The Devil Colony (47 page)

Chin’s finger came to rest on that lake. His eyes rose to Painter’s face. “But deeper underground, the pressure keeps slowly mounting as the molten mantle rock rises, building up inside that colossal magma chamber.”

“Until it eventually explodes.”

“Which Yellowstone has done
three
times over the past two million years. The first explosion tore a hole in the crust the size of Rhode Island. The last eruption left most of the continent covered in ash. These blowouts occur on a regular basis, as steady as the blasts from Old Faithful geyser. They occur once every six hundred thousand years.”

“When was the last one?” Painter asked.

“Six hundred
and forty thousand
years ago.” The geologist looked significantly at Painter. “So we’re overdue. It’s not a matter of
if
that supervolcano will erupt, it’s a matter of
when
. The eruption is inevitable, and geological evidence indicates that it will be soon.”

“What evidence?”

Chin reached and pulled up a sheaf of U.S. Geological Survey studies and seismographic reports from the volcano observatory. He shook the pages in his hand. “We’ve been collecting data going back to 1923. The land around here has been steadily rising as pressure builds below, but starting in 2004, that bulging of the land has surged to three times the annual average, the highest ever recorded. The bottom of one end of Yellowstone Lake, which overlies the caldera, has risen enough to spill water out of the other end, killing trees. Other sections of forest are dying because their roots are being cooked by the subterranean heat. Hot springs along trails have begun to boil, severely injuring some tourists, requiring some paths to be shut down. Elsewhere, new vents have been opening deeper in the parks, observed by passing airplanes, spewing steam and gouts of toxic vapors that have killed bison on the spot.”

Chin slapped his papers down on the table. “This is a powder keg waiting to explode.”

“And someone just lit the match,” Painter said.

He pictured the massive waves of neutrinos flowing from somewhere inside that park, counting down to an inevitable explosion, one a hundredfold larger than the one that had occurred in Iceland.

“What can we expect if we fail to stop this?” Painter said. “What happens if the caldera does erupt?”

“Cataclysm.” Chin stared at the spread of reports and data sheets. “First, it would be the loudest explosion heard by mankind in over seventy thousand years. Within minutes, a hundred thousand people would be buried by ash, incinerated by superheated pyroclastic flows, or killed by the explosive force alone. Magma would spew twenty-five miles into the air. The chamber would release a volume of lava large enough, if spread over the entire United States, to cover the country to the depth of five inches. But most of that flow would be confined to the Western states, wiping out the entire Northwest. For the rest of the country—and the world—
ash
would be the real killer. Estimates say it would cover two-thirds of the country in at least a meter of ash, rendering the land sterile and uninhabitable. But worst of all, the ash blown into the atmosphere would dim the sun and drop the earth’s temperature by twenty degrees, triggering a
volcanic winter
that could last decades, if not centuries.”

Painter imagined the worldwide starvation, the chaos, the death. He remembered Gray’s description of the Laki eruption in Iceland shortly after the founding of America. That small-by-comparison volcanic event killed six million people.

He stared at Chin’s ashen face. “You’re talking about an extinction-level event, aren’t you?”

“It’s happened before. Only seventy thousand years ago. A supervolcano erupted in Sumatra. The volcanic winter that followed in its wake wiped out most of the human population, dropping our numbers down to only a few thousand breeding pairs worldwide. The human species survived that eruption by the breadth of a hair.” Chin fixed Painter with a dead stare. “We won’t be so lucky this time.”

12:28
A.M.

Seated in the back office, Hank listened to Chin’s dire prediction.

His hands rested on the computer keyboard, but his eyes had gone blind to the screen. He imagined all of civilization wiped out. He remembered the Ute elder’s apocalyptic prophecy concerning that cave up in the Utah mountains, how the Great Spirit would rise up and destroy the world if anyone dared trespass.

It was now coming true.

A shadow stretched over his long, knobby fingers. A warm hand, unlined by age, squeezed his own.

