Or whenever he mentioned their other captive.
The boy—Jordan Appawora—was in the other helicopter, parked twenty yards away, a bit of insurance for Kai’s continued cooperation.
On the screen, Rafe could see Bern sliding carefully down the chute, ready for any contingency. He imagined the burning sensation of the sun on his face, the tightness in his chest as he restricted his breathing, the tension in his back and arms as he handled the heavy rifle.
Bern reached a turn in the chute and took a split-second peek into a blind chasm. That’s all the time that was required. There was an advantage to having a partner sitting on your shoulder. Rafe brought up the image again and froze it on his screen to study it more closely.
The chasm’s rock walls were wildly decorated with petroglyphs, but he found only a single living figure standing in the tight space. A woman, likely the park ranger who acted as a guide for Painter Crowe’s team. She stood with her back to the camera, holding a leash, staring down a hole in the ground.
Ah, so that’s where you went . . .
Rafe sighed. “You’re not going to make this easy, are you, mon ami?”
He lifted the radio to his lips. “Bern, looks like we must do this the hard way. We’ll have to make it personal in order to draw our quarry out.”
Rafe caught Kai’s reflection again as he gave the order.
“Take down the guard. We’re coming in.”
On the screen, Bern popped around the corner with his weapon raised.
The ranger must have heard something and started to turn. Bern’s rifle jerked silently on the screen, and the woman crumpled to the ground.
Kai gasped behind him.
Rafe reached to the other captain’s chair and found Ashanda’s hand. She had been sitting silently, a dark statue, almost forgotten, but never far from his heart. He gave her fingers a squeeze.
“I’m going to need your help.”
4:20 P.M.
From the edge of the cavern, Hank stared at the frozen tomb of the Anasazi, preserved for centuries deep underground. He struggled to understand what he was seeing.
It can’t be . . .
Thick blue ice coated the walls, flooded the floors, and formed massive icicles that dripped like stalactites from the arched roof. Across the way, embedded half into the ice, stood a village frozen in time. The tumbled blocks of ancient pueblo homes climbed four stories high, stacked into a ragged pile, all draped and barred by more flows of ice. It was Wupatki reborn, only larger. But the residents here hadn’t fared any better. Blackened, mummified bodies sprawled frozen in the ice, looking as if they’d been washed from their homes. Clay pots and wooden ladders lay cracked and buried, mostly to one side of the cavern, along with tangles of blankets and woven baskets preserved in frost.
“There must have been a flash flood through here,” Painter said, pointing to the other tunnels that ran into and out of the cavern. “Drowned everyone, then froze over again.”
Hank shook his head. “First, their people died in fire . . . then by ice.”
“Maybe they were cursed,” Kowalski said with unusual somberness.
Maybe they were.
“Are you sure they’re Anasazi?” Painter asked.
“From what I can tell from the clothing, along with the architecture of the buildings and the unique black-on-white markings on the pottery, these poor people were some clan of the Anasazi.”
Hank stepped forward to bear witness. “These must have been the last survivors, those who escaped both the volcanic eruption and the slaughter. They must have fled Wupatki, tried to start a new home here, hidden away underground, the entrance protected by the small citadel above.”
“But who sealed the entrance?” Painter asked. “Why did they mark it with the moon-and-star symbol of the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev?”
“Maybe a neighboring tribe who was helping to hide this last bastion of the clan. They sealed it with a gravestone, engraving it with the mark of those who they believed brought such punishment down upon these people. A warning to others against trespass.”
Painter checked his watch. “Speaking of which, we should explore what we can, then head back up.”
Hank heard the disappointment in his voice. He must have been hoping to discover more than just an icy graveyard. They spread out, careful where they stepped. Hank was not ready to examine any of the bodies. He took out his own flashlight and set about searching the lowest levels of the pueblo.
He had to crack through fangs of icicles that blocked the door to squeeze inside. He found another body, that of a child, which had been washed into a corner like so much refuse. A tiny clawed hand stuck out of the ice, as if asking to be rescued.
“I’m sorry . . .” he whispered, and pushed on to a room farther back.
Frost and ice covered everything, reflecting the beam of his flashlight with a certain macabre beauty. But beneath that bright sheen lay only death.
As he searched deeper, he had a vague destination in mind, the true heart of the pueblo, a place to pay his respects. Ducking through a doorway, he stepped into an atrium-like space in the center of the tumble of rooms. Terraces led up, festooned in runnels of ice. He imagined children playing there, calling to one another, mothers scolding, kneading bread.
But he had to look only farther up to dash such musings. Massive ice stalactites pointed menacingly down at him from the roof. He pictured them fracturing and falling, spearing him clean through, punishing him for his intrusion into this haunted space.
But the dead gods of these people had other plans for this trespasser.
His gaze focused upward, Hank missed seeing the hole until it was too late. His right leg dropped into it. He screamed in surprise as he crashed through the manhole-sized opening. He scrabbled for the sides, losing his flashlight, but it was no help. Like a skater falling through thin ice, he could find no grip.
He dropped, plunging feetfirst, expecting to die.
