The Devil Colony

The foreground of the landscape showed the confluence of two creeks, flowing into the distance down a forested valley. In the background rose towering clifflike mountains, fringed by lodgepole pines, so detailed that each needle had been carefully scratched in place. And in the middle, rising between the creeks, rose a tall cone, slightly steaming, like a small smoldering volcano. Around it stood smaller anthill-like cones.

  So realistic were the details that it seemed impossible to believe them to depict anything other than a real place. The steaming geothermal structures in the center certainly suggested that such a spot might be found within this park. Painter pictured the artist sitting in a field, meticulously working the metal to preserve an image of this place. If it was important enough to etch onto this canopic jar, it must represent a site sacred to the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev. Perhaps it was a view from their new refuge here in Yellowstone.

  That’s what Painter hoped.

  By now, Kowalski had unpacked the cases Painter had ordered him to bring here. He set the disassembled pieces of the digital laser scanner on the table, next to all of the other computer equipment.

  Painter glanced from Rafael to the scrawny computer tech. “Do you have all the satellite uplinks and parameters set on your end?”

  “We do.”

  “Can your guy help me assemble and get it cabled in properly?”

  Instead of addressing the tech, Rafael turned to the tall African woman. “Ashanda, perhaps you should oversee TJ’s handiwork. We don’t want to risk any mistakes.” He drew Painter aside. “Let them do their magic.”

  Even with the use of only one hand and without speaking a single word, Ashanda orchestrated the assembly of the laser device, along with its calibration and integration into the workstation. Even Kai helped run some of the cabling, plainly needing to do something—though every jangle of the handcuffs drew a scared glance from her.

  Within a few minutes, a window opened on one of the monitors, ready to accept data. The window ledger read LASER TECHNIQUES COMPANY, LLC. It was a company out of Bellevue, Washington, that worked with NASA, developing patented tools to detect erosion, pitting, scuffing, or cracking in metallic surfaces, covering a gamut of uses that included space-shuttle thrusters, military hardware, nuclear steam generator tubes, and underwater pipelines. The laser device could pick up and photograph minute changes in metal that the eye could easily miss.

  Painter needed that precision now.

  Ashanda turned and silently announced the completion of her work with a small bow of her head.

  Is she mute? Painter wondered absently. But he could give the question no more attention than that. At the moment he had a more important puzzle to solve.

  “Guess that’s my cue,” he said.

  He stepped back to the table and switched on the laser mapping system. A bluish holographic cone glowed from the scanner’s emitter. Painter positioned it until a set of crosshairs were fixed to the center of the golden landscape. Once this was done, he activated the scan.

  Dark azure lines flowed up and down across the golden surface, then back and forth, absorbing every detail off the jar, from the tiniest wisp of steam to a minuscule pinecone hanging off the branch of a tree in the background.

  On the computer monitor, the image formed—at first a static flat image, then, as the scan finished, it rendered out into an extrapolated 3-D view. A square slice of landscape, topographically accurate, spun slowly on the screen.

  “Amazing,” Rafael said.

  “Let’s see if it helps us.” Painter moved to the computer keyboard, opened a data stream to a NASA technician in Houston, and sent the large file. Once it was received, the team in Houston would set about using the satellite data collected over the past hour and compare the real-world terrain of Yellowstone to this holographic image. With a bit of luck, they’d find a match.

  “This may take a few minutes,” Painter said.

  Rafael stared at the golden jar and muttered. “Let’s hope not too many minutes.”

  4:34 A.M.

  Hank crouched beside the table, opposite from Painter and the Frenchman. He kept his gaze fixed on the canopic jar, feeling possessive about it, as he’d been the one who found the artifact down in the Anasazi’s kiva. He imagined one of the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev devoutly inscribing this sacred object. Painter was right. It had to be important and could point them to the location of the lost city.

  Hank also felt that the landscape was a significant clue. In fact, it nagged at him. There was something vaguely familiar about the picture, especially that small volcano in the center; he felt as if he’d seen it somewhere before, yet he’d never visited Yellowstone.

