To her side, Kane began a long, low whine.
She turned to the dog.
His tail was now tucked between his back legs. His body trembled, in tune with that whine. His neck was bowed, his head low, his nails dug into the sand—as if his entire body were trying to bottle up a howl from bursting out.
She stared down into the dark tunnel.
What’s going on down there?
(11)
8:03 a.m.
Tucker headed blindly along the tunnel, which descended steeply. He dared not use his penlight. His pistol blasts surely had alerted those down below, but if anyone came up to investigate those shots, he didn’t want his flashlight to give away his presence in the tunnel. He needed every advantage he could muster, especially with the odds being three against one.
As he continued deeper, he held his Desert Eagle pointed forward, running the fingertips of his other hand along one wall to keep his bearings, testing each step ahead of him. He sensed the path was not only descending, but also curving ever clockwise, spiraling toward the heart of the black hill.
Finally, an eerie green glow flowed around the bend ahead.
He stopped, his ears straining for any threat. But by now, the unearthly pressure had dampened his hearing to the point of deafness. His body burned like a torch, making it harder to feel the cold stone under his fingertips. As he moved through the darkness, his vision had begun to dance with flames at the edges, growing ever narrower. It was as if all his senses were being overwhelmed, being shut down as they were overloaded.
Before he lost everything, he continued forward.
He rounded the curve and discovered the source of the eerie emerald sheen. It was simply a dozen plastic glowsticks scattered across the floor of a cave ahead. He paused and stared at the strange tableau illuminated inside.
The cavern walls reflected the wan light and cast it back in brilliant rainbows of fire. The entire chamber, even the curve of the floor, was covered in fire agates, from pebble-sized stones to huge boulders. In a breath, he understood what he was seeing.
It’s a giant geode, lined by opalescent fire agates.
As soon as he thought it, he knew it was wrong.
He felt his assaulted senses spin.
These were not ordinary fire agates.
He remembered Abbie’s description of the ferrimagnetic iron oxide layered throughout those stones, and Landon’s explanation of the true nature of these agates. He gaped out at the expanse of the cave.
This was a geode made up of time crystals.
He feared entering the space, especially considering the state of the bodies inside. Two figures stood upright, visibly shaking, facing a quarter turn to the right, their features frozen and aghast. Tucker recognized the auburn-haired one with the scruff of dark beard from Abbie’s description.
Hawk.
Neither of the men sensed Tucker’s presence, their gazes fixed to the right.
Between them, a third man—gray-haired and ponytailed—knelt on the floor. His back was to whatever the other two men were transfixed by. One of the man’s legs stuck out askew, bent wrong. A pool of blood doused the fires in the stones around him. From the looks of it, he had been shot. Still, the man kept his forehead pressed to the pebbled floor, his arms bound behind him.
It was Jackson Kee.
Tucker edged into the cavern, staying low. “Dr. Kee . . .”
The man looked up, his eyes wild, confused. “Who—?”
Tucker had no time to explain. He didn’t know why the other two men remained frozen, but he recalled the old prospector’s story of being trapped here, held in a hypnagogic state until nightfall, stuck in a waking dream. If the same was going on here now, Tucker intended to take advantage of it. He considered executing the two men as they stood, but that seemed even too cold-blooded for him.
Still, he gripped his pistol.
If anything changes . . .
Breathing hard, still struggling with his senses, he hurried low toward Jackson, judging if he could be moved. Tucker reached the old man, dropped to a knee, and cut the zip ties binding the guy’s wrists.
“Abbie sent me,” Tucker said, hoping that using his granddaughter’s name would help reassure the old man of his intent.
Once free, Jackson grabbed Tucker’s shirt and tugged him lower. “Don’t look.”
He might not have, except for that warning.
He glanced past the old man’s bowed back. Across the way, another arch of sandstone framed a passageway. Tucker had a hard time focusing on it. The fiery refracted light dazzled across the opening. He shook his head, which only stoked his headache. He blinked, trying to clear his pinched vision, only to have it narrow further.
