The Last Dragon td-92

by Warren Murphy

  "How am I going to explain this to the board?" he moaned as the wingship crew compared notes. They had all remembered waking up in their seats to find the ship destroyed. No one remembered falling asleep. No one remembered anything.

  "Simple," Nancy had suggested. "We beached, there was an accident, and the ship broke apart. We were all knocked unconscious."

  "That's it! Pilot error. Why not? It works for the F.A.A."

  "It was no pilot error. It was an accident."

  "You don't understand. This is corporate politics we're talking about. There has to be a scapegoat. It's the way the game is played, and you're my backup."

  "I am not your backup. Get clear on that point."

  "Forget about me ever mentoring you."

  They had to beach the barge, but it worked out better that way. A beached barge could not capsize. The cranes toiled briefly, under the watchful eyes of the Burger Berets, swinging the limp creature onto the padded carrier.

  Everyone pitched in at that point, guiding the dinosaur's head to a safe landing. One of the cranes was needed to drape the thick tail onto the carrier. The beast was secured with heavy cable.

  "Perfect." King said. "We're ready to roll."

  The moon had become lost in a storm front. The darkness was absolute. Even so, transporting a ten-ton reptile up the lonely Delaware coast was not about to come off smoothly.

  Yet, it did. The roads were virtually deserted.

  "I can't believe our luck," Nancy said, riding in a company car with King. They were directly behind the brontohauler, as King called it. Three cars loaded with crack Burger Berets rode point.

  "Don't," King said flatly. "The board had the roads blocked off."

  "The board has that kind of clout?"

  "The board has that much money to throw around," King retorted.

  "Somehow I don't much care for the way the board throws money at problems instead of reasoning them through."

  "In our league, baby, things move so smoothly that thinking is optional."

  "That, I believe."

  King frowned in the darkness. "That didn't come out right."

  "Oh, yes it did."

  They were barreling along a stretch of wooded road. The carrier, on twelve fat tires, each the size of their own car, dragged them along in the steady suction of its passing.

  "I'll be glad when we get where we're going," Nancy breathed. "I feel like I personally carried Old Jack all the way from Africa on my shoulders."

  "Me, I feel great. I'm Skip King, the man who brought the last living Brontosaur back from Africa alive. I wonder if I'll make the cover of Time?"

  "Probably not," Nancy said in a cool voice.

  "Why not?"

  "I think they'll put Jack's picture on the cover, if anyone's."

  "Damn, that's right. Those bastards probably will. Damn. Maybe I can get into the picture, somehow."

  "Maybe if you put your head into his mouth."

  King blinked. "Brontos don't eat people, do they?"

  "Of course not."

  "Maybe it's worth a shot then." King reached over and chucked Nancy under the chin. "Thanks, kid. You're all right."

  Nancy rolled her eyes.

  The walkie-talkie on the dash crackled.

  "Mustard to Mogul. Mustard to Mogul. Acknowledge."

  "Mogul is my code name," King said proudly. Into the walkie-talkie, he said, "Go ahead, Mustard."

  "We have some vehicles blocking the road up ahead. "

  "Roadblock?"

  "Looks like."

  "Must be state troopers securing the road," King muttered. "Go on ahead and get them to clear the way for us. Fast. We don't want the carrier to have to brake unless we have to. That thing is a juggernaut."

  "Roger. Out."

  Through the steady rhythm of the carrier they heard the lead cars accelerate. Several moments passed: Then, unmistakably, there came the rattle and pop pop pop of small arms fire.

  "That can't be gunfire!" Nancy said.

  Abruptly, the red brake lights-all sixteen of them-flared along the carrier's rear end. Massive brakes engaged and the giant wheels kicked up acrid rubber smoke as momentum pushed the locked tires along.

  The brontohauler began slewing.

  Nancy moaned, "Oh no. It's going to jacknife!"

  The carrier didn't jacknife. But it was a near thing.

  Knuckles white, King swerved to avoid a collision.

  He ended up on the soft shoulder of the road. He popped the door and lifted his head up to see.

  The carrier was sliding on locked tires to a sloppy halt. There was another silence. Then the gunfire broke the stillness, louder and more spiteful this time.

