Carnosaur Crimes

by Christine Gentry

  “Who?”

  “Take your pick. The mafia. Black Market dealers. Local poachers. We’ve spooked somebody out of the woodwork,” he replied angrily. “Just keep your head down and do whatever we tell you. No arguments.”

  The second copter began to catch up. They were being chased, she realized. Nothing made that fact more real than seeing the black helicopter heading straight for her. She also noticed that Parker had started to decrease their altitude. The eroded Badlands were only a mile ahead, and they made a dashing descent toward them. As they got lower, the other copter moved into a position several hundred feet behind their tail.

  “I want everybody to stay calm and don’t panic,” Parker ordered. “Keep your helmets and restraints on at all times. Make sure lose items are secure. If we have a forced landing, you’ll have to assume a crash position. Bend over with your chest on your thighs. Place one arm under your thighs and the other grabbing the seat. Feet braced on the floor and slightly apart. I’ll get us down safely no matter what.”

  He turned to look at the aft seats. “Everybody got that?”

  Ansel couldn’t see his eyes behind the sunglasses, but didn’t have to. She could feel his energy directed toward her despite his generalized question. She gave him a brief acknowledging smile and a nod before he looked away. In that fleeting moment, she wished she could have touched him and apologized for what she’d said to him, but now was not the time or place.

  Behind her, the sudden noise of gunfire exploded. A whizzing strafe of bullets hailed down on them an instant before the copter lurched abruptly sideways and shot for the ground. Nothing hit the fuselage during the short barrage as Parker managed to adroitly avoid the first volley with lightening fast reflexes. Below, the first towering ridges and plateaus scythed by at fifty miles an hour. Above, Ansel could plainly see the chasing copter with two occupants inside. She could also see the outriggers and mounted miniguns.

  “Shit,” Dixie exclaimed. “Get us out the hell out of here, Parker.”

  “I’m trying.” He’d navigated the copter down to two-hundred feet and was weaving in and out of ravines, passes, and Badlands rock corridors like a combat pilot.

  Another volley of bullets pinged past them, and Ansel saw the flashes and smoke fanning out from the gun mounts with crystal clarity. The black copter was slightly above them and shooting at the tail boom. She couldn’t believe this was happening. All she wanted was to get to the hospital and see her father. Another strafe came at them. This time, something hit the copter and there was a explosive concussion that sounded like a firecracker going off inside a tin can.

  “Set us down,” yelled Outerbridge, “before we fall down.”

  Parker frantically struggled with the controls. “Don’t have a choice now. We can’t go up again. The hydraulics were hit. We’re losing pressure and tail rotor elevator controls by the second.”

  Outerbridge scowled. “Find a place to land, dammit.”

  As they lost altitude and speed very quickly, the stony ground reached up for them. Ansel swallowed back her panic. If the crash didn’t kill them, the ten-story high crags would. She forced herself to peer out her window. Clustered bluff tops ringed by tall Ponderosa would be impossible to land on. So would the deep gullies and calcareous bluff bottoms. “There’s a box canyon to our right. The middle is flat. Can we reach that?”

  Everyone except Parker looked toward her. “Looks about three-hundred acres wide. Should work if I can get us there,” he yelled back. “I haven’t got much directional control in forward.”

  “Just do it,” Walthers shot back from the back seat.

  Parker struggled with the sluggish controls, and the copter slowly turned to the right. Behind them the Gazelle closed in. Miniguns fired. High velocity bullets skimmed past the turning fuselage and struck rock walls, surrounding them with explosive smacks that chipped off stone, felled tree limbs, and raced along the canyon rim in a lethal swath of destruction. In the midst of this, an alarm sounded throughout the cabin, warning of some incipient danger with the copter’s functions.

  Dixie screamed and covered her ears. Walthers squeezed his eyes closed. Outerbridge clenched his armrests and leaned against the copter’s semi-controlled and sharply angled turn. Ansel put her hands over her ears and prayed they survived long enough to attempt a crash landing.

  “Crash positions,” Parker yelled.

