The Devil Colony
Page 23
No hope there.
With everything they needed, Monk and Gray kicked out of the open hatch and into the twilight waters. Sun and air were far overhead. They’d never make it to the surface on their own, especially not in time for any hope of resuscitating Ollie. But Gray owed the old man his life. He intended to return the favor.
Gray passed his rubber package to Monk. Air bubbled from his friend’s lips as his prosthetic hand clamped hard to the rope handle dangling from the cube. He read the agony in Monk’s eyes, imagined he looked the same. If the cold didn’t kill them, the lack of air soon would.
Gray grasped Monk’s belt with one arm, ready to hug Ollie between them. But first he reached and tugged the cord on the compressed air cartridge alongside the cube.
With one pull, the Rapid Deployment Craft inflated, swelling open overhead into a yellow life raft. Normally, RDCs were tossed out of aircraft to drowning sailors. Gray hoped that putting one to this new use would rescue them. The raft’s buoyancy immediately began tugging them upward—at first slowly, then more and more rapidly.
In a matter of seconds, they were rocketing through the water.
Gray held tightly to Monk and Ollie as they flew toward the surface. The waters grew rapidly lighter around them. Gray relieved his screaming need for oxygen by letting air escape his chest, blowing out, tricking his lungs into thinking he was about to inhale.
He hoped it wasn’t just a trick.
His vision narrowed from lack of oxygen, darkening his view, making it hard for him to tell how much farther they had to go.
Then, like a cork from a champagne bottle, they shot out of the water. The raft leaped free, clearing the waves, tossing them high. They all flew, crashing back to the sea. Gray managed to keep his grip on Ollie. Monk kept hold of the raft.
Gray sputtered, gasping, coughing out seawater. Monk towed the raft to his side, a tiny rescue lamp blinking brightly from its bow. They clambered out of the icy waters, limbs shaking, teeth chattering. Gray sprawled Ollie across the raft while Monk quickly checked him.
“Not breathing, but I got a weak pulse.”
Monk rolled the man over and began pumping his chest. It was difficult on the floating, rubbery surface. Still, water flowed from Ollie’s lips and nose. Once he was satisfied, Monk flipped him back over. The old man’s skin looked a frightening grayish purple. But Monk’s medical training would not let him give up. He began mouth-to-mouth.
Gray offered a silent prayer heavenward. He owed Ollie a debt. And it had already cost them too much to come to this damned island. Gray shrugged off the backpack he’d stolen from the civilian member of the commando team. He let it drop to the raft. He’d recovered it from the helicopter. He wasn’t about to leave it behind. It was all they had to show for this mission.
But at what price?
He searched the waters around the raft. He pictured Seichan being ripped away from him, vanishing out of the cabin in a swirling tempest. He didn’t hold out much hope. She couldn’t survive more than a few minutes in these icy waters.
Where could she go?
Gray looked around, but thick smoke covered the seas south of the island, swallowing everything up. He could see no more than a handful of yards in any direction. The air reeked of burning brimstone and salt, but at least for the moment it was warm.
Overhead, the sun was a dull orange blur. Brighter by far was the nearby island. The ruins of Ellirey lay only a couple of hundred yards away. It was a dark shadow topped by a crown of fire. Flames splashed high into the air while ribbons of glowing lava flowed down its sides. Steam rimmed the broken shores, marking the spot where molten rock seeped into the icy waters.
All the while the world rumbled and roared.
They were still far too close to the island.
This became clear as a deafening boom sounded, accompanied by a fountain of fire bursting from the island’s heart. Smoke swirled more fiercely while a cloud of fine hot ash began to rain out of the sky, sizzling into the water, stinging any exposed skin. Large rocks struck the water, unseen through the smoke, but heard as loud splashes.
A smaller cough drew Gray’s attention.
Ollie heaved and coughed again. More water spilled from his lips and nose. Monk knelt back, looking relieved. He helped the old man sit up. The caretaker stared blearily around him.
