by David Drake
“And Mordecai!”
The Prime Minister nodded without enthusiasm. Vickers swallowed and continued, “The three of us will go down after that saurolophus. Warren, you’ll stay up here where there’s enough height to warn us if necessary. And for God’s sake, stay where you belong this time!”
“Mr. Vickers,” said Stern, “I am under your orders if you desire another gun.”
The guide’s mouth opened, but he bit off the response frustration had intended when he realized that Stern was armed after all. The official had obviously had his rifle waiting on the intrusion vehicle instead of carrying it around the Tel Aviv facility like the rest of them. It was a Browning FAL, for many years the Israeli service issue. Seeing it reminded Vickers in a rush of Dieter Jost, who had carried a similar weapon . . . and who, had he survived his last safari, might have been present now in the place of Warren.
Stern caught the stare and misinterpreted it. His heavy face darkened in something like a blush. “I am not boasting that I am a crack shot like you and need only the small bullets, Mr. Vickers,” the official said. “This I carried in the Sinai—better than a weapon I do not have time to learn, though it was many years ago.” He raised his chin. “My nerve will not fail.”
Vickers quirked a smile that was half-embarrassment. “Neither would your good judgment, Avraham,” he said. “Stay up here with Warren and the troops, and yell if you see trouble coming.” To the pair of officials he continued, “We’ll follow the trail we’ve landed in the middle of, cut through the brush if we have to when we get close. You’ll have the shot, Mr. Secretary, so you’ll lead if it gets tight. I’ll be right behind you, and—”
“I’ll be right behind him,” said the bodyguard, “and look, I don’t like the idea of anybody firing past the Secretary. You can—”
“Craig, shut the hell up!” Cardway snarled impatiently before Vickers could form a response. “Come on, let’s go!” The bodyguard, blank-faced and clutching his Uzi like a reliquary, brought up the end of the short column.
Secretary Cardway reached the bottom of the ramp, took two steps further along the game trail, and paused. He had realized for the first time what a difference the intrusion vehicle’s height had made. The brush on which dinosaurs could be heard browsing was only about eight feet tall. The trails, worn through it by the hips of the great beasts, were broad but often not cleared to the sky. To either side the brush grew gnarled and spiky, as inhospitable as a barbed-wire entanglement. The effect was less that of standing in a grape arbor than it was walking down the center of a subway tunnel, listening to the tracks hum.
Vickers started to move forward. The trail was wide enough for two to walk abreast. The Secretary began to move again, with more determination at each step. “Sir,” the guide whispered, “not so fast. We don’t want to—we want to have time for a good shot.”
Cardway looked puzzled. Vickers had forgotten that their quarry was supposed to be wounded. The Secretary slowed from the near run toward which he had been building, however. The guide glanced back to check Greenbaum and Craig. They were all right, though Craig seemed to be crowding the Prime Minister somewhat. Vickers could no longer see the men on the intrusion vehicle through the dappled tanglings of brush. He should have thought to bring along a wand with a pennon for this sort of situation. Of course, if he had expected the situation, he might have refused to take out the safari after all. The millstone-crunching of a dinosaur’s teeth was becoming very loud. Hadrosaurs, like the beast they were after, were not carnivorous, of course, but neither was a threshing machine carnivorous; and threshing machines had killed their share of the unwary over the years.
The bush to their right was a multi-stemmed clump with leaves like green glass teardrops. It shuddered as something pulled a huge mouthful out of the other side. Cardway raised his rifle. Vickers touched the politician’s shoulder for attention and shook his head. Then he knelt and used the fore-end of his own weapon to gently press a line of sight between the bush and its neighbor. A male saurolophus, possibly even the one Cardway had fired at, was facing them within spitting distance.
The dinosaur was chewing with its short forelegs lowered but not quite touching the ground. Its neck was raised at right angles to the straight, horizontal line of its back and counterbalancing tail. If it saw Vickers, it ignored him. The guide leaned his head back out of the way. With his free hand he motioned Cardway forward into the gap he was holding open. Then Vickers tapped himself on the breastbone with index and middle fingers to indicate the proper aiming point. Secretary Cardway knelt with a set expression, advancing his rifle.
