UNSEEN FORCES: SKY WILDER (BOOK ONE) Page 5

  Ten miles out of Sedona, Sky turned the Jeep onto a gravel county road. After off-roading into the Kaibab National Forest, they turned off a seldom used fire trail onto an extremely rough trail, which soon became little more than a wash.

  When the boulders in the wash became too large, they parked between manzanita and creosote bushes under the mouth of an unnamed canyon. They made quick work of strapping on their packs, bed rolls, canteens and extra gear. Wilder wore a fanny pack front-first, giving him quick access to a GPS, compass, maps, binoculars, energy bars, and, Bacavi noticed, a thirty-eight snub-nosed revolver.

  “Ninety-five degrees and about four hours of daylight left.” A gold pocket-watch seemed miniature in Frank’s huge hands.

  “And the good news is, we’re less than two kilometers away,” said Sky, glancing into the canyon, heavy with agave, yucca, one-seed juniper, and pinion pine higher up along the scarlet walls. He grabbed a bale of camouflage netting from the Jeep.

  “What’s that for?”

  “For luck.” He draped the desert pattern netting over the Jeep.

  “You don’t want the gods to know we’re here?”

  “Something like that.”

  ###

  The bone-dry canyon, hundreds of millions of years ago part of an ocean bed, spanned fifty meters at the mouth and slowly narrowed as they climbed. They navigated silently through dense scrub and juniper alongside the rocky wash, swatting away insistent flies as the heat index skyrocketed. Like countless canyons Wilder had explored, this one looked simple enough initially, but soon became tricky. It was one long, excellent location for an ambush; the brush, giant boulders and sudden outcroppings acted like a natural maze, steering and controlling their progress and preventing them from having a clear picture of the exact lay of the canyon.

  They'd hiked in another half-kilometer when Wilder stopped to cross-check his Forest Service maps with a U.S. army-issue handheld Global Positioning System device. The GPS unit used four or five satellites to triangulate his position within three meters of accuracy.

  “We’ll have to climb to the ledge of the escarpment, where the tree line looks to be about forty meters up. I want to get to that outcropping, right there,” he gestured.

  “Wonderful,” said Bacavi, shielding his eyes for a look. “You'd better have an iced latte waiting for me up there.”

  They set off without speaking and in less than an hour neared the outcropping, only to discover a crevasse in the rock blocked their progress. The gash measured two meters across and a forty meter drop onto hard, jagged rock. The fissure cut deep into the side of the mountain, making it impossible to see whether climbing higher would enable them to cross and then descend.

  “How close are we, really?” asked Frank, between gulps from his canteen. Sweat ran down his cheeks and his khaki shirt, darkened with moisture, clung to his chest.

  “Spitting distance,” said Sky, who used his sleeve to wipe sweat beads from his eyes. “Cross this gap, scramble up, and we’re home.”

  They stood on a small level area at the crevasse. A pinion pine had grown up fearlessly right at the edge of the fissure. Wilder touched the sticky bark of the pine then looked across the crevasse. “Cut this boy just so, it’d fall right across. Make a perfect log bridge.”

  “This is a national forest!” Frank said in mock protest. “Log bridge is not a bad idea, though.” He scanned the slope above them. A few small pines had fallen due to death or disease. “Looks like we have some ready-made wood, right up there.”

  Sky nodded. “Beats coming back here next weekend with a bunch of climbing gear.”

  Within minutes they’d managed to drag three small trunks to the precipice. It would be too heavy to lash the trees together and slide them across as a unit, so the duo eased them across one at a time. They tied the logs together on their side of the crevasse using nylon cord.

  Leaving his pack behind, keeping his center of gravity low, Wilder scampered across the makeshift bridge quickly, then lashed the logs together on the other side. Nothing fancy, and pretty narrow—only about nine inches wide. They then ferried the backpacks over using rope. The two men worked wordlessly, as old partners often do.

  Finally, Sky stood up, studied the bridge, then scanned his partner standing on the other side. “Don't take this wrong, Flying Bull, but you've got about a hundred pounds on me and one of those logs is really brittle. I felt it give when I crossed.”

