James Rollins - THE DEVIL COLONY

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."

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."

"I thought he wanted to stay off the grid."

The Humetewas' cabins had no television or telephones. Even cellular reception was nonexistent in the labyrinthine canyons.

She shrugged. "Should still be safe. I heard him say something about encryption software. Probably acts as a scrambler or something."

He nodded and patted the stone. "You came all the way up here to tell me that?"

She sank cross-legged to the stone. "No..." There was a long pause, too long for the truth. "Just wanted to stretch my legs."

He recognized the waffling and could guess its source. He had already noted how she shied away from her uncle, circled him like a wary dog fearful of being beaten but drawn anyway. Still, there was no timidity to her. She kept her hackles raised, ready to bite. All this uncertainty must have made it too uncomfortable for her to stay below at the cabins, pushing her to follow after him.

He faced the rising sun as it crested fully and set fire to the red-rock landscape below. "Are you familiar with the na'ii'ees ceremony?"

"What's that?"

He shook his head sadly. Why was it that the most fervent of the Native American activists were so often ignorant of their own heritage?

"It's the sunrise ceremony," he explained, pointing to the blazing birth of the new day. "A rite of passage for girls into womanhood. It involves four days and nights of dancing and sacred blessings, imbuing the new women with the spiritual and healing power of the White Painted Woman."

Answering the questioning lift of an eyebrow, he explained the Apache and Navajo mythology surrounding this goddess, also known as the Changing Woman, named for her ability to shift appearances along with the seasons. He enjoyed how her gaze turned from dull to rapt with the telling, a sign of her thirst for such knowledge.

As he ended his description, she turned to the rising sun. "So do any tribes still perform the ceremony?"

"Some, but rarely. In the early twentieth century, the U.S. government banned Native American spiritual rites and practices, making the sunrise ceremony illegal. Over time, the practice slowly faded, only to return in a weakened version today."

Kai's face turned darker. "They've stolen so much from us..."

"The past is the past. It's now up to us to sustain our own culture. We only lose what we fail to nurture."

She seemed little mollified by this, her words bitter. "What? Like you're doing? Forsaking your own beliefs for the white man's religion. A religion that persecuted our people and incited massacres."

He sighed. He'd heard it all before, and once again tried his best to enlighten the ignorant. "Mistakes are made by stupid men. In the course of human history, religions have been used as excuses for violence, including among our own Native American tribes. But when it comes to culture, religion is only one thread in a vast woven rug. My father was raised Mormon, as was my mother. That is as much my history as my native blood. One does not negate the other. I find much in the Book of Mormon that gives me peace and brings me closer to God-or whatever you want to call that eternal spirituality that exists in all of us. In the end, my faith even offers another viewpoint on our own people's past. It's why I became a Native American historian and naturalist. To seek the answer to who we are."