The rotors brought up the dust and the dust brought up Mogadishu.
O’Brien was somewhere else before anyone could reach him. The weapon came out. The round went close enough. Garcia was bleeding from the head before the helicopter touched back down.
Afterwards, nobody discussed it.
That night all four of them had the same dream.
A coyote. A mesa. A cave mouth with a stream running red beneath it. Every detail identical across four separate rooms.
They woke up knowing where to go.
So they went.
Three men died on the approach.
One state trooper. Two officers of the San Carlos Apache Tribal Police.
Single rounds from a Lee-Enfield, placed carefully by something that has been doing this for a very long time.
The group kept moving.
Inside the cave: two sets of knife-marked bones. A third body, recent and drained, still damp in the cave cool. And at the centre of the chamber, laid carefully across pale stone, a sand painting of a handsome man in a dark suit looking directly outward with all the patience in the world.
They photographed it.
They took samples.
Outside in the July sun, three body bags waited for the drive back to San Carlos.
The shooter escaped through a fissure at the rear of the cave system.
Already back out in the desert.
Already moving.
The cave was not the end of anything.
It was the first moment they finally caught up with it.
When they return, Alejandro Colorados will be waiting.
They have photographs. Evidence bags. Three medicine men. Two tribal officers. One state trooper.
They never learned the names of the men inside the cave.
And nobody asked what they used to be called.
Session 04 — Friday 29th May, 2026