  The right turn never stopped as the copter dropped beneath the northwest rim of the box canyon, barely missing a direct hit against the cliff wall. The nose kept spinning right, however, and the left side of the tail struck rock like a decelerated hammer. Metal dragged across bedrock as a deafening, cacophonous screech.

  A thud that felt like God had swatted the copter threw Ansel against the fuselage despite her leg-hugging stance and iron grip on the seat. Screams and hoarse grunts of shock and surprise echoed through the cabin right before the copter nose tilted down, and the craft dropped like a stone.

  Then the long, scraping fall to the boulder-strewn, canyon floor began in earnest.

  Chapter 30

  “Make my enemy brave and strong, so that if defeated, I will not be ashamed.”

  Plains Indian

  Something tugged on Ansel’s shoulders. Her eyes flickered open, then closed though she was vaguely aware of a loud crackling sound and the smell of smoke. A cough welled in her chest as acrid air invaded her lungs, but a heavy drowsiness kept her from stirring too much. Only a sharp yank near her stomach irritated her enough for her to open her eyes again.

  She saw the blurry outline of Parker’s smoke-shrouded face hovering above her. He was reaching down, frantically trying to release her seat belt. Only then did she realize that she was hanging sideways with Dixie and Walthers below her. The copter had come to rest on its left side, and Parker was actually on top of the overturned fuselage trying to get her out through the open right passenger door.

  “Hurry up,” he ordered. “This bird is smoking. Hold onto my hand, and I’ll pull you out.” He unclipped her buckle and suddenly Ansel’s dangling weight was free.

  Her body dropped onto Dixie’s unconscious form still strapped in a seat. The smoke inside the cabin became much thicker, funneling up past Ansel and through the overhead door. It smelled of acrid burning plastic and fuel. She glanced down and could barely see Dixie as she struggled to upright herself with feet on her seat’s now sideways leg struts and the gray-carpeted cabin floor against her belly. Coughing several times, she grabbed Parker’s right hand. He moved further back on the exterior fuselage, struggling for footing, and pulled her through the opening. When she was almost out, long split-front skirt and all, Ansel settled on her rump and swung her legs onto the copter’s Fiberglass hull.

  “Slide down to the ground, then get back near those boulders. The copter might blow. There’s a hot power plant with an engine compartment leaking sixty gallons of fuel beside us.”

  Ansel half-slid and half-jumped the many feet to the ground and her sore back complained. She noticed Parker’s red duffel bag thrown on the ground. He must have gathered his belongings before leaving the flight deck and rescuing her. Luckily, she had placed her saddle purse diagonally over her shoulder and chest when she’d buckled into her seat.

  “The others?”she called up. “Are they all right?”

  Parker prepared to jump directly into the passenger deck this time. His face was grave. “Just Dixie.” Without another word, he sat, dangled his legs into the smoking hole, and then disappeared.

  Dixie? What about Outerbridge and Walthers on the bottom left side? Ansel wondered. Instead of leaving the copter, she quickly circled it, her boots sinking into the soft dirt churned up by the crash velocity. The copter had sustained a lot of damage, but she couldn’t see anything or anybody through the front windshield. It was opaque with roiling gray smoke and partially compacted on the left side from some catastrophic impact too great to withstand.

  Everything in front of Outerbridge had buckled inward
s six feet. Even with the smoke, she could see the huge blood splatters coating the indented, spider-webbed windshield. The gruesome sight confirmed that Special Agent John Outerbridge and Agent Daniel Walthers were dead. The copter’s forward ground speed, almost vertical drop, left-sided impact, and the hard-packed terrain had doomed them.

  With new horror, she vividly remembered how the left side of the nose-down copter had dragged more than seventy vertical feet down the sandstone canyon wall as the engine accelerated them forward even faster. Then there had been that tremendous tilted crash into the firmament when she must have lost consciousness.

  As if that wasn’t enough, the thirty foot long main rotor blades had snapped, either from striking the canyon cliff or by surviving the drop only to have the nosedive against the ground catch the blade tips in mid-spin. The tail boom was missing its rear portion, which had landed several feet away from the main fuselage.

