The Eye of God: A Sigma Force Novel

18

“And you all believe this cross is important,” Gray said.

He sat with everyone in a suite of rooms at the Hotel Ulaanbaatar in the center of the capital city’s downtown. The façade of the building looked Soviet industrial, a holdover from the country’s oppressed past, but the interior was a display of European modernity and elegance, representing the new Mongolia, a country looking to an independent future.

Their suite even featured a meeting room with a long conference table. Everyone was seated, with Monk’s team on one side, Gray’s on the other.

Only an hour ago, a knock at Gray’s door revealed a familiar bald and smiling face. Monk had grabbed him in a bear hug, almost ripping his shoulder back open. Behind him, his new partner, Duncan Wren, bowed his tall physique inside. He was accompanied by a young Mongolian man wearing a midthigh sheepskin coat. He had a pet carrier in hand and something stirring inside.

But it was the pair who came last who triggered his strongest reaction, a mix of joy, warm memories, and deep affection.

Gray had grabbed Vigor with as much enthusiasm as Monk had him a moment ago. He found the monsignor his same self: tough, resolute, yet gentle of spirit. Only now Gray saw the man’s age physically, how his frame seemed thinner, wasted. Even his face looked more gaunt.

Then there was Rachel.

Gray had greeted her just as warmly as the others, memories blurring as he held her in his arms. She clung to him an extra moment longer than ordinary friendship warranted. The two had been close for some time, intimate even, beginning to talk of something long term, until the shine of new romance waned into the practical realities of a long-distance relationship. The romance settled instead into a deep friendship, not that it didn’t occasionally well up into something more physical whenever they still happened to cross paths.

But circumstances had since changed…

Gray looked at the woman seated across from Rachel.

Seichan also knew of their past history and had her own complicated relationship with Rachel, but the two had come to terms, respecting each other, but were still cautious.

Once Monk’s team had time to settle in, Gray had ushered them into the meeting room, needing to decide how to proceed from here. They all placed their figurative cards on the table.

After receiving permission from Painter, Monk had shared the details of the crashed satellite with Vigor and Rachel, even with the Mongolian named Sanjar. The young man had offered his services as a guide into the Khan Khentii Strictly Protected Area, the mountainous region northwest of the city.

The story of the destruction captured by the falling spacecraft and the recent events in Antarctica had sobered the jubilance of their reunion. They now all understood the stakes at hand.

But Gray still remained doubtful about one detail. Monk’s group had filled him in on what had transpired in Kazakhstan. They all seemed convinced that this cross, one carried by St. Thomas in the past, bore some significance to the potential disaster to come.

Even Dr. Jada Shaw believed it was vital to find.

She explained that now. “I know from my observations and calculations that Comet IKON is shedding an unusual energy signature, one triggering gravitational abnormalities.”

“That you believe is caused by dark energy,” Gray said.

“All I can say is that those anomalies exactly match my theoretical calculations.”

“And the cross?”

“According to Duncan, the ancient relics are also giving off some form of energy. We believe it was because Genghis was exposed to, and contaminated by, that same energy while carrying the cross for many years on his person.”

She ticked off additional points on her fingers, her dark eyes flashing with certainty. “First, the cross’s history is tied to a meteor strike. Second, it’s connected physically to a prophecy of a disaster set to play out in roughly two and a half days, matching the same time frame as the satellite image. Third, it’s giving off a strange energy signature that left its trace on these relics. I say it’s worth investigating. Or at least somebody should check into it.”

“But not you,” Gray said, challenging that certainty.

She sighed. “I’ll be more useful going after the wreck of the crashed satellite. My expertise is astrophysics. I know that spacecraft inside out. My knowledge of history, on the other hand, barely extends beyond the last presidential election.”

It had already been decided that Jada, Duncan, and Monk would head straight for the crash site deep in the remote mountains. Sanjar would act as their local guide and interpreter. Gray wanted to go with them, but Monk and his team were unanimous in their belief that somebody had to find that cross, one prophesied by a dead saint to be vital to surviving the coming fiery apocalypse.

Vigor was adamant about continuing on this path. If so, he would need logistical support and protection. Everyone faced Gray waiting for a final decision.

He still balked, and for good reason. “But you’ve lost that last relic, which held the only possible clue to the location of the cross.”

“Then we find it again,” Vigor said.

“How? You don’t know where it was taken or the identity of this mysterious clan leader. With the timer counting down, it seems a better plan to pool our resources and go after that satellite together. At the moment, the wreckage of the spacecraft is our best chance of learning more about this pending disaster. And that knowledge could be our best weapon to avert it, not this cross.”

Even Jada sank back in her seat, clearly accepting the wisdom of his plan. But then she was a scientist, accustomed to following the dictates of logic.

Vigor, on the other hand, was a man of faith and heart. He simply crossed his arms, unconvinced. “I am no use to anyone on this search, Commander Pierce. And I made a promise to Father Josip that I won’t break. I will still pursue the cross with every effort. Even on my own.”

Rachel caught Gray’s eye, clearly worried about her uncle. They both knew how stubborn Vigor could be, and she did not want Vigor pursuing this alone. The danger of that path was evident enough in all their bruises, scrapes, and cuts.

She looked to him to sway her uncle against this course.

To that end, Gray turned to Sanjar. This local man could better express the futility of that path.

“Sanjar, you’ve already stated that you have no clue as to the identity of this clan leader named Borjigin — the Master of the Blue Wolf — but you know how resourceful and ruthless he can be.”

“That is true,” the man said solemnly. “His core followers, like my cousin Arslan, will do anything to serve him. To them, Genghis Khan is a god, and the clan leader Borjigin is their pope, a conduit to the glories of the past and a promise of an even brighter future.”

Gray heard the echo of that same nationalistic passion in the man, but Sanjar had failed to drink all of that madman’s Kool-Aid.

“Borjigin claims to be a direct descendant of the great khan. I remember once, he even wore—”

Sanjar’s words abruptly stopped. He sat straighter, his eyes wide. He pressed a palm to his forehead. “I am a fool.”

Vigor turned to him. “What is it, Sanjar?”

“I only just remembered it now.”

He bowed his head toward Gray as if thanking him — but thanking him for what?

“As proof of his claim,” Sanjar said, “Borjigin once displayed a gold wrist cuff, a treasure he said once belonged to Genghis himself. I doubted it at the time, thought it was mere boasting. So I never gave it much thought.” He turned to Vigor. “But then I overheard what Father Josip confessed in Kazakhstan yesterday. I knew Josip sold a treasure to finance his search, but I never knew what it was until that moment.”

Vigor’s voice grew sharper. “You’re talking about the gold cuff found in Attila’s grave, the one with Genghis’s name on it. Could it be the same one?” He reached and clasped Sanjar’s forearm. “Did the cuff you saw Borjigin wearing have images of a phoenix and demons on it?”

Sanjar cast the monsignor an apologetic look. “I did not get a close look at it. Only from a distance and only that one time. That’s why I failed to connect the two until now.”

He slipped his arm from Vigor’s.

“And I may still be wrong,” Sanjar admitted. “Antiquity dealers across Ulan Bator have shelves of items said to be tied to Genghis. And wrist cuffs are nothing unusual. The tradition of falconry is still prized here. Many wear such cuffs as a token of our illustrious past. From something simple, like the leather one I wear.” He bared his wrist, exposing a thick piece of scarred leather. “Or something ornate, worn as jewelry.”

“But how does this revelation help us?” Gray pressed. “If what Josip sold to finance his dig is the same cuff worn by the Master of the Blue Wolf, how does that bring us closer to identifying the man?”

Sanjar ran fingers through his hair. “Because, though I didn’t know what Father Josip had sold until last night, I knew who he sold it to.”

Rachel stirred. “I asked that very question of Josip.”

Vigor looked stricken. “And I dismissed it as unimportant.”

“Uncle, you were just trying to protect Josip’s feelings. We could not know the importance of such information.”

Gray stared hard at Sanjar. “Who bought the priest’s treasure, this gold cuff?”

“Workers talk, tell stories, so even this might not be true. But everyone seemed convinced it was sold to someone important in the Mongolian government.”

“Who?”

“Our minister of justice. A man named Batukhan.”

Gray considered this new information, recognizing the thin nature of this line of conjecture. Maybe it wasn’t the same gold cuff. Maybe Batukhan wasn’t the one who bought it. And even if both were true, the minister could have sold it to someone else long ago.

All eyes were upon him.

“It’s worth checking out,” Gray finally admitted. “At least we should pay this guy a visit. But if this minister is Borjigin, he’ll likely know all your faces.” He nodded to Monk’s side of the table. “But he won’t know mine. Nor Seichan’s.”

Excitement drove Vigor to his feet. “If we can recover that last relic—”

Gray held up a hand. “That’s a big if. And I’m not willing to delay the hunt for the wreckage of the satellite on this long shot alone.” He pointed across the table. “Monk, you take Duncan and Jada and head into the mountains with Sanjar. You’ve got the latest GPS waypoints from Painter that mark off the search grid, right?”

The team at the SMC had further refined the trajectory estimates of the crashing satellite, narrowing the parameters to as small a region as possible.

“It’s still a lot of terrain to cover,” Monk conceded.

“So we’ll get started immediately. In the meantime, I’ll investigate this minister with Seichan and leave Kowalski to guard Vigor and Rachel here at the hotel. If nothing pans out, we’ll join you in the mountains as soon as possible.”

With a nod, Monk stood, ready to go.

Kowalski stretched and mumbled, “Yeah, it’s always a good idea to split up. That’s worked so well for us in the past.”

Seichan paced her room. She had come in here to take a fast nap after Monk and his group headed out to begin their trip into the mountains.

In the next room, Gray worked with Kat back at Sigma command. They were putting together a profile on the Mongolian minister of justice, including where he worked and lived and the schematics of both places. They also gathered financial records and a list of known associates, business partners, anything that might prove useful before approaching the enemy.

If he was the enemy…

No one was ever who they seemed to be. It was something she had learned long ago, thrust as a child into the realities of the harsh world, where everyone had a price, and faces were as much of a façade as the clan leader’s wolf mask. She had learned to trust only herself.

Even around Gray, she could not totally let her guard down.

She wasn’t afraid of him seeing her true face. Instead, she feared she had no face. After so many years, playing so many different roles to survive, she feared nothing was left. If she dropped her guard, would anything be there at all?

Am I just scar tissue and instinct?

A knock at the door drew her from her thoughts. Glad for the interruption, she called out, “Yes?”

The door opened and Rachel poked her head inside. “I didn’t know if you’d fallen asleep yet.”

“What do you want?”

It came out more brusquely than she intended, revealing some of that scar tissue. She felt no animosity toward Rachel. While they could never be friends, she respected the woman’s abilities, her sharp intelligence. But she could not discount the spark of jealousy when she first saw Rachel today. It was mindless, a feral instinct to protect her territory.

“I’m sorry,” she tried again. “Come on in.”

Rachel took a tentative step inside, as if entering a lion’s cage. “I wanted to thank you for agreeing to help my uncle. If he had gone out on his own…”

Seichan shrugged. “It was Gray’s decision.”

“Still…”

“And I like your uncle.” Seichan was momentarily surprised how true those words were. Upon entering the hotel room earlier, Vigor had touched her arm with affection, knowing full well her dark past. That simple gesture meant a great deal to her. “How long has he been sick?”

Rachel blinked a few times at her question and swallowed.

Seichan realized Rachel hadn’t fully accepted that reality. From the pending tears, Rachel must know it down deep, but she hadn’t truly faced it.

At least not out loud.

Seichan waved her farther inside and closed the door.

“He won’t speak about it,” Rachel said stiffly and moved to a chair and sat on the cushion’s edge. “I think he believes he’s protecting us, sheltering me.”

“But this is worse.”

Rachel nodded and wiped a tear. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“He’s been going downhill for a while. But it’s been so gradual, each small decline easy to dismiss and excuse. Then suddenly you truly see him. Like on this trip. And you can no longer deny the truth.”

Rachel covered her face with her hands for a long breath, then lowered them again, struggling to keep her composure.

“I don’t know why I’m burdening you with this,” she said.

Seichan knew but remained silent. Sometimes it was easier to open one’s heart to a stranger, to test emotions upon someone who means little to you.

“I… I appreciate you helping to watch over him.” Rachel reached out and took her fingers. “I don’t think I could have done this alone.”

Seichan involuntarily stiffened, wanted to yank her hand back, but fought against it. Instead, she whispered, “We’ll do it together then.”

Rachel squeezed her fingers. “Thank you.”

Seichan slipped her hand away, awkward at the intimacy. She knew Rachel wasn’t only thanking her for shouldering the burden of her uncle, but also for allowing her to share her fears. Silence fueled anxieties, gave them their true power. Expressing them aloud was a way of releasing that tension, of letting go, if only for a brief time.

“I should get back to my uncle.” Rachel stood up. As she headed out, she paused at the door. “Gray said you found your mother. How wonderful that must be for you.”

Seichan froze, weighing how to respond. She considered taking Rachel’s example, of telling the truth, of attempting to share her own fears and trepidations with another, a near stranger to whom she could test what it would feel like to open up.

But she had been silent all her life.

It was a pattern hard to break — especially now.

“Thank you,” Seichan said, hiding behind a lie. “It is truly wonderful.”

Rachel smiled at her and left.

As the door closed, Seichan turned to the bright windows, ready to face what lay ahead, glad to put thoughts of warring Triads, her mother, and all of North Korea behind her.

Still, she felt an ache deep in her stomach.

Knowing her silence was wrong.

“What is she doing in Mongolia?” Hwan Pak asked.

Ju-long followed the North Korean scientist out of one of the administration buildings of the prison. Ju-long was still at the camp, not as an inmate, but for his own protection.

