The cavernous space seemed especially large because it was empty. Like the park, the hotel had been evacuated, except for a skeleton crew who’d volunteered to remain behind and protect this treasured place. It was a futile gesture. No one could protect anything against what was coming — they could only try to stop it.
To that end, upon spotting Rafael’s party, Painter crossed toward them. They had taken up residence amid a collection of Mission chairs, rockers, and coffee tables. A larger trestle table from the neighboring lobby restaurant had been carried over and turned into a makeshift computer lab. Miniservers, LCD screens, and other digital equipment were being rapidly assembled, overseen by a scrawny, nervous-eyed technician and a familiar-looking dark woman.
From that woman’s shadow, another familiar figure appeared.
“Uncle Crowe…” Kai stepped into view.
Jordan ran forward. “Kai!”
Her face brightened upon seeing him. She moved to greet him as he hurried toward her, raising one of her arms to hug him. But suddenly she was snagged to a stop by the larger woman’s grip on her wrist. A jangle of steel links drew Painter’s eye, correcting his assumption. The African wasn’t holding Kai — the two were handcuffed together.
Jordan drew to a stop, also noting the situation.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Painter asked, stepping forward.
“Merely insurance, Monsieur Crowe.” Rafael rose from one of the chairs, needing his cane to help him up. Small wrinkles of pain etched the corner of his eyes. Apparently the ride here had taxed his frail body.
“What do you mean, insurance? We had a deal.”
“Indeed. I am a man of my word. The agreement was that I’d safely return your niece once you revealed the location of the lost city.”
“Which I did.”
“Which you did not.” Rafael lifted his arm to encompass more than just this hotel. “Where is this lost city, then?”
Painter realized that the Frenchman was right. He stared into Kai’s forlorn and scared eyes. Her hand had found Jordan’s during his exchange with Rafe. He also noted the thickness of the cuff’s bracelet around Kai’s other wrist. A tiny red light was blinking.
Rafael noticed his attention. “An unfortunate necessity. The handcuffs are powered, creating a closed circuit, connecting the two bracelets. Break that circuit, and a small, but powerful charge will explode with enough force to take off your niece’s arm and likely a good portion of her torso.”
Kai looked aghast at Rafael. Apparently her captor had not revealed this extra bit of security to her.
“I thought this best,” Rafael explained. “Now you will not be distracted by the thoughts of wresting your niece from me. We can both concentrate on what must be done. In the meantime, she is perfectly safe until we complete our transaction.”
The tension in the room seemed to thicken the air between the two forces. Backing up Rafael, his Aryan bodyguard rested his palm atop his holstered sidearm. Five mercenaries flanked their leader.
They were at an impasse — and time was running out.
Painter had said he didn’t want drama, and here he was adding to it. He needed to end this.
Painter gave Kai a firm look of assurance. He would get her through this — somehow. He turned back to Rafael. “Did you bring the gold wolf’s-head jar?”
“Of course.” Rafe hobbled around. “Bern, bring that valise to the table.”
The soldier obeyed, stalking across to a medium-size case on the floor. He hauled it atop a coffee table and opened its lid. The golden canopic jar lay nestled in protective black foam. The two gold tablets, stolen by Kai out of the Utah cave, were also inside.
Hank noted the tablets, too, and moved closer, but Bern extracted the jar and snapped the lid closed. The soldier crossed and placed the artifact on the table next to the computer workstation.
Again Painter was struck by its beauty, from the perfectly sculpted head of a timber wolf to the handsomely etched mountain landscape. But he did not have time to appreciate such artistry. Instead, he studied it as if it were a piece to a puzzle.
Without turning, he pointed his arm back. “Kowalski, go unpack our gear.”
Rafael stepped beside Painter, his movement accompanied by a waft of spicy cologne. He leaned on his cane with both hands. “Do you truly think this will help us narrow down our search of these two million acres?”
“It must. The satellite passes of the park are of little use.”
En route to Yellowstone, Painter had pulled every string he could, raising the alarm all the way up to the Oval Office. With President Gant’s signature, along with approval of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Painter had commandeered every available satellite in orbit. The entire park had been scanned across every spectrum: ground-penetrating radar, geomagnetic potentials, thermal gradients… anything that might offer a clue as to where a lost city might be buried.
He’d come up with nothing.
“Problem is,” Painter said, “this terrain is riddled with caverns, caves, vents, lava tubes, and hot springs. Pick almost any spot in the park and there seems to be some cavity or pocket underground. The city could still be anywhere.”
“And the physicists?” Rafael asked.
“We’ve got every expert in subatomic particles trying to calibrate and pinpoint the source of the massive neutrino flow from this region. But the volume of production is so prodigious that they could narrow the scope only to a two-hundred-mile radius.”
“Useless,” Rafael commented.
Painter agreed. He had one hope. It rested on the table. The landscape on the canopic jar. Some ancient artist had taken a great deal of time to etch it so meticulously upon the bottle.
The foreground of the landscape showed the confluence of two creeks, flowing into the distance down a forested valley. In the background rose towering clifflike mountains, fringed by lodgepole pines, so detailed that each needle had been carefully scratched in place. And in the middle, rising between the creeks, rose a tall cone, slightly steaming, like a small smoldering volcano. Around it stood smaller anthill-like cones.
So realistic were the details that it seemed impossible to believe them to depict anything other than a real place. The steaming geothermal structures in the center certainly suggested that such a spot might be found within this park. Painter pictured the artist sitting in a field, meticulously working the metal to preserve an image of this place. If it was important enough to etch onto this canopic jar, it must represent a site sacred to the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev. Perhaps it was a view from their new refuge here in Yellowstone.
That’s what Painter hoped.
By now, Kowalski had unpacked the cases Painter had ordered him to bring here. He set the disassembled pieces of the digital laser scanner on the table, next to all of the other computer equipment.
Painter glanced from Rafael to the scrawny computer tech. “Do you have all the satellite uplinks and parameters set on your end?”
“We do.”
“Can your guy help me assemble and get it cabled in properly?”
Instead of addressing the tech, Rafael turned to the tall African woman. “Ashanda, perhaps you should oversee TJ’s handiwork. We don’t want to risk any mistakes.” He drew Painter aside. “Let them do their magic.”
Even with the use of only one hand and without speaking a single word, Ashanda orchestrated the assembly of the laser device, along with its calibration and integration into the workstation. Even Kai helped run some of the cabling, plainly needing to do something — though every jangle of the handcuffs drew a scared glance from her.