  “Call me overweight again, Dances With Wolves, and I'll hammer you.” Frank stepped slowly and cautiously, staying to the thicker log, creaking under his girth. He took the next step more confidently, but his left foot came down to a sickening snap and the rotted trunk gave way. His body lurched forward, hard, but he landed lucky, his torso slamming on top of the logs, and he held on as the damaged bridge slid forward six inches.

  Ultra-focused, Sky leaned over the ledge, reached out and grabbed his friend’s upper arm. “Don’t get up, just scramble toward me, now.” Frozen, Frank started to look down. “Don’t look down,” Sky growled, “just crawl toward me, you big ox!” The little bridge started to moan.

  Frank grinned. “My foot’s caught, Einstein, or I’d already be over there tearing you a second a-hole for talking me into leaving my Jacuzzi for this wilderness fantasy weekend.”

  Bacavi's right leg lay wedged between the splintered log at about mid-calf. As he tried to pull free, large splinters pierced his trousers, causing him to wince.

  “Hold up a minute.”

  “Not sure I have a minute.” He jerked his leg trying to pull it free. His face contorted and he growled in pain. But the leg didn’t come free.

  “Stay still.” Wilder scooted out onto the log bridge, crawling over Bacavi. Now both men balanced on the flimsy structure over the crevasse, jagged rock waiting patiently one hundred and twenty feet below.

  “What in the name of Chief Seattle are you...?” Frank went silent when the bridge gave its biggest groan yet. “You sorry son-of-a-gun this isn’t funny.”

  Wilder found a handhold, then eased himself over the edge of the log bridge, dangling by only one hand. He worked fast, using his free hand to pry the sharp splintered wood away from Bacavi’s leg. “Try it now.”

  Frank tugged and Sky helped push the foot clear. The big man then eased his way onto the rock. Sky grunted as he hoisted himself back onto the shattered log bridge. As Frank turned to give him a hand, the bridge snapped.

  Their forearms locked just as the wood fell away. Sure as a hammerhead steel crane offloading a container from China, Frank hoisted Sky onto the ledge.

  Both men stood there for a second, panting, knowing they'd just escaped death by a hair's breath.

  “I don’t owe you anything, you owe me one less, you Casper-skinned, skinny-assed showboater.”

  “You’re welcome, chief.”

  ###

  The ruddy rock outcropping lay remarkably flat and darkly discolored in the center. Scree from the sloped escarpment above peppered the otherwise smooth surface. Brush had taken hold along the base of the slope where it met the stone outcropping. There was no sign anyone had ever been here.

  “This is it, huh?” Frank positioned his backpack against a rock as a cushion and sat back. “Nice view.”

  Sky double-checked his GPS. “Yeah, this is it. The opening could be buried under the rockfall behind you.” He scanned the area. There was nothing but twenty-five square meters of solid rock beneath their feet and the mountain escarpment above. Wilder traced along the edge of the outcropping, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

  Frank went to work stoking his pipe as Sky started a careful, methodical search of the slope above. He gently rubbed a solid gold two-inch figurine of the Egyptian goddess Hathor for good luck and protection. He’d had it custom-made at a jewelry store on Sharia Hoda Shaarawi in Cairo, and wore it around his neck. Originally Hathor was considered Queen of the West and Mistress of the Netherworld; journeyers there could be protected by her if they knew the
right spells.

  After noodling around for a couple of minutes, Wilder looked up to take in the approach of dusk upon the Verde Valley. Irrigated greenery sprouting from red soil capped by rusty stratification of the weathered rock formations like some kind of dusty parfait all glowed slightly golden in the softening light. The panoramic view was a bigger picture, a distanced perspective, and of course, that’s when he saw it.

  From above, the outcropping where Frank Bacavi sat looked just like a jar or bowl, narrower at the top with a lip, angled sides flaring out to a rounded bottom. At least it seemed to be a rounded bottom, for it sat partially covered by rockfall. But more importantly, the discoloration in the middle of the outcropping took on a distinct shape from this angle. It resembled a triangle, except the baseline was curved, not straight, and in alignment with the base curvature of the outcropping.