His voice was hoarse. “I knew I’d always end up in helviti.”
Monk clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re not in hell yet, old man.”
Ollie glanced around. “You sure?”
Flakes of ash began to fall more heavily, drifting like fiery snow, beginning to cover the water in a fine layer. A large blazing cinder struck one of the boat’s pontoons. Before it could be brushed away, it melted through the polyurethane surface. Air hissed out, escaping rapidly, deflating that side.
“We need to get farther away from the island,” Gray warned. “Out of this ash cloud. We’ll have to paddle by hand.”
“Or we can just hitch a ride,” Monk said, pointing behind Gray.
The loud burst of an air horn split across the water.
Gray turned. The bow of a large boat pushed out of the smoke and headed their way, a ghostly but familiar apparition.
It was Captain Huld’s fishing trawler.
The boat slid alongside them, expertly piloted by Huld’s son.
The captain called from the open deck, wearing a wide grin. “What the fjandanum did you do to my island?”
Huld met them at the stern deck and helped them aboard. Ollie, still weak, had to be carried, slung between Monk and Gray.
“A bunch of drowned rats, the lot of you,” Huld scolded. “Come. We’ve got blankets and dry clothes below.”
“How did you find us?” Gray asked.
“Spotted that little blinkin’ light of yours.” He pointed to the emergency LED at the raft’s bow. “Plus we couldn’t leave the area till we found you. She wouldn’t have it.”
From the wheelhouse, a lithe form limped out, wrapped in a blanket, her left leg bandaged from calf to midthigh.
Seichan . . .
Gray came close to dropping Ollie in a sudden desire to rush forward.
Monk swore in surprise.
“Darnedest thing,” Huld said. “That same pod of orcas we saw earlier has been hugging our sides since the fireworks began, like frightened kids hanging on to our skirts. Then suddenly the whole lot of ’em goes and sinks away. Thought they were abandoning us. Only half a minute later, they pop back up with your woman, nearly drowned, and nosed her over to the boat.”
Gray knew that the term killer in killer whales was a misnomer. In the wild, no orca had ever attacked a human. In fact, just as it was with their close relative, the dolphin, there were reported cases of orcas protecting humans in the water.
It seemed the playful pod—fed and respected by Huld—had returned that affection today.
Seichan hobbled over to join them, looking more angry than relieved. “I could’ve made it to the surface on my own.”
Huld shrugged. “They did not think so. And they know these waters better than you, my stúlka.”
She scowled.
“I’ve got Ollie,” Monk said, shifting the caretaker’s weight. “I need to get him somewhere warm, do a more thorough exam. He swallowed a lot of seawater.”
They all had, but Gray urged Monk to do as he’d suggested.
Huld went to help his son, but not before passing on some news. “Been listening to the shortwave. Word is this eruption’s gone ahead and triggered some magma blowouts along the rift that splits the seabed here. Before all is through, we may have another island or two.”
With those dire words, Huld left them alone on the deck.
Seichan stood with her arms crossed. She wouldn’t look at Gray and stared out to sea. The boat trudged away from the blasted island, slowly drawing clear of the ash cloud.
“I thought you were dead,” Seichan said. Her voice was a whisper. She shook her head.
“But I . . . I couldn’t give up.”
He moved next to her. “I’m glad you didn’t. You saved our lives by making Huld stay.”
She looked at him, searching his face, seeing if he was being flippant. Whatever she found there made her turn swiftly away, but not before Gray noted a rare flicker of uncertainty in her eyes.
She wrapped her blanket more snugly around her. Neither of them spoke for several breaths.
“Have you searched the bag yet?” she asked.
He was momentarily confused until she glanced over to the backpack he’d abandoned on the deck.
“No,” he said. “I haven’t had a chance.”
She lifted an eyebrow at him.
She was right. Now was as good a time as any.
Gray crossed to the bag, knelt next to it, and opened the main compartment. Seichan hovered over him.
