by Lukens, Mark
Don’t go in there, his mind whispered, but Randy started walking towards the mouth of the cave.
Maybe somebody was hurt.
He stopped beside the generator for a moment and placed a hand on the muffler. It was ice-cold. He shivered as the wind sliced down from the ridge towards him. He thought about starting the generator up, but he didn’t want to disturb anything. He aimed his flashlight into the mouth of the cave, and then stepped right up to it. The light beam only shined so far into the tunnel, revealing claustrophobic rock walls on both sides, a hard-packed dirt floor, and the lines of electric cords with the construction lights every fifty feet or so that disappeared into the darkness.
“Hello?” Randy called into the mouth of the cave, his voice echoing back at him. “Are you okay in there?”
No answer.
He couldn’t believe he was doing this, but he entered the cave. He had been in caves many times in his life … more than he could remember. He knew his way around caves, and with the string of lights in this cave, there was no chance of getting lost. He would just venture inside a little ways, just far enough to make sure no one was injured and needed help.
“Hello?” he called out as he walked deeper into the cave. His flashlight beam looked like a laser beam of light stabbing into the total darkness. He moved slowly, his work boots scuffling along the dirt floor, kicking at the small rocks in the way. The path through the rock seemed to narrow slightly the deeper he went, the walls closing in slowly. He’d never been claustrophobic—he’d never been scared of much in his life—but something was frightening him badly now. Something felt bad here … very bad.
And a moment later he smelled the unmistakable coppery scent of blood … the odor of death and decay. Something was dead in this cave farther ahead in the darkness. Something big. Or maybe more than one dead thing.
I should just turn around right now, Randy told himself. Turn around and get back on my horse. Ride home and call the police. Something isn’t right here.
But he didn’t turn around.
He ventured deeper into the cave.
And finally the path through the walls of rock opened up to a gigantic cavern. He felt like he could breathe again now that the walls of rock weren’t pressing in on him, but the smell of rot and decay was so strong now that it was hard to breathe. He held his nostrils closed with one hand, breathing in and out through his mouth, while his other hand that clutched his flashlight trembled slightly, shaking the flashlight beam in front of him.
He panned the light beam around the large cavern, and then he shined his light on the most horrifying thing he’d ever seen.
“Oh … no … no …”
The big flashlight nearly slipped out of his hand as he stared at the sight in the darkness fifty feet in front of him, something that shouldn’t be possible.
Then he turned and ran.
He ran back down the claustrophobic tunnel through the solid rock, his footsteps and ragged breaths echoing all around him. He felt like he was being followed, like something was chasing him through the darkness, about to grab him and pull him back …
Moments later Randy was out of the cave and vomiting in the bushes. It seemed so much darker out here now, the night coming so quickly. He wiped the spittle from his mouth with the back of his hand, and then he exhaled, his breath clouding up in front of him in the cold air. His horse was whinnying now and reeling against the rope, threatening to snap it.
But Randy kept his eyes on the mouth of the cave, sure that some demon or monstrosity, some creature of ancient legend, was going to come crawling out of that cave after him. He backed up towards his horse, his eyes on the cave the entire time.
“It’s okay,” he lied to his horse, touching him, calming him down only slightly. Maybe his horse could smell the death all the way out here.
Randy slipped his flashlight back into his saddle bag and then untied the rope from the limb of the tree. He mounted his horse and rode towards the trail that led up to the ridge, both of them glad to be leaving.
CHAPTER 2
Navajo Reservation—dig site
“I’m not going back in that cave,” Randy told Captain Begay.
Begay stared at Randy. “I’m not asking you to go in there.”
Randy had raced his horse home and called Captain Begay of the Navajo Tribal Police. He knew Begay well and he had the man’s private number. It was early evening by the time Begay and two of his officers drove way out here to the dig site. Randy had ridden back to the dig site to meet them there, but he hadn’t ventured down onto the canyon floor until Begay and his officers had arrived. He didn’t want to be down there alone.
The officers had come in three vehicles; two of the vehicles were Dodge Durangos painted olive green with the Navajo Police shield among the wide green and yellow stripes down the side. Whipcord antennas poked up from the backs of the vehicles, and they both had large meaty tires and extra gas cans strapped to the back. The other vehicle was an older jacked-up Ford Bronco with faded brown paint and oversized tires, a gas-guzzling dinosaur of a vehicle that rumbled with power.
All three men got out of their vehicles. The two officers who drove the Durangos both wore bulky green jackets over their khaki uniforms with the Navajo Tribal Police patch on the shoulders of their coats. One officer was tall and lean, his long hair tied back in a loose ponytail. The other man was an inch shorter and a little heavier, his black hair cropped short. Randy was glad to see that they both had a sidearm on their hips.
Captain Begay was dressed casually in jeans, a button-down shirt, and a well-worn pair of cowboy boots. He wore the same type of bulky green jacket over his clothes like his two officers. He was a bear of a man with a fleshy face and slicked-back dark hair that didn’t show a strand of gray even though he had to be close to fifty years old. He walked towards Randy, who was tying his horse to the same cottonwood tree he had tied him to before. Begay didn’t seem to be bothered by the cold.