But he fell only about the length of his body—then his boots hit solid ice. He stared down. The only thing that saved him from a broken neck, or at least a broken leg, was that the chamber he’d fallen into was half filled with ice. He reached down and picked up his flashlight, then stared up at the hole.
Painter called to him. “Hank!”
“I’m okay!” he shouted back. “But I need some help! I fell down a hole!”
As he waited for rescue, he swept his light around the chamber. The room was circular, lined by mortared bricks. He slowly realized he’d fallen into the exact place that he’d been hoping to find.
Some god, he was sure, was laughing with dark amusement.
He searched around. Small niches marked the wall, about at the level of the flooded ice. Normally the alcoves would be halfway up the chamber’s sides. A glint drew his attention to the largest niche, reflecting his light.
No . . . how could this be?
Shadows danced across the ice floor. He swung his light up and saw Painter and Kowalski peering down at him.
“Are you hurt?” Painter asked, out of breath, clearly concerned.
“No, but you might want to hop down here yourself. I’m not sure I should be touching this.”
Painter frowned, but Hank waved, urging him down.
“Okay,” Painter conceded, and turned to his partner. “Kowalski, go secure a rope and toss it down to us.”
After the big man left, Painter twisted around and dropped smoothly into the ice-flooded chamber. “So what did you find, Doc?”
Hank waved to encompass the chamber. “This is a kiva, a spiritual center of an Anasazi settlement. Basically their church.” He pointed his beam up. “They built them in wells like this. That hole we both dropped through is called a sipapa; to the Anasazi it represented the mythical place where their people first emerged into the world.”
“Okay, why the religious lesson?”
“So you’d understand what they worshipped here, or at least preserved as some sort of token to th
e gods.” He swung his light to the large alcove. “I think this object may be what the thieves stole from the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev—what led to the Anasazi’s doom.”
5:06 P.M.
Painter stepped closer to the alcove, adding the shine of his own flashlight to the professor’s. Not that the object needed any better illumination. It shone brightly, without a speck of tarnish, just a thin coating of ice.
Amazing . . .
Within the niche stood a gold jar, about a foot and a half tall, topped by the sculpted head of a wolf. The tiny bust was perfectly detailed, from the tipped-up ears to the furry scruff of mane. Even the eyes looked ready to blink.
Moving his light down, he recognized a familiar writing inscribed across the front of the jar in precise and even rows.
“It’s the same writing found on the gold tablets,” Painter said.
Hank nodded. “That must be proof that this totem once belonged to the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev, don’t you think? That the Anasazi stole it from their cache.”
“Maybe,” Painter mumbled. “But what about the container itself? Am I wrong, or does it look like one those vases used by ancient Egyptians to hold the organs of their dead?”
“Canopic jars,” Hank said.
“Exactly. Only this one has a wolf’s head.”
“The Egyptians adorned their bottles with animals from their native lands. If whoever forged this jar did so in North America, then a wolf makes sense. Wolves have always been powerful totems here.”
“But doesn’t that ruin your theory about the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev? Aren’t they supposed to be the lost tribe of Israel from the Book of Mormon?”
“No, it doesn’t dash my theory.” Excitement rose in the professor’s voice. “If anything, it supports it.”
“How so?”
Hank pressed his hands to his lips, trying to control his elation. He looked ready to fall to his knees. “According to our scriptures, the gold plates that John Smith translated to compose the Book of Mormon were written in a language described as reformed Egyptian. To quote Mormon chapter nine, verse thirty-two. ‘And now, behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech.’ ”
Hank turned to face Painter. “But no one’s ever actually seen that writing,” he stressed, “because the original golden plates vanished after John Smith translated them. They were said to have been returned to the angel Moroni. All we know about this writing is that it was supposed to be a derivation of Hebrew, a variant that evolved since the time the tribe left the Holy Lands.”
“Then why call it Egyptian at all? Reformed or otherwise.”
“I believe the answers are here.” Hank pointed. “We know the tribes of Israel had complicated ties to Egypt, a mixing of ancestries. As I told you before, the earliest representation of the moon-and-star symbol goes back to the ancient Moabites, who shared bloodlines with both the Israelites and the Egyptians of the time. So when the lost tribe came to America, they must have had a heritage with a foot in each world. Here is that very proof, a pure blending of Egyptian culture and ancient Hebrew. It must be preserved.”
Painter reached for the jar. “On that we can agree.”
“Careful,” Hank said.
The base of the vessel was lodged a couple of inches into the ice, but that was not what worried the professor. They’d all seen what happened when someone mishandled artifacts left behind by the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev.
“I think it should be okay,” Painter said. “It’s been frozen for centuries.”
Painter remembered Ronald Chin’s contention that the explosive compound needed warmth to keep it stable, or extreme heat to destroy it. It only destabilized when it got cold. Still, he held his breath as he reached toward the wolf’s-head lid. He lifted it free, cracking through a thin scrim of ice, then shone his flashlight down inside.
He let out the breath he’d been holding. “Just as I thought. It’s empty.”
He passed the cap to Hank, then set about breaking the jar loose from the ice. With a few sharp tugs, it came free.
“It’s heavy,” he said as he replaced the cap. “I wager this gold is the same nano-dense material as the plates. The ancients must’ve used the metal to insulate their unstable compound.”