He sifted through the sodden contents. There wasn’t much: a couple of wet T-shirts, pens, a spiral notepad whose pages had become mush. But buried within the nest of shirts, perhaps meant to cushion it, was something sealed in a plastic Ziploc bag. Gray pulled it free.
“What is it?”
“Looks like an old book . . . maybe a journal.” Gray unzipped the bag and slipped out the contents.
It was a small leather-bound volume, brittle with age. He flipped the book open carefully. A meticulous handwritten script filled the pages, along with drawings that had been done with an equally precise hand. The book definitely appeared to be a journal or diary.
He scanned the writing.
“French,” he said.
He turned to the first page, where a set of initials was floridly etched.
“A.F.,” he read aloud, and stared up at Seichan.
They both knew those initials, the author of this journal.
Archard Fortescue.
Chapter 23
May 31, 10:12 A.M.
Flagstaff, Arizona
“Shouldn’t be much farther,” Hank Kanosh said from the backseat.
Lost in thought, Painter stared out the window at the passing scenery of the high desert. The midday sun had beat the landscape into shades of crimson and gold, broken by patches of sagebrush and stands of prickly yucca trees.
Kowalski sped along Highway 89. They were headed northeast out of Flagstaff, having landed in Arizona only fifteen minutes ago after a short hop in a private charter from an airfield outside of Price, Utah. Their destination—Sunset Crater National Park—lay forty minutes from the city.
“We’re looking for Fire Road 545,” Hank said. The professor’s dog sat at the other end of the SUV’s bench seat, his nose glued to the glass after he’d spotted a wild hare bounding away from the highway. The dog was now on high alert. “The fire road’s a thirty-five-mile loop off the highway that passes through the park and a slew of ancient Pueblo ruins. Nancy Tso will meet us at the visitors’ center near the park’s entrance.”
Their contact, Nancy Tso, was a Navajo woman, but also a National Park Service ranger. Earlier, Hank had made a few discreet calls, channeling through his contacts, and discovered the names of those who knew the region the best. On the flight here, Painter had read up as well as he could about the area. They all had. Kat had sent reams of information from D.C., but Painter preferred firsthand knowledge. The plan was to interview the guide, to see what they could learn.
Still, Painter had a hard time focusing. He had heard from Kat about the events in Iceland, listened to radio reports as news coverage of the volcanic eruptions spread. The entire archipelago south of Iceland’s main coast was steaming and quaking. In addition to the one on the island, two submarine volcanoes had begun to boil the seas, spewing lava along the seabed and building steadily higher.
A giant volcanic plume was headed for Europe. Airports were already grounding planes. Gray, though, had gotten out ahead of it. He was already in the air, winging his way back to Washington with the prize in hand: an old journal belonging to the French scientist Archard Fortescue.
But would it shed any light on their predicament?
“There’s the exit,” Hank said, leaning forward and pointing.
“I see it,” Kowalski said sourly. “I’m not blind.”
Hank slipped back into his seat. They were all getting testy from lack of sleep. Silence settled over the vehicle as they took the exit off the highway and drove onto a two-lane road. There was no mistaking their destination as they continued the last few miles.
Sunset Crater appeared ahead of them. The thousand-foot-tall cinder cone rose above islands of pine and aspen. The cratered mountain was the youngest and least eroded cinder cone of the San Francisco volcanic fields. Over six hundred volcanoes of different shapes and sizes spread outward from here, most of them dormant, but beneath this chunk of the Colorado Plateau, magma still simmered close to the surface.
As they drove, Painter imagined the earthquakes and lava bombs that must have shaken the region a thousand years ago. He pictured the storm of flaming cinders and swirling clouds of burning ash, setting fire to the world, turning day to night. In the end, the ash field covered eight hundred square miles.
