunnel. Still on his knees, he listened to her sobbing cries fade away.

Footfalls sounded behind him. Kowalski came running up with Jordan. “What happened to the bridge?”

“They’d mined it,” Painter said hollowly.

“Kai?” Jordan asked, his face aghast.

Painter shook his head.

“What are we going to do?” Kowalski asked. “We can’t make it across that.”

Painter slowly collected himself, gained his feet, and stepped to the edge of the steaming gorge. They had to get across. It was Kai’s only chance. With no further use for her, Rafael would soon kill her. Painter had to stay alive, so she could live, too. Still, despair washed over him. Even if they made it out, what did he have to bargain with to win her back? Rafael had the gold tablets and the canopic jar. He stared down at his empty hands.

Then the ground shook, and an echoing blast reached them. A wash of dust and smoke belched out of the far tunnel, accompanied by the distant grumble of rock.

“Seems the bastards mined more than just the bridge,” Kowalski said.

Painter pictured the chasm cliffs above crashing down, sealing them in. As the dust settled, the air grew strangely still. The sting of sulfur worsened, and the heat rose rapidly. With the opening of the blowhole above now blocked, any circulation of air stopped down here.

Jordan covered his nose and mouth. “What are we going to do?”

As if in answer, a thunderous detonation cracked through the enclosed space. But it was no explosion.

Painter turned as the fissure high up the wall broke wider, splintering outward. The concussion of the charges above must have traveled deep into the earth, to this bubble in the limestone, weakening its already fractured structure.

The flow of boiling mud surged through the widening gap. Boulders began to break off the wall and fall crashing into the pool below. Mud splashed high, raining down.

As Painter and the others retreated from the hail of muddy gobbets, more and more of the wall broke away, falling apart in pieces like a crumbling dam. The sludge fall became a torrent, gushing forth, flooding the river and overflowing the banks of the bubbling pool.

At last, Painter had an answer for Jordan’s question.

What are we going to do?

He pointed to the tunnel as a wall of mud rolled toward them.

“Run!”

Chapter 28

The plan had failed…

Gray folded his hands atop his head. Seichan and Monk did the same as rifles pointed at their backs. Soldiers forced them at gunpoint past the bodies of the mint officers, the marble slick with their blood.

Waldorf limped behind them, nursing his wounded leg, leaving bloody footprints. “Take them out the gates,” he instructed the man carrying the plate of gold. “I’m heading to my office. I’ll sound the alarm in five minutes. You want to be out of here by then.”

“Yes, sir.”

As they passed through the security station in the lobby, Gray spotted the Humvee idling outside, its tailpipe smoking as the night grew cooler. They had only one chance.

One of the soldiers dashed ahead to the door, moving sideways, still keeping an eye on them. Now was as good a time as any. Gray glanced to Monk, who already knew what to do. His friend gave the smallest nod, a sign that Gray understood. Atop his head, Monk’s fingers blindly tapped a code onto his wrist cuff, preparing to transmit a wireless signal.

“Eyes closed, hands over ears,” Gray whispered to Seichan.

She looked momentarily confused, then her gaze shifted to the plastic tray holding Monk’s disembodied prosthetic hand.

“Now,” Gray said breathlessly.

Monk tapped the go signal, activating a small flash-bang charge built into his prosthesis, one of its unique new weapons system upgrades. Gray slipped his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes closed. It wasn’t much protection. As the hand exploded, the flash of the charge outlined his fingers against his eyelids, and the bang stabbed into his head.

Men screamed as they went temporarily blind and disoriented.

Rifles fired wildly.

Gray had only seconds before their sight returned. He twisted around and hauled the gold plate out of the arms of the team leader. He continued his turn, dropping and pivoting on his toes, swinging back full around and heaving the heavy plate into the legs of the same soldier. Bones shattered. The man’s scream turned high-pitched.

At the same time Seichan had grabbed a gunman’s rifle out of his dazed grip, expertly flipped it around, and fired point-blank into his chest. His body flew back into another soldier. Seichan continued firing, taking down that other man, too.

Monk had lunged low toward the door, out of firing range. He threw a meaty fist up, square into the guard’s nose, crunching deeply. His target fell limply against the door and slid down. Monk retrieved the man’s weapon.

Seichan continued to fire, strafing deeper into the lobby.

Gray spotted her target.

Waldorf limped and fell through his office door, slamming it shut behind him. Seichan continued to fire, but the rounds pelted into steel. The door must be reinforced like the rest of the fortress.

“Damn,” she said.

Seconds later, an alarm Klaxon rang out, echoing throughout the building. Waldorf must have hit a panic button in his office. Monk stood beside the exit as a blast shield began to trundle down from above, preparing to seal the place up.

“Time to go!” he called out, and held the door open.

Gray and Seichan sprinted toward him. Even with her bad leg, Seichan reached the exit first and dove out. Slower, encumbered by the heavy gold plate, Gray had to duck to get under the lowering blast shield.

Monk followed, gasping. Sirens rang throughout the base, spreading the alarm. “I thought breaking into Fort Knox was hard,” he said. “Breaking out may be even harder!”

“Into the Humvee!” Gray ordered.

They ran for the idling truck. Gray hopped behind the wheel. Monk took the passenger side. Seichan leaped into the backseat. All three doors slammed at the same time.

Gray shifted into gear and wheeled the Humvee around, gunning the massive engine and barreling up speed along the entry road. In the rearview mirror, he spotted Seichan sidling over to a window and cracking a side panel so she could poke her rifle out.

“We don’t shoot!” Gray said. “These are U.S. soldiers just doing their job.”

“Oh, this just gets easier and easier,” Monk complained.

They had one hope.

Gray had already noted their ride had been outfitted with an “up-armor” kit for combat use, which included reinforced doors, bullet-resistant glass, side and rear plating, and a ballistic windshield capable of withstanding explosive ordnance. It was not an unusual vehicle to find here, since Fort Knox was home to the U.S. Army Center for Armored Warfare. It was a proving ground for tanks, artillery, and all manner of armored beasts.

To avoid killing anyone, they needed to ram their way to freedom. For the moment they had the advantage of surprise — and confusion. It wasn’t like someone broke into or out of Fort Knox on a regular basis.

Gray aimed for the gates, which had already closed. Sentries milled about, plainly unsure if this was a false alarm or merely a training exercise. The Humvee charging at them cleared up that confusion.

Rifles were raised. Rounds cracked against the windshield.

From the sentry tower, someone fired a rocket-propelled grenade, but in his haste, the shot went wide, blasting through the fencing to the side.

“Hang on!” Gray called.

He didn’t slow, trusting the soldiers to leap out of the way in time.

They did.

The Humvee’s armored grille hit the gates and bulled through with a screech of torn fencing. Then they were flying down Gold Vault Road. Rifle fire peppered the rear of the truck.

“They’ll have birds in the air in less than five minutes,” Monk said. Birds being Apache helicopter gunships. “It should take them longer to mobilize a more significant armored threat. But we could get hit by—”

A sharp whistling cut through the engine’s roar.

“—mortars,” Monk finished.

The rocket shot past their hood and exploded in the neighboring field, casting up a fountain of grass, dirt, and rock. Smoke billowed across the road.

Gray roared through it and quickly reached the end of the road. But instead of turning onto Bullion Boulevard, he drove straight across the street, bounced across a ditch, and crashed through another fence, clipping a sign that read THORNE PARK. He trundled overland across a field dotted by woods. The Humvee’s wide tires trenched deep tracks. He headed south through the park, aiming for the Dixie Highway that ran alongside the base.

Another rocket exploded into an oak tree, shattering it into flaming splinters. The Humvee smashed through the remains with a great wash of fire and smoke, blinding them all.

Then they were past it.

“That one was closer,” Monk said.

“You think?” Seichan asked sarcastically.

“They may not even be trying to hit us, only slow us down.” Gray yanked the wheel and sent the vehicle into a slightly new trajectory, trying to make them a harder target if he was wrong.

“I see lights rising from the airfield,” Seichan warned.

“Maybe that’s why they’re trying to delay us,” Monk realized aloud. “They’re sending out the gunships.”

Gray sped faster. They needed to get clear of this base and into civilian territory before serious firepower was employed. If they could escape from this place, the military would be confined to tracking them from the air, utilizing civilian police forces on the ground.

A line of lights appeared through the trees, moving slowly, car headlamps marking the Dixie Highway. They were almost there. He floored the accelerator.

“Here come the helicopters!” Seichan called out.

The Humvee rocketed toward the highway, churning mud and weeds. Then they hit the slope of the highway embankment, shooting up over the gravel and concrete apron. Gray looked for a break in the stream of car lights, found it, and skidded the massive vehicle around on its side, fishtailing into traffic.

Horns bleated in protest. Tires squealed, smoking rubber on asphalt.

A small SUV bumped their rear.

Gray did not slow. He gunned the engine and set off down the highway in a wild, careening course, blaring his horn to help clear the way. The small town of Radcliff appeared as a sea of lights ahead. He raced toward it, barreling at twice the speed limit as the highway became a road at the city’s edge.

“We got company!” Seichan yelled.

A brilliant light speared the darkness behind them, reflecting from the truck’s mirrors. It was the spotlight from a helicopter sweeping down the highway toward them.

“Take the next turn!” Monk yelled.

Gray trusted him and swung around the corner onto a narrow street, not bothering to slow. Seichan slid across the backseat.

Fourplexes and taller apartment buildings lined both sides of the avenue, likely off-base housing for military personnel. The tight row of buildings offered them a temporary reprieve, blocking them from the helicopter’s view.

