He rose with a roar of frustration, putting the gun on semi, scrambling down the talus slope. He stopped, knelt, fired again, but it was a stupid shot – they'd already gotten into the lee of the stone wall.
How could he have missed? What was wrong with him? He stretched out his hand, unclosed the fist – and was shocked by how much it was trembling. He was exhausted, thirsty, injured, probably running a fever – but, still, how could he have missed? Then it hit him. Unaccustomed to shooting at such acutely high angles, he had overcompensated for the bullet's drop-off. He should have fired a practice round and then zeroed in. Instead, he rushed his shots.
Still, he had a chance. The canyon had sheer walls-they were trapped. He could still kill them – if he could run them down.
Slinging his rifle over his shoulder, he charged down the slope and sprinted after them. In a minute he rounded the bend. He could see them three or four hundred yards ahead, running, the man helping her along. Even at that distance he could see she was weak. Both of them were fading fast. No wonder: she hadn't eaten in thirty-six hours and they must be at least as thirsty as he was. On top of that, she was limping.
He ran after them, not fast, but keeping to a sustainable pace. The sand was soft and it made running difficult, but this worked to his advantage. He loped along, conserving his energy, sure he could wear them down in the long haul. At first, in their panic they ran fast, lengthening their lead, but as Maddox kept up his steady pace they began to falter and lag. One, two, three more bends he pursued them. When he rounded the third bend he could see her struggling, the man supporting her. Maddox had narrowed the gap to less than two hundred yards. Still, he didn't push himself, didn't speed up. He knew now he could outlast them: he would get them after all. They disappeared around another corner. When he rounded it, they were even closer. He could hear the man talking to Sally, encouraging her as he helped her along.
He dropped to one knee, aimed, fired a burst on auto. They threw themselves down, and Maddox seized the opportunity to gain significant ground. They scrambled back to their feet but he'd closed to less than a hundred yards.
She fell and he helped her up. Forty yards now. Even with his shaking hands it was a no-brainer. Broadbent tried to encourage her, but she staggered – and then they just gave up. Turned and faced him defiantly.
He aimed, thought better of it, walked closer. Twenty-five yards. Flicked off the auto, knelt, aimed, and fired.
Click!
Nothing. The full-auto bursts had emptied the magazine. With a roar, both of them were sprinting at him full bore. He fumbled for his pistol and got off a shot, but the woman was on top of him like a wildcat, grabbing his pistol with both hands. They fell together, struggling over the pistol, and then he got the gun and rolled on top of her, pressing it to her head, fumbling to get his finger through the trigger guard.
He felt a gun on the back of his own head. He could see it was Broadbent's .22.
"Count of three," said Broadbent.
"I'll pop her! I will!"
"One."
"I swear, I'll blow out her brains! I'll do it!"
"Two."
Knowing he couldn't get off two shots, he whipped around, going for Broadbent first, and fired wildly but practically into his face, and the man went down; he aimed to follow up with another shot, but the bitch dealt him a stunning kick to the groin, so hard that his hand spasmed and the pistol went off, and it felt as if something had jerked his leg hard, followed by a numbness – and a gush of crimson on the sand.
"My leg!" he shrieked, dropping the gun and tearing at his pants, feeling madly for the wound. "My leg!" The blood was jetting out, his blood, and so much of it! "I'm bleeding to death!"
The woman stepped back, covering him with his own Glock. He knew immediately from the way she held the weapon she knew how to use it.
"No! Wait! Please!"
She didn't fire.
There was no need. The blood – geysering out of his severed femoral artery – inundated his pant leg.
She shoved the gun in her belt and hastened to kneel over Broadbent, shot on the ground. Maddox watched her, overwhelmed with relief that she hadn't killed him. He felt tears of gratitude running down his cheeks, but then he began to feel dizzy and the canyon walls started to move around. He tried to rise but he was so weak he couldn't even raise his head, sinking back to the sand under an irresistible weakness, almost as if someone were holding him down.
