Darkwind: Ancient Enemy 2 Read Online Free PDF Page A

both about thirty-five to forty feet long. A tent with one canvas wall rolled up had been erected not too far away from the trailers—closer to a rock canyon wall in the distance that rose up to the sky, its jagged top a dark contrast against the peaceful blue morning sky.
    Palmer parked his car farther back from the three police vehicles, right beside Klein’s black sedan, and then he cut the engine. He got out and pocketed his keys and then grabbed his coat from the back seat. After slipping his coat on, he stuffed his hands into a pair of black leather gloves. He checked his coat pockets to make sure he had his cell phone, some plastic baggies, and a few pairs of blue nitrite gloves with him.
    “Captain Begay,” Agent Klein said as he walked towards the big man. He wasn’t exactly trying to hide his distaste for the captain.
    “Agent Klein,” the big man answered and nodded slightly. Neither man offered a hand in greeting. The large man’s narrow eyes shifted to Palmer.
    “Special Agent Palmer,” Palmer said and pulled out his ID and badge. He flipped the leather wallet open in a practiced motion, showing the badge and ID to Captain Begay.
    “Begay,” the large man said and extended a gloveless brown hand to Palmer.
    Palmer shook the man’s hand and it felt like his hand had been squeezed in a piece of machinery for a second.
    Begay was a big man, easily three or four inches taller than Palmer’s five foot eleven inches, and he outweighed Palmer by over a hundred pounds. He had a wide face that had been tanned and wrinkled by the relentless desert sun. His mane of dark hair was tied back in a ponytail. He wore plain clothes but he had a police belt with a sidearm, walkie-talkie, and a leather pouch for a pair of handcuffs. Over his plain clothes he wore the same kind of green coat that the other two officers wore. They all had Navajo Tribal Police patches on their shoulders and a small nameplate on the right front pockets of their coats.
    The other two officers were both tall and much younger and leaner than Begay. They stared at Palmer, both of them closer to the Bronco which Palmer guessed was Begay’s vehicle. The two officers didn’t stare at him with the animosity that Palmer had expected. Instead, he saw shock and fear in their dark eyes.
    They had seen something bad here.
    Palmer looked around for a few seconds, taking in the landscape. He noticed that what he’d thought had been a sheer rock wall in the distance actually had a vertical slit in it that was the mouth to some kind of cave. Another canvas tent, this one without walls, had been set up near the mouth with a generator underneath it. Piles of shrubbery and brush that had been cut away from the mouth of the cave were piled up on each side of the entrance to the cave, well out of the way.
    “Thanks for coming,” Begay told Palmer in a low grumbling voice, but it sounded like a hollow platitude.
    Palmer looked back at Begay and saw the same fear and shock in the man’s coal-black eyes. He nodded at him.
    “Agent Palmer is a … a specialist in these matters,” Klein said.
    Palmer wished Klein would stop talking.
    “What we’ve got here,” Begay said, ignoring Klein completely, “it’s not like anything we’ve ever dealt with before.”
    Palmer nodded. “Ten dead bodies.”
    Begay shrugged. “Maybe. Can’t really tell.”
    “What do you mean by that?” Klein asked him.
    Begay looked at Klein with a hard stare. “You’ll see.”
    Palmer looked over at the two trailers. “They in there?”
    Begay shook his head no. “It might have started in there … there’s blood everywhere inside the first trailer and a big bloodstain in the dirt over there.” He looked back at the mouth of the cave in the distance. “But all of the bodies are in there.”
    “What about the other trailer?” Klein said. “Blood in the second trailer?”
    “It looks clean,” Begay answered.
    Palmer didn’t say anything.
    “Looks to me like a lot of