  So how could that be? What am I forgetting?

  Racking his memory, he finally gave up and turned his attention to the other mystery on the gold jar.

  Leaning down, Hank studied the writing etched onto its opposite side, wondering again if he was gazing upon the letters of the language that the Book of Mormon described as reformed Egyptian. His linguist colleague back at BYU who had helped identify the writing on the gold plates had an equally fanciful name for this script: the alphabet of the Magi.

  Hank studied the writing and considered the scribe who had etched the letters onto the jar ages ago. Were the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev some kind of scholarly sect, masters of a lost technology who had fled the Holy Lands centuries before Christ’s birth? Did these fleeing Israelites—these Nephites—come to North America to preserve and protect their knowledge, some mix of Jewish mysticism and Egyptian science?

  Oh, if only I could talk to one of them . . .

  But maybe one of them was speaking to him now, through these flowing lines of proto-Hebrew. Still, Hank knew he would need help to understand the message he was receiving.

  He straightened and interrupted Painter, who was in conversation with the Frenchman. It seemed as if the enemies had become colleagues. Still, Hank noted the nervous edge to Painter’s mien, the quickness with which his fingers formed themselves into fists, the angry pinch to his eyes, the clipped manner of his speech. He imagined it was taking all of the man’s control to keep from ripping Rafael’s head from his shoulders. Hank also saw the raw wound in Painter’s eyes, born of guilt and pain, whenever he looked in Kai’s direction.

  It was made worse by the waiting and tension.

  Hank offered him something to do. “Painter, could we use your tool to take a photo of the writing on this side of the jar? I can send it to my colleague, the expert in ancient languages and linguistics. When I spoke to him last, he believed he might be able to help us translate it. Not the entire message, mind you. He thought he might be able to pick out a few words here and there, those bits that still bear some relation to modern Hebrew.”

  “At this point, I’ll take any help I can. Even a single word could be the final key to solving this puzzle.”

  Hank was hanging back while Painter and the French team worked to get a copy uploaded to BYU when he accidentally bumped into the carrying case that had been used to transport the canopic jar.

  Hmm . . .

  Painter suddenly called out, drawing everyone’s attention.

  “NASA just sent word. We got a hit!”

  Chapter 36

  June 1, 7:06 A.M.

  Hohenwald, Tennessee

  The sun had come up by the time they were able to off-load the backhoe from the flatbed. Gray trundled the earthmover across the empty parking lot of the Meriwether Lewis State Park. The recreation area lay about eighty miles south of Nashville along the Natchez Trace Parkway. At this hour, the park was still closed, and the gravesite they sought was well off the road, surrounded by thick forest.

  If they moved quickly enough, they shouldn’t be disturbed.

  Earlier, Kat had cleared the way for this little bit of grave robbing by arranging permits for a bogus sewer repair job to cover their actions, along with renting the backhoe from a local heavy-equipment dealer in the nearby town of Hohenwald.

  Monk
and Seichan, both suited up in blue utility jumpers and carrying shovels, led the way from the parking lot.

  Gray followed, working the two brakes to control his turns and peering over the top of the loading bucket. He’d driven tractors and backhoes as a kid back in Texas. He was rusty, but it was coming back to him.

  Entering the main grounds, they passed several commemorative and informational signs, as well as a restoration of the original Grinder’s Stand, where Lewis died. The log structure stood to one side of the park. The grave marker lay ahead, across a swath of lawn. It was a simple monument with a stacked stone base holding up a broken plinth of limestone, symbolic of a life that was cut short.

  Gray headed across the lawn toward it, going slowly.

  Once they got close enough, Monk circled his arm in the air. “Turn her!”

  Gray obeyed, swinging the backhoe fully around, to bring the rear boom and bucket to bear. He shifted into neutral and set the brake. Once the machine was ready, he swiveled his seat to face the stubby controls to the rear digging arm and lowered the stabilizer legs to either side.

