“Daddy!” she’d screamed. “Mommy! The ground’s blowing!”
There is only one explanation for the ground blowing air—a cave. What lay under Cricket’s rock pile was the first-known entrance to a subterranean environment so vast and complex that Tom christened it the Labyrinth. It became Tom’s obsession to explore the find. Relying on mapping technology of his own design, Tom, Whitney, Cricket, and a group of twenty hard-core cave explorers had discovered and charted nearly 180 miles of underground passage within two years.
Within five years, they had expanded the working knowledge of the cave another two hundred miles. The Labyrinth was now the world’s longest known cave. In a cover article for National Geographic published in August 2004, Tom wrote that he did not believe he had explored the entire system and he speculated that the cave Cricket discovered might someday prove to be a thousand miles of total passage.
Through the windshield of his truck, Tom could now clearly make out the silhouette of the Labyrinth’s nine rounded ridges. Each of them jutted nearly a thousand vertical feet above the sinkhole plain. Forest-clad and articulated along a sweeping curve, Tom thought that the layout of the ridges resembled the crinkled folds of an antique paper fan separated from its handle. Seeing them he felt as if he were coming home to the place where he had always felt most centered.
That thought was followed by one that sobered him. For years he’d always come to the Labyrinth with Whitney. Now she would not even go near a cave. His face screwed up at the melancholy and exasperation that welled within him. She’d always been there for him, through all the tough years. Now they were separated by a single horrible incident that Whitney seemed unable to overcome. He knew he should not feel this way, considering all the sacrifices she’d made for him over the years, but here, at the moment of his greatest triumph, he felt abandoned and angry at her for leaving him.
Focus, compartmentalize, Tom told himself. You’ve got a job to do. A job that’s vital to the nation’s future. That thought sent chills through him. He thought of himself first and foremost as a scientist The Artemis Project was not only clearly to the benefit of the nation but to the benefit of mankind. He was part of a team working to solve the world’s energy needs. To tell the truth, he was more excited than he’d been at the first discovery of Labyrinth Cave. He was doing something that really mattered. His worries over his fractured relationship with Whitney would have to be set aside for the time being.
Tom turned onto a gravel road that coursed along the southern base of the Labyrinth’s nine hogbacks. At the easternmost ridge, he made a left turn onto an even narrower byway that climbed through a series of switchback turns. At the crest of the ridge, he angled the truck onto a dirt two-track and immediately stopped at a gate manned by U.S. Air Force Military Police. A metal sign on the gate read: NASA CLOSED AREA: NO ENTRY WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION.
A burly MP approached their truck with a powerful flashlight, which he shone inside. Then he asked for and examined their identification. “You’ll have tent six, Dr. Burke. Directly behind Pavilion A, adjacent to the quarters of the mission commander.”
“I’ll find it,” Tom said. “Has the rest of my team arrived?”
“Last one, a woman from France, came in just before midnight, sir,” the guard said, before studying his clipboard. “We have three Burkes on our security list.”
Tom stiffened. “My wife isn’t coming. She isn’t feeling well.”
“Sorry to hear that, sir,” the guard said offhandedly before signaling the gate man. The metal bar rose. They drove through and onto a darkened lane protected by a thick canopy of oak trees. At the end of the two-track, they emerged into a clearing.
“Old man Jenkins must be rolling over in his grave,” Cricket said petulantly.
When the Burkes had first seen the clearing nearly nine years ago it had been part of an old farmstead. A sagging barn. Goats, pigs, and chickens in wire enclosures set about a ramshackle farmhouse. A swaybacked horse named Fred had inhabited the meadow beyond. It was the empire of a hermit named Roswell Jenkins.
After much cajoling, the old man had given the Burkes permission to camp on his property while they explored the cave. The cantankerous septuagenarian normally hated visitors, but he came to look forward to their arrival late on Friday nights. Inevitably the Burkes and Jenkins had become close, but the family had been stunned when the old man died and left them his land in support of Tom’s dream of turning the Labyrinth and its nine ridges into a national park
Now the entire farmyard was lit by banks of halogen lights powered by a half-dozen generators. Five television transmission trucks were parked around the huge old elm that shaded the farmhouse. A stage was under construction in what used to be the paddock. A series of large canvas tents of the sort used for outdoor weddings stood on the other side of the farmhouse. The waterproof tent flaps were tied open to reveal mosquito netting through which could be seen row after row of long tables upon which sat dozens of computers. Behind the larger pavilions stood a dozen smaller tents, quarters for the NASA support personnel. Despite the early hour, the place bustled with activity.