But that wouldn’t last long.

“There!” Monk said, and pointed. “I saw the sign from the road.”

Up ahead, a neon advertisement slowly turned atop a tall pole.

That would do.

It was another necessity around off-base housing.

Gray swung into the parking lot of an all-night automated car wash. Individual enclosed bays with coin-operated hoses and vacuums lined one side. He swung into one of the bays, pulling fully under the enclosure, hiding them from sight by air.

“Bail out,” Gray ordered.

He grabbed the gold plate. Monk and Seichan snatched up their rifles and some extra ammunition they’d found inside the Humvee. They heard the whump-whump of searching helicopters and stared skyward. Three helicopters patrolled the town, sweeping the streets with their searchlights. Gray and the others had to be out of here before roadblocks locked the place down.

There was another patron of the car wash who was also watching the air show.

Monk crossed to him, a tattooed and pierced kid in a dirty T-shirt with a Harley emblem and ragged jeans.

Monk pointed his rifle.

Wide-eyed, the kid stared from the weapon to Monk’s face and said, “Shit.” He pointed to an older, rust-pocked Pontiac Firebird and backed away, sliding a bit in the suds. “Listen, man. Keys are in the car.”

Monk pointed to the Humvee. “So are ours. Feel free to take it.”

The kid did not seem so inclined. He was no fool. He had taken stock of the situation.

Gray hurried to the Firebird, threw the priceless plate in the trunk, and got behind the wheel. Keys hung from the ignition, along with a silver skull-shaped fob. He hoped that wasn’t a bad omen.

The others piled in, with Seichan taking the front passenger seat this time. Monk clambered into the back. A minute later, they were crossing out of the city limits. Gray had them yank the batteries from their cell phones, to keep anyone from tracking them. He couldn’t take any chances, not with the treasure that was sitting in the trunk.

Before pulling his battery, he noted an unopened voice mail from his parents’ home number. He didn’t have time to deal with it at the moment. He also didn’t want to risk drawing undue attention to himself and the others by calling his parents. Besides, he had supplied his mother with a list of emergency numbers. That should hold them for a while.

Eventually Gray knew that the three of them would have to buy disposable phones, something that couldn’t be connected to them, in order to reach Sigma and determine the best course of action from this point. But for now they had to keep moving, keep under the radar.

With all their electronic tails severed, Gray headed due south, using a map he purchased with cash from a gas station. He edged his speed up along the back roads, avoiding major thoroughfares, eking out as much power as the old V-8 engine could muster. The only trail he left behind was oily smoke rising from his tailpipe, coming from a bad cylinder head.

At least he hoped that was the only trail.

As he drove, the tiny silver skull kept knocking against the steering wheel column, as if trying to warn him.

But of what?

Chapter 29

It’ll be okay…

Down on one knee, Hank Kanosh patted Kawtch’s flanks, trying to calm the dog. The explosions a moment ago had set them both to trembling. That and the cold chill of the icy tomb. With only the one flashlight, he sat in a solitary pool of light. The dark tomb loomed over his shoulder as he stared at the tunnel opening.

What is happening up there?

He should never have agreed to stay down here.

Kawtch burst up from his haunches to his paws, hackles bristling. A low growl of warning emanated from his throat. Then Hank heard it, too. Muffled voices, faint and growing louder, echoed out of the tunnel.

Who is coming? Friend or foe?

Then the scraping of boots sounded — and a small shape slid on his backside out of the icy passageway. The limber form bounded to his feet. Kawtch barked a greeting while Hank backed a wary step until his mind made sense of the newcomer, recognizing him.

“Jordan?”

“Get back!” the young man said. He ran up, grabbed Hank by the arm, and hauled him away from the tunnel.

“What’s going—?”

Painter and Kowalski fell out of the opening next.

They split in opposite directions, diving away.

Then an impossible sight.

From the mouth of the passageway, a massive black worm extruded into the cavern, shooting all the way to the ice-encrusted ruins. The tubular shape quickly grew misshapen, melting, sighing out with a sulfurous steam. A large bubble burst, spattering out hotter, molten material from the interior.

Mud.

More of the thickening goop poured out of the tunnel, piling and worming into the space, building higher and higher, continually burbling outward in surges and belches of half-molten mud.

Painter joined Hank and Jordan while Kowalski skirted around the cooling edge.

“The enemy sealed us in,” Painter explained, gasping a bit, holding his side. He waved them all farther back. “The explosion cracked through the cavern wall, unleashing a lake of flaming mud.”

Jordan rubbed his arms against the cold chill.

“We have to keep moving.” Painter eyed the mountain building behind them. “The cold down here is the only thing that saved us. It’s cooling the mud, turning it to sludge, forming a semiplug in the tunnel. But we can’t count on it holding. The lake building above will eventually melt its way down here, or the mounting pressure will blast the plug out. Either way, we don’t want to be here when that happens.”

Hank agreed. He stared at the Anasazi tomb. The dead souls here would finally get a proper interment, buried in more than just ice.

Jordan asked an important question. He tried to sound as brave as the others, but a squeak to his voice betrayed his terror. “Where can we go?”

“This must be a huge cavern system,” Painter said. “So for now we keep moving.”

Making the necessity for this abundantly clear, at that moment a great gout of fresh mud burst out of the tunnel, swamping across the cavern, steaming, bubbling with gas — before cooling. As they backed away, more and more hot mud flowed into the cavern, flooding in faster.

Painter pointed to one of the tunnels — the largest — that exited the cave. “Go!”

They fled at a reckless clip. Painter took the lead with a flashlight; Kowalski kept behind them with another. The tunnel ran deeper underground, still treacherously icy. Hank pictured the ancient flood that had drowned the Anasazi’s hidden settlement, imagining it draining away down this very tunnel, eventually turning to ice.

Jordan ran a hand along the low ceiling. “I think we’re in an old lava tube. This could keep going down and down forever.”

“That’s not good,” Painter said. “We need to find a way up. The mud will continue to drain deeper. We have to get clear of its path.”

“And we’d better find that way fast!” Kowalski called from the back.

Hank looked over his shoulder, but Kowalski flashed his beam down. It took a breath for Hank to note the water trickling underfoot now, pouring down from above. Kawtch’s paws splashed in the thin stream. The mud must have reached this tunnel’s mouth, melting the ice above and sending it flowing after them.

Painter set a faster pace.

After another ten minutes — which seemed more like an hour — they finally reached the tube’s end.

“Oh no,” Hank moaned, stepping next to Painter.

The tunnel ended high up a cliff wall. Painter pointed his light over the edge. They couldn’t even see the bottom of the precipitous drop, but a gurgling rush of water was echoing upward. Directly ahead, across an eight-foot gap, stood the opposite cliff. The lava tube continued on that far side. It was like some mighty god had taken a giant cleaver and split this section of the earth, cutting the tunnel in half.

“It’s a slip fault,” Painter said. “We’ll have to jump. It’s not that far. With a running start, we should be able to dive into that other tunnel.”

“Are you mad?” Hank asked.

“It looks worse than it is.”

Kowalski sided with Hank. “Bullshit. My eyesight’s not that bad.”

“I can do it,” Jordan said, and waved everyone back. “I’ll go first.”

“Jordan…” Hank cautioned.

“It’s not like we have any choice,” the young man reminded him.

No one could argue with that.

They backed up the tunnel and gave him enough room for a running start.

“Careful,” Hank said, patting Jordan on the shoulder.

He gave them a thumbs-up — then ran low, splashing in the growing stream, and leaped headlong across the gap. Like a young muscular arrow, he shot straight through the air and dove cleanly into the far opening, sliding on his belly across the icy bottom of the next tube. He vanished for a bit — then popped back.

“It’s really not that bad,” he said, panting, wearing a huge smile.

Easy for him to say…

“I’ll go next,” Painter said. “Once I’m there, Kowalski, you throw me the dog.”

Kowalski looked at Kawtch; the dog looked at the big man.

Neither looked happy about that idea.

After a bit of maneuvering, Painter ran and made the leap as smoothly as Jordan.

Kowalski then picked up Kawtch, slinging him between his legs. The dog wiggled until Hank got him to calm down with a pat and whispered reassurances.

“Sheesh, Doc. What are you feeding this guy?”

“Just be careful,” Hank said, holding a hand to his throat.

Kowalski stepped to the edge of the drop-off, bent deep at the waist — then heaved upward. Kawtch yelped in surprise, legs splaying out like a flying squirrel. Painter leaned out and caught the dog cleanly. They both fell back into the tunnel amid a rout of barking protest.

Hank choked out his relief — until Kowalski turned to him.

“That means you’re next.”

He swallowed and shook his head. “I don’t know if I can.”

“It’s that or I throw you across like your dog. Your pick, Doc.”

Hank couldn’t decide which was worse.

Painter called from the other side. “I’ll be here if you need me.”

“Okay, let’s do this,” Hank said, forcing as much bravado into those words as he could.

He backed up the tunnel alongside Kowalski.

“I can push you… give you a running start,” the large man offered.

Before he could answer, a low sighing gasp made them both turn. Kowalski pointed his flashlight up the lava tube. The beam ended at a wall of mud about twenty feet away. It had crept up on them silently, like some skilled assassin, oozing down the tube. As they watched, the sludge wall melted open and hot mud began to run out of its center, extending its reach.

“Now or never, Doc.”

A low rumble alerted them to trouble.

The flowing mud suddenly exploded toward them. Hot sludge pelted their bodies, burning skin, stinking of sulfur. Bubbling mud followed in its wake, pouring down at them.

“Run!” Kowalski said.