Or so he had been informed.

Once he’d been freed from the interrogation room in the middle of the night, it had taken hours to settle matters, to discover their captive had escaped out of North Korea, whisked away by American forces, not that this event would ever be officially acknowledged.

It had put Ju-long in a precarious situation. The North Koreans, especially Hwan Pak, needed someone to bully, someone to blame. Ju-long was a convenient target.

Still, from long experience, he never entered hostile territory without a secondary plan in place. Years ago, as a precaution, he had taken to tagging his merchandise, including sales like this. It was only sound business practice to keep track of your inventory.

While the pretty assassin had been in his custody and drugged, Ju-long had planted a micro-GPS tracking device on her. She had been significantly abraded and lacerated following the ambush in the streets of Macau, when he’d slammed his Cadillac into the bike she had been driving. He had the microtracker — a postage-stamp-sized wafer of electronics — sutured beneath one of her wounds. Eventually it would be found or the battery would die, but in the short term, it worked wonders at keeping tabs on his merchandise.

Earlier this morning, he had played this card, informing Pak about this ace up his sleeve. Ju-long suspected it was the only reason he had been treated so well after last night’s events. They had even offered him a bed in the officers’ quarters, where he caught a couple of hours of fitful rest. Before retiring to bed, he had placed a call to Macau and had the tracker activated. It had taken longer than he would have liked to discover the escaped prisoner’s whereabouts, mostly because no one expected to search so far afield.

“I don’t know why she’s in Mongolia,” Ju-long admitted as they reached the same building where all this had started, the prison’s interrogation center.

Pak had said he left something important here, something to help them capture the woman. Ju-long followed the man through the building to the back. They entered the same room where he and Pak had been trapped last night.

A new prisoner sat strapped to the chair, his head hanging listless, blood pooled beneath him. Cigarette burns blistered his arms. His face was so badly bruised and swollen that it took Ju-long a moment to recognize him.

He rushed forward. “Tomaz!”

It was his second-in-command.

Hearing his name, Tomaz groaned weakly.

Ju-long swung to Pak, who stepped forward with a smile. It seemed the North Korean had been denied his pain last night and took it out on another this morning.

“Why?” Ju-long asked, furious.

As if taking cruel joy in punctuating his point, Pak lit a cigarette, drawing deeply until the tip glowed a fiery red.

“As a lesson,” Pak puffed out. “We don’t tolerate failure.”

“And this loss of the prisoner was my fault?” He pointed to Tomaz. “His fault? How?”

“No, you misunderstand me. We don’t blame you for her escape. But we will hold you accountable for her capture. You will continue to track her and accompany an elite Spec Ops team to retrieve her. The Americans rescued her for some reason. My government wants to know why.”

“I don’t handle lost merchandise,” Ju-long said. “In good faith, I delivered her to you. She was in your custody when she escaped. I don’t see how this is my responsibility.”

“Because you did not screen your merchandise as thoroughly as you should have, Delgado-ssi. You delivered what my government considers to be a bomb onto our soil, one that was still armed. If we had known this woman was so important to American forces, we would have handled this differently. So you must make amends for this grievous error and embarrassment to our country.”

“And if I refuse?”

Pak removed his pistol, set it to the side of Tomaz’s head, and pulled the trigger. The shock as much as the noise made Ju-long jump. Tomaz fell limp within his restraints.

“Like I said, this is a lesson.”

Pak reached for his phone and held it out to Ju-long.

“And this is your incentive to succeed.”

Stunned, he took the phone and raised it to his ear. A voice came immediately on the line, trembling with fear.

“Ju-long?”

His heart clenched with recognition, and all it implied. “Natalia?”

“Help me. I don’t know who these—”

Pak snatched the phone back, keeping his pistol pointed at Ju-long’s chest. A wise precaution, as it took all of Ju-long’s control not to break the North Korean’s neck. But he knew it would do his wife no good.

“We are holding her… and I suppose your son, too… in a location in Hong Kong. Neither will be harmed as long as you cooperate. At the first sign of insubordination, we will have a doctor remove your son and mail his body to your home. We’ll keep your wife alive, of course.”

If that happened, Ju-long knew his son’s death would be a kindness compared to what they’d do to Natalia.

Pak smiled. “So do we have a deal?”

19

Duncan crossed a span of centuries in a matter of hours.

After he and the others had left Ulan Bator in an older-model Toyota Land Cruiser, they passed through a small mining town to the east, a postapocalyptic landscape of coal pits, heavy machinery, and soot-coated Soviet-era buildings — but then a sharp turn to the north cast them into a valley thick with poplars, elms, and willows.

Farther ahead, a silvery river split the rolling grasslands of the higher steppes, all colored in shades of winter amber. Tiny white yurts — which Sanjar called gers—dotted those brittle waves, looking like boats in a storm-swept sea.

As he stared out at the spread of nomadic tent-homes, Duncan imagined the countryside had changed little since the time of Genghis Khan. As they climbed out of the valley, though, he saw evidence of the modern world encroaching upon this ancient way of living. A satellite dish sprouted from a yurt. Next to it, a small Chinese-made motorbike had been secured to an oxcart.

Winding their way slowly higher, they aimed for the mountains rising ahead, the most distant to the north capped with snow. Under them, the road changed from asphalt, to gravel, eventually to dirt. The gers grew less frequent, more authentic, with goats in pens and small horses tethered outside. As their SUV trundled past, a few short-framed, sun-wizened folk in sheepskin jackets and fur-flapped hats came out to watch.

At the wheel, Duncan offered them a curt wave, which was returned with genuine enthusiasm. According to Sanjar, hospitality was a highly esteemed virtue among the Mongols.

In the front passenger seat, Monk played copilot and navigator. He had a map unfolded on his lap and a portable GPS in hand. “Looks like you should take the next left turn. That road should take us into the search zone.”

The word zone was rather generous. The search parameters placed the debris field in a box one hundred miles on each side. Still, that was down from five hundred miles yesterday.

Duncan made the next left turn and headed at a grinding pace into the mountains. The terrain challenged the SUV’s four-wheel drive. It was mostly broken rock and patches of grassland, crisscrossed by forests of larches and pines. Rains had washed out parts of the road, requiring a careful traverse.

“I’m not sure this region needs special protection by the government,” Duncan said. “I think Nature is doing a pretty good job of it herself.”

Sanjar leaned forward from the backseat, which he shared with Jada. “It is why our ancestors chose these mountains for our grave sites. You’ll find them throughout this area. With tombs often stacked atop other tombs. And, unfortunately, grave robbing is a real problem. Locals will often search these old sites, then middlemen from the city drive through and purchase anything scavenged from these tombs to resell in China.”

He pointed ahead to a rounded peak higher than the others. “That is Burkhan Khaldun, our most sacred mountain. It is rumored to be the birthplace of Genghis, and where most people believe he is buried. Some say he is entombed in a large necropolis under the mountain, believed to hold not only his body and treasures, but also that of his descendants, including his most famous grandson, Kublai Khan.”

“That’s a mighty big prize for whoever finds it,” Duncan said.

“People have hunted for his tomb for centuries. Which has led to much looting and vandalism. To protect the environment and our heritage, the government restricts access here, even by air.”

That was one of the reasons their team was driving. But they had another motive, too. Satellite imaging of the region had failed to pick up any trace of the crashed spacecraft, so it was unlikely that a search by helicopter or airplane would have fared any better.

It was even possible the satellite had entirely burned up during reentry. All this might be a wild-goose chase. But they had to make the attempt.

“I should warn you that there is another reason for these restrictions, too,” Sanjar said.

Jada turned to him. “What reason?”

“It is said that Genghis himself declared this area sacred. Many locals believe that if his tomb is ever found and opened, the world will end.”

Duncan groaned. “Great. If we find his tomb, the world will end. If we don’t find his tomb, the world is doomed.”

“Damned if we do, damned if we don’t,” Jada mumbled.

Duncan caught her eye in the rearview mirror, and she offered a small smile.

“Something Director Crowe said before I set off on this trip,” she explained. “Seems he was right.”

Monk stirred, his nose still in his map. “Never bet against Painter.”

An hour later, Jada half drowsed in the backseat when Duncan loudly declared, “End of the road, folks!”

Jada sat straighter, rubbing her eyes, realizing he wasn’t speaking metaphorically. The dirt track ended at a cluster of five gers. Free-ranging goats ran from their path as the SUV rolled toward the tents. Farther back, a group of horses roamed a large paddock.

After reaching the perimeter of the search zone, Sanjar had recommended this detour off the main road. It wasn’t on any map. But he said that the best bet to find the satellite was to question the locals.

They know every movement of twig and shift of breeze up here, he had declared. If something large crashed in the area, they would know.

As the Land Cruiser drew to a stop, Sanjar hopped out. “Follow me.”

They all clambered free of the vehicle into the chilly day. Jada stretched circulation back into her stiff limbs. Once they were all moving, Sanjar headed straight for the closest ger.

“Do you know these people?” Monk asked.

“No, not personally. But this is a fairly established encampment.”

Sanjar strode up to the stout wood door and pulled it open without knocking. He had warned them that this was tradition, another hallmark of Mongol hospitality. It would be considered an insult to the family inside if you knocked, as if you doubted their good manners and generous disposition.

So in he strode, as if he owned the place.

They had no choice but to follow him. Jada obeyed his prior instructions, careful not to step on the threshold and to turn right as was traditional as she entered the circular tent.

She found the place surprisingly spacious and warm. The roof was supported by ribs of wood; the walls were framed by lattice. It was all sealed against the winds and cold by thick layers of sheepskin and felt.

Faces greeted them with smiles, as if expecting them. It was a family of four, with two children under five. The husband formally buttoned the collar of his del robe and waved them to stools.

Before she knew it, she had a cup of hot tea warming her hands. Apparently an early dinner had been under way, judging from the boiling pots on a central hearth. She smelled curry and steaming mutton. A bowl and plate landed in front of her. The wife encouraged her to eat, smiling broadly, pantomiming with her hands.

“It’s boortz soup,” Sanjar said. “Very good. And those bits on the plate that look like broken pottery are aruul cheese. Very healthy.”

Not wanting to be rude, Jada tried a chunk of the cheese and found it to be as hard as pottery, too. She ended up sucking on it like candy, which the locals also seemed to be doing.

When in Rome…

Sanjar spoke with their host in a native dialect. It involved much gesturing, some corrections. But the husband began nodding vigorously, pointing northeast.

Jada hoped it was a positive sign.

The talk continued for some time after that. She could only watch and eat. To the side, the children found Monk’s prosthesis fascinating. He had one boy on his lap, showing the child how the hand could be detached from his wrist, yet the fingers still wiggled.

Jada found it actually disconcerting.

The children were enthralled.

Finally, Sanjar grabbed his own bowl of soup and tucked in with a spoon. He explained while eating. “Our host, Chuluun, says he heard stories from someone passing through yesterday, coming from the north. The man spoke of a fireball in the sky. It supposedly crashed into a small lake at the snow line of the neighboring mountain and set the water to boiling.”

Monk frowned. “If the wreckage is underwater, no wonder it was never picked up by satellite.”

“Then how are we going to get to it?” Jada said.

They hadn’t thought to bring diving equipment, let alone a wet suit.

“We’ll have to cross that bridge when we get to it,” Monk said. “Let’s find this place, confirm the location, and we’ll ship in what we need from there.”

Sanjar had an additional precaution. “Be warned. It’s a treacherous trail to reach that location. We’ll never make it by car or truck. I’ve asked Chuluun if he would be willing to lend us four of his horses.”

Jada balked at that idea. She could ride, just not well.

Still, it’s not like I have much choice.

“Did he agree?” Monk asked.

“Yes, and he’ll even send one of his cousins to guide us there. With luck, we should be able to reach the lake before the sun sets.”

Monk stood up. “Then let’s go.”

Jada followed his example, bowing her thanks to their hosts. Chuluun led them outside and spoke to one of his children who ran off to a neighboring ger, likely to fetch the cousin.

Chuluun pointed past the neighboring sweep of meadows, patched with dense forests, to the next peak, its upper slopes white with snow.

That was clearly their destination. It looked no more than twenty miles away. With their goal so close, trepidation set in. Responsibility settled heavily on Jada’s shoulders. The world was looking to her for answers, for a way to avert the coming doomsday.

As if reading her intimidation, Duncan stepped to her side, answering her silent question.

This is how.

By working together.

A commotion drew them to the next ger. A young woman, no older than eighteen, came charging out, snapping together the collar of her sheepskin jacket snugly. She had a flag of black hair, loose to her midback. With a leather tie in hand, she magically bound her hair into a fast braid. Once done, she snatched a curved bow from beside the tent and shouldered a quiver of arrows. She also carried a rifle over her other shoulder.

Was this their guide?

She approached them in knee-high Mongol boots that looked well worn. “I am Khaidu,” she said in heavily accented English. “You wish to go to the Wolf Fang. I will take you. Good time to go.”

She looked to be in as much of a hurry to leave as they were.

An older man appeared at the door, calling over to her.

She harrumphed and stalked away.

Sanjar explained. “A suitor for her hand. Likely an arranged marriage.”

No wonder she wants to leave.

They all hurried to catch up as she headed for the paddock.

Monk smiled. “This trip just got a little brighter.”

“You’re married.” Duncan nudged him. “With kids.”

He scowled back. “You say that like I’m dead.”

Jada sighed.

Maybe I’m better off going alone after all.

Duncan stared up at the Wolf Fang as they set off on horseback across the highland valley toward the snowy peak. The mountain did indeed look like a hooked fang, pointed up at the sky.

With the sun overhead, the day’s chill quickly warmed away. It was a pleasant afternoon for a ride, made more so by the rugged landscape they traversed. With a thunder of hooves, they raced across meadows of porcupine grass or skirted dense forests of white-barked birches, fringed with blueberry and blackberry bushes.

