Cryptozoica

by Mark Ellis

  Honoré’s lips twitched in a smile. “The larger theropod you called a Stinkosaurus Rex.”

  Kavanaugh matched her smile, but it looked stitched on. “It’s obviously of the Tyrannosaur family, but I think it’s more of a scavenger than a predator. It eats everything, including the shit of other animals. That’s why its breath smelled so bad.”

  “How many times did you see it? How many were there?”

  “We only got one really good straight-on look at one of them. We spotted it around sundown, at the peat swamp, near the grazing grounds of the Apatosaurus. That’s about ten or so miles away. We found its prints near the riverbank fairly often.”

  “What other animals are indigenous to Big Tamtung?”

  “Monkeys, tapirs, and we’ve seen leopards from time to time.”

  Honoré nodded. “The Neofelis nebulosa, the Clouded Leopard. Mr. Flitcroft blamed the deaths of his investors on them, right?”

  “That was the official story, but it didn’t really matter what killed them. They were just as dead.”

  She paused and in voice barely above a whisper, she said, “There’s something else here, too, isn’t there? Some other form of life you encountered?”

  Kavanaugh cast her a sharp glance, then turned toward the faint sound of rushing water. “Let’s pick up the pace.”

  After clawing through a thicket of vines, they reached the riverbank, breathing hard because of the heat and the exertion. Mosquitoes whined around them. The Thunder Lizard River flowed broad and torpid under overhanging tree boughs. The buttress roots of the giant hardwoods stretched out like gnarled tentacles to the river’s edge. Because of their immense size, the trees were unable to send their roots down very far into the ground and extended them outward instead.

  Several miles inland, the watery concourse lifted, until the river seemed to issue from a crack between two towering cliffs expanding outward from the base of the escarpment.

  The sky rolled with the echoes of a distant thunderclap. Crowe gestured. “Over this way, girls.”

  The six people walked into the perimeter of the Petting Zoo, following overgrown limestone pavers inscribed with the Cryptozoica logo. A main thoroughfare ran between four brick and concrete block buildings, all of them only one story high. The lane curved to the right and led to the helipad, a big square of concrete nearly covered with white flowering creepers. The logo of Cryptozoica Enterprises inscribed on the surface could be glimpsed through the greenery.

  On the opposite side of a tin-roofed lean-to, a wide pier stretched out over the sluggishly flowing river. A canvas shrouded boat hung between a pair of metal hoists. Crowe gusted out a sigh of relief. “The Nautique is still here.”

  “Who would’ve stolen the bloody thing?” Mouzi asked dourly. “It’s probably a home for snakes and face-hugging’ spiders.”

  McQuay found a bench and sat down, examining his camcorder, absently fanning away flies from his bandage. Honoré surveyed the façade of the largest building. It bore a two-dimensional red and yellow plastic representation of a grinning Tyrannosaur-like creature holding a hamburger between its paws. The picture window, even green-stained and streaked, still showed the legend: Try Our Brontoburgers With Jurassic Jump Juice!

  Honoré read it aloud with undisguised contempt and turned away, shaking her head. “Did they hire anybody who even knew the difference between the Jurassic and the Cretaceous?”

  Belleau chuckled. “I doubt the people they hired to put this farce together knew the difference between their arses and the proverbial hole in the ground.”

  A long bungalow with a faux thatched roof and vinyl bamboo siding occupied the largest tract of land. A veranda ran the length of the building. A metal sign hung askew above the door. The red letters in raised relief read Horizons Ultd Lounge.

  “What did you charge for drinks in there?” Honoré asked Kavanaugh.

  He shrugged. “We never got around to making up a price list. But they would have been reasonable, taking into account our transportation costs.”

  “I’m sure,” she said coldly. “Just like I’m sure they wouldn’t have been watered.”

  The Petting Zoo site felt less like a prefabricated visitor’s center and more like an abandoned frontier settlement, similar to the couple of ghost towns Honoré had come across while hiking in the American Southwest.

  She walked down the avenue toward a vine-enwrapped concrete pylon. A spiral staircase corkscrewed around it up to a platform twenty-five feet above the ground. The monorail track extended straight outward, plunging into a mass of foliage. A couple of small outbuildings stood at the edge of the clearing.

  “Where’s the train?” Honoré asked.