Still, he spotted a body sprawled halfway into the tunnel.
As addled as he was, he had forgotten Hawk had a another teammate. The man lay facedown on the agate floor, his legs still in the cavern, his upper body across the threshold. Only there was no body on that other side—just bones.
As Tucker stared, the skull crumbled to dust as if it were centuries old.
“I tried to stop him,” Jackson said, drawing back Tucker’s attention. The old man waved at his broken leg, shattered by a bullet.
Over by the arch, Tucker spotted an abandoned pistol on the floor, the barrel still smoking. Tucker pictured the gunman diving at that arch, falling across it, his upper body either burning—or maybe aging—to ash and bone, leaving only his legs intact on this side.
“I . . . I think it started when the sunlight struck the hilltop,” Jackson said as Tucker scooped an arm under his shoulders, ready to haul him up. “It felt like a thunderclap inside here, only noiseless but still powerful.”
Tucker didn’t care. Though he suspected Jackson was right. The old prospector had only escaped at nightfall, possibly when the hypnagogic spell broke. Tucker glanced at the two men standing stiffly with horrified expressions. He intended to be long gone before they woke. Once outside, he would call Painter, have the director summon the choppers, and bring Hawk and his teammate to justice.
That was the plan.
He straightened, lifting Jackson who gasped in pain, but didn’t struggle.
“This . . . place,” Jackson panted, perhaps talking to keep from screaming. “It amplifies your fears. Wakes what’s buried deepest.”
Tucker remembered Abbie’s description of the emotion-magnifying effect of Sedona’s vortexes, of her belief that the electromagnetic energies could play havoc with magnetic particles in the brain, addling one’s senses, stoking that lizard part of one’s brain, where the basest emotions were rooted.
“Maybe the Yavapai found this place,” Jackson said. “Used it as a test. To make you face your fears, to control your emotions—or die.” He glanced to the archway, then back again. “You mustn’t go near that portal. Nothing living can survive its energies.”
Wasn’t planning on it.
Tucker turned Jackson toward the exit. Even supported, the old man stumbled, swinging out an arm. He ended up striking the guy next to him, Hawk’s teammate. The man yelled, as if bitten by a snake.
Tucker crouched and lifted his Desert Eagle at the man, fearing Jackson had woken him. But the guy still stared toward the archway, began shambling toward it, moaning.
“Mama, no, wait, Mama . . .”
“You have to stop him,” Jackson said.
But before Tucker could move, the man darted toward the archway, which now shimmered with refracted light, like a poorly tuned television.
As the man neared it, traceries of energy played across his limbs, atop the crown of his head. Then the radio at his hip exploded, violently enough to spin the man, to break the spell. The man’s arms flailed—but it was too late. Momentum cast his form backward across the arch’s threshold. Fiery energies burst around him, consuming him. On the far side, a cloud of dust burst into the far tunnel, along with the rattling cascade of bone.
“Go,” Jackson urged. “It gets worse just after�
�”
Tucker had stared too long.
The pressure on his ears popped, his tunnel vision expanded into full technicolor. He heard the thumping of a helicopter. Men screaming. He smelled the sulfur of gun smoke, the reek of burning flesh. His cheeks were frozen, traced by hot tears. He stared at the mountaintop below. Men lay broken on the rock; blood steamed on patches of snow. A pit smoked from where the IED bomb had exploded, ambushing the team. He heard the scream of Taliban soldiers, rallying and triumphant. He watched them run to the top of the slope, heads swaddled in black, shaking rifles, several firing at the retreating helicopter.
Others chased down a limping dog, who scrambled one way, then the other, seeking a way to escape.
“Abel,” he screamed, then and now.
The dog stopped and stared up at him, gazes locking.
Abel . . .
