“So where is he now?”
“No one knows. We captured that monster in Panama, and we’ve been working since to try to understand how the hell he put it together. As for the man himself, he’s everywhere, but more often than not, he pops up in Africa. The French really want to arrest him, so he keeps well under cover. I’ve only met him once. We tried to get him to do some work for us… but things suddenly went very bad for him and he disappeared. All we got from him was the monster you saw and a couple of smaller samples.”
“And the Russians let them out to kill those people we saw?”
“The Russians. Yes, the Russians let them out. Let it out. Yes.” Sun-Lee shook his head. “You need to report this. Can you compose an article, and send photos?”
“I haven’t got a network connection.”
“I can fix that. My phone is a satellite phone and I can hotspot you.”
“All right, let me transfer the pics from the camera to my phone. I still have plenty of battery life. Give me a minute.”
She composed a quick email to her editor. She didn’t tell him she was up a tree, probably doomed to become a monster’s lunch. Instead, she tried to keep it professional, to make the story about the story, and not about her. If she died, they could give her any awards posthumously, but she wanted them to think about the immense story she’d discovered. No one, not even Marianne down in the underbrush, could scoop her this time.
“Sending it over,” she said. Even the images went quickly, making her wonder why the man had such impressive bandwidth out in the middle of nowhere. But she wasn’t in the habit of questioning good luck. You used it until it was used up, and then you waited for a little more to hit.
“You didn’t ask for help,” Sun-Lee said.
“No. The story was more important.”
Sun-Lee nodded silently and kept looking down towards the floor of their little patch of forest.
“Any sign of them?”
“No dinosaurs. A lot of them are probably following after the monster. Others are probably hiding from it.”
“Why would they follow something like that?”
“Many of the dinosaurs are carrion-eaters by preference. The movie might make you think velociraptors are hunters, but they’d much rather strip a dead carcass than make their own. Dead bodies don’t fight back. So they follow bigger, badder dinosaurs and wait for them to kill something. Then they feed on the remains.”
“Ugh. What if the big one sees them?”
“They run. But normally, the big hunters ignore them and concentrate on things with more meat on them.”
A scream, distant but full of pain, reached them.
“I would guess,” Sun-Lee said, “that the monster has found something worth hunting. Can you see what it is?”
“No, it went out of sight behind a tree.”
Sounds on the forest floor beneath them echoed and they shut up.
Two men and a woman walked under the tree she was hanging from. Tatiana was so relieved to see a friendly face that she whispered, “Marianne. Marianne, up here.”
Marianne looked around, confused.
“Up here,” Tatiana repeated.
Finally, Marianne spotted her. “Tatiana? What are you doing up there?”
“I’m hiding from velociraptors and stuff.”
“If you’d seen what we just saw, you’d welcome velociraptors.”
Tatiana couldn’t believe it. She’d just watched her colleague come within a hair’s breadth of being torn to pieces, but she seemed unflustered by the experience. Ragged around the edges, looking like she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards, but not the nervous wreck she should have been. Certainly not the nervous wreck Tatiana would have been.
“I saw it. This is just awful.”
“We need to tell the world about this.”
“I already have. We got a message out just now.”
“We?” Marianne said. “Who’s we?”
Tatiana pointed towards the branches below her where Park Sun-Lee was perched, but the space was empty. A rustle below them announced the two men who’d been with Marianne before. Tatiana recognized two of the soldiers that had helped them escape from the YekLab panic room.
One of them had Sun-lee by the arm, the other was holding a gun to her host.
“Wait,” Tatiana said. “He’s one of the good guys. He’s trying to tell the world what’s happening here. Don’t hurt him.”
The big, blond soldier peered up at her and then turned to Marianne. “This guy is a snake second only to the witch-woman in sliminess. He is anything but one of the good guys. We should shoot him now.” He waited, making it clear that he wanted her opinion, maybe because she knew Tatiana, maybe simply because he didn’t want to look like an arbitrary monster.
Marianne hesitated. “Tatiana is the best journalist I know. She is also honest. If she thinks this is a good guy, we should at least listen to what she says.”
“I think she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.” The gun pointed at Sun-Lee’s head didn’t waver.
Sun-Lee looked him in the eye, unflinching. Tatiana couldn’t believe these people. Was she the only one who would have fainted if someone pointed a gun at her?
“If you shoot me, you’ll never get out of here alive,” Sun-Lee said.
“I don’t think you’ll be much good in a fight,” the soldier replied.
“Perhaps. But I know the way out.”
“So do I. The tunnel. But we can’t use it because Selene controls the complex at the far end.”
“Not the tunnel. Another way. Only I know where it is and I won’t tell you unless you take me with you and promise not to kill me after I tell you where it is.”
The gun lowered and the soldier said something in Russian that sounded very unhappy.
“Dammit,” he said. “But put a single foot wrong, and I’ll shoot you myself.” He looked up. “I hope you’re right about him,” he said to Tatiana. “Because if not, I’ll shoot you, too. Now get down here so we can start moving.”