“It’s okay, Professor,” Jordan said. The youth was seated beside him, where he’d been collating pages from a laser printer. “Maybe Yellowstone isn’t even the right place.”

“It is.”

Hank could not shake his despair, made worse by his memories of Maggie and all of the others who had died.

All this death.

He grew suddenly resentful of his companion’s youth, of his unflagging optimism and his steadfast belief in his own immortality. He glanced up at Jordan—but what he found in the young man’s face told a different story. The black eyes, the bruised features, the fear expressed in every muscle—it was not a lack of maturity that engendered such hope in the young man. It was simply who Jordan was.

Hank took a deep shuddering breath, casting back the shrouds of the dead. He was still alive. So was this resolute young man. A tail thumped under the table.

You, too, Kawtch.

Hank returned Jordan’s support, momentarily sharing that warm squeeze, before his focus returned to the situation at hand. He still hadn’t changed his opinion concerning the final resting place of the
Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev
. Painter’s colleague out east had read that golden map correctly.

At least, Hank believed so.

“What did you find?” Jordan asked.

“I’ve been reading through reams of Native American lore concerning Yellowstone, attempting to discern possible correlations among the various myths and legends that would support the existence of a lost city hidden in that valley. It’s been frustrating. Native Americans have been living in this region for over ten thousand years. The Cheyenne, Kiowa, Shoshone, Blackfeet, and more recently, the Crows. But so little is spoken among all these tribes about this unique valley. It’s a resounding and loud silence, suspiciously so.”

“Maybe they didn’t know about it.”

“No, they had names for it. The Crows called it
land of burning ground
or sometimes the
land of vapors
. The Blackfeet described it as
many smokes
. The Flatheads used the phrase
smoke from the ground
. Can’t be more accurate than that, can you? Those early tribes definitely knew about this place.”

“Then maybe they didn’t talk about it because they were scared.”

“That was the view that was held for the longest time. That Indians believed the hissing and roaring of the geysers were the voices of evil spirits. It’s still bandied about in some circles, but it’s pure hogwash. The newest anthropological studies have revealed that not to be the case. The early Indians had no fear of this steaming land. Instead, that false story got told and retold, mostly by early white settlers, perhaps to make their savage neighbors appear foolish and dull of mind . . . or maybe to help justify the taking of their lands. If the pioneers could claim that Indians were too scared to enter Yellowstone, then the entire territory was up for grabs.”

“Then what is the true story?”

Hank pointed to the screen. “The evidence confounded the scholars of the time. This is what historian Hiram Chittenden wrote about it back in 1895.
‘It is a singular fact that in Yellowstone National Park, no knowledge of the country seems to have been derived from the Indians . . . Their deep silence concerning it is therefore no less remarkable than mysterious.’
”

“Doesn’t sound like they were scared,” Jordan said. “More like they were hiding something.”

Hank touched his nose—
dead on, my boy
—then pointed to the screen. “Look at this. I found this passage in a recent study; it’s an excerpt from an old journal of one of the earliest settlers, John Hamilcar Hollister. I could find nothing like this anywhere else, but it speaks volumes on that deep Indian silence.”

Jordan leaned closer.

Hank read the words quietly again alongside him.

There are but few Indian legends which refer to this purposely unknown land. Of these I have found but one, and that is this—that no white man should ever be told of this inferno, lest he should enter that region and form a league with the devils, and by their aid come forth and destroy all Indians.

Jordan sat back, stunned. “So they
were
hiding something.”

“Something our ancestors didn’t want to have fall into the wrong hands, fearing it would be used against them.”

“That lost city must be there.”

But where?

Hank checked his watch, fighting against a return of the paralyzing despair that had gripped him moments before. He would follow Jordan’s example. He would not give up hope. He caught the young man staring out the window toward the lights of Flagstaff in the distance. But Hank knew his mind was much farther away, with a worry that had nothing to do with volcanoes and lost cities.

This time it was Hank who reached over and gave Jordan’s hand a squeeze of reassurance. “We’ll get her back.”