  Kavanaugh made a vague gesture. “Somewhere out in the savannah––we think. We sent it on a test-run and something went wrong with the electronics and it stopped dead. We never got around to finding it.”

  Belleau laughed derisively. “Dear God, this is so much worse than I imagined. Why on Earth wouldn’t Bai Suzhen and Howard Flitcroft be desperate to sell their interests in this place—to anybody who has a checkbook?”

  Kavanaugh suppressed the urge to mention Jimmy Cao and the Ghost Shadow triad. That bit of knowledge was a hole card and he didn’t want to play it in a transitory game of one-upmanship. He maintained a neutral expression.

  Honoré strode over to a metal handrail spanning a concrete apron. The platform overlooked a square pit covered by interlaced steel bars. The sheer walls plunged downward about fifteen feet to the flagstone floor below. Where loose leaves and dirt didn’t cover it, it showed dark stains. The dimensions were twenty feet by twenty feet. Two heavy metal doors faced each other at opposite sides of the pit.

  “What did you plan on exhibiting down there?” Honoré asked.

  “Something fairly harmless and fairly cute,” answered Kavanaugh. “A baby snufflegalumpus, maybe. We never intended to keep them caged for long.”

  “Hey!” came Crowe’s call. “I might need a hand over here.”

  They turned toward the pier just as Crowe, Mouzi and Oakshott dragged away the canvas shroud from the boat. The yellow and white craft was a twenty-foot long luxury runabout equipped with a 475 horsepower Crusader inboard engine. On the forward-planing hull the name Alley Oop was painted in bright cobalt blue. The big, concave-curved windshield swept back to the aluminum framework of a black vinyl sun-shelter.

  As Kavanaugh approached, Crowe slapped the right-hand hoist and winch armature. “There’s no power,” he said irritably. “We’ll have to lower it manually.”

  “Hope you chased out the tenants first,” Mouzi commented.

  The metal cable and pulley system was stiff with rust, so it took the combined strength of Oakshott and Kavanaugh to break loose the catch latches so the slack could be run through the drum. Crowe, Mouzi and Honoré guided the boat down, settling it gently in the water.

  The interior of the craft looked surprisingly clean, with only a few spots of greenish mildew on the seat cushions. To Mouzi’s relief she saw no evidence that snakes or insects had taken up residence.

  She and Crowe clambered aboard and ran fast checks on the craft’s systems and supplies. While they worked, a gusty wind rattled the leaves of the underbrush and the fronds of the trees. The sky rolled with a pair of overlapping thunderclaps.

  “We’re going to have a storm in our teeth in a minute,” Kavanaugh called over to McQuay. “You might think about getting out of the rain.”

  The bandaged man pushed himself up from the bench and walked slowly to stand beneath the roof of the lean-to. He focused his attention on the playback window of his camera.

  Crowe unscrewed the cap of the fuel tank and checked the dipstick. With a note of surprise in his voice, he said, “There’s half a tank. I thought it would’ve evaporated after all this time.”

  “If you started with a full tank in an airtight container,” Belleau said patronizingly, “then the rate of evaporation is about average.”

 
Crowe checked the oil sump and found it full, although slightly dirty. “Mouzi, check the electrical system.”

  Mouzi climbed into the Nautique’s cockpit and flicked the power switch of the shortwave receiver to the on position. Green lights glowed and the radio juiced up with an electronic whine. “Huh,” she said dispassionately. “It works. Go figure.”

  “I went only with state-of-the-art equipment,” Crowe said impatiently. “Don’t act so surprised. Turn it off until we test the ignition. We’ll need all the power to start the engine.”

  She did as he said. Crowe pushed the primer button on the exterior engine housing. “Give it a kick,” he called to her.

  Mouzi turned the key. The engine made a bubbly, burping noise, then died. Crowe pumped the primer again just as wind-driven sheets of refreshingly cold rain fell, first in scattered showers, then in a torrential downpour. The surface of the river dimpled under the barrage of raindrops. The wind tore at the treeline.

  Water streaming from the brim of her hat, Honoré suggested loudly, “Captain Crowe, perhaps we should get under cover until you ascertain if the engine works.”

  She, Oakshott and Belleau joined McQuay in the shelter of the lean-to. Kavanaugh remained on the pierside, offering suggestions that neither Mouzi nor Crowe affected to hear.