  “That can’t really be,” Sky mumbled, then made his way back down to the outcropping and examined the discoloration more closely. He seemed more troubled than excited by what he saw. “What could have caused this coloration?”

  “Well, considering what we’re looking for, I’d have to say... aliens.”

  Sky couldn’t help but smile as he sat down. “From up there, this outcropping we’re sitting on has a distinct outline. It looks just like the Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol for jar, and the discoloration is part of it. Part of the symbol.”

  “Jar?”

  He pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper from a zippered pocket inside his vest. “According to the riddle of the second site—”

  “The riddle you solved in your dream,” Frank confirmed dryly.

  “I solved part of the one-time pad code keys in the dream. There were three of them. The riddles are an adjunct to the coordinates. They were also in that library in Florence. They were never encoded. The Gestapo obtained them in France in nineteen forty-two from a Warriors of the Rose lodge member, not from the Dutchman, Piet Ronhaar. The coordinates alone, obviously, might not be enough to find the tablets.”

  “Riddles, coordinates. When are you going to show me your secret decoder ring?”

  Sky sighed deeply. “Look, I didn’t plot to bring you out on a snipe hunt. So thanks for humoring me about all this crazy stuff. But you’re right, this is ridiculous.” Sky produced a silver flask from his pack. “Twelve year-old single malt from Spayside. Peace?” He offered it up.

  Frank considered, then, “Screw you and show me the riddle.”

  This was exactly the response Sky expected and he couldn’t contain his 5000 watt smile. “Each of the three hidden tablets has its own riddle. What we’re looking for here is the second tablet. And according to the second riddle, the stone tablet is kept in a jar.”

  Frank read from the paper.

  “Saith Osiris rising up again in the red southwest

  The central key of life eternal floats on high

  In a dry stone jar, sealed by the tears of Isis

  Seen only from heaven, the home of Min.”

  “Who wrote this?” asked Frank.

  “No idea. I dated the paper and ink to the twentieth century.”

  “Curious use of language for the twentieth century.” Frank took a few puffs from the Castello, then handed the paper back to Sky.

  “Not if you’re an Egyptologist. This outcropping, when looking down from above... seen only from heaven... looks just like the symbol for jar... a dry stone jar. And then there’s, the home of Min. Min is a fertility god, always portrayed with a very large phallus. You can’t miss him, every culture has one. But he’s also a patron deity of desert travelers. We are in the desert, Frank.”

  “No. Really?” He took a few puffs from his pipe. “The thing is,” said Frank, gesturing with the shiny black Lucite pipe stem as he made his point, “there's truth in your work. But you’re too fast and loose with facts, with data. Because of the riddle, you’re thinking about a jar, so you look at the rock and see a jar. When you—”

  Sky grabbed Frank’s pipe hand and held it like a vice.

  Frank stared sharply at Sky, then traced his friend’s gaze along the trail of the bluish smoke, which lazily wafted to the right, then picked up speed and disappeared into a rosette of long, spindly thin, bluish-green leaves fanning out 360 degrees from a clump in the rockfall. A meter high flowering stalk had grown up from the center of the Banana Yucca. Faded yellow flowers hung down from the stalk like limp trumpets. The pipe smoke curled past small, solid green capsules of fruit.

  Their eyes met for a moment, then they began pawing at the yucca and some sweetbush covering the base of the escarpment.

  Hidden behind the scrub, a square slab of stone stood upright, half-buried in loose rock. Frank held the pipe in front of the stone, and the smoke wafted into a practically invisible crack behind the stone.

  “There’s a draft, that’s for sure.”

  “This thing kind of looks like a tablet,” said Frank, as he brushed dirt off the face of the stone with his bare hands, then dug at the loose rock, freeing more of the stone. The men took entrenching tools from their packs and cleared the rubble from the stone.

  “Probably just a square rock.” Sky spoke cautiously.

  “Look how it stands here perfectly, all by itself, like it has been fitted up against the side of the mountain.” Frank retrieved a small pry bar and chipped away at the area behind the slab. He created a larger crack and the smoke flowed more freely into the mountain.

  Wilder had gone silent, a thousand thoughts flooding him at once. What if an entrance beckoned? Today’s excursion was as much about spending quality time with his old friend, as it was about confirming he hadn’t broken the code.

