“Are you okay?” Kowalski called.
Painter lifted an arm, acknowledging that he was fine, but he feared calling out. This was foolish, of course. He continued onward, step by step, until finally he reached the far side and happily leaped to solid ground.
Relieved, he leaned down, resting his hands on his knees.
“Should we follow?” Hank yelled.
Painter merely lifted an arm and waved them over.
In short order, they all crossed and made it safely to the far side. After a moment to collect themselves, they headed toward the dark tunnel, leaving the muddy caldera behind them.
Once they reached the mouth of the passageway, they were rewarded with a cold breath blowing out of the tunnel. The air had a mineral tang, but it was a welcome respite from the sulfurous burn of the cavern.
Kowalski held a hand to the breeze. “Where’s this coming from?”
“Only one way to find out.” Painter led the way again.
Hank offered a more detailed answer as they headed down. “The cavern system must extend much farther underground. For a cave to breathe like this, it takes a great volume of cold air below.” He pointed behind him. “That hot cavern is drawing the chilled air upward, and the breeze continues from there to the surface, flushing that heat upward and out.”
Painter remembered the volume estimate of the cavern system beneath Wupatki’s blowhole. Seven billion cubic feet. He sensed that this was bigger. But how far down would they have to go?
The tunnel continued deeper, turning steeper in some spots, almost flat in others. But it never turned upward. The way also grew steadily colder. After another ten minutes of hiking, a pearly sheen of ice began to coat the walls, reflecting the beam of Painter’s flashlight. He remembered Nancy’s story of the icy lava tubes that lay beneath the cone of the Sunset Crater. The same phenomenon was happening here.
Soon, even their footing became more treacherous. Kowalski took a hard fall and cursed loudly. The breeze blew stronger, the icy chill burning Painter’s cheeks as readily as the sulfuric heat had some minutes ago.
“Is it just me,” Kowalski asked as he picked himself up, “or is anyone else thinking of the phrase when hell freezes over?”
Painter ignored him as his light revealed the end of the tunnel at last. He hurried forward, half skating on the slick surface. He slid into another cavern and stopped once again at the entrance, stunned by what he saw before him.
Kowalski whistled sharply.
Hank gaped in awe. “We’ve found them.”
Painter knew what he meant.
They’d found the Anasazi.
4:14 P.M.
“It’s almost like watching a video game, n’est-ce pas?” Rafael asked.
He sat in the rear cabin of a surveillance helicopter—one of two aircraft borrowed at some expense from a private militia group who spent time patrolling the Mexican border for “narco-terrorists.” With heavily tinted bulletproof windows and engines idling, the two helicopters sat in the desert about a mile from the mesa.
The rear cabin of Rafe’s craft was equipped with two captain’s chairs that swiveled easily between a bench seat on one side and an entire wall of equipment, including digital recorders, DVD players, a bank of three LCD monitors, all of it tied into microwave receivers and cameras bristling on the outside.
On the center LCD monitor, a jangling view revealed a team climbing up a crack in the mesa’s side, aiming for the ruins on top. The feed came from Bern’s helmet-mounted camera, allowing Rafe to once again monitor the assault.
He turned his chair to face Kai Quocheets, who sat on the bench seat beside one of Bern’s teammates. She stared sullenly back at him with her arms crossed in front of her. Clearly still furious about his betrayal, she hadn’t said a word since they’d left the pueblos after the shooting of the two elderly Hopi natives. He felt a bit bad about that. He admitted to himself now that it had been a feckless act on his part, one beneath him, but he’d been sore from the ride to the pueblos and already in a foul temper over how the old woman had resisted his interrogation. He now truly believed the elderly pair knew nothing.
A waste.
And if the young woman hadn’t been so obstinate, he might have thrown her a bone, but instead he let her sulk.
So be it.
He turned around and faced the monitors. Bern’s team had reached the mesa’s top and circled to where the satellite feed had last spotted Painter Crowe’s team vanishing down another chute on the far side. The resolution had not been good enough to reveal anything more.
It hadn’t been hard to track the director of Sigma to this location. A few calls, a few interviews, and it was over, especially after Painter’s group posted trail permits with the National Park Service office. No names had been mentioned—but then again, how many three-man teams of hikers were headed into the deep desert with a dog? Descriptions were matched, and through the Saint Germaine family’s contacts in the scientific community, Rafe was able to gain access to a geophysical satellite and monitor the desert around the Crack-in-the-Rock pueblo.
After that, they had flown in from the unpopulated north side of the park. Once within a mile of the mesa, Bern’s team had off-loaded and headed out across the desert on foot.
Rafe leaned closer to the screen.
“Where is that chiant uncle of yours now?” he whispered to the monitor.
He watched Bern climb with the effortless grace of a true athlete, moving from stone to stone, carrying a heavy pack with a rifle ready at his shoulder. Rafe found his left hand rubbing his thigh in envy. He forced his fingers to curl into a fist. The best he could hope for in life was to live vicariously through others. As he was doing now. If he stared hard enough, blocked out other stimuli, he could be Bern for short periods of time.
His second-in-command slipped to the front of his team, assuming the point position. Bern was not one to let a subordinate take a risk he himself wasn’t willing to face. He edged over a pile of crumbling bricks, part of an ancient wall, and reached a hidden chute. Before he entered, a hand rose into view. Bern gave silent signals. Rafe interpreted them, repeating the hand signals on his knee.
Move quiet. On my mark. Go.
From the corner of his eye, he caught Kai’s reflection in one of the dark monitors as she shifted forward, trying to get a better look. She might act the disinterested, estranged niece, but Rafe noted how her breathing quickened whenever she overheard him talking about her uncle.
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.