Abominable

by Alan Nayes

  Smilodon. A saber-toothed cat. He’s angry, he’s frightened, he’s hungry, and he’s 12,000 years from home!

  PROLOGUE

  June 30, 1908, 7:17 AM 40 kilometers north of Vanavana, Siberia

  The Siberian feline crouched on coiled springs of muscle and tendon. With paws large enough to sever a man’s arm with a single swipe, the ten-year-old tigress cunningly regarded the small herd of reindeer grazing unsuspectingly along the west bank of the Makirta River. She’d already decided to take the young buck furthest from the water. Approaching middle age for a tiger, the big cat patiently waited for her chance to attack, camouflaged behind a hummock of peat and tangled swamp grass. Excepting the peculiar white saddle-shaped patch of fur riding high across her upper spine, the feline’s otherwise tawny coat, interrupted by black stripes, served her well in her incessant quest for nourishment. Her presence was rarely known to her victims, until it was too late.

  The air was cool and the breeze lightly tousled the reeds choking the northern wetlands. Though the cat could smell the pungent scent of swamp water on all sides, the water per se didn’t concern her. She was an excellent swimmer, much preferring to chase down a meal across the bog than be forced to climb a tree after a fleeing victim. The she-cat flexed her front paws, spreading her toes and extending the two-inch stiletto nails. Supported by four legs powerful enough to propel her quarter ton body over a two-meter fence, the Siberian tigress was the most efficient natural killing machine the swamp had seen in modern times. And today, she was insanely hungry, driven by the sharp pangs gnawing at her entrails.

  For three months, the she-cat had followed the reindeer herd across the taiga, or swamp forest, leading her further west and north than she’d ever ventured. Once her ravenous appetite was satiated and her strength optimal, she would return south to prepare a den beneath a boulder or fallen tree, and await the late arrival developing in her womb.

  The yearling buck snorted, precipitating a synchronized shock wave throughout the tiger’s quivering musculature. From twenty yards away, she watched the reindeer use his front hoof to scrape loose the mosses sprouting from a flat rock, nibbling as he moved.

  Neither animal was aware of the incremental rise in the ambient air temperature.

  The warming caused the breeze to shift momentarily, wafting the feline’s scent across the buck’s nostrils. Instantly sensing danger, the alarmed buck snorted a second time, sending the entire herd bolting for the forest.

  The buck’s reflexes were fast but still far too slow to manage a clear escape. The tigress was upon him in three successive bounds, sinking her claws into his rear flank. Dragging the reindeer to the ground, she slapped his thrashing head with one paw, exposing the vulnerable underside of the buck’s neck. In half a second, the job would be complete.

  The big feline didn’t have half a second. The sudden ear-splitting concussive bang exploding high in the morning sky made her totally forget her hunger pangs. She reeled away from her quarry as a great heat descended over the entire swamp. Oblivious to the wounded buck, the tigress looked up to find the northern sky swathed in brilliant oranges and yellows, the bright colors extending all the way to the horizon.

  Her instincts screamed run, and she did. In long fluid strides, she sprinted away from the atmospheric conflagration, virtually flying over the peat marsh. Beneath her pads, she felt the uneasy trembling of the earth. Within seconds, though, the hot blast of wind had overtaken her, its gale force howl blowing past her ears while effectively blotting out all other sounds, even the sharp staccato cracks of splintering wood.

  The pregnant tigress raced away from the mass destruction as fast as her driving legs would carry her, ignorant of the fact she’d just born witness to a cataclysmic event that would not only affect her but many succeeding generations to come.

  Spring, 1995, Lesosibirsk, Russia

  The reedy guard, a low-level member of the Russian counter-intelligence service FSK, studied the lone male passenger stepping onto the concrete platform. The Anglo looked big — big hands, big head, big torso — and carried only a single piece of luggage, a brown leather valise.

  Oleg Potapov didn’t need to double-check the grainy image on the pocket photo he’d been issued, but he did, keenly aware that any mistake in identification would be dealt with harshly.

