“Why is that?” Painter asked. “Besides the fact we’re standing on top of a supervolcano?”
“That’s deeper underground.” The geologist patted the surface of sinter. “Feel this.”
Painter reached down and pressed his palm against the chalky stone.
“What are you doing?” Rafael asked, joining them, along with Ashanda and Kai.
“It’s vibrating,” Painter said.
Chin explained. “This geothermal zone sits atop a plugged-up hydrothermal vent, known as a hydrothermal boil, a hot teapot that continually cycles the water seeping through the porous rock, then back up again as steam. The vibration is from the pressure underground, the pulse of the steam engine beneath us.”
Before anyone could comment on this, Hank’s phone rang. He checked the number and lifted his face. “It’s my colleague from BYU, the one helping us decipher the lost language.”
“Answer it,” Painter urged, hoping the man had some good news.
Hank stepped away, pressed the phone to one ear, and placed a palm over the other. As the professor conversed, Painter watched his face go from hope to dismay to confusion. He finally snapped his phone closed and returned to them. He seemed momentarily unable to speak.
“Professor?” Painter urged.
“My colleague deciphered some bits of the writing on the wolf-totem jar. He found a smattering of words and phrases that spoke of death and destruction. Nothing more.”
“So basically a warning label,” Painter said.
Kowalski frowned. “Why didn’t they just slap it with a skull and crossbones to begin with? It would’ve saved everyone a bunch of trouble.”
“I think maybe they did,” Hank said. “The early Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev stored their elixir in containers that were meant to hold the organs of the dead. Egyptian canopic jars, modified for their purpose. But once they integrated here, they chose another totem of my early ancestors, the bones of animals long extinct. Perhaps it was to caution against tampering with this compound lest it destroy the human race, a symbolic warning against our own extinction.”
Painter read some hesitancy in the professor’s eyes, as if he wanted to say more. He noted the slightest glance in Rafael’s direction. But the Frenchman had survived long in an organization that did not reward a lack of attention to detail.
“What aren’t you telling us, monsieur le professeur?” Rafael asked.
Painter gave Hank a small nod. They were all long past secrets, at least most secrets. “Tell him.”
Hank looked dismayed. “My friend was also able to translate the passage your colleague sent to you. The writing found on the margins of the gold map.”
Rafael turned to Painter. “Why is this the first I’ve heard of this? You explained how the mark on the map revealed Yellowstone, but not this clue?”
“Because it was meaningless information until now.”
“It may still be,” Hank added. “My colleague could translate only a small section. It reads ‘where the wolf and eagle stare.’ ”
“What does that mean?” Rafael asked.
Hank shrugged and shook his head.
Another dead end.
Painter checked his watch and stared across the valley. Gray had sent them this clue. According to Kat, he was searching for another, something to do with a buffalo hide. Hopefully they’d all have more luck with that one.
But with the way their luck was running . . .
Chapter 38
June 1, 7:06 A.M.
Hohenwald, Tennessee
This will have to do . . .
Gray lifted his shovel, the only weapon he had at hand.
“Going primitive on their asses?” Monk asked with a wince, pushing up enough to lean on the wall of the freshly uncovered grave. He looked down to the spreading pool of blood through his blue coveralls. “Bullet went through and through. But I won’t be getting my cleaning deposit back on these clothes.”
“Can you walk?” Gray asked.
“Hobble, sure. Run, no way.”
“Then you stay here.”
“I wasn’t really planning on going anywhere.”
Seichan lowered herself from where she was watching a team move in from the parking lot. “I counted eight to ten. They’ve moved behind the cabin across the lawn for cover.”
“Must think we have weapons,” Gray said. “Or they’d have swarmed us by now.”
“What’s the plan?” Seichan asked.
Both she and Monk looked to him.
“We keep them thinking we have guns—at least long enough for us to get to our rifles. The backhoe is only a few yards away. Its bulk will offer some cover if we can reach it. But we’ll be vulnerable climbing out of this hole.”
