She sat straighter. It had cost her much, came close to exposing her, to retrieve a copy of that letter.
“According to what you told me,” he said, “Franklin’s note surfaced twelve days ago.”
“That’s right.”
“That was just after the cave was discovered out in Utah.”
“You mentioned that before, but I still don’t see the connection.”
“I think the crux comes down to two words found in Franklin’s letter. Pale Indians.”
She shook her head, remembering the line from the letter. She’d read the translation enough times to memorize it.
With those deaths, all who had knowledge of the Great Elixir and the Pale Indians have pass’d into the hands of Providence.
She still didn’t understand. “So?”
Gray shifted closer on the bench, as if physically trying to make his point. “Just after the discovery, an investigation began to identify the mummified remains found inside that cavern. Native American groups were claiming rights over the bodies, but ownership was in dispute, as the remains appeared more Caucasian in appearance.”
“Caucasian?”
“Pale Indians,” Gray stressed. “If the Guild—Franklin’s old enemy—was involved in the past with some matter concerning white-skinned Indians, the sudden discovery of a cave full of such mummified remains, along with their relics, would certainly draw them out. Back then, Franklin and Jefferson were clearly searching for something, something that they believed threatened the new union. Apparently their enemy was after it, too.”
“And if you’re right, they’re still after it,” she added. “So what do you think? Did the Guild cause that blast out in Utah?”
“I don’t think so. But either way, I’ve got to brief Director Crowe. If I’m right, he’s stepping into the middle of a centuries-old war.”
Chapter 13
May 30, 11:33 P.M.
Provo, Utah
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness in the lab, Kai slipped her wrist from her uncle’s grip. A weak glow flowed in from the hallway, coming from illuminated emergency signs.
She searched the maze of the dark lab, ready to run. It was her first means of defense. Passed among foster homes, she had quickly learned to read the warning signs around her. It was vital to survival, to sense the mood, to know when to walk warily and when to stand your ground in homes where you were unwanted or barely tolerated.
Professor Kanosh rose up from one knee, where he’d been calming his dog, Kawtch. “Maybe it’s just an ordinary power outage,” he offered.
Kai latched onto that hope but knew it was desperation. She looked to her uncle for some reassurance.
Instead, Painter crossed to a desktop phone and lifted the receiver. Kai flashed to the old stereotype of an Indian pressing his ears to the ground to listen for signs of danger. This was a modern version of that.
“No dial tone,” he said, and replaced the receiver. “Somebody cut the lines.”
She crossed her arms, holding tightly. So much for that hope . . .
Painter turned to the big man he’d come here with and pointed to the lab’s door. “Kowalski, watch the hall. Be ready to barricade the door if necessary.”
The hulking man moved to the exit, sweeping aside his long jacket to reveal a shotgun strapped to his leg. Kai was familiar enough with guns from her hunting days with her father, but there was something odd about the weapon, especially the extra shells mounted on the gun’s butt. They were spiked at one end. Still, the sight of the shotgun made the situation all the more real. Her heart began to pound harder in her throat, her senses stretching to a keening edge.
“What’re we going to do?” Denton asked.
“We should hide,” Kai blurted out, fighting back a tremble that threatened to leave her quaking on the floor. She took a step away, seeking the comfort of dark spaces.
Painter stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. He pulled her closer. She didn’t resist, leaning against him, but it was like hugging a metal post. He was all hard muscle, bone, and purpose.
“Hiding won’t do any good,” he explained. “Clearly someone had you all under surveillance. Tracked you here and sent a strike team to flush you out. They’ll sweep the place until they find you. Our only hope is that it’ll take time to search the main building before they venture down to the underground facility. Until then, we need to find another way out of here.”
Kai stared toward the ceiling, picturing the buried lab in her mind’s eye. “How about up?” she asked, grasping for anything.
Painter gave her an appreciative squeeze. It did much to return some strength to her legs.
“What about that?” he asked the two professors. “Are there any air vents? Service tunnels?”
“Sorry,” Denton said, his voice quavering. “I know the entire schematics of this place. There’s nothing like that. At least not large enough to crawl through. Only thing above our heads is a foot of reinforced concrete and about a yard of soil, rock, and lawn.”
“Still, the kid’s idea is a good one.” The gruff words came from the doorway, from the man named Kowalski. “How ’bout we make our own exit?”
He tossed something the size of a ripe peach toward her uncle, who caught it one-handed. She felt Painter flinch next to her, then swear under his breath.
11:35 P.M.
Painter stared down at what he held. Though his eyes had somewhat adjusted to the dark, it was still difficult to examine the object—but from the chemical smell and the greasy feel to the claylike substance, there was little doubt of its identity.
He fought through his shock to ask, “Kowalski, what are you doing with C4?”
Kowalski shrugged both shoulders. “Still had it with me from before.”
From before?
Painter pinched his brows, thinking back; then he remembered. He recalled the man kneading a fistful of the plastic explosive in his office, as casually as someone squeezing a stress-relieving ball. And maybe it served that purpose for him, as he’d apparently never gotten rid of it.
