“I’ll try to get her back,” Deep Blue said. “The valley is in shadow with the sun rising so we’re not seeing anything on the visual scan.”

“Infrared?” Bishop asked.

“That’s the thing,” Deep Blue said. “I’m not seeing anything other than embers from the fire. Either everyone is gone, or…”

“Everyone is dead,” Knight finished. “We’re on it.”

Knight and Bishop crept into the valley, weapons ready. They focused on every crag and shadow where someone could hide. A series of petroglyphs caught Knight’s eye. He looked at the ancient pictographs. Some depicted ancient peoples and animals and others were simple swirling circles that he knew represented a watering hole. His eyes followed a streak of black algae that had grown in a water channel. Halfway up, the dry black surface became wet.

And red.

A small trickle of thick blood rolled down the stone and dripped at his feet. “Bishop!”

He followed the blood trail up and found a dark-skinned arm protruding from beneath a large boulder. It appeared the boulder had fallen on the person, but there were no cliff faces above it.

Bishop stepped farther into the valley as Knight continued looking at the crushed arm. “That stone must weigh a ton, Bishop. How—”

“Knight.” Bishop’s voice was quiet, but full of dread, which was an unusual inflection for a man who could not be injured or killed short of decapitation. Sensing the danger had passed, he lowered his weapon.

Knight joined him at a curve in the valley, which opened up into a large atrium. The back wall, covered in petroglyphs, rose up and hung over a large watering hole. It was fringed by adder’s-tongue ferns and mulga and bloodwood trees. A small clearing held a circle of crushed, smoldering ash. But none of this held their attention. It was impossible to see the beauty of the place amid the sheer carnage.

Counting the bodies was impossible because many were torn apart and intermingled. Several were squashed, like roadkill—bodies bent, faces twisted in disgust, entrails burst from stomachs. Others lay beneath massive stones, as though they’d fallen from the sky. And one man hung upside down from a tree, twenty feet above the valley floor, his legs bent at impossible angles. Several piles of sandstone dust, now scattering in the breeze rolling down Ayers Rock, were spread among the dead.

The attack had only lasted a few minutes, but had been brutally efficient, leaving only a single wallaby as an eyewitness.

Bishop bent down to a severed head and rolled it over with the barrel of his UMP. Ignoring the look of horror frozen in the man’s eyes, he focused on the Aboriginal facial features—pronounced brow, wide nose, dark skin. “These were our targets.”

Knight crouched by a nearby body, possibly the one belonging to the head Bishop was inspecting. A pouch tied around the waist contained a wallet. Knight opened it and found a photo I.D. The name read: Balun Ammaroo. But the man in the photo wore a business suit and tie. “They were reenacting all this. Connecting with their heritage or something.” Knight toggled on his throat mic. “Deep Blue, this is Knight.”