Gray handed Monk his shovel, then twisted around and grabbed the other. “We need some sound effects. Our attackers are edgy, wary, moving in cautiously. So let’s spook them some more. Crack the shovels together . . . loudly and rapidly.”
Monk got it. “Make them think we’re firing at them.”
“It’ll only work for a couple of seconds. Hopefully long enough for us to reach the backhoe’s cab and our rifles.”
“Got it.”
“Then on my mark.”
Gray crouched beside Seichan. Her eyes shone in the shadows of the grave. Her pulse beat at her throat as she stared up at the edge, ready to pounce.
“Go!”
With one shovel propped against the side of the grave, Monk banged the other spade against it with all of his might. The noise was so loud and sudden, it did sound like gunfire. Gray leaped to the lip, shoved hard with his arms against the edge, and rolled cleanly out of the grave and to his feet. He sprinted low for the cover of the backhoe.
Seichan kept next to him.
Reaching the momentary safety under the boom arm at the back of the earthmover, Gray checked on her. Her face was flushed, her lips slightly parted. She lifted an eyebrow toward him.
Good enough . . .
Without needing to say a word to each other, they split to opposite sides of the backhoe. Shots were fired at them, but they went wild, hitting the dirt yards away. The assailants were momentarily confused as Monk continued to bang his shovels.
Gray ducked into the cab. He’d left the backhoe idling when he went to check the grave. He slid into the seat, popped the parking brake, and raised the hydraulic stabilizers to free the earthmover.
Seichan grabbed both rifles, leaving the driving to him. She pointed, and he understood. This was not a vehicle to attempt to flee in. Besides, they couldn’t leave Monk behind.
Gray raised the large front loader, using it as a shield across the windshield. He’d be driving blind, but at the moment he wasn’t worried about sideswiping a car. He trundled out into the lawn. Rounds banged into the loader. He slowly angled toward the rear of the log home while Seichan leaned low out the door and fired under the raised bucket, keeping the men pinned down behind the cabin.
Once they reached the shadow of the cabin, Seichan rolled out.
That was the easy part.
7:07 A.M.
Monk sat in the grave, holding his shovel.
After he’d heard the real rifle fire, it was clear that his job here was done. He used the spade as a crutch to help him gain his feet. He wanted to see what was happening. With some effort, he stood up and peeked his head out of the grave—only to have it almost sheered off by a set of giant metal teeth.
Gray had returned with the backhoe, coming in low and fast with the front loader. The noise of the ongoing firefight had covered his approach.
Monk fell back as the scoop dug into the opposite wall of the grave, caving in a good section.
“Climb up!” Gray hollered.
Understanding dawned.
Monk hauled over, climbing through the dirt, and shoulder-rolled into the front loader. Hydraulics whined and raised the arm high while Gray twisted the hoe around. Monk slid inside the bucket, keeping hidden as shots were fired, pinging ag
ainst the front loader.
Something bumped his shoulder.
He reached over and found an assault rifle.
And it’s not even my birthday.
7:08 P.M.
After tossing the rifle into the bucket for Monk, Seichan had fled away from the backhoe and toward the cabin, keeping the stout log home between her and her assailants. But she couldn’t count on such protection for long. The team would eventually come at her from both sides, outflanking her.
That must not happen.
Besides, she had to keep the commando team’s attention on her while Gray freed Monk. So she sprinted toward the window on this side of the cabin. She raised her rifle and fired three rounds at the panes, striking the glass in a perfect triangle pattern. With the glass weakened, she leaped up, kicked out with her boot, and hurdled through the window. The rest of her body followed. She landed smoothly inside, sliding and skating atop the broken glass, keeping on her feet.
She raised her rifle while still moving.
She had burst into the cabin’s main room and had a clear view to the window on the far side. A soldier stared at her, momentarily frozen. She fired—pop, pop, pop—and down he went.
She dove to the side, seeking the shelter of a cast-iron stove.
