Tyrannosaur Canyon

by Douglas Preston

  He waited, listening.

  "Listen, I don't know who you are, but I'm not going to tolerate being followed," he said sharply. He took a step forward, meaning to walk back and around the corner to confront his pursuer, but his nerve faltered. He realized he was afraid.

  This was preposterous. He looked around, saw the gleaming metal doors of the dinosaur bone vault. He stepped over to them and as quietly as possible swiped his key card in the magnetic reader. The security light blinked from red to green and the door softly unlatched. He pushed it open, stepped inside, and closed it behind him, hearing the massive electronic bolts reengage.

  There was a small window in the door, with wire-mesh glass, through which he could see into the corridor beyond. Now he would be able to identify who was following him. He would lodge a strong complaint against whoever it was; this sort of intrigue was intolerable.

  A minute passed and then a sudden shadow fell across the pane. A face appeared in profile, then turned with a snap and looked in the window.

  Jolted, Corvus hastily stepped back into the darkness of the storage room, but the man, he knew, had seen him. He waited, wrapped in a cloak of absolute darkness, looking at the man's face. It was lit from behind and partially in shadow; but he could still see the general outline of the man's features, the skin stretched tightly over prominent cheekbones, a thatch of jet-black hair, a small, perfectly formed nose, and a pair of lips that looked like two thin coils of clay. He could not see the eyes: just two pools of shadow under the man's brow. It was not a face he recognized. This was no museum employee, no graduate student. If he was a visiting paleontologist he must be obscure indeed for Corvus not to know him – the field was small.

  Corvus hardly breathed. There was something about the utter calmness in the man's expression that frightened him – that, and those gray, dead lips. The man lingered at the window, unmoving. Then there was a soft brushing noise, a scraping, a faint click. The handle on the inside of the door turned slowly a quarter turn, then slowly returned to its initial position.

  Corvus couldn't believe it: the bastard was trying to get in. Fat bloody chance. With millions of dollars of specimens inside only a half-dozen people had access to Dinosaur Storage – and this man certainly wasn't one of them. Corvus knew for a fact that the door was two layers of quarter-inch stainless steel with a titanium honeycomb core, sporting a lock that was technically unpickable.

  Another soft brushing noise, a click, another click. The security light on the inside of the door continued to glow red – as Corvus knew it would. He almost felt like laughing out loud, taunting and insulting the blighter, except that the sheer persistence of the man amazed and alarmed him. What the devil did he want?

  Corvus suddenly thought of the museum phone in the back of the storage room, where the study tables were. He'd call security to arrest the bugger. He turned but it was so very dark, and the room was so vast and crowded with shelves and freestanding dinosaurs, that he realized he couldn't possible get back there without turning on lights. But if he turned on the lights the man would run. He slipped his cell phone out of his suitcoat – but of course there was no coverage this far underground. The man was still working the knob, making various clicking and scraping noises as he tried to get in. It was unbelievable.

  More soft sounds, a sharper click – and then Corvus stared in disbelief.

  The security light on the door had just gone green.

  Chapter 11

  AFTER PASSING THE kidnapper's car, which had pulled off the highway and shut off its lights, Tom had driven until he was out of sight, and then he made a U-turn. The road behind him remained dark. The man had evidently turned off on one of the many forest roads going up into the Canjilon Mountains.

  Tom accelerated southward, and in a few minutes he found the place where the man had pulled off, leaving a clear set of tracks in the sand. Just beyond that was a forest road turnoff, and he saw that the same tracks went up it.

  Tom followed in the Dodge, driving slowly, keeping his headlights off. The road climbed into the Canjilon foothills above the Mesa de los Viejos, and as he gained altitude the piñon and juniper scrub gradually gave way to a dark ponderosa forest. He resisted the impulse to turn on the lights and charge ahead; surprise was his only advantage. He knew in his gut that Sally was still alive. She couldn't be dead. He would have felt it.