  Ansel looked at her watch and rubbed her lower back. Only eleven minutes had passed since the copter hit the canyon wall. Now two people were gone. No matter their treatment of her, neither FBI agent deserved this. Tears stung her eyes, but she didn’t have the luxury of losing it out here in the one-hundred and three degree heat with two killers probably out to finish off the rest of them.

  Suddenly Parker reappeared through the door, coughing and covered with black grit. He’d revived Dixie, who’s head popped out, sputtering for breath and clawing at the fuselage sides, her duffel bag in tow. Ansel ignored Parker’s instructions and hurried to help get Dixie off the copter. The paleontologist had a bruise on her left forehead but looked physically well other wise. Ansel tried to ignore the blood stains smearing Dixie’s clothes. They had must have come from Walthers.

  Parker stared down at the two women. “Get further away. I’ve got to go back in.”

  “Parker, no,” Ansel said. Toxic black smoke now spilled from beneath the copter and out the passenger door and the air around the craft felt hotter, fiery.

  “I forgot something,” he said, distracted. “I’ll be right out.”

  “Let’s move back,” Dixie agreed. “He knows what he’s doing.”

  Ansel reluctantly left. Dixie and she walked toward the canyon wall some eighty feet away. As soon as Dixie reached the shade, she pulled a cell phone from her duffel and punched in a number. As Ansel watched, amazed at the idea that Dixie thought she could just dial up the equivalent of Triple A to come and pick her up, the paleontologist’s face twisted into a grimace and she snapped the cover plate shut. “I tried calling an operator. No signal. Great. No food and no water. I didn’t sign up for this.”

  Next Dixie plopped to the ground and leaned her head against a huge boulder providing shade and scrabbled through her bag for matches and a cigarette. She lighted the tip with badly shaking hands, puffed several times, then stared angrily off into the flat brown acreage filled with brown scrub brush and prickly pear enclosed by a solid ring of sienna and cream, skyscraper cliffs.

  Ansel leaned against another chunk of rock, fanning her face with her hat. “Relax. Even with these temperatures, if we stayed in the shade and moved from dusk until dawn, we could last almost six days without either, but it probably won’t come to that. We’ll find something to eat, and there’s a rain storm on the way.”

  Parker soon jumped to the ground from the destroyed aircraft and joined them. He was carrying his duffel and Outerbridge’s steel briefcase. “We’re going to need this,” he said, “Or everything we did will be meaningless.”

  The bill of sale for the Allosaurus skull and the store security camera recordings were in the briefcase, Ansel considered with admiration. She’d forgotten all about them. She scanned the canyon. Everything looked normal – lifeless and isolated, but she knew that things weren’t always what they seemed in the Badlands.

  “Where do you think the other copter went?” she said.

  Parker wiped sweat from his black-smudged forehead. “If we’re lucky it’s gone but with all that smoke, they can come back and find us anytime they want.”

  “So can the FBI,” Dixie asserted. “And doesn’t the copter have a distress beacon?”

  “Sure, I manually activated an Emergency Locator Transmitter before we crashed, and it should broadcast a radio distress signal for quite a while. The problem is that the copter’s not just smouldering, it’s on fire near the engine compartment. It’s only a matter of time before it blows. Plus, we’re in a box canyon. A CAP plane or any other aircraft would have to be directly over us in order to pick up the distress signal. We can’t depend on the ELT.”

  Ansel nodded. “I’ve got to get to my father. So which way is out?”

  “I’ve got the survey maps for this area and a GPS unit. We should be able to find the hidden entrance to this box canyon pretty easily. After that we head toward civilization. First, we take stock of what we’ve got so everyone knows who’s in charge of what supplies.”

  They all sat on the ground and went through both the duffels and her purse, garnering a catalog of items necessary for the trek. All and all they were in pretty good shape except for their food and water situation. Parker had taken an emergency medical kit, safety strobe, flashlight, matches, two inclement weather ponchos, and three guns from the copter – his own, plus Walthers’and Outerbridge’s. Parker and Dixie chucked most of their clothes and toiletries, replacing valuable duffel space with important papers, maps, two cell phones, and other essentials. Ansel’s purse was rifled, too. She removed all her jewelry and tossed it inside after taking everything else out except a tiny bottle of expensive perfume which she couldn’t bare to part with, a mirror, and lipstick to keep her lips from chapping.