Hank took off, Kowalski at his heels.

Crouched over, Hank ran as fast as he could, but as he reached the end, the water-slick ice betrayed him. His legs went out from under him and he toppled crookedly over the edge.

“Got you, Doc!” A beefy arm scooped him around the waist — then carried him in a hurdling tackle across the dark chasm.

Hank wanted to close his eyes, but that scared him more.

They failed to hit the tunnel as smoothly as the other two. Kowalski clipped his shoulder, sending them tumbling in a tangle of limbs down the throat of the icy tunnel. They crashed into Painter, who could not get out of the way in time.

But eventually they came to a halt. After a bit of figuring whose limbs belonged to whom, they gained their feet. Jordan had returned to the tunnel’s mouth, staring across the gap.

Hank joined him, bruised in odd places.

A new mud waterfall had been born. From the far tube, they could see sludge gushing in a flowing, sulfurous stream. As Hank watched, he caught a flash of a blackened leg poke out of the flow. It was one of the Anasazi bodies, washed from its icy tomb.

The corpse, now buried in mud, vanished below.

Hank said a silent prayer for the lost soul, for all of them — then turned back.

Kowalski expressed what all of them were thinking. “Now what?”

They all sorely needed the rest break.

“We’ll stop here,” Painter said, and sank to his butt, exhausted.

After escaping the mud, he had led them to the end of the lava tube. It had dumped them into a growing maze of tunnels, chutes, rock falls, and blind alleys. For the past half hour, Painter kept trying to climb upward, hoping for the best, but each time, they were eventually driven back deeper.

Needing to collect himself and think, he called for a stop in this small cavern. He searched around. Tunnels branched off in three different directions.

Where now?

Painter stared at his mud-coated companions. Hank let the others take turns sipping from his CamelBak water pouch. Kowalski had already drained his, and Painter had lost his pack to that Amazon woman. They kept hearing water but could never find its location. Dehydration, more than anything, threatened them. If the chill didn’t kill them, the lack of water would.

How long could they keep this up?

Hank looked one step away from collapsing as he sat next to his dog. Kowalski fared little better. He sweated like a racehorse, losing pints of water every few minutes. Even Jordan looked hollow-eyed and lost.

Painter knew that what was weighing them all down, making every step harder, was the futility of their situation. He felt doubly crushed. If he closed his eyes, he could still see Kai’s face as she was dragged away, hear her sobbing cries.

Was she even still alive?

That worry plagued another. Jordan had voiced similar questions as they hiked, never straying far from that same fear. The two had apparently grown close.

Jordan leaned his head back against the wall, too tired to move. Painter studied him, suddenly recognizing how truly young he was. Jordan had held up as well as any man, but he was still barely out of boyhood.

As Painter stared, he noted the youth’s small cowlick — really just a few hairs sticking up — bend ever so slightly, quivering. Jordan scratched his head, perhaps feeling it, too.

It took Painter a few extra moments to realize the truth.

That’s the answer…

He sprang up, shedding his exhaustion like so much dead skin. “There’s a breeze blowing through here,” he said. “It’s faint, but it’s here.”

Kowalski opened one eye. “So?”

“This is a breathing cavern system. And it’s still breathing.”

Hank’s eyes widened, the dullness fading. He lifted a damp hand, trying to feel that faint breath.

Painter explained. “Just because one blowhole got plugged, that doesn’t mean they all did. By following the direction of this breeze, it should lead us to a way out.”

Kowalski slapped a palm on his thigh and stood. “Then what are we waiting for? Once we’re out of here, I’m looking for the nearest watering hole. And for once in my damned life, I really mean water.”

With renewed hope, they set off.

But not before Kowalski made an addendum to that last statement. “Of course, just to be clear, that doesn’t mean I would turn down a cold beer if someone offered.”

The hike from this point on was no less strenuous or frustrating than what came before, but hope now buoyed their spirits, kept them moving forward. They tested each crossroads with a small match from Hank’s backpack, watching the direction of the smoke. The breeze grew stronger and stronger over the next two hours, which only encouraged them to move faster.

“We must be near the surface,” Hank said, and sucked on the blue plastic tube to his CamelBak. From the forlorn gurgle as he sucked, he was empty.

They needed to find the way out.

Painter checked his watch.

9:45 P.M.

After another hour, it still seemed they were no closer to the surface. Out of water, down to one flashlight with working batteries, they were running out of time.

Hank heard a strange popping-crackle sounding underfoot. A rock had shattered under his boot. He pointed his light down. Bits of black-and-white pottery skittered across the limestone.

It wasn’t a rock, but a pot.

He bent down and picked up a shard. “This is Anasazi handiwork.”

Painter focused his beam up the rocky chute they’d been climbing along the past ten minutes. He spotted more bowls and clay vessels resting on shelves of rock.

“Look at this,” Jordan said behind him. “Cave art.”

Hank moved down to the youth’s side. Painter had missed seeing the clue when he passed by it a moment ago, exhaustion making him sloppy.

“Petroglyphs,” Hank said, and stared up the chute. “Painter, could you turn off your flashlight?”

Painter sensed that the professor was onto something and flicked off his lamp.

Total darkness closed over them.

No, not total darkness.

Painter stared up. Faint light glowed up there, barely more than a grayness against the black backdrop.

“I think I know where we are,” Hank said out of the darkness.

Painter turned his light back on.

Hank’s eyes were huge as he waved Painter forward. “It shouldn’t be much farther.”

Painter believed him. Their pace became hurried, especially as crude steps appeared, carved into the rock. They led up to a square of moonlight overhead, crosshatched by a steel grate. Painter had seen that grate before — but from the other side.

“This is the blowhole at Wupatki,” he mumbled. He remembered the park ranger’s estimation of the cavern system beneath it.

Seven billion cubic feet… stretching for miles.

That had proven to be true — and might even be an underestimation.

Hank could not restrain his excitement. “This must be how the surviving Anasazi escaped the massacre here. They fled down here, crossed underground through this cavern system, and set up a new home beneath the other blowhole. There they lived until the flood wiped them out.”

With one mystery solved, Painter faced another.

He reached up and rattled the grill. “It’s padlocked.”

“No worries.” Kowalski pushed forward and raised his pistol. “I got the key.”

Chapter 30

“They’re still hunting you,” Kat said, her voice sounding tinny through the cheap disposable phone. “They will be all night.”

Gray sat in the passenger seat of a nondescript white Ford van — the more nondescript the better, it seemed, according to Kat’s report. They’d ditched the muscle car hours ago in a wooded park outside of Bowling Green and hot-wired their new vehicle from a used-car lot. The van shouldn’t be missed until the dealership opened in the morning.

Still, they kept moving, knowing that the dragnet for the escaped Fort Knox terrorists would be ever widening. To stay ahead of it, they traveled back roads, avoiding main thoroughfares, threading their way south until they reached Nashville.

“You’ve got everyone looking for you,” Kat continued. “FBI, military intelligence, civilian law enforcement. It’s still a clusterfuck out here in D.C., especially with all of this coming down in the middle of the night. Now that the terrorist flag has been raised, everyone’s scrambling.”

As Monk drove slowly through a suburban industrial park on the outskirts of Nashville, Gray glanced to the backseat. Seichan sat with her arms crossed, staring at the dark mix of warehouses, supply stores, and mechanic shops. Because of her past crimes, she was not officially a member of Sigma. She could never be. Her recruitment as an asset and spy was known only by a small handful of people within their organization, all well trusted. To the rest of the world’s intelligence agencies, she remained a wanted terrorist, a deadly assassin for hire.

“How did that alert at Fort Knox get raised in the first place?” Gray asked. “All of our identification was solid. What tipped them off? We were scanned and photographed at the depository. Did Seichan’s picture get flagged by some database?”

“I’m still working on that,” Kat replied. “But I can tell you the alert wasn’t generated from Fort Knox. It came from an outside source, but I can’t trace it. At least not right now. It’s too early. Everyone is still covering his or her ass at this point. I imagine files are being shredded all over D.C.”

“So we were set up. It was an ambush from the start.” He could guess who orchestrated it all, picturing the officer in charge at Fort Knox. “Any further news on Waldorf?”

Gray had spoken to Kat an hour ago after purchasing the disposable cell phone. The conversation had been brief as she tried to quell a hundred fires while blowing chaff to keep Sigma’s involvement a secret and misdirecting the nation’s various intelligence and security agencies to keep Gray and his teammates from getting caught.

“No,” she said. “I’ve made numerous inquires, but Waldorf vanished shortly after the base alert got raised. But he must be hunting for you as desperately as everyone else.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It was one of the reasons I was calling you back. To warn you. The Learjet that you took from D.C. was blown up in midair about fifteen minutes ago, shortly after taking off from the Louisville Airport. A blast took out the tail section. Estimates are that it was a bomb tied to an altimeter timer. The plane reached a certain height and the ordnance blew.”

Gray remembered the young pilot. A hot coal of anger settled deep in his belly. “Waldorf was gunning for us. But he must have known we wouldn’t be on that plane.”

He squeezed a fist on his knee as he realized what this meant. The bombing was an act of pure vengeance, a murderous tantrum after Waldorf had been thwarted.

“I thought you should know,” Kat warned. “It’s another reason you must keep moving.”

“Understood.” He heard her sigh loudly, sensing more was to come. “What?”

“I heard from Dr. Janice Cooper again.”

It took Gray a moment to place that name — then he remembered. “She was working with that Japanese physicist.”

“They’re both still under guard, but her partner who survived the massacre has been continuing to consult with other labs. At our request, he’s been studying the massive neutrino surges rising from the West.”