Vickers knew the shot would be deafening, but the reality was stunningly worse than he had expected. Cardway spun over on his back like a sacked passer, losing his grip on the rifle. The meat-axe smack! of the bullet was lost in the muzzle blast, but the ground shook as the stricken hadrosaur fell.
Vickers backed a step. He leveled his own rifle one-handed toward the brush in case the saurolophus burst through. Then he picked up the Secretary’s weapon as well. Vickers’ head rang. His first thought had been that the old Gibbs had exploded, either because metal had crystallized or because of trash in the bore. The big weapon was apparently undamaged, however, except for the dirt that now clung to its exterior. Vickers thumbed the locking key. The breeches clicked open and the ejectors kicked out both the cartridges, empty. The rifle had doubled, shock of the first discharge firing the second barrel almost simultaneously.
The Secretary was rising groggily to his knees. Vickers thrust the empty Gibbs at him. His hearing was beginning to return. The wounded hadrosaur was kicking on the ground close by. “Load one barrel,” the guide shouted. “It’s firing both together.”
“Goddamn if I do!” Cardway replied. His mouth was shouting, but his words rang through a long tunnel. “Give me yours!”
Vickers twisted his M14 away from the hands spread to grasp it. “No,” he said, “just load one round.”
“You worthless sonofabitch!” snarled the white-faced politician. “You give me that gun now or you’ll regret the day you were born!”
The guide’s knuckles tightened on the Gibbs, held now in bar rather than in offering. The surface of his mind was slick as glass. The instant before Vickers might have acted, Prime Minister Greenbaum stepped between the two men. He held out his Mannlicher, saying, “Here, Luther. I’m sure this will finish the job.”
Cardway’s rage evaporated. He snatched the bolt-action rifle from his colleague without a word. Instead of kneeling again to fire beneath the spreading foliage, the big Texan began thrusting himself between the bushes. He seemed oblivious of the thorns that ripped at his coveralls.
Vickers paused momentarily, but he could neither restrain his client nor allow him to go alone. Throwing himself on his belly, the guide squirmed on knees and elbows around the other side of the bush past which they had fired. He cleared the obstacle an instant before Cardway could. The hadrosaur lay on its side, its spine toward the hunters. Its tail was flailing sideways, cracking against the earth on every downward stroke. The brush was splashed with bright arterial blood, further evidence that at least one of Cardway’s bullets had been a solid hit.
The dinosaur was only six feet away. Vickers aimed at the beast’s spine but did not fire. He prayed that if it became necessary to shoot, the grit on the bolt of his M14 would not jam it. The magazine was loaded with modern armor-piercing rounds, penetrators of depleted uranium which could drill through an inch of steel. Anyone can miss a shot, however, no matter how short the range; and the nineteen rounds remaining in the magazine might as well be on the Moon for all the good they would be to a jammed rifle.
Secretary Cardway forced through the brush with thorns hanging from his sleeves and the backs of his hands bleeding. He aimed the Mannlicher and emptied it with five point-blank shots as quickly as he could work the spoon-handle bolt. The recoil of the big rifle—it was chambered for .458 Magnum—did not appear to bother him, despite
the bruising his shoulder must have taken when the Gibbs doubled. Vickers watched his client carefully. The look on the Secretary’s face as he fired was chilling.
The crashing shots ended when Cardway ran out of ammunition. The struggles of the hadrosaur had disintegrated into a quivering as lifeless as the collapse of a house of cards. Splotches of blood gummed the dust that obscured the patterning of the beast’s back-scales.
Vickers stood up slowly, porting his rifle. “Splendid trophy, sir,” he said.
The Secretary was lowering the muzzle of the Mannlicher. “Yes,” he said in a thick voice. “Goddamn it, yes.” Behind him, the brush quaked to pass his wild-eyed bodyguard.
Time safaris always held an element of danger, Vickers thought. Usually, however, the greatest danger was from the local wildlife.
“Right,” said Thomas Warren, as if he were an amateur magician demonstrating card tricks. “Here’s the culprit.”
