Savage (Jack Sigler / Chess Team)

by Jeremy Robinson

  The mind-boggling novelty of the sighting quickly wore off as they spied more dinosaurs, not just Paralititan, but a dizzying variety of the evidently not-quite-extinct creatures. Deep Blue attempted to identify them based on what little was known of dinosaurs living in Africa. The conversation ceased when both she and Rook realized that, if this lost world supported populations of plant-eating dinosaurs, then it almost certainly would contain predators—not the humanoid insect-lizard hybrids that had plagued Rook’s Saturday morning cartoon-fueled nightmares perhaps, but animals much bigger and much more dangerous.

  They soon discovered that even the river was not entirely safe. Large reptilian and amphibious creatures swam across their path. For the most part, the animals ignored them or scurried away, but a few were curious enough that Rook laid aside his punting pole and drew his spear head, ready for combat. A massive snake, easily larger than an Amazonian anaconda, trailed in their wake for several minutes, its serpentine body undulating along the surface at an astonishing speed. Queen had no doubt that, if it had chosen to attack, the snake could have crushed the little raft in its massive coils, and then gulped them down whole, but after a while it got distracted by something on the shore and lost interest.

  Much sooner than Queen expected, the river brought them once more into territory claimed by the Ancients. The unique topography of the cavern and the wild vegetation hid the structure from view until they were practically on top of it, or more precisely, right under it.

  The Ancients had built another enormous wall, but unlike the first, this one intersected the river, spanning its breadth with an arch of carefully fitted rocks. As the raft slid beneath the bridge, Queen saw that the wall was the beginning of something far more impressive than anything they had previously encountered.

  The landscape inside the walls was not much different than what lay outside. The dense vegetation had not been stopped by the barrier; if anything, it actually seemed more prolific, possibly because the wall kept out the large grazing dinosaurs. But even the tallest ‘trees’ were dwarfed by what the Ancients had built.

  Three-story and four-story structures sprouted up on both sides of the river bank, and behind them were even taller buildings—towers that seemed intent on reaching the very ceiling of the cavern. More bridges spanned the river, along with piled stone piers, where vessels much larger than the little raft could have been moored. As they moved deeper, with no end in sight, Queen realized that this place was not simply another outpost on the Ancients’ trade route.

  “This is their city,” she said, breathless. “We found it.”

  “If Joe could have seen this…” Rook didn’t finish the thought. The discovery made the Congolese president’s death seem all the more tragic.

  “Let’s make sure the world knows about it. About everything.”

  She steered the raft toward a nearby pier and hopped off, splashing in the shallows. Rook pulled the little craft further along the pier and toward shore, and then joined her. Together, they clambered up onto the stone dock and made their way into the Ancients’ city.

  The ground was thick with the strange plants, and little blue fires burned at random intervals throughout, but the Ancients had laid out their city in a methodical fashion similar to a modern urban grid. Instead of wandering into the city depths, they backtracked, skirting the river until they reached the wall, where they ascended a ramp to walk atop it. Higher up, level with the tops of many of the stone structures, the view was even more impressive. What they could not see however, was a way out.

  “This couldn’t have been the end of the road,” Rook said. “They wouldn’t have built this city here, in the middle of nowhere. There’s got to be a way to the surface.”

  Queen thought it sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as her. There could have been any number of reasons to found the city in such a remote location. Most likely some unique natural resource, like gold or diamonds. She decided not to share those ideas with Rook. Unfounded optimism might not help their situation, but at least it kept the mood light. “We’ll walk the wall. If the road continues, there’s got to be another gate. If not, we’ll get back on the river.”

  “Better remember where we parked,” Rook said.

  The wall curved around the city like the rim of an enormous wheel, most of it hidden by the towering structures in the middle. They soon lost sight of the river, but their attention was drawn to a large hump that sat beside the wall. As they got closer, it became apparent that the hump was a fortress guarding the main entrance to the city. The city gate was broader than the one they had encountered earlier, but with a similar design—a massive rolling stone barrier that could allow or block access. One thing however was very different.

