The Devil Colony(135)

“And the physicists?” Rafael asked.

“We’ve got every expert in subatomic particles trying to calibrate and pinpoint the source of the massive neutrino flow from this region. But the volume of production is so prodigious that they could narrow the scope only to a two-hundred-mile radius.”

“Useless,” Rafael commented.

Painter agreed. He had one hope. It rested on the table. The landscape on the canopic jar. Some ancient artist had taken a great deal of time to etch it so meticulously upon the bottle.

The foreground of the landscape showed the confluence of two creeks, flowing into the distance down a forested valley. In the background rose towering clifflike mountains, fringed by lodgepole pines, so detailed that each needle had been carefully scratched in place. And in the middle, rising between the creeks, rose a tall cone, slightly steaming, like a small smoldering volcano. Around it stood smaller anthill-like cones.

So realistic were the details that it seemed impossible to believe them to depict anything other than a real place. The steaming geothermal structures in the center certainly suggested that such a spot might be found within this park. Painter pictured the artist sitting in a field, meticulously working the metal to preserve an image of this place. If it was important enough to etch onto this canopic jar, it must represent a site sacred to the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev. Perhaps it was a view from their new refuge here in Yellowstone.

That’s what Painter hoped.

By now, Kowalski had unpacked the cases Painter had ordered him to bring here. He set the disassembled pieces of the digital laser scanner on the table, next to all of the other computer equipment.

Painter glanced from Rafael to the scrawny computer tech. “Do you have all the satellite uplinks and parameters set on your end?”

“We do.”

“Can your guy help me assemble and get it cabled in properly?”

Instead of addressing the tech, Rafael turned to the tall African woman. “Ashanda, perhaps you should oversee TJ’s handiwork. We don’t want to risk any mistakes.” He drew Painter aside. “Let them do their magic.”

Even with the use of only one hand and without speaking a single word, Ashanda orchestrated the assembly of the laser device, along with its calibration and integration into the workstation. Even Kai helped run some of the cabling, plainly needing to do something—though every jangle of the handcuffs drew a scared glance from her.

Within a few minutes, a window opened on one of the monitors, ready to accept data. The window ledger read LASER TECHNIQUES COMPANY, LLC. It was a company out of Bellevue, Washington, that worked with NASA, developing patented tools to detect erosion, pitting, scuffing, or cracking in metallic surfaces, covering a gamut of uses that included space-shuttle thrusters, military hardware, nuclear steam generator tubes, and underwater pipelines. The laser device could pick up and photograph minute changes in metal that the eye could easily miss.

Painter needed that precision now.

Ashanda turned and silently announced the completion of her work with a small bow of her head.

Is she mute? Painter wondered absently. But he could give the question no more attention than that. At the moment he had a more important puzzle to solve.

“Guess that’s my cue,” he said.

He stepped back to the table and switched on the laser mapping system. A bluish holographic cone glowed from the scanner’s emitter. Painter positioned it until a set of crosshairs were fixed to the center of the golden landscape. Once this was done, he activated the scan.

Dark azure lines flowed up and down across the golden surface, then back and forth, absorbing every detail off the jar, from the tiniest wisp of steam to a minuscule pinecone hanging off the branch of a tree in the background.

On the computer monitor, the image formed—at first a static flat image, then, as the scan finished, it rendered out into an extrapolated 3-D view. A square slice of landscape, topographically accurate, spun slowly on the screen.

“Amazing,” Rafael said.

“Let’s see if it helps us.” Painter moved to the computer keyboard, opened a data stream to a NASA technician in Houston, and sent the large file. Once it was received, the team in Houston would set about using the satellite data collected over the past hour and compare the real-world terrain of Yellowstone to this holographic image. With a bit of luck, they’d find a match.

“This may take a few minutes,” Painter said.

Rafael stared at the golden jar and muttered. “Let’s hope not too many minutes.”


4:34 A.M.



Hank crouched beside the table, opposite from Painter and the Frenchman. He kept his gaze fixed on the canopic jar, feeling possessive about it, as he’d been the one who found the artifact down in the Anasazi’s kiva. He imagined one of the Tawtsee’untsaw Pootseev devoutly inscribing this sacred object. Painter was right. It had to be important and could point them to the location of the lost city.