  Mouzi pressed the gas pedal and grasped the throttle. “I’ll try ‘er again.”

  There was a sputtering cough and a gout of blue-black smoke puffed from the exhaust. Then the engine roared and the entire length of the boat vibrated violently. Ripples spread out over the river. Kavanaugh saw the dark water roil and bubble ominously, as if something large moved off the bottom, attracted by the prop-wash and the noise.

  Mouzi maintained a steady pressure on the throttle. Both Crowe and Kavanaugh expected the engine to stall and die but although it stuttered, it continued to run.

  Kavanaugh stepped off the edge of the dock and into the boat. In Crowe’s ear he shouted, “Do you want to see if you can get her moving?”

  “First things first. Mouzi, try to raise to Pendlebury.”

  She turned on the transceiver, thumbing the channel scanner until she reached the correct frequency. She put the microphone to her lips. “Pendlebury, come in. Are you there? Do you read me?”

  Pendlebury’s high, shrill voice crackled out of the speaker, but because of the engine noise and thunderclap, they couldn’t understand what he said.

  Twisting the volume knob to full, Mouzi said, “Pendlebury, say again. Over.”

  “I said something has happened to Howard! When I called him to tell him what had happened to the chopper, he told me the boat was under attack by shadows!”

  Scowling, Crowe moved forward and snatched the microphone from Mouzi’s hand. “What the hell are you babbling about, Bert?”

  “Howard just called me—he told me to tell you if I could that you guys need to get the hell out of wherever you are…Belleau is in on it, too. They’ve got Bai Suzhen and once she signs her interests over to Belleau, she’ll be killed. They’re coming for you, too. Do you read me, Gus? They’re coming for all of you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Footsteps slammed down the ladder from the pilothouse, punctuated by frantic shouting in Thai and Cantonese. Interwoven throughout the thumps and thuds came the stutter of automatic weapons. A man’s voice rose high in a scream of pain.

  Bai Suzhen yanked open a desk drawer and pulled out a black handgun. Swiftly, she checked the action, working the slide, jacking a round into the chamber.

  “What the hell is going on?” demanded Flitcroft, eyes darting from the pistol in her hand to the ceiling. “We Are the Champions” continued to trill from his pocket.

  “Jimmy Cao and the Ghost Shadows,” she bit out, whirling toward the door. “Answer your damn phone!”

  Bai ran down the companionway and up the short ladder, shouldering open the hatch. Wood splinters flew in a spray above her head with the whine of ricochets. She ducked back into the hatch, holding her CZ75 in a two-fisted grip. Her security staff ran to and fro across the deck, but she didn’t see either Dang Xo or Pai Chu. She had expected one or the both of them to make sure she was safe at the first vague hint of trouble.

  Bai Suzhen counted to five under her breath, then lunged from the hatch and up the flight of steps to the pilothouse so she could see more of the foredeck. Glass shattered and flew from the pilothouse windows. More subguns opened up from below, bullets slamming against the hull. Wood splinters snicked through the air.

  Ricochets went keening away as she reached the superstructure. Shielding her face from flying fragments of wood and glass, Bai Suzhen elbow-crawled around the corner of the cupola that served as a pilothouse to a point where she could see most of the Keying.

  Her crew and security men raced over the decks, all of them armed. Three of her men were down, dark blood pooling around their bodies. Bai saw six sampans circling the junk like sharks, water purling around their prows. The drone of overtaxed outboard motors was very loud. From the little cabins amidships stabbed muzzle-flashes, like clusters of mad fireflies.

  Autofire rattled and bullets sent water fountaining up all around the junk. A hailstorm of slugs thudded into the hull, just above the waterline. Bai recognized the distinctive rattle of spidery-looking Chinese-made Type 64 subguns. She only caught glimpses of the men—they wore headbands divided by equal rectangles of black and white, the colors of the Ghost Shadow triad. Half of them wielded curved, single-bladed dao swords, more meat cleaver than weapon.

  She grasped the mechanics of the assault in an instant—the Ghost Shadows had hidden in plain sight among the daily flotilla of fishing sampans and then surrounded the Keying while Jimmy Cao’s sailing yacht effectively bottled up the only exit from the bay. Steel-jacketed bullets sang through the rigging and sails. Holes appeared in the sailcloth, giving them the likeness of giant lace doilies. One of her security guards doubled up and fell overboard, tumbling headfirst into the water.

