The Devil Colony (Sigma Force 7)

Seeking diversion, she wandered the forest with Ashanda. The world had less than an hour of life remaining to it now. The soldiers from both sides had begun to drift back, empty-handed, after searching their sections of the cliffs.

The words of Hank Kanosh stayed with her, a puzzle to distract.

Where the wolf and eagle stare.

Walking through the forest with these words in her mind, she finally saw it, from the right angle, with the sun just rising. She froze so fast that Ashanda bumped into her, a rare lapse in the African woman’s sharp reflexes.

“Professor Kanosh! Uncle Crowe!”

The two men lifted their heads from where they were bowed.

“Come here!” Kai waved her arm, pulling up short, forgetting for the moment that her limb was handcuffed, but her urgency drew the men, along with Rafael.

“What is it?” Hank asked.

She pointed to the six-foot geyserite cone in front of her. It rose like a pillar. “Look at the top, how it’s broken into two sharp points . . . like ears! . . . and below it, that thick knob of rock sticking out . . . doesn’t that look like a dog’s muzzle?”

“She’s right,” Hank said, and stepped closer. “The wolf and eagle are common Indian totems. And these natural pillars are like stone totem poles. Feel this.”

Uncle Crowe reached his hand up. “They’ve been carved,” he said, awed.

Hank ran a finger down the pillar. “But over time, new accretions of minerals have coated the surface, blurring the imagery.”

Rafael spun, leaning on his cane. “We must find that eagle.”

Over the next ten minutes, both teams scoured the stone forest. But none of the pillars looked birdlike in any way. The flurry of searching died down to head-scratching and plodding feet.

“We’re wasting time,” Rafael said. “Maybe we should just search in the direction of the wolf, non?”

By now, Kai had made a roundabout hike through the geothermal cones and ended up where she started. She stepped in front of the wolf pillar, putting her back to it, and gazed outward across the valley. The wolf had a long stare. It stretched clear across the longest axis of the basin, eventually striking a distant cliff.

She pointed toward it. “Did anyone search—”

Jordan cried out, gasping in surprise. “Over here!”

She turned, along with everyone else. Jordan stood before an ordinary column of bumpy rock. It looked nothing like an eagle. But he bent down into the meadow grasses and picked up a fluted chunk of rock. He fitted it to the pillar’s side, from which it must have broken off. Once the piece was in place, a slight fluting on the other side paired up with it, forming a pair of wings.

Jordan motioned up. “That crest of flowstone near the top, pointed down, could be a beak.” He pantomimed by lowering his chin to his chest and looking down his nose.

“It’s the second totem pole!” Hank said.

Jordan stared across at Kai, smiling broadly, silently communicating a message: We both found one.

Kai returned to her post in front of the wolf and waved for Jordan to do the same. Once in position, she began to walk in the direction of the wolf’s stare. Jordan followed the eagle’s gaze. Step by step, they continued out across the field, slowly approaching each other, attempting to determine the spot where the stares of the two totems met.

Everyone followed.

Forty yards out, Kai reached out her free arm and took Jordan’s hand, the two of them coming together at last. They stood before another cone. Standing four feet high and about three feet wide, it was squat and unremarkable looking, resembling nothing so much as a fat mushroom cap.

“I don’t understand,” Rafael said.

The Asian geologist came forward and examined the structure from all sides. “Looks like any of the others.” He placed his palms atop it and stayed in this position for several breaths. “But it’s not vibrating. Even the dormant ones have a palpable tremor to them.”

“What does that mean?” Kai said.

He pronounced his judgment. “This is fake.”

5:38 A.M.

Full sunrise brightened the day, but not their moods.

“Why don’t we just blow it up?” Kowalski asked.

“It may come to that, but let’s give Hank and Chin at least a minute to finish their examination.”

Still, Painter had to consider Kowalski’s option. They had roughly forty minutes until the valley exploded.

“Just in case,” Painter asked, “do you have any C4 with you?”

He had asked Kowalski to secure some of the explosive for the flight here, in case they needed to blow their way into a tunnel or passage. But the man had come here with no satchel or pack.

“I have a little,” Kowalski admitted. He stepped back and flared out both sides of his ankle-length duster, revealing a vest covered in cubes of C4.

“You call that a little?”

Kowalski glanced down. “Yeah. Should I have brought more?”

Over by the mushroom rock, Hank and Chin stood up together.

Hank gave their assessment. “We think it’s meant to act like a plug, perhaps symbolic of an infant’s umbilical cord. Either way, we need four strong men to hook their arms around that lip—which I believe is the very reason it’s there—and lift straight up.”

Kowalski volunteered, as did Major Ryan, Bern, and Chin.

Bending at the knee, the men circled the stone and linked arms.

“The rock is porous,” Chin said. “Hopefully we can lift it free.”

On a count of three, they all heaved up. From the strain on their faces, the geologist’s assessment was proving questionable. But then a grating metallic sound groaned from the earth. The stone plug rose in the men’s arms. With the stopper finally loosened, the men easily lifted the stone and sidestepped out of the way to set it down.

Painter moved forward with Hank and Rafael.

“Is that gold?” Jordan asked behind them.

If it was, they’d definitely found the right place.

Painter studied the bottom of the stone stopper. Gold coated the lower foot of the mushroom-shaped rock and rimmed the pit’s edges.

“The precious metal must be to keep the plug from corroding into place permanently,” Chin said.

Hank studied the hole. “This reminds me of the opening to a kiva. The entrance to the underworld.”

Kowalski glared down that hole. “Look how well that turned out for us last time.”

5:45 A.M.

Hank followed Painter down into the pit. The initial drop was only four feet, but the tunnel below sloped steeply from there, aiming back toward the heart of the geothermal basin and its strange cones. The air was hot but dry, smelling strongly of sulfur.