He turned to see her shining her helmet lamp toward the cavern wall opposite the ancient gravesite. The blast had collapsed a section of bricks there, revealing what appeared to be another alcove hidden on that side. He joined her and added his light, shining it into the space once sealed by the chapel’s brick wall on this side.
He gasped at the sight. On the back wall of the alcove was another large star-shaped petroglyph. Again made of palm prints. “It’s just like the one across the way.”
“Not exactly,” Lena said.
“What do you mean?”
She pulled out her cell phone and pointed it into the space. “The prints are smaller and more numerous, and note all the pinkie marks of these palms . . . they’re bent askew, like the artist’s finger was broken and healed crooked. Definitely someone different made this petroglyph. And from the size of the prints, maybe a female.”
As Lena snapped a series of pictures, Roland glanced back to the pile of rocks covering the opposite grave. “Maybe that other man was this woman’s mate.”
“Maybe, but we’ll never know.” Lena angled her light to the bottom of the alcove. “There are no bones here.”
At least not any longer.
Roland turned and worked his way to the far side of the rubble. He dropped to a knee and studied the twin set of scrape marks gouged in the floor that he had noted earlier. The centuries-old trail headed away from the chapel and toward the former entrance.
Maybe today’s thieves were not the only ones to steal something from here.
He straightened and returned his attention to the toppled section of the back wall of the chapel. He overturned loose bricks, examining each, a silent prayer on his lips.
“What’re you looking for?” Lena asked.
Before he could answer, his beam glinted off a piece of metal poking from under a stone. He flipped the brick over, sighing with relief.
“This,” he said, running his thumb over the name inscribed at the bottom of the metal plate bolted to the brick. It was the small grave marker that he had examined before.
Lena joined him, staring over his shoulder.
“Written here,” he explained, “might be some clue to solving these mysteries. Though the surface is heavily corroded, given time, I think I can—”
Another boom rocked through the cavern, echoing from a distance away. Roland grabbed Lena’s arm.
“What is it?” she asked.
Fearing the answer, he hurried with her down the tunnel to the main cavern. The beam of his light picked up a fresh wash of smoke and dust coming from the far passageway that led to the smaller cave and the surface.
“No . . .” Lena moaned, clearly understanding what this meant.
The thieves must not have been satisfied with merely blowing up the chapel. They also intended to seal up the entrance to this cavern, further masking their crime.
“What are we going to do?” Lena asked.
As he started to answer, a deep rumbling shook the floor underfoot. A large chandelier-like chunk of fragile helictites broke from the roof and shattered onto the stone, scattering snow-white pieces to the toes of his boot.
Lena clutched his elbow, waiting for the shaking to stop.
Roland remembered how a 5.2-magnitude earthquake had broken off a shoulder of the stone giant that was Klek Mountain and revealed this ancient cavern system at its heart. The sudden storm and the weight of all that flowing water must have put additional strain on the fault lines underlying the mountain, triggering an aftershock—or maybe even the concussions from the recent blasts contributed to the new quake.
Either way, they were in deep trouble.
He held his breath until the tremors finally faded and the ground stopped shaking.
“It’s all right,” Roland whispered, trying to reassure his companion as much as himself.
“Look!” Lena pointed toward the crack where the two of them had hidden earlier.
From the mouth of that crevice, water now gushed forth.
The quake must have altered the hydrology of the mountain, shifting the veins and arteries of the giant Klek, turning that storm surge toward this open pocket. From other smaller cracks and crevices, more water flowed.
Lena stared up at him, her face stricken, looking to him for some hope, some plan.
He had neither.
4
April 29, 1:38 P.M. CEST
Paris, France
The phone rang at a most inopportune moment.
Commander Gray Pierce stood naked before a steaming tub in the hotel bathroom. From the window of his suite, he could look out upon the majestic and historic tree-lined Champs-Élysées of Paris. Still, the view closer at hand was far superior.
From the mists of the lavender-scented water, a sleek leg hung over the lip of the tub. A layer of bubbles did little to mask the figure luxuriating within the bath. She was all long limbs and sweeping curves. As she shifted, a fall of damp hair, as black as a raven’s wing, fell away to reveal emerald-green eyes.
Irritation at the interruption shone there.
“You could ignore it,” she said, stretching that leg high, before lowering it slowly into the bubbles, stealing away the sight.
He was tempted to follow her suggestion, but the ringing did not rise from the hotel phone; it was from Gray’s cell on the bedside table. The unique ringtone identified the caller: his boss, Painter Crowe, the director of Sigma.
Gray sighed. “He wouldn’t call unless it was urgent.”
“When is it not?” she murmured, sinking fully underwater, then rising again. The surface of her face steamed as water sluiced along her wide cheekbones and down her delicate neck.
It took all his strength to turn away from the tub. “I’m sorry, Seichan.”
He headed into the bedroom and fetched his phone. For the past three days, he and Seichan had been enjoying the delights of Paris—or at least what could be viewed through the windows or ordered from room service. After being apart from each other for three weeks, they had found themselves seldom venturing far from their suite at the Hôtel Fouquet’s Barrière.