A rifle barrel shoved through the broken window and blindly strafed inside. Seichan ignored it, merely waited, centering her aim. A head poked into view, checking for damage. She fired only once this time. A body tumbled past the window.
With her back to the wall and the stove for shelter, she readied to make a stand. Hopefully she’d bought Gray the time he needed.
Then a grenade flew into the room and bounced across the floor.
It looked like she’d overstayed her welcome.
7:09 A.M.
Bent to peer under the raised front bucket, Gray rode past the cabin as an explosion blew out its windows and tore the door off its hinges. Smoke rolled out. He fumbled with his gears in surprise and worry.
Seichan . . .
Silence fell over the battlefield for a heartbeat—then the noise resumed. Two men popped around the cabin’s corner. Monk strafed from his advantage atop his steel castle tower, balancing the front of his rifle between two teeth of the front loader. A third assailant threw a grenade from where the commandos were hiding, lobbing it over the roof toward the backhoe.
But they didn’t know that Monk was an expert sharpshooter—or how pissed he was about getting tagged in the gut. Monk swiveled his weapon and pinged the grenade as if he were shooting skeet. It fell back behind the cabin. Another explosion blew back there, casting up dirt and smoke. A helmet rolled into view. It wasn’t empty. Screams followed.
Then gunfire.
It sounded like a brief firefight—a one-sided firefight.
After a moment, through the smoke, a figure appeared.
Seichan, covered in blood and with her clothes still smoldering, crossed into view. She must have dived out a back window as the grenade inside the cabin blew. She pointed toward the parking lot. She wasn’t indicating that it was time to go. A single figure remained, standing next to a Humvee.
Mitchell Waldorf.
The traitor turned toward the vehicle, but Monk was one step ahead of him. From his perch, he took out the truck’s tires and drove Waldorf back from the vehicle. If they could capture him alive—a Guild operative buried deep in the government—he could prove to be invaluable, a resource capable of exposing much about the workings of the organization.
Waldorf must have realized the same thing.
He lifted a pistol to his chin.
Gray swore, goosed the backhoe for more speed. Seichan ran toward him. Waldorf smiled and shouted at them cryptically: “This isn’t over!”
The single pistol shot rang brightly.
The top of the man’s head erupted in a blast of skull and brain matter. The body slumped to the pavement.
Certainly looks over to me.
Still, the sight of the man’s last smile stayed with Gray. A cold fear settled in his gut. What did the bastard mean?
7:19 A.M.
Ten minutes later, Gray and the others were speeding down the Natchez Trace Parkway in the second Humvee they’d stolen that day. They’d taken one of the assault team’s vehicles, figuring they’d be less likely to be bothered that way. Plus, they needed the extra room.
Monk lay sprawled across the backseat, stripped to the waist, his belly bandaged in a pressure wrap from an emergency medical kit Gray had found in the back of the Army vehicle. Apparently the assault team had been expecting some injuries. He’d also found a morphine stick and jabbed Monk in the thigh with it.
His friend’s eyes already had a happy glaze around their edges.
Seichan, with her cuts and lacerations taped, manned the wheel, leaving Gray to examine the buffalo hide. He’d fetched it from the grave before leaving. The leather was brittle, but he was able to unfold it, revealing an image of a riotous battle dyed into the skin, showing Indians in the midst of waging a great war. Thousands of arrows flew, each delicately but indelibly tattooed into the skin. Elsewhere, pueblos tumbled from cliffs. Faces, feathered and painted, screamed.
Gray remembered Kat’s report from Painter, about the destruction of the Anasazi following the theft of sacred totems from the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev. Was that slaughter—that genocide—being memorialized on this buffalo skin?
This raised a larger question.
Gray had the buffalo hide open to the middle, spread over his lap. A large section was missing. He felt the surface with his fingers. It was much rougher.
“Lewis scraped this part of the artwork off the hide,” Gray said.
“Why?” Seichan asked.
