The Devil Colony (43 page)

Rifles were raised. Rounds cracked against the windshield.

From the sentry tower, someone fired a rocket-propelled grenade, but in his haste, the shot went wide, blasting through the fencing to the side.

“Hang on!” Gray called.

He didn’t slow, trusting the soldiers to leap out of the way in time.

They did.

The Humvee’s armored grille hit the gates and bulled through with a screech of torn fencing. Then they were flying down Gold Vault Road. Rifle fire peppered the rear of the truck.

“They’ll have birds in the air in less than five minutes,” Monk said.
Birds
being Apache helicopter gunships. “It should take them longer to mobilize a more significant armored threat. But we could get hit by—”

A sharp whistling cut through the engine’s roar.

“—mortars,” Monk finished.

The rocket shot past their hood and exploded in the neighboring field, casting up a fountain of grass, dirt, and rock. Smoke billowed across the road.

Gray roared through it and quickly reached the end of the road. But instead of turning onto Bullion Boulevard, he drove straight across the street, bounced across a ditch, and crashed through another fence, clipping a sign that read
THORNE PARK
. He trundled overland across a field dotted by woods. The Humvee’s wide tires trenched deep tracks. He headed south through the park, aiming for the Dixie Highway that ran alongside the base.

Another rocket exploded into an oak tree, shattering it into flaming splinters. The Humvee smashed through the remains with a great wash of fire and smoke, blinding them all.

Then they were past it.

“That one was closer,” Monk said.

“You think?” Seichan asked sarcastically.

“They may not even be trying to hit us, only slow us down.” Gray yanked the wheel and sent the vehicle into a slightly new trajectory, trying to make them a harder target if he was wrong.

“I see lights rising from the airfield,” Seichan warned.

“Maybe that’s why they’re trying to delay us,” Monk realized aloud. “They’re sending out the gunships.”

Gray sped faster. They needed to get clear of this base and into civilian territory before serious firepower was employed. If they could escape from this place, the military would be confined to tracking them from the air, utilizing civilian police forces on the ground.

A line of lights appeared through the trees, moving slowly, car headlamps marking the Dixie Highway. They were almost there. He floored the accelerator.

“Here come the helicopters!” Seichan called out.

The Humvee rocketed toward the highway, churning mud and weeds. Then they hit the slope of the highway embankment, shooting up over the gravel and concrete apron. Gray looked for a break in the stream of car lights, found it, and skidded the massive vehicle around on its side, fishtailing into traffic.

Horns bleated in protest. Tires squealed, smoking rubber on asphalt.

A small SUV bumped their rear.

Gray did not slow. He gunned the engine and set off down the highway in a wild, careening course, blaring his horn to help clear the way. The small town of Radcliff appeared as a sea of lights ahead. He raced toward it, barreling at twice the speed limit as the highway became a road at the city’s edge.

“We got company!” Seichan yelled.

A brilliant light speared the darkness behind them, reflecting from the truck’s mirrors. It was the spotlight from a helicopter sweeping down the highway toward them.

“Take the next turn!” Monk yelled.

Gray trusted him and swung around the corner onto a narrow street, not bothering to slow. Seichan slid across the backseat.

Fourplexes and taller apartment buildings lined both sides of the avenue, likely off-base housing for military personnel. The tight row of buildings offered them a temporary reprieve, blocking them from the helicopter’s view.

But that wouldn’t last long.

“There!” Monk said, and pointed. “I saw the sign from the road.”

Up ahead, a neon advertisement slowly turned atop a tall pole.

That would do.

It was another necessity around off-base housing.

Gray swung into the parking lot of an all-night automated car wash. Individual enclosed bays with coin-operated hoses and vacuums lined one side. He swung into one of the bays, pulling fully under the enclosure, hiding them from sight by air.

“Bail out,” Gray ordered.

He grabbed the gold plate. Monk and Seichan snatched up their rifles and some extra ammunition they’d found inside the Humvee. They heard the
whump-whump
of searching helicopters and stared skyward. Three helicopters patrolled the town, sweeping the streets with their searchlights. Gray and the others had to be out of here before roadblocks locked the place down.