Jada clearly did not share his passion for this ride. He noticed how tentative she was with her horse, so he kept by her side.

Monk brought up the rear, while the fiery Khaidu rode ahead with Sanjar. But in the true lead was Heru.

It seemed the falcon had recovered from taking a hard knock yesterday. Set free, the bird soared high into a crisp blue sky, obeying the occasional whistled command from his handler.

Sanjar was plainly showing off for Khaidu, who kept close to his side. And it seemed to be working. She leaned over often to ask a question or point out some feature in the land.

Meanwhile, Jada’s attention was not on the skies, but on the ground zipping under her mount’s hooves.

Duncan tried to reassure her as they climbed a slippery slope of shale. He patted his stallion’s spotted neck. “Just trust your mount! They know what they’re doing. These are sturdy Mongol horses, descendants of those that Genghis himself once rode.”

“So in other words, they’re last year’s model.” She offered him a crooked smile, trying to put on a brave face.

A few minutes later, they reached a narrow path with a steep drop on one side. He drew abreast of her, putting himself between her and a long fall to the sharp rocks below. Now was not the time to panic. To distract her, he talked shop.

“What do you think really happened when that satellite crashed?” he asked. “About the image it shot?”

She glanced to him, clearly distracted but willing to talk. “Dark energy is the stuff of time and space. When we drew that much energy into the earth’s gravity well, the smooth curve of space-time around the planet wrinkled along that path.”

“And time skipped a beat,” he said. “You also mentioned to Painter that you believed the Eye of God might have become entangled at the quantum level with the comet.”

“If it absorbed enough dark energy, it’s a possibility. I’ll know better once we reach the wreck of the satellite.”

“Then let’s examine the converse.”

She glanced at him.

“The cross,” he explained. “Let’s say it’s a piece of the comet that fell to earth when it last appeared. Or maybe it’s some asteroid that passed too near the comet at that time, absorbed its energy like Genghis’s tissues did, and fell to earth as a meteor.”

She nodded. “I hadn’t even considered that second option, but you’re right. That’s a possibility, too.”

“Either way, I’m not sure it matters. The bigger mystery is: how did the cross grant St. Thomas the ability to predict this doomsday?”

“Hmm. That’s a good question.”

“So I’ve stumped you, Dr. Shaw.”

“Hardly,” she said, clearly spurred by the challenge in his voice. “Three facts to consider. One, dark energy is the driving force behind quantum mechanics. They are one and the same. A universal constant.”

“You mentioned that before.”

“Two, some individuals are more sensitive to electromagnetic radiation. Even without magnets.”

She looked pointedly at his fingertips.

He was actually familiar with the concept of electromagnetic hypersensitivity. Some people got sick if they were exposed too long to power lines or cellular towers, showing symptoms of headache, fatigue, tinnitus, even memory loss. While conversely, some individuals had a positive effect. It was believed that dowsers — those people wandering around with divining rods looking for water, buried metals, or gemstones — were uniquely attuned to the tiny gradient fluctuations in the ground’s magnetic field.

“Three,” she continued, “a common consensus among neuroscientists is that human consciousness lies within the quantum field generated by the vast neural network that is our brain.”

“So consciousness is a quantum effect.”

She smiled whimsically. “I’ve always found that last thought reassuring.”

“Why?”

“If that’s true, then by virtue of quantum mechanics, our consciousness is entangled across all the various multiverses. Perhaps when we die, it’s just a collapse of that potential in this timeline and our consciousness shifts into one where we are still living.”

From his doubtful expression, she delved deeper. “Take cancer. You have this cell in your body that divides wrong, a small mistake in a process that happens over and over again in a healthy body. If it divides correctly, no cancer. If it makes a mistake, you get cancer. A mere toss of the genetic dice. Heads or tails.”

Duncan hid a wince from her. Her words struck too close to home. His hand rose to touch the palm print tattooed on his chest. He pictured his younger brother, wasted to bone in a hospital bed, leaving behind nothing but the ghost of his shit-eating grin. Billy had died of osteogenic sarcoma, losing that toss of the genetic dice.

Jada continued, oblivious to his reaction. “But what if we are all entangled across multiple universes? That opens up a unique possibility. In one universe, cancer may kill you, but because you’re entangled, your consciousness shifts into that other universe where you don’t get cancer.”

“And you keep living?”

“Or at least your consciousness continues, merging with the other. This can happen over and over again, shifting each time to a timeline where you live… until you live your fullest life.”

He pictured Billy’s face, finding comfort in that possibility.

“But what happens after that?” he asked. “What happens when all those potentials collapse down to a single universe and you die there?”

“I don’t know. That’s the beauty of the universe. There’s always a new mystery. Maybe all this is just a test, a grand experiment. Many physicists are now convinced our universe is just a hologram, a three-dimensional construct built upon equations written on the inside of the sphere of this universe.”

“But who wrote those equations?”

She shrugged in her saddle. “Call it the hand of God, a higher power, a superintelligence, who knows?”

“I think we’re getting off track,” he said, returning to the subject of St. Thomas and his vision of doom. “To summarize your three points. The human brain functions quantumly, dark energy is a function of quantum mechanics, and some individuals are extrasensitive to EM fields.”

She looked at him to see if he could put it all together.

He was up to the challenge and proved it.

“You think St. Thomas was a sensitive. Because of that, he was especially affected by the dark energy given off by the cross, an energy that warped the quantum field in his brain to bring him a vision of this time.”

“Or there might be a simpler explanation.”

“Like what.”

“It was a miracle.”

He sighed loudly. “Whether science or a miracle, it still strikes me as damned coincidental that both the Eye of God and inner eye of St. Thomas had a vision of the exact same moment in time?”

“And God doesn’t play dice with the world,” she said, quoting Einstein.

Nice.

“I don’t think it was a coincidence,” she continued. “Remember, time is just a dimension. It has no inherent flow backward or forward.”

“In other words, the distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion?” He raised an eyebrow toward her. “See, I can quote Einstein, too.”

She grinned, looking five years younger. “Then consider time like a point in space. Both the Eye of God and that inner eye of St. Thomas slipped to that same point in time, likely when the comet’s corona of dark energy will come closest to Earth. There, like hitting a deep groove in a record, they both became stuck, trapped and playing the same bit of music over and over again.”

“Or in this case vision, showing the ruin of Earth.”

She nodded.

“But what do you think is going to happen then?”

“From what Director Crowe shared concerning Antarctica, I think when that dark energy corona reaches its maximum, it will bend space-time near the earth, just like gravity does normally.”

“Because dark energy and gravity are intimately entwined concepts,” he said, this time quoting her.

“Exactly. Only this time, instead of a wrinkle of space-time, it will create a chute, down which a rain of meteors will roll, like marbles along a slide.”

“That’s a cheery thought.”

“It’s only a theory.”

But seeing her expression, Duncan could tell she believed it.

Afterward, she remained silent for too long, as if something was bothering her.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Seems like I’m still missing something.”

Before they could look deeper, a shout drew their attention forward. They had reached the end of the precarious ledge, and a wide plateau opened before them. Directly ahead rose a sharp mountain peak.

Sanjar thundered back to them, trailed high by his falcon. “We’ve reached the Wolf Fang!”

“See, the ride here wasn’t so bad,” Duncan reassured her. “The worst is over. It should be smooth sailing from here.”

“We found them,” Arslan reported over the phone.

Batukhan sat in his office in the parliament building and waved his secretary out, a young thing in a tight dress and jacket. While her outfit was distinctly of the West, not traditional in the least, he appreciated its form-hugging cut. Some customs of the West would be welcome in the new Mongolia, an empire he planned to create with the treasures of Genghis Khan.

He already envisioned what he would do when that tomb was found. First, he would handpick and smuggle out the most valuable items, treasures that could be melted down or stripped of gems and sold on the open market. Then he would announce his discovery to the world, turning that fame into power. He wanted to be the wealthiest man not only in Mongolia, but in all Asia. He would conquer the world like his ancestor had in the past, creating an empire of wealth and power, with himself at the helm.

But there were a few loose ends to clean up first.

After the storm had blown over in Kazakhstan, a member of Arslan’s crew had returned to the Aral Sea to confirm the deaths and salvage the abandoned helicopter — only to find the aircraft gone.

No one knew if the pilot had escaped alone or if anyone else had survived. Batukhan had no fear of repercussions personally — as only Arslan knew his identity. Still, as a precaution, he had planted spies throughout the lower steppes between Ulan Bator and the Khentii Mountains. He wanted all roads into the region watched, in case any survivors attempted to continue their search for Genghis’s tomb by heading into those sacred mountains.

Truthfully, he had not expected to catch anything with this net. The spies were placed mostly to guard those mountains — where he still believed Genghis was buried — until such a time that he could study the stolen relics and discern the tomb’s location.

It was a shame Father Josip had to die before Batukhan could question him. Genghis abhorred torture. Batukhan considered this to be the khan’s biggest fault.

Now came this news.

“What do you wish me to do?” Arslan asked.

“How far ahead of you are they?”

“They have an hour’s lead, but so far, they make no effort to hide their passage.”

“Then another thirty minutes will make no difference. Gather your most loyal men, those who show the most skill with sword and arrow. Form a full mounted battle group. I will join and lead you.”

“Very well, Borjigin.”

Desire rang loudly in Arslan’s voice.

It sang to Batukhan’s own bloodlust. In the past, the clan’s practice skirmishes out on the steppes had been with props and stand-ins. The worst injury sustained had been a broken arm when someone fell from a horse. Batukhan found it fitting that his ascendancy to the throne of the new Mongol Empire would require bloodshed.

But more important, he had also always wanted to put an arrow through someone’s chest. Now was his chance.

“I should also inform you,” Arslan said, “the traitor Sanjar is among them.”

Ah, now I understand the fiery hatred in your tone.

Batukhan pictured Arslan’s face after the man had returned from Kazakhstan. His scalp had been ripped down to bone, a cheek punctured clean through by a talon. The man clearly wanted revenge for his disfigurement.

And he would get it.

Traitors must be taught a lesson.

His intercom buzzed. “Minister Batukhan, I have the two representatives from the mining consortium here for their four o’clock appointment.”

“Hold them there a moment.”

He finished with Arslan and considered canceling this meeting, but this could be a very lucrative contract, one that could pay off handsomely and be yet another brick in his road to a new empire.

He buzzed back and said, “Send them in. And bring us tea.”

These were Westerners, so they would probably prefer coffee, but he had never acquired a taste for that brew, preferring traditional tea.

It is high time Americans grew accustomed to our traditions.

The door opened and a tall man with storm-blue eyes and a hard face entered. Batukhan felt the twinge of a challenge, sensing a worthy adversary in this one. Behind him came his aide, a handsome Eurasian woman in a prim suit. Normally he felt no threat from the softer sex, but with her, his hackles rose even higher.

Interesting.

He waved them to a seat.

“How may I help you?”

20

Gray knew an enemy when he faced one.

On the far side of the desk, Batukhan put on a friendly face, showing all the common courtesies. He seemed a pleasant enough fellow, fit and hard for someone in his late fifties. But Gray caught peeks of someone else, cracks in his mask: a hungry glint in his eyes, an overlong and dismissive glance down Seichan’s form, an unconscious clenching of a fist on his desk.

During their discussion of mineral rights, oil futures, and governmental restrictions, the man was on edge the entire time. Gray caught him glancing at his watch once too often.

Seichan had already planted a wireless bug on the underside of his desk, so they could track any conversations following this meeting. But for that bug to attract the spider, they needed to tweak its web.

Gray shifted in his seat, noting a cabinet of Mongolian artifacts to the left of Batukhan’s desk. It held pottery, weapons, and a few small funerary statues. He also noted a pair of carved wooden wolves.

“Excuse me,” Gray said, cutting the minister off in midsentence, irking him purposefully. He pointed to the cabinet. “May I take a closer look?”

“Certainly.” His adversary puffed out his chest a bit with pride at his collection.

Gray stood and crossed to the glass case. He bent his nose close to the small carvings. “I see wolves all over the city. Lots of places carry the name Blue Wolf.”

In the reflection in the glass, he saw a sly tightening of the corner of the man’s lips, someone savoring a secret.

Hmm…

“What’s the significance?” Gray asked, straightening and facing the man.

“It goes back to the creation mythology of our people, where the Mongol tribes are said to be descended from the mating of Gua maral, a wild doe, and Boerte chino, a blue wolf. Even Genghis Khan took the clan title of Master of the Blue Wolf.”

He heard the telltale catch in the other’s voice.

Gray had no doubt this was their man, the mysterious Borjigin.

“And why this continuing fascination with wolves?” Seichan asked, clearly noting the same. She stirred and stretched a long leg, baring her ankle.

“They are a good luck symbol here, especially for males.” He had to clearly pull his gaze from her leg. “Wolves also represent a lusty overabundant appetite.”

“How so?” Seichan asked, crossing her other leg, keeping the guy distracted.

“A wolf kills more than he can eat. According to our stories, God told the wolf that he could eat one out of every thousand sheep. The wolf misheard him. He ate one out of every thousand sheep he killed.”

Gray heard a hint of envy in his words, also maybe threat.

Batukhan made a show of checking his watch. “Perhaps we should finish our business, as the day grows late. And I have other matters needing my attention.”

I’m sure you do.

Gray quickly concluded their business and made their good-byes. Once out of sight of the office door, he slipped a small earpiece into place.

Seichan mumbled next to him, “Do you think we got him suspicious enough with all that talk of wolves?”

Gray had his answer quickly enough. He heard Batukhan speaking to his secretary, canceling the rest of his day. Then he was on the phone again, his voice taking a harsher edge of command.