  King grabbed up his walkie-talkie. "Mogul to Mustard. What's happening?"

  "You won't believe this, Mr. King," Colonel Mustard panted, pausing to snap off a shot. "We're under attack!"

  "Not again!" Nancy said.

  "Can you make out who it is?" King asked in a heated voice.

  "No, sir, they're wearing camos and ski masks. But there is something you should know."

  "What?"

  "They're wearing green berets."

  "It can't be! We left those third world do-gooders back in Africa."

  "I can't say it's them, but they have the same haberdasher. We're returning fire. "

  "Return fire, hell! Wipe 'em out!"

  Nancy hissed at him in the dark. "Are you crazy, King? A firefight is insane."

  King looked at her incredulously. "What do you want-to let them just steal the animal?"

  "If I have a choice between a dead dinosaur and a kidnapped one," Nancy bit back. "I'll take the latter. Gladly."

  "The board didn't spend millions just to lose out on the product tie-in of the century."

  Nancy jumped out of the car. "Use your head. Where could they possibly take Jack? Back to Africa? Order your goons to retreat."

  "I'm giving the orders around here." King hissed into the walkie-talkie, "Burger Berets! Do your duty! Sing out!"

  And from the near distance, repeated in the walkie-talkie, came a crackling battlecry.

  "Have it your way!"

  Then the percussive chatter of automatic weapons fire cannonading through the night like a crackling intermittent rain.

  Listening to it, King pounded on the car roof. "Damn, I wish I had a gun!"

  "So do I," Nancy said bitterly. "And you in my sights. "

  "You're just overwrought."

  Then, the most blood-chilling sound Nancy Derringer had ever heard in her life lifted over the unremitting small arms fire.

  Harruuunkk?

  King grinned fiercely. "They must have nailed one of the bastards!"

  "That was Jack!" Nancy cried.

  "Old Jack?"

  But Nancy was rushing to the brontohauler. Skip King froze. If he pulled her back, she might be eternally grateful. On the other hand, she'd been threatening to write him up to the board.

  "Maybe I should leave this to Kismet," he said, ducking back into the car to wait out the mortal storm.

  Nancy Derringer heard the sound a second time. The black tip of the Apatosaur's whiplike tail was twitching.

  "Oh God, the tranks are wearing off!- Not now! Not now! Please not now!"

  The pumpkin bulk still lay flat on the hauler body. Nancy circled around to the front. The head lay flat like that of a stunned serpent. The eyes were half open, the square, goaty pupils hooded. The orbs were filmed and cloudy. It was not aware of its surroundings. And obviously too weak to stand. A minor blessing.

  Nancy gave the rough leathery hide a reassuring pat. "Don't you worry, Punkin. Mama's going to get you out of this. Somehow . . ."

  She stopped under the oversized cab. Both doors were open. The drivers had joined the firefight, which seemed to be all around her now. Tracers zipped through the dark woods just ahead.

  Nancy had started climbing the aluminum ladder to the driver's compartment when out of the shadows a masked man emerged.
>
  Nancy saw him and yelled, "Put that weapon down! Do you want to kill the poor creature?"

  "Get down from that thing," warned a gruff voice. A stocking mask covered all but the mouth and a thin circle around the eyes. The man's skin was black. No question. And he wore the signature forest green beret of a member of the Congress for a Green Africa.

  "All right," Nancy said tightly, "but watch where you point that thing, please."

  She clambered down.

  The masked man approached. "Hands up."

  Nancy obeyed. She tried to keep her face blank. Inside, she was boiling.

  The masked man in the green beret approached. He carried his Skorpion machine pistol carelessly, waving it about.

  Nancy tried to reason with him. "You don't expect to just steal a ten-ton dinosaur, do you?"

  "If we can't," the man said casually, "then we'll just kill it."

  It was the wrong thing to say. Nancy felt her mind go as blank as her face. She hadn't planned it. She hadn't planned anything. But her toe was in the man's groin before she knew she had kicked up and out.

  Her opponent went, "Ooof!"

