by Rick Chesler
Were those men on the dinosaur’s carapace, climbing and fighting each other? Gunshots intermittently lit up the deep shadows, and as the platform continued to rise, Alex got a momentary glimpse of something that made his heart lurch.
A pair of black-clad figures with scales on their faces and bright yellow eyes…contrasting with the scarlet dripping from their flashing teeth as they tore through an American’s jacket and feasted on his insides.
#
“Are you getting this, sir?” the soldier snapped into his communicator.
Marcus grabbed Alex’s shoulder and tried to pull him back from the edge.
“No, Dad. Listen, everyone—stop the excavation!”
“We can’t,” Marcus said.
“We won’t,” the soldier in charge returned.
The platform continued to rise, and now Marcus saw what hadn’t been clear before: it was covered with soldiers, men in black fighting those in white, and…blood. Blood everywhere. Not from gunshots so much as… “Jesus, they’re eating our men…”
“My God,” the soldier at his side said. He aimed through his weapon’s scope. “Screw this. Alpha Team, fire!”
“No!” Marcus yelled and lunged for the weapon, only to have the soldier swing it back hard and knock him on his back. He aimed it at Alex.
“You going to be a problem, too?”
“No,” Alex said, hands raised, “but they are. Unless you kill them all.”
The man nodded and aimed again. “Oh, we’ll get them.”
He commenced firing.
Alex could only watch, and Marcus, as he pulled himself up, nursing his bloody lip, looked down in dismay. He flinched with every shot.
“It’s not working,” he said, seeing the black outfits pierced again and again. Nothing slowed down the Russians in their ravenous attack on the Americans, who were doing their best to find cover around the T. rex’s body, crawling and climbing across the platform, taking shots with handguns. “Body armor?”
The soldier nodded, and spoke into his communicator again. “Sniper shots, to the head. On my command, go!”
Then the real carnage began.
Fifty feet left to the surface, and the dozen soldiers around the ridge, emptied their clips and reloaded. Aiming and firing, aiming and firing. Marcus winced, watching heads blown apart, brains and gore splattering his dinosaur. Hoping against hope the shots weren’t going wild, imagining he’d be extracting bullets from the specimen for weeks.
The Russians were dropping now—and for an instant, Marcus thought he saw something impossible. One of their faces an instant before impact: blurry, but unmistakably covered with thick scales, yellowish and pallid, spattered in blood, and those eyes—then the head exploded and the twitching body pitched off the side of the platform.
The Americans were regrouping. Several fighting valiantly, ganging up on the remaining Russians, tossing several over.
Still the gunshots rang out, taking out the few remaining enemies.
Marcus started to breathe a sigh of relief, along with the Americans, he imagined. Then, the soldier in charge paused in his shooting, listening to commands in his helmet.
“What? But…yes sir. I understand. Copy that.”
He raised the weapon again, sighting.
“What are you doing?” Marcus asked, as his prize, the T. rex, in all its bloodied immensity, was lifted almost into level view. “You got them all, you can stand down now.” And return me to command, he felt like adding.
The soldier fired. An American dropped, the top of his head blown off.
Alex screamed and tried to rush the soldier, but Marcus held him back. They both turned. “What the hell!”
Then more shots, from all sides. The Americans were sitting ducks, and in seconds, it was over. Twitching, nearly-headless bodies draped over the triumphantly-raised T. rex. A few bodies flopped with the jostling of the platform and fell over the edge.
“Toss the rest back into the pit,” the soldier growled into his radio, “and continue with the extraction. He slung his weapon over his shoulder and faced Marcus.
“Your show now, Doctor.”
“Why?” Alex whispered, still staring at the bodies as they were tossed unceremoniously over the edge.
“Orders,” the soldier said.
For just a moment, Alex had a sudden image of Tony, his skin changing. The gash in his arm…
He swallowed hard, even as Marcus found his voice and was about to argue. “Dad,” he said, “let it go, I think they did the right thing. The only thing.”