“I’m heading out of the city,” he said. “While I’m gone, keep the packages under guard at the warehouse at all times. Around the clock.”

He gave Seichan a thumbs-up.

Gray had thought they could unsettle the man enough to get him to lead them to the stolen relics, but this was good enough. From Kat’s review of the Mongolian minister’s holdings, he had only one warehouse in the city.

Back out on the street, Gray hailed a cab. They quickly crossed a city that was an odd mix of ornate Mongol palaces, blockish Soviet-era buildings, and serene Buddhist monasteries. Over it all hung a shadowy pall, courtesy of the city’s pollution and smog.

He leaned next to Seichan, slipping his hand into hers, and whispered like a lover in her ear, “Feel like climbing through some sewers?”

She smiled. “You always know how to make a girl feel special.”

With the sun low on the horizon, Seichan stood next to Gray as he pried open a manhole cover, exposing the steam tunnels that crisscrossed beneath the world’s coldest capital city. A waft of hot air blew up from the city’s bowels.

Along with it came faint singing, like a distant children’s choir.

It was disconcertingly sweet coming from this steamy netherworld.

“People make their homes down there,” Gray said.

Seichan had spent her fair share of time in such hiding places, fleeing the cold, finding company with other children of the street. With the city’s high level of unemployment, coupled with its struggle to make the transition from communism to democracy, people fell through the cracks, including lots of homeless children.

Gray headed down first. Their actions were hidden by the shadow of a neighboring apartment complex. It lay only a couple of blocks from their goal. Back in D.C., Kat had pulled blueprints for the warehouse from city records. They discovered this set of steam tunnels led directly under the building and offered access to it via heating ducts.

Seichan descended the ladder, quickly abandoning the bright, cold day for the warm, dark tunnels. With each rung, it got hotter, quickly becoming nearly unbearable. And then there was the overbearing stink of refuse and waste, some of it human.

Gray clicked on a flashlight and dropped to the tunnel floor below.

She joined him, hunched down, coming close to burning herself on a pipe overhead. She switched on her own flashlight and swept its beam down the tunnels that branched in four directions. Down one, she spotted a scurry of motion, a flash of a small, scared face.

Then nothing.

Even the singing had stopped.

She expected the tunnels were regularly raided, the children rounded up and likely sent to detention centers that were little better than the North Korean prison.

No wonder they ran.

“This way,” Gray said and headed in the direction of the warehouse.

The path was not straight and required checking their map twice. Finally, Gray waved her low.

“That next ladder should lead up to the main warehouse floor. We’ll only have the element of surprise for a short time, and we don’t know how many guards we’ll find up there.”

“Got it.”

In other words, move fast.

She adjusted the night-vision goggles atop her head. Gray wore a matching set, looking like he had the disarticulated eyes of an insect.

She waved him forward, having to go on hands and knees from here. As Gray departed, Seichan felt something grab her ankle.

She twisted around, a pistol in her hand, elongated with a silencer.

She found herself facing a small girl of nine or ten, with almond eyes and wide cheekbones, as if looking in a mirror of her own past. The child cowered from the weapon.

Seichan pulled the pistol away, freeing her leg from the girl’s fingers.

“What do you want?” she whispered in Vietnamese, knowing it was close to Mongolian.

The girl looked after Gray, or at least in the direction he was headed. She shook her head and tugged the edge of her pant leg as if to pull her back.

It was a warning of danger.

The children living here must have surmised she and Gray were not with the police. Then, tracking the two of them, they must have realized their goal. Clearly the children down here must have had encounters with the warehouse guards — and not pleasant ones. The effort to warn them was likely less about concern for her and Gray than it was for themselves. Whatever transpired, it was likely to have dire repercussions for the street kids down here.

And they were probably right.

Retribution might be exacted upon those living down here after they left. But there was little Seichan could do about that. She couldn’t change the harsh and unfair ways of the world. She’d had that beaten into her enough times to know.

I’m sorry, little one. Get as far from here as possible.

She tried to communicate that.

“Ði,” she said in Vietnamese. Go.

With a final scared flash of her eyes, the child vanished into the darkness, a shadow of her former self.

Gray hissed for her from the foot of the ladder, oblivious to what had transpired. She hurried over to him. He silently climbed the rungs and secured tiny charges to the locked grate up top.

Dropping back down, they both ducked to the side as he hit the detonator.

A fast bang echoed. It was not much louder than a firecracker, but it would surely draw any guards in the warehouse.

Gray rushed up with Seichan behind him. He hit the smoking grate with the palm of his hand, knocking it open. With his other hand, he expertly tossed in two smoke grenades, rolling them in opposite directions. As the bombs blew with a flash of fire and a blast of smoke, Gray and Seichan rolled out onto the warehouse floor.

She already had her night-vision goggles in place. Lying on her back on the concrete floor, she targeted every light she could see through the smoke.

Firing rapidly she took them all out, sinking the warehouse into deeper darkness.

Gray was already moving, running for the office. It was the most likely place the relics would be secured. If they were wrong, they would force one of the guards to talk.

Muffled blasts of suppressed fire marked Gray’s progress across the chasm of the warehouse. She stayed on her back, hidden by the smoke, holding their exit. She toggled her scope to infrared, picking out the heat signatures of guards rushing from the far side of the warehouse. She aimed her pistol.

Pop, pop, pop…

Bodies crumpled.

Others scattered, seeking cover, firing back blindly.

Seichan knew the smoke cover would only last a few more minutes, then she would be left exposed out here.

Don’t take too long, Gray.

Sweeping through the smoke, Gray fired upon anything that flared through his scopes. He took out two men on the floor and another on the open stairs leading to an office that overlooked the warehouse. He climbed two steps at a time, staying low.

A bullet pinged off the stair rail.

He swung toward the source, identified the heat signature, and fired.

The shooter fell.

Clambering to the top landing, he shot out the door lock, not even bothering to pause to check if it was unlocked. This high up, he was clear of the smoke.

Proving the danger, a burst of rounds peppered the front of the office.

Not slowing, he shouldered through the door and rolled low inside. He kept away from the windows and kicked the door closed while still on his back. At the same time, he swept his pistol across the small space. A door at the back led out to more administration spaces and a conference room.

Finding the room empty, he stayed crouched and checked that back door.

Locked.

Good.

He didn’t want any surprises from that direction.

The desk was not in direct view of the windows so he stood up, noticing the boxes and cases stacked there. The largest was tied up in a blanket. It was the right size from Vigor’s description. A peek through a fold revealed tarnished silver.

Gray pawed through the rest but failed to find the other relics. He tried the desk drawers. In the bottom one, he discovered a wolf mask staring back up at him.

So Borjigin had been here, likely savoring his new treasures.

While bent down, Gray spotted a small army duffel tucked into the knee well of the desk. He unzipped it and found the skull and the leather book inside. Relieved, he tossed the duffel over a shoulder and lifted the box under one arm. It was heavy and awkward, but it left one hand free to hold his pistol.

A quick glance out of the window showed the smoke beginning to clear.

His search had taken too long.

Using a toe, he nudged open the door. He spotted two men running up the steps toward him, both carrying submachine guns with flashlight undermounts. Beyond them, a firefight was under way in the fading smoke as Seichan kept the rest of the warehouse at bay.

Thinking quickly, Gray ripped off his night-vision gear, rushed back to the desk, and opened the bottom drawer. He grabbed the wolf mask and tugged it over his face. He snatched his pistol back off the desktop — just as the door was kicked open.

As he turned, two men burst inside, submachine guns at their shoulders. Their flashlights blinded him, but the sight of the wolf mask startled them. Fear of its mysterious owner made them pause for a fraction of a heartbeat.

Gray used it to place rounds in both of their heads.

As their bodies fell, he leaped past them, stopping only long enough to trade his pistol for one of their weapons. With the mask still over his face, he burst out the door and slid down the stair’s railing to the main floor. Rounds ricocheted around him as he landed hard in the thinning pool of smoke.

He crouched low as he fled, coming upon a guard running at him.

The man’s eyes widened as the apparition of a wolf’s head appeared out of the pall before him. Gray cut him in half, firing at point-blank range.

Only afterward did Gray realize why he’d run into the man.

The firefight from a moment ago had gone silent.

The guard had clearly been trying to escape.

He found Seichan where he had left her. She was up on a knee, disheveled but unharmed. She swung toward him, and it took her a visible extra beat not to shoot him.

He tugged off the mask and threw it aside.

She scowled at him. “You truly have to stop wearing disguises, Gray. It’s very unhealthy for you.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you’re unarmed next Halloween.”

Seichan assisted Gray in getting the blanket-wrapped box and satchel down into the steam tunnels. With the smoke down to a heavy haze, she kept watch, but it appeared any surviving guards had fled.

Searching around, she noted the warehouse was stacked with boxes of dry goods, electronics, car parts, even baby formula. It seemed Batukhan had his fingers into many different pies, including hoarding foodstuffs in a city where many starved.

She followed Gray below, back into the stink and the heat.

He managed the box, crawling ahead, while she shouldered the duffel.

Reaching a side tunnel, she spotted a familiar face shining back at her. Seichan paused, reached to her own head, and tossed over the night-vision goggles. They would be invaluable to a little girl trying to survive in this dark netherworld. But it wasn’t only this one child.

Beyond the little one’s shoulder stirred more shadows, likely representing hundreds of other kids.

Seichan pointed back to the ladder, to the wealth lying unguarded above.

“Ð! Hãy! Nó là an toàn!” she called to them all. Go! Take! It is safe!

With nothing more she could do, Seichan headed after Gray.

She might not be able to change the world, but she could at least make this small part of it momentarily a little better.

21

Jada and the others climbed out of the darkness and into the light.

With the sun less than an hour from going down, the group had set a hard pace up the forested flank of the mountain. The upper peak blazed with the day’s last light, reflecting off snow and ice. The woods below — a mix of birch and pine — lay in deep shadows as night filled the lowlands.

Wolves howled out of that rising darkness, accompanied by yipping echoes, welcoming the coming sunset. It seemed the Wolf Fang had not earned its name from its shape alone, but also from what haunted its slopes.

Beyond the forest stretched the highland meadow they had crossed earlier. It seemed impossibly far below.

Hard to believe we gained this much elevation.

Jada thought she spotted movement down there, along the edge of a patch of dark woods, but as she strained to see what it was, it vanished.

Shadows playing tricks…

Duncan still had his ear cocked to the chorus of the neighboring woods. “The wolves. Will they attack people?”

“Not unless provoked,” Sanjar said. “And seldom when faced by numbers such as ours. But it is the start of winter, and they are beginning to grow hungry.”

Duncan plainly did not like that answer. “Then let’s keep going before we lose any more light.”

“Why?” Sanjar pointed ahead. “We’re already here.”

Jada swung in her saddle to return her attention forward, to this last island of daylight in the sea of night. They had reached a wide plateau, a giant’s step in the side of the mountain. The snow line began another thirty or forty yards upslope, but she saw no lake.

“Where is it?” Duncan asked.

“Around that tumble of boulders to the west,” Sanjar explained and trotted his horse in that direction, dragging them all with him.

They circled past the old rockslide. It was a narrow squeeze between the pile of boulders and the edge of a steep cliff. Jada eyed the precarious stacking. It looked like an avalanche that had frozen in place, but more likely it had been there for centuries.

Clearing the rockfall, they saw the plateau spread even wider on the far side. It dropped off to sheer cliffs to the left and rose into a snowy slope to the right. Filling most of the remainder of the space was a two-acre lake, a midnight blue to match the darkening skies, reflecting the few clouds. Its shoreline ran right up to the edge of the ice, suggesting the lake was fed by snowmelt, likely swelling in the spring to pour over that ledge into a glistening waterfall.

Monk drew alongside her. “If something crashed here, it sure doesn’t look like it now.”

He was right. It looked pristine, untouched.

Khaidu had ridden ahead to the lake’s edge. She slid smoothly out of her saddle and walked her overheated horse to the water. Her mount dipped its nose as if to slake its thirst, but then tossed its head back and trotted back several steps. Khaidu steadied the mare with a firm hand on the lead, keeping it from retreating straight over the cliff.

With a furrowed brow, Sanjar hopped down and handed Khaidu the reins of his own horse. He crossed to the shore and dipped his hand in the lake. He turned and gave them a wide-eyed look.

“It’s warm…”

Jada remembered the story from the eyewitness, the one who saw a fireball crash here. He had said it set the lake to boiling. It certainly wasn’t now, but Jada pictured the overheated metal slowly cooling in its depths. The lake must not have had time to fully cool back down yet.

“It’s in there,” Duncan said, clearly coming to the same conclusion.

“But how can we be sure?” Jada asked.

Monk jumped off his horse and helped her down. “Looks like someone’s going to have to dive in there and take a look.”

Duncan stood in his boxers at the edge of the lake. He shivered in the icy breeze sweeping down from the mountaintop. Having grown up mostly in the southern half of the United States, he was not a fan of cold weather.

His family had moved almost yearly, across a swath of states: Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi, Florida. Regularly switching jobs, his father shed his skin like a snake, mostly leaving his two sons to fend for themselves. It was why Duncan and his younger brother had grown so close. After Billy died, with their mother already long out of the picture, Duncan and his father had found themselves with nothing to hold their tiny family together. Unfettered, they spun coldly out of each other’s orbit. Estranged for years now, he didn’t even know where his father lived.

“Can you hurry up?” Duncan asked, not wanting to dwell on that past.

Jada knelt by an open laptop. “I just need an extra moment to finish setting up the feed.”

Besides his boxers, Duncan also wore a headband equipped with a waterproof camera, radio, and LED light. A trailing length of antenna wire attached to a float would wirelessly transmit video back to the laptop.

