But even that was chancy. By now, the surrounding woods were glowing with flames, while boulders continued to crash out of the sky, stripping branches, leaving a swath of fire. Worst of all, the world to the right of the Jeep ended at a towering wall of smoky fire, a witch’s cauldron of ash and rock. The cloud rolled toward them, swallowing all in its path as they sped along below it.
The only consolation was that the streambed was wide and shallow, full of packed gravel and sand. Ryan jammed the accelerator to the floor. The Jeep sped higher, gaining ground, skipping around boulders with deft turns of his wrist. But the farther he went, the narrower the course grew. They were running out of stream.
Fifty yards ahead, a boulder hit with the force of a rocket. Water exploded into steam, gravel rained down on them.
End of the road.
“There!” Chin yelled, and pointed beyond the right bank.
Past a few trees, a steep high alpine meadow spread outward, rapidly being eaten away by the flow of fiery smoke.
Ryan hauled sharply on the wheel and sent the Jeep leaping over the bank, catching air, before it hit the meadow. Deep-treaded tires tore into the grassy soil, patched by snow at this altitude.
“We’re not going to make it,” Chin said, staring to the right, to where the world ended.
Like hell we aren’t.
Ryan raced across the meadow as the cloud bore down on them. The heat of the approaching cloud burned like the breath of a dragon. Patches of snow began to melt around them.
At the end of the meadow rose a steep slope of raw granite. He aimed for it, hit it, and shot up its length. He climbed higher and higher, pressed back into his seat as the Jeep tilted precariously toward vertical. In the rearview mirror, he watched the cloud wash below them, erasing the world and replacing it with a roiling black sea.
Heat washed upward, blistering, searing his lungs, but he still cried out in relief. “We did it!”
Then the tires—all four of them—lost traction on the slick stone. The Jeep lurched, slipping sideways, falling backward. He fought against it, but gravity pulled them back toward the flaming sea.
“C’mon, Major!”
A hand balled into the collar of his uniform. He was yanked from his seat. Chin climbed over the windshield, dragging him along. Ryan understood and hit the hood beside Chin. Together, they shoulder-rolled forward as the Jeep slid backward under him.
Ryan hit the granite slope and scrambled to keep from following the Jeep down. Fingers latched onto his wrist and hauled him to a precarious lip of rock, enough for a toehold. Choking, coughing, the pair of them perched there like two little burned birds.
Ryan followed Chin’s gaze over the valley. The fiery cloud continued down the dark mountainside. Closer at hand, the chasm below belched with fire and flowed with ribbons of lava.
“My men . . .” he mumbled numbly, wondering about their fate
Chin reached and squeezed his elbow, offering sympathy. “Pray they heard you.”
Chapter 17
May 31, 6:05 A.M.
San Rafael Swell
Utah
Hank Kanosh greeted the dawn on his knees, not in an act of worship, but from exhaustion. He’d climbed the steep trail from the circle of cabins just before sunrise. The winding track led up through a maze of slot canyons and into a dry wash. Kawtch sat next to him, tongue hanging, panting. With the sun just rising, the morning was still cool, but it was a challenging trail and neither of them was young.
Still, he knew it was not the passing of years that weighed down his legs and made the climb so taxing. It was his heart. Even now, the feel of it pounding in his chest came with an upwelling of guilt, guilt for surviving, for not being able to doing anything when he was most needed. For the past day, while he was on the run, it had been easier to push aside the pain of his friends’ deaths.
That was no longer the case.
He stared out over the broken landscape below. He and Maggie had made this same hike almost a decade ago, while testing the waters with each other. He still remembered the kiss they’d shared on this very spot. Her hair had smelled of sage; her lips tasted salty, yet sweet.
He savored that memory now as he knelt atop a slab of rock that jutted precariously over a deep gorge nicknamed the “Little Grand Canyon.” The valley lay at the heart of the San Rafael Swell, a sixty-mile-wide bulge of sedimentary rock that had been uplifted here by geological forces over fifty million years ago. Since then, rain and wind had carved and chiseled the region into a labyrinth of steep slopes, broken canyons, and rugged washes. Far below, the San Rafael River continued the eroding process, snaking lazily across the landscape on its way to the Colorado.
The red-rock region was mostly deserted, home to wild burros, stallions, and one of the largest herds of desert bighorn sheep. The only two-legged visitors here were the more adventurous hikers, because entry to the remote area required four-wheel-drive vehicles to traverse its few roads. In the past, the Swell’s nearly inaccessible maze of canyons and ravines had been the hideouts and escape routes for many outlaws, including Butch Cassidy and his gang.
And it seemed such was the case again.
Hank and the others had arrived here in the wee hours of the morning, crawling down a rock-strewn track from Copper Globe Road. Their destination was the family cabins of his retired colleagues, Alvin and Iris Humetewa. Hank’s group had barged in without any warning, but as he had known, the couple had taken the intrusion in good-natured stride.
The small homestead of five mud-and-stone pueblos was half commune, half school for Hopi children who were taught the old ways by three generations of the Humetewa clan, all led by Iris Humetewa, matriarch and benevolent dictator.
At the moment there were no students.
Or almost no students.
“You can come out,” Hank said.
A peeved sigh rose from beyond a boulder in the wash behind him. The slim figure of Kai Quocheets stalked out of hiding. She’d been trailing him since he’d left the cabins.
“If you want to see the sunrise,” he urged her, “you’d best come up here.”
With a sullen slump to her shoulders, she climbed to the overlook. Kawtch slapped his tail a couple of times against the sandstone slab in greeting.
“Is it safe out there?” she asked, eyeing the drop beyond the edge of the jutting rock.
“Stone’s been here thousands of years, it’ll probably last another few minutes.”
She looked doubtful about his assessment but came forward anyway. “Uncle Crowe and his partner are putting together some sort of satellite dish tied to a laptop and phone.”