  The road switchbacked up a steep ridge covered with a dense stand of ponderosa, and at the top it skirted a cliff. Here the trees opened up to a broad vista across the high mesas, dominated by the great dark outline of Mesa de los Viejos. The road turned back into the forest and soon a chain-link fence loomed up out of the darkness, gleaming new, with a pair of gates across the road. A weather-beaten sign read:

  CCC CAMP

  PERDIZ CREEK

  And then, a new sign, hung on the fence:

  Private Property

  No Trespassing

  Violators Will Be Prosecuted to the

  Full Extent of the Law

  It was some kind of inholding in the national forest. Tom pulled off the road, shut off the engine. Now that he had a moment he pulled the gun out of the door pocket. It was a well-used J. C. Higgins "88" revolver, .22 caliber, a real piece of shit. He checked the cylinder – nine chambers, all empty.

  He pulled a wad of old maps and an empty pint of Jim Beam out of the door pocket and felt around, but there were no rounds. He yanked open the glove compartment and searched it, scattering more maps and empty bottles, and in the bottom found a single beaten-up round, which he inserted into the cylinder and shoved the gun in his belt. He pocketed a Maglite from the glove compartment and searched the rest of the truck, under the seats, in every crevice, looking for more loose rounds. Nothing.

  He exited the truck. There was no sound beyond the whispering of a night breeze in the trees and the hooting of an owl. The gate was padlocked. He peered through. The road curved off and disappeared in the trees, and there, in the far distance, he could see the faintest glimmer of light.

  A cabin.

  Tom climbed the chain-link fence, dropped down the far side, and then headed down the road at a fast, silent run.

  Chapter 12

  SALLY CRAWLED DOWN the dark tunnel and, after a moment, stopped to listen. She could hear the man scrabbling about and swearing, evidently looking for his flashlight.

  She peered ahead into the darkness. Where did it go? She felt her matches but didn't dare light one, realizing it would only turn her into a silhouetted target. She crawled ahead blind, making as little noise as possible. More shots rang out, but he was firing at random, the shots going wild in the darkness. She crawled as fast as she could, cutting her knees on the rocky floor of the mine, feeling ahead. In a few minutes her hand made contact with something cold – a length of slimy, rotten wood that swayed under her grasp. She could smell a cold exhalation of damp mine air coming from below. She lay on her stomach and felt past the railing, her hand encountering a sharp edge of rock. She inched forward, feeling downward – it was slick and wet, evidently the vertical side of a shaft.

  Hoping there might be a way around, she crouched and moved alongside, feeling the railing as she went.

  A voice rang out. "You can't get out, bitch. The grate's locked and I got the key." A pause, then he spoke again, making an effort to be calmer. "Look, hey, I'm not going to hurt you. Forget all that. Let's be reasonable. Let's talk."

  Sally reached the tunnel wall. The pit, it seemed, stretched all the way across, blocking her way. She paused, her heart pounding in her chest.

  "Look, I'm sorry about all that. I got carried away."

  She could still hear him rummaging around for the flashlight he had dropped – which might still work. She had to find a way down the shaft, and fast.

  She felt her way back along the railing until she came to a gap. Was this where a ladder descended? She lay flat on her stomach again and leaned over the lip of the pit, feeling the wet wall of stone downward – a ladder!
The top rung felt soft and spongy from rot.

  She had to see it before she began climbing down. She had to risk a match.

  "Hey, I know you're there. So be reasonable. I promise I'll let you go."

  She took out the box of matches, slid it open, took out a match. Then she leaned out over the edge and struck it, keeping the flame below the edge of the shaft. The rising air caused it to flicker and blue, but there was enough light for her to see a rotting wooden ladder descending into a black, seemingly bottomless pit. Many of its rungs were broken or muffled with rot and creeping white fungus. It would be suicide to go down that ladder.

  Wham! A shot followed, snipping the rock just to her right and spraying the side of her shoulder with chips of stone.