There was another patron of the car wash who was also watching the air show.

Monk crossed to him, a tattooed and pierced kid in a dirty T-shirt with a Harley emblem and ragged jeans.

Monk pointed his rifle.

Wide-eyed, the kid stared from the weapon to Monk’s face and said, “Shit.” He pointed to an older, rust-pocked Pontiac Firebird and backed away, sliding a bit in the suds. “Listen, man. Keys are in the car.”

Monk pointed to the Humvee. “So are ours. Feel free to take it.”

The kid did not seem so inclined. He was no fool. He had taken stock of the situation.

Gray hurried to the Firebird, threw the priceless plate in the trunk, and got behind the wheel. Keys hung from the ignition, along with a silver skull-shaped fob. He hoped that wasn’t a bad omen.

The others piled in, with Seichan taking the front passenger seat this time. Monk clambered into the back. A minute later, they were crossing out of the city limits. Gray had them yank the batteries from their cell phones, to keep anyone from tracking them. He couldn’t take any chances, not with the treasure that was sitting in the trunk.

Before pulling his battery, he noted an unopened voice mail from his parents’ home number. He didn’t have time to deal with it at the moment. He also didn’t want to risk drawing undue attention to himself and the others by calling his parents. Besides, he had supplied his mother with a list of emergency numbers. That should hold them for a while.

Eventually Gray knew that the three of them would have to buy disposable phones, something that couldn’t be connected to them, in order to reach Sigma and determine the best course of action from this point. But for now they had to keep moving, keep under the radar.

With all their electronic tails severed, Gray headed due south, using a map he purchased with cash from a gas station. He edged his speed up along the back roads, avoiding major thoroughfares, eking out as much power as the old V-8 engine could muster. The only trail he left behind was oily smoke rising from his tailpipe, coming from a bad cylinder head.

At least he hoped that was the only trail.

As he drove, the tiny silver skull kept knocking against the steering wheel column, as if trying to warn him.

But of what?

Chapter 29

May 31, 6:43
P.M.
Beneath the Arizona desert

It’ll be okay . . .

Down on one knee, Hank Kanosh patted Kawtch’s flanks, trying to calm the dog. The explosions a moment ago had set them both to trembling. That and the cold chill of the icy tomb. With only the one flashlight, he sat in a solitary pool of light. The dark tomb loomed over his shoulder as he stared at the tunnel opening.

What is happening up there?

He should never have agreed to stay down here.

Kawtch burst up from his haunches to his paws, hackles bristling. A low growl of warning emanated from his throat. Then Hank heard it, too. Muffled voices, faint and growing louder, echoed out of the tunnel.

Who is coming? Friend or foe?

Then the scraping of boots sounded—and a small shape slid on his backside out of the icy passageway. The limber form bounded to his feet. Kawtch barked a greeting while Hank backed a wary step until his mind made sense of the newcomer, recognizing him.

“Jordan?”

“Get back!” the young man said. He ran up, grabbed Hank by the arm, and hauled him away from the tunnel.

“What’s going—?”

Painter and Kowalski fell out of the opening next.

They split in opposite directions, diving away.

Then an impossible sight.

From the mouth of the passageway, a massive black worm extruded into the cavern, shooting all the way to the ice-encrusted ruins. The tubular shape quickly grew misshapen, melting, sighing out with a sulfurous steam. A large bubble burst, spattering out hotter, molten material from the interior.

Mud.

More of the thickening goop poured out of the tunnel, piling and worming into the space, building higher and higher, continually burbling outward in surges and belches of half-molten mud.

Painter joined Hank and Jordan while Kowalski skirted around the cooling edge.

“The enemy sealed us in,” Painter explained, gasping a bit, holding his side. He waved them all farther back. “The explosion cracked through the cavern wall, unleashing a lake of flaming mud.”

Jordan rubbed his arms against the cold chill.

“We have to keep moving.” Painter eyed the mountain building behind them. “The cold down here is the only thing that saved us. It’s cooling the mud, turning it to sludge, forming a semiplug in the tunnel. But we can’t count on it holding. The lake building above will eventually melt its way down here, or the mounting pressure will blast the plug out. Either way, we don’t want to be here when that happens.”

