The Devil Colony (44 page)

Hank couldn’t decide which was worse.

Painter called from the other side. “I’ll be here if you need me.”

“Okay, let’s do this,” Hank said, forcing as much bravado into those words as he could.

He backed up the tunnel alongside Kowalski.

“I can push you . . . give you a running start,” the large man offered.

Before he could answer, a low sighing gasp made them both turn. Kowalski pointed his flashlight up the lava tube. The beam ended at a wall of mud about twenty feet away. It had crept up on them silently, like some skilled assassin, oozing down the tube. As they watched, the sludge wall melted open and hot mud began to run out of its center, extending its reach.

“Now or never, Doc.”

A low rumble alerted them to trouble.

The flowing mud suddenly exploded toward them. Hot sludge pelted their bodies, burning skin, stinking of sulfur. Bubbling mud followed in its wake, pouring down at them.

“Run!” Kowalski said.

Hank took off, Kowalski at his heels.

Crouched over, Hank ran as fast as he could, but as he reached the end, the water-slick ice betrayed him. His legs went out from under him and he toppled crookedly over the edge.

“Got you, Doc!” A beefy arm scooped him around the waist—then carried him in a hurdling tackle across the dark chasm.

Hank wanted to close his eyes, but that scared him more.

They failed to hit the tunnel as smoothly as the other two. Kowalski clipped his shoulder, sending them tumbling in a tangle of limbs down the throat of the icy tunnel. They crashed into Painter, who could not get out of the way in time.

But eventually they came to a halt. After a bit of figuring whose limbs belonged to whom, they gained their feet. Jordan had returned to the tunnel’s mouth, staring across the gap.

Hank joined him, bruised in odd places.

A new mud waterfall had been born. From the far tube, they could see sludge gushing in a flowing, sulfurous stream. As Hank watched, he caught a flash of a blackened leg poke out of the flow. It was one of the Anasazi bodies, washed from its icy tomb.

The corpse, now buried in mud, vanished below.

Hank said a silent prayer for the lost soul, for all of them—then turned back.

Kowalski expressed what all of them were thinking. “Now what?”

7:28
P.M.

They all sorely needed the rest break.

“We’ll stop here,” Painter said, and sank to his butt, exhausted.

After escaping the mud, he had led them to the end of the lava tube. It had dumped them into a growing maze of tunnels, chutes, rock falls, and blind alleys. For the past half hour, Painter kept trying to climb upward, hoping for the best, but each time, they were eventually driven back deeper.

Needing to collect himself and think, he called for a stop in this small cavern. He searched around. Tunnels branched off in three different directions.

Where now?

Painter stared at his mud-coated companions. Hank let the others take turns sipping from his CamelBak water pouch. Kowalski had already drained his, and Painter had lost his pack to that Amazon woman. They kept hearing water but could never find its location. Dehydration, more than anything, threatened them. If the chill didn’t kill them, the lack of water would.

How long could they keep this up?

Hank looked one step away from collapsing as he sat next to his dog. Kowalski fared little better. He sweated like a racehorse, losing pints of water every few minutes. Even Jordan looked hollow-eyed and lost.

Painter knew that what was weighing them all down, making every step harder, was the futility of their situation. He felt doubly crushed. If he closed his eyes, he could still see Kai’s face as she was dragged away, hear her sobbing cries.

Was she even still alive?

That worry plagued another. Jordan had voiced similar questions as they hiked, never straying far from that same fear. The two had apparently grown close.

Jordan leaned his head back against the wall, too tired to move. Painter studied him, suddenly recognizing how truly
young
he was. Jordan had held up as well as any man, but he was still barely out of boyhood.

As Painter stared, he noted the youth’s small cowlick—really just a few hairs sticking up—bend ever so slightly, quivering. Jordan scratched his head, perhaps feeling it, too.

It took Painter a few extra moments to realize the truth.

That’s the answer . . .

He sprang up, shedding his exhaustion like so much dead skin. “There’s a breeze blowing through here,” he said. “It’s faint, but it’s here.”