  And his Skorpion hit the ground. Nancy leapt for it. Her hand touched the still-hot barrel. "Ouch!" She fumbled for the stock and brought the weapon around. She pointed it at her attacker.

  The terrorist was holding himself and walking bentlegged.

  "Settle down," Nancy warned, getting the feel of the unfamiliar weapon.

  "Bitch! You kicked me!" His voice was very high.

  "I'm as surprised as you are about it. Now stand still."

  The man stopped. He stood in a bowlegged stance, holding his crotch, his teeth bared in pain.

  "You gonna pay for that, bitch."

  "Fine. Just so long as you stay exactly where you are, and don't let go of your organs of thought."

  "Got no choice," the man grunted.

  Nancy noticed his voice then. His accent was not what she had expected. There was none of the EuroAfrican gumbo flavor of the previous attackers. It sounded more American somehow.

  "Who are you, anyway? You couldn't have beat us back to the States."

  "That for you to figure out, bitch."

  "You are an American."

  "Congress for a Green Africa be international."

  "Hmmm."

  Clicking footsteps behind her caused Nancy to whirl. She pointed the Skorpion at the approaching figure.

  "Halt!"

  "Nancy-what are you doing?"

  Nancy almost shot the familiar voice in her surprise. "King?"

  Then she was jumped from behind. They struggled for the weapon. The terrorist was stronger. Inexorably, he was using the extended weapon as a lever to force her to her knees. He was winning.

  And in her ears, Skip King was saying, "For God's sake, Nancy! That man is a professional killer. Don't fight him. You can't win."

  Maybe it was her anger at King. Maybe it was a sudden and terrifying awareness that the muzzle was pointing directly at the slumbering Apatosaur. But something gave Nancy Derringer the strength to resist as she tried to bring her heel down on his instep.

  His feet kept shifting. It was no good. Her breath came in hot sobs.

  "King-" she grunted. "Help-me."

  Then her opponent's thumb found the trigger guard and the gun started erupting fire and stuttering noise.

  Nancy forced the muzzle down, praying she wasn't too late. The weapon was spitting at a cluster of oversized tires and then at the ground. Abruptly, it was emptied.

  Nancy let go and stepped back, her face white and shocked. And a fist connected with the point of her chin. She kept her feet, her eyes blinking furiously.

  Dark shadows were moving all around her, but she barely comprehended what they meant. She was out on her feet.

  When her head cleared, Nancy was sitting up against the big hauler tires and Skip King was bending over her, shining a flashlight on her modest cleavage.

  "What happened?" she asked in a thick voice.

  "I saved you," King said smugly. "You owe me your life."

  "You did?"

  "Absolutely. Ahem, I hope you'll keep that in mind when it comes time to write your expedition report."

  Nancy pulled herself to her feet. She looked around. It was still dark. The air was heavy with the smell of gunsmoke.

  There were clots of Burger Berets moving around sweeping through the roadside trees.

  "What happened?" Nancy repeated.

  "The Berets beat off the bad guys. What else?"

  Eyes clearing suddenly, Nancy whirled. "Punkin!"

  "Who?"

  "Old Jack! Is he hurt?"

  "Not that I can see," King said, sweeping the dappled brute's bulk with his flashlight.

  Nancy took it away from him. "Give me that!" She climbed onto the cab, using the light to illuminate every square inch of wrinkled hide. There were no visible cuts or wounds.

  "A miracle," she breathed, coming down off the cab.

  "You could throw a little gratitude around," King said sourly.

  "I could. But I won't."

  "That's cold."

  Nancy speared the light in his eyes. "Yes, cold. Exactly how you'd feel if you woke up and found your top blouse buttons unbuttoned. And don't try to deny it, either!"

  King's lean lips grew pouty. "I was checking for wounds. In case you needed a medic."

  "How many dead?" Nancy demanded.

  "None."

  Nancy blinked. "None! After all that shooting?"

  "You sound disappointed."

  "Confused is more like it. What happened to the one I nailed?"

  "You mean the one who conked you over the head?"

  "Whatever. Answer the question, please."

  "He got away. I would have nailed him myself, but I was too busy-"

  "Sexually assaulting me."

