Day of the Predator

by Alex Scarrow

  ‘You kiddin’?’ said Juan. ‘They’d end up al over it like a rash, man. Secret service, Homeland sti s in black suits an’ dark glasses an’ stu .’

  ‘I’l tel you, dude. Whoever found it would end up having an unfortunate accident,’ said Jonah, looking at Kel y. ‘Always happens, like … always. In fact, anybody who knew about it, was related to somebody who knew about it, would end up dead or in Guantanamo or someplace. Either way, there wouldn’t be anyone walking around talking about it.’

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ said Liam. ‘It would remain a secret.’ He looked at Becks. ‘And so nothing major would be changed by it. The world wouldn’t be talking about it. The world wouldn’t know about it.’

  Behind her narrowing eyes he guessed her computer Behind her narrowing eyes he guessed her computer was hard at work processing that notion. Looking for a percentage probability gure.

  Whitmore nodded. ‘That’s how the intel igence agencies work, by put ing up a poker face. Give nothing away. You know something? You keep it to yourself. You know something about the enemy, say the Russians … you don’t change a thing about the way you behave. You act normal so the enemy don’t know you’ve got something on them.’

  Liam nodded. ‘Exactly! Just like in the Second World War. I read something about those Enigma codes and al . And how the Americans and British couldn’t sometimes react to the German messages they’d intercepted, otherwise the Germans would have gured out they’d cracked their secret codes.’ He looked down at the muddy ground at his feet. Subconsciously the toe of his left shoe drew spirals in the dirt. ‘So I don’t know yet what kind of a message we could write. But we’d want something we know they’d have to keep secret. But, more importantly, we want a message they’d need to take directly to our eld o ce.’

  ‘That wil compromise the agency’s secrecy,’ warned Becks.

  Liam shrugged. ‘I know … but another problem to x later, huh?’

  She scowled silently at that. ‘It is another protocol con ict.’

  ‘So you can blame it on me when we get back,’ he said with a grin.

  The group considered Liam’s plan in silence for a while The group considered Liam’s plan in silence for a while as the re crackled and hissed between them.

  ‘I reckon your idea sounds cool,’ said Lam. ‘I’m in.’

  Liam noticed a couple of heads nod.

  ‘Al right, then,’ he said nal y. ‘Al right, then.’ This felt good, having something at least half-gured out, something for them al to work towards. ‘Becks, we’d need for them to know when we are, you know? As close as you can get it. So you do what maths in your head you need to do.’

  She nodded slowly. ‘A rmative.’

  ‘And maybe we’l need some sort of device erected exactly where we landed, right? So that if –’ he corrected himself – ‘when they get our message and have an approximate time period to start density probing, we need something that’s constantly moving to and fro in that space. Creating some sort of a movement, a disturbance?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘You mean like a windmil or somethin’?’ asked Ranjit. Becks nodded. ‘A rmative. A device of that kind would be suitable.’

  ‘And we’l need to make some preparations for a long hike. Food, water, weapons, those sorts of things.’ Liam looked around at them. ‘And we’l need to leave someone behind to man the camp and lift the bridge after we’re gone.’

  ‘Also to maintain the density interference device. It must function constantly. Al the time,’ said Becks. Liam looked over his shoulder out towards the darkness, towards the middle of the clearing where they’d darkness, towards the middle of the clearing where they’d landed over a week ago. ‘Yes, you’re right. It’d be bad news for us if a density probe passed through here once, found nothing and moved on.’

  Liam’s grin was infectious and began to spread among the others.

  He looked at Becks. ‘Is this acceptable?’

  She nodded slowly. ‘The plan has a low probability of success.’ She smiled, quite nicely this time. ‘But it is possible, Liam O’Connor.’

  CHAPTER 34

  2001, New York

  Sal watched the world go by. Her world, that’s how she thought about it: Times Square, New York, eight thirty in the morning, Tuesday 11 September 2001.

  She knew it so wel now. She knew everything that existed in this thoroughfare and everything that was meant to happen at this very moment in time. For instance … she looked around … and there they were: the old couple in matching jogging pants, hu ng slowly side by side; the FedEx guy with an armful of packages, dropping one of them on the pavement and looking around to see whether anyone had noticed his ham stedness; two blonde girls sharing headphones and giggling at something they were listening to.

  Sal smiled.

  Al normal so far.

  And there was the ustered-looking huddle of Japanese tourists standing outside TGI Friday’s on the corner of 192

  West and 46th Street, ipping anxiously through their phrase books to work out how to ask for a co ee and saltbeef and mustard bagels times nine. Her eyes drifted up to the bil boards overlooking Times Square; there was Shrek and Donkey, Mikey and Sul y. Square; there was Shrek and Donkey, Mikey and Sul y. There was the bil board for Mamma Mia … and walking slowly up the pavement towards her favourite bench, checking in every bin along the way and pushing a loaded shopping trol ey in front of him, was the cheerful old tramp she saw this time every morning.