“Can you hear me?” she asked.

He adjusted the radio earpiece. “Loud and clear.”

Jada knew more about the satellite than anyone. She would follow his progress topside and communicate to him in an effort to guide his salvage operation.

“Then we’re all set here,” Jada said.

Monk stood beside Duncan. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I think it’s too late for that.”

Duncan waded into the shallows, finding the water warm, welcomingly so. He leaped outward into a shallow dive. After the cold wind above, the water felt downright balmy. In the past, he had done some diving in Belize, where the sea was like bathwater. This was even warmer.

He set off, swimming with long strokes across the surface, kicking hard. With a lake this large, it could take hours to explore fully, going grid by grid. Duncan decided to narrow his search by playing a kid’s game of hot and cold.

Or in this case, warm and warmer.

If the crashed satellite was down there, the waters closest to it were likely to be the hottest. So as he swam, he turned away whenever the water grew cooler and explored the warmest patches by diving deep, sweeping his light along the lake’s rocky bottom. He spotted some plump trout, someone’s lost boot, and lots of sweeping moss.

Reaching a particularly hot spot in the lake, he took a big breath and dove, kicking his legs high to drive him deep. After he had gone down three meters, with his ears complaining of the water pressure, he spotted a flash below, something reflecting his light.

“Turn more left,” Jada directed him in his ear, excitement in her voice.

Following her order, he twisted and kicked himself farther in that direction. The beam lit the waters around him and speared deep to the bottom.

And there it was, resting in a crater of blasted river rock, surrounded by a halo of slag metal and charred debris.

The Eye of God.

It was in utter ruin.

Jada felt like crying.

“There’s nothing left,” she mumbled to herself and to the others.

Even with the poor reception, which only grew worse the deeper Duncan dove, she could tell there would be nothing to salvage here. The original satellite had been the size of a hot dog vendor’s cart, a beautiful synthesis of theory, engineering, and design.

She stared at the shaky image on her laptop screen.

All that was left was a scorched heap of wreckage the size of a minifridge. After the blazing heat of reentry, followed by the blast impact and water damage, all that remained was charred junk. She picked out a few details: a burned horizon sensor, a piece of the solar array melted into the outer casing, a shattered magnetometer. Any hope of recovering significant electronics or data was nil.

She had to admit that to herself — and to Duncan.

Needing air, he had resurfaced. He exploded from the lake, sluicing water from the hard planes of his body, his hair plastered to his head.

But he already knew the truth.

His face was a mask of defeat.

She imagined her own looked no better.

After coming so far, surviving so much…

She shook her head. Worst of all, the wreckage held no hope for answers, no solutions to the catastrophe looming on the horizon.

Duncan pointed his thumb down. “It’s resting about fifteen feet under me. I’m going to see if I can at least haul it up. I may have to do it piecemeal.”

She recognized that the guy needed to do something to keep busy, anything to stanch the sense of defeat.

“I’d better let Sigma command know,” Monk said, removing his satellite phone and stepping away to keep his grim conversation private.

Sanjar and Khaidu hung near the cliff’s edge, sensing their disappointment.

On the screen, Jada watched Duncan dive below again, kicking deep, reaching the satellite quickly. He tentatively reached his hands toward the wreckage, perhaps fearing it was still hot. As his fingers touched the outer casing, the image on the screen blacked out.

Lifting her head, Jada checked the lake. The antenna float bobbed like normal on the surface. She should still be getting feed from below.

“Duncan?” she radioed. “If you can hear me, I’ve lost the connection.”

After another thirty seconds of silence, with the chop of the lake from his dive smoothing out, she grew concerned.

She stood up, half turning and calling to Monk.

“Something’s wrong.”

As soon as Duncan’s fingers touched the wreckage, he felt a familiar tingle in his fingertips, that sense of something pushing back, even through the pressure at this depth. The warm water went cold as he recognized that oily, black feel to the energy signature, the same field as he had sensed emanating from the relics.

If there was any question about the ancient cross being connected physically to the comet in some way, that was gone now. They clearly must share the same strange energy.

Dark energy…

He wanted to burst back up and tell Jada, but not without first recovering the remains of the satellite. He grabbed hold and tried to yank it up, but it wouldn’t budge. It seemed to be stuck to the rock beneath. He pictured its metal shell, still molten from the heat of reentry, cooling and fusing to the blasted rock.

Frustrated, he passed his hands over the surface, noting a gradient to the energy field. It pushed stronger near one end than the other. Probing with his fingertips, he found a crack in the surface, the edge of a steel plate, curled and bent from the force of the impact.

Maybe I could crack it open.

He tried using his fingers, but he couldn’t get good leverage. Recognizing the futility and running out of air, he pushed off the bottom of the lake and shot back up.

As he surfaced, taking in a big gulp of air, he saw Monk splashing into the water, fully clothed, a panic to his actions.

“What are you doing?” he called to shore, treading water.

Jada stood behind Monk. She lowered the hands that were at her throat. “We thought you were in trouble! We suddenly lost the feed and you were down there for so long—”

“I’m fine.” He swam for shore. “Just need some tools!”

Reaching the others, he began to rise out of the water, but the first frigid breeze drove him back into the warmth.

“Pass me that small crowbar,” he said. “I’m going to attempt to crack through that hard shell and search inside.”

Jada passed the length of steel to Monk, still knee-deep in water, who handed it to him.

“Why?” she said. “Nothing significant could have survived.”

“I’m feeling an electromagnetic signature off the wreckage. A strong one.”

Her brow furrowed, her expression doubtful. “That’s impossible.”

“My fingertips don’t lie. And I’m pretty sure I recognize the unique quality of this energy field.”

He looked hard at her, lifting an eyebrow.

“Like the relics?” Her eyes widened. “The skull and the book…?”

“Same damned signatures.”

She took a step forward, looking ready to join him in the water. “Can you get the wreckage to shore?”

“Not all of it. The majority of its shell is melted into the rock. But I think I can break it open and gut out whatever is inside.”

“Do it,” she said.

He saluted her with the crowbar and dove back down.

With the sun below the horizon but the skies still glowing to the west, Jada crouched by her laptop. For some reason, the feed had resumed after Duncan had surfaced. She again watched him descend toward the wreckage.

“Duncan, can you hear me?” she radioed, testing their connection.

He gave her a thumbs-up.

As he went deeper, the image on the screen grew sketchier, with pixel loss and cutouts.

Could it be the presence of the wreckage?

Urging caution, she told him, “I think the energy field off the wreck might be interfering with the feed.”

Monk shivered next to her in his wet clothes. “Tell him not to touch it. His ungrounded body might have acted like a conduit before and temporarily fritzed his gear.”

He was right.

“Duncan, keep back and let me see what you see. Show me where you feel the energy is the strongest, where you want to use the crowbar. We don’t want to damage anything that might prove vital later.”

Hearing her, he shifted to one end of the crashed satellite and pointed the tip of his crowbar.

“That end looks to be the main electronics module,” she radioed. “And you’re pointing to the thermal radiation door. If you can get it open, I can try to guide you from up here.”

Duncan dug the end of the crowbar into a gap in the door.

“Careful…”

Using the steel bar as a fulcrum, he got his feet on the rock to either side of the wreckage — and heaved down. The thermal hatch resisted his efforts for a few seconds, then ripped away, flipping through the water.

It took Duncan a moment to swim into proper position to point his camera into the innards of the crashed satellite.

Again Jada felt a sink of defeat. All the electronics were charred, most of it melted into mounds of plastic, silicon, and fiber optics.

On the screen, Duncan moved one hand over the inside, still careful not to touch anything. His finger pointed at one square object, a block of steel with visible hinges on one side. Protected by the bulk of the craft, it looked relatively intact. From the urgency of Duncan’s motion, it was clear he was trying to communicate.

“That must be where the energy is the strongest,” Monk said, looking over her shoulder and apparently reading her mind.

“Duncan, that’s the gyroscopic housing. If you can, try to keep it intact. It should only have a single fat cable running to it. If you can twist that off, it should lift free as a whole.”

He gave her another thumbs-up and leaned the crowbar against the side of the satellite. He would need both hands free to pull this off.

Again, as his fingers touched the housing, the feed went dead.

Jada shared a look with Monk — then they both stared toward the lake. If Jada’s theories of dark energy were correct, Duncan could be about to wrestle with the very fires that fueled the universe.

Be careful…

Running out of air, Duncan fought both the satellite and his own revulsion. Stubborn piece of—

He wasn’t prone to swearing, but between the melted slag that trapped the gyroscopic casing and the repellent touch to its energy field, it felt as if he were trying to unscrew a pickle jar while his fingers squirmed in electrified gel.

As soon as he had popped the hatch in the back of the satellite, the EM field had surged stronger, pushing like steam out of its scorched interior, rising from this steel heart. When he touched the housing, his fingertips felt as if they were pushing through mud. The energy field resisted him, or at least it registered as such to his magnetic sixth sense.

When his fingers finally made contact, it was indescribable. During his training as an electrical engineer, he’d brushed against a live wire or two. But this was no bite of copper. It was more like touching an electric eel. The energy had a distinct living feel to it.

It set his hairs on end.

Finally, with a savage twist of its half-melted cabling, he broke the housing free. He lifted it out, as if removing its power core, and kicked off for the surface, anxious to be rid of it.

Reaching the surface and fresh air, Duncan breathed heavily and kicked for shore. He carried the gyroscopic housing in one large hand, as if palming a basketball, a ball he was more than happy to pass off to a fellow player.

Jada waited for Duncan at the edge of the lake, carrying a blanket in one hand. As he reached the shore, he shoved up, dripping wet, his tattoos bright against his chilled flesh, covering his shoulders and down his arms.

Clicking off his headlamp, he fell into shadows. Focused on the laptop, she hadn’t realized it had already gotten so dark. Night did not waste any time falling at these elevations.

Duncan waded out of the lake. She traded her warm blanket for his steel prize.

“Why is this so important?” he asked, his teeth chattering a bit.

“I’ll show you.”

She moved to her makeshift desk, basically a flat boulder holding her laptop, and placed the housing down.

She explained, “If this is giving off the same electromagnetic signature as the relics, it must be tied to the comet’s corona of dark energy. If I could get this to a lab and properly study it, I might be able to get some real answers.”

She glanced significantly at Monk.

“On it,” he said. “Kat will get us back to the States by the fastest route possible.”

Jada spoke as he raised his satellite phone. “We’re already this far east. It’ll be quicker to reach my labs at the Space and Missile Systems Center in L.A. I’ve got everything I need to do a complete analysis there, plus access to engineers and techs familiar with my research. If there are any solutions to our problems, my best chance to discover them is there.”

Monk frowned, as if disagreeing with her, but that was not the source of his consternation. It was his satellite phone. “Can’t get any signal now…”

“Might be the energy given off by this thing,” she realized aloud. She pointed him toward the neighboring rock pile. “Try farther away. I’ll have to figure out a way to insulate this if we’re going to travel by air.”

Duncan crouched next to her, back in his clothes after drying off. “I ran a hand over the remainder of the wreckage after yanking that thing out. I couldn’t feel any trace of the energy left in the satellite. It all seemed to be emanating from that housing.”

“Makes sense.”

“Why?”

“This is the heart of the Eye of God, its very namesake.”

She shifted her attention back to the housing. She searched along its sides until she found a small latch and undid it. With great care, she broke the case open, the two halves hinging apart to reveal what it protected.

Duncan leaned closer.

Seated inside, reflecting the glow from the laptop, was a sphere of quartz about the size of a softball. Though you couldn’t tell from looking at it, the sphere was virtually flawless.

“This is the gyroscope that spun in the heart of the satellite,” she explained. “We used it to measure the curve of space-time around the earth during our experiment.”

“But why is it charged with energy now?”

“I’ll need to do a hundred tests to confirm it, but I have an idea. As it was spinning out there, measuring the curve of space-time, it monitored the wrinkle that formed. I believe the stream of dark energy that created that wrinkle flowed along that crease and poured into the eye of the only observer.”

“The crystal sphere.”

“Turning it into a true Eye of God.”

“But how does that help us?”

“If we could—”

A strange whistling noise drew both their eyes — followed by a thunk of something striking flesh.

Khaidu sank to her knees, her back to the cliff.

Her hands found her belly.

And the steel arrowhead sticking out from there.

22

Vigor paced around the conference table in the hotel suite, his heart thudding tiredly, his eyes sore. For the past hour, he had been balanced between jubilation at Gray’s recovery of the relics and frustration at his inability to solve the eight-hundred-year-old mystery.

The focus of everyone’s attention rested in the middle of the table: the macabre sailing ship made of bones and tanned skin.

Vigor had spent a solid hour with magnifying loupe in hand, poring over the relic that they had recovered from the Aral Sea. He could still smell the salt off the tarnished silver box sitting next to it, a bitter reminder of the loss of his friend.

Josip had sacrificed everything to uncover this artifact.

And to what end?

After an hour of study, Vigor had come to no firm conclusions, except a deep respect for the artisan. The rib bones of the hull had been boiled and bleached to make them easier to carve. Intricate waves had been scrimshawed into them, along with a plethora of fish, birds, even seals, the latter of which frolicked in the sea and leaped high out of the water. The sails were rigged with twisted human hair and ribbed in the traditional manner of Chinese junks of the Song dynasty, an era that matched Genghis Khan’s time period.

But what did it all mean? Where was this bread crumb supposed to lead them? To solve that, he had a laptop open on the table, where he had been researching anything and everything that might offer a clue. But he had hit dead end after dead end.

Everyone around the table looked to him to solve this mystery, but maybe it was beyond him. He wished for the hundredth time that Josip were here. He needed his friend’s mad genius now more than ever.

