“More…more.” He concentrated on not getting cut.
Rich Tamburro was above him. He shone his flashlight down which helped give Quinn the sense that he was not alone in space.
During the process, they missed their scheduled check-in. Jaffe’s walkie-talkie crackled. Leslie was trying to reach them. However, he didn’t dare take his hands off the lifeline. Not yet.
“Almost,” McCauley said. He extended his toes in anticipation. But it wasn’t the ground he felt. It was emptiness. He had nothing to hold onto. His feet were not on the ground. He dangled in mid-air.
He looked up at Tamburro. “Any more line?”
“A little.”
“Slowly then.”
The end went from Jaffe to Tamburro, who held on tight. With all the rope out, McCauley was still not on the ground.
“That’s it?”
“Yes,”
“Damn.” He misjudged the drop.
McCauley looked up. “You’re going to have to let go. I’ve got about three more feet.”
“Wait.” Tamburro turned his head back and asked Dr. Alpert to call for more line. They’d need it to secure and haul Anna, if that was even possible.
“Okay, Dr. McCauley. Say when.”
McCauley took a deep breath. “When.”
A second later, McCauley hit the ground hard.
“I’m standing,” he said. As he adjusted his position, his foot rubbed against something hard. It wasn’t a rock. He shined his light down. It was Anna Chohany’s head.
Kavanaugh reviewed the parchment first for language. He read the three pages again to put precise meaning to individual words and the full context. Then he read it a third time, asking himself if there could be any other possible interpretation than what he had considered.
Although Kavanaugh didn’t know it, Martin Gruber had reacted the very same way when he first read the letter written by Father Vincenzo Maculano da Firenzuola in 1633. It was the secret directive that led to the establishment of an organization that would be known as Autem Semita.
“She’s here and alive,” McCauley yelled. He instinctively held her hand and felt Anna’s fingers tighten around his.
McCauley gave her water and assessed her condition. Possible concussion, broken arm. Cracked or bruised ribs. He was most worried about her neck and back.
McCauley knelt and checked her breathing. It was labored.
“Listen, it’s not going to be easy, but we have to get you back up. Rich’s just up above. He’s looking right down. Rich, say hi.”
“Hey, Anna. You’re going to be okay. We’ll get you out.”
She opened her eyes.
McCauley talked to her softly.
“Can you move your toes and legs?”
He shined the flashlight to see.
“Good girl.”
“Now can you roll from side to side?”
She showed some movement, but it was difficult. But most importantly, Anna Chohany wasn’t paralyzed.
An hour later, the Harvard student was strapped to a county medevac helicopter gurney and on her way to Glendive Medical Center. The paramedics were ready to start the IV drip.
“No, no!” she screamed.
Chohany dug her cell phone out of a pocket and struggled to compose a text. It was full of auto corrects, but she got the point across. She hit send. “Okay, now,” she said. “Pile on the painkillers.”
Twenty-three
“How are you feeling?”
“Stupid,” Anna Chohany told Rich Tamburro.
“Not too bad considering it could have been worse.”
It looked worse. She was hooked up to an IV and a heart monitor. Her right arm was in a cast, her neck in a brace. That’s all he could see on top of the covers.
“Good thing you have such a hard head.”
“Yeah, but not such a hard body. Sorry. And a body that’s out of commission. Even more sorry.”
Chohany was lucky to be alive. In addition to McCauley’s amateur diagnosis in the cave, she had a dislocated shoulder and two fractured ribs.
“So we’ll catch up after your rehab,” Tamburro said while holding her hand.
“Right. You know I am sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“I should have been more careful.”
“You should have never gone in by yourself,” he argued.
Chohany looked away.
“We’re a team. What were you thinking?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I can’t really say.”
“Hell, you ruined a summer of great sex. That’s for damned sure.” He caught himself laughing.
It hurt her too much to laugh. Besides, she was thinking of something else.
“Listen, Rich. Will you keep me up to date on everything?”
“Of course, hon.”
“I mean really. Pictures. Everything.” She squeezed his hand and locked on his eyes again. “Like I’m still there. Emails and calls every day. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
Chohany had opened up the route to the new shaft, but she never saw where it led. Dr. Quinn McCauley and his team did.
A new tunnel angled downward, far beyond the distance their extension cords reached. Far beyond the range of the walkie-talkies. Far into the obscure past told through Native American cave paintings, more of which appeared to plot a direction.
“What do you think?” Katrina Alpert asked.
“I really don’t know.”
The plan was to stay only an hour-and-a-half. That meant turning back at the forty-minute mark. They had ten more minutes. And yet…
“Getting chillier,” Jaffe noted.
McCauley’s phone app showed that the temperature had dropped to fifty-three degrees. More interestingly, the sound of their footsteps had changed — like the tunnel was opening up.
They needed additional electrical lights and longer extension cords. But even with the lights they had, they could see that they were entering a magnificent cavern. Yet unlike others formed by wind, water and violent geological episodes, this appeared different. The walls were shiny and smooth as if perfectly polished igneous rock. And further up, there was another tunnel, also smooth and reflective, but smaller and much more claustrophobic.
“We can’t rush through this,” Quinn McCauley said to his dejected team an hour later at base camp. “There’s a great deal we don’t understand.”
“Like everything,” Leslie Cohen said.
“Well, yes. So let’s look at this like the research scientists we are. Put our findings into identifiable categories: geological factors, seismic patterns, whatever we can deduce. Adjust for millennial cycles in climate change and how that might have influenced where and how people took shelter. Don’t make anything up or jump to conclusions. Through this we should come to see the expected in the unexpected; answers we can trust.”
The team was already a fan of Dr. McCauley. Now Katrina Alpert was impressed.
“I can add some insight,” she said. Katrina reached down for a handful of the dirt. “Volcanoes make for smooth rocks. Smooth rocks reflect light.” She found one on the ground; black, shiny, smooth. “Is this from the same geological period?”
“Relatively so.” Cohen chose both.
“You’re right. It is and it isn’t. Could be millions of years apart from the cavern. But where’s the rest?”