  Parker took the strobe, flashlight and guns. Dixie took the ponchos and whatever protective clothing remained. Ansel got the medical kit which fit perfectly inside her purse and afforded a thick leather protection. Outerbridge’s briefcase was the only tote left intact. By silent, mutual agreement, the pouch seemed somehow sacred – inviolable until it was given to the proper authorities. Ansel carried that.

  Behind them, the helicopter suddenly flared with a sizzling whoosh of flame that engulfed the interior cabin and the men left behind. Tongues of fire shot out of the open doors on the right side, hissing and smoking. The noise sounded like perverse cackling to Ansel as she watched the helicopter become a funeral pyre.

  Dixie stared hard at the aircraft while fashioning a make-shift head covering with a large yellow tee-shirt. She stretched the neckline tight across her forehead and tied it behind her head with the short sleeves, then let the rest droop behind her neck and back

  Dixie stared at Parker. “Maybe we should have taken them out of there.”

  Ansel shook her head. “Couldn’t bury them. They’d be eaten by animals.”

  Parker said nothing but watched the fiery spectacle, his face ashen. Ansel couldn’t imagine what he must be feeling. Guilt, anger, horror. He’d known those men better than she, and she imagined that the deep, fraternal bonding between federal agents was something unfathomable and unquantifiable by her standards of experience. When the copter finally exploded, sending a hellish fireball of orange and black smoky flame into the sky along with a rain of small debris and gagging fumes, he turned away.

  He occupied the next several minutes consulting a Hell Creek geological survey map and orientating himself with the digital Global Positioning Unit. “West to east, this flat area is about a half mile long. There’s only a deep ravine at the east end that leads out of the canyon.”

  “That’s not too bad,” Dixie admitted. “Maybe our cell phones will work outside these bluffs.”

  Parker sighed. “I wouldn’t count on it.” He reached into his duffel and pulled out a light blue windbreaker jacket. “Ansel put this on. I don’t want your bare arms getting burned. I’ll wear a long-sleeved shirt.” He passed her the jacket and striped off his sooty tee and replaced it with a vibrant red plaid western shirt. Then he carefully strapped on his shoulder holster.<
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  Ansel pulled the windbreaker over her thin white top. “Good idea. Dehydration is going to be our worst problem.”

  Parker started walking. “There’s not much shade anywhere so we’ll take the fastest way across and see how it goes. Stick together. If that copter comes back, find some cover or hit the ground. If everything goes all right and we get out of here, we’ll concentrate on staying in the shade the rest of the afternoon and building a shelter at dusk.”

  They began the long walk across the small prairie, one behind the other. Parker led, Ansel followed, and then Dixie, who tended to lag anyway. It was fast going since the land was relatively flat and the normally tall grasses and scrub were reduced to near nothingness. The worst was the prickly pear. They zig-zagged a lot, avoiding these thick succulent patches. The foot-high cactus had long, stiff thorns that cut with a wicked efficiency and could cause infection.

  They hadn’t walked more than five minutes before the drone of helicopter blades sounded beyond the eastern ridge. Parker’s head snapped upwards as he scanned the Ponderosa-covered, eastern bluff they were headed toward. Ansel and Dixie froze in place, listening. The whomp-whomp of rotor blades increased with every passing second.

  Parker calmly turned and looked at Ansel as he handed her his duffel bag. “Run into the rocks,” he commanded. “Now.”

  Ansel accepted the baggage, but stood her ground even as Dixie bolted past her to start the long run from the center of the prairie toward the nearest plateau on the southern side. “What are you going to do?”

  “Decoy them away from you two.”

  The black helicopter appeared over the bluff top. “Bullshit. I’m not letting you be a target. Come with us.”

  Parker grabbed her arm and pushed her roughly away. “You’ve got to protect that briefcase. I’m depending on you. God dammit, get out of here.” His face was red with anger as he pulled his gun from his holster and looked up at the copter headed straight for them.