"My leg..." he croaked. He wanted to see it but he couldn't, he was too weak, all he could see now was the flat blue sky overhead. A remoteness crept into his head, as if he had become smoke and was rising, expanding, dissipating into nothing.
And then he was nothing.
Chapter 3
WYMAN FORD HALTED next to a pillar of rock and listened. He had heard the shots quite distinctly, three bursts from an automatic weapon, quite possibly an M16, followed by a two deeper-sounding shots from what was probably a large-caliber handgun. The sounds seemed to have come from the very far end of Devil's Graveyard, perhaps a mile to the northeast, across what looked like some hellacious country.
He waited, listening for more reports, but after those few quick bursts of shooting all was quiet.
Ford moved deeper into the shadows. Something extraordinary was going on. If there was anything his CIA training had taught him, it was that the guy with the better information survived. Forget the weapons, the commando training, the high-tech gear. Engagements were won, first and foremost, with information. And that was precisely what he lacked.
Ford hefted his canteen, sloshed the water around, uncapped it, and took a small sip. He was down to about half a liter and the nearest reliable source was twenty miles away. He had no business doing anything but going straight for water. Still, the shots had been close and it would be a matter of twenty minutes to hike to the head of the valley where they had come from.
He turned back, determined to find out what was going on. He headed across Devil's Graveyard, toward the mouth of a canyon at the northeast side, passing through an area of low sand dunes. He climbed over a series of flat rocks, crossed some ash hills, dropped down to a dry wash, and continued on.
The far end of Devil's Graveyard was even stranger than he had imagined. The canyon walls on either side stepped back as the sandstone alternated with
shale and volcanic tuff. Dead-end side canyons branched out, many containing clusters of bald domes of rock and pockets of badlands. It was a complicated and confusing country. Somewhere in this very area was the dinosaur fossil.
He shook his head. What a fool he was, still thinking about finding the dinosaur. He'd be lucky to get out of there alive.
Chapter 4
TOM OPENED HIS eyes to find Sally bent over him, her blond hair spilling over his face, the smell of her hair in his nostrils. She was dabbing his head with a torn piece of cloth.
"Sally? Are you all right?"
"I'm fine. You, on the other hand, got creased by a bullet." She tried to smile but her voice was shaky. "Knocked you out for a moment."
"What about him?"
"Dead – I think."
Tom relaxed. "How long was I–?"
"Just a few seconds. God, Tom, I thought–" She stopped. "A quarter of an inch to the right and... never mind. You're damned lucky."
Tom tried to raise himself up and winced, his head throbbing.
Sally eased him back down. "I'm not finished. It's a crease, maybe a concussion, but it didn't crack the bone. It's that hard head of yours." She finished tying a strip of blue silk around his head. "I think Valentino ought to go into the designer bandage business. You look ravishing."
Tom tried to smile, winced.
"Too tight?"
"Not at all."
"By the way, I owe you thanks. You made good use of that unloaded pistol."
He reached out and took her hand.
"Help me sit up. My head seems to be clearing."
She raised him into a sitting pos
ition, then helped him to his feet. He staggered but the dizziness cleared quickly. "You sure you're okay?" she asked.
"I'm a lot more worried about you than me."
"I have an idea: you do my worrying, I'll do yours."
Tom steadied himself, trying to ignore his thirst. His eye fell on the man lying in the sand-the scumbag who had kidnapped, then tried to rape and murder his wife. He lay on his back shirtless, arms by his side, almost as if he'd gone to sleep. Both legs stuck straight out, but the jeans covering his right leg sported a large hole and were soaked black with blood. Underneath, a large puddle sank into the sand.
He knelt. The man had a hollow, thin face, unshaven, his black hair streaked with dust. His mouth was relaxed, almost smiling, his head tilted back, exposing an ugly Adam's apple covered with stubble. A trace of spittle had escaped from one corner of his mouth. His eyes were slits – almost closed, but not quite. His torso had the pumped-up look of a con.