1:38
A.M.
Salt Lake City, Utah

It had been almost an hour since Kai had spoken to Uncle Crowe. She sat in a dining room chair, unbound, but there was nothing she could do, except chew at her thumbnail.

The suite of rooms bustled with activity. Commandos had shed combat gear for civilian clothing that looked ill-suited to such hardened mercenaries. They set about packing, storing gear, breaking down weapons. They were readying to move out.

Even the computer equipment had been racked up inside a tall, wheeled cargo case, modified out of a Louis Vuitton steamer trunk. From the stack, several lines of cable trailed back to Jordan’s gutted cell phone.

Rafael paced around the container, waiting for Kai’s uncle’s call.

She lowered her hand to her lap, clasping her palms between her legs, just as anxious as the man who kept her prisoner, balancing on a razor of terror.

Before Painter’s call, convinced he was dead, she had been locked in one of the bedrooms of the suite. At the time she knew these people were going to kill her. She didn’t care. Drained to a hollow shell of herself, she had simply sat on the bed’s edge. She was still aware of feeling fear, coiled around the base of her spine, but it was nothing compared to the feeling of desolation that gripped her. She had seen too much blood, too much death. Her own life held little meaning. She considered breaking the mirror in the bathroom and using a shard of glass to spill her own blood, as if by so doing she could wrest back some modicum of control.

But even that had felt too much like fighting.

She simply didn’t have the strength.

Then the call had come. Her uncle was alive, so were the professor and Jordan, and even that walking refrigerator called Kowalski. She’d seen their picture on Rafael’s computer screen, some frozen image from a broadcast of the group’s rescue.

After the call, jubilation filled those hollow spaces inside her, shining a warm light into that dark vacuum. Her uncle’s last words stayed with her.

I’m going to come get you. I promise.

He’d said he would not abandon her—and she believed him, which is what ignited the keening terror inside her now. She suddenly wanted to live, and in allowing herself to feel that desire, she realized that once again she had everything to lose.

But there was no escape.

She glanced over to her sole companion at the dining room table. It was the muscular African woman named Ashanda. Kai had initially been terrified of the woman, but then, at the time, the woman had been heating irons in the fire, carrying out a torture upon Rafael’s orders. But over time, that fear mellowed into something that resembled discomfort mixed with a kind of curiosity.

Who was she?

The woman was so unlike the others, clearly not a soldier, though she fought for Rafael. Kai pictured Ashanda rising from the shadows of the mud-heated cavern, running with a lithe speed that defied her size. Kai had also seen Ashanda working at the computer as she herself talked to Painter, the woman’s dark fingers racing over a keyboard. It was clear that she was more than a technician.

In the bright light of the room, Kai noted vague scars thickening the woman’s skin, forming rows of small dots that made stripes along her arms, looking almost like the skin of a crocodile. Her face was similarly scarred but in a more decorative pattern, one that accentuated her dark eyes and swept in wings to her temples. Her hair was done in tight, dark braids that spread from the crown of her head and draped gracefully to her forehead and shoulders.

Kai watched the woman staring at Rafael. Before she had seen only emptiness in those eyes, but this was no longer true. Deep within those dark mirrors, Kai knew, stirred a well of sadness. Ashanda sat so very still, as if afraid of being seen, yet at the same time, wanting more. There was devotion in that gaze, too, along with weariness. She sat like a dog waiting for a touch from its master, knowing that a mere touch was all she was ever going to get.

The reverie ended with the chiming ring of a phone.

Kai swung around.

At last
.

1:44
A.M.

Rafael appreciated punctuality. The director of Sigma had placed his follow-up call precisely at the time he had promised. It was not the call itself, but what the man offered when he spoke, that dismayed the Frenchman, coming as it did so unexpectedly.

“A truce?” Rafe asked. “Between us? How does that serve me?”

Painter’s voice remained urgent. “As promised, I’ll tell you where the Fourteenth Colony is located. But it will do you no good. The cache is set to explode in approximately four and a half hours.”