Douglas Preston - Mount Dragon

I cannot follow you through that door.

Levine hesitated. I’m sorry, Phido, but I must continue. Please play back the keystrokes for this location.

Very well. “If all the girls who attended the Harvard-Yale game were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.” Dorothy Parker.

With a distinct click, the massive black door sprang ajar. Levine paused, took a deep breath, and steadied his hand on the trackball. Then, very slowly, he maneuvered himself forward into what he knew must be Scopes’s mysterious Cypherspace.

Nye stood in the center of the basin, Muerto’s reins in his hand. The story of his humiliation was written clearly in the sand and grass. Somehow, Carson and the woman must have sensed his presence. They’d snuck over to their horses and led them away—without his hearing a bloody thing. It was almost inconceivable that they could have pulled it off. Yet the tracks did not lie.

He turned. The shadow was still by his side sbut when he looked at it directly it seemed to disappear.

He walked to the edge of the basin. The two had headed east toward the lava beds, where, no doubt, they hoped to lose him. Although riding through the lava beds was slow work, Nye would have little trouble tracking them. With two gallons of water, it was only a matter of time before their horses would start to weaken. There was no hurry. The edge of the Jornada desert was still almost one hundred miles away.

Nye swung into the saddle and began to follow. They had walked their horses for a while and then mounted. The tracks gradually separated—was it a trick?—and Nye followed the heavier set of impressions, knowing they must be Carson’s.

The sun broke over the mountains, throwing immense shadows toward the horizon. As it boiled up into the sky, the shadows began to shrink, and the smell of hot sand and creosote bush rose in the air. It was going to be a hot day. A very hot day. And nowhere was it going to be hotter than in the black lava beds of El Malpaís.

He had plenty of water and ammunition. Their hour or so of lead time couldn’t amount to more than four or five miles. That gap would narrow considerably as the lava slowed them down. Though he no longer had the advantage of total surprise, their awareness of his presence would force them to travel during the heat of the day.

A half mile from the lava, the two tracks joined again. Nye followed them to the base of the flow. Without even dismounting, he could see the whitish marks on the basalt where the iron shoes had scrabbled onto the rock. Now that the sun was up, following these marks would be easy.

It was still early morning, and the temperature was a comfortable eighty degrees. In an hour it would be a hundred; in another hour, a hundred and five. At four thousand feet of altitude, with a clear sky, the sun’s heat would be overwhelming in its intensity. The only shade anywhere was the shadow under a horse’s belly. If he didn’t get them by nightfall, the desert would.

The lava bed lay ahead in great ropy masses, stretching into the limitless distance. In places there were pits of broken lava, fractured hexagonal blocks where the roofs of subterranean tubes had collapsed. In other areas there were pressure ridges where the ancient flow had shoved up rafts and blocks of lava into enormous piles. Already the ground was shimmering as the black basalt absorbed the sunlight, reemitting it as heat.

Muerto picked his way across the flow with care. The horse’s hooves rang and clattered among the rocks. A lizard shot off into a crack. Thinking about Carson and de Vaca in this heat with so little water made Nye thirsty. He took a satisfying drink from one of the water bags. The water was still cold and had a faint, pleasing taste of flax.

The shadow was still there, walking tirelessly beside his horse, visible only indirectly. It had not spoken again. Nye found himself taking comfort in its presence.

After a few miles, he dismounted to follow the marks with greater ease.

Carson and de Vaca had continued eastward toward a low cinder cone. The cone was open at the west end and almost flush with the lava flow, its sides rising like two points into the fierce blue sky. The tracks headed straight for the low opening.

Nye felt a spreading flush of triumph. Carson and the woman would be going into the cinder cone for only one reason: to take refuge. They thought they had shaken Nye by retreating back into the lava. Realizing that crossing the desert during daylight was suicide, they were going to wait in the cinder cone until darkness, and continue their journey under cover of night.

Then he noticed a wisp of smoke curling up from the inner side of the cinder cone. Nye stopped, staring in disbelief. Carson must have caught something, most likely a rabbit, and they were busy feasting. He examined the trail very carefully, and then cut for sign, checking for any possible tracks or tricks. Carson had proven to be resourceful. Perhaps there was a trail out on the far side.

Leaving Muerto at a safe distance, Nye moved cautiously, with infinite patience, remaining hidden as he circled the cinder cone. The smoke, the tracks, could be a trap of some kind.

But there was no sign of a trap. And there were no tracks leading away. The two had ridden into the cinder cone and not come out.

Immediately, Nye knew what he must do. Climb the back side of the cinder cone, where the walls of lava reared upward in jagged thrusts. From that height, he could shoot down anywhere into the cone. There would be no place to take cover.

Returning for Muerto, he moved in a slow arc, leading the horse around to the southeastern end of the cone. There, in the close and silent shadows, he ordered Muerto to stand. With great care, Nye began to creep up the side of the cinder cone, his rifle slung over his back and an extra box of ammunition in his pocket. The cinders were small and hot beneath his hands, and they rustled as he moved up the slope, but he knew that the noise would not reach inside.

Within minutes, he neared the lip of the cone. Easing the safety off the Holland & Holland, he crawled to the edge.

A hundred feet below, he could make out a smoldering fire. Draped on a chamisa bush was a bandanna that had apparently been washed and let out to dry. A T-shirt was hanging next to it. It was definitely their camp, and they had not moved on. But where the hell were they?

He glanced around. There was a hole in the side of the cinder cone, lying in deep shadow. They must be resting in the shade. And the horses? Carson would have left them hobbled some distance away to graze.

Nye sat down to wait, easing the curve of his cheek into the rifle stock. When they came out of the shade, he would pick them off.

Forty minutes went by. Then Nye saw the shadow that was now always at his side begin to stir impatiently.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“You are a fool,” the voice whispered. “You are a fool, a fool, a—”

“What?” Nye whispered.

“A man and a woman, dying of thirst, use their last water to wash a bandanna,” the voice said in a mocking tone. “In the hundred-degree heat, they light a fire. Fool, fool, fool ...”

Nye felt a prickly sensation race up his neck. The voice was right. The rotter, the bloody thieving rotter, had managed to slip away a second time. Nye stood with a curse and slid down the inside of the cinder cone, no longer making any attempt to conceal his presence. The shadowy hole in the side of the cone was empty. Nye walked around the camp, taking in at first hand its obvious phoniness. The bandanna and the T-shirt were two expendable items, designed to make him think the camp was occupied. There was no evidence that Carson and de Vaca had stopped at all, although he could see marks indicating that horses had been inside for a brief period. The fire had been hastily built with green sticks of greasewood, guaranteed to smoke.