“Life is full of risk. Right, Climber?”
Jack swung his gear bag over a shoulder. “Let’s get this over with quickly.”
“Here’s the entrance,” Garrett said. “Hidden in the brush. Almost didn’t find it again.” He pulled out a couple of flashlights and handed them to Jack. “Juan and I should pack up the campsite in case we have to make a fast getaway.”
“That’s a good idea,” Jack said. He nodded in Marko’s direction. “He can stay here and serve as a lookout while Leah and I are inside.”
“If I see park rangers, how should I warn you?” Marko raised his hands up to his mouth in the shape of a megaphone. “I could yell down into the entrance like this.”
Leah rolled her eyes. “Yeah, that’s what you should do.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Jack said. He reached for Marko’s climbing gear and searched through the collection of ropes, anchoring devices, carabineers and leftover Snickers wrappers. “What have we here?”
Jack removed several small aluminum bowls held together with a metal bar and wing nut.
“My cook kit,” Marko said, looking embarrassed. “I don’t think it’s all that clean.”
“We’re not serving lunch.” Jack handed Marko one end of the climbing line. “If you see or hear rangers, yank on this.”
Jack and Leah slid down into the mouth of the cavern and pushed through the maze of twisting sandstone.
“Thirty more meters,” Leah said. “Do you feel a little tightness in your chest, Hobson?”
Over the years, Leah had learned most of his weaknesses — including occasional attacks of claustrophobia.
“Just a headache every time my head hits the rock,” he muttered.
She switched the halogen flashlight on to its high position, illuminating the dwellings. “Not bad for an unemployed archeologist and a couple of desert rats.”
Eight-hundred-year-old wooden ladders lay against the walls, providing a lattice to the top of the cavern. Thoughts of having to climb those ladders gave Jack a chill. One misstep meant a fatal fall.
“I’ve got to set up our alarm system.” Jack pulled out a small climbing cam and jammed it into a narrow slot between two boulders. He threaded the climbing line through carabineers and clipped it to the handle on the larger cook pot, then dropped in Marko’s spaghetti-crusted eating utensils and metal coffee cup.
The collection of cook gear hung like a bell in a medieval church cathedral. He gave the line a tug, and a moment later Marko tugged back. The sound of pans banging off the rock and each other echoed throughout the cavern.
“Works like a charm.”
“Let’s hope Marko doesn’t decide to take a nap.” Leah pointed down a dark alleyway separating the cavern wall from the back of the dwelling. “The vertical shaft where we found the human remains and red granite is over here.”
Leah stepped across the dwelling floor, working the light back and forth. “Don’t kick any of the pottery. If we had time for a lecture I could tell you stories about we’ve found down here that would blow you away.”
“I’ll be careful, Professor.”
Fifteen minutes later, Jack stepped carefully through the carnage at the bottom of the sub-cavern. “What I’m looking for here?”
Leah dropped down right behind him. “If you’re right, we know that the red stones are native to Antarctica. There’s a set of extraordinary pictographs.” She pointed down the narrow passageway. “They rewrite Native American history as we know it. We’re not sure how far to take the story, or what it really means. That’s where you come in: You’ve spent plenty of time in Antarctica. Some of the pictographs appear to be outlines of mountain ranges in very specific shapes. They don’t look anything like the landscape around here. It’s a long shot, but I thought if you saw something familiar from Antarctica, it might give us at least a clue where these stones came from. If not, we’ll have to depend upon the geology — finding out where we might locate the source of this granite.”
He studied the first ancient drawing, remembering what Marko had said; the shape of the pictograph seemed to resemble Half Dome in Yosemite. He let his light drift above the pictograph, to the strange figures with talons. He glanced at Leah.
“I’m still working on that,” she said. “It’s not like anything I’ve seen before.”
“Looks to me like they thought they’d pissed off the Gods, and the Gods weren’t playing friendly.”
“That occurred to me.” Leah worked the lights around the interior of the sub-cavern. “If you were frightened it makes sense that you might shoehorn yourself down into this hole.” She aimed the light back down the passageway. “Marko found more pictographs down this passageway.”
Jack illuminated the wall, and another pictograph appeared. It featured a mountain that looked something like a bold capital I but tilted about thirty degrees to the left. He traced along the drawing, hoping it might spur something concrete from his memory.
Then it struck him. He reached up and framed his hand over the bottom of the drawing, leaving a shape that now looked more like a ragged capital T tilted forward at an angle.
Jack stepped back in stunned silence.
“You know what it is, don’t you?” she whispered. “From Antarctica?”
He retraced the lines, just to be sure. “Yeah, I think so. It’s a sheer granite cliff that resembles Half Dome in some respects. It’s located in a remote section of the Ellsworth Range, not that far from Mt. Vincent, the tallest peak on the continent. The face juts up nearly three thousand feet above the ice; there’s a thick vein of red-colored granite crystal running directly through the center resembling a big hammer. It was used as a navigation point for early aviators exploring the continent. “Thor’s Hammer. I’d bet a free trip to K2, it’s Thor’s Hammer.
Leah opened her mouth to reply when the metallic sounds of the dinner-plate alarm system echoed frantically throughout the cavern.
CHAPTER 12
Marko crouched behind the large boulder, shielding the cavern entryway from view. He pointed toward the mesa. “I heard the ATVs. I haven’t seen them yet.”
Jack scanned the desert. With the overhanging ledges, boulders and thick pine forest, half the Chinese Army could hide from view on the mesa.
“We’re sitting ducks here,” he said. “Leah, I want you to run for the bridge and cross the canyon. Keep low if you can. Once you get to the other side, sprint for the campsite and tell Garrett and Juan we got company.”
“What about you guys?” she asked.
“I’m sending Marko once you’ve cleared the arch. If we hear park rangers, we’ll duck into the dwelling until it’s clear.”
Marko held up the end of the climbing line, still attached to his cook kit. “Do you want me to climb down and unhook it?”
“Just toss the line down into the cavern. Guess you don’t have to worry about cleaning that gear after all.”
Leah shouldered the pack and jogged toward the rock bridge, holding the bottom so the contents didn’t rattle.
“Your turn, and keep it quiet,” Jack said to Marko.
The young rock climber jumped over three boulders and then tripped, nearly falling down on the treacherous rock. His spill dislodged a stone about the size of a basketball. The rock’s sound echoed off the sandstone walls the rock as it rolled down the slope.
“Hold up, buddy!”
Two hundred meters away, standing on top of a ledge, one of the rangers waved his arms. Marko broke into an all-out dash for the opposite side of the canyon. “Stop running and stay right where you are!”
Jack bolted out from behind the rock and sprinted across the boulders.
“Stop!” The ranger’s voice was two full octaves higher than his first warning.