“Has he been able to pin down the location?”

“No, but he has been able to extrapolate the magnitude of the coming explosion. He says it may be over a hundred times larger than the one in Iceland.”

Gray pictured Ellirey Island crumbling to fiery ruin.

A hundred times larger than that?

The level of destruction would be massive, the scale unimaginable.

Kat continued, “Which brings me to the real reason I called. The Japanese physicist has worked up a rough estimate for when it might blow. Like he did with Iceland.”

“When?” Gray asked, tensing his abdomen, anticipating the punch.

“In about five hours.”

A sinking despair settled through him. What could they do in five hours? Even if they weren’t being hunted, they’d have a hard time even flying to the West Coast in time to accomplish anything. But Sigma already had other operatives out there.

“Any word from Director Crowe?”

Her voice grew strained. “No. He had gone down into a cavern system under some ruins, but local rangers reported an explosion there, burying much of it in rubble. I have Lisa monitoring teams combing the desert where he’d last been seen. She’s a wreck. Nothing’s turned up. And I’ve spoken to Ronald Chin at least a dozen times. He’s heard nothing from Painter either.”

Gray hoped the director was okay, but they still needed someone out west who could address the trouble that was escalating in that region. “Did you tell Chin about the geological timer ticking down?”

“I did, but without a location, what can he do? That’s why I need you to find a way to free that old Indian map from the gold plate. If there’s some clue as to where this cache of unstable nanotech is hidden, we need to know it now.”

“I’ll do what I can, but I’ll need some foundry where I can heat up this gold plate. See if I can’t melt away the ordinary gold and expose the map at its heart.”

“I anticipated that.”

Of course she did.

“I have the name of a small goldsmith shop near you. I’ll give you the address. The owner will meet you there in fifteen minutes.”

She passed on the location. It was only a few blocks away, in the same industrial park they were driving through. Leave it to Kat to have every variable covered.

But there remained one last variable.

“Can I have a word with Monk?” she asked, sounding stern.

“Hang on.” He held out the phone to his friend. “Looks like you’re in trouble.”

Monk kept hold of the steering wheel with the stump of his wrist and took the phone. He cradled it between his shoulder and chin and regained his grip on the wheel.

“Hey, babe,” he said.

Kat’s voice whispered from the phone, but the words were too faint to make out.

“No, I didn’t lose another hand,” Monk said, tightening his fingers on the steering wheel. “I just lost my prosthesis. Big difference, hon.”

Gray imagined Kat scolding her husband in an operatic duet that has been going on between husbands and wives for ages, that eternal mix of exasperation and love.

A slow smile spread across Monk’s face. He whispered back words that were mundane and ordinary — but in fact were as loving as the lyrics of any aria. “Uh-huh… okay… yeah, I’ll do that…”

In an effort to give them privacy, Gray turned to study the dark streets, but his eyes caught on the rearview mirror. He saw Seichan staring at the back of Monk’s head, her face soft and lost, not knowing anyone was watching.

But she was still a hunter.

As she sensed his attention, her gaze flicked and trapped him in the mirror’s reflection. Her face went hard again as she turned away.

Monk’s voice suddenly grew sharper. “What? Just now?”

Gray drew his focus back up front.

Monk lifted his chin to address the car. “Kat’s just heard. Lisa’s on the phone with him now. Painter’s been found.”

Chapter 31

Less than five hours until the next explosion?

After speaking with Lisa, Painter had been fully debriefed by Kat. He checked his watch. That would put the time just at sunrise out here. But the big question remained: Where exactly would it blow?

Kat continued: “I have Gray working to narrow the search radius. Our only hope is that he truly has found the old Indian map and can pinpoint the location of that lost city.”

Ever since clawing his way to freedom, Painter had felt as if his hands were tied. He and the others had escaped the caverns below Wupatki about an hour ago. Members of a search party, bivouacked at the site of the ruins, had been surprised when Painter’s group appeared out of nowhere, asking for water and food. They’d been promptly evacuated to a ranger station, where Painter set about discovering what had been going on during his absence.

Apparently a lot.

But one question remained foremost in his mind. He asked it again: “Kat, has there been any news about Kai?”

“No.” Her next words were spoken carefully. “We’re combing all the counties in Arizona and Utah. No law enforcement agencies have reported the discovery of a dead body matching your niece’s description.”

He steeled his voice, keeping control, knowing it would serve no one to do otherwise. “Jordan Appawora said the commando team had helicopters. They could have traveled farther.”

“I’ll extend the search.”

“What about spreading the word — through clandestine channels and local media — that I survived?”

“Already done. I sent a breaking news ticker out through all the major wires. About the rescue, including photos of your group. If Rafael Saint Germaine or any of his crew turn on a television, radio, or check the news online, they’ll know.”

“Good.”

His niece’s best chance for survival — if she was still alive — was to get that Frenchman’s attention. After that, Rafael would keep her safe, if only to use her as a bargaining chip again. Now all Painter had to do was figure out what chip he had that would set her free.

Over the next ten minutes, Kat went over additional notes: about Fort Knox, the ongoing manhunt for Gray and company, and the status of the neutrino reports.

Once he was caught up, he signed off.

“Sir,” a voice said behind him. He turned to find Jordan standing in the doorway. The others had sacked out in a bunk room at the back of the ranger station. Jordan looked like he’d not slept a wink. “Any word?”

“Nothing yet.” Noting the grim look on the boy’s face, he added, “And that’s good news. Until we hear otherwise, we assume she’s alive, right?”

Jordan gave a sullen nod. “Okay, but when I was crashed back there in the dark, I got to thinking. They took everything from me when I was captured. That included my cell phone. What if they still have it? What if we tried calling my number?”

Painter felt the cords binding his wrists loosen slightly at that thought. Could they still have the kid’s phone? It was worth investigating. Besides, he hated sitting here doing nothing.

Jordan continued to argue his case, not realizing he’d already won it. “Maybe someone will answer my phone and we could threaten them, scare them enough to let Kai go.”

For that matter, we could also track the phone, Painter thought, running through various possibilities. Or turn it into a remote bug by activating its microphone.

Of course, all of this was a long shot. The Frenchman was no fool. He would’ve dumped that phone by now. Painter tapped a finger atop the table. Then again, Rafael thought they were all dead. Maybe his men hadn’t purged everything yet.

Still, Painter knew it would take time to track that phone, especially out here in the remote desert—time that Kai might not have.

Painter had to buy her an extension. “What’s your cell number?”

Jordan gave it to him.

Painter memorized it and asked a ranger for a landline and a bit of privacy. Once alone in a back office, he dialed the number. It rang and rang as he prayed for someone to pick it up.

Finally, the line clicked open. A thickly accented voice spoke slowly, unconcerned. “Ah, Monsieur Crowe, I see we’re not quite done with each other yet.”

Rafael lounged once again in the presidential suite atop the Grand America Hotel in downtown Salt Lake City. He had been woken up half an hour ago and shown footage of muddy figures standing over a grated hole.

Painter Crowe lived.

Remarquable.

Shocked, he had stood there in his bathrobe for a full minute, unable to respond. Emotions had warred in his breast at the sight: rage, awe, and yes, a trickle of fear — not for the man, but for the fickleness of fortune.

In the photo, Painter had been staring straight into the camera.

Rafe read the challenge in that steely gaze. He knew the director of Sigma had orchestrated this media blitz. This was a message sent personally to Rafael.

I am alive. I want my niece.

As Rafe held the phone to his ear, ignoring the bundle of cables and wires dangling from the gutted mobile device, he stared over at the closed door. It seemed that fortune was smiling as warmly on the niece as it had smiled on the uncle. He had wanted to interrogate Kai more fully before dispatching her. She had been inside the Utah cavern, saw the mummies and the treasure. He wanted every detail of that trespass. Potentially she also knew more about Sigma, its operatives, and other tidbits gleaned from her short time with her uncle.

But such interviews were too taxing after the long day.

Morning would be soon enough, so he let her live to see one more sunrise.

And now he was glad he’d shown such generous restraint.

“Do not bother tracking this call,” Rafe warned his adversary. “I employ a crack team of encryption experts. We’re bouncing this signal all around the world.”

“I wouldn’t think of it. You were clearly expecting this call, so I can only assume you had countermeasures in place.”

Exactement.

After seeing the photo earlier, Rafe had known Painter would discover some way to reach out to him. He was somewhat surprised it had taken this long. Ashanda — along with assistance from TJ — had worked their technological magic on the device, ensuring no one could track the phone or trace the signal.

“I’ve called to restart our negotiations,” Painter said. “To continue where we left off.”

“Fair enough.”

“First, I want some guarantee Kai is still alive.”

“No, I don’t believe I’ll give you that.” Rafe enjoyed the long pause, knowing how it must torture the man. “Not until I understand what you’re bringing to the table.”

The pause stretched, stoking suspicion.

Are you preparing to bluff?

Truly, in the end, what could the man offer of interest?

Rafe stared at the gold jar resting atop the dining table. He had studied it at length, drinking in every bit of it, trapping it forever in his mind’s eye. Even now, he rotated the jar in his head, tracing a finger over each inscribed letter of the lost language and feeling anew the detailed landscape that was etched across its golden surface.

This treasure promised far more than wealth. It could guarantee eternal glory, for him, for his family. What more could he want?

Painter told him. “In exchange for Kai’s safe return, I will reveal the location of the Fourteenth Colony.”

Rafe slowly smiled, shocked yet again.

The man never ceased to amaze.

Remarquable.