Marcus turned to his son. “Are you mad?”
Alex had turned away, and now approached the platform, getting as close as he could to the giant’s cranium and that eye…now closed. Alex shuddered, thinking for a moment. “They weren’t wearing body armor, Dad. “I saw it, down there on the other side.”
“Impossible,” the soldier said.
“But true,” Alex replied, “and if they were infected with whatever was in that lake, then…”
He stared at the T. rex, its enormous jaws, and the hint of teeth. The overlapping scales and thick epidermis. The knick marks from the bullets that had failed to penetrate.
“You had better have a very cold shipping container, and hope this thing never thaws…”
9.
Aboard Oil Tanker Hammond-1, Erebus Point, Antarctica
“Erebrus Point, eh? Should have named it Windy-ass Bay!” Xander nearly had to yell to make himself heard over the roaring winds that buffeted the entrance to the bay, as he and the captain stepped into the glassed-in bridge from out on deck.
“Just be glad we don't have to go to Icy Balls Bay,” the captain said, clearly half in the bag, taking a seat in front of the myriad displays and instruments that controlled the massive ship. He shook with hearty laughter at his own joke as he toggled switches on the control panel. Xander wondered again how much he'd had to drink and what kind of oversight, if any, these sea captains were subject to, and especially ones DeKirk would hire.
“Sounds like a brand of rum, don't it? Icy Balls Bay, a shot a day!” The captain kept going as he looked over his head at an array of instrumentation.
Xander didn't laugh. “Yeah, yeah. Hey, maybe we should focus a little. Is there a dock or something?”
The captain made a sharp exhalation that caused little flecks of spittle to pepper the GPS display in front of him. “Sure, mate, right next to the waterfront pub with the girlies in cute little outfits servin' up trays of Icy Balls on the rocks! 'Cept the girls are penguins, and the rocks are icebergs waitin' to tear this ship a new one.” He paused, looking over at Xander to see how he was reacting before continuing.
“No, there ain't no dock. There's a couple small piers here and there around this blasted ice continent, but this bay has none, and this ship is too big to navigate them 'bergs in there, anyway.” He pointed deeper into the bay where the ocean's surface became studded with white rocks.
Xander appeared confused. “I thought this was an ice-breaker, made for this kind of stuff?” He waved an arm through the windscreen at the iceberg-strewn expanse of water between them and the rocky shoreline.
The captain pressed a button to release the tanker's massive anchor. “Is that what you thought? Imagine that. DeKirk actually giving a shit about anybody's safety. Look here.” He patted the dashboard. “This ship's state-of-the-art, it's new, it's badass, but not in the way you think. You see, this oversized metal tub is faster than shit, for a metal tub, but in order to achieve that speed, something else needed to be sacrificed, and that something else was the icebreaking layer, which is heavy as shit.”
“Why would you want that?”
“DeKirk wants it so's we can reach the Adranos Island quick-like, as soon as we leave this ice-pit.”
“What is this I keep hearing about Adranos—”
The captain raised a hand as his marine radio crackled. “Shush now. Time to get to work so we can get outta here.”
X
ander muttered something under his breath as the captain engaged in some kind of technical chatter on the radio. The conversation became a little more heated, though, when the person on the other end asked if the captain could bring the ship closer.
“Negative. You bring it out here on the barge. We'll be waitin' with Hell's bells on.”
He cursed under his breath as he hung up the radio transmitter.
#
About an hour later, a long, flat vessel motored up to the Hammond and tied up alongside. Its deck was littered with shipping containers and industrial equipment. Multiple personnel busied themselves on deck like worker ants in a large colony. On the tanker's bridge, the captain barked orders through a PA system related to operating a large crane to his crew outside on deck.