As they drew closer, the singular feature of this cratered mountain—in fact, the reason it had earned its name—became apparent. In the sunlight, the crown of the cone glowed a ruddy crimson, streaked and pooled with splashes of brilliant yellow, purple, and emerald, as if the view of the crater were forever frozen at sunset. But Painter had read enough to know there was nothing magical about this effect. The coloring came from a violent spewing of red oxidized iron and sulfur scoria that had settled around the cone’s summit during its last eruption.
From the backseat, Hank offered a less geological viewpoint. “I’ve been reading the Hopi legends about this place. This was a sacred mountain to the Indians of this region. They believed angry gods once destroyed an evil people here with fire and molten rock.”
“That doesn’t sound like a legend,” Painter said. “It pretty much matches the story told by Jordan’s grandfather—and for that matter, even the history of the place. The volcano erupted here around 1064 AD, about the same time that the Anasazi vanished.”
“True. But what I find most interesting is that the same Hopi legend goes on to warn that the people who died here are still here, that they remain as spiritual guardians of the place. Which, of course, makes me wonder what still needs guarding here.”
Painter stared at the red cone, pondering the same mystery. Jordan Appawora’s grandfather had hinted that something lay hidden here, something that could shed light on the ancient people, the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev—Hank’s mythical lost tribe of Israelites.
Kowalski pointed ahead as they passed through the gates of the national park. “Is that our lady?”
Painter sat straighter. A slim young woman climbed out of a white Jeep Cherokee equipped with a blue light bar on top. She wore a starched gray shirt with a badge affixed to it, along with green slacks, black boots, and a matching service belt, including a holstered sidearm. As she stepped clear of the vehicle, she pulled on a broad-brimmed campaign hat and crossed toward the passenger side of their vehicle once it came to a stop.
Kowalski let out a low whistle of appreciation.
“I don’t think your girlfriend back in D.C. would approve of that,” Painter warned.
“We got an agreement. I’m allowed to look, just not touch.”
Painter should have scolded him for his behavior, but in the end he couldn’t disagree with the man’s assessment of the park ranger. Still, as striking as the ranger was, she didn’t hold a candle to Lisa. He had spoken to his girlfriend an hour ago, assuring her that everything was okay. She had hurried to Sigma command, joining Kat as this situation escalated.
As the park ranger reached their car, Painter rolled down his window. She leaned toward his door. Her skin was a coppery mocha, her eyes a dark caramel, framed by long black hair done up in a braid down her back.
“Ranger Tso?” he asked.
It seemed her instincts were as refined as her looks. Then again, park rangers had to wear a lot of hats, juggling duties that varied from overseeing national resources to thwarting illegal activities of every sort. They were firemen, police officers, naturalists, and historical preservationists all rolled up into one—and all too often, psychiatrists, too, as they did their best to protect the resources from the visitors, the visitors from the resources, and the visitors from one another.
She pointed to a neighboring lot. “Park over there. Then tell me what this is all really about.”
Kowalski obeyed. As he turned into the parking lot, he glanced to Painter and mouthed the word wow.
Again, Painter couldn’t disagree.
In short order, they were all marching down a trail, gravel grinding underfoot. As it was midweek and midday, they had the path to themselves. They climbed toward the crater, passing through a sparse pine forest, along a route marked as LAVA FLOW TRAIL. Wildflowers sprouted in the sunnier stretches, but most of the path was crumbling pumice and cinders from an ancient flow. They passed a few spatter cones, known as hornitos or “little ovens” in Spanish, marking where old bubbles of lava burst forth, forming minivolcanoes. There were also strange eruptions from cracks—called “squeeze-ups”—where sheets of rising lava hardened and curled into massive flowerlike sculptures. But the main attraction was the cone itself, climbing higher and higher before their eyes. Up close, the mineral show was even more impressive as the lower slope’s dark gray cinders rose up into a spectacular display of brilliant hues, reflecting every bit of sunlight.
“This looped trail is only one mile long,” their guide warned. “You have my attention for exactly that length of time.”