The Bone Labyrinth by James Rollins

bedside table. The unique ringtone identified the caller: his boss, Painter Crowe, the director of Sigma.
    Gray sighed. “He wouldn’t call unless it was urgent.”
    “When is it not?” she murmured, sinking fully underwater, then rising again. The surface of her face steamed as water sluiced along her wide cheekbones and down her delicate neck.
    It took all his strength to turn away from the tub. “I’m sorry, Seichan.”
    He headed into the bedroom and fetched his phone. For the past three days, he and Seichan had been enjoying the delights of Paris—or at least what could be viewed through the windows or ordered from room service. After being apart from each other for three weeks, they had found themselves seldom venturing far from their suite at the Hôtel Fouquet’s Barrière.
    Seichan had flown to Paris directly from Hong Kong, where she had been overseeing the construction of a women’s shelter. He had come from the other direction, from D.C. He was taking a brief vacation—not only from the demands of Sigma, but also from managing his father, who suffered from Alzheimer’s. His father at least seemed more stable of late, so Gray had felt confident enough to leave for a short spell. While he was gone, a daytime nurse and Gray’s younger brother split his father’s caretaking duties.
    Still, as he picked up the phone, he felt a twinge of foreboding, expecting this call to be about his father. Day in and day out, that fear sat in his gut like a chunk of granite: hard, cold, and immovable. A part of him was always girded, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
    He clutched the phone to his ear as the scrambled connection to Sigma headquarters was made. He caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror above the dresser, reading the anxiety in the hard set of his jaw. Impatient at even this small delay, he swept damp hair from his eyes and rubbed the dark stubble over his cheeks.
    C’mon . . .
    Finally the connection was made, and the director immediately spoke. “Commander Pierce, I’m glad I could reach you. I apologize for interrupting your vacation, but it’s important.”
    “What’s wrong?” he said, his fear spiking sharper.
    “We have a problem. About twenty minutes ago, I fielded an emergency call from General Metcalf.”
    Gray sank to the bed, letting go some of his fear. This wasn’t about his father. “Go on.”
    “It seems French intelligence received a frantic SOS dispatched from one of their units in Croatia.”
    “Croatia?”
    “In the mountains out there. A French alpine military team was acting as a security force for some archaeological dig. From the sound of it, the team was ambushed. So far, attempts to reestablish communication have failed.”
    Gray didn’t see how this involved Sigma, but if Metcalf had called Painter, then something significant must be up. General Gregory Metcalf was the head of DARPA—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—and Painter’s immediate superior. Sigma Force operated under the aegis of DARPA and was composed of former Special Forces soldiers who had been retrained in various scientific disciplines, which allowed for covert teams to be tasked against specific threats to U.S. or global security.
    “I don’t understand,” Gray said. “This sounds more like a matter for the French military. How does this involve Sigma?”
    “Because DARPA has some skin in the game. The team being protected by that French unit was an international group, including an American geneticist, Dr. Lena Crandall. Her current project is partially funded by DARPA. It’s why General Metcalf called us, to get someone from Sigma out there to investigate.”
    And as I’m practically in the neighborhood already . . .
    “Kat is arranging to have a jet readied for you,” Painter continued. “She can get your boots on the ground in those mountains in under two hours.”
    Kat—Captain Kathryn Bryant—was Sigma’s chief intelligence analyst, serving as Painter’s