They parked and were climbing out of the truck when Andy Swearingen, a sandy-blond-haired man in his early twenties, wearing khaki shorts, hiking boots, and a sweatshirt that read ARTEMIS CAVE PROJECT, trotted out to meet them.
“You’re late, boss,” Andy called. “Hey, Cricket.”
Tom saw Cricket’s entire physical attitude change. During the entire drive north she’d been sulking and dismal. Now she blushed and smiled at Andy. Tom felt a twinge of anxiety pulse through him because it dawned on him for the first time that his daughter might have a crush on his assistant and it bothered him. His little girl was becoming a young lady. It would not be long now before she began the process of separation. His family was fragmenting, on the point of disintegration.
“How’s it coming?” Tom managed to say.
“Everything’s right on schedule, but your schedule keeps growing. NASA booked you on the Today show tomorrow morning. Helen Greidel herself is flying in to do interviews.”
Cricket turned and looked at her father with astonishment. “Dad, that’s wild! You’re gonna be on national television!”
“You too, Cricket,” Andy added.
“What?” Cricket cried.
“Greidel’s producers asked that Ms. Alexandra Burke also be available.”
“Me?” Cricket said. “On the Today show? Oh, I don’t know about that.”
Andy leaned over and gave her a big kiss on the cheek. “You’re gonna do great.”
Cricket’s skin turned red with embarrassment and confusion. “I don’t know if I want to do this, Dad.”
Tom sighed. “We need you, Cricket. It’s for the good of the project. It’s good for me, too, okay?”
Cricket stared at her father for a long moment, then nodded. “Okay, Dad. But only for you.”
5:15 A.M.
EDDYVILLE PENITENTIARY
THREE HUNDRED AND TEN miles to the west, the full moon still loomed high in the sky, even as the sun began to rise over Lake Barkley and the long four-story front of the state penitentiary at Eddyville, Kentucky.
More than 150 years before, convicts under the direction of Italian stonemasons erected the prison atop a peninsula that jutted out into the deep waters of the lake. With its limestone ramparts, the battlement treatment along the prison’s roofline, and its six hexagonal gun turrets, the rugged façade suggested not so much a penal institution as a medieval fortress. Indeed, prisoners doing time at Eddyville still referred to the Gothic structure by its nineteenth-century nickname—The Castle.
At that moment, deep within The Castle, a guard stepped into the grid of shadow and light cast by the steel bars of a cage painted a warning red. Lieutenant William “Billy” Lyons stood there for a moment, swigging coffee, his face screwed up in concentration.
“Coming in, Andrews,” he called out.
“Coming in, Lieutenant.”
>
A steel sally door clanged open before him and Lyons stepped through. He was thirty-six, a dark-skinned black man. Six feet tall, 180 pounds with a weight-lifter’s chest, powerful hands, and a boxer’s broken nose, features made all the more imposing by a pair of intelligent, wary eyes.
Inside the cage, three other guards sat on metal chairs around a Formica-topped table, reading the previous day’s edition of the Louisville Courier-Journal. The headline read: CONGRESS FUNDS RETURN TO MOON. A fourth guard stood next to an open metal box attached to the far wall of the cage. Rows of green lights glowed inside the box. Old-fashioned keyholes occupied positions below each light.
The Kentucky penal system is tiered according to the types of criminals and the levels of security they require. The most hardened convicts are sent to Eddyville. Within The Castle itself is a similar tiered system of security units. Lyons looked beyond the guards, out through the back bars of the cage, into the segregation unit home for the worst in the state. The hall, at this early hour, was silent.
“Kind of an odd hour for a visit Lieutenant,” said one of the guards, an older man named Keith Wilcox.
Lyons rubbed his chin and looked away before replying, “We got positive tuberculosis readings. Segregation, lower unit.”
“All of them?” Wilcox said, one eyebrow raised.