  Skip King lifted placating hands. "Don't say that. Please don't say that. The board is very down on sexual harassment this quarter. I don't know what got into them. But please don't call it that."

  Colonel Mustard came up at that point. "Mr. King, we've finished our sweep. It's all clear. We can move out now."

  A serpentlike head lifted in the darkness and from it came a low harrooo of a sound. Nancy held her breath. The head settled back into place and the eyes fell closed.

  "We'd better get a move on, or baby is going to make our other troubles seem tame," King said uneasily.

  "We'll settle this later," Nancy spat. "This time I'm riding on the carrier."

  "Suit yourself," said King, stomping away.

  As the Berets got into the cars and the transport team clambered into the cab, Nancy gave the hauler a quick once-over.

  The tires were whole, she found. The body hadn't a single bullet pock. Nor the ground.

  "Strange," she muttered.

  Then she noticed a long black streak on the fender above the tire she had shot. She ran her hand along it. The fingertip came away black. Smudged.

  "Gunpowder burn," she said. "But where are the bullet holes?"

  Her flash picked out a sprinkling of spent cartridges. She picked up one. It was still warm.

  Then the hauler's diesel engine was rumbling and she doused the light and climbed aboard, a worried notch appearing between her eyes that stayed there the rest of the trip.

  She was looking at the ragged, powder-burned tip of the cartridge.

  Chapter 18

  Doyce Deck liked nothing more than to kill.

  The kick of a Marlin .444 lever-action rifle against his shoulder was sweet music to his ears. The eruption of blood from a fresh wound was a too-brief painting, the smell of gore wafting on the breeze, metallic and tangy, were more pleasing than the scent of flowers after a spring rain.

  Right now, in the sagebrush hills north of Gillette, Wyoming, with the Devil's Tower national monument thrusting up against the endless sky, Doyce Deek laid the crosshairs of his Tasco scope on the bronze flank of a pronghorned antelope.

/>   The antelope was poised on a rise. It look around, white tail switching, as if scenting danger. Deek took his time. He ran the crosshairs down from the flank to the big tawny hindquarters. He could shatter that hip and still split the narrow skull before the animal could hit the dust.

  Then again, head shots were pretty spectacular. He shifted his sight to the head. He got the left eye, big and black as the heart of a bull's eye, centered in the crosshairs. There was a lot to say for a clean head shot. The crack of the skull, the splash of hot brains. True, you didn't get as much of a pump of gore from the head as from the flank. But the satisfaction of looking into the kill's eyes in the instant before death all but gave him hard-on.

  So, with the morning sun climbing the brass bowl of the clear Wyoming sky, Doyce Deck lingered over his kill.

  The trouble was, Doyce Deck really, really preferred other game. Human game. Antelope were fine. Their eyes had that hunted look that people got when they found themselves staring into the end of a hunting rifle. But antelope never understood what hit them. The crack of the bullet might stir their eardrums in the final moments of life, but they wouldn't hear it. The brain was usually dead by the time the sound got to the target.

  It was different with human prey. But Doyce Deck couldn't afford to hunt human prey anymore. Not after that time in Utah when he stalked two men through the desert for two days. He killed one. The other had gotten away. Deck might have hunted him down, but since everyone at work knew that the three of them had gone camping together, it would look suspicious if only Doyce Deck came out of the desert alive.

  Deck had started back to civilization after planting his rifle where the third man, Roy Shortsleeve, had left his abandoned belongings. Then he fingered Shortsleeve for the murder. It had been that simple.

  The Utah State Police never did a background check, never learned that in other states where he had lived Doyce Deck had a habit of inviting friends and coworkers on camping trips and coming back alone. And never figured out that Roy Shortsleeve had been condemned to die for something he didn't do.

  Doyce had testified against Roy those many years ago. He had kept in touch with the prison, as each postponement came. And when the time came, he planned to be a witness when they injected Roy Shortsleeve with liquid death.

  He was looking forward to it, in fact. In a way, Deck liked to think, it was going to be his thumb on the plunger. He only wished it could be. Doyce really, really liked to kill people. No special reason. He just liked it.