The lock-work of the Gibbs double was strewn on the linen tablecloth in front of the British guide. Around him sat Vickers and his wife, Stern, Greenbaum, and Cardway. The audience wore expressions of interest and, in the last case, considerable impatience. Craig, the bodyguard, stood stiffly a pace behind the Secretary. He continually moved his head in nervous jerks to check behind him. “The sear, you see,” Warren continued, prodding the little piece again with his index finger. “Not worn, really, just polished down a little too closely in the final assembly. These big express chamberings give quite a jolt—as you know, old chap, as you know. In this case, it’s enough to jolt the left hammer spang off its sear when the right barrel fires. Sometimes, at any rate. More common a problem than you might think with these old darlings—” the guide rapped the joined barrels with his fingernail. “One reason I’ve always kept to a magazine rifle.”
“Well, fix the goddamn thing, then!” Secretary Cardway snapped. “You’re not on the payroll to run your mouth.”
Adrienne’s hand, resting companionably on her husband’s shoulder, tightened. Warren’s smile, however, appeared to be quite genuine as he replied, “Well, you see, old boy, that’s the problem. Short of fitting another sear, there’s not a great deal to be done. Not a bloody thing, really. Use it as a single shot, that is. Or I dare say, there’s a spare gun or two about the camp—isn’t that so, Vickers?”
Henry Vickers had a good idea of how the Secretary would react if he were offered the camp gun—a functional but very battered Ruger in .375 H&H. Fortunately, Prime Minister Greenbaum forestalled him by saying, “Luther, when I held your gun, I found that it suits me far better than the one I purchased for myself. I would appreciate it no end if you would agree to exchange with me.”
Adrienne got up, muttering something under her breath. The support crew was sprawled around the campfire, a discreet ten meters from their betters at the table. A pair of startled soldiers made room for the blonde woman when she tapped them on the shoulders.
“All right, that’s settled,” the Secretary was saying as if he had just made a concession. “Now,” the Texan continued, poking an index finger across the table at Vickers, “I’ve got another bone to pick. You told me that I was going after a tyrannosaurus this morning.”
The guide’s fist clenched in his lap. “Ah,” he temporized, “your hadrosaur is really an exceptional trophy.”
“I’m not wasting my time here to bring back a goddamn duckbill!” Cardway said, jabbing with his finger as if it were a pistol. “You lied to me once and you won’t do it again, hear? I want a tyrannosaurus rex.” He stood abruptly and strode toward his private tent. His back was straight, his carriage in every way that of a leader. Craig followed him at a respectful distance.
Vickers was pale. Stern said softly, “He has a very—selective—memory. I suppose we can hope that if matters in the long run turn out to his liking, his memory will select the positive aspects of the hunt as well.”
In an equally low voice, looking at Vickers, the Prime Minister said, “I am not a hunter, you understand. It does not matter what gun I carry or indeed if I carry one. But if I did hunt, if I were as keen on the chase as, as you are, as anyone could be—I would still have done the same thing I just did.” The little Israeli took a deep breath and continued, his whispered words freighted with genuine concern. “I am here to be the dutiful child, you see, the child who does whatever his papa pleases and is therefore rewarded with a treat. Only this time, the treat is his . . . his right to exist, his life. You see? I regret what I must bear, and what I must ask able gentlemen like yourselves to bear; but there is no choice.”
Vickers shook himself. “It’s all right,” he said, looking at his hands. “Only . . . only, I don’t see how anybody that—abrasive—expects to get elected anything. But they say he was almost President in the last election and he probably will make it the next time.”
The Prime Minister’s smile was tired. “Oh, you must not think Mr. Cardway is this way at all times. Only with people who must accept the behavior, underlings, dependents. If the United States needed a concession from Israel, he would be in a very different temper with me, with us, I assure you. Though he would still treat his own aide like dirt.” Greenbaum paused, shaking his head ruefully. “I sometimes find myself giving speeches even in the shower,” he said. “Well, gentlemen, good night.”
Stern watched the smaller man walking to the tent the two of them shared. “Best I go as well,” the official said. “Otherwise I will disturb him when I enter. A man of great courage, that one. Great courage.” He stood.
“But not great enough courage to refuse to start World War III,” Vickers said.