“Uncle Crowe, you’re alive!”

Painter sagged in his seat upon hearing her voice, wanting to express the same sentiments himself.

She was alive!

Instead, he kept his questions practical, knowing he’d have little time. “Kai, are you okay? Have they hurt you?”

“No,” she answered, stretching that single word to encompass so much more.

Painter knew the trauma she must be undergoing: the deaths, the bloodshed, the terror of the unknown. But he also heard the bravery in that one utterance. She had the blood of warriors in her.

“I’m going to come get you. I promise.”

“I know.” Her response held both tears and hope. “I know you will.”

The phone was taken from her. Rafael returned to the line.

“So we have a deal, n’est-ce pas?”

“I will call you with a time and location for the exchange.”

“And I will want proof of what you claim, Monsieur Crowe.”

“You’ll have it. As long as she is safe and unharmed.”

“So be it. Au revoir.”

As the line cut off, Painter continued to hold the phone, fingers clamped tightly to it, as if trying to keep his connection to Kai. He felt light-headed with relief.

A voice rose behind him. “So is Kai still alive?”

He swung around in the chair. Jordan’s bruised face was raw with worry. Focused on the call, Painter had not heard the boy creep into the office. Either the youth was remarkably light-footed, a trait well known to his Ute clan… or Painter was simply too exhausted to pay his usual attention.

Maybe it was a combination of both.

Painter faced the young man, knowing he had to be truthful. Jordan had earned it. “They’ve not harmed her,” he said. “But she’s still in danger.”

Jordan stepped forward. “So then you’ll tell them what they want to know… to get them to let her go?”

While this was a question, Painter heard the note of demand in it, too.

“I will try.”

That’s the best he could offer. He’d been bluffing with Rafael over the phone, buying time for Kai. But how much leeway had he bought her? How long could he keep stringing the Frenchman along?

In truth, Painter had no idea of the location of the lost Fourteenth Colony. Only one person had a chance of gaining that knowledge — and he was on the run, being hunted by every law enforcement and intelligence agency in the country.

The fear had returned to Jordan’s face.

Painter stood, crossed over, and placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay to worry, but don’t lose heart. I have one of my best men on the case.”

Jordan nodded, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

Painter looked down at the telephone handset still in his grip. Rafael would be expecting another call in an hour. Painter needed some answers by then. He turned to the dark office window, staring across the breadth of the country.

Gray, don’t let me down.

Chapter 32

Standing beside Seichan, Gray leaned his face closer to the oven window. Heat bathed his face. Inside the chamber, the golden plate rested atop a ceramic grate, canted at an angle, showing the Great Seal with the fourteen arrows.

Rows of blue flames waved along the bottom of the oven, slowly raising the temperature inside. Above the door, the readout from the digital thermometer steadily climbed higher, crossing above six hundred degrees Celsius.

“Shouldn’t be much longer,” the shop owner said.

The goldsmith was Russian, around fifty, with salt-and-pepper hair. He stood no taller than five feet but had a linebacker’s build with a bit of a paunch hanging over his belt. He scratched at a gold chain tucked under his T-shirt. The name of his business was GoldXChange, located amid a jumble of industrial complexes on the outskirts of Nashville. He bought old gold for cash, but also melted clients’ rings, coins, necklaces, and other jewelry into ingots.

He’d also had some trouble with the IRS. Kat had pressured the man to cooperate, threatened him with imprisonment if he did not keep silent about tonight’s enterprise.

The owner was plainly nervous, sweating through his shirt.

“Gold melts around a thousand degrees Celsius,” the Russian said. “See how the metal is already glowing.”

Inside the oven, the ruddy surface of the plate had burned to a sun-bright sheen. As he watched, a single, shimmering droplet appeared atop the stamped U.S. Seal, where the gold formed the image of the eagle’s feathers. It rolled down the slanted slope to drip into a ceramic pan beneath the grate. Soon more blazing teardrops began to weep and flow in rivulets, slowly erasing the details of the Seal. The crisp, sharp edges of the plate grew soft, melting away in a river of gold.

“That should be hot enough,” Gray told the shop owner. “Hold the temperature right there.”

Gray did not want to risk damaging the map if it was buried inside. The denser nano-gold had a higher melting point than the rest of the plate, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t soften if it got too hot. They dared not melt away the details of the map.

Once the temperature was set, Gray pointed the Russian to the door. “You’ll need to leave now. Go join my partner outside.”

The goldsmith did not hesitate. With a nod, he backed away, turned, and quickly strode to the exit. Monk was outside watching the street. They did not want to be ambushed again.

Gray waited for the man to leave before returning his attention to the oven, in which molten gold was flowing like liquid sunshine. Slowly the plate eroded before their eyes, shedding more and more of its mass.

“Look along the top,” Seichan said, reaching out to grip his wrist.

“I see it.”

A dark ragged ridge appeared, protruding from the leading edge of the plate, a shadow against the brilliance of the molten gold. Over the next few minutes, more and more of the blazing metal poured away, revealing a greater expanse of the hidden object. That new metal smoldered also — but less brilliantly, a ruddy rosiness against the yellowish gold.

“It’s the map,” Seichan whispered.

This became clear as the remaining gold drained away, flowing across the rosy metal surface, exposing another long-held secret.

This hidden bit of cartography wasn’t a flat engraving.

“It’s a topographical map,” Gray said, awed by the artistry.

Tiny, sculpted mountain ranges appeared, along with deep-cut river valleys and pockets that marked lakes. The melting gold revealed a darkly glowing scale model of the upper half of the North American continent.

As Gray watched, one of the last molten droplets slid like a sailing ship down a large river valley splitting the middle of the continent.

That has to be the Mississippi.

He continued to identify other landmarks: a chain of depressions that marked the Great Lakes, a small crack that could only be the Grand Canyon, a raised spine of mountains that mapped the Appalachians. Even the coastlines looked uncannily accurate. Then, to the northeast of the continent, out in the ocean, rose a peaked series of islands around a larger mainland.

Iceland.

Soon only the map remained on the ceramic grate. Its edges were rough, misshapen, slightly curled up at the corners. A fine, straight crease split the middle, the two halves fitting perfectly together. Gray pictured the map lining the cranial cavity of a mastodon’s skull. Jefferson’s people must have burned away the ancient bone to preserve the map.

“Is that writing?” Seichan asked.

“Where?”

“Along the map’s margins.”

Gray leaned closer to the oven, the radiating heat burning his face. Seichan’s eyes were sharper than his. Faint lines of script did indeed run along the map, to the west of the continent, like notations of a cartographer.

Pinching his eyes, he studied it. “Looks like the same writing we saw in Fortescue’s journal, the ancient lettering he copied from one of those gold plates.” He turned to Seichan. “Grab some paper from the office here. You’ve got better eyes than me. I want that all copied down.”

Seichan obeyed without asking questions. She knew the challenge that was facing him and was happy to leave him to it.

Gray returned his attention to the tiny sculpted map of Iceland. To the south of the mainland, smaller peaks marked the Westman archipelago. Atop one of the islands, a tiny dark crystal shard—possibly a black diamond—had been embedded deep into the metal. It glinted in the dance of fire going on in the oven.

Ellirey Island.

He moved his attention to the west, to another diamond shining against the rosy metal. This shard was much larger than the one set in Iceland, perhaps indicating the relative size of the western deposit. It was a disturbing reminder of the danger brewing out there.

Gray frowned at the map, struggling to get his bearings. The lack of state lines and city names made it difficult to judge with great accuracy where this marker pointed, only that it lay somewhere in the chain of Rocky Mountains, well to the north but still within what would eventually become the United States.

Given the lack of clarity, it was no wonder that Fortescue had decided to go to Iceland first.

Seichan returned with pen and paper and began copying the notations found on the map’s borders.

As she worked, Gray followed the spine of the Rockies farther south. There, he found what he was looking for, the barest sliver of crystal, easy to miss unless you were looking for it.

That must be the Utah site.

Compared to the chunk of diamond to the north, it was nothing. So minuscule, in fact, that Jefferson and Fortescue had either overlooked it or hadn’t even thought it worth mentioning. Gray stared between the three crystals, growing more certain that their different sizes reflected the relative importance of the various sites — and also the relative danger each posed.

He checked his watch, all too aware of the clock ticking down.

Seichan finished her work and pointed her pen at the largest diamond. “Any idea where that is?”

“I think I might know,” he said, putting the pieces together in his head. It all made dreadful and terrifying sense. But he had to be sure before sharing his theory. “I need to check a map of the Western United States.”

Seichan pointed to the oven. “In the meantime, what do we do about that map?”

Gray showed her. He reached and dialed up the digital thermostat on the oven. He kept turning, watching the temperature setting climb above three thousand degrees Celsius, three times the melting point of ordinary gold. The blue acetylene flames shot higher inside the oven, dancing more vigorously.

Seichan stared at him, one eyebrow raised.

“We can’t risk the map falling into Waldorf’s hands,” he explained.

“So you’re going to destroy it?”

“I’m going to try. The map’s metal is denser, so it’s not going to melt at the low temperatures of ordinary gold. But there must be some temperature at which it does melt.”

To make sure this happened, Gray continued to twist the oven’s thermostat dial until the temperature setting changed from digital numbers to just three letters: MAX.

Hopefully that should do it.

Gray kept vigil with Seichan as the oven’s temperature rose higher and higher. Soon the radiating heat drove them back another few steps. Inside the chamber, the map’s rosy glow became a blinding brilliance, shining like a minisun.

Maybe it won’t melt… not even at these temperatures.

In another minute, Gray had to shield his eyes against the glare.