Gray spoke up, seated beside Seichan. “Since it’s a Chinese ship, it must be pointing to somewhere in China.”

“Not necessarily. Genghis was a great admirer of the science and technology of the nations he conquered. He absorbed and incorporated whatever he found, from Chinese gunpowder to the compass and the abacus. He certainly would appreciate such boat-making skills.”

“Still, it is a fishing boat,” Gray continued, pointing out the details of the scrimshaw. “Doesn’t that suggest the hiding place is somewhere along the Pacific Ocean or the Yellow Sea?”

“I agree. And that coast does mark the easternmost reach of Genghis’s empire.”

Josip’s earlier words played again in his head.

I believe Genghis had instructed his son to turn the entire known world into his grave, to spread his spiritual reach from one end of the Mongol Empire to the other.

His friend was right. Genghis’s head had been ceremonially buried in Hungary, representing the westernmost reach of his son’s empire. Then the bone ship was hidden in the Aral Sea, marking the western edge of Genghis’s conquered territory. So it only made sense that the next spot would be along that eastern edge.

There was only one problem, and Vigor voiced it aloud.

“If we’re right, that’s nearly a thousand miles of coastline. Where do we even begin to look?”

Rachel stirred on the opposite side of the table. “Maybe we need a break. To clear our heads and start again fresh.”

“We don’t have the time to spare,” Vigor snapped back at her, but he regretted his tone immediately and patted her shoulder in apology as he passed by her while continuing to pace.

Something kept nagging at him and wouldn’t let him sit still. Then contrarily, the stitch in his abdomen flared with every step, making it harder to think.

Maybe Rachel is right. A little rest might be a good idea.

Gray frowned and tried talking it out. “They buried his head in Hungary, and I guess, because the ship is made of rib bones and vertebrae, it represents his chest.”

“Or more likely his heart,” Vigor corrected, that nagging feeling flaring as he said that.

“Head and heart,” Kowalski mumbled. He was sprawled on a neighboring couch, an arm over his eyes. “Guess that means all we have to do is find this guy’s feet.”

Vigor shrugged. That actually sounded right.

Head, heart, feet.

Josip’s words repeated yet again.

… spread his spiritual reach from one end of the Mongol Empire to the other.

Vigor stopped so fast he had to steady himself on the back of an empty chair. He suddenly realized that it wasn’t Josip’s words that he should have been paying attention to.

“You smart, crazy man,” he mumbled. “I’ve been such a fool.”

No wonder Josip had looked so full of regret as he died. It wasn’t because his friend couldn’t finish this journey — though that was likely part of it — but because he had recognized the lack of understanding in Vigor’s eyes.

“He figured it out!” Vigor exclaimed.

“What do you mean?” Rachel asked. “Are you talking about Father Josip?”

Vigor placed his palm over his heart, feeling it beat. Josip had taken that same hand and put it on his own bloody chest — not just to say good-bye, but to communicate in the only way he could at the end, to offer a clue before he died.

“Head, heart, feet,” he repeated, patting his own chest as he emphasized the middle note of the chorus. “We’ve been looking at this all wrong.”

Rachel shifted straighter. “How?”

“The head marked the boundary of his son’s empire, representing the future of the Mongol Empire after his death. The heart embodied the empire of Genghis’s own lifetime, of his present. What we need to be looking for next is a marker where Genghis first put his feet down and made a name for himself, symbolizing his past.”

“Head, heart, feet,” Gray said. “Future, present, past.”

Vigor nodded, slipping back to his chair in front of the open laptop. “Genghis didn’t instruct his son to spread his body from one end of the empire to the other geographically. He wanted it spread from his empire’s past to its future.”

Rachel reached over and squeezed his arm. “Brilliant.”

“Don’t use that word yet.” He tapped at the computer. “Right now I’m feeling rather stupid since Josip all but told me this before he passed away. And we still have to use this knowledge to discover where to continue the search.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

Vigor brought up a map that showed the spread of the Mongol Empire during Genghis Khan’s reign.

“Here you can see the extent of Genghis’s empire,” he said, “stretching from the Pacific to the Caspian Sea, but the darker oval in northern Mongolia represents the great khan’s original territorial base.”

He tapped that spot on the screen.

Gray looked over his shoulder. “That’s still a lot of territory to cover.”

“And it’s landlocked,” Vigor added. “As you can see, his original territory did not extend to the Yellow Sea or the Pacific.”

Everyone stared over at the ship, while Vigor kept his nose close to his laptop’s screen, bringing up more research files on the region.

“Then why leave a ship as a clue?” Gray asked, nodding to the relic.

Vigor zoomed in on the map and pointed to a large body of water at the northern edge of that darker oval.

“Because of that,” he explained. “Lake Baikal.”

“What’s the significance of that particular lake?” Gray squinted at the crescent-shaped body of water. “Do you know anything about it?”

“Only what I’m looking at now,” Vigor said and summarized aloud. “It’s the oldest and deepest lake in all the world. It holds over twenty percent of the world’s fresh water. To the ancient Mongol people, it was a major source of fishing… and still is today.”

Gray stared closer at the scrimshaw. “Then I understand the fish carved on the boat’s hull, but what about these frolicking—?”

“Seals?” Vigor asked, with a triumphant smile. He sat back and let them see the picture on his laptop, of a dark sleek shape sitting atop a rock. “Let me introduce you to the nerpa. The world’s only breed of freshwater seal and—”

“Let me guess,” Gray said, cutting him off this time. “They’re only found in Lake Baikal.”

Vigor’s smile widened.

Gray’s satellite phone rang. He glanced at the screen. “It’s Sigma command.” As he headed away to take the call in private, he pointed back to Vigor. “Learn everything you can about that lake.”

“Already on it.”

Vigor paused long enough to look heavenward.

Thank you, my friend.

“And you’ve heard nothing from Monk?” Painter asked over the phone.

“Not a word.” Gray had moved over to his bedroom for privacy, but also not to disturb Vigor’s investigation into Lake Baikal.

“I’ve tried reaching him for the past ten minutes,” Painter said. “But there’s been no answer. The last update from his team was when they were heading out on horseback into the mountains.”

“It’s getting dark out here,” Gray offered. “Maybe he’s busy setting up camp.”

Painter sighed in tired exasperation. “I had hoped to consult with Dr. Shaw before they settled in for the night.”

“Why?”

“I just received a final assessment from the crew over at the SMC in L.A. I told you about the physicist who was monitoring the gravitational anomalies that Jada had first noted in the comet’s path.”

“Right. You mentioned something about them changing.”

“Growing, in fact. They’ve confirmed that these tiny changes are incrementally increasing in direct proportion to the comet’s approach toward Earth.”

“You’re not concerned about the comet hitting us, are you?”

It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. In 1994, the Shoemaker-Levy comet collided into Jupiter, and sometime next year, a comet was likely to smash into Mars.

“No,” Painter said, “the comet will pass close in astronomical terms, but it has no chance of striking us. But that doesn’t mean we’re out of danger. We’ve been tracking NEOs for the past day.”

“NEOs?”

“Near-Earth objects. We’ve been monitoring any asteroids that might pose a risk of shifting earthward due to the stirring of the comet’s energy through our neighborhood. Its trajectory has already shaken up the cosmic game of billiards out there, resulting in the recent meteor showers.”

“Along with what happened in Antarctica.”

“Exactly. That was why I wanted to consult with Dr. Shaw. She understands these gravitational anomalies better than anyone. The consensus out of the SMS is that the increasing flux could trigger the mother of all meteor showers as the comet reaches its closest pass by the earth. And NASA is monitoring some very large rocks beginning to respond to those deviations.”

Gray heard the dread in the director’s voice. “Is there anything we can do to stop this?”

“The physicist at the SMC believes that Dr. Shaw would be the best one to answer that question. He’s growing to believe that there must be a reason these anomalies are growing larger in direct relation to its approach toward Earth. He thinks there must be something here on the planet that the comet’s energy is responding to.”

“Jada seemed convinced of the same,” Gray conceded, suddenly glad he had agreed to search for the stolen relics. “She thinks this ancient cross we’re hunting for might have been sculpted out of a piece of that comet when it last appeared. That it could still retain some of its dark energy, and that the two — the cross and the comet — are entangled at the quantum level.”

“Then we need to find that artifact.”

Gray offered a bit of hopeful news. “We may have a solid lead for once. Vigor is working on it right now. But as a precaution, can you get Kat started on arranging transportation for our group?”

“Where?”

“To Russia, to a lake near its southern border called Baikal. It’s about three hundred miles north of where we are now.”

“We’ll get on it. That short a distance should only take a few hours of travel, but you’d better still hurry. We only have forty-eight hours remaining until the events pictured by the satellite come true.”

Recognizing the urgency, Gray finished his call and returned to the others. As he stepped into the room, he found everyone gathered around Vigor and his laptop.

“What?” he asked.

Vigor swung to him. “The more I look into Lake Baikal, the more I’m convinced that’s the correct spot.”

Rachel smiled over, flushed with excitement. “We may even know where on Lake Baikal to look.”

“Where?” He shifted to join them.

“First of all, legends say that Genghis Khan’s mother was born on an island in that lake.”

“Another island,” Gray said.

That at least sounded right. The first relics were found hidden near Boszorkánysziget, the Island of the Witches, in Hungary, and the second beneath an island in the old Aral Sea.

“It’s called Olkhon Island,” Vigor explained. “Local rumors say that Genghis Khan’s mother came from there. Which may very well be true.”

Gray considered this. If we’re looking for where Genghis Khan came from, you can’t get much earlier than his mother’s womb.

Vigor continued, “Other legends claim Genghis is indeed buried on that island. Not that we should put a whole lot of weight on that rumor. The same can be said of countless other places across Asia. But this particular story mentions that Genghis was buried with a great weapon, one that could destroy the world.”

Rachel nodded. “This legend may be the source of the commonly held belief by the Mongols that if Genghis’s tomb is ever found and opened, the world will end.”

Gray felt their excitement seeping into his blood.

“From a real-world practicality,” Vigor said, “archaeologists have found many Mongol weapons and relics on that island. There are even historical records of Mongol warriors of Genghis’s time coming to that island. Though what they were doing there, no one knew.”

“The island is also the center for a unique form of shamanism,” Rachel said. “The local Buryat tribesmen, who descend from ancient Mongols, practice a religion that merges Buddhism with naturalistic animism. They believe a great conqueror of the universe resides on the island. Shamans still protect many of that ruler’s sacred sites and believe trampling them would invite ruin upon the world.”

Similar to the Genghis story…

“Last,” Vigor said, “some travelers to that island report fits of energy. Those are their words.”

Rachel nodded. “Maybe these folks are attuned or hypersensitive to whatever energy is emanating from St. Thomas’s cross. Some even claim to have visited a cave that opened a door to other worlds.”

Gray remembered Dr. Shaw’s statements about dark energy and the multiverse. He also wondered if these other worlds could be related to the visions of St. Thomas.

“Then let’s check it out,” Gray said. “I already have Sigma command arranging our transportation.”

“But what about Monk and the others?” Rachel asked.

Gray frowned. He doubted they could spare the time to wait for them. His group could easily lose half a day while Monk and the others returned from the mountains.

“We’ll move on,” Gray decided. “Update them when we can.”

Still, worry nagged him.

What was going on with Monk’s team?

23

Batukhan sat astride his horse, both mount and rider in traditional leather armor. He also wore a Mongol war helmet that was crowned with steel and draped with a mask made of real wolfskin to hide his features.

It was important to remain anonymous, especially now when murder was involved.

The bowstring near his ear still vibrated, singing a chorus of blood. He had watched his arrow pierce the back of the woman standing at the cliff’s edge above, enjoyed seeing her sink to her knees in shock. He smiled under his mask, his heart thundering in his ears.

“Excellent shot,” Arslan said, sitting on a stallion to the side. Similarly attired in leather, the man also wore a helmet, but the ruin of his face was bared for all to see. Sutures knit his skin together, laddering across his cheek and brow. It was a sight both gruesome and fearsome.

“I saved Sanjar for you,” Batukhan said.

With only two targets visible along the cliff’s edge, he had chosen the woman. He found the kill as exciting as sex, the penetration equally satisfying. He had left Sanjar standing, knowing Arslan would want that prize for himself later, to exact personal vengeance.

Now the cliff’s edge was empty, their quarry likely terrified and hiding. But there was nowhere to go.

Batukhan cast his gaze across the dozen mounted men spread across the dark forested slope that led toward the shelf of rock above. They were the best and most loyal of the clan.

Twelve warriors against three men and two women.

Make that one woman now.

Ideally he would spare the last woman’s life, so his men could celebrate afterward as the forces of Genghis Khan had in the past. It was their birthright and heritage, and a well-deserved reward after spilling blood this night.

They could always kill her afterward.

With a kick of his heels, he trotted his horse before his men, sitting tall in his saddle, knowing he cast a striking figure. He spoke a few words to each, showing respect, getting it back, like any good commander, readying his troops.

Once he’d made his rounds, he returned to Arslan’s side and pointed up toward the plateau. Surrounded by ice-encrusted walls, his quarry was trapped. The only way down was through this forest — that, or leaping headlong off the cliff to the rocks below. There was nowhere else to go. It would be a slaughterhouse, with their victims’ screams echoing across the mountaintops, possibly to Genghis Khan’s own tomb, where he imagined the great man relishing the blood and horror to come.

Batukhan yelled, knowing there was no further need for stealth.

The first arrow had already flown, drawing blood.

“Yavyaa!” he bellowed, a traditional call to battle. “Yavyaa!”

As the thunder of hooves echoed up from below, Duncan crouched with Sanjar. They hid in a cluster of boulders near the snow line.