  But before digging, he had to do a little clearing.

  With a cringe against the violation he was about to commit and a silent apology to the dead pioneer, Gray lifted the boom and extended the arm, using the bucket like a ram against the top of the pillar. Hydraulics whined and slowly the broken plinth toppled over, ripping out of its stacked-stone base. It crashed, penetrating deep into the lawn on the far side.

  Once that was done, it took another fifteen minutes to remove the base: scooping stone and mortar and dumping it to the side. After this, Gray pointed the bucket’s teeth to the ground and began to dig in earnest, one scoopful at a time.

  Monk and Seichan helped guide his actions, checking after each bucket load, jumping in and searching around with their spades. Finally, a sharp whistle drew Gray’s attention. Monk straightened from the hole and pointed down.

  “Time to wake up the dead!”

  Monk and Gray cleared the rest of the way with the shovels. Monk had a bit of difficulty with only one hand, but he’d learned long ago to manage most tasks through the artful use of his stump.

  Seichan watched from the lip of the open grave.

  According to information supplied to them by Eric Heisman, Gray’s team was not the first to violate Lewis’s resting place. A monument committee had dug up Lewis’s body back in 1847, to confirm that it was indeed the famous pioneer in this grave before allowing the construction of the broken-pillar grave marker. The committee’s report to the state legislature also stated their firm belief that Lewis met his end through murder, not suicide, declaring he’d “died at the hands of an assassin.”

  The coffin was probably dated back to that time.

  A worry nagged at Gray. Had the committee, he wondered, committed any further violation, such as emptying anything they found here?

  They were about to find out.

  Inside the grave, Gray set the edge of his spade and broke the rusted locks from the wood coffin. With Monk’s help, he got the lid raised. Skeletal remains rested in the tattered remnants of an old suit. Dried bits of flesh still clung in flaking patches.

  Monk fell back a step and pointed a thumb up. “I think I’m going to go join Seichan.”

  “Go ahead,” Gray said, releasing him from duty.

  They were done here.

  Folded neatly over the body’s skeletal legs was the hide of a buffalo. It looked to be in poor shape, the fur of the pelt ragged, almost bald, but the leather itself appeared intact.

  Gray bent closer to examine it as the crack of a rifle suddenly split the bright morning quiet. Monk came falling back into the grave, sprawling atop the bones.

  Gray reached to his side, and his fingers came back bloody.

  Seichan leaped down to join them as more shots blasted into the edge of the grave. “Where are our rifles?” she asked.

  “Still in the backhoe’s cab,” Gray said.

  It was a foolish oversight.

  Monk groaned. “Looks like we dug our own graves.”

  Chapter 37

  June 1, 5:05 A.M.

  Yellowstone National Park

  Half an hour after getting word from NASA, Painter stood within the landscape pictured on the canopic jar. While he was being airlifted here, dawn had broken across Yellowstone, though the sun had yet to fully rise. The soft glow of a new day cast a magical quality on the small valley.

  According to the ranger they’d spoken with, this was one of the most remote areas of the park. Fewer than twenty-five people had ever set foot in this small geothermal basin. To use the ranger’s words, “More people have been to the summit of Everest than have made it to Fairyland Basin.”

  Despite the whimsical name, the reason for the lack of visitors was plain to see. The basin lay seventeen miles away from the nearest trailhead, and treacherous cliffs rose fifteen hundred feet all around. Only the most foolhardy dared risk coming here.

  Luckily they had helicopters.

  The chopper lifted off behind him after the search party had been unloaded.

  Ducking against the beat of the rotor wash, Painter yelled to be heard. “We have a little over one hour, people! We need to find that lost city!”

  Other helicopters circled overhead, carrying insulated blast boxes that were normally used to explode suspicious packages. The plan was to find the cache of unstable compound. If they couldn’t neutralize it here, the nano-material would be transported hot, out of the valley, and dumped clear of the caldera. That was the primary goal, to protect the supervolcano.

