James Rollins - THE DEVIL COLONY

Seichan pointed to the oven. "In the meantime, what do we do about that map?"

Gray showed her. He reached and dialed up the digital thermostat on the oven. He kept turning, watching the temperature setting climb above three thousand degrees Celsius, three times the melting point of ordinary gold. The blue acetylene flames shot higher inside the oven, dancing more vigorously.

Seichan stared at him, one eyebrow raised.

"We can't risk the map falling into Waldorf's hands," he explained.

"So you're going to destroy it?"

"I'm going to try. The map's metal is denser, so it's not going to melt at the low temperatures of ordinary gold. But there must be some temperature at which it does melt."

To make sure this happened, Gray continued to twist the oven's thermostat dial until the temperature setting changed from digital numbers to just three letters: MAX.

Hopefully that should do it.

Gray kept vigil with Seichan as the oven's temperature rose higher and higher. Soon the radiating heat drove them back another few steps. Inside the chamber, the map's rosy glow became a blinding brilliance, shining like a minisun.

Maybe it won't melt... not even at these temperatures.

In another minute, Gray had to shield his eyes against the glare.

"Do you feel that?" Seichan asked.

"Feel what?" he began-then he felt it.

A prickling across his skin, a fine vibration, as if all the molecules in the room had grown excited. A second later, the heavy oven began to quake against the concrete floor.

Gray grabbed Seichan's elbow and pushed her toward the door. "Run!"

He fled behind her. He pictured the tightly packed atoms in the nano-gold, squeezed abnormally close together, trapping massive amounts of potential energy in that strained state, like a rubber band stretched tautly.

He glanced behind him. If that rubber band were suddenly cut, if all that potential energy were released at once by overheating the metal...

It wasn't going to melt.

It was going to-

The explosion blew him into Seichan and rolled them both through the shop door and out into the night. Shattered glass and splintered wood rained down around them. The scorched door of the oven flew past and crashed through the windshield of the shop owner's Chevy Suburban, parked just outside.

Gray scrambled up, hooking an arm around Seichan's waist and drawing her up with him. He pictured the shop's rows of pressurized gas tanks. The next explosion knocked them back to the ground with a scorching blast of heat. A massive fireball blew out the remaining shop windows behind them and rolled high into the sky.

They regained their feet, each helping the other up.

Across a small parking lot that fronted the business, Monk stared back at them. He stood beside the stunned Russian next to their stolen white van. As they ran up, the goldsmith fell to his knees.

"What have you done to my shop?" the man demanded.

"You'll be reimbursed," Gray said, waving the man aside and the others toward the vehicle. "As long as you stay silent."

They all piled into the van, with Monk behind the wheel.

"Hang on," Monk warned.

He shifted into reverse, pounded the gas pedal, and sent the vehicle flying in reverse, tires squealing across the parking lot. Bouncing over a curb, they hit the surface street teeth-jarringly hard-then Monk yanked back into forward gear so fast that they risked whiplash.

Gray understood the need for speed. They all did. They had to be long gone from the area before any emergency response teams arrived. He stared back at the burning complex. Flames continued to lap around it and smoke roiled high into the night sky, like a signal flare. Their trail, which had grown cool, was suddenly hot again. He couldn't trust the Russian to remain silent. Word would spread-likely reaching Waldorf.

"What happened back there?" Monk finally asked.

Gray told him.

"So, at least, you found the Indian map," Monk commented. "But what about the location of the Fourteenth Colony? Do you know where it is?"

Gray nodded, his head still ringing. "I have an idea."

"Where?"

"In the very worst place it could be."

June 1, 12:22 A.M.

Flagstaff, Arizona

Painter leaned on a table in the main lodge of the ranger station. "If Gray's right, how much trouble are we in?"

Across a swath of topographical maps and reports from the U.S. Geological Survey, Ronald Chin shook his head.

"I'd say a shitload."

The normally reserved geologist's slip into profanity spoke volumes. Chin had arrived thirty minutes ago, along with a member of the National Guard-Major Ashley Ryan. The pair had already been en route from Utah to Arizona, intending to help with the search for Painter's lost group. After landing in Flagstaff and learning of their rescue, they had joined Painter's team here at the station, which had become a makeshift situation room.

"Could you be any more specific?" Painter asked, and stared down at a splayed open map of Montana and Wyoming. It was here that Gray believed the lost city of the ancients was hidden, the final resting place of the Tawtsee'untsaw Pootseev, where they stored their greatest treasures and where a doomsday clock was ticking downward, one neutrino at a time.

He studied the boundaries of the national park outlined on the map.

Yellowstone .

The first of the nation's parks, and the granddaddy of all geothermal areas on this continent. If the Tawtsee'untsaw Pootseev had wanted a warm and permanent home to preserve and protect their fragile treasure, this would be the place, with its ten thousand hot springs, two hundred geysers, and countless other steaming vents, bubbling fumaroles, and mud volcanoes. In fact, half the geysers in the entire world were located within this park.

But it was also a lot of park to search.

Over two million acres .

Before deciding to concentrate their efforts fully on that one location, Painter wanted to be sure. Off in one of the back offices, Hank Kanosh was mobilizing his Native American resources, struggling to substantiate Gray's claim. At this point, it was still a theory. Even Gray admitted that his estimation of the location was a best guess and that a large margin of error remained. In the meantime, his team would seek further corroboration by investigating the historical angle.

While all that was being done, Painter wanted some idea of what to expect. For this, he needed the expertise of a geologist.

Chin stepped around the table, dragging a topographical map of the national park along its surface. It showed a ring of mountains sheltering a vast plateau, the true geothermal heart of Yellowstone. The steaming valley stretched four thousand square kilometers, large enough to hold all of Los Angeles-but it was no ordinary valley. It was a caldera, the cratered top of a supervolcano that simmered beneath the park.

"This is the problem," Chin said, tapping the center of the crater, where a vast lake pooled. "The Yellowstone caldera marks a geological hot spot, a continual upwelling of hot, molten mantle rock from the earth's core. It feeds into a massive magma chamber only four to five miles beneath the surface. From data collected by the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, we also know that there are pockets of magma much closer to the surface, seeping into the crust, driving all the hydrothermal activity in the area. With all the rainfall locally, the heat drives a massive and ancient hydraulic system, the world's largest steam engine. That force alone has triggered massive hydrothermal explosions in the valley. Yellowstone Lake itself was formed from one of those blasts, when rain and springwater filled the crater that resulted."