"You've got to be kidding."
"They promised we'd have our answers in under twenty-four hours. That's something, right?"
"I suppose."
"You just have to learn to relax a little. These things have been in the ground for how many hundreds of years? It's not like they're just going to walk away now."
"You're right, of course...."
"But?"
Elliot bit her lip and contemplated how to formulate her thoughts well enough to express what was troubling her. If the devil was in the details, then there had to be the faded, windblown impressions of cloven hooves everywhere.
"But there are just a lot of little things, inconsistencies, nothing I can put a finger on."
"Well... If there's something to be found, I'm sure you'll find it," Mondragon said. "I have faith in you. After all, you learned from the master."
He winked at her and walked back to where the two girls crouched over the grid. Kneeling between them, he demonstrated the proper way to excavate by level rather than by working outward from the blanket, which appeared to have taken on the rounded shape of the crown of a skull. Heaven forbid they tear the bundle or crack the cranium--
Elliot's brow furrowed.
She pictured the first mummy inside the tent. Was it possible?
Striking off toward the tent, she passed the others without a backwards glance. Her walk turned to a jog, and the next thing she knew she was bursting through the flaps and sliding down into the hole. She leaned forward until her face was only inches from the mummy's head and began combing through the hair with her fingertips.
"Jesus," she whispered, jerking her hands back and wiping them on her pants.
The long strands were a uniform jet black, with the exception of roughly a quarter inch at the base of each hair, which was just a subtle shade lighter.
X
Denver International Airport
Denver, Colorado
The small white jet had been fueled and ready when Carver arrived, the pilot and copilot prepared to taxi the moment he was seated. He'd never traveled by private plane before and felt somewhat out of place in the richly appointed cabin. The seats were upholstered with butter-soft brown leather with a lacquered table before each, satellite phones on the walls, and windows large enough to easily climb through, all in all more reminiscent of an executive lounge than the cramped cattle-steerage of coach to which he was accustomed. The copilot had made sure he was comfortable, pointed him in the direction of the stocked bar and the lavatory, and without a word regarding their destination, had locked himself behind the steel-reinforced door in the cockpit. Now Carver was alone in the cabin, the plane screaming down the runway, at the mercy of his fate.
He produced the cell phone from his jacket pocket and stared at the display. The screen was roughly the size of a credit card, the downloaded icon no larger than the nail of his pinkie, yet the enormity of the information contained within seemed so much larger. The time had come to determine what kind of nightmare he had stumbled into, but first, he needed some answers, and there was only one person whom he could call without drawing undue attention to his inquiries. And if anyone might be privy to the facts he sought, it was Jack Warren.
Carver removed his personal cell phone from the opposite jacket pocket, scrolled through the digital phone book until he found Jack's number, and dialed. He was certain that he was being watched even now, and if his cryptic new superiors were as paranoid as he thought, his phone was surely bugged. He would have to be careful what he said.
"Hello?" The voice was aged yet firm, and Carver felt a swell of relief just hearing it.
"Hi Jack."
"Paxton, my boy, it's been too long. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"I need your help."
"Official help?"
Carver remained silent.
"I've been following the Schwartz case," Jack said. "He wouldn't have come after you if you hadn't been nipping at his heels. And the girl's death was a foregone conclusion. Don't beat yourself up over it."
"Easier said than done. What else do you know about it?"
Jack Warren was not only his mother's oldest and dearest friend, but something of a surrogate father to Carver, who had never known his biological father. Stephen Carver had died in a car accident when his mother had been six months pregnant. Jack, who had never married, had always been there for both of them, visiting over the holidays, attending the important games and graduations, and generally just making himself available when Carver needed a sounding board or some guidance, despite the rigors of his job. Jack had even been there to recruit him into the Bureau when Carver had felt as though his life was floundering without direction. And most importantly, as the recently retired Deputy Director of the FBI, he knew just about everything about everyone, and if he didn't, there were still plenty of people who owed him favors.
"I know you've drawn the interest of some powerful players. I suspect that's why you're calling. Who made the contact?"
"Hawthorne."
Jack whistled. "You're in the big leagues now, Paxton."
"What do you know about him?"
"Truthfully? Not a whole lot. Hawthorne is one intense individual. Weaned in the Marines, cut his teeth in Special Ops. He's as smart as he is dangerous, and unaccustomed to failure. Remember Charles Grady, the guy who killed twenty-two transients across the Midwest and dumped them in the bathrooms at rest stops? Hawthorne was the one who nailed him. Most recently, he brought down Edgar Ross, who cannibalized his victims prior to their deaths. If I remember correctly, they found the partially consumed remains of two families reported missing from campsites in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons in his basement."
"Neither of them made it to trial."
"A bullet to the brainpan can do that."
"Both? Isn't that a little odd?"
"Ask me again after Schwartz's trial."
"Touché," Carver said. "Who does he answer to?"
"That's the million dollar question, isn't it? Last I heard, I believe he was a field operative for the Combined DNA Index System Unit, but I can find out who's currently pulling his strings if you give me a little time."
"Thanks, Jack. I knew I could count on you."
"You know I'm here whenever you need me. But now you owe me. When things settle down you're going to have to humor an old man and come down to Baltimore. You still haven't been out on my boat."
"Looking forward to it," Carver said. He was about to hit the "END" button when Jack spoke.
"I'm proud of you, Pax."
Carver nodded and hung up, feeling better already. At least until he set aside his personal phone in favor of the other.
He glanced out the window. The plane banked around the northern suburbs of Thornton and Westminster before aligning with the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains and heading south.