Jada remained on the far side of the steep rockslide, near the shore of the lake, out of immediate harm’s way. He had left her with his pistol and quickly showed her how to use it. She guarded over the injured Khaidu, who still lived but needed medical care soon.

After securing them, Duncan and Sanjar had joined Monk on the opposite side of the rock pile. They quickly prepared for battle, recognizing what was coming, knowing that the arrow had been sent to terrorize them, to draw first blood — a common tactic of Mongol fighters, or so Sanjar had informed them.

Sanjar urged Duncan to hurry once he heard the yell echo up from below, a battle cry to charge. “Tie it to Heru’s jess. That piece of leather hanging from his claw.”

Duncan held the damp headband in his hand and passed the dangling cord through it and secured it with a fast knot. Sanjar kept the hooded falcon close to his body, while Duncan finished.

“Let him go,” Duncan said.

Sanjar tugged the hood off and sent the bird flying from his wrist. Duncan ducked from the initial heavy flaps and studied the laptop at his knees, the screen’s glow lowered to its dimmest setting. On the monitor, he watched the falcon take flight, gaining a bird’s-eye view of the forest below, the feed coming from the tiny video camera attached to the headband. It worked even better in the air than underwater.

The falcon soared high above the treetops, circling wide. Duncan did his best to count the number of horses pounding up from below. He saw at least a dozen, in full battle regalia, like their riders. He spotted no others on the ground.

He radioed Monk, who had left the shelter of their boulders to prepare a welcome for the coming forces.

“No more than a baker’s dozen,” Duncan reported in. “All on horseback. I spotted bows, swords, and several assault rifles.”

Seems there was a limit when it came to sticking to the old ways.

“Understood,” Monk transmitted back. “Just about ready here.”

Duncan craned over the boulder to see his partner down on one knee by the rockslide. He had planted charges at its leading edge and was quickly securing them with wireless detonators. The explosives had been intended to destroy the wreck of the satellite in case it couldn’t be moved or salvaged. They couldn’t risk the Chinese or Russians getting hold of the classified advanced technology.

But matters had changed.

The plan was to hide here and lure the attackers toward the far side where Jada and Khaidu sheltered. Once within the narrow pass between the cliff and rockfall, they would blow the charges, trying to take out as many of the enemy as possible, while simultaneously closing off immediate access to the lake, keeping Jada and Khaidu safe for as long as possible.

Enemies left on this side would be for Duncan, Monk, and Sanjar to handle. Not great odds, but it wasn’t like they had a whole lot of options.

And it would take perfect timing.

Hence, their eye in the sky.

As Monk came hightailing it back toward them, Duncan kept watch on the screen. He spotted a figure leading the charge through the woods wearing what looked like a wolf’s head. It seemed like the Master of the Blue Wolves had decided to get his hands dirty this time.

“Here they come,” Duncan hissed.

The three of them ducked lower, not wanting to be seen as the mounted battle group pounded up the last stretch and onto the plateau.

On the screen, they watched the horses and riders mill about momentarily. One had a rifle at his shoulder; others had bows drawn. Upon finding no one, their leader pointed toward the rockslide and the lake beyond.

“Uragshaa!” he ordered, which likely meant go forward.

Drawing a curved sword from a scabbard, the Master of the Blue Wolves led his men toward the hidden lake.

Good, Duncan thought.

Maybe if they could kill their leader, the rest would break ranks and flee.

Monk had his thumb on the detonator, his eyes fixed to the screen, waiting until the first few men had trotted their horses into the gap between the rocks and the cliff’s edge.

Now, Duncan silently urged.

As if Monk had heard him, he pressed the detonator.

Nothing happened.

Or at least not much.

A blasting cap popped like a firecracker, flashing out in the darkness. The noise startled the nearest horse, sending it cantering forward, bumping and jostling the next in line. Other horses shied entirely away from the rockslide, keeping on this side.

“Cap must have fallen out of the first charge,” Monk mumbled. “That’s what I get for working in the damned dark.”

He twisted the detonator to the next charge and pressed the button again. This time a major explosion rocked the plateau. Ice and snow showered over them, shaken loose from the cliffs above.

Monk didn’t stop. In quick fashion, he blew the third and fourth charges in fast succession. Duncan’s ears rang from the explosions. Horses reared and whinnied. Riders fell out of their saddles.

“Go!” Monk ordered.

The three of them burst out of hiding, guns blazing.

As he fired, Duncan prayed Jada and Khaidu were safe.

From the far side of the lake, Jada had watched three riders barrel into view around the rocks, the first wearing a formidable wolf mask. She had heard the retort, like a gunshot, a second before.

Then a series of loud fiery blasts had her cringing, covering her face with an arm. Boulders shattered amid a roll of smoke and rock dust. More came tumbling down to close off the lake from the other side. Smaller rocks continued to rain down, splashing into the water or bouncing over the granite shelf.

Jada held her breath, hoping the explosions had dispatched the three riders — but out of the smoke, a trio of horses thundered back into view, the beasts in full panic.

Taking advantage, Jada fired. She squeezed her trigger over and over again. She had never shot a pistol before, or any gun for that matter. So she opted for quantity versus quality.

Still, she hit one horse. It reared, the rider clinging tightly. That was a mistake. As the panicked mount turned on a back hoof, it leaped blindly, tumbling over the cliff’s edge, taking the rider, too. The man’s scream of terror as he fell pierced through the echoing blasts of her pistol.

Jada kept firing wildly.

Another lucky round caught a second man in the throat as he tried to bring his bow up. He fell out of his saddle, landing facedown in the water, splashing feebly.

The third rider, unharmed, came charging for her, a curved sword raised high. His wolf mask hid his face, making him appear a merciless force of nature.

Jada squeezed the trigger again, but it wouldn’t budge — the slide had locked back. Duncan had told her what that meant.

Out of bullets.

The rider swooped down upon her, his sword flashing in the moonlight.

Then an arrow zipped past her head, its feathers brushing her ear.

It flew and struck the horse in the neck.

The beast crashed, throwing the rider over its head toward Jada. She fled back on her knees, staring to the side as Khaidu struggled to notch another arrow to her bowstring, but the single pull had sapped the last of the young girl’s strength. Her fingers shook, pained sweat shining on her face, then the bow tumbled from her weak grasp.

The rider climbed to his feet. Behind him, his horse had fallen to its side, the stone slick with arterial blood, struck through the carotid.

Khaidu stared toward the beast with pity; plainly the horse hadn’t been her intended target. That was the man who picked up his sword and stalked toward them now. He had a palm resting on a holstered pistol.

Khaidu turned to her, the girl’s expression no less pitying. “Run…”

Jada took the advice, leaped to her feet, and dove into the neighboring lake.

Cruel laughter followed her down into the depths.

They both knew the truth.

Where could she go?

Duncan ran through the chaos of horseflesh and men. When the rock pile blew, a rough head count put eight men still on this side, armed with swords and rifles. Duncan, along with Monk and Sanjar, had dispatched half in the opening moments of their ambush.

Now it was a more dangerous game.

One of the combatants had dismounted near the edge of the plateau and set up a sniper’s position, flat to the ground, taking potshots at them, keeping them on the defensive. Out in the open with little shelter, it would have been like shooting fish in a barrel — but with the mix of eight horses and the sniper’s fellow men out here, Duncan and the others had some cover.

If only that damned cover would quit moving or trying to kill you…

Monk slammed into Duncan, dancing from a round that ricocheted at his toes. They both ducked behind a horse for a few breaths. Duncan kept hold of its lead to keep their stallion between them and the sniper.

Sanjar joined them a second later.

Monk gasped. “Dunk, go take out that shooter.”

No argument here… that guy was really pissing him off.

“Sanjar and I’ll try to make it over the wall,” Monk said and pointed.

Moments ago, they had all heard the shooting on the far side, coming from the lake. A few of the enemy must have gotten through before the charges blew. Someone had to go help Jada and Khaidu.

Duncan understood. For that to happen, the sniper had to be taken out. Monk and Sanjar would never be able to scale that rubble and drop to the other side with the shooter having a clear shot at them.

“I got it,” Duncan said, “but I’m going to have to borrow this horse… and this guy’s helmet.”

He tugged the headgear from a body underfoot and slammed it atop his head. Once ready, he hooked a boot in a stirrup, got a nod from Monk, then leaped into the saddle. Grabbing the reins, he turned his steed toward the sniper and goaded the beast into a full gallop, the leather armor flapping with each strike of a hoof.

Duncan kept low to his mount’s neck, hoping the shooter only saw the horse and the helmet. The sniper fired — but he aimed into the chaos behind Duncan, likely spotting Monk and Sanjar striking for the wall.

Duncan centered on the muzzle flashes in the dark. He urged the horse faster in that direction, knowing he’d only have this one chance. Hooves pounded the granite; sweat flecked the stallion’s neck.

Then he reached the sniper.

He caught a look on the man’s face as the sniper realized the ruse too late. The horse tried to shy away at the last moment, but Duncan held him firm by the reins. Eight hundred pounds of Mongolian stallion trampled over the sniper’s sprawled body, stamping bone and crushing flesh.

Then Duncan was past him, flying down the slope toward the forest’s edge. It took several yards to slow and wheel the horse around and head back up. He slid from the saddle — not to check on the sniper, who was clearly dead, but to go for the man’s gun, to turn the tables on the enemy.

Unfortunately, an unlucky hoof had struck the rifle, breaking the stock and bending the barrel. He lifted the weapon up anyway and looked through the night-vision scope for his friends.

A bobbling search across the killing floor revealed Monk standing over a limp form near the wall, his pistol smoking. Sanjar slit another man’s throat, dropping his body. Then a horse moved, and Duncan spotted a final attacker, coming from behind them.

“MONK!” he yelled.

The whinnying and clattering of horses drowned his warning.

He could only watch as the man ran his sword through Sanjar’s back, while raising a rifle with his other hand toward Monk. Duncan recognized the attacker, even with his face in ruins.

Arslan.

Duncan was already on his feet running, knowing he’d be too late.

Victory must be savored.

Batukhan stood over the young Mongol woman, no more than a girl, her stomach soaked in blood. She had some skill with the bow, dropping his horse with a single arrow. He now had his sword pressed between her small breasts, pushing enough to pierce cloth and skin and touch its point against the bone of her sternum.

Pain etched her features, but she still stared stonily at him.

Tough, hardy stock.

A flicker of pride for his people flared through him, not that he wouldn’t relish this kill. He remembered his favorite quote from Genghis Khan: It is not sufficient that I succeed — all others must fail.

He would grant this one a quick death.

The American would be slower.

He held his pistol in his other hand, pointed back toward the lake. He would stalk the defenseless woman at his leisure. There was nowhere for her to run, no weapon with which to defend herself.

Smiling behind his mask, he leaned forward, ready to plunge his sword to sweet satisfaction — then a loud splash erupted behind him.

A glance behind revealed a dark figure rising out of the lake, a Nubian goddess, rushing toward him, swinging a deadly length of steel in one hand toward his head.

Jada swung the crowbar at the beast’s head, ready to cleave it clean off the man’s shoulders.

After diving into the lake, she remembered Duncan abandoning the tool below after cracking open the satellite’s bulk. She might not be good with a pistol — but from years of racing triathlons, she had stamina and knew how to swim. While crossing the lake, she had taken a few breaths by surfacing on her back, bringing just her lips and nose up enough to get air. Once in position, she dove deep and used the moonlight through the clear water to find and seize her weapon.

Then she swam back, gliding through the shallows, trusting the reflection of starlight on the midnight lake to hide her.

She waited until the man was turned fully away to leap forth and attack. But alerted at the last minute, he shifted enough to take the blow to the crown of his helmet.

Steel rang against steel.

The shock ran up her arm to her shoulder, numbing her fingers enough to lose the crowbar. It clanked against the stone.

Still, the resounding strike dented the man’s helmet and staggered him back. He dropped the sword, weaving on his legs — but unfortunately he kept hold of his pistol.

He raised it to point at her chest and swept his damaged helmet off with his other hand. He cursed at her in his native language, his face as much a mask as before, but now one of fury and vengeance.

He shoved the pistol at her — then winced in shock, dropping heavily and suddenly to his knees.

Behind him, Khaidu held his abandoned sword, bloody after slashing him across the back of the legs, where he had little armor, hamstringing and crippling him.

Jada kicked out with a waterlogged boot and struck the gun from his stunned fingers. The weapon flew and splashed into the water. She then retrieved the crowbar from the ground, and with an uppercut swing, cracked him in the chin. His head flew back — then the rest of his body followed.

He crashed to the stone, knocked cold, bleeding from his legs.

Jada hurried to Khaidu’s side and helped her to her feet.

They weren’t out of danger yet.

As panic slowed time, Duncan ran through molasses. He staggered toward the tableau of Sanjar pierced clean through, of Monk turning too slowly, of Arslan aiming his rifle at his partner’s back.

Underfoot, the rock ran slick with the blood of men and horses. Large panicked bodies shoved around him.

Never make it.

Sanjar slumped to his knees — then glanced up and yelled, “HERU!”

Arslan flinched from that name, dropping back and ducking, raising his rifle in defense against the falcon.

A bird that wasn’t there.

Monk used the shock to swing around, shifting his pistol up.

But Sanjar surged to his feet, dagger in hand, and slammed it to the hilt into Arslan’s neck. The falconer had used the phantom of his own bird to terrorize his cousin, knowing Arslan would react with panic and alarm after his recent mauling.

Sanjar dragged Arslan down, twisting his knife as he did so. Blood poured thickly from Arslan’s mouth and nose, drowning him in racking quakes. As the man finally slumped, his eyes glassy, Sanjar shoved him away — then fell onto his back himself.

A shining dark pool quickly formed under him.

Duncan finally reached the others and slid on his knees to Sanjar’s side. But someone beat him first to the young man.