  Finally convinced after a third glance, he approached the man disembarking the only train into Lesosibirsk that day. He threw out his hand stiffly. “Oleg Potapov,” he introduced himself. “I am to escort you to the institute.”

  Shawn Clarksdale smiled and returned the Russian’s grip. Though Potapov reminded him of a ferret, small, wiry, with constantly darting eyes, Clarksdale remained at ease. This wasn’t the first time he’d traveled behind the former iron curtain.

  “NpuBet,” he greeted the man in passable Russian. “My papers.” He began to reach inside his jacket but the guard waved him off.

  “Professor Kirsinchoff will examine all the necessary documents,” Potapov responded in English.

  “They are in order.”

  “I trust they are.”

  Potapov’s car was a late model black Volvo. Other than some body rust over the wheel hubs, the vehicle looked roadworthy.

  “You travel light, Mr. Clarksdale,” Potapov said, maintaining one eye in the rearview.

  “Yes,” Clarksdale responded singularly. Not implying rudeness, he was simply exhausted after the long journey. Any small talk would come later when it really counted.

  “I’ve never visited your country,” the guard continued affably. “One day, maybe. I would like to see the great white house of your leader. Now that would be something to tell my grandchildren, yes.”

  “Yes,” Clarksdale agreed out of politeness. He cracked the window. Outside, the morning air carried the diesel smell of heavy industry — Lesosibirsk’s wood processing centers and factories. The river port city’s street traffic was light, justifiably so, as it was barely past 6 AM local time. Between drab wood and brick buildings, he caught glimpses of the Yenisey River, the vast Russian south-north waterway. Hundreds of kilometers north, the Stony Tunguska branched east, one of the river’s nine major tributaries.

  He leaned back against the seat, relieving a kink that had developed in his neck. The train trip from Novosibirsk, a distance of five hundred miles, had taken fourteen hours, not bad by Russian standards. And with the fifteen hundred mile, sometimes exciting, Aeroflot leg from Moscow plus the prior transatlantic flight originating from New York’s Laguardia International Airport, Clarksdale calculated he’d crossed fifteen time zones, if he considered the initial flight from his home in the western United States.

  Back in Central Idaho on his 95,000-acre Clarksdale Animal Preserve, the local mountain time would be nearing mid-afternoon of the previous day. Instead of evoking feelings of homesickness, though, the thought sent a spark of adventure through his veins. If what Professor Kirsinchoff had relayed over the phone and fax had been correct, the long journey would have been well worth the monumental fatigue now engulfing his bones.

  Clarksdale had conducted several prior business transactions with the senior professor of vertebrate paleontology and biology at the Lesosibirsk Pedagogical Institute, most recently the purchase of a rare fossilized nest of twelve hadrosaur eggs smuggled out of Xinjiang province in northern Mongolia. But he’d only had to travel as far as Dallas, Texas to receive the merchandise. And that pickup hadn’t entailed a cage, feeding arrangements, not to mention the licensing documentation from the myriad federal and international agencies responsible for the importing and exporting of exotic mammals.

  However, after the preliminary money transfer of one hundred thousand U.S. dollars to a Swiss account still under Clarksdale’s control, Kirsinchoff had proved meticulous, almost to a fault, in coordinating the much needed false export visas and shipping arrangements. Once the cargo left Siberian air space though, and that was assuming what the Russian scientist had purport
ed proved to be accurate, only then would Kirsinchoff’s responsibilities be fulfilled. From London onward west, Clarksdale would handle all the logistics associated with transporting the specimen. If the animal died in transit, it would be his total loss. The final leg and the one in which Clarksdale could finally begin to relax would be the six-hour flight home from New York City aboard his private Learjet. They would touchdown on the Preserve’s private runway sometime during the night of June 1st. An eternity from now.

  Clarksdale groaned.

  “Sir?” Potapov was holding up a plain brown flask with a shiny silver cap.

  Clarksdale politely declined the vodka offer. “Blavid before noon aggravates my gastritis,” he said.

  “Not Blavid,” the guard said as if he’d been insulted. “This is Kryshtal, Russia’s finest.”