“You know the rules,” Lyons said. “If one has it, they all go to Louisville.”
“Don’t tell me we’re the transfer team,” Wilcox grumbled.
“You are,” Lyons said, handing Wilcox a large white canvas bag. Then he turned, hesitated at the chance he was about to take, and nodded to Arnold Jarrett, a beefy guard in his late twenties.
Jarrett threw a switch. The cage’s far sally door slid open. Lyons stepped through, sniffing at the stinging scent of industrial cleansers that tainted the air. Wilcox followed. Like Lyons, Wilcox was dressed in navy-blue pants and a matching short-sleeved shirt. The guard was in his late fifties, with rheumy eyes and busted red veins across his nose and cheeks. Both men wore black soft-soled boots and baseball hats embroidered with the emblem of the Kentucky Department of Corrections.
“Who do you want first?” Wilcox asked.
Lyons ran a shaky finger down a list on his handheld computer. “Kelly,” he said. He highlighted Inmate 3309 on the list and pressed Enter.
Edward Kelly, the screen now read. Convicted 2004, first degree murder, four counts. Sentence: death by electrocution.
Inside the cage, Jarrett pushed a key into the hole under the first green light on the panel’s upper right quadrant. He twisted the key. The green light died. The scarlet lamp beneath turned electric. Out in the segregation unit, the first door rolled back to reveal a cramped cell with a narrow bunk and stainless-steel toilet and sink. There were shelves on the upper wall stocked with dog-eared paperback mystery novels and several on emergency medical techniques. On the bunk lay a swarthy, thick-featured man. Curly brown hair. Wrists and forearms as stout and powerful as bridge cables. Hands huge, with gnarled, meaty fingers. Kelly roused, sat up, looked at the clock on his sink and groused, “What’s this shit? If s three fucking hours to inspection.”
“Out on the line, Kelly,” Lyons said. “You’re being transferred.”
At that, Kelly came fully awake and snapped his head to the right, revealing slate-colored eyes. “No lie? Test came back pos?”
Lyons swallowed hard. “Everyone on the unit’s been exposed. Early-stage TB. Can’t risk the chances of you boys infecting the rest of the population.”
The big guard grew more confident in his deception. He rocked forward, unclasped his hands, pulled out a billy club, and waved it at Kelly. “You get six weeks’ sanitarium time at the hospital prison at Louisville in order to keep our Castle clean. Now out on the line, before I drag you out.”
A trace of a grin crossed Kelly’s face. The convict rolled off the bunk toward the open cell door, provoking an instant change in Wilcox’s level of vigilance. Kelly was of average height and weight, but the way he moved, low and centered, suggested a great ape trolling the jungle. He came out on the line, hooked left, and looked straight ahead.
“Strip, motherfucker,” Lyons said.
Kelly climbed out of the yellow scrub bottoms and top and boxer shorts and left them in a heap on the floor. It was the arms Lyons took note of, abnormally long for Kelly’s chiseled torso, bulging with weighted gangly power, a grappler’s arms. Wilcox snapped on rubber gloves, probed Kelly’s mouth and rectal area, then said, “He’s clean.”
Lyons held out a pair of flip-flops and a bright orange transfer jumpsuit. KENTUCKY DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, INMATE TRANSFER had been stenciled in large black letters across the back and chest of the coverall. After Kelly put the suit on, Wilcox handcuffed the inmate. Then from the canvas mason’s bag the older guard pulled out what looked like the back-support belt weight lifters wear for their workouts—except for the small black box attached to the back of the belt.
“You gotta use that?” Kelly asked as Wilcox strapped the device around his waist.
Lyons waved a black cylindrical device with green buttons and an antenna in Kelly’s face. “Not unless you try to run.”
“C’mon, Lyons, you know I wouldn’t do that,” Kelly replied. “If I’ve told you once, I told you twice, I like it here. Why would I want to leave now?”
Lyons looked away from Kelly’s smirk, trying to make his own face a mask of intense concentration.
“You’re done,” Wilcox said, locking the hasps on the belt. “Stand ahead.”
Lyons glanced at his watch, then called to the bearded guard still sitting at the table inside the cage, “Peterson, get in here. We’ll take them two at a time.”