Kowalski opened one eye. “So?”

“This is a
breathing
cavern system. And it’s still
breathing
.”

Hank’s eyes widened, the dullness fading. He lifted a damp hand, trying to feel that faint breath.

Painter explained. “Just because
one
blowhole got plugged, that doesn’t mean they
all
did. By following the direction of this breeze, it should lead us to a way out.”

Kowalski slapped a palm on his thigh and stood. “Then what are we waiting for? Once we’re out of here, I’m looking for the nearest watering hole. And for once in my damned life, I really mean
water
.”

With renewed hope, they set off.

But not before Kowalski made an addendum to that last statement. “Of course, just to be clear, that doesn’t mean I would turn down a cold beer if someone offered.”

The hike from this point on was no less strenuous or frustrating than what came before, but hope now buoyed their spirits, kept them moving forward. They tested each crossroads with a small match from Hank’s backpack, watching the direction of the smoke. The breeze grew stronger and stronger over the next two hours, which only encouraged them to move faster.

“We must be near the surface,” Hank said, and sucked on the blue plastic tube to his CamelBak. From the forlorn gurgle as he sucked, he was empty.

They needed to find the way out.

Painter checked his watch.

9:45
P.M.

After another hour, it still seemed they were no closer to the surface. Out of water, down to one flashlight with working batteries, they were running out of time.

Hank heard a strange
popping-crackle
sounding underfoot. A rock had shattered under his boot. He pointed his light down. Bits of black-and-white pottery skittered across the limestone.

It wasn’t a rock, but a pot.

He bent down and picked up a shard. “This is Anasazi handiwork.”

Painter focused his beam up the rocky chute they’d been climbing along the past ten minutes. He spotted more bowls and clay vessels resting on shelves of rock.

“Look at this,” Jordan said behind him. “Cave art.”

Hank moved down to the youth’s side. Painter had missed seeing the clue when he passed by it a moment ago, exhaustion making him sloppy.

“Petroglyphs,” Hank said, and stared up the chute. “Painter, could you turn off your flashlight?”

Painter sensed that the professor was onto something and flicked off his lamp.

Total darkness closed over them.

No, not
total
darkness.

Painter stared up. Faint light glowed up there, barely more than a grayness against the black backdrop.

“I think I know where we are,” Hank said out of the darkness.

Painter turned his light back on.

Hank’s eyes were huge as he waved Painter forward. “It shouldn’t be much farther.”

Painter believed him. Their pace became hurried, especially as crude steps appeared, carved into the rock. They led up to a square of moonlight overhead, crosshatched by a steel grate. Painter had seen that grate before—but from the other side.

“This is the blowhole at Wupatki,” he mumbled. He remembered the park ranger’s estimation of the cavern system beneath it.

Seven billion cubic feet . . . stretching for miles.

That had proven to be true—and might even be an underestimation.

Hank could not restrain his excitement. “This must be how the surviving Anasazi escaped the massacre here. They fled down here, crossed underground through this cavern system, and set up a new home beneath the other blowhole. There they lived until the flood wiped them out.”

With one mystery solved, Painter faced another.

He reached up and rattled the grill. “It’s padlocked.”

“No worries.” Kowalski pushed forward and raised his pistol. “I got the key.”

Chapter 30

June 1, 2:08
A.M.
Nashville, Tennessee

“They’re still hunting you,” Kat said, her voice sounding tinny through the cheap disposable phone. “They will be all night.”

Gray sat in the passenger seat of a nondescript white Ford van—the more
nondescript
the better, it seemed, according to Kat’s report. They’d ditched the muscle car hours ago in a wooded park outside of Bowling Green and hot-wired their new vehicle from a used-car lot. The van shouldn’t be missed until the dealership opened in the morning.

Still, they kept moving, knowing that the dragnet for the escaped Fort Knox terrorists would be ever widening. To stay ahead of it, they traveled back roads, avoiding main thoroughfares, threading their way south until they reached Nashville.