“Do you feel that?” Seichan asked.

“Feel what?” he began — then he felt it.

A prickling across his skin, a fine vibration, as if all the molecules in the room had grown excited. A second later, the heavy oven began to quake against the concrete floor.

Gray grabbed Seichan’s elbow and pushed her toward the door. “Run!”

He fled behind her. He pictured the tightly packed atoms in the nano-gold, squeezed abnormally close together, trapping massive amounts of potential energy in that strained state, like a rubber band stretched tautly.

He glanced behind him. If that rubber band were suddenly cut, if all that potential energy were released at once by overheating the metal…

It wasn’t going to melt.

It was going to—

The explosion blew him into Seichan and rolled them both through the shop door and out into the night. Shattered glass and splintered wood rained down around them. The scorched door of the oven flew past and crashed through the windshield of the shop owner’s Chevy Suburban, parked just outside.

Gray scrambled up, hooking an arm around Seichan’s waist and drawing her up with him. He pictured the shop’s rows of pressurized gas tanks. The next explosion knocked them back to the ground with a scorching blast of heat. A massive fireball blew out the remaining shop windows behind them and rolled high into the sky.

They regained their feet, each helping the other up.

Across a small parking lot that fronted the business, Monk stared back at them. He stood beside the stunned Russian next to their stolen white van. As they ran up, the goldsmith fell to his knees.

“What have you done to my shop?” the man demanded.

“You’ll be reimbursed,” Gray said, waving the man aside and the others toward the vehicle. “As long as you stay silent.”

They all piled into the van, with Monk behind the wheel.

“Hang on,” Monk warned.

He shifted into reverse, pounded the gas pedal, and sent the vehicle flying in reverse, tires squealing across the parking lot. Bouncing over a curb, they hit the surface street teeth-jarringly hard — then Monk yanked back into forward gear so fast that they risked whiplash.

Gray understood the need for speed. They all did. They had to be long gone from the area before any emergency response teams arrived. He stared back at the burning complex. Flames continued to lap around it and smoke roiled high into the night sky, like a signal flare. Their trail, which had grown cool, was suddenly hot again. He couldn’t trust the Russian to remain silent. Word would spread — likely reaching Waldorf.

“What happened back there?” Monk finally asked.

Gray told him.

“So, at least, you found the Indian map,” Monk commented. “But what about the location of the Fourteenth Colony? Do you know where it is?”

Gray nodded, his head still ringing. “I have an idea.”

“Where?”

“In the very worst place it could be.”

Chapter 33

Painter leaned on a table in the main lodge of the ranger station. “If Gray’s right, how much trouble are we in?”

Across a swath of topographical maps and reports from the U.S. Geological Survey, Ronald Chin shook his head.

“I’d say a shitload.”

The normally reserved geologist’s slip into profanity spoke volumes. Chin had arrived thirty minutes ago, along with a member of the National Guard — Major Ashley Ryan. The pair had already been en route from Utah to Arizona, intending to help with the search for Painter’s lost group. After landing in Flagstaff and learning of their rescue, they had joined Painter’s team here at the station, which had become a makeshift situation room.

“Could you be any more specific?” Painter asked, and stared down at a splayed open map of Montana and Wyoming. It was here that Gray believed the lost city of the ancients was hidden, the final resting place of the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev, where they stored their greatest treasures and where a doomsday clock was ticking downward, one neutrino at a time.

He studied the boundaries of the national park outlined on the map.

Yellowstone.

The first of the nation’s parks, and the granddaddy of all geothermal areas on this continent. If the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev had wanted a warm and permanent home to preserve and protect their fragile treasure, this would be the place, with its ten thousand hot springs, two hundred geysers, and countless other steaming vents, bubbling fumaroles, and mud volcanoes. In fact, half the geysers in the entire world were located within this park.

But it was also a lot of park to search.

Over two million acres.

Before deciding to concentrate their efforts fully on that one location, Painter wanted to be sure. Off in one of the back offices, Hank Kanosh was mobilizing his Native American resources, struggling to substantiate Gray’s claim. At this point, it was still a theory. Even Gray admitted that his estimation of the location was a best guess and that a large margin of error remained. In the meantime, his team would seek further corroboration by investigating the historical angle.

While all that was being done, Painter wanted some idea of what to expect. For this, he needed the expertise of a geologist.

Chin stepped around the table, dragging a topographical map of the national park along its surface. It showed a ring of mountains sheltering a vast plateau, the true geothermal heart of Yellowstone. The steaming valley stretched four thousand square kilometers, large enough to hold all of Los Angeles — but it was no ordinary valley. It was a caldera, the cratered top of a supervolcano that simmered beneath the park.

“This is the problem,” Chin said, tapping the center of the crater, where a vast lake pooled. “The Yellowstone caldera marks a geological hot spot, a continual upwelling of hot, molten mantle rock from the earth’s core. It feeds into a massive magma chamber only four to five miles beneath the surface. From data collected by the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, we also know that there are pockets of magma much closer to the surface, seeping into the crust, driving all the hydrothermal activity in the area. With all the rainfall locally, the heat drives a massive and ancient hydraulic system, the world’s largest steam engine. That force alone has triggered massive hydrothermal explosions in the valley. Yellowstone Lake itself was formed from one of those blasts, when rain and springwater filled the crater that resulted.”

Chin’s finger came to rest on that lake. His eyes rose to Painter’s face. “But deeper underground, the pressure keeps slowly mounting as the molten mantle rock rises, building up inside that colossal magma chamber.”

“Until it eventually explodes.”

“Which Yellowstone has done three times over the past two million years. The first explosion tore a hole in the crust the size of Rhode Island. The last eruption left most of the continent covered in ash. These blowouts occur on a regular basis, as steady as the blasts from Old Faithful geyser. They occur once every six hundred thousand years.”

“When was the last one?” Painter asked.

“Six hundred and forty thousand years ago.” The geologist looked significantly at Painter. “So we’re overdue. It’s not a matter of if that supervolcano will erupt, it’s a matter of when. The eruption is inevitable, and geological evidence indicates that it will be soon.”

“What evidence?”

Chin reached and pulled up a sheaf of U.S. Geological Survey studies and seismographic reports from the volcano observatory. He shook the pages in his hand. “We’ve been collecting data going back to 1923. The land around here has been steadily rising as pressure builds below, but starting in 2004, that bulging of the land has surged to three times the annual average, the highest ever recorded. The bottom of one end of Yellowstone Lake, which overlies the caldera, has risen enough to spill water out of the other end, killing trees. Other sections of forest are dying because their roots are being cooked by the subterranean heat. Hot springs along trails have begun to boil, severely injuring some tourists, requiring some paths to be shut down. Elsewhere, new vents have been opening deeper in the parks, observed by passing airplanes, spewing steam and gouts of toxic vapors that have killed bison on the spot.”

Chin slapped his papers down on the table. “This is a powder keg waiting to explode.”

“And someone just lit the match,” Painter said.

He pictured the massive waves of neutrinos flowing from somewhere inside that park, counting down to an inevitable explosion, one a hundredfold larger than the one that had occurred in Iceland.

“What can we expect if we fail to stop this?” Painter said. “What happens if the caldera does erupt?”

“Cataclysm.” Chin stared at the spread of reports and data sheets. “First, it would be the loudest explosion heard by mankind in over seventy thousand years. Within minutes, a hundred thousand people would be buried by ash, incinerated by superheated pyroclastic flows, or killed by the explosive force alone. Magma would spew twenty-five miles into the air. The chamber would release a volume of lava large enough, if spread over the entire United States, to cover the country to the depth of five inches. But most of that flow would be confined to the Western states, wiping out the entire Northwest. For the rest of the country — and the world—ash would be the real killer. Estimates say it would cover two-thirds of the country in at least a meter of ash, rendering the land sterile and uninhabitable. But worst of all, the ash blown into the atmosphere would dim the sun and drop the earth’s temperature by twenty degrees, triggering a volcanic winter that could last decades, if not centuries.”

Painter imagined the worldwide starvation, the chaos, the death. He remembered Gray’s description of the Laki eruption in Iceland shortly after the founding of America. That small-by-comparison volcanic event killed six million people.

He stared at Chin’s ashen face. “You’re talking about an extinction-level event, aren’t you?”

“It’s happened before. Only seventy thousand years ago. A supervolcano erupted in Sumatra. The volcanic winter that followed in its wake wiped out most of the human population, dropping our numbers down to only a few thousand breeding pairs worldwide. The human species survived that eruption by the breadth of a hair.” Chin fixed Painter with a dead stare. “We won’t be so lucky this time.”

Seated in the back office, Hank listened to Chin’s dire prediction.

His hands rested on the computer keyboard, but his eyes had gone blind to the screen. He imagined all of civilization wiped out. He remembered the Ute elder’s apocalyptic prophecy concerning that cave up in the Utah mountains, how the Great Spirit would rise up and destroy the world if anyone dared trespass.

It was now coming true.

A shadow stretched over his long, knobby fingers. A warm hand, unlined by age, squeezed his own.

“It’s okay, Professor,” Jordan said. The youth was seated beside him, where he’d been collating pages from a laser printer. “Maybe Yellowstone isn’t even the right place.”

“It is.”

Hank could not shake his despair, made worse by his memories of Maggie and all of the others who had died.

All this death.

He grew suddenly resentful of his companion’s youth, of his unflagging optimism and his steadfast belief in his own immortality. He glanced up at Jordan — but what he found in the young man’s face told a different story. The black eyes, the bruised features, the fear expressed in every muscle — it was not a lack of maturity that engendered such hope in the young man. It was simply who Jordan was.