  “Let’s pry this sucker loose.” Frank looked at him quizzically. “Sky, you with me?”

  “Yeah. Probably just a small cave and the smoke is being drawn out somewhere else along the slope.”

  Bacavi worked the pry bar, allowing Wilder to slip his entrenching tool in behind the top of the stone. Using rocks as fulcrums, they heaved and the slab tottered over on its face, kicking up lots of dust.

  They saw it immediately, long before the dust cleared. Painted in vivid colors on the back of the slab, seeing the sun for the first time in untold years, loomed a precise depiction in the style of a hieroglyph, of the ithyphallic Egyptian god, Min.

  ###

  The opening beckoned just large enough. Bacavi went first, creeping on all fours. Wilder could never be the first one into a cave or tomb or underground ruin. Not willingly. To help allay his fears he trailed a rope secured to the fallen slab at the mouth of the cave. A small day pack replaced his backpack, and he wore a carbide lamp attached to an elastic band around his forehead and carried two flashlights. Under these circumstances he could tolerate being in a cave, but even then, the anxiety attacks from claustrophobia and achluphobia, fear of darkness, lurked just under the surface. He’d twice been temporarily trapped in caves without light. Wracked with debilitating panic and anxiety, he’d crumpled into a blathering heap. He'd vowed he’d never place himself in a position where it could happen again.

  Four meters in, the narrow, tunnel-like crawl space angled to the right, then straightened out.

  “This entranceway looks like it’s been cut out of the rock.”

  “Looks that way,” said Sky, not at all happy with the prospect.

  The crawlway opened up, enabling them to crouch, then finally stand. Frank struck a flare. They stood in a cave room almost three meters high, and about the same circumference as the rock outcropping. Beyond this room, a narrow dark passageway lead deeper into the mountain and smoke from the flare drifted in that direction.

  “See the smoke? There must be another entrance, or an air vent.”

  “Who cares about that! Don't you see what I see?” Frank practically came out of his shoes.

  A stoic, almost detached look took root on Wilder's face. He took a deep breath, and then with some trepidation, scanned the room more closely. Three small altars, carved
from the rock and each abutting a wall of the cave room, held an ancient artifact. Brightly painted hieroglyphic stelae bookended the altars. They looked crudely rendered, not the kind of fine execution one found in the tombs of the great Pharaohs.

  In the center of the room stood an altar carved from the living rock. Atop it sat a blue stone jar almost two feet high, its profile exactly matching the overhead profile of the rock outcropping.

  Sky switched on a lantern and set it on the floor. Frank unwrapped a piece of hard candy, popped it in his mouth and moved carefully with a soft brush toward one of the altars. “Photograph this one, will you?”

  Using a top-of-the-line Sony digital camera, Wilder showed no enthusiasm as he snapped photos of what looked like a sheathed dagger, its tarnished hilt made of solid gold.

  “Any idea what this is?”

  He lowered the camera and took a closer look. “The ceremonial dagger of an Egyptian king. New Kingdom period, somewhere around the Twentieth Dynasty, probably.” Sky frowned, reached for his flask, and took a healthy swig. “What bad luck.”

  “Dude, look around. You broke the code! This is one of the hiding places of that secret society you were talking about, the tablets of Hui and all that. That dagger over there wouldn’t be from the dynasty of Ramses the Third, would it?”

  “As a matter of fact, it would.”

  Frank nodded. “Gravy on the meat, my friend, gravy on the meat. And look, there are coins here.” He used a soft brush to push away dust and grit, then picked up one of the silver and gold coins using a pair of wooden tweezers. The coins were unevenly round. “These are ancient. Recognize them?” The coin bore a crude but regal profile.

  “If they’re real they’re very old. In early Phoenician times, cities worshiped different gods. They minted their own coins. These could be... from the time of Hui in Tyre.”

  Frank’s excitement built as they examined the other small altars. One held a ceremonial ax made of stone and copper, the other an intricately carved perfume vessel which symbolized rebirth, made of some unknown material. That brought them to the main altar and the simple stone jar.