  “Ah, Belarusian. In that case…” Clarksdale accepted the flask and took a long swig. He’d imbibed liquors from all over the world, but his own personal tastes preferred Russian and Polish vodkas the best. Kryshtal was no exception. By the time the burning in his throat had spread out to his fingertips, the Russian chauffeur had turned onto the University grounds.

  Clarksdale sensed his pulse quicken. Could the specimen really be as Kirsinchoff had described? It seemed impossible, but before two fishermen had raised their nets from the warm waters of the Indian Ocean back in 1938, the coelacanth had long been thought to be extinct, too.

  The stands of birch and well-landscaped lawns showed no evidence of the prior winter’s heavy snows. Everywhere Clarksdale looked he saw clear thoroughfares, hiking trails, and even several students in sweats and on bicycles. The idyllic view was in stark contrast to the smoke-belching wood mills lining the banks of the Yenisey.

  Potapov slowed in front of a two-story, marble edifice with opaque black windows. The ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF FISH RESERVOIRS AND LAND BIOLOGICAL ECOSYSTEMS. Clarksdale surmised his translation of the sign, though not perfect, was close enough. This is where he would meet Kirsinchoff.

  The Volvo wended along a curved drive shadowed by half century old aspen, eventually stopping at the rear of the building. Other than a few roosting pigeons, Clarksdale detected no other signs of activity.

  Potapov turned off the ignition and pointed to an unmarked door at the top of a loading dock. “The doctor will greet you inside,” he said.

  Clarksdale nodded in anticipation. “You’re not going?” he asked.

  “I’ll wait here,” the guard said, an odd expression spreading across his thin face. “Mr. Clarksdale,” he added seemingly as an afterthought. “The doctor called you an animal expert.”

  “Yes,” Clarksdale said, one shoe already on the concrete. “I consider myself one of sorts.”

  “Care to make a small wager?” The Russian’s odd expression had transformed into a sly grin.

  Clarksdale scratched the stubble on his cheek. “And what should we wager?” he asked, his curiosity piqued.

  “A case of Kryshtal, of course.” Potapov said. “I’ll wager even a man of your worldly travels could never have predicted what manner of creatures stalk the taiga of our great Siberian plateau.”

  Clarksdale reached across the seat and shook the guard’s hand.

  The corporate Learjet cruised comfortably through the night air at 29,000 feet. Just aft of the cockpit, Clarksdale sat comfortably ensconced in one of the two executive club chairs, the other four having been temporarily removed prior to the journey to make room for their special cargo. Though exhaustion and fatigue tugged at every muscle in his body, Clarksdale couldn’t have fallen asleep even if his very life depended on it. Never in his wildest dreams of fancy would he have believed the possibility of such a creature’s existence. And now the discovery was officially his. Unfuckingbelievable.

  The transaction had been consummated with a simple handshake. The Russian had accepted the money. Clarksdale would have eagerly offered twice the agreed upon amount.

  He laughed out loud at his good fortune.

  The pilot stuck his head from the cockpit. “Everything all right, Sir?”

  Clarksdale saluted him. “Fucking fantastic, Rob. Just get us home in one piece.”

  “Four hours, Mr. Clarksdale.” His attention returned to the instrument panel.

  Clarksdale could hear the pilot discussing on the radio the issuance of a weather warning concerning a rapidly developing high-pressure system forming over the Sierra Nevadas. The gist was lost in the smooth din of the twin jet engines. Clarksdale didn’t care. If Rob required any assistance, Clarksdale could serve as co-pilot, having recently recertified his pilot’s license. For the moment, though, he would allow nothing to dampen his euphoria. Not even the weather.

  Seventy-one hours — almost two days — had passed since his meeting with Professor Kirsinchoff. And in every sense the trip had been a robust success. Except for the case of vodka. Clarksdale chuckled again. Hell, he would’ve gladly paid off his wager with Potapov with ten cases. Twenty. Fifty. It didn’t matter. What he had in his possession, he truly believed was priceless. And it was alive.

  For a split second, Clarksdale felt a twinge of panic. Unbuckling his seat belt, he stood and walked to the rear of the Learjet. The four foot steel reinforced cage hadn’t shifted an inch and was still strapped in securely, stabilized by six four-inch-wide nylon restraints. He slid open the viewing slat and peered inside.