  “Uh, oh,” said Rook. “Looks like someone left the door open.”

  “They must have abandoned the city when the lake cut off access to the other end of the highway. No sense in closing the gate if you don’t ever plan to come back.”

  “Guess not.” He scanned the area outside the walls. “If there’s a road, it’s been completely covered over.”

  Queen peered further out, magnifying the distant landscape in her glasses, which she’d taken back from Rook. She saw what he could not. “There’s a wall. Maybe a couple klicks out, but it’s there. I think we’re close to the cavern’s end. I just hope that when we get there, we’ll find the route they took back to the surface.”

  “We’ll find it,” he replied, confidently. “We’re good at finding stuff.”

  She laughed, but then wrinkled her nose. “God, what’s that smell?”

  In the hours that they had spent traversing the subterranean world, they had gotten accustomed to the unfamiliar and unusual smells that filled the hot, humid environment. This odor was very different, and not at all unfamiliar. Rook bobbed his head back and forth, sniffing experimentally, then his face twisted in disgust. “Gross. Smells like a mixture of rotting meat and chicken shit.”

  “I guess you would know, farm boy.” Rook had grown up on a farm in rural New England, so Queen didn’t doubt that his olfactory senses were more discriminating than hers. “But I doubt there’s a chicken coop down here.”

  She shook her head. “Whatever that is, it’s fresh…well, you know what I mean.”

  The smell got worse as they approached the fortress, and when they reached the ramp leading down to the gate, they saw its source. The broad courtyard just inside the city entrance was strewn with decaying carcasses. The remains clearly belonged to very large animals, perhaps even as large as the Paralititan, but the bodies had been torn apart like Thanksgiving turkeys, so that nothing recognizable remained. There were dozens of them, some just bones nearly picked clean, but several looked like recent roadkill, torn open to reveal red meat and pink entrails. There was no vegetation, just an unsightly mass of bone fragments and a gray-white substance that, based on Rook’s identification of the odor, was almost certainly manure.

  “Uh, I don’t think I want to meet the guy that lives here now,” Rook whispered.

  “Blue, did T. Rex live in Africa?”

  “No.” Before Queen could breathe a sigh of relief, Deep Blue continued. “Africa’s version of the Tyrannosaur was Carcharodontosaurus.”

  “Car-car…what?”

  “It means ‘shark tooth lizard.’ Slightly bigger than T. Rex. If that’s what we’re dealing with, you’d better give it a very wide berth.”

  “Nice.”

  “What did he say?” Rook said.

  “That we’re probably in deep dino shit.” She sighed. “But it looks like shark-tooth is out for the moment, so let’s move while we can.”

  They snuck down the wall, Rook gripping the stone spear head, which would have seemed a comical thing to do if it hadn’t been their only means of self-defense. They skirted the base of the wall, but their route could not completely avoid the killing ground. There was still no sign of the beast that called the place home. The only things moving were the
carcasses themselves, which squirmed with insect larvae. The stench was overpowering. Queen’s empty stomach roiled with nausea. She fought back a fit of dry heaves with each breath.

  They paused beside the gateway, searching for signs of activity. Queen looked to Rook with an inquiring glance, and got a shrug in return. Then, still brandishing his spear head, he moved out. Queen stayed right behind him.

  They had gone only a few steps when an oddly familiar sound reached Queen’s ears. It was a deep pop, not much different or louder than the noise made by a book hitting a table top. Isolated as they were, deep underground, any noise was cause for alarm, but this sounded suspiciously like…

  “Did you hear that?” Rook whispered, glancing back. He recognized it, too.