  Bai gritted her teeth in fury and rose to a knee, sighting down the length of her pistol. A man stood at the bow of Den Lau’s sampan with a long-barreled Dragonuv SVD sniper rifle at his shoulder, peering through the scope. He wore Lau’s characteristic lampshade hat and she realized how the Ghost Shadows had managed to get so close to the Keying.

  Centering the sights of her pistol on the sniper, she squeezed the trigger. The single shot cracked, like the snapping of a whip. The man's hat floated away, propelled by a mist of blood. Legs twisting in clumsy pirouette, he and the rifle fell into the bay.

  The rattling of the Type 64s drowned out the shouts and engine roars. She ducked down as bullets scooped out gouges in the side of the pilothouse, stinging her bare arms with splinters. Quickly, she backed up into the cupola and found Dang Xo sagged over the wheel, wheezing, blowing droplets of blood from his slack lips. A wet stain spread across his shirtfront. With a surge of horror, she realized the pink froth on his lips meant her bodyguard had taken a bullet through the lungs.

  “My lady—” he managed to gasp out, his straight, double-edged jian sword hanging from his right hand. “Tried to stop them, to warn you, but—”

  Rising to her knees, Bai Suzhen pulled the man away from the wheel and sat him down, propping him against the wall. Judging by the size of the entrance and exit wounds in his chest, she knew Dang Xo had been one of the first casualties of the Dragonuv sniper rifle. “Don’t talk,” she told him quietly.

  He nodded, lips writhing as he bottled up the pain. As formally as he could, he handed her his sword, pommel-first. He leaned his head back, closed his eyes as if he were lost in thought, and died. Bai ducked her head in a respectful acknowledgement, then peered around the edge of the door.

  The sampans had pulled close to the junk’s portside and the Ghost Shadows hurled grapnels aboard, the metal hooks biting and holding into the deck-rails. A dozen of them swarmed up the knotted nylon ropes while their comrades in the boats maintained a covering fire.

&nb
sp; The Ghost Shadow soldiers were stocky, saffron-skinned men. Their faces were broad and flat, their crewcut hair black and coarse. She guessed they were Nanai, from Manchuria. They were armed with subguns, pistols and curved dao swords. Nothing was orderly and organized about the boarding. They charged across the deck in a howling horde.

  Cupping her right hand with her left, Bai Suzhen fired steadily into the first group of attackers. Some of them folded over, some fell down into the bay and a couple of others jumped back onto the decks of the sampans, clutching at wounds. She burned through the rest of the CZ75’s clip, spent cartridge cases tinkling down around her in a glinting rain.

  Bai squeezed off one more round, then the slide of the pistol blew back into the locked and empty position. She flung herself backward, behind the shield of the corner of the pilothouse. Bullets crashed into it, tearing away long fragments.

  The defense put up by the Keying’s crew was disorganized and sporadic. They retreated toward the quarterdeck, while more Ghost Shadows hauled themselves over the rail until Bai estimated nearly a score were assembled on the deck.

  Bai Suzhen glimpsed Pai Chu wielding his jian blade with expert ease, slicing halfway through the neck of a Ghost Shadow soldier. Blood spouted from the severed carotid artery, a scarlet fountain that splashed across the deck and slicked the boards.

  Bai cast Dang Xo a final glance, put down her pistol, gripped his sword and then vaulted out of the cupola and off the superstructure. She landed directly behind two Ghost Shadow soldiers, bending her knees to absorb the shock of impact. She spun the mirror-bright blade over her head, cutting bright wheels in the air.

  Bai’s grandmother, Lady Hu had matriculated her to take over the White Serpent triad on her twelfth birthday. She had enrolled Bai in the finest martial arts schools in Asia, which taught all forms of wushu with a strong emphasis on Taijijian, combat with the sword.

  The two men stared at her in silence, their eyes wide, expressions registering a blend of confusion and fear. The man on her left uncertainly lifted his dao sword, as if he intended to shake it at her like an admonishing finger. Bai Suzhen bounded forward. The blade in her right fist sliced through his neck and blood splashed across the shocked face of the man standing next to him.