The Devil Colony by James Rollins Read Free Book Online Page B

head.
    “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Ryan said, still dazed. “The force of this explosion should have taken out half the crowd. Including us.” He held up an open palm. “And just feel that heat.”
    Hank did. It felt like a blast furnace. The air reeked of burning brimstone, turning his stomach.
    As they watched, a large boulder crumbled apart within the blast zone, breaking down into smaller rocks. The face of the cliff began to do the same, disintegrating into a flow of boulders and sand. It was as if the hard granite had become loose sandstone, friable and weak.
    “Look at the ground,” Ryan said.
    Hank stared at the blasted rock, steaming and awash with a swirl of mist. The drizzling rain hissed and spattered as it struck. Still, he didn’t see what had Major Ryan so agitated. Then again, the man had much younger eyes.
    Hank dropped to a knee to inspect the ground more closely. Then he saw it, too. He’d missed it through the swirl of steam. The stone surface wasn’t solid, more like ground pepper—and it was moving !
    The grains jittered and trembled as if they were drops of oil simmering atop a hot skillet. He watched a small pebble on the surface dissolve into coarse sand, then into a dusty powder. A drop of rain struck the ground and blasted a crater. Like a pebble hitting a still pond, ripples spread outward across the microfine surface
    Hank shook his head in disbelief. Fearful, he studied where the blast zone ended and solid ground began. As he stared, the bordering edge of stone crumbled to sand, incrementally expanding the blast zone.
    “It’s spreading,” Hank realized, and pushed Ryan back.
    “What are you talking about?”
    Hank had no answers, only a growing certainty. “Something is still active. It’s eating away the rock and radiating outward.”
    “Are you nuts? Nothing can—”
    From the center of the blast zone, a belch of water burst upward from below and coughed into a steaming column, rising several yards into the air. A scalding heat chased them farther off.
    By the time they stopped, Hank’s skin burned, and his eyes felt parboiled. He gasped and choked out a few words.
    “Must’ve cracked into the geothermal spring . . . under the valley.”
    “What are you talking about?” Ryan pulled his jacket collar over his mouth and nose. The burning sulfur made even breathing dangerous.
    “Whatever’s happening here, it’s not only spreading outward—”
    Hank pointed to the minigeyser.
    “—it’s also heading down .”

Chapter 3
    May 30, 3:39 P.M.
Washington, D.C.
    So much for dinner plans.
    Though the explosion in Utah was only an hour old, Painter Crowe knew he’d be in his office all night. Details continued to flow in by the minute, but information remained sketchy due to the remote mountainous location of the blast. All of Washington’s intelligence communities were on high alert and mobilizing to bear on the situation.
    Including Sigma.
    Painter’s group operated as a covert wing for DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. His team was composed of handpicked Special Forces soldiers—those whose IQs tested off the scales or who showed unique mental acumen. He recruited and retrained them in various scientific disciplines to act as field operatives for the Defense Department’s research-and-development wing. Teams were sent out into the world to protect against global threats.
    Normally, such a domestic attack as in Utah would not fall within his team’s purview, but a few anomalous details had drawn the interest of his boss, the head of DARPA, General Gregory Metcalf. Painter might have still argued against utilizing Sigma’s resources for such a messy business, but as a result of the controversy surrounding the blast, even the president—who owed his life to Sigma in the past—had personally requested their assistance in this delicate matter.
    And one does not say no to President James T. Gant.
    So Painter’s barbecue plans with