  Two wide-spaced amber eyes stared back, dull and listless. He waited until he saw them blink, then slid the slat closed. His fear had been unfounded. Though the animal was in no danger of dying, at some point the sedative’s effects would wear off and then the possibility of the specimen injuring itself in the confines of the cage would become all too real. He couldn’t allow that to happen. Not after so many miles, including layovers in Moscow and London’s Heathrow, and always the threat that some curious airport official might go beyond the travel documents describing the cargo as Tigris altaica, a Siberian tiger cub, and actually request to see the animal. Fortunately, none of that transpired and here he was, Mr. Shawn Clarksdale, animal and fossil collector extraordinaire, flying high over the midwestern United States with a prize any museum curator would kill for.

  “Unfuckingbelievable.” This time he spoke aloud. Wonders of the natural world never ceased. He patted the cage lightly, just as a reassurance the enclosure was real, then returned to his seat. In another three hours they’d begin their initial descent.

  Opening his briefcase, Clarksdale pulled out a handful of papers — game permits to authorize, the rich and famous flew in to hunt moose, elk, and bear on his private preserve; in addition there was a requisition to lease 10,000 adjoining acres from Boise Cascade, and a miscellany of conservation reports, commodities’ figures, and documents concerning future land development issues. He tried to concentrate but found it impossible.

  His conversations with Kirsinchoff kept replaying in his mind. Some parts he’d understood. The index case had been found by one of the professor’s graduate students sixty kilometers southeast of Vanavara on the Stony Tunguska River. The mother, a rare Siberian white tiger, had been crippled by poachers and had to be put down. Kirsinchoff was probably in the midst of her dissection at this very moment. Other than her ghostly coat, though, she’d born none of the outward characteristics of her male offspring, the animal now in Clarksdale’s possession. The Russian PhD had even gone so far as to pronounce the birth a ten thousand year step back in time.

  However, words like genetic divergence, variable penetrance, the Marceau phenomenon — an eponymous term for the possibility of the rare reemergence of atavistic genes in the DNA of a select few animal and plant species — left Clarksdale feeling like a kindergartner sitting in on a college physics lecture. He did understand, though, that if the Russian’s hypothesis was indeed correct, then similar primordial traits would have had to have been passed across several generations as it’d been over eighty years since the Tunguska meteor had exploded a
bove the remote forests of the great Siberian taiga, showering hundreds of square miles of swampland with black rain and radioactive fallout. And considering the average lifespan of a big cat in the wild was approximately ten to fifteen years, that meant his cub was a fourth or fifth generation offspring. It would have taken at least that much time for the more advantageous gene mutations to be fully expressed.

  Clarksdale shuffled back through his notes, retrieving the papers pertaining to Kirsinchoff’s theory. He found it difficult to refute what the Soviet paleobiologist proposed. The facts spoke for themselves. Spectral analysis of the peat bogs and water in the areas studied had already revealed the anomalous presence of a number of radioactive elements — carbon, hydrogen, ytterbium, and iridium. In addition, cross-cut sections of trees indigenous to the swamp forests testified to an additional unknown radiation source, presumably left behind by the meteor. These isotopically charged elements, Kirsinchoff theorized, had triggered the reactivation of the species’ primitive or atavistic traits. And what a pair of traits they were. When Clarksdale had expressed some skepticism, Kirsinchoff had quickly pointed out that Russian scientists had been documenting accelerated growth rates in certain mutated plant species, mostly lichens, mosses, and small grasses, in these areas for years.

  Clarksdale closed his eyes a moment and attempted to conjure an image of the infant creature as a fully-grown adult. He couldn’t do it. The very idea was just too amazing, too fantastic. And almost as astounding was the distinct possibility that other such creatures might exist, though thus far none had turned up. Not to mention the potential for future breeding. The idea made him giddy.

  “Mr. Clarksdale.” Rob’s voice broke his reverie. “We have a vigorous disturbance building awfully fast over the northern Rockies.”