Seichan had flown to Paris directly from Hong Kong, where she had been overseeing the construction of a women’s shelter. He had come from the other direction, from D.C. He was taking a brief vacation—not only from the demands of Sigma, but also from managing his father, who suffered from Alzheimer’s. His father at least seemed more stable of late, so Gray had felt confident enough to leave for a short spell. While he was gone, a daytime nurse and Gray’s younger brother split his father’s caretaking duties.
Still, as he picked up the phone, he felt a twinge of foreboding, expecting this call to be about his father. Day in and day out, that fear sat in his gut like a chunk of granite: hard, cold, and immovable. A part of him was always girded, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
He clutched the phone to his ear as the scrambled connection to Sigma headquarters was made. He caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror above the dresser, reading the anxiety in the hard set of his jaw. Impatient at even this small delay, he swept damp hair from his eyes and rubbed the dark stubble over his cheeks.
C’mon . . .
Finally the connection was made, and the director immediately spoke. “Commander Pierce, I’m glad I could reach you. I apologize for interrupting your vacation, but it’s important.”
“What’s wrong?” he said, his fear spiking sharper.
“We have a problem. About twenty minutes ago, I fielded an emergency call from General Metcalf.”
Gray sank to the bed, letting go some of his fear. This wasn’t about his father. “Go on.”
“It seems French intelligence received a frantic SOS dispatched from one of their units in Croatia.”
“Croatia?”
“In the mountains out there. A French alpine military team was acting as a security force for some archaeological dig. From the sound of it, the team was ambushed. So far, attempts to reestablish communication have failed
.”
Gray didn’t see how this involved Sigma, but if Metcalf had called Painter, then something significant must be up. General Gregory Metcalf was the head of DARPA—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—and Painter’s immediate superior. Sigma Force operated under the aegis of DARPA and was composed of former Special Forces soldiers who had been retrained in various scientific disciplines, which allowed for covert teams to be tasked against specific threats to U.S. or global security.
“I don’t understand,” Gray said. “This sounds more like a matter for the French military. How does this involve Sigma?”
“Because DARPA has some skin in the game. The team being protected by that French unit was an international group, including an American geneticist, Dr. Lena Crandall. Her current project is partially funded by DARPA. It’s why General Metcalf called us, to get someone from Sigma out there to investigate.”
And as I’m practically in the neighborhood already . . .
“Kat is arranging to have a jet readied for you,” Painter continued. “She can get your boots on the ground in those mountains in under two hours.”
Kat—Captain Kathryn Bryant—was Sigma’s chief intelligence analyst, serving as Painter’s right hand. She and her husband were also Gray’s best friends.
“What about Seichan?” Gray asked.
“Kat assumed she would be coming, too.”
Movement drew Gray’s attention to the bathroom door. Seichan leaned against the doorframe, wrapped only in a wet towel that hid very little.
“Where are we going?” she asked, plainly guessing the general gist of the conversation.
Gray smiled at her powers of perception, a skill surely honed from her years as an assassin for hire. Even now, there remained layers of mystery to her. Still, while several countries maintained a bounty on her for past crimes, there was no one he wanted more by his side.
And not just for her talents with a gun.
He took in the sight of her body, the sultry mocha of her bare skin. Even motionless, her limbs exuded equal parts grace and power.
“Looks like our vacation will have to be cut short,” he warned.
She shrugged, letting the towel fall from her torso. “I was getting tired of Paris anyway.”
She turned, baring the full curve of her backside.
That’s one view I’ll never get tired of.
Painter interrupted. “As a precaution, I’ll also be extending the investigation stateside.”
Gray drew his attention back to the phone. “What do you mean?”
“Dr. Crandall’s project is based out of Emory University. I’m dispatching a team to Atlanta to interview the project’s co-researcher, Dr. Crandall’s sister.”
“Her sister?”
“Her twin, actually. Dr. Maria Crandall. Seems the project is a family affair.”
“What were the two working on?”
“Much of it’s classified. Even Metcalf didn’t know all the specifics at this early stage. All I know is that the project involved the search for the origin of human intelligence.”
The origin of human intelligence?
Intrigued, Gray wanted to know more, but he suspected Painter was holding back until he could get a full accounting of that project. “Who are you sending to Atlanta?”
“That’s the thing . . . I need someone who’s fluent in American Sign Language.”
Gray frowned. He didn’t understand why such a skill was necessary, but surely if this was an investigation into human intelligence, Painter would send Sigma’s best and brightest.
“So who’s going?” Gray asked again.
Painter only sighed.
7:55 a.m. EDT
“I thought she was pregnant,” Joe Kowalski said, picturing the furious expression on the new security guard who manned the desk upstairs. Sullenly, he exited the elevator into the heart of Sigma command with Monk Kokkalis at his side.
“Still, you never ask a woman when she’s due,” Monk said. “Never. Not even if you’re sure she’s carrying triplets.”
Kowalski scowled. “It’s the damned uniform, that big black belt. I swore she was almost due.”
“You’re lucky she didn’t shoot you.”
