“And you, being made the new Father, became a deadbeat dad and left them.” Queen flashed a grin.

“They never did ask for child support,” Rook said. “But the old mothers didn’t live here.”

She closed her eyes and nodded, remembering the stories told by Rook, Knight, and Bishop, who had seen more of the Neanderthal’s underground world than she or King. “The Necropolis.”

“That’s the place.”

“Which way?”

“South, past the river.”

Queen stepped past him. “Then what are we waiting for?”

Rook watched Queen move past him and head south. They hadn’t been on a mission since leaving the jungles of Vietnam a year earlier, and though they had trained continuously since then, something felt different. Queen had always been detail-oriented and focused. Driven. But now her guard was down. Not quite laid back, but indifferent to life and death.

Over the past year, she had not once mentioned the scar on her forehead, at least not to anyone on the team, and he seriously doubted she’d been to see a professional. The brand, a skull inside a star, had been burned into her forehead by Major-General Trung, commander of the Death Volunteers. It was a torture few people could endure without lasting side effects. And while Queen wasn’t most people, the brutal act had changed her. Being trained to hide her feelings from the enemy, she would have no trouble hiding them from the team. But Rook could see it.

He realized he might be seeing something because he was looking too hard. His concern for her had grown over the past year, but he kept his thoughts to himself, afraid talking would reveal his true feelings. Was his worry for her well-being corrupting his assessment of her abilities? That seemed more likely than Queen going soft. Rook frowned. He was going soft. And being back in this jungle with her, where they had shared a brief kiss … He shook his head, trying to stay focused on the mission before his own distractions put them both in danger.

EIGHT

30,000 Feet Above Uluru, Australia

AFTER SWINGING OVER Vietnam to drop off Rook and Queen, the Crescent turned south and, flying at Mach 2 (1,522 mph), covered the three-thousand-two-hundred-mile distance in two hours. Bishop and Knight spent the last hour prebreathing for their impending HALO jump. They felt the stealth transport shift as its speed slowed, signaling their final approach to Ayers Rock, known as Uluru to the aboriginal Australians.

Uluru, a one-thousand-one-hundred-forty-two-foot-tall sandstone formation with a six-mile circumference stood out on the flat desert of central Australia like a crater in reverse. It had amazing views, three hundred sixty degrees of crags and fissures perfect for climbing, historical value as an ancient watering hole for desert travelers, and an ancient spiritual site of great importance since one of the sacred “Dreamtime” tracks—the paths taken by the Creator Beings as they walked the young earth—cut directly through the giant stone.

Knight and Bishop stood and walked to the hatch. Both had slept for the majority of the six-hour flight from Fort Bragg to Vietnam and had spent most of the time since then in silence—Bishop in meditation, Knight in study.