Hank agreed. He stared at the Anasazi tomb. The dead souls here would finally get a proper interment, buried in more than just ice.

Jordan asked an important question. He tried to sound as brave as the others, but a squeak to his voice betrayed his terror. “Where can we go?”

“This must be a huge cavern system,” Painter said. “So for now we keep moving.”

Making the necessity for this abundantly clear, at that moment a great gout of fresh mud burst out of the tunnel, swamping across the cavern, steaming, bubbling with gas—before cooling. As they backed away, more and more hot mud flowed into the cavern, flooding in faster.

Painter pointed to one of the tunnels—the largest—that exited the cave. “Go!”

They fled at a reckless clip. Painter took the lead with a flashlight; Kowalski kept behind them with another. The tunnel ran deeper underground, still treacherously icy. Hank pictured the ancient flood that had drowned the Anasazi’s hidden settlement, imagining it draining away down this very tunnel, eventually turning to ice.

Jordan ran a hand along the low ceiling. “I think we’re in an old lava tube. This could keep going down and down forever.”

“That’s not good,” Painter said. “We need to find a way
up
. The mud will continue to drain deeper. We have to get clear of its path.”

“And we’d better find that way fast!” Kowalski called from the back.

Hank looked over his shoulder, but Kowalski flashed his beam down. It took a breath for Hank to note the water trickling underfoot now, pouring down from above. Kawtch’s paws splashed in the thin stream. The mud must have reached this tunnel’s mouth, melting the ice above and sending it flowing after them.

Painter set a faster pace.

After another ten minutes—which seemed more like an hour—they finally reached the tube’s end.

“Oh no,” Hank moaned, stepping next to Painter.

The tunnel ended high up a cliff wall. Painter pointed his light over the edge. They couldn’t even see the bottom of the precipitous drop, but a gurgling rush of water was echoing upward. Directly ahead, across an eight-foot gap, stood the opposite cliff. The lava tube continued on that far side. It was like some mighty god had taken a giant cleaver and split this section of the earth, cutting the tunnel in half.

“It’s a slip fault,” Painter said. “We’ll have to jump. It’s not that far. With a running start, we should be able to dive into that other tunnel.”

“Are you mad?” Hank asked.

“It looks worse than it is.”

Kowalski sided with Hank. “Bullshit. My eyesight’s not that bad.”

“I can do it,” Jordan said, and waved everyone back. “I’ll go first.”

“Jordan . . .” Hank cautioned.

“It’s not like we have any choice,” the young man reminded him.

No one could argue with that.

They backed up the tunnel and gave him enough room for a running start.

“Careful,” Hank said, patting Jordan on the shoulder.

He gave them a thumbs-up—then ran low, splashing in the growing stream, and leaped headlong across the gap. Like a young muscular arrow, he shot straight through the air and dove cleanly into the far opening, sliding on his belly across the icy bottom of the next tube. He vanished for a bit—then popped back.

“It’s really not that bad,” he said, panting, wearing a huge smile.

Easy for him to say . . .

“I’ll go next,” Painter said. “Once I’m there, Kowalski, you throw me the dog.”

Kowalski looked at Kawtch; the dog looked at the big man.

Neither looked happy about that idea.

After a bit of maneuvering, Painter ran and made the leap as smoothly as Jordan.

Kowalski then picked up Kawtch, slinging him between his legs. The dog wiggled until Hank got him to calm down with a pat and whispered reassurances.

“Sheesh, Doc. What are you feeding this guy?”

“Just be careful,” Hank said, holding a hand to his throat.

Kowalski stepped to the edge of the drop-off, bent deep at the waist—then heaved upward. Kawtch yelped in surprise, legs splaying out like a flying squirrel. Painter leaned out and caught the dog cleanly. They both fell back into the tunnel amid a rout of barking protest.

Hank choked out his relief—until Kowalski turned to him.

“That means you’re next.”

He swallowed and shook his head. “I don’t know if I can.”

“It’s that or I throw you across like your dog. Your pick, Doc.”