  She dropped the match with an involuntary gasp, and it spiraled into the darkness, flickering for a moment before going out.

  "Bitch! I'll kill you!"

  She swung herself over the black void and felt downward with her foot, encountering a rotten rung, tested it with her weight, then lowered herself slowly, trying the next rung.

  She heard a muffled exclamation of triumph, then a click – and suddenly the beam of a flashlight swung past her head.

  She ducked and scrambled down the ladder. Almost immediately one of the rungs snapped and her leg swung out over the pit before she could reestablish her footing. The entire ladder creaked and swayed.

  Down she went, rung after rung, slipping and gasping with effort, the ladder shaking, drops of water cascading about her. Another rung snapped under her foot, two in a row, dropping her so she was only holding on by her hands, swinging once again in the darkness. She gasped, laddering down with her hands and feeling ahead with her feet until she could pick up a solid rung again.

  The beam of the light suddenly appeared at the lip of the shaft, a bright light fixating her in its glare. She threw herself sideways as the gun went off, the round tearing a hole in the rung, the entire ladder swaying with her violent movement.

  A laugh echoed down. "That was just for practice. Now for the real thing."

  She looked up again, gasping. He was leaning over the lip, twenty feet above her, flashlight in one hand, aiming the gun with the other. It was a no-miss shot. He knew he had her and was taking his time. She struggled down the groaning ladder. Any second he would pull the trigger. She looked up, saw just the outline of his face etched against the light. She stopped descending – it was pointless.

  "No," she gasped. "Please don't."

  He extended his arm, the steel muzzle of the gun gleaming in the light. She could see the muscles tightening in his hand as he began to depress the trigger. "Kiss your ass good-bye, bitch."

  Sally did the only thing she could do: she launched herself from the ladder, letting herself fall into the dark pit.

  Chapter 13

  CORVUS STARED AT the green LED, paralyzed with fear. How could the man have penetrated the museum's security? What the hell did he want?

  The door eased open, casting a widening stripe of yellow light across the floor, which cut through the mounted skeleton of an allosaurus, turning it into a Halloween-like monstrosity. The shadow of his pursuer moved into the bar of light, his outline falling strangely on the dinosaur, and as he took a second step forward Corvus saw he was carrying a long-barreled weapon of some kind.

  The sight of it broke the spell and spurred Corvus into action. He turned and fled back toward the dark recesses of the storage room, flying down a narrow corridor lined on both sides with massive steel shelves, past stacks of bones and skulls. He came to a jog and turned right, then ran down another aisle and left into another. He stopped, panting and crouching behind a large centrosaurus skull, looking back to see if the man was pursuing. His heart was pounding so hard he could hear the rhythmic whoosh of blood in his ears. He peered through a hole in the monster's bony frill, and he saw that the man had not moved: he remained a black silhouette in the open door. The man finally raised the weapon, stepped away, and allowed the door to reclose, the security locks latching automatically – and darkness once again descended on the storage room.

  Corvus's mind raced. This was insane: he was being hunted in his own museum. It must be connected with the T. Rex in New Mexico. This man wanted his data and was willing to kill for it.

  The curator heard someone breathing loudly, realized it was himself, and tried to get himself under control. As noiselessly as possible he slipped out of his shoes, and in his stocking feet retreated deeper into the dark rows of fossils, toward the back of the storage room where the biggest mounted specimens were kept, cheek by jowl. That would offer the best possibilities for hiding. But how long could he remain hidden? The storage room was as large as a warehouse, but the man would have most of the night to ferret him out.

  A voice came from the darkness, quiet and neutral in tone.

  "I should like to speak with you, Professor."