As Xander watched, an oblong crate was crane-hoisted from the barge to the work deck of the tanker. He recalled with a shiver of excitement the image that he'd seen earlier on the laptop from his quarters. Xander left the bridge while the captain was still hollering at his crew through the PA. He descended a flight of ice-covered metal stairs, slipping once and banging his head on the railing, to a deck that wrapped around the ship's bridge tower. The shouts of working crewmen rang out across the ship. As he looked down on the tanker's work deck, the excavated find was transferred from the crane hoist to a large forklift, a dozen burly men putting in a lot of physical effort to center the crate on the lift.
Xander watched as one man walked up to the crew foreman directing the work team. He looked very much out of place holding a clipboard and without the hardhat or rubber overalls the ship's crew wore. Xander watched as the foreman became irritated with the man and hurriedly pointed in the direction of the cargo hold as the forklift started to roll. Xander also made his way down to the hold, recalling the gigantic chains set into the walls. When he walked through the huge double-doors, currently held open, he saw the newcomer trailing the forklift as it came to a stop well into the hold's cavernous interior.
Xander caught up with him as he stood there gawking at the spectacle of it all, at the huge set of shackles, at the crate now being slid off the forklift, the impromptu living space set aside in the hold. He could see now that he had a Hispanic look about him, and a sort of quiet intensity that suggested either continued awe in the presence of such a find, or more likely—a man scheming for a way to get what he wanted. Xander squinted at the man critically.
The observer appeared almost startled, as though Xander had woken him from a pleasant dream by dumping a bucket of water on his head. He shook it off and extended his hand. “Yes? Can I help you?”
“I'm Xander Dyson, Director of Scientific Research for Melvin DeKirk Enterprises, and you are?”
“Dyson, you say? I'm Dr. Marcus Ramirez, Chief Paleontologist for DeKirk’s expedition here.”
Xander regarded him coolly, never taking the doctor’s hand. Now he was up to speed on who this was, and he recognized a threat, however minor, when he saw one.
“Let's get one thing straight. You're not the chief anything here. I'm in charge now, and I believe you’ll find your services are no longer required.” He pointed at the crate, now being pried apart by six crew with crowbars. “This specimen is the culmination of years of planning and hard work. You were brought on for your expertise in a very narrow area that helped us to achieve this means. Don't forget your place in the food chain, and we'll get along just fine until we reach port, and then you can catch the next flight home, or wherever it is you go when you’re not digging around in the ice.”
Marcus’s face cycled through a few shades of red, settling on a particularly eye-catching crimson hue. “Mr. DeKirk signs my paychecks, not you. This specimen is absolutely my responsibility until we reach the island.”
The sound of plywood boards slapping the metal floor echoed in the hold. Marcus turned his head to look, but Xander grabbed him by the arm, pulling him away. “Come with me.”
Marcus tried to shake off the surprisingly firm grip. “Let go of me.”
“I don’t think so. You’ve left me little choice, so now, let's talk about your son. C'mon.” Xander started walking deeper into the hold, beckoning Marcus to follow. The crew was still working on the crate, so he trailed Xander past a bulkhead into the middle section of the hold. He was surprised to see a brig area—a tiny office staffed by one crewman across from a small jail cell lit by a bare bulb in a wire cage on the wall. He was even more surprised to see his son inside it, sitting on a threadbare metal bunk, head in his hands.
“Alex! How the hell did you—?”
Alex snapped his head up at the sound of his father's voice.
“Dad! DeKirk's soldier goons put me in here! What's going on?”
The crewman seated at the small desk across from the cell turned a laptop around so that its screen faced Marcus. DeKirk's wizened visage filled the display as he began to speak.
“I'll tell you what's going on.” The entrepreneur spoke forcefully, commanding the attention of all in the room. “Dr. Ramirez, as you probably already heard, but refused to accept from my associate, Mr. Dyson, I am terminating your position as of right now. You will be dropped off at a port in Chile, with your return airfare to the U.S. paid for. Is that clear?”
Xander grinned smugly and crossed his arms.
“No! That is not acceptable. I was brought on to conduct research, not to be cast aside like some greenhorn post-doc as soon as an exciting discovery is made so that this...this corporate misfit can take over!” He glared at Xander with contempt.
