Grand nodded and continued to read. The article said that in newly burned volcanic vents where the ice came to rest, the walls were often fractured by the intense heat and cold- which would explain the flaking he found in the subterranean cavern.
It would also explain something else. The painting in the passageway.
"What do you think?" Hannah asked.
"Two of them could have been trapped, frozen where they were, or carried along."
"It's possible," he admitted.
"Encased in ice or freeze-dried?"
"Probably the latter," Grand said. "It can get very warm in those caves. A block of ice wouldn't have lasted for thousands of years."
"And lightning couldn't have reached them if they were frozen solid," she said. "Maybe it struck them and did a Frankenstein number, brought them back to life."
"I wonder if it was lightning or something else."
"Such as?"
"The rainwater that spilled in there could have contained electrolytic elements from any number of sources," Grand said. "Hydroelectric, acid rain, chemical - any of that could have been absorbed in their skin, jump-started their metabolic processes."
"I like that," Hannah said. "So the tigers wake up and they continue doing whatever they were doing back then."
"It's possible," Grand said, though he was only half-listening. He was thinking about the cavern, the walls, the passageway. There weren't two Chumash paintings, there were three. And they all meant something.
"This is incredible," Hannah said. She leaned over Grand and bookmarked the Web site. "Okay. I've got to calm down. What we should do is rest for a few hours. Then I'll get up and write this in a way that doesn't sound impossible. Maybe get a few quotes from you, from biologists at the university, some cryogenics people. I'll also have to put someone on the environmental angle, take Gearhart to task for his blood-and-guts approach." She looked at Grand. "How's that sound to you?"
He didn't answer.
"Hey, are you okay?" Hannah asked.
Grand shook his head slowly. "I'm not sure."
"What is it? Gearhart?"
"It's more than Gearhart."
Hannah's enthusiasm quieted. She squatted beside him. "Jim, talk to me."
"There was a third painting down there. At first I thought it was a celestial design. Then I thought they were eyes."
"And what do you think now?"
"That I was right the second time."
"Eyes?"
Grand nodded. "They're staring out from the cave where a Chumash artist found them thousands of years ago. Eyes that were painted white because the artist was trying to say that they were frozen. Eyes that belonged to petrified saber-tooths inside the caves."
Hannah's expression crashed. "Oh Jesus, Jim. How many eyes were there in the painting?"
He looked at her. "Dozens."
Chapter Fifty-Six
Sitting in the passenger compartment of the highway-patrol helicopter, Gearhart was concerned when he couldn't raise Lyon on his radio. Poking his head into the cockpit, the sheriff asked the pilot to call Deputy Russo in the Bell.
There was no response.
Gearhart sat back in the vinyl seat. He looked out the window as they made a thuddingly noisy pass over the dark terrain. He felt, for a flashing instant, that he was back in Vietnam, being airlifted from a combat zone and waiting to find out if the rest of the platoon made it out in the second chopper. He hated that feeling then and he hated it now.
The flight took less than five minutes, though Gearhart knew before they reached the site that something had happened. There was no light in the sky and no call to indicate that the chopper had followed the cat to another location. His initial concern was that the chopper might have collided with one of the peaks in the dark; though Deputy Russo was an experienced night flier in the mountains, she did not usually travel this far southeast. Then he began to hope that they'd experienced mechanical trouble and had set down somewhere.
But Gearhart's hope was blasted when the highway-patrol pilot reported seeing wreckage among the trees up ahead. Gearhart jumped from his seat. He squeezed into the cockpit between the pilot and copilot and looked out as the chopper approached the site. They had cleared a five-hundred-foot hill and dropped to two hundred feet.
The scene was horrific. Brightly lit by the jiggling white searchlight, Gearhart saw that many of the trees had been stripped of leaves. As they neared he could see the helicopter nestled among them. Worse than the horribly twisted rotor was the sight of the chopper itself. Lying on its side, it reminded Gearhart of a beached whale-helpless despite its formidable size and power.
But the helicopter wasn't badly damaged, and Gearhart still hoped that Lyon and Russo might be alive. The pilot dropped lower. Only then, as the remaining leaves parted, could they see inside the cockpit.
"Oh, shit," murmured the pilot. "Sheriff-"
"Go lower!" he yelled.
The pilot obliged.
The sight was shocking, even to Gearhart. Lyon 's body was lying across that of Russo. They were savagely mangled and bloody beyond imagining. Though the windshield was shattered, the dismemberment hadn't happened in the crash. Gearhart had seen rotor wounds and crash injuries. These two looked as though they'd been pushed through a paper shredder.
"Put me through to the California Army National Guard," Gearhart said. "The Fortieth Division Support Command in LA, General Brewer."
The pilot obliged.
While he waited, Gearhart looked down at the wreckage. He didn't know what had brought the chopper down; that would be for the investigating engineers to figure out. But he knew what had mangled the passengers. Except for the presence of the bodies, the blood distribution was the same as in the fish truck they'd found on the beach. The cats had probably gone in after the chopper went down and finished the two off.
Gearhart looked out at the sinkhole. He wondered if the animals were there watching, waiting for them to make a move.
They wouldn't have to wait long, Gearhart vowed.
Not long at all.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Except for the thick roar of the waves behind Grand, the living room was silent. Hannah took a slow sip of tea, then walked toward a white leather sofa in the center of the room. She sat down in the middle and huddled around the mug. She looked past Grand at the sea.
"You know, we could be wrong about this," she said. "There may be another interpretation of that painting."
"I don't think so," Grand said.
"Why not?"
He picked up his coffee and walked toward her. "Since this started I've been bothered by the amount of carnage we've seen, especially at the campsite. Two cats could have been responsible for killing all of those people and carrying them away, but this-"
"Makes a lot more sense."
Grand stopped beside the sofa and nodded. "The cats we saw are probably point cats watching the pride's flank."
"Like an army."
"Yes. There are probably one or two more serving as scouts. They're going to be tough to bring down alive or dead," Grand went on. "The question is, where are they going? What were they doing eleven thousand years ago when they were incapacitated? Seasonal homes, hunting grounds-we have no idea what their migratory habits were back then, assuming they had any."
"I just had a thought," Hannah said. "One you may not like."
"What?"
"We better let Gearhart know about the other cats," she said. "Even if we convince him to use tranquilizers, he'll still need enough darts and guns to deal with a dozen or more animals."