  After that, they would address whatever destructive and denaturing force was released by that blast. Kat had the Japanese physicist working up various scenarios, not ruling out a nuclear option if necessary.

  But this was a bridge they’d cross later.

  First, they had to find the tomb of the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev—and it would not be easy. Painter gaped at the towering cliffs, the dark stands of dark lodgepole pines, and the green meadows that rolled outward from the confluence of two silver creeks.

  It was a beautiful spot, but it might not be the right spot. That ancient artist may have etched this valley in gold for no other reason than that it appealed to him. It might have had nothing to do with that lost city.

  Someone disagreed with him.

  “This is the place!” Professor Kanosh stood several yards away, holding a hand to his forehead. “Why didn’t I remember this before?”

  Painter headed over to him. Hank stood amid the geothermal structures that gave this valley its fanciful name. Fairyland came from the chalk-gray geothermal structures rising up between the shores of those two streams. They were geyserite cones, according to Chin, formed by the aggregation of mineral deposits left by small geysers. There had to be over forty of them spread over an area half a football field in size. Some were as squat as knee-high toadstools; others towered ten feet tall, reminding Painter of giant African termite hills. Most had long gone dormant, but a handful continued to puff with steam or run with boiling water. According to the ranger, many of the larger cones had specific names: Magic Mushroom, Phallic Cone, Pitcher’s Mound . . .

  It was the last of these before which Hank was standing. Steam rose from the top of the largest cone, a minivolcano amid its more stalklike neighbors. Water ran down its sides and flowed in rivulets across the chalk-stone ground.

  Painter headed toward the professor as Kawtch splashed in the shallows of the neighboring creek. Jordan stood at Hank’s side, though his gaze shifted often to Kai. Rafael’s party gathered in a clutch on the far side of the geothermal field’s expanse.

  Sweeping his cane high, Rafael ordered Bern and his men to begin a systematic search, concentrating on the cliffs. Smart. If there were an entrance to a subterranean city, it would most likely be found there.

  “Major Ryan,” Painter called out. “Take your men and check the cliffs on this side of the valley. Chin, you’re with me
. I want your assessment about this steaming hot spot here.”

  Kowalski followed them, eyeballing the French team across the way with suspicion. “I trust that guy as much as I trust a snake in a boot.”

  Painter thought this was a fair assessment, but for now, they had to work together.

  “Hank, what did you find?” he asked as he reached the professor’s side.

  The professor pointed to the rippled sides of the Pitcher’s Mound cone. Its name clearly derived from the fat fingerlike projections along the rim, making it look like an open pitcher’s mitt.

  “Look at this,” Hank said, crouching down and pointing. “Over the centuries, the slow aggregation of minerals must have remodeled this cone somewhat, but the resemblance is still uncanny. Study the silhouette.”

  “Resemblance to what?”

  “To one of the most revered Jewish landmarks, from out of the Book of Exodus, the mountain Moses came down bearing the Ten Commandments.”

  “Are you talking about Mount Sinai?” Painter asked. He bent at the waist and stared at the hill, trying to picture it as a miniature model of that famous mountain.

  I guess so, he thought, but he remained unsure. It was like staring at clouds and seeing what you wanted to see. To Painter, the big cone appeared as much like Mount Sinai as those other bent-backed gray towers looked like gnomes.

  Kowalski shook his head, plainly not buying it either. He searched around at the field of stalklike gray rocks. “They all look like penises to me.”

  “What difference does it make,” Painter asked, “whether it looks like Mount Sinai or not?”

  “Because if the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev were descendants of a lost tribe of Israel, then the discovery of a cone shaped like Sinai would be a providential sign to them. This valley would be important, sacred enough to make it their secret home.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Painter said.

  Chin had another opinion. He knelt atop the thick field of dried minerals and rocks called sinter, from which most of the cones arose. “Well, from a geologist’s standpoint, this is the worst place for them to choose.”