“You sure about what you saw in there?” Begay asked when he was in front of Randy.
“I would not bring you out here in the darkness if I was not sure about this,” Randy told him.
Begay waited a moment like he was studying Randy and then he finally nodded. He had a large flashlight in his hand, it looked a lot like the one Randy had used when he had entered the cave only hours ago. The officer with the long hair had an even bigger flashlight with him that he held by a pistol grip handle.
Begay turned to his officers. “Let’s go check it out.”
They walked to the mouth of the cave. Begay stopped at the generator. He looked back at Randy who hadn’t moved too far away from his horse. “You try this generator?” Begay asked Randy.
“I did not touch anything.”
Begay looked back at the generator, studying it for a moment. He slipped on a pair of latex gloves, stretching them over his big hands. He pressed the start button a few times but nothing happened. He checked the gas tank. “Full of gas,” he muttered.
He tried the button a few more times, but the generator didn’t even try to start. “I guess it’s not going to work.” He sighed and turned his flashlight on. He looked at the officer with the big flashlight. “Lead the way with the light.”
Randy watched the officer with the biggest flashlight lead the men into the cave. Begay was right behind him and the other officer was the last man in. And then the mouth of the cave swallowed the men up in its darkness.
The minutes seemed to drag by as Randy waited by the cottonwood tree. His horse wasn’t too happy about coming back here. He fed his horse a treat to try to keep him calm, but he was still jumpy. But he seemed a little calmer with more people around.
Fifteen minutes later the three officers hurried out of the cave. Their tan faces seemed to have grown a few shades paler, and their eyes were wide with shock. One of the officers had his pistol in his hand like he might have to use it at any second. He scanned the ridges around them for any activity. Captain Begay
rushed towards his Ford Bronco.
“What do you think happened in there?” Randy asked as he hurried over to catch up with Begay.
“This is an FBI matter now,” Begay grumbled. “I’m afraid you’re going to need to leave.”
Randy didn’t like the abrupt shove off from Begay, but at the same time he was happy to leave this place.
PART 1
SUNDAY
CHAPTER 3
Denver, Colorado
Special Agent Palmer knew the day was going to be a bad one as soon as his eyes popped open in the darkness.
It was the dream … the terrible dream.
For a few seconds, Palmer didn’t know where he was, but then he realized that he was in his condo, in his bedroom, in his bed. It was still dark—either it was still the middle of the night or very early in the morning. Fragments of the nightmare clung to him, but the images were fading fast into the depths of his subconscious, never to be retrieved again.
His heart was beating fast … racing, thumping hard against his breastbone. He was a little shaky. Something had frightened him terribly in the dream, causing him to wake up.
But what had it been?
He couldn’t remember.
This wasn’t a typical experience for him. He usually didn’t remember dreaming at all, and he could probably count on one hand the nightmares that he’d had in his life. And he’d never woken up from a dream and felt like … like this. A feeling of overwhelming dread and despair.
He lay there very still in his bed for a moment longer, trying to get his breathing and his heartrate back to normal. For a split second he wondered if he was having a heart attack. He was lean and in decent shape for a forty-six-year-old man, but he also drank too much and he’d smoked cigarettes for years.
It wasn’t a heart attack. He dismissed that wild thought immediately. There was no pain in his chest, arm, or anywhere else in his body. His heart was just beating fast, like he’d been running at a full sprint. And he was scared … he couldn’t deny that. He’d known fear many times in his life as an FBI agent: he’d had guns pointed at him, he’d been attacked by criminals, attack dogs, and he’d been in car chases, so he knew what fear felt like. And he was afraid now. Afraid of something he’d seen in his dream … something he’d felt.
He tried to remember the dream before it dissolved away into nothingness. In the dream he’d been inside some kind of building … an unfamiliar place. The building was huge, a maze of hallways and rooms that seemed to go on forever. He was walking down one of the wide halls with his service pistol gripped in his hand. The floor was striped with lines of sunlight that shined out of the open doors of each of the rooms. He looked into each room as he passed by, glancing in through the open doorway. Each room had beds, chairs, rugs, and other furniture … normal stuff. But there seemed to be something that was slightly off about each room. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was, like the room was slightly out of square, or the furniture was placed at odd angles, like everything was just out of kilter somehow.
But why was he so afraid in the dream?
He seemed to think that he’d been following someone through the building, searching for someone, an invisible enemy that he couldn’t find, someone extremely dangerous, and he knew he needed to be careful.
The hallway morphed into a gigantic warehouse that was filled with different kinds of furniture and appliances for as far as he could see; a lot of it so close together there weren’t even aisles to walk through. The layout of the furniture and appliances didn’t make any sense to him. In the distance he saw the doorways to the other rooms that he’d been passing by, but they were so much farther away now that he was suddenly in the middle of this vast room.
He heard a voice calling to him from another direction. It was a man’s voice, and the man was alarmed, yelling at him.