Tom felt his neck for a pulse and was shocked to find it.
"Is he dead?" Sally asked.
"No."
"What do we do?"
Tom tried to tear away the soggy pant leg, but the jeans were too tough. He removed a buck knife from the man's belt, slit up the pant leg, and spread the material apart. The leg and groin were a god-awful mess and he had nothing to wipe away the excess blood to see clearly. The bullet had exited behind the knee, tearing off almost the entire back of it. Blood was still feebly pulsing out.
"Looks like the bullet hit the femoral artery."
Sally looked away.
"Help me pull him into the shade against this rock."
They propped him up. Tom cut a shirttail off and fashioned it into a loose tourniquet, tightening it just enough to stem the flow of blood. He rummaged around in the man's pockets and, extracted his wallet. He opened it, pulled out an Ohio driver's license with a photo of the man, cocky look in his eyes, arrogant, lopsided smile-a real psychopath.
"Jimson A. Maddox," he read out loud. He searched the wallet, pulling out a thick wad of cash, credit cards, and receipts. A soiled business card stopped him:
Iain Corvus, D. Phil. Oxon. F.R.P.S.
Assistant Curator
Department of Vertebrate Paleontology
American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West at Seventy-ninth Street
New York, NY 10024
He turned it over. On the back, written in a strong hand, was a club address, cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses. He passed it to Sally.
"That's the guy he was working for," she said. "The guy who got him out of prison."
"I find it hard to believe a scientist from a great museum like that would be involved in kidnapping, theft, and murder."
"When the stakes are high enough, some people will do anything."
She handed the card back and Tom stuck it in his pocket along with the driver's license. He went through the rest of the wallet and then quickly searched the other pockets. He found the notebook, pulled it out, held it up.
"Well, well, what do you know," said Sally.
He stuck it in his own pocket. In a small musette bag buckled around the man's waist he found an extra magazine for the handgun. He glanced around, saw the gun lying on the ground where Sally had dropped it. He shoved it in his belt and buckled the musette bag around his own waist.
"You really think you're going to need that sidearm?" Sally asked.
"The guy might have a partner."
"I don't think so."
"You never know."
There was nothing else of interest on the man. Tom felt his pulse again. Thready, but still there. He wished the man were dead: it would make things simpler. It vaguely shocked him how he couldn't muster even the slightest pity for the man.
The man's rifle was lying on the sand a few feet away, and Tom retrieved it, ejected the empty magazine, and flung it away. There was a second magazine in the musette bag, which he emptied, scattering the bullets in the sand and tossing the magazine.
"Let's go," he said.
"And him?"
"The only thing we can do for him is get out of here and find help. If the truth be told, he's a goner." Tom put his arm around her. "You ready?"
Arm in arm, leaning on each other, they set off limping down the wash. For ten minutes they walked in silence, and then Tom halted in surprise.
A robed figure was striding up the wash toward them, hand raised. It was the monk – Wyman Ford.
"Tom!" the figure called, breaking into a jog. "Tom!" He was gesturing frantically, now running toward them. At the same time Tom heard a faint droning noise and saw a small, windowless plane with a bulbous nose come flying over the rim of the canyon, making a slow turn toward them.
Chapter 5
MELODIE STARED AT the computer screen on which was scrolling the data from the last run of the microprobe. She blinked her eyes twice, rolled them around one way, then the other, trying to get them to focus. Strange how she felt both exhausted and wired at the same time, with a buzz in her head as bad as if she'd just downed a martini. She glanced up at the big clock in the lab. Four o'clock in the afternoon. As she gazed at the clock, the minute hand jerked a single minute forward with a faint clunk. She hadn't slept in over fifty hours.
She rapped a key and stored the data. She had done all the obvious research that could be done on the specimen and she'd answered most of the major questions. The only loose end was the Venus particle. She was determined to tie that one up before submitting her paper for online publication. Otherwise some other scientist would tie it up for her – and she was so close.