A shadow of wings swept down, and a sleek form alighted onto his master’s chest. The falcon fluttered and rustled, bending his head down, brushing Sanjar’s chin and cheek.

Hands rose to cradle the bird. Fingers freed the leather jesses from around Heru’s talons. He then brought the falcon to his lips, whispering something into the ruff of feathers.

Done saying good-bye, Sanjar let his head drop back, a shadow of a smile on his lips as he gazed up at the open starry sky. For several breaths, he lay there — then his hands went slack, slipping away, freeing his companion.

Heru leaped forth and sailed high into that same sky.

Sanjar stared upward, but he was already gone, too.

Fear stoked them all to move faster.

Jada had changed into dry clothes and hurriedly secured her pack to her horse, patting the gyroscopic casing inside. So much blood had been lost to secure this piece of the wreckage. She refused to let those sacrifices be in vain.

Poor Sanjar…

As she worked, she kept her back to the carnage on the plateau, trying to hold it together. But she could not escape the stink of death. She kept her eyes averted from a body trampled into the rock nearby.

A few minutes ago, she had been relieved to see Duncan climbing over the rockslide, coming to their rescue. He was late, but at least he made up for it by helping her get Khaidu to the other side.

Monk still worked on the girl’s injury. He was plainly a skilled medic, performing a swift triage using the team’s emergency field kit. He had snapped off the steel arrowhead and did the same with the feathered end, leaving the wooden shaft pierced through her abdomen. He plainly feared to extract it. Instead, he had applied a tight belly wrap, working around the broken ends.

“Get ready to move!” Monk called out as he finished patching Khaidu for the ride back to civilization.

Duncan nodded and stepped to his own horse. He had been keeping tabs on the lower forests with a night-vision scope. Other combatants might still be out in the dark woods or reinforcements could be on their way.

But that wasn’t the only fear driving them to hurry.

Howling rose like steam out of the dark woods, growing steadily louder, drawn by the scent of blood and meat.

They dared delay no longer.

Monk passed Khaidu up to Duncan, who cradled the girl across his lap as he sat astride his horse, prepared to carry her down the mountain.

Jada climbed into her saddle. She had her own reason for a hasty flight off this mountain. She rested a palm on the gyroscope’s case. If this hard-won prize held any answers, she needed to get it to safety, back to the States, back to her lab.

And soon.

She would let nothing stop her.

Monk waved an arm and pointed below. “Go!”

Batukhan woke to the sound of thunder.

Dazed, he rolled to a seated position beside the steam-shrouded lake. He frowned at the clear skies.

Not thunder…

As his head cleared, he recognized the fading echo of trampling hooves, heading away.

“Wait,” he croaked out, fearing his men were abandoning him.

The single utterance flared pain in his jaw. His fingers rose and found his chin split and bloody. Memory filled in slowly.

Fucking bitch…

He rolled to his feet — or tried to. Agony lanced up his legs. He stared down at his blood-soaked limbs, confused by their lack of cooperation. His hands probed the fire behind his knees, discovering deep slashes, the tendons shredded, turning his legs into floundering appendages that refused to hold his weight.

No…

He needed to signal his men.

Fools must have left me for dead.

He hauled his leaden bulk toward his fallen horse, dragging his legs, pulling with his arms, each movement a new torment. Sweat pebbled his forehead. Blood dripped from his chin. It felt as if the lower half of his body had been set on fire.

Just need to reach my phone.

Then all would be fine. He could rest until rescue came.

Lifting his head, he spotted a shift of shadows on the far side of the lake, over the top of the rockslide.

Someone was still here.

He raised his arm — then heard the low growls.

More dark shapes flowed over the wall, leaping down.

Wolves.

Primitive terror keened through him.

Not like this.

He rolled toward the edge of the cliff. He would rather die a quick death by his own hand than be torn apart alive. His useless legs still fought his efforts, leaving a trail of blood. Shadows closed toward him, moving so silently for such large beasts.

But at last, he reached the edge and flung himself over, relieved in some small way. Then something snatched his trailing arm, latching hard onto his wrist, piercing flesh and locking onto bone.

Another jaw snatched the leather armor of his forearm, halting his fall. Strong legs and powerful hearts dragged him from the abyss.

More teeth found him, rolling him to his back.

He stared up as the pack leader loomed over his face, lips curled back into a growl, showing sharp teeth, long fangs.

This was no mask.

Here was the true face of Genghis Khan.

Merciless, relentless, indomitable.

Without warning, they tore into him.

24

On the other side of the globe, Painter stood in his office, staring into space. Literally. The large wall-mounted LCD screen on his back wall displayed a large dark rock against a backdrop of stars. Its surface was pitted and blasted, an old battle-scarred warrior.

“NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii sent us this picture a few minutes ago,” Kat said behind him. “The asteroid’s official designation is 99942, but it goes by the name Apophis. It’s already been pegged as a troublemaker in the past, being the first asteroid to ever have been raised from a one on the Torino impact hazard scale to a two.”

“The Torino scale?”

“It’s a way of categorizing the risk of a near-Earth object striking the planet. A zero meaning no chance. A ten meaning a certain hit.”

“And Apophis was the first asteroid to get upgraded to a two?”

“For a brief time, it climbed all the way to number four, when it was believed it had a one in sixty-two chance of hitting the earth. Its risk factor got lowered after that — that is, until today.”

“What are you hearing out of the SMC in Los Angeles?”

“They’ve been tracking the gravitational anomalies around the comet, extrapolating how it will affect local space, monitoring the largest of the NEOs in the path of the comet. Like Apophis. Right now, if the gravitational effects of the energy field around the comet remain static and don’t change from here, Apophis is still a solid five, pushing it into the threatening level. But if the size of the anomaly continues to grow in proportion to the comet’s approach, the asteroid’s ranking will steadily climb up the Torino scale.”

Painter stared over at her. “How high will it reach?”

“The SMC believes it will reach into the red zone. An eight, nine, or ten.”

“And what’s the difference between those upper levels?”

“The difference from a survivable impact — a number eight — and a planet destroyer.”

“A number ten.”

Kat nodded and pointed to the screen. “Apophis is over three hundred meters wide and lists a mass of forty megatons. That is what is headed toward the East Coast if our extrapolations hold true.”

“But I thought it was determined that a cluster of meteors was destined to strike the Eastern Seaboard, not one big one.”

“The SMC believes Apophis exploded in the upper atmosphere and the pieces peppered across the seaboard. What the satellite showed us was the aftermath of that barrage.”

Painter read the lines in Kat’s face like a map. Something else still had her worried. “What haven’t you told me?”

“The timeline.” Kat turned fully back to him. “The image from the satellite was dated about forty-six hours from now. But like I said, that’s the aftermath. From burn rates, smoke density, and the level of destruction, an engineer at the SMC calculated that the actual time of impact was likely six to eight hours earlier.”

“So we have even less time to stop what’s coming.”

“And not just six to eight hours less.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told you that even if we could somehow switch off that comet, Apophis would still be a category five. The field has already shifted its trajectory that much.”

“And turning it off won’t reverse that new path.”

“No.”

Kat looked scared, as she struck for the heart of the matter. “I spoke to the physicist monitoring the gravitational anomalies. He has calculated how long it will take for Apophis to reach a Torino level of eight, passing into that set of rankings that guarantee a planetary collision. Once that point is reached, the asteroid will hit Earth. Whether we turn off that field or not after that, it won’t matter.”

“When will it reach that point of no return?”

Kat eyed him. “In sixteen hours from now.”

Painter leaned back on his desk, finding it harder to breathe.

Sixteen hours…

He allowed himself a moment of horror — then forced it back. He had a job to do. He faced Kat, determined and resolute.

“We need Dr. Shaw.”

After forty-five minutes of hard riding, Jada gladly slipped out of her saddle to the ground. Monk had called for a short rest stop in a small copse of trees in the dark meadow below the mountain. He helped get Khaidu down from Duncan’s lap, where he had cradled her during the ride down the mountain’s flank.

“Ten minutes,” Monk said, moving off with Khaidu to a fallen log to check on her bandages.

Duncan headed back to Jada.

She knelt down and lowered her pack from her shoulders. Flipping back a flap and unzipping it, she reached inside and pulled out the gyroscopic housing unit. Undoing the latch, she opened it. She wanted to make sure her prize was intact after the rough handling of late.

The perfect sphere lay cradled in its housing, catching every bit of starlight, reflecting the sky along its curved surface.

It appeared to be fine, but looks could be deceiving.

She glanced over to Duncan. He must have read her concerned expression and moved his hand over the open casing.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “The energy signature is still strong.”

She sighed in relief.

Monk called over to her, straightening up, apparently satisfied with Khaidu’s wrap. He held up his satellite phone. “I’ve finally got a signal. I’m going to try to reach Sigma command.”

Jada stood up. “I want to speak to Director Crowe, too!”

She needed to set things in motion over at her labs, so everything would be ready as soon as they touched down in California. Even a couple of hours could be the difference between success and failure.

Monk waved her over, but after she took a few steps in his direction, he held up his palm. “Stop! Signal just dropped off.”

Jada glanced down at her hands. She was still holding the gyroscopic case. “Must be the energy field given off by the Eye,” she yelled back to him.

“Leave it there then,” Monk ordered.

Jada turned, searching around. She didn’t want to abandon it on the ground.

Duncan came over, wearing a hangdog look, and held out his hands. “I’ll take it and move off. I suspect the farther away I am, the stronger your reception will be.”

“You’re probably right.”

Duncan took the prize with his sensitive fingers as if accepting the gift of a cobra. “Find out what’s going on,” he urged her and strode off toward the open meadow.

Free of the burden, Jada hurried to Monk’s side. He already had Painter on the line and spoke in a terse fashion, quickly and efficiently describing all that had happened. Monk had clearly done such a debriefing many times, turning bloodshed and mayhem into clean, precise facts.

Once done, Monk handed over the phone. “Seems someone is anxious to speak to you.”

Jada raised it to her ear. “Director Crowe?”

“Monk told me you recovered the gyroscopic core of the satellite and that it’s charged with a strange power source.”

“I believe it’s the same energy as the comet, but I can’t say for certain without reaching my lab at the SMC.”

“Monk informed me of your plans. I agree with you. Kat will expedite a fast evacuation and get you to California as quickly as possible. But I wanted to inform you about what has transpired during your absence.”

He then told her everything, none of it good news.

“Sixteen hours?” she said with dismay as he finished. “It’ll take us at least two hours just to get back to Ulan Bator.”

“I’ll tell Monk to head straight for the airport. There will be a jet fueled and waiting for you and that Eye.”

“Could someone also transmit the latest data from the SMC to my laptop? I want to review everything en route to California. Also I’ll need a secure channel to speak to personnel out there while I’m flying.”

“It’ll be done.”

She detailed her final preparations and passed the phone back to Monk, leaving him to work out the logistics.

Jada stepped away, hugging her arms around herself, chilled and scared. She stared up at the blaze of the comet across the night sky.

Sixteen hours.

It was a frightening, impossible time frame.

Still, a deeper terror settled through her, born of a nagging sense that she was still missing something important.

Duncan stood at the edge of the meadow, trying to hold the gyroscopic case between his palms, keeping his fingertips away from its surface. Still, that dark electric field pushed against him, pulsing very faintly with tiny waves, giving off that feeling of holding something with a beating heart.

He shivered — but not from the cold.

Gooseflesh covered his arms.

C’mon already, guys, he thought as he listened to Monk murmuring over the satellite phone, likely making plans to leave here.

He was more than happy about that.

And getting rid of this thing.

Trying to shake the nervous feeling, he paced along the edge of the forest. His toe hit a root poking out of the soil. He stumbled a few steps, feeling stupid — until something worse happened.

The bottom half of the gyroscopic case dropped open between his palms. Jada must have forgotten to latch it after closing it. He never thought to even check.

In slow motion, he watched that perfect sphere of crystal — holding the very fire of the universe — drop away. It fell out of the bottom of the open housing, hit the ground, and rolled into the porcupine grass of the meadow.

He chased after it.

If he lost this…

He snatched it one-handed, like nabbing a basketball before it bounced out of bounds. The shock of grasping the sphere bare-handed, without its case as insulation, felled him to his knees. The black energy lit his hand on fire, his fingers spastically clenched around the curved surface. He could no longer tell where the energy field ended and the crystal began. It felt as if his fingers were melting into the sphere.

Still kneeling, he lifted the object high, ready to cast it away in revulsion — but a spark of fire inside drew his eye. He stared through the sphere, seeing a view of the Wolf Fang through its crystal heart.

Only now the tip of the peak lay shattered, frosted with a haze of rock dust. The lower forest burned, smoking heavily, the edges still raging with flames.

He lowered the crystal — and all was fine.

Back up again — and the world burned.

That can’t be good.

Standing up, he swiveled around. No matter where he cast the Eye, it opened a view into a fiery apocalypse. Facing north, he spotted the likely source of this destruction: a distant smoking crater.

“What are you doing?” Jada asked, startling him as she came up behind him.

Too shocked to speak, he shifted the sphere toward her. He pointed through it toward the Wolf Fang.

Frowning at his apparent foolishness, she leaned against his shoulder and peered through the crystal. She stood that way for several breaths, surely as shocked as he was.

“So?” she finally said, turning toward his face.

“Don’t you see it?”

“See what?”

“The mountain, the forest. Everything destroyed.”

She looked at him as if he were crazy. “I don’t see anything like that.”

What?

Duncan turned his attention back to the fiery destruction glowing in the heart of the crystal Eye, an apocalypse apparently only he could see.

Here was confirmation that it wasn’t only the Eastern Seaboard at risk. The entire globe was threatened.

Realizing this, he came to only one firm conclusion.

We’re screwed.