  Before Queen could answer, the ground seemed to rise up right in front of them. Almost faster than she could comprehend, the creature, which had blended in perfectly with the surrounding vegetation, rose to its full height, towering over them. The creature might not have been a Tyrannosaur, but it looked to Queen exactly like every representation of a T. Rex she’d ever seen in pictures, movies and plastic figurines—thick torso, massive muscular hind legs and tiny forearms that looked almost useless. As it stood, its body tilted forward until its back was almost parallel with the ground, its long tail sticking out straight behind it for balance. Its head, which was larger than Rook was tall, swung in their direction, orienting on the sound of Rook’s voice.

  “Yogi’s hairy sphincter!” Rook spun on his heel and grasped Queen’s arm with his free hand. He bolted for the open gate, Queen at his side, nearly outpacing him.

  The ground vibrated beneath their feet as the Carcharodontosaurus started after them, pounding the earth with its massive bulk. Queen felt its hot breath on the back of her neck. She told herself it was just her imagination, but then she heard the click of its jaws snapping shut and felt something brush against her hair. It’s right there! Even a moments delay would seal her fate.

  Rook pivoted hard to the right as they reached the gateway, pulling Queen out of the way of another chomp. The dinosaur’s momentum carried it forward, skidding through mounds of its own refuse, but it recovered far more quickly than Queen would have believed possible, whipping its tail around for balance as it turned toward them and charged again.

  While Queen looked over her shoulder at the rampaging beast, Rook searched for a place to hide. He angled toward the open doorway of a small structure that, like everything else they’d seen, was constructed of rocks stacked and slotted together—a three-dimensional puzzle. They slipped through the portal and headed for the deepest corner of the stone hut.

  The hut had no roof, or if there had been a roof, it had long since collapsed, but this was something Queen discovered only once they were inside. The Carcharodontosaurus probably could have easily reached over the top of the low wall and snatched them up in his powerful jaws, but it evidently had little experience hunting prey in its own lair. It tried to follow them through the door.

  The beast got most of its massive head through the opening, but Queen and Rook were just out of reach. It reared back, then thrust forward like a striking viper. When its bulky torso slammed into the surrounding door frame, the entire wall collapsed inward.

  Queen pressed back even harder into the far wall, as a shower of loose stone fell at her feet. With the resistance of the barrier suddenly gone, the dinosaur shot forward into the middle of structure, crashing to the floor, half buried by the aftermath of its intrusion.

  Rook pointed to the huge gap where the wall had been and shouted, “Go!”

  Without waiting for Queen, he charged to the predator’s left side, leaping across the uneven pile of stones, while the beast struggled to recover. Its monstrous head started to move, tracking Rook, and Queen saw her opening. She sprinted off the wall and slipped past on the creature’s right.

  “Ideas?” she shouted as she chased after Rook. Behind her, the Carcharodontosaurus thrashed free of the hut, tearing down the rest of the structure in the process.

  “You mean other than run?” Rook shot back. “Sorry, that’s all I’ve got.”

  But as Rook headed for the open gate again, she saw that there was a method to his madness. Out in the open, they might be able to outmaneuver the gigantic beast. Operative word, might, she thought, but given the circumstances, an imperfect plan was better than no plan at all.

  Rook slipped around the corner, through the opening, and because Queen was just a couple of steps behind him, she didn’t have time to react when he came to an abrupt stop. She collided with him and bounced back like she’d hit a brick wall. Rook did not appear to have noticed. He was just staring straight ahead in complete disbelief.

  “Damn it, Rook.” She sprang back to her feet, poised to resume running. “What the f—”

  The curse died on her lips. Until that moment, she would have thought herself incapable of astonishment. She had witnessed dinosaurs walking the Earth. What could compare to that?

  A figure was charging toward them. He was drenched in blood, teeth bared in a rictus of pain or fury, perhaps both, howling like some kind of Viking berserker.

  But that was not what stunned her into paralysis.

  It was the fact that she recognized him.