Stern looked down at the guide for a long moment, but in the end he walked off without responding.
The whole compound area was covered with a tent of mosquito netting, suspended from high poles. The covering must have been manufactured for the hunt. Reflected light brightened the inner face of the net to opacity, except where insects clung and fluttered on the exterior. There appeared to be a breed of hawk moth with wings the size of a man’s hands. Vickers had seen no flowers impressive enough to justify such a monster, but perhaps they were night-blooming. He hadn’t trained himself to observe flowers, anyway. He’d never guided a client who wanted to kill a rose.
There was laughter from the group around the fire, half-stilled at a sergeant’s gruff order. Adrienne’s liquid trill choked off a moment later. “Quite a lady, your wife,” said Thomas Warren. He was fitting a screw into a sideplate. “Must prove quite a—” his eyes flicked sideways, toward Vickers—“handful for you.”
“Instead of worrying about that,” Vickers said, “you might give some thought to how we’ll keep Cardway from running into the brush after his first carnosaur, the same as he did with the duckbill this morning.” Then, “I’m going to bed.”
Warren whistled between his teeth as he finished reassembling the rifle. His face bore the smile of a death-camp guard.
# # #
The ten-inch lizard racing down the center of the game trail actually gained on the half-track momentarily. Then the little creature’s burst of energy gave out. It faltered, an olive shadow against the gray soil. From Vickers’ vantage point, clinging to the front rail of the truck box beside the gun, it looked as if the front wheels would inevitably crush the lizard. At the last instant, however, the reptile spurted sideways into the shade and safety of the brush. Vickers found he was unexpectedly pleased at that.
“Hold it up here,” he said on his cordless throat mike. There was no point in trying to speak directly to the driver while they were in motion. Even though the cab was open-topped, the treads and the racket of brush clanging constantly on both sides of the vehicle provided a background of deafening white noise.
Obediently, the soldier driving slowed the half-track to a stop. He shared the cab with one of the propaganda staffers who looked a little green. Not only was the ride a rough one for anyone not accustomed to it, quite a few of the higher branches were slapping the wind
screen. Its Plexiglas held despite deep scarring, but masses of six-inch thorns at eye height were bound to be disconcerting. The ponies, the little diesel carts which time safaris ordinarily used, would have slipped down the trails with less noise and infinitely greater comfort, but you couldn’t mount a fifty-caliber machine gun on one of them.
Well, it had yet to be proven that you could hunt dinos from these monsters.
“Give me those binoculars,” Secretary Cardway said. He pushed past Vickers as the guide started to mount the ladder. The cargo area of the half-track was cramped. Besides the gear and the braced ladder, there were six people: Vickers and his wife, Cardway and his bodyguard, the soldier manning the machine gun, and a holograph cameraman like the one in the cab. Only the fact that too many people were in the way kept Adrienne from jerking the Secretary back by his collar.
“Adrienne,” the guide cautioned in an undertone, hoping the cold-eyed Craig had not interpreted her brief tension correctly. “Here you are, sir,” he continued, handing up his binoculars. With luck, Cardway would not drop them. “There’s sign of ceratopsians—ah, that’s triceratops and the like, the horns—and, ah, duckbills, hadrosaurs, all around. With the ladder, it should be possible to pick out a number of nice trophies. We’ll ring them with the other track, then, and move in.”
Secretary Cardway had climbed a few steps and begun to scan their surroundings in a cursory fashion. The air was almost dead still. The plume of dust raised by their passage lay behind them like a still picture. A kilometer to the right hung a frozen ridge of gray, the track of the other vehicle more or less paralleling their own progress on another trail. That half-track stopped as well. Though it was not fitted with a ladder, Vickers could see Warren standing on the hood to eye the plain.
“Look, I’m tired of this dicking around,” Cardway said as he dropped to the bed again. He allowed Vickers to retrieve the binoculars and scramble up the ladder, but he did not seem interested in what the guide was doing. “I didn’t come to get duckbills and what-have-you,” the Secretary continued, “and I didn’t come to get my kidneys pounded out on some goddamn antique. If this is the best you Jews can manage, maybe the Arabs ought to get a crack at it.”