  Corvus did not respond. He had to get to a more secure hiding place. He felt his way forward, crawling on his hands and knees, moving carefully so as not to make any noise. There was, he recalled, the massive torso of a triceratops back there under a sheet of plastic; he could hide in the beast's rib cage. Even with the lights on, he would be in deep shadow from the skeleton and the great horned casque of the dinosaur would act like a hood. The triceratops was packed in among several dozen partially mounted dinosaurs and all were sheeted in plastic. He crawled forward through the forest of bones, squirming under hanging sheets of plastic, working his way deeper into the clutter of fossils. At one point he paused and listened, but he could hear nothing – no footfalls, no movement.

  Strange that the man hadn't turned on a light.

  "Dr. Corvus, we are wasting precious time. Please make yourself known."

  Corvus was shaken: the voice was no longer coming from the front of the storeroom, near the door. It had come from a different place – closer and to his right. The man had been moving through the darkness, only so silently that he had made no sound at all.

  On his hands and knees, Corvus continued to creep forward with infinite caution, feeling the mounted foot bones of each dinosaur, trying to identify it and then place it within his mental map of the jumbled storeroom.

  He bumped something and a bone fell with a rattle.

  "This is getting tiresome."

  The voice was closer – a lot closer. He wanted to ask: Who are you? But he didn't; he knew perfectly well who the man was – a bloody rival, a paleontologist or someone working for a paleontologist, come to steal his discovery. The bloody Americans were all criminals and beasts.

  Corvus lifted yet another piece of plastic, which gave out a loud crackle. He paused, holding his breath, then went back to feeling his way forward. If only he could identify one of these bloody dinosaurs, he'd know where he was – yes, it was the furcula of the oviraptorid Ingenia. He scurried to the right, avoiding plastic sheets, feeling his way, until he encountered a tail vertebra, and another, along with the bent iron rod supporting them. It was the triceratops. He reached up, encountered a thick sheet of plastic, and with infinite care raised it and wriggled underneath. Once inside, he felt a rib and another, crawling toward the front, where he could huddle under the dinosaur's huge tri-horned casque, almost five feet in diameter. He painstakingly inched himself into the hollow where the beast's heart and lungs once sat. Even with the lights on, it would be bloody difficult to see him. It might take the man hours to find him, maybe even all night. He waited, crouching, unmoving, his heart pounding in his own rib cage.

  "It is useless to hide. I am coming to you."

  The voice was closer, much closer. Corvus felt a hum of terror, like a swarm of bees unloosed in his head. He could not get the image of that long gun barrel out of his mind. This was no joke: the man was going to kill him.

  He needed a weapon.

  He felt along the rib cage, grabbed a rib, tried to wiggle it free, but it was solidly fixed. He tested several more and finally found one that gave a lit
tle when he tugged on it. He felt up the supporting iron armature for the wing nut and screw that held the bone, found it, tried to turn it. Stuck. He felt back to the bottom, found the other wing nut – but it too was frozen.

  Bloody hell, he should have picked up a loose bone to use as a weapon when he had the chance.

  "Dr. Corvus, I repeat: this is tiresome. I am coming to you."

  The voice was even closer. How was he moving so silently through the darkness? How did he know the room so well? It was like the man was floating in the dark. With a surge of desperation he fumbled with the wing nut, grasping it, trying to wrench it loose; he felt the rusted nut cut into his flesh, the warm blood running down – and still it did not budge.

  He let go, swallowed, moderated his breathing. His heart was pounding so hard he felt it must be audible – but you couldn't hear a beating heart, could you? If he just stayed tight, didn't move, kept silent, the man would never find him in this darkness. He couldn't. It was impossible.

  "Dr. Corvus?" the voice asked. "All I want is a small piece of information about the Tyrannosaurus rex. When I get that, our business will be concluded."

  Corvus crouched there, in fetal position, trembling uncontrollably. The voice was not more than ten feet away.

  Chapter 14

  TOM SPRINTED THROUGH the forest toward the yellow light shining through the trees. He slowed when he came up behind a cabin, moving forward cautiously and keeping within the darkness. It was a large, two-story cabin with a porch, and in the glow of the porch light he could see the Ranger Rover parked in front.