  She sni ed the warm morning air; it smel ed of car fumes and faintly of sizzling bacon and sausage meat. Again, quite normal – the smel of a city in a hurry and on its way to work.

  ‘My world,’ she whispered to herself. Her world … and al was wel .

  Only that was lit le consolation. If her world was stil unaltered, if there weren’t even the tiniest of di erences to see here, it could only mean that Liam and the others had as yet to make any impact on whatever piece of history they’d landed in. There were two conclusions to draw from that, weren’t there? Either they were being incredibly careful and had managed to avoid any kind of contamination at al … or …

  ‘Or they arrived nowhere,’ she mut ered.

  Dead. Torn to pieces by a wal of energy, by the explosion they’d caused. Or perhaps lost in chaos space. Foster had once ominously told her it was a place you’d never ever want – not in your wildest nightmares – to loiter around in.

  Maddy was back from her trip to locate Foster. She’d not managed to nd him. Sal had thought it was a long shot. But she seemed to have cheered up a lit le, seemed shot. But she seemed to have cheered up a lit le, seemed hopeful that they were going to get them back home yet. For some reason she’d been gabbling on about expecting, when the bubble reset at twelve o’clock tonight and they were ‘reset’ back to Monday morning, the rst thing they’d hear would be a knock on the archway’s door, and somebody standing outside, perhaps feeling sil y, uncertain, and holding in their hand some sort of artefact from history with Liam’s scru y handwriting scrawled across it.

  Sal wondered why Maddy was so sure that was going to happen, that the answer to this lit le mess they were in was actual y going to deliver itself to their front door like the morning post.

  Maddy slurped on her third Dr Pepper and placed it back on the desk beside the other two, now forming an orderly queue of crumpled cans. She could feel the sugar kick building up inside and the o ce chair twisted one way then the other as she pul ed on the edge of the desk.

  ‘Wel ?’ she said. ‘What do you think, Bob?’

  > Your thinking is logical. However, my AI duplicate would o er Liam caution against this course of action.

  ‘Of course you would, Bob … because that’s a hardcoded protocol.’

  The cursor blinked for a few seconds.

  > Also because of the danger of revealing the location of this eld o ce.

  ‘But Liam would stil go and do something like that,

  ‘But Liam would stil go
and do something like that, right? He’d override your warning?’

  > I am unable to answer that, Maddy.

  ‘But, come on, you know him bet er than me or Sal.’

  > He has broken protocols before. He is capable of impulsive decisions.

  Maddy smiled. ‘That he is.’

  She picked up her can again and tossed another zzy mouthful down. ‘So, like, if somebody in history does nd a message from him … I guess we’re going to have to do a lot of tidying up after ourselves.’

  > It wil depend on who discovers the message. And when in history that person comes from.

  ‘Wel , it would be dropped somewhere, sometime in the state of Texas. It could be anyone from some Apache Indian, or maybe a cowboy to … I dunno, maybe a civilwar soldier or an oil dril er, or some col ege kids goo ng around o the main highway. It could be anyone.’

  > You presume they have only travel ed back in time a hundred or two hundred years. It is equal y possible they exist in what wil one day be Texas long before the arrival of colonials. It is equal y possible they exist in a time before the arrival of Native Americans.

  ‘Isn’t there a way you could at least best-guess how far back in time they’ve gone?’

  > Negative. However, it might be possible for my AI duplicate to compare the density of tachyon particles in the vicinity of the explosion and the arrival point. The decay at rition is constant and this would give a fairly decay at rition is constant and this would give a fairly precise indication of when they are.

  She stared at the screen. ‘Real y?’

  > A rmative. It wil depend on how accurate the reading was.

  If Bob was right, if that was true and they had a timestamp, then get ing some sort of message through time to her was the only course they could take. And Liam and the version of Bob’s AI that was with him were smart enough to come to the exact same conclusion.

  ‘I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be al right, I real y do.’

  > I hope you are correct, Maddy.

  She nodded, wishing she had just a lit le of Liam’s laidback devil-may-care at itude. She tilted her can and swil ed another mouthful. ‘Let’s have some music … It’s like a freakin’ graveyard in here.’

  > I have an extensive database of music. What would you like for your listening pleasure?

  ‘Something heavy … something rocky.’

  > Clarify ‘heavy’, ‘rocky’.

  ‘Bob … just give me something lively, then.’

  > I can analyse the audio les in my database for variables such as beats-per-minute, wave-form, volume, number of times played.

  ‘Do that,’ she cut in. ‘Do that … number of times played. Give me something the previous team liked to listen to.’

  > A rmative.

  She heard his hard drive whirring softly, then a moment She heard his hard drive whirring softly, then a moment later the speakers on the desk either side of the main monitor began to chug with a heavy drum beat.

  > Is this acceptable?

  She sat back in her chair and put her feet up on the desk. It sounded pret y good to her, a bit like Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson … a bit like Chil i Peppers. ‘Yeah, cool … I like it.’

  The music echoed around the archway, bouncing o the cool brick wal