Burial Ground

V

10:32 p.m.

Colton turned the satchel over and over in his lap. It was the dried stomach of some large animal, easily identifiable by the telltale horn shape and the coarse rugae lining the inside. He couldn't bear to look at Leo, who stared helplessly between the small hammer and the shadowed wilderness, where the hired crew tromped through the underbrush in search of tracks they would never find. Dahlia and Jay followed them in hopes of capturing the native on film, which saved him the trouble of having to run them off for attempting to memorialize Leo's suffering. There were probably consolatory words that should be said, but he didn't know any of them. Instead, he scrutinized the remaining contents of the native's bag. There were several arrowheads, dried lengths of jerked meat, and two irregular clumps of what he had at first erroneously believed to be clods of mud. He broke one open and inspected it more closely. At the center of the sphere was a small chunk of something metallic. It was an amalgam of some sort, part reddish and flaking, the remainder a smoky gray. The outer portion that had been packed around the odd core was composed of clay that had been mixed with metal shavings. He brought it closer to the fire. The flecks glinted of silver and copper.

"Well, what do you know?" he said out loud.

"What is it?" Galen asked from behind him. Colton didn't realize he had drawn an audience.

"See this outer layer? Those metal shavings are copper and magnesium." He pinched off some of the clay and carefully set it on one of the branches in the fire. After a moment, a fierce greenish-white glare enveloped the clay like a birthing star. It faded quickly to nothing again. "And this chunk of metal in the center? The red portion is iron oxide, more commonly known as rust. The grayish part is aluminum. Together they form an incendiary compound called thermite." He crumbled off a section and threw it into the flames.

"Nothing happened," Galen said after a long moment.

"Right. That's because the temperature required for the auto-ignition of thermite is higher than the fire can generate alone. But throw in the magnesium as a fuse..."

He wadded up the ball again and dropped it into the fire.

It smoked and smoldered before the magnesium flare blazed again. A heartbeat later, the thermite ignited with a brilliant expulsion of light and heat. The logs in the campfire incinerated and the blinding glow eclipsed the flames.

Galen stumbled backward and fell onto his rear end with a gasp.

Colton chuckled and moved away from the fire. His shins already ached from the searing heat.

Powdered rust and aluminum combined to form a flash powder that burned extremely hot and fast. He had never experimented with them in this rock-like form. Was it created through come sort of metallic precipitation process?

"You could have at least warned me," Galen said. He picked himself up and dusted off his backside.

Colton smirked.

The thermite continued to burn.

They were dealing with some very smart natives. And while that in itself didn't trouble him, something else did. Why in the world did an aboriginal tribe in the middle of nowhere need incendiary devices?