Tatiana had barely reached the ground when something hit her in the chest. Marianne held her tight and sobbed. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”
Tatiana returned the hug. She had nothing to add.
Chapter 8
Selene looked down at the man on the floor, the man who’d been one of Sun-Lee’s henchmen—surprisingly good at keeping them pinned and wasting her time. He’d taken a bullet to the right side of his chest, close to the liver, but he was still alive.
“Where did he come from?” she asked in Russian.
“There’s no identification on him,” one of the men with her replied after a quick search.
“Of course not,” Selene replied, kneeling next to him. “You’re a professional, aren’t you? Never take identification with you on a job, not even a fake driver’s license that could be traced back to someone. So tell me. Who are you, and who do you work for? You’re not one of mine, and you certainly aren’t one of Sun-Lee’s security guys from the lab… so tell me.”
The man said nothing. He stared at her, but she didn’t know if it was a look of defiance or one of hopelessness.
His face certainly told her nothing else. Dark hair with just a hint of grey in it, and slightly swarthy features meant that he could be from anywhere in the south of Russia or any of the Stans. His features weren’t distinctive enough for her to be able to hazard a guess.
That meant he’d chosen the right line of work: being unexceptional was an asset for certain jobs. They would need to take his fingerprints to gain any information on him.
Unless she got him to speak. Then, he would give himself away to her trained ear.
“How about this. If you talk, I’ll get you a doctor and maybe you’ll survive. After all, it’s not a hired goon we want, it’s Sun-Lee, so we can let you walk.”
It was a lie, of course. Even if there was any hope of saving the guy, they would have stabilized him only in order to torture him
to death. But there was no hope. A shot to the liver was pretty much a painful death sentence. Even if he’d been in a city, his life would likely have been forfeit. Out here? The chances of surviving were exactly zero.
She was banking on the fact that he wouldn’t know that, and clutch at any straw.
“On the other hand, if you don’t talk right now, I’ll put a bullet in your brain. You have ten seconds.”
He held her gaze, no spark of hope visible. She pointed the gun at him. “Three… two…”
He tried to speak, but spluttered, tried again, but pointed at his throat, his movements weak and sluggish.
“Pity,” Selene said, and pressed the trigger.
At that range, Selene was incapable of missing, and she turned away to avoid splatter. There was no real need to check if he was dead… and exit wounds from head shots were always unpleasant.
She holstered her pistol and turned back to her remaining men—one had caught a bullet, leaving her with two—and the three dinosaurs with human brains. She briefly thought of shooting the dinosaurs just to remove distractions but, on further thought, decided to let them come along. They could be useful as cannon fodder if they ran into a lot of other creatures at once.
“Get the sonic weapon,” she told her men. “That one really works.”
They set off across grass. About halfway to the nearest trees, she stopped.
“What the hell is that?”
“I don’t know,” the man nearest her answered. “Sounds like an earthquake or something.”
“The ground isn’t moving,” Selene shot back.
“Yeah, that’s true.”
“Move. I think this is trouble.”
They sprinted across the grass and, about halfway to the trees, they stopped again, mouth agape.
“Please tell me you’re seeing what I’m seeing,” she said.
“I hope not. I’m seeing a spider as big as a house. With pincers. And a scorpion’s tail.”
“Good. Then I’m not hallucinating.”
“What do we do?”
“Stay still. I don’t think it saw us.”
They remained where they were-even the uplifted deinonychus was rooted in place-until the monster disappeared around the hill.
Then they ran like hell for the trees.
Selene cursed as they went. That North Korean bastard had managed to hide this thing from her, and from everyone she worked with. How? She didn’t know, but when she returned, everyone whose job it had been to report on Sun-Lee’s activities would have one hell of a lot of explaining to do.
As she thought about it, she realized there was only one possible explanation that fit the facts: Panama. He’d captured the thing when in Panama.
The problem was that an operation of the size and equipment needed to grab a monster like that would have needed near-military resources… and she was certain they hadn’t come from Russia.
That meant contractors… and that, in turn, meant money. Where he’d gotten it was another mystery that she would have to look into.
Damn. This was supposed to be a quick and easy jaunt to kill a few loose ends. It was suddenly getting complicated.
The plan had now changed. She could kill the soldier and the reporter bitch but she would need Sun-Lee alive. Unfortunately, that brought in additional complications: no one could know that the director was being put to the question… that way lay unwanted attention.
Well, she’d cross that bridge when she got to it.
They reached the trees and kept running. At least now, they were out of sight of anything they couldn’t deal with. Stuff in the woods would be small enough to shoot… and they’d be unlikely to mess with her pet raptors.
“Move it! We need to catch up to Sun-Lee,” Selene called back to the men running with her. She jumped around a particularly thick clump of trees and into a group of small dinosaurs. “Watch out!”
But the warning came too late. One of her men bowled straight into the little carnivores and was immediately swarmed. She brought up her gun to clear him and shot one off, but he was writhing so much that she didn’t want to keep shooting for fear of hitting him.
The man’s screams echoed in the trees, and the other guy went in and kicked at the creatures hanging all over him. Bones crunched as the boots fell.