“Why do you think that?”
“The denser the metal, the better it retains heat. It might take longer to warm, but once this gold heats up, it would retain its warmth for a longer span of time. Such insulation would act like an insurance policy in case there were any sudden variations in temperature. It would also allow them additional time to get the substance from one heat source to another.”
Hank shook his head at such ingenuity. “So the gold helped these ancient people stabilize their compound.”
“I think this jar might have been one of their unused containers. But considering what happened at Sunset Crater, the Anasazi must have also stolen one that was full.” Painter turned the jar over in his hands. “And look at this. On the opposite side of the jar.”
Hank moved closer, standing shoulder to shoulder with him.
Inscribed on the back was a detailed drawing of a landscape: a winding creek, a steep mountain fringed by trees, and in the middle of it all, something that looked like a small erupting volcano.
“What do you make of it?” Painter asked.
“I don’t know.”
Before they could ponder it further, a rope fell heavily, coming close to knocking the jar out of Painter’s hands.
“Careful, Kowalski!” he called up.
“Sorry.”
Painter stepped under the opening and lifted the jar with both arms. “Come take this!”
Kowalski gladly took the prize and held it at arm’s length, letting out an appreciative whistle. “At least we found some treasure! Makes my bruised ass feel less sore.”
With a bit of effort, Painter and Hank climbed out of the kiva, and they all worked their way free of the frozen pueblo. Once out in the open cavern, Painter packed the gold jar, accepting the burden for the return trip, wrapping it next to the plates Kai had stolen. His pack had to weigh something like sixty or seventy pounds. He did not look forward to the long climb back to the sun, but there was no choice.
“We should head up before Nancy calls in the cavalry.”
As he turned to the tunnel, a dark shape came flying out the opening and shot past his legs, almost knocking him off his feet. Hank stumbled back in fear—then suddenly recognized a familiar friend.
“Kawtch?” the old man blurted out, surprised.
The dog hugged the professor’s legs, circling and circling, whining deep in his throat. The leash still hung from his collar, tangling up Hank’s feet. He dropped to a knee to calm his dog.
“Must’ve run away from Nancy,” Hank said.
“I think it’s worse than that.” Painter pointed his flashlight down at the ice. A dark crimson streak skittered across the surface, left behind by the dragging leash.
Blood.
Chapter 26
May 31, 8:07 P.M.
Louisville, Kentucky
Hurry up and wait . . .
Monk kept forgetting that this was the motto of the military. He hated cooling his jets—in this case, literally. The three of them sat in the cabin of a Learjet 55 outside a private terminal at the Louisville Airport. It was an older model, but it got them here to Kentucky in one piece, and he appreciated these aged birds with a little air under their tails. He stared out the window, looking down the length of the white wings, searching the dark tarmac.
The trio was waiting for a military team from the U.S. Army Garrison over at Fort Knox to arrive and escort them to the Bullion Depository. They’d been here for over ten minutes. His knee began to bounce. He’d hated leaving Kat over at Sigma. She was starting to have cramps, which, with her being eight months along, set him on edge. She c
laimed it was just back spasms from sitting for long stretches, but he was nervous enough to interpret every bit of indigestion as a potential miscarriage or impending labor pains.
Kat had practically pushed him out the door for this trip, but not before a long embrace. He had kept one palm resting on her belly—as proud father, as loving husband, even as army medic, making sure she was doing well. He knew how frightened she’d been during the debriefing following the events in Iceland, though she kept her game face on the whole time.
But he knew better.
And now this evening hop to Kentucky. He wanted to get this over with and be back at her side ASAP. He loved missions, hated downtime, but with a baby due any day, he just wanted to be at her side, rubbing her feet.
Yes, he was that much of a man.
Monk pressed his forehead against the glass. “Where are they?”
“They’ll be here,” Gray said.
Monk fell back into his seat, glaring at Gray, needing someone to blame. The bird’s-eye maple interior of the jet was configured with four leather seats: two facing forward, two toward the tail. He sat directly across from Gray, while Seichan sat next to his partner, her bad leg propped up on the opposite chair.
“Do we even know what we’re looking for here?” Monk asked, not expecting an answer, just seeking to distract himself.
Gray continued to stare out the window. “Maybe I do.”
Monk’s knee stopped bobbing. Even Seichan looked over at Gray. Before the wheels had lifted off in D.C., the basic plan had been simply to pop in and take a look around Fort Knox. Not exactly the most brilliant strategy, but no one knew the mysterious source behind these radiating neutrinos. The anomalous readings picked up by the Japanese physicist might be significant, or they might not. The three of them were on a fishing expedition and had left home without their poles.
“What’s your idea?” Monk asked.
Gray picked up a folder tucked into the side of his seat cushion. He’d been reading through all the intelligence reports concerning this mission. If anyone could pick through miscellaneous details and come up with a pattern, it was Gray. Sometimes Monk wished his own mind worked that way, but maybe it was better it didn’t. He knew the burden often placed on his friend’s shoulders. He was more than happy to play the support role. Somebody had to haul out the garbage and make sure the dog got fed.