The dog lifted its head and howled forlornly, begging for help, to not be left behind, to not be abandoned. Abel howled again, shattering Tucker’s heart into pieces.
But another heard it, too.
* * *
Kane’s ears prick higher.
A breath ago, he heard a name cried out, one that woke old pain. Still, he held his position, following his packmate’s last command: Stay on Guard.
He obeys.
Still, he listens, less with his ears than with his heart. Here in this strange place, where the air buzzes with unseen wasps, where his fur shivers from hidden winds, the long tether that binds him to another has grown far stronger.
He feels another’s anguish, he tastes fear, he smells fire and smoke.
Then faint, but as real as the rock under his pads, a howl echoes to him—reaching not his ears, but some place far deeper, to bonds and memories buried in his bones, in each breath, in every beat of his heart. He remembers nestling with his brother in the greater warmth of their mother, bellies full of milk. He again romps, chasing the other’s tail. Shoulder to shoulder, they sit stiffly in training, ready to prove themselves, to be rewarded. They sometimes fight, more often lick each other’s wounds. Then two become three, and all was even better. Three run courses together, race across deserts, through forests. They hunt and play and feast. They pile together in a rucksack, each warming the other, breaths shared—until three became one.
Now, another howl.
It can no longer be ignored.
It shatters the command that binds Kane to this spot.
With every fiber of muscle, he leaps to bring them all together again.
For three to become one once more.
(12)
8:08 a.m.
Abbie gasped as Kane burst from his tense crouch and lunged into the tunnel. Startled, she fell back a step. There had been no warning. She had never suspected the dog could move so fast—there one second, gone the next.
A moment ago, she had heard some faint yelling, maybe a name being called out. She had shared a look with Landon across the archway, unsure what to do. There had been no gunshots. Still, fearing the worst, they had retreated a few steps from the opening. Landon had lifted his rifle to his shoulder; she had raised her Glock.
Then the dog had burst away.
Abbie stared where Kane had been steadfastly posted. “He must’ve heard something,” she said to Landon. “If he broke command, then something’s seriously wrong.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I’m going to trust Kane.” She shifted forward. “If the dog thinks Tucker, maybe my grandfather, are in danger, I believe him.”
“What’s the plan then?”
“I’m done waiting.” She headed into the tunnel. “I’m backing Kane up.”
(13)
8:09 a.m.
Inside the helicopter, arms held Tucker and restrained him from leaping out of the chopper. He fought to be free, to go to Abel’s aid.
“Don’t get any closer,” someone warned, sounding distant and faint, but familiar.
Tucker’s shoulders were strangely weighted down. He heard pained gasps in his ear. He shoved it all away. A body crashed heavily to the side with a cry of agony, then another warning.
“Stay back . . . please . . .”
He ignored this.
I can’t leave. I won’t. Not again.
With this thought, he was suddenly out of the helicopter, standing on the mountaintop. His boots crunched through snow. Frigid winds whipped and snapped at his uniform. Across the way, Abel fought to escape the gunfire. A knife flashed. The dog dodged at the last second, limping, getting weaker.
Hold on, Abel. I’m coming.
He took another step, then another.
He lifted the pistol in his hand, momentarily confused.
Where’s my rifle?
Then his pant leg was grabbed. He was tugged back, nearly losing his footing. He batted at what held him. But his fingers found a cold nose, soft fur. He heard a sharp whine. Here was a warning he could never ignore.
Kane . . .
Still, he kept his gaze fixed on Abel’s struggle to reach the two of them. Tucker continued forward, dragging Kane with him—but Kane held tight. The dog braced all four paws, becoming an anchor.
Again a whine, more urgent, full of warning.
Tucker finally glanced down to his leg, to his partner, and the world fractured around him.
He saw Kane clamped hard to his pant leg, but Tucker was no longer in uniform. He wore jeans and a khaki jacket. To the side, he spotted a form crumpled in agony on the floor, a leg broken under him, an arm reaching toward him.