She selected the last of the prepared wafers, put it on a slide, and examined it in the polarizing scope. At 500x she could just barely see them, tiny black dots clustered here and there inside the cells. She removed the wafer, slipped it into a micro-mortar, and carefully broke it up, gently grinding it with water to a fine slurry, which she poured into a plastic beaker.
She went to the locked cabinet and removed a bottle of twelve percent hydrofluoric acid. It was unwise of her to handle such a dangerous chemical – one that would actually dissolve glass – after so much stress and lack of sleep, but it was the only acid capable of doing what she wanted done: completely dissolving the replacement mineral of the fossil without attacking the carbon coating of the Venus particles. She wanted to free the particles so she could take a look at them in the round, so to speak.
She brought the bottle over to the fume hood and placed it in the area marked HF USE ONLY. Then she put on splash goggles, nitrile gloves, a rubber apron, and sleeve protectors. She lowered the fume hood to six inches to protect her face, turned it on, and began work, unscrewing the cap and pouring a small amount of HF into the plastic test tube containing the ground fossil, acutely aware that even a small spill on her skin could be fatal. She watched as it foamed and clouded, timing it to the second. When it was done she quickly diluted it fifty to one to stop the acidic reaction, poured off the excess, and diluted it a second and third time to get rid of the acid.
She held up the result to the light, a thin layer of mineral sediment at the bottom of a test tube, in which she knew must be present at least some particles.
With a micropipette she sucked up most of the sediments, dried them, and then, using a separation funnel and a solution of sodium metatungstate, floated off the lighter sediments from the heavier grit. A further rinse, and then she took up a small quantity of particles with a micropipette to let them drift over a gridded slide, the particles settling into the grids. A quick count at l00x revealed about thirty Venus particles, largely intact, cleaned of miscellaneous grit and junk.
She zeroed in on one particularly well-preserved particle and upped the magnification to 750x. The particle leapt into clarity, filling the objective. Melodie examined it with growing puzzlement. It looked even more like the Venus symbol, a spherule of carbon with a long piece sticking out of it, with a crosspiece at the end tipped with what looked li
ke hairs. She opened her lab notebook and sketched a picture of it.
When she was done, she sat back and looked at her drawing. She was deeply surprised. The particle did not resemble any kind of inclusion that might have crystallized naturally in the rock. In fact, it looked like nothing she had ever seen before – except, perhaps, the radiolaria she had once spent a couple of days examining and drawing as part of a high school science project. It was definitely of biological origin – she was sure of that at least.
Melodie removed a half-dozen Venus particles from the gridded slide and transferred them to a SEM stage. She placed it in a vacuum prep chamber, get-tine it ready for the scanning electron microscope. She pressed the button and a faint humming rose from the machine as the chamber was evacuated.
Time to take a look at this sucker in the round, she thought.
Chapter 6
F. P. MASAGO STOOD in the whitewashed computer room of the monastery, now serving as the Ground Control Station for the Predator. His eyes were fixed on a flat panel video screen displaying the DLTV feed from the Predator's main camera. The rough wooden monastery table was covered with an array of advanced electronics, manned by three operators. The central operator was a Combat Controller from the 615th Special Tactics Group Wing Command, wearing a UAV FlightSim helmet. The console he worked displayed the basic controls a normal aircraft would have: yoke, throttle, airspeed indicator, heading, and altimeter, along with an F-16 style joystick.
Masago's eyes flickered away from the screen for a moment to the two CAG/DEVGU support operators. They were working intently, aware of nothing except the electronic world in which they were immersed. One worked the pay-load console, an array of screens, switches, keyboards, and digital readouts that controlled the surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities of the Predator. This 450-pound package contained electro-optical and infrared cameras, a synthetic aperture radar for flight in bad weather; a two-color DLTV television with a variable zoom and 955mm Spotter, along with a high-resolution Forward Looking Infrared Radar with six fields of view, 19mm to 560mm.
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