“He’s written something here in the blank space.”
He stared down at the meticulous lines of script, flowing in a large swatch down the middle. While everyone was tending his or her wounds, he had sponged off the old blood that still covered most of the hide. The iron in the hemoglobin had stained the skin, but the words he found there were still legible.
“Only it makes no sense,” he said. “It’s just a jumble of letters. Either it’s a code, or Lewis really had gone mad.”
Seichan glanced down at the hide, then back to the road. “Didn’t Heisman say Lewis and Jefferson communicated in code? That they exchanged messages in their own private cipher.”
“That’s true.”
Gray pictured Lewis dying over that long night, waiting for Mrs. Grinder to find him. He had plenty of time to write this last message to the world, but what did it contain? Did it name his killer? Was it his last will and testament?
Gray’s fingers again rubbed the tough hide, where it had been crudely abraded. What did Lewis erase here? Along the edges, bits of what looked like a map remained: a corner of a river coursing down a mountain, some pass through another range, a piece of a lake. Was this a more detailed map of the terrain around the lost city of the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev? Did the gold map point to the general position, while this dyed rendition offered a more precise location? Is that how Fortescue was able to find it out west—that is, if he did in fact find it?
Gray put the bits together in his head. “I think the traitor, General Wilkinson, killed Lewis for the gold tablet in his possession, but he never knew about the significance of the buffalo hide. After his assassination, Lewis didn’t want it to fall into the wrong hands, so he scraped it clean and left this last cryptic message to the world. He used his own blood and body to hide it.”
“Why hide it?”
“Perhaps to keep his murderer from knowing he’d been named. Maybe he hoped the hide would reach Jefferson with his other possessions, and if not, he’d at least leave a final testament to the future. We may never know. All we know is that there’s no map here to help Painter.”
Gray’s disposable phone rang. He picked it up. “Kat?”
“How’s Monk doing?” she asked, trying to sound strong but cracking at the edges.
>
“Sleeping like a baby,” he assured her.
Gray had already called her as they set off down the road, updating their situation. He’d given her a quick debriefing about the map.
“I have a jet waiting for you at a private airfield near Columbia,” she said.
“Good. We should be there in a few minutes. But what about Seichan? Isn’t everyone and their brother hunting her?”
“With what’s going on in Yellowstone, no one is concerned with the three of you any longer, especially as I’ve passed on an intelligence briefing implicating Waldorf, explaining how the situation at Fort Knox was an inside job orchestrated by him, and how he’d fabricated his story of terrorists to cover his own actions. That should buy you all enough clearance to get back home.”
“We’ll be there as quickly as we can.” Gray had one other concern. “Have you figured out how Waldorf managed to set up that ambush? How he knew we’d be digging up Lewis’s body? As far as I know, only you and Eric Heisman knew about it. Possibly also the curator’s assistant, Sharyn.”
“As far as I can tell, they’re both clear. And to be honest, with everything that’s happening so fast, some bit of intel may have reached the wrong ears. And you know the Guild has ears everywhere.” Kat sighed. “What about you? Did you make any further progress with the buffalo hide?”
“No. Nothing that can help Painter. I’m afraid he’s on his own from here.”
Chapter 39
June 1, 5:20 A.M.
Yellowstone National Park
Kai moved through the forest of otherworldly cones with her shadow chained to her. Ashanda followed so quietly behind, even the handcuffs were silent. Despite the bomb on Kai’s wrist, the woman’s presence was reassuring in some odd way.
Maybe it’s some sort of Stockholm-syndrome kind of thing, Kai thought.
But she sensed that it was more than that. She knew the woman did Rafael’s bidding, but there was no enmity in her. In many ways, the woman was as much a prisoner as Kai herself. Weren’t they both wearing handcuffs? Plus Kai had to admit that there was a kind of simplicity and beauty in Ashanda’s quietness, and in the soft sound of her humming that Kai occasionally overheard—filled always with that sadness under the surface.