Jackson . . .
Still, he heard the screams of dying men, the ululating cries of savage triumph, the beat of rotors. He smelled smoke and blood and bodies. He turned enough to see Abel fighting to escape, to reach him, every step agony, every movement desperate.
Tucker turned to face that which wounded him most.
Abel stared back at him, barking, yelping, his gaze mournful.
Kane tugged at his leg. As Tucker took another step, Kane refused to let go, ready to be dragged wherever Tucker went.
For a moment, trapped in this hypnagogic state, Tucker saw both worlds, past and present, real and not. It was like when he ran with Kane, seeing simultaneously through both his eyes and his partner’s.
Tucker had been trained for this, his brain wired for it.
He knew what he had to do.
He could not doom Kane, but he could not abandon Abel.
So, he stood his ground.
Jackson had said nothing living could pass through that portal, that view into a past that his fevered brain had conjured. He remembered the radio exploding earlier, casting that other man through the fiery curtain. It wasn’t just the living, anything powered could not withstand the maelstrom of energies focused there, which pretty much encompassed all living things.
What are we but biological machines, as electrical as any radio.
No, Tucker knew what he had to do.
Toss a rock, something inert.
Only with a lot more force.
He aimed his pistol at the portal, toward where Abel struggled. He fired again and again and again. He watched one Taliban soldier drop, then another. A black-clothed figure came at Abel with a raised dagger, a shout on his lips. Tucker cut it off with a round through his throat. By now, the other Taliban soldiers froze and looked around, unsure where the hidden sniper was shooting from. Spooked, they fled in all directions.
Until only Abel stood there, panting, hurt, but alive.
The dog stared at Tucker, still begging to be reunited.
Kane let go of his pant leg and came around to Tucker’s side. A whine flowed from the dog—not in warning now, but in the excited whimper of a wolf greeting a long-lost member of the pack.
Kane stepped toward his brother, but Tucker dropped to a knee and hugged Kane, holding him fast.
“He’s free,” Tucker whispered in Kane’s ear.
We all are.
Tucker held tight to Kane, feeling the heat of his
partner’s body. He stared at Abel, the dog’s form already turning ghostly. He stared one last time into Abel’s eyes.
“Run, my good boy . . . run until you’re home again.”
Abel acknowledged his words with a toss of his head, then turned and hobbled away. He slowly gained speed with each step, until he was racing—and vanished over the mountain’s edge and was gone.
Tucker stood up, staring after him.
Kane barked after Abel, as if cheering his brother onward.
The loud bark finally broke the spell’s hold over Tucker. The glamour vanished all around him until there was only the radiant cavern and a sandstone arch framing a dark and empty tunnel.
Unfortunately, the spell did not only break for Tucker.
A gasp rose to his left.
He turned.
Hawk stumbled away from him, his eyes still haunted and wild. The bastard swung his assault rifle toward Tucker and Kane. Tucker lifted his Desert Eagle, but the weapon’s breach had sprung. He had emptied his pistol defending Abel.
Tucker didn’t regret it.
Hawk leveled the rifle and fired.
Tucker twisted around. He had failed to save Abel years ago. He refused to lose Kane now. He swept down and covered Kane with his own body. Gunfire blasted, deafening in the cavern.
But he felt no impact, no fiery pain.
Instead, rounds strafed over him, sparking and ricocheting off the agate on the far side. He glanced back—in time to see Hawk crashing backward, half his face gone.
Tucker turned fully around.
Abbie stood at the threshold to the cavern, a smoking pistol in her hand.
(14)
8:11 a.m.
“That’s for Uncle Oro,” Abbie said.
She lowered her Glock and stepped into the cavern.
Landon came up from behind and joined her. He took in the room, then stiffened, and rushed past her. He dashed over to where her grandfather lay on his side on the floor, propped up on one arm.
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