  45

  Near Lake Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo

  The Red Queen stepped down from her chariot and into the wreckage of what had been, just two days earlier, the camp of the science expedition. The scientists had been looking for a way to transform Lake Kivu’s natural gas reserves into a bounty of cheap energy for the Congo region, empowering the developing nation to rise to an equal footing on the great global game field. Joseph Mulamba was not wrong in believing that the thirteen cubic miles of methane at the lake’s bottom would play a pivotal role in how the game played out. His mistake was in thinking that it was the prize that would go to the victor. Favreau knew differently. The lake was not the prize. It was the pawn that she would maneuver to checkmate her enemies.

  General Velle stepped out of the helicopter right behind her and looked with disdain at the burned out husk of a truck that sat in the middle of the camp. The ruined tents had been cleared away to create a landing zone for the helicopter, but the canvas skins along with all the other detritus had been heaped up in a pile at the edge of the clearing. The bodies of the science team were probably there as well, mixed in with the rest of the refuse. A few had escaped into the forest, but a relentless search had run them to ground. The latest report was that the survivors were holed up in a nearby cave. Favreau did not think they would be of any consequence, but she knew better than to leave anything to chance. She had directed General Velle to send more rebel fighters to reinforce the pursuit.

  The perimeter of the camp was ringed by a dozen Type 63 armored infantry vehicles, representing most of the fighting force Velle had sent into the Kivu region at her earlier behest. Along with the regular DRC Army troops loyal to Velle, there were fighters representing a plethora of loosely organized rebel groups, some of whom had been operating in the area since the Simba Rebellion of 1964. Most had been rebels in name only, fighting to protect their criminal enterprises—poaching mostly. More often than not, they were paid by corrupt government and military officials, like Velle, to maintain order in the region. The alliance with the rebels had been a critical factor emboldening Velle to make his bid for control of the country. Although he could only count on a small portion of the legitimate military in distant Kinshasa to support him, he fielded a combined army of fighters in the east. Nevertheless, he made no secret of his displeasure at having to move his base of operations to the edge of the country.

  “I cannot rule from a tent,” he complained.

  Favreau kept a cool expression, though inwardly she was weary of having to explain herself to the pompous officer. “This is where the power is,” she told him, gesturing out to the lake. “If you had stayed in Kisangani, you would have been vulnerable.”

 
“To whom?”

  She patted him on the arm. “General, you must think that I underestimate your importance in all of this. I want you to be the ruler of this country as much as you do. But victory will not be achieved by open war. To win, you must force the Western nations to make your new government legitimate.”

  “And why would they not do so? I am offering them exactly what they want, full access to the natural gas reserves.”

  Favreau shook her head in a mockery of long-suffering. “General, you do not understand the Western mind. They see you as a thug. Useful to them for clearing away the old regime, but not someone with whom to conduct respectable business. The United States has paid a heavy price for supporting ruthless dictators in the past. The eyes of the world are on them now, and they do not wish to be perceived as fomenting bloody civil wars as a means to securing natural resources and building their empire—especially if it’s true. They will recognize your government only if you give them no choice. They would prefer to cast you as the villain, ride in as the benevolent savior and install their own puppet regime. That is why you must be here. They will not attack here for fear that you will make good on your threat to destroy Lake Kivu.”

  Velle grunted, then turned away, joining a group of his toadies. Favreau assumed they would be more sympathetic to his complaints. That suited her purposes as well. There was a lot to do.

  She watched as the rest of the passengers debarked from the Mil Mi-8. The Russian-made helicopter could carry up to twenty-four people, and on this trip, every available seat had been filled. In addition to a handful of Velle’s senior officers, she’d brought what was left of her ESI contingent. She had lost some in Kinshasa—killed by the resourceful American operative. She had sent two more to escort Senator Marrs to Mombasa, where he would deliver her demands to his colleagues in the US government. Those men would almost certainly learn that Favreau had been disavowed. The mercenaries still with her—a random draw of Hearts and Clubs—had no idea that they had been declared a rogue element. They probably wouldn’t have cared.