Painter lowered his arm and shook his head in disbelief. Leave it to Kowalski to be walking around with a pocketful of explosives.
Which begged another question.
“I don’t suppose you have a blasting cap to go along with it?” he asked.
Kowalski turned his back dismissively, focusing back on the hallway. “C’mon, boss. I can’t think of everything.”
Painter glanced around at the lab, trying to determine how he could improvise some type of detonator. C4 was notoriously stable. It could be burned, electrocuted, shot with a bullet, and it still would not explode. It took an intense shock wave, like the one caused by an exploding blasting cap, to set it off.
Denton stepped forward and offered a possibility. “The applied physics lab might have what you need. They work in conjunction with the region’s mining operations. They keep percussion and blasting caps over there.”
“And where’s that?”
“Off by the stairwell.”
Painter sighed inwardly. Not the direction he wanted to go. It would be dangerous, and risked exposure, but he had little choice. He studied Denton. He hated to involve a civilian, but the underground facility was a maze, and he didn’t know where to begin looking for blasting caps in that other lab.
“Professor Denton, would you be willing to come with me? To show me?”
The professor nodded, but he was clearly reluctant.
Next, Painter crossed to Kowalski and handed back the balled-up chunk of explosive. “Find a place to plant this. A roof joist or someplace where we have the best chance to blast a hole to the surface. And get as deep as you can into this facility, as far from the science center as possible.”
Painter imagined all the exits were being watched. If his plan worked, he wanted to pop out beyond whatever snare had been set around the building.
Denton pointed. “The rearmost lab is the particle accelerator chamber.”
/> “I know where that’s at,” Kanosh added. “Straight down at the other end of the hall. Can’t miss it. I can take him.”
“Good. Bring Kai and your dog, too. All of you hole up down there until we return.”
Painter sensed the press of time and quickly calculated in his head what he needed to pull this off. Denton helped him gather the necessary tools. He then crossed back to Kowalski and freed his SIG Sauer pistol from its shoulder holster. He traded his sidearm for the man’s Taser-modified shotgun.
“Keep the others protected. Shoot to kill.”
Kowalski scowled. “Like I shoot any other way.”
Kai shifted to the shadow of the big man, but her eyes were huge on Painter. “Uncle Crowe, be careful . . .”
“That’s definitely my plan.” Still, he could not escape a feeling of misgiving as he pointed to the door. “Everybody move out.”
11:36 P.M.
Seated in a leather desk chair in the mansion’s library, Rafe watched his laptop’s monitor. It carried live feed from the operation in the field, offering multiple viewpoints via cameras mounted on the black helmets of his mercenaries. It was a jumbling viewpoint that threatened to turn his stomach, but he couldn’t look away.
He had watched the initial assault as power and telephone feeds were cut, all exits under close watch. Four shell-shocked students stumbled out of various doors, escaping the dark building. They were quickly dispatched, their bodies whisked into hiding. The assault team continued inside, searching floor by floor for their targets.
He was not surprised that the power loss had failed to flush out his targets as it had the few students. After the events in the mountains, his prey had grown more wary, but his men had been handpicked by Bern for both their thoroughness and ruthlessness. Their targets would be found.
On one corner of the laptop screen, Bern turned his camera toward his own face, indicating he wanted to report in from the field. His voice was a bit choppy from the digital feed. “Sir, all the upper levels are clear. That leaves only the basement. The team’s heading down.”
“Very good.” Rafe drew his face closer to the screen, eager to watch.
So they fled into the cellars, like so many frightened rats. No matter. I’ve got the best rat catchers money can buy.
A whimper drew his attention to a wingback chair by the fire. Flames danced, casting shadows—but none darker than his black queen, Ashanda, who sat in the chair, holding a small boy, no older than four. The child’s face was a ruin of tears and mucus. His eyes were wide with shock and fear. They probably should have moved the body of his mother from the room, but there’d been no time for such niceties. The woman lay on the Persian rug, her blood and brain matter ruining the subtlety of the wool pattern.
Ashanda stared into the flames and gently stroked the boy’s hair. One of Bern’s men had offered to alleviate the boy’s suffering with the swift skill of his blades, but Ashanda had backhanded the muscular mercenary away as if he were a rag doll, in order to protect the child.
Ever the caretaker.
Rafe sighed. The boy would still have to be dealt with, but not when Ashanda was watching.
Until then . . .
He faced the screen, giving it his full concentration.
Back to the show.
11:38 P.M.
Painter worked quickly atop a small bench inside the applied physics lab as Denton held a penlight. The professor had guided him safely here, not far from the stairwell that led up to the main building.
Despite his qualms about involving a civilian, he was glad that Denton had accompanied him. The lab was tucked off the main hall, easy to miss. The long narrow room held a jumble of gear and equipment, dominated by a large cubic press with stainless-steel anvils used for high-pressure studies, as in the creation of synthetic diamonds.
But Painter’s goal here was more priceless than any diamond.
Denton had guided him to a locked cabinet. After a breathless fumble of keys, he got it open and passed Painter a box of solid-pack electric blasting caps. “Will this do?” he had whispered, breathless with hope.