Hank took a deep shuddering breath, casting back the shrouds of the dead. He was still alive. So was this resolute young man. A tail thumped under the table.

You, too, Kawtch.

Hank returned Jordan’s support, momentarily sharing that warm squeeze, before his focus returned to the situation at hand. He still hadn’t changed his opinion concerning the final resting place of the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev. Painter’s colleague out east had read that golden map correctly.

At least, Hank believed so.

“What did you find?” Jordan asked.

“I’ve been reading through reams of Native American lore concerning Yellowstone, attempting to discern possible correlations among the various myths and legends that would support the existence of a lost city hidden in that valley. It’s been frustrating. Native Americans have been living in this region for over ten thousand years. The Cheyenne, Kiowa, Shoshone, Blackfeet, and more recently, the Crows. But so little is spoken among all these tribes about this unique valley. It’s a resounding and loud silence, suspiciously so.”

“Maybe they didn’t know about it.”

“No, they had names for it. The Crows called it land of burning ground or sometimes the land of vapors. The Blackfeet described it as many smokes. The Flatheads used the phrase smoke from the ground. Can’t be more accurate than that, can you? Those early tribes definitely knew about this place.”

“Then maybe they didn’t talk about it because they were scared.”

“That was the view that was held for the longest time. That Indians believed the hissing and roaring of the geysers were the voices of evil spirits. It’s still bandied about in some circles, but it’s pure hogwash. The newest anthropological studies have revealed that not to be the case. The early Indians had no fear of this steaming land. Instead, that false story got told and retold, mostly by early white settlers, perhaps to make their savage neighbors appear foolish and dull of mind… or maybe to help justify the taking of their lands. If the pioneers could claim that Indians were too scared to enter Yellowstone, then the entire territory was up for grabs.”

“Then what is the true story?”

Hank pointed to the screen. “The evidence confounded the scholars of the time. This is what historian Hiram Chittenden wrote about it back in 1895. ‘It is a singular fact that in Yellowstone National Park, no knowledge of the country seems to have been derived from the Indians… Their deep silence concerning it is therefore no less remarkable than mysterious.’ ”

“Doesn’t sound like they were scared,” Jordan said. “More like they were hiding something.”

Hank touched his nose—dead on, my boy—then pointed to the screen. “Look at this. I found this passage in a recent study; it’s an excerpt from an old journal of one of the earliest settlers, John Hamilcar Hollister. I could find nothing like this anywhere else, but it speaks volumes on that deep Indian silence.”

Jordan leaned closer.

Hank read the words quietly again alongside him.There are but few Indian legends which refer to this purposely unknown land. Of these I have found but one, and that is this — that no white man should ever be told of this inferno, lest he should enter that region and form a league with the devils, and by their aid come forth and destroy all Indians.

Jordan sat back, stunned. “So they were hiding something.”

“Something our ancestors didn’t want to have fall into the wrong hands, fearing it would be used against them.”

“That lost city must be there.”

But where?

Hank checked his watch, fighting against a return of the paralyzing despair that had gripped him moments before. He would follow Jordan’s example. He would not give up hope. He caught the young man staring out the window toward the lights of Flagstaff in the distance. But Hank knew his mind was much farther away, with a worry that had nothing to do with volcanoes and lost cities.

This time it was Hank who reached over and gave Jordan’s hand a squeeze of reassurance. “We’ll get her back.”

It had been almost an hour since Kai had spoken to Uncle Crowe. She sat in a dining room chair, unbound, but there was nothing she could do, except chew at her thumbnail.

The suite of rooms bustled with activity. Commandos had shed combat gear for civilian clothing that looked ill-suited to such hardened mercenaries. They set about packing, storing gear, breaking down weapons. They were readying to move out.

Even the computer equipment had been racked up inside a tall, wheeled cargo case, modified out of a Louis Vuitton steamer trunk. From the stack, several lines of cable trailed back to Jordan’s gutted cell phone.

Rafael paced around the container, waiting for Kai’s uncle’s call.

She lowered her hand to her lap, clasping her palms between her legs, just as anxious as the man who kept her prisoner, balancing on a razor of terror.

Before Painter’s call, convinced he was dead, she had been locked in one of the bedrooms of the suite. At the time she knew these people were going to kill her. She didn’t care. Drained to a hollow shell of herself, she had simply sat on the bed’s edge. She was still aware of feeling fear, coiled around the base of her spine, but it was nothing compared to the feeling of desolation that gripped her. She had seen too much blood, too much death. Her own life held little meaning. She considered breaking the mirror in the bathroom and using a shard of glass to spill her own blood, as if by so doing she could wrest back some modicum of control.

But even that had felt too much like fighting.

She simply didn’t have the strength.

Then the call had come. Her uncle was alive, so were the professor and Jordan, and even that walking refrigerator called Kowalski. She’d seen their picture on Rafael’s computer screen, some frozen image from a broadcast of the group’s rescue.

After the call, jubilation filled those hollow spaces inside her, shining a warm light into that dark vacuum. Her uncle’s last words stayed with her.

I’m going to come get you. I promise.

He’d said he would not abandon her — and she believed him, which is what ignited the keening terror inside her now. She suddenly wanted to live, and in allowing herself to feel that desire, she realized that once again she had everything to lose.

But there was no escape.

She glanced over to her sole companion at the dining room table. It was the muscular African woman named Ashanda. Kai had initially been terrified of the woman, but then, at the time, the woman had been heating irons in the fire, carrying out a torture upon Rafael’s orders. But over time, that fear mellowed into something that resembled discomfort mixed with a kind of curiosity.

Who was she?

The woman was so unlike the others, clearly not a soldier, though she fought for Rafael. Kai pictured Ashanda rising from the shadows of the mud-heated cavern, running with a lithe speed that defied her size. Kai had also seen Ashanda working at the computer as she herself talked to Painter, the woman’s dark fingers racing over a keyboard. It was clear that she was more than a technician.

In the bright light of the room, Kai noted vague scars thickening the woman’s skin, forming rows of small dots that made stripes along her arms, looking almost like the skin of a crocodile. Her face was similarly scarred but in a more decorative pattern, one that accentuated her dark eyes and swept in wings to her temples. Her hair was done in tight, dark braids that spread from the crown of her head and draped gracefully to her forehead and shoulders.

Kai watched the woman staring at Rafael. Before she had seen only emptiness in those eyes, but this was no longer true. Deep within those dark mirrors, Kai knew, stirred a well of sadness. Ashanda sat so very still, as if afraid of being seen, yet at the same time, wanting more. There was devotion in that gaze, too, along with weariness. She sat like a dog waiting for a touch from its master, knowing that a mere touch was all she was ever going to get.

The reverie ended with the chiming ring of a phone.

Kai swung around.

At last.

Rafael appreciated punctuality. The director of Sigma had placed his follow-up call precisely at the time he had promised. It was not the call itself, but what the man offered when he spoke, that dismayed the Frenchman, coming as it did so unexpectedly.

“A truce?” Rafe asked. “Between us? How does that serve me?”

Painter’s voice remained urgent. “As promised, I’ll tell you where the Fourteenth Colony is located. But it will do you no good. The cache is set to explode in approximately four and a half hours.”

“Then, Monsieur Crowe, if you wish your niece to live, you’d best make this exchange as quickly as possible.”

“Listen to me, Rafael. I’ll tell you the location now. The Fourteenth Colony is hidden somewhere in Yellowstone National Park. I’m sure that such a resting place makes sense to you, does it not?”

Rafe fought to understand such a drastic turn of events.

Is this a ruse? To what end?

Painter did not let up, speaking rapidly. “Give me an e-mail address. I’ll send you all the relevant data. But in a few short hours, that cache is going to go critical, triggering a blast over a hundredfold stronger than the one in Iceland. But you know that’s not the true danger. That explosion will release a mass of nanobots. They’ll start disassembling any matter they encounter and keep spreading and growing larger. The nano-nest will eat its way down until it reaches the magma chamber under Yellowstone, where it will ignite the supervolcano buried beneath that park. The resulting cataclysm will be the equivalent of a mile-wide asteroid slamming into the earth. It means the end of most life, certainly all human life.”

Rafe found himself breathing harder. Could he be telling the truth?

“I doubt that such destruction will serve even your aims,” Painter continued. “Or those of anyone you work with, for that matter. We either team up, share our knowledge, in order to stop this from happening, or it’s the end of everything.”

“I… I will need time to think about this.” Rafe hated to hear the stammer in his own voice.

“Don’t take long,” Painter warned. “Again I will send you all of our data — whatever you want. But Yellowstone is spread over two million acres, and this creates a huge challenge to us. We must still discover and pinpoint the lost city’s exact location, and we must do it while the clock keeps ticking downward.”

Rafe checked his wristwatch. If the director was telling the truth, they had until 6:15 A.M. to find the lost city and neutralize the material that was hidden there.

“Send me what you have,” Rafe said, and gave him an e-mail address.

“You have my number.” Painter signed off.

Rafael lowered the phone, hanging his head in thought.

Do I believe you, Monsieur Crowe? Could you be telling the truth?

Rafe lifted his head enough to glance toward Kai Quocheets.

The director had never asked once about his niece. That, more than anything, spoke to his honesty. What did it matter if he negotiated for one life when the lives of all of mankind were at risk?

The phone rang again, making Rafe jump. He stared down at the mobile device in his hand, wired to the encrypting software. But that wasn’t the source of the ringing. He turned to the dining room buffet, where his personal laptop and cell phone rested. He watched his phone vibrate and heard it ring again.

