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.
On the screen, Rafe could see Bern sliding carefully down the chute, ready for any contingency. He imagined the burning sensation of the sun on his face, the tightness in his chest as he restricted his breathing, the tension in his back and arms as he handled the heavy rifle.
Bern reached a turn in the chute and took a split-second peek into a blind chasm. That’s all the time that was required. There was an advantage to having a partner sitting on your shoulder. Rafe brought up the image again and froze it on his screen to study it more closely.
The chasm’s rock walls were wildly decorated with petroglyphs, but he found only a single living figure standing in the tight space. A woman, likely the park ranger who acted as a guide for Painter Crowe’s team. She stood with her back to the camera, holding a leash, staring down a hole in the ground.
Ah, so that’s where you went…
Rafe sighed. “You’re not going to make this easy, are you, mon ami?”
He lifted the radio to his lips. “Bern, looks like we must do this the hard way. We’ll have to make it personal in order to draw our quarry out.”
Rafe caught Kai’s reflection again as he gave the order.
“Take down the guard. We’re coming in.”
On the screen, Bern popped around the corner with his weapon raised.
The ranger must have heard something and started to turn. Bern’s rifle jerked silently on the screen, and the woman crumpled to the ground.
Kai gasped behind him.
Rafe reached to the other captain’s chair and found Ashanda’s hand. She had been sitting silently, a dark statue, almost forgotten, but never far from his heart. He gave her fingers a squeeze.
“I’m going to need your help.”
From the edge of the cavern, Hank stared at the frozen tomb of the Anasazi, preserved for centuries deep underground. He struggled to understand what he was seeing.
It can’t be…
Thick blue ice coated the walls, flooded the floors, and formed massive icicles that dripped like stalactites from the arched roof. Across the way, embedded half into the ice, stood a village frozen in time. The tumbled blocks of ancient pueblo homes climbed four stories high, stacked into a ragged pile, all draped and barred by more flows of ice. It was Wupatki reborn, only larger. But the residents here hadn’t fared any better. Blackened, mummified bodies sprawled frozen in the ice, looking as if they’d been washed from their homes. Clay pots and wooden ladders lay cracked and buried, mostly to one side of the cavern, along with tangles of blankets and woven baskets preserved in frost.
“There must have been a flash flood through here,” Painter said, pointing to the other tunnels that ran into and out of the cavern. “Drowned everyone, then froze over again.”
Hank shook his head. “First, their people died in fire… then by ice.”
“Maybe they were cursed,” Kowalski said with unusual somberness.
Maybe they were.
“Are you sure they’re Anasazi?” Painter asked.
“From what I can tell from the clothing, along with the architecture of the buildings and the unique black-on-white markings on the pottery, these poor people were some clan of the Anasazi.”
Hank stepped forward to bear witness. “These must have been the last survivors, those who escaped both the volcanic eruption and the slaughter. They must have fled Wupatki, tried to start a new home here, hidden away underground, the entrance protected by the small citadel above.”
“But who sealed the entrance?” Painter asked. “Why did they mark it with the moon-and-star symbol of the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev?”
“Maybe a neighboring tribe who was helping to hide this last bastion of the clan. They sealed it with a gravestone, engraving it with the mark of those who they believed brought such punishment down upon these people. A warning to others against trespass.”
Painter checked his watch. “Speaking of which, we should explore what we can, then head back up.”
Hank heard the disappointment in his voice. He must have been hoping to discover more than just an icy graveyard. They spread out, careful where they stepped. Hank was not ready to examine any of the bodies. He took out his own flashlight and set about searching the lowest levels of the pueblo.
He had to crack through fangs of icicles that blocked the door to squeeze inside. He found another body, that of a child, which had been washed into a corner like so much refuse. A tiny clawed hand stuck out of the ice, as if asking to be rescued.
“I’m sorry…” he whispered, and pushed on to a room farther back.
Frost and ice covered everything, reflecting the beam of his flashlight with a certain macabre beauty. But beneath that bright sheen lay only death.
As he searched deeper, he had a vague destination in mind, the true heart of the pueblo, a place to pay his respects. Ducking through a doorway, he stepped into an atrium-like space in the center of the tumble of rooms. Terraces led up, festooned in runnels of ice. He imagined children playing there, calling to one another, mothers scolding, kneading bread.