“You’ve got everyone looking for you,” Kat continued. “FBI, military intelligence, civilian law enforcement. It’s still a clusterfuck out here in D.C., especially with all of this coming down in the middle of the night. Now that the terrorist flag has been raised, everyone’s scrambling.”

As Monk drove slowly through a suburban industrial park on the outskirts of Nashville, Gray glanced to the backseat. Seichan sat with her arms crossed, staring at the dark mix of warehouses, supply stores, and mechanic shops. Because of her past crimes, she was not officially a member of Sigma. She could never be. Her recruitment as an asset and spy was known only by a small handful of people within their organization, all well trusted. To the rest of the world’s intelligence agencies, she remained a wanted terrorist, a deadly assassin for hire.

“How did that alert at Fort Knox get raised in the first place?” Gray asked. “All of our identification was solid. What tipped them off? We were scanned and photographed at the depository. Did Seichan’s picture get flagged by some database?”

“I’m still working on that,” Kat replied. “But I can tell you the alert wasn’t generated from Fort Knox. It came from an outside source, but I can’t trace it. At least not right now. It’s too early. Everyone is still covering his or her ass at this point. I imagine files are being shredded all over D.C.”

“So we were set up. It was an ambush from the start.” He could guess who orchestrated it all, picturing the officer in charge at Fort Knox. “Any further news on Waldorf?”

Gray had spoken to Kat an hour ago after purchasing the disposable cell phone. The conversation had been brief as she tried to quell a hundred fires while blowing chaff to keep Sigma’s involvement a secret and misdirecting the nation’s various intelligence and security agencies to keep Gray and his teammates from getting caught.

“No,” she said. “I’ve made numerous inquires, but Waldorf vanished shortly after the base alert got raised. But he must be hunting for you as desperately as everyone else.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It was one of the reasons I was calling you back. To warn you. The Learjet that you took from D.C. was blown up in midair about fifteen minutes ago, shortly after taking off from the Louisville Airport. A blast took out the tail section. Estimates are that it was a bomb tied to an altimeter timer. The plane reached a certain height and the ordnance blew.”

Gray remembered the young pilot. A hot coal of anger settled deep in his belly. “Waldorf was gunning for us. But he must have known we wouldn’t be on that plane.”

He squeezed a fist on his knee as he realized what this meant. The bombing was an act of pure vengeance, a murderous tantrum after Waldorf had been thwarted.

“I thought you should know,” Kat warned. “It’s another reason you must keep moving.”

“Understood.” He heard her sigh loudly, sensing more was to come. “What?”

“I heard from Dr. Janice Cooper again.”

It took Gray a moment to place that name—then he remembered. “She was working with that Japanese physicist.”

“They’re both still under guard, but her partner who survived the massacre has been continuing to consult with other labs. At our request, he’s been studying the massive neutrino surges rising from the West.”

“Has he been able to pin down the location?”

“No, but he has been able to extrapolate the magnitude of the coming explosion. He says it may be over a hundred times larger than the one in Iceland.”

Gray pictured Ellirey Island crumbling to fiery ruin.

A hundred times larger than that?

The level of destruction would be massive, the scale unimaginable.

Kat continued, “Which brings me to the real reason I called. The Japanese physicist has worked up a rough estimate for
when
it might blow. Like he did with Iceland.”

“When?” Gray asked, tensing his abdomen, anticipating the punch.

“In about five hours.”

A sinking despair settled through him. What could they do in five hours? Even if they weren’t being hunted, they’d have a hard time even flying to the West Coast in time to accomplish anything. But Sigma already had other operatives out there.

“Any word from Director Crowe?”

Her voice grew strained. “No. He had gone down into a cavern system under some ruins, but local rangers reported an explosion there, burying much of it in rubble. I have Lisa monitoring teams combing the desert where he’d last been seen. She’s a wreck. Nothing’s turned up. And I’ve spoken to Ronald Chin at least a dozen times. He’s heard nothing from Painter either.”

Gray hoped the director was okay, but they still needed someone out west who could address the trouble that was escalating in that region. “Did you tell Chin about the geological timer ticking down?”