Leaning more heavily on his cane than he usually did, he stepped over and retrieved the device. His personal phone was meant only for direct communication with his family, along with a few of his associates at the research facilities back in the French Alps. But the caller ID simply listed the caller’s name as blocked. That made no sense. His phone didn’t accept blocked calls.

He was ready to dismiss the matter and not respond, but the phone was already in his hand and he needed something to distract himself with while he awaited the data from Painter Crowe.

Irritated, Rafe lifted the device to his ear. “Who is this?”

The voice was American, soft-spoken, nondescript, perhaps a hint of a Southern accent, but too faint for Rafe to tell anything more than that. The man told him his name.

Rafe’s cane slipped from his hand and clattered to the marble floor. He reached back to the buffet to catch himself. He noted Ashanda rising, ready to come to his aid. He sternly shook his head at her.

The caller spoke calmly, distinctly, with no threat in his voice, only certainty. “We’ve heard the news. You’ll cooperate with Sigma to the fullest extent. What is to come must be stopped for all our sakes. We have full confidence in your abilities.”

“Je vous en prie,” he said breathlessly, cringing to note that he’d slipped into French inadvertently.

“Once you’ve accomplished your goal, anyone outside your party who has knowledge of what is discovered must be destroyed. But be warned. Director Crowe has been underestimated in the past.”

Rafe’s gaze flicked to Kai. “I may have a way of neutralizing any threat he poses, but I will still be careful.”

“With such brittle bones, I’m sure that is a trait you’ve honed well.”

While this might be taken as a vague insult, the gentle amusement — even in such trying times — made it clear that the speaker’s intent was nothing but good-natured.

“Adieu,” the man said in French, equally accommodating. “I have matters I must address out east here.”

The phone clicked off.

Rafe turned promptly to TJ, who was packing the last of the computer gear. “Raise Painter Crowe for me.” To Bern, he said, “Have the men ready to leave in fifteen minutes.”

“Where are we headed?” Bern asked. He wasn’t prying; it was just a need-to-know inquiry to better prepare his team.

“To Yellowstone.”

TJ interrupted. “Connection’s ringing, sir.”

Rafe took the phone, ready to make the deal.

He knew better than to disobey. The honor of the moment warmed through him, hardening his resolve, if not his bones. He was the first in his family to ever speak to a member of the True Bloodline.

Chapter 34

It would soon be getting lighter.

Gray wasn’t sure if this was a positive development. They’d barely made it out of Nashville, having to take surface streets and back roads, sticking to the speed limits. Monk had done the driving while Gray coordinated matters with Painter Crowe.

With one goal accomplished, the director had assigned him another: to attempt to narrow down the location of the Fourteenth Colony settlement by following the historical trail. They’d dogged Archard Fortescue’s path to Iceland and back. Now they had to see if they could track the Frenchman’s subsequent footsteps.

That meant they weren’t the only ones who were getting no sleep.

“Calling this early is becoming a habit, Mr. Pierce,” Eric Heisman said over the phone, but rather than irritated, he sounded excited.

Kat had arranged the call, passing it through the Sigma switchboard to scramble the connection.

“I’ve got you on speaker,” Gray said. He needed everyone’s input. Now was not the time to miss a critical insight or overlook an important detail. Gray wanted everybody’s fingerprints all over this case.

Seichan sat up from the backseat, listening in.

Monk was driving slowly down Shelbyville Highway south of the city. At this hour, it was deserted, which allowed him to focus all of his attention on the call. Kat also listened in on the other end, from Sigma command.

Heisman filled them in where he’d left off in his scholarly investigations. “Sharyn and I pulled everything we could on the Lewis and Clark expedition and its relationship to Yellowstone. I also consulted with Professor Henry Kanosh just a few minutes ago. He saved me much time and effort by researching the Native American side of the equation.”

Gray urged the man along, sensing the press of time. Kat had already informed him that Painter, along with a French team of Guild operatives, was already en route to Yellowstone, where the two groups would jointly work on the puzzle from ground zero. Not a good situation from any perspective. Gray was determined to help from afar in any way he could.

“And you found no evidence that Lewis and Clark’s team ever entered Yellowstone?” Gray asked.

“No. But I find it odd, almost beyond comprehension, that they missed it. The expedition crossed to within only forty miles of the park. According to Professor Kanosh, the Native American tribes had been secretive about the geothermal valley, but the expedition had bushels of trinkets and coins to ply Indians for any information about unique natural features: plants, animals, geology. Someone would have eventually tipped their hand and talked about such an unusual valley.”

“So you think they did find it?” Seichan asked from the backseat.

“If they did, they erased their tracks very well. So far the only evidence we do have to support such a claim is weak at best. We know all records of Archard Fortescue came to a halt after he left with the expedition led by Meriwether Lewis. We know Lewis was murdered a few years after returning. But that’s a far cry from saying either of them found that lost Indian city, that heart of the Fourteenth Colony.”

“Then let’s work this backward,” Gray suggested, turning the puzzle around in his head. “Let’s start with the death of Meriwether Lewis. Let’s assume the expedition did discover the truth and that Lewis’s murder was somehow connected to the discovery. Can you tell us again about the manner of his death?”

“Well, he was struck down in October of 1809, at a wayside inn called Grinder’s Stand in Tennessee, not far from Nashville.”

Gray glanced to the others.

Nashville?

Monk mumbled, “Oh yeah, looks like we’re still dogging after those guys. First to Iceland and now Tennessee.”

Heisman didn’t hear him and continued: “Again, there’s no solid explanation for Lewis’s death. Despite the double gunshot wounds — one to the gut, one to the head — his death was deemed a suicide. It remained the belief for centuries, until just recently. It’s now widely accepted that Lewis was indeed murdered, whether as part of a robbery or an outright assassination or both.”

“What details do we know about the night he died?” Gray asked.

“There are numerous accounts, but the best comes from Mrs. Grinder herself, the innkeeper’s wife, who was there alone that night. She reported gunshots, sounds of a struggle, and heard Lewis call out for help, but she was too scared to check on him until daybreak. She eventually found him dying in his room, barely hanging on to life, sprawled atop his buffalo-skin robe, which was soaked in his blood. It is said his last words were mysterious. ‘I have done the business.’ As if he’d thwarted his murderers in some manner at the end.”

Gray felt his pulse quicken with the telling, knowing this had to be important. But there was something else Heisman had mentioned…

The curator wasn’t done. “But rumors are many about Lewis’s last days, about who might have killed him. The best evidence points to Brigadier General James Wilkinson, a known conspirator of the traitor Aaron Burr. Some believe the general orchestrated the murder. Those same stories hint that Lewis was still acting as Jefferson’s spy, that he had with him something vital that he wanted to bring to D.C.”

Gray pictured one of the gold plates. Was Grinder’s Stand the place where the Guild originally got hold of their own plate? He recalled how he imagined Lewis as a colonial version of a Sigma operative: spy, soldier, scientist. Was Wilkinson one of the great enemies mentioned by Jefferson and Franklin, a predecessor to the modern Guild? Did he murder Lewis to gain possession of that tablet?

Gray felt history repeating itself.

Is that same battle still going on two centuries later?

Still, he sensed he was missing a key element to the story, something that snagged in his mind, but slipped through without catching.

Seichan beat him to it. “You mentioned that Lewis bled out on top of a buffalo-skin robe.”

“That’s right.”

Gray glanced at her appreciatively, but Seichan merely shrugged. “Dr. Heisman,” he asked, “didn’t Fortescue’s journal mention that the mastodon’s skull was wrapped in a buffalo skin?”

“Let me check.” Heisman whistled slowly, the sound accompanied by a shuffling of pages. “Ah, here it is. It’s mentioned simply as ‘a painted buffalo hide.’ ”

“Whatever happened to it?” Seichan asked.

“It doesn’t say.”

Gray followed up with his own question. “Is there any record of Jefferson ever owning a painted buffalo skin?”

“Now that you mention it, yes. In fact, the president amassed a huge private collection of Indian artifacts that he kept in his home at Monticello. A highly decorated skin was one of his showcase items. It was said he received the hide from Lewis, who sent it back from the trail during the expedition. It was said to be stunning and very old. But upon his death, most of Jefferson’s collection, including that spectacular hide, vanished.”

Odd…

Gray ruminated for a time. Could the buffalo hide in all these stories be the same one? Had Lewis taken it with him in order to help him find that lost city? Did it take both the map and the hide to solve the puzzle of the Fourteenth Colony? Afterward, did Lewis send the hide back to Jefferson as some token of his success?

Gray knew he had nothing solid to go on: there were too many suppositions, too many holes. For example, why was the skin again in Lewis’s possession at the time of his death? Was its presence the reason he spoke those cryptic words in the final moments of his life—I have done the business? Had he lost the gold tablet to Wilkinson or some other thief, but retained the more important buffalo hide?

A new player in the game spoke. “Dr. Heisman,” Kat asked over the phone, “can you tell us anything about what happened to Lewis’s body?”

“Nothing special. A tragedy considering he was such a national hero. But because his death was deemed a suicide, he was buried on the spot, on the grounds of that same inn. There in Tennessee.”

“And can we assume he was interred with all of his possessions?” Kat asked.

“That was usually done. Sometimes the authorities would send any money found on the bodies or something of sentimental value to their surviving heirs.”

“But not likely a blood-soaked buffalo hide,” Gray added.

Monk stirred, taking his eyes off the road. “You think he might still be buried with it?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Gray said. “We have to dig up the body of Meriwether Lewis.”