Then, one of Selene’s pet deinonychus joined the fray and the small raptors gave up any semblance of a fight. They disappeared into the trees, leaving only one dead dinosaur—shot by Selene—and the one her single remaining foot soldier had kicked. That one lay brokenly on the floor, trying to get up and mewling pitifully.
The other man was very dead. The little bastards had torn away a good chunk of his throat. It wasn’t just a killing blow: they’d actually been feeding.
Selene picked up the dead man’s rifle. Her gun was proving worse than useless. Then, she turned to one of the dinosaurs with them. “We’re going that way. You take the lead.”
They followed the beast through the trees and didn’t see any other dinosaurs. The only indication that they were in a place where hundreds of prehistoric creatures had been released was the noise fleeing animals made as they moved out of the way of the advancing deinonychus.
When they emerged, she cursed. “They got away,” she said.
“Were the two groups working together?”
“Of course not, they probably took a helicopter each.” She stared at the empty space on the hill where the two helicopters should have been. “Wait a second. The whole place looks weird. I want to have a look.”
They stepped past two of the dead dinosaurs and she stopped at the one furthest from the trees. Someone had stabbed it with a spear.
“Someone out here is a badass,” the single man with her said. She was surprised. Her troops generally knew when to keep their mouths shut. This man must have been truly impressed by what he was seeing.
“Yeah. Too bad we’re going to catch him and skin him alive.”
She wasn’t certain of that now. After all, if the soldiers were back at the Spetsnaz base, getting them out was going to be a real bitch. Orlov might have played ball so far, but if this Max guy had any intelligence at all, everyone would already know what had happened here even before she went after him. They’d know why he was being hunted, who was doing the hunting and what would happen to him.
Most of the soldiers would be dead set against letting her have her prize and, though she was powerful, there was no way she would be powerful enough to take on an entire Spetsnaz base.
Worse, they’d have leverage on her, leverage that Orlov could use with his superiors to get her recalled. And ‘recall’, in this case was a euphemism for ‘disappeared’.
She decided to change the subject. “Did you hear a helicopter?”
Her man scratched his head. “No. Not at all. But there was a lot of shooting, so I’m not surprised I missed it.”
“I didn’t either. Let’s get up there and see. That big chunk of concrete wasn’t there when they landed. The blacktop was empty. Something isn’t right.”
They climbed the remaining portion of the hill. When they crested it, she gasped. An entire sector of the concrete lot had collapsed into the hill. The wreckage of two helicopters lay at the bottom. Across from them, a group of small dinosaurs were investigating a staircase that led down into the guts of the underground complex revealed by the collapse. She pointed. “That’s where they went in. Let’s go.” Then, turning to the dinosaurs with her, Selene said: “Run up ahead and clear out the little things. Wait for me at the first landing.”
“What do you think happened here?” the man asked.
He was more talkative than the rest, but she’d have to tolerate it for now as he was the last bit of muscle remaining to her. “I think this is where the Korean had his secret lab, and where he kept his ugly spider pet. He probably blew the roof when he realized that he wasn’t going to make it to the helicopters… and released that… thing into the Russian countryside. It’s just an
other thing he’ll have to answer for once we grab him.”
She started down the steps.
***
Vaseekar sat in his study, a carpeted, beautiful room in his mansion overlooking Palk Bay and studied the pictures on the article. Was it real? The Buddha never screwed around, of course, but his follow-ups to get the name of the seller and the pertinent contact details met with a swift ‘not yet, all shall be revealed in due course’ response.
Which meant that, if the Buddha wasn’t screwing around, there was something else going on. If that was the case, he didn’t want any part of it. The Sri Lankan police, forged by decades of guerrilla war, were a sophisticated, deadly enemy. Any misstep on his part would see his Reborn Tigers destroyed before they could fire a weapon in anger.
So he studied the article that the Buddha had sent. As far as he could tell, the original piece had been published in a Brazilian fluff magazine who happened to have a reporter in the area.
That certainly wasn’t an auspicious start, and his Portuguese was nowhere near good enough to judge the quality of the writing. Google translate was absolutely no help. Now, he had to try to piece together the veracity of the journalism by seeing who picked it up after it originally ran. That was an interesting trail.
The usual bottom-feeders republished first. Online newspapers who specialized in gore and sensationalism without asking too many questions. Then some local outlets who might have been having a slow news day.
The heavy-hitters got in on the act a little later, with USA Today and The New York Times running pieces about the Russian Dinosaur Atrocity. The BBC stated that they were flying a team into the area, as did CNN.
It certainly sounded like people who knew what they were doing believed that this new technology to create genetic monsters existed. No one mentioned that it might be for sale, which was a good thing.
He wanted to catch the authorities by surprise… and this would do nicely.
Vaseekar began to compose an email to the Electric Buddha.
***
“There’s food in that refrigerator,” Sun-Lee said. “It’s quite fresh. A man comes in once a week to clear out anything old and replace it. Since I never know when I’ll be here, it’s important to keep supplies up.”
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