It would have to . . . but it still required some improvisation.
Painter concentrated on his work, using tweezers and needle-nose pliers, performing delicate surgery. These types of caps required a jolt of electricity to ignite, like from a cell-phone battery or some other source. And you didn’t want to be close by when that cap exploded the C4. He needed a remote way of shocking the blasting cap from a distance—and with no cell-phone reception down here, that left only one other possibility.
With great care, he crimped the cap’s fuse wires to the battery leads on the gutted XREP Taser shell. The shotgun shell was the same size as any twelve-gauge round, but its casing was transparent and packed with electronics rather than standard buckshot. Even with his background in electrical engineering and microdesign, Painter held his breath. Any misstep could blow off his fingers.
As he secured the last wire—checking to make sure he didn’t disturb the device’s transformer and microprocessor—a furtive noise drew his attention toward the lab’s door. The telltale tramp of boots on stairs echoed over to them, followed by muffled voices, clipped and terse, definitely military. The search team was headed down here, confident, moving with minimal caution, thinking their targets were nothing more than frightened, unarmed civilians.
Painter quickly reassembled his jury-rigged shell, pocketed it, and grabbed the Mossberg shotgun from where it leaned against the bench. Turning, he whispered and motioned to Denton. “On my signal, you take off for the others. I’ll buy us some time.”
The professor nodded, but the penlight in his hand shook as he flicked it off.
Painter led the way back to the lab’s door and crossed the few steps to the main hall. With Denton hovering behind him, he peeked around the corner. In the wan illumination of emergency signs, he spotted a clutch of men in black commando uniforms gathering at the foot of the stairs. With hand gestures, the team prepared to split: half to search the basement beneath the science building, the others preparing to enter the underground facility that extended north of the center.
Painter didn’t have a moment to spare. With a finger to his lips, he waved for Denton to head down the hall, away from the gathering in the stairwell. Denton wouldn’t be exposed for long. Fifteen feet away, the darkened hall turned abruptly to the left. Once around that corner, the professor had a clear run straight for the others.
Denton seemed to realize this. Hugging the wall, he hurried toward safety. Painter used the Mossberg’s ghost-ring sighting system to keep a watch on the assault team. If any of them made an aggressive move in Denton’s direction, he intended to drop the man with a sizzling jolt of a Taser round. The surprise of such armed resistance should drive the hunters into momentary cover, hopefully buying Painter enough time to make it around the same corner as Denton before the team regrouped.
Without taking his eyes off the assault team, he listened to the soft tread of Denton’s retreating steps. When he reached the corner, a soft double cough sounded from that direction. Painter turned in time to see Denton’s body blown away from the corner and hit the far wall. He slid into a boneless slump, half his face gone.
Painter fought against reacting, going deadly calm, hardened by fury.
A large figure stalked into view from around the corner, a pistol fitted with a silencer smoking in his grip. The man wore black combat gear like the others, his helmet fitted with night-vision goggles. Unlike his teammates, there was nothing sloppy about his manner. The sureness of his movement spoke of command. He must have silently sneaked past Painter’s position in the applied physics lab, taking point and scouting ahead on his own. From his wary posture, the fleeing professor must have caught him off guard. The soldier clearly didn’t intend to allow that to happen again as he swung toward Painter’s direction.
Whether he’d been spotted or not, Painter knew that his only hope lay in taking the offensive. He
dove low into the hall. A pistol cracked in his direction—the man was fast, but in his haste, he shot too high.
Painter fired as he slid on one shoulder, the shotgun blast loud in the confined hallway. He hit the man in the upper thigh, marked by a bluish spark of electricity as the Taser ignited. The man gasped, going rigid with a violent tremble of his limbs. As he toppled toward the floor, Painter rolled on his back, pumping the Mossberg with one hand, ejecting the spent cartridge and positioning another.
Leaping to his feet, he fired blindly toward the stairwell and turned away. He heard a shocked cry from that direction, indicating he’d hit someone. He let that small victory fuel his flight down the hall. Reaching the corner, he vaulted over the twitching, agonized body of the ambusher.
As he passed, he caught a glimpse of Denton on the floor, knew he was dead. Guilt flashed through him. The professor had been under his protection. He should never have exposed him like this—but he knew why he had.
He pictured Kai’s face, scared, wide-eyed as a doe, looking years younger than eighteen. He’d taken risks he normally wouldn’t have dared to take—and another man had paid the price for his recklessness.
Still, for the moment, he had no time for remorse.
As he turned the hall’s corner, gunfire spattered behind him. He ducked and fled out of the direct line of fire from the assault team—but such a reprieve wouldn’t last for long.
11:39 P.M.
“Get up!” Rafe yelled at the screen.
Through the camera feed, he had watched Bern shoot some white-coated old man in the face, savoring that frozen look of surprise before it vanished in a fog of bone and blood. But that victory was short-lived. A moment later, his second-in-command was on his back. The camera feed revealed a twitching view of the ceiling—then a shadowy figure leaped over Bern’s body, carrying a rifle or shotgun in one hand.