“No blankets, no mattresses, no pillows,” he murmured.

The cots had been stripped.

And why so many of them?

According to Bukolov, the Boers had arrived here with only a hundred men. This medical ward held cots for nearly a third of that number. Had that many soldiers been wounded?

With more mysteries raised than solved, Tucker moved to the fourth and final passageway. This one ended at a huge cavern, but it was barren: no crates, no equipment. Nothing. But something struck him as odd about its far wall.

Following his beam of light, Tucker crossed there and discovered a large wall of rubble. He noted blackened scorch marks to either side. Roosa must have blasted this entrance, collapsing and sealing it behind him. At least this discovery answered a question that had been nagging him: How had Roosa gotten the horses into this cave system? Of course, that raised in turn yet another question: What became of the horses?

Kane barked twice behind him.

The shepherd drew him to a tunnel opening off to the right. This one was blocked by a careful stack of boulders. Each stone wedged tightly together. Even the gaps had been stuffed with clumps of burlap.

“What the hell?” he murmured.

Using his hands and his knife, he pried at the wall of boulders until one slipped free. It crashed to the floor, almost hitting his toes. He began to lower his face to the opening, to shine his light through the gap, but yanked his head back, slapped in the face by a fierce stench.

He took a few involuntary steps backward, covering his nose and mouth with a hand. He recognized the stink immediately, flashing back to too many battlefields, to too much death.

Flesh and fire.

He took a full minute to steel himself, then he returned to the sealed door. He now detected a whiff of kerosene through the stench, the incendiary source for whatever horrors lay beyond this blockade.

He remembered the entry read by Bukolov from De Klerk’s diary.

Die Horro . . .

Holding his breath, he shoved his head through the gap and swiveled the beam of his lamp. He pointed it down first, expecting to see floor. Instead, darkness swallowed his light. He was staring into the mouth of a shaft, a black pit.

Tucker pulled back out and sat down beside Kane.

He knew what he had to do, but he railed against it.

He had no doubt what lay at the bottom of the pit.

But he had no answer as to why and who?

Those answers lay below—along with perhaps the secret behind De Klerk’s diary. He closed his eyes, struggling to rally. He’d come too far with too much blood shed. He could not balk now.

But I want to . . . dear God, do I want to.

8:41 P.M.

“Tucker, what did you find?” Christopher asked, looking worried, perhaps noting his sickened demeanor as he returned.

“I’m not sure. But I need you to go back to the supplies, grab a coil of climbing rope, and come back here.”

Christopher returned two minutes later.

“Follow me,” Tucker said and led Christopher and Kane back to the large cavern and over to the doorway that closed off the pit.

“That stink . . .” Christopher said after peering through the hole. He had helped Tucker widen it by pulling out a few more rocks. “You’re not going down there, are you?”

“I’m happy for you to take my place.”

For once, Christopher didn’t argue.

Working together, they anchored the rope around a nearby stalagmite and tossed the free end through the hole.

After ordering Kane to stay put, Tucker boosted himself through the opening and twisted around. With his gloved hands on the rope, he leaned back and braced his feet against the wall of the shaft. He took a calming breath. He tried to quiet the voice in his head that was shouting at him to go no farther.

In the end, he simply chose to ignore it.

Hand over hand, Tucker walked himself down into the pit. His headlamp danced off the rock. After ten feet he stopped, steadied himself, and looked below. The bottom of the pit was still beyond the reach of his headlamp’s beam. He kept going. He stopped again at the twenty-foot mark and spotted the end of his rope coiled on a bottom of sorts, a rock ramp that tilted at a sharp angle.

Tucker lowered himself until his boots came to rest atop that ramp. He noted most of the shaft around him was scorched with an oily black soot. He kept one hand on the line—not trusting the rock’s slippery surface or its steep grade. Crouching carefully, he peered over the lip of the ramp and discovered another drop-off.

Don’t think, he commanded himself.

Swallowing hard, he leaned over the drop-off and shone his light down.

His beam revealed an outstretched arm, reaching up toward him, blackened to bone, fingers curled by old flames.

He shuddered, his heart pounding in his throat.

He panned the light down the forearm and biceps, where it disappeared into—

It took Tucker a few seconds for his mind to accept what he was seeing: a morass of skeletal remains and charred flesh. At the edges, he picked out scorched clothing and blankets, chunks of half-charred wood, and blackened tins of kerosene. Despite trying to avoid it, he discerned bits of individual remains.

—a torso jutting from the mire as though the man had been trying to claw his way out of quicksand.

—the disembodied hoof of a horse, its steel shoe glinting dully.

—a pair of gentleman’s spectacles caught on a higher spur of rock, looking unscathed by the conflagration below, reflecting back his lamp’s light.

“Good God,” he murmured.

Sick to his stomach, his head full of the acrid stench of immolated flesh, he tore his eyes away and pulled himself back until he stood on trembling legs on the scorched ramp. Questions swirled.

What had happened here?

How deep was the pit?

How many were down there?

Tucker stared up, ready to escape this choked gateway to hell.

Two feet above his head, he found himself staring at the haft of a dagger. It was jutting from the rock face, so soot covered he hadn’t noticed it when he first came down. He reached up, grabbed the haft, and gave it a wiggle. Dried soot flaked off and swirled in the beam of his headlamp. There was something beneath the soot, pinned by the blade into the rock.

Using his fingertips, he brushed away the soot to reveal a thick square of oilcloth. Carefully, he pried the packet off the wall and slipped it into his thigh pocket.

“Tucker!” Christopher’s shout startled him. “What did you find?”

He glared up toward his friend’s headlamp. “I’m coming up! Get that damned light out of my eyes.”

“Oh, sorry.”

He quickly and gladly hauled himself up the rock face and out of the shaft. Without saying a word, he strode several yards away from the charnel pit and finally sat down. Christopher joined him and offered a canteen.

He took a long gulp of water.

Kane slinked over, his tail low, the very tip wagging questioningly.

“I’m okay . . . I’m okay . . .”

The reassurance was as much for him as Kane.

“What was down there?” Christopher asked.

Tucker explained—though words failed to convey the true horror.

Christopher murmured, “Good Lord, why would they do that?”

“I don’t know.” Tucker withdrew the wrapped packet of oilcloth. “But this may hold some clue.”

He turned the prize over in his hands. He found a seam in the cloth. Using the tip of his knife, he slit along it and unfolded the cloth. It was several layers thick. At the heart of the package rested a thick sheaf of papers, folded in half and perfectly preserved, showing no signs of soot or decay.

Written on the outside in what he immediately recognized as De Klerk’s handwriting were two lines: one Afrikaans, the other in English, likely the same message.