Palmer turned towards the other side of the room where the voice was coming from. He saw a man in another room at the far end, maybe forty yards away across the sea of furniture. The man was dressed in some kind of dark pants and a white dress shirt and tie. He was leaning back in an office chair in front of the desk so he could stare out through the open doorway. He stared at Palmer with wide eyes of shock, his mouth hung open.
“What are you doing?” the man yelled as he stared at him in terror.
Palmer didn’t recognize the man, and he didn’t understand what the man was asking?
“Why are you doing that?” the man screeched, and his eyes dropped down just a bit—like he was looking down at something in Palmer’s hands.
Palmer looked down at his own hands in the dream. He didn’t have his gun anymore, even though he didn’t remember holstering it. He stood in front of a gigantic metal sink that he didn’t remember seeing before in this room. A tall curved faucet hung over the sink, which was big enough to wash a large dog inside of it. The water from the faucet was running. He had something in his hands down inside the sink, washing it in the water. He saw the blood running down his hands, carried away by the running water, the blood turning pink from the dilution of the water.
In his hands was a piece of flesh the size of a softball, part of an organ torn from a person’s body. It was soft and it was still warm.
And then his mind went blank. He couldn’t remember anymore. That must’ve been when he’d woken up with his heart jackhammering in his chest and his breath caught in his throat.
But there was more to the dream, he felt sure of it. Something else had happened after he was at the metal sink washing off that piece of flesh, something he couldn’t remember now … something he didn’t want to remember.
This wasn’t like him. He never had nightmares like this. He never woke up from sleep, caught in the middle of a panic attack.
He sat on the edge of his bed and swung his bare feet over the edge of it. He was cold even though he knew the heat was on. He still felt shaky and his heartbeat and breathing still hadn’t slowed down to a normal rate yet.
What time was it?
A glance at the alarm clock next to his bed told him it was three o’clock in the morning.
He craved a drink but he tried to fight the urge. He should try to get back to sleep, but he thought sleep might be nearly impossible now. Maybe he would make some coffee.
He jumped when his cell phone rang. He grabbed it from the cluttered end table next to his bed and looked at the number. It was Cardenelli, his supervisor.
What was he doing calling in the middle of the night?
An emergency of some kind. Had to be.
It was always something bad when Cardenelli called him in the middle of the night.
CHAPTER 4
Denver, Colorado
“Yes, sir,” Palmer said into his cell phone.
“Palmer,” Cardenelli barked. “I need you to get to the airport right now.”
“Where am I going?”
“Down to New Mexico. Small town called Farmington. I’ll have a rental car ready for you there. It’s a long drive from there to the dig site.”
“Dig site?”
“It’s on the Navajo Reservation. Some bodies were found at an archaeological dig site.”
Palmer sighed. “Why me? Isn’t there someone down there who could—”
“Agent Klein will meet you there. But I need you down there with him on this one. This one is … it’s a little strange.”
Palmer didn’t say anything. Strange was his area of expertise.
“A captain of the Navajo Tribal Police in that area, a man named Begay, will be there, too. He’s the one who called it in. The Tribal Police are the only ones besides us involved in this right now—no county or state police.”
“Well, it’s Navajo land,” Palmer said. “It’s their bodies …”
“FBI handles murders on Indian Reservations. And these bodies aren’t all Navajo.”
Again Palmer didn’t respond.
“It’s a group of archaeologists, maybe some grad students. Ten of them in all
.”
“Ten bodies?” Palmer asked, a little surprised.
“Yeah. We’re going to try and get some info from the universities in the area, see if we can get some IDs on these people. See if any has been reported missing.”
“How were they killed? Shot?”
“That’s the strange part,” Cardenelli said. “From the way Captain Begay described things … well, it’s just a little hard to believe.”
“What do you mean?”
“He said some of the bodies were … cut up … or torn apart …”
“Maybe an animal—”
“No, I already asked him that. He was adamant that it wasn’t any kind of animal attack.”
“Then someone murdered all of these scientists at the dig site? All ten of them?”
“That’s what you’re going down there to find out. I’ll send you all the info I have so far. You can read it on the plane. A forensics team will be there by the afternoon. They’re driving over from the Albuquerque office, so they’ll be several hours behind you. I’ll get Debbie to get any other info that you need.”
“Okay.”
“Palmer, I want you to keep those Tribal Police away from the scene when you get down there. Who knows how badly they’ve already corrupted it? When you get down there, talk with them, see what they know, but then I want you to take over.”
“What about Klein?”
“Agent Klein is … well, let’s just say that the very best agents aren’t sent to Indian Reservations.”
Palmer had heard of that before. It was a well-known punishment in the Bureau to be sent to Indian Reservations.
“Captain Begay asked for our assistance, and it’s going to be our case now. You’re in charge when you get down there. You make sure you let them know that.”
“Got it.”
Cardenelli hung up without a good-bye, and Palmer hung up and set his phone down on the nightstand next to his service pistol. He switched on the lamp and saw the nearly-empty pint of vodka next to the lamp; it was perched close to the edge of the table. He was craving that drink even more right now. He’d drunk too much vodka last night, not anticipating going to work today. Maybe a few nips with his coffee would take the edge off of the hangover.