Maybe she should have . . .
He stared at the ceiling of the hallway as he strode alongside Monk. Sigma Command was buried beneath the Smithsonian Castle, occupying a warren of World War II–era bomb shelters. Moments ago, returning from a morning jog along the National Mall, he had tried to be a good neighbor, to show some interest in the new addition to the staff above. Of course, it hadn’t hurt that the woman was cute with full lips.
“Talk about burning a bridge,” Monk scolded.
Kowalski growled his irritation. He didn’t need to be reminded about his sorry track record with women of late. “Drop it already.”
Monk shrugged and ran a palm over his bald scalp, possibly sensing he had taken the joke one step too far. He stood a head shorter than Kowalski and would certainly win no beauty contests. Then again, Kowalski knew his own charms were few and far between. More than one woman had compared him to a shaved ape—and they were probably being generous.
Ahead, a slender form, dressed in crisp navy blues, appeared from the doorway that led into Sigma’s communication nest. “There you two are,” Kat said, drawing alongside them. “I was just headed over to the director’s office.”
“So what’s this sudden summons about?” Monk asked, slipping his hand into his wife’s fingers as they continued down the hallway.
Kowalski noted the simple gesture of affection, so effortless and easy. A bitter flare of envy burned through him, along with a flicker of hope.
If this guy could win the heart of such a woman . . .
Then again, Monk made up for his looks in countless ways. He was a former Green Beret, with the scars to prove it, and now served as Sigma’s medical forensic expert. Many enemies misjudged his brutish exterior, underestimating his skills and sharp mind.
Director Crowe had once told Kowalski that Sigma got its name from the Greek letter ∑, the mathematical symbol for the sum of, because Sigma Force was the union of the best of man’s abilities—the joining of brain and brawn. That certainly fit the description of Monk Kokkalis.
Kowalski caught his own reflection in the glass of a closed door, staring at his lumbering form, his thick neck, his crooked nose.
So what the hell am I doing here?
During his time in the navy, he had climbed no higher than the rank of seaman. Even at Sigma, his “scientific” training centered on how to blow things up—not that he didn’t enjoy that. But he knew down deep that when it came to balancing brain and brawn, in his case, those scales were tipped far to one side.
Kat spoke ahead of him. “I’ll let Painter explain the reason for calling you both down here. We’re just getting a handle on the details ourselves.”
Kowalski followed the pair down the hall to the director’s office. He and Monk had been ordered to return to Sigma as they rounded the Lincoln Memorial during their morning jog. Both still wore sweat pants and hoodies.
Kat led her husband through the director’s open door first, leaving Kowalski to tag behind. They found Painter Crowe at his usual station in his office, seated behind a desk stacked with files. He held up a palm toward them as he finished up a call. Behind his shoulders, the three remaining walls of his office glowed with large flat-screens, displaying various maps, news feeds, and aerial footage of some mountains. Though Sigma’s headquarters were buried underground, the monitors served as the director’s windows to the world at large.
Painter finished his call and slipped the Bluetooth receiver from his ear. He stood up. “Thank you both for coming. It seems a case has arisen that suits your unique set of talents.”
The director continued, explaining about an ambush of a French military team in the Croatian mountains. He elaborated with topographical maps and live satellite images on his monitors, finally briefing them about
a group of scientists who were being guarded by that French unit. The researchers’ faces flashed on the various monitors: a British geologist, a French paleontologist, and some historian from the Vatican. The last photo was of a young woman wearing a white lab smock. She was smiling at the camera, showing perfect teeth, suntanned skin, and a dash of freckles across both cheeks. Her long, dark blond hair was efficiently tied back.
Kowalski sighed out a soft whistle of appreciation.
Painter ignored his reaction. “Dr. Lena Crandall. A geneticist from Emory University. She was overseeing a project funded by DARPA.”
“What was she working on?” Monk asked.
Kowalski didn’t care. He continued to stare at the photo.
“That’s what I want you both to answer for me,” Painter said. “Kat’s arranged to have you two fly down to Atlanta this morning and interview Dr. Crandall’s sister, to find out how their research at Emory connects to an archaeological dig in Croatia. There are pieces of this puzzle that still are missing.”
“What about the research team in Croatia?” Monk asked.
“Gray and Seichan are on their way to investigate that right now.” Painter glanced for confirmation from Kat, who nodded. “I want the particulars about this research project by the time they land.”
Monk cracked the knuckles of one hand as he studied the various screens, taking it all in, clearly readying himself for the mission.
Painter placed a palm on Monk’s shoulder. “With your background in medicine and genetics, I thought you’d be best suited to communicate with Dr. Maria Crandall regarding her research. You’ll also be joined by a liaison from the National Science Foundation, a scientist who has oversight on the funding of the project.”
Painter then faced Kowalski. “And you . . .”
Kowalski frowned, unable to imagine how he could contribute beyond acting as a bodyguard.
“You’re best suited to communicate with Dr. Crandall’s test subject, the cornerstone and culmination of her research.”
“And why’s that?” Kowalski asked.
“Because you’re fluent in sign language.”