DeKirk's voice boomed through the laptop again. “Speaking of misfits, take a look at your son, Marcus.” Marcus glanced at Alex, who shrunk beneath his gaze in the grimy cell.
“His fate is entirely up in the air right now. We could keep him in the brig for weeks—months, even—until we reach a U.S. port in which to turn him over to authorities there for acts of vandalism, international espionage, manslaughter...” He paused, enjoying the look of fear on Alex's face and the distaste on his father's. “Or we could even hand him over to the Russians and see if they have an opinion as to what should happen to him.”
“Mr. DeKirk! I respectfully…” Marcus began, but DeKirk rolled over him, holding up a hand on the Skype window.
“Or...we have a third option.” At this, Marcus quieted, waiting for DeKirk to continue.
“As I was saying, we could simply drop you and your son off in Chile together, where you both will be free to return home. This would be in return for your absolute silence regarding our operations here and upholding the nondisclosure documents you already signed at the time of your hiring, as well as your acceptance of the fact that you are now merely a passenger aboard my ship, in no way acting in a working capacity.”
Marcus looked from Alex then back at DeKirk on the Skype window. “My find…all the announcements and press. The release of the discovery…”
DeKirk shook his head, a slight smirk on his face.
Marcus fumed inside. “You never intended to share this find with the world, did you? You needed me to help you find it, but…not to legitimize it after?”
DeKirk shook his head, eyes never wavering from Marcus’.
“So…what then? What are you going to do with it?”
“That, Dr. Ramirez, you will find out, along with the rest of the world.”
He lowered his eyes. “Son of a bitch.”
“I’m sorry,” DeKirk said. “I didn’t hear that clearly with this connection.”
Xander, off to the side, leaning against a bulkhead with his arms crossed, gave his own smirk.
DeKirk leaned in closer, turning his head so that his ear was to the microphone. “Did you say you agreed?”
Marcus sighed. He glanced again at Alex, restrained and looking miserable and lost. Goddamn. They had him, and they knew it.
“Deal.”
It took all of Marcus’s willpower not to punch the self-satisfied grin off Xander's stupid face, while the crewman behind the jailer’s des
k stood up with the key for Alex’s release.
10.
Aboard Oil Tanker Hammond-1, Erebus Point, Antarctica
The utility closet in the ship's cargo hold wasn't the most comfortable place from which Veronica Winters had ever conducted a stakeout, which was for sure. Cramped, smelling of oil and rat urine, and full of rusty spare parts, what it lacked in comfort, it made up for with a stealth factor that allowed her to observe the happenings in this part of the hold. Her smartphone, connected via shipboard satellite service, would tell her if the ship's “doctor” was being paged. Until that happened, she would learn what she could about that creep, Xander. It should be you in that cell, you bastard, she thought, looking out through the door, slightly ajar.
She would also have to learn a little more about whatever the hell that thing was that had just been loaded aboard in the crate. There was certainly a high degree of fuss about it, but that was secondary to nailing Xander. She watched as he told the paleontologist that he should feel free never to call him for a reference while he looked for a new job, and then Xander walked out of the brig area toward the main cargo hold where the crate was. She heard shouts from in there, as if something was happening. It sounded like it should keep Xander busy for a little while.
Peering out from the closet, she saw the jailer call after Xander. Heard Xander say follow me, and he, too, left the brig area. She nudged the door just wide enough for her to slip through, praying it wouldn't creak, and then, while the father was telling his kid something about having a serious talk, Veronica slipped out of the closet.
She made a right turn, away from the commotion surrounding the crate, and tip-toed past the Ramirez reunion deeper into the cargo hold. As the ship's supposed doctor, she had been required to know the tanker's layout well, since she was expected to get to any part of the ship quickly in case of a medical emergency. To this end, she had studied the ship's diagrams and blueprints given to her by the captain, and now this prior familiarization with the ship was coming in handy, because while Xander was preoccupied, she would find out what the hell he was doing here by ransacking his quarters.