“Two at a time?” Peterson said. “That’s not protocol, Billy.”
Lyons hated himself for what he was about to do, but he did it anyway. “I don’t give a shit about protocol right now,” he retorted. “Do it.”
Peterson shrugged and came through the sally door toward Lyons, who said, “Wilcox and I handle the searches. You shackle.”
Up and down the unit Lyons saw eyes showing at the windows set in the white cell doors. The entire unit was awake now. Lyons’s job had just become more difficult Jarrett twisted the skeleton key twice. Two green bulbs faded. Two scarlet bulbs lit
First out was a man in his early twenties who looked more like he belonged in a Vanity Fair advertisement or on a lounge chair by the pool at a country club than in a prison cell. He ran delicate fingers through dirty blond hair and winked at Wilcox.
“I was having a lovely dream,” he said. “A blonde. Large breasted and—”
“Shut up and strip,” Wilcox said.
Quentin Mann, Lyons’s computer read. Convicted 2005. Serial sexual assault. Sentence: twenty-five years to life.
“I feels fine,” called out a second man in a sleepy voice that was thick and southern. He slunk out of the cell next to Mann’s. Rawboned, he sported a tattoo of a burning trident spear at his Adam’s apple. Leonard Pate. Convicted 2002. Arson. Five counts. Sentence: thirty-years.
“Test says you’re sick, Pate,” Wilcox replied. “You’re sick.”
“Yeah, right,” Pate drawled. “And next you’ll be telling me the moon man’s not off his rocker. But, what the hell, old Lenny’ll take the change of scenery.”
Lyons, meanwhile, had eased up to the window of the last cell on the unit. Inside, by the glare of a single naked bulb, the guard could make out a poster of the moon taped to the far wall. His eyes went left and right, seeking the cell’s inhabitant. But there was no one on the bunk or on the toilet or at the sink; and for a moment, Lyons almost panicked.
Then a fist smashed into the bulletproof glass. Lyons jumped back. A man appeared at the window: completely hairless, skin so colorless it seemed waxen, several thick swatches of dingy scar running across his neck and cheeks as if he’d been burned at one time. The rest of his facial skin was leached of color. But his eyes glowed like ember
s ready to take fire.
“Let me out of here!” he screamed. “You have no right to hold me like this! It’s a plot to keep me from what’s mine!”
Lyons shivered, then he hit Enter on the computer. Robert Gregor. Incarcerated 2005. Convicted one count first degree murder. Sentence: life.
The lieutenant took a deep breath, then barked, “Gregor! Stand back from the door! You’re being transferred to the hospital unit. I told you it might be coming.”
For a moment, Gregor regarded Lyons with complete and abject hatred. Then he blinked and the incessant twitching at his temples softened. “Transfer?” he said.
Lyons set his teeth and nodded. Gregor stepped back and held up his hands in surrender.
“Let him out,” Lyons called to Jarrett
“You don’t want to wait for backup?” Jarrett asked anxiously.
“No time,” Lyons said.
The white metal door slid open. Gregor weighed barely 135 pounds. Even so, every guard, including Lyons, drew his baton. “Ease out slow, Gregor,” Lyons ordered. “Hands where we can see them. You don’t want to fuck this up. Not now.”
Gregor hesitated, then nodded at the lieutenant, padded out onto the yellow line, and stripped. His skin was so pale it was almost opaque and drawn so tight against his rib cage that to Lyons he appeared to be the victim of some wasting disease. Wilcox searched Gregor, then handed him the orange transfer suit.
“Check his pulse and blood pressure before we put on the belt,” Lyons said. “I don’t want him stroking out on us before we get to Louisville—where the guy should be anyway. I mean, shit, look at him.”
Gregor’s jaw stiffened. From the mason’s bag, Peterson came up with a stethoscope and blood pressure gauge. He went to attach the cuff below Gregor’s left biceps. At his touch, the wan inmate reacted as if he’d been struck with a cattle prod. In one motion, Gregor changed his entire carriage, spun, and rammed his elbow into Peterson’s solar plexus. The guard doubled over. Gregor brought his knee straight up into Peterson’s face. His nose exploded. Two teeth broke free of his gums. Peterson crumpled to the floor.
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