Turning his attention to the screen, he tapped the file icon. There were two separate folders. The first contained the file he had already viewed on Tobin Schwartz, confirming his suspicion that his prior investigation was far from over, and that hopefully he would get a chance to answer some of the questions that had been plaguing him. The second file was something altogether different. At first its contents appeared disjointed and incoherent, and he questioned their relevancy, but as he perused the limited amount of information, he felt a sinking sensation in his gut as though they had just passed through heavy turbulence. There was a report containing lab data detailing the isotopic degradation of a series of biological samples, a bioinformatics chart comparing chromosomal DNA from different sources, and the strangest thing of all: a picture of a desiccated corpse that appeared to be hundreds of years old, bound by ropes in fetal position, and partially wrapped in a filthy blanket against a background of sand.
There were no answers to be found, only more questions. How did the two files relate to one another? Why the covert nature of the investigation? Why did they need
him
? It was obvious they were further along connecting the dots than he was.
Carver leaned back in the seat and allowed his mind to work through the facts. He watched as foothills green with pines passed beneath, listened to the hum of the engines, felt the gentle vibrations, and was overtaken by exhaustion.
Chapter Two
Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer;
nothing is more difficult than to understand him.
--Fyodor Dostoevsky
I
Sonoran Desert
Arizona
The chopper blades thundered overhead, muffled by the cans on his ears to the dull thumping of a mechanical heartbeat. Countless miles of desert stretched beneath, marred by a dusting of bushes, cacti, and the occasional scar of an arrow-straight dirt road. Carver remembered the rugged red buttes and the fascination he'd felt seeing them as a child. The parallel layers of hard earth from which they were formed, sometimes horizontal, other times diagonal. Had they been thrust up from the ground or had the sand receded from them? How did the pine trees grow on top of the bare rock? He had been raised in Sun City on the northwestern edge of Phoenix until the football scholarship money had transplanted him to Boulder, Colorado and he had traded brutal heat and scorpions for wicked cold and Buffaloes. As finances had been tight, their infrequent vacations had always begun in these vast wastelands, his mother at the wheel of one dusty car or other, regaling him with stories of what they would do when they reached Las Vegas or Los Angeles or wherever they were headed while he daydreamed of an unlimited future beyond the terminal sand.
"That's it," a voice said through the speakers in his headset. "Off to the left about ten o'clock."
Carver acknowledged the Special Agent in the seat to his right with a nod and caught the glint of the sun reflected from the roof of a vehicle. Roughly two hundred yards to the southeast, the top of a low, flat butte was framed by the crumbled stone walls of an ancient dwelling. Past the ravine behind it and another hundred yards to the east was a tent, which blended into the sand so well he hadn't seen it at first.
"They don't know yet?" Carver said into the microphone poised in front of his lips.
"We made sure they'd hear it from us first so they wouldn't go blabbing about it. Right now there are probably a dozen panicked IT guys at the university sweating over their mainframe, fearing for their livelihoods, and wishing they'd just gone to the Star Trek convention instead of answering their pagers."
Carver turned to the agent, who gave him a conniving wink. Wolfe was his name, and when he had introduced himself on the tarmac at Sky Harbor, he had made the impression of a movie star trying to play an FBI agent. He wore black sunglasses that hadn't left his eyes yet and a crisp matching Valentino suit. His hair was an oil slick and his face was as smooth as silk. The left corner of his mouth curled up just enough to make him appear as though there was something only he knew and wasn't about to share, or perhaps he was simply cocky, an explanation Carver had begun to favor.
"What do you know about the victim?" Carver asked. He could now see they had attracted the attention of a small group of people who'd gathered in front of the tent.
"You mean
victims
."
"They found more?"
"At least two. We poached a cell phone call to the university."
"How did we get the carbon dating results before they did?"
"This is a digital world, my friend," Wolfe said, smirking behind the microphone. "All C14 tests are flagged by CIDIS for just such an occasion."
"So you work for CIDIS?"
Wolfe's smile showed teeth. "In a way."
The Bell Longranger VH-MJO helicopter descended, kicking up clouds of dust. The canvas siding of the tent flapped as though trying to take flight, straining against its pegs. Shrubs shed their leaves and tugged at their roots. The world became a sandstorm as they alighted thirty yards from the encampment in a patch of bare desert. Three shapes stood in front of the tent, shielding their eyes with their hands. The runners bounced on the sand and the rotor whined to slow the blades.
"Let's get this party started," Wolfe said, casting off his headset and bounding down to the ground.
Carver climbed out his side and the two converged in front of the chopper. They walked directly toward a middle-aged man and two young women, all of whom wore the same shocked expression. The girls retreated a step, but the man held his ground. He finally lowered his hand from his eyes as the props came to rest.
"This is an archeological dig," the man said, striding forward. "You could have easily done irreparable damage to--"
Wolfe silenced him with a flash of his badge. "I'm Special Agent Wolfe and this is Special Agent Carver. Who's in charge here?"
"Dr. Emil Mondragon, Regents' Professor of Anthropology and Co-Director of Undergraduate Studies at Northern Arizona University." He proffered a hand, which the agents shook in turn. "As I was saying, this is an--"
"Archeological dig," Wolfe finished. Carver imagined he could see the agent roll his eyes behind his glasses. "But unless you're planting corpses just to dig them up again, you're way too early for this site to be of any archeological value."
"What are you suggesting?"
"That your stiffs are no more ancient than *NSYNC."
"That can't be right. If you've seen the condition of the body--"
With a flick of his wrist, Wolfe was holding a cell phone identical to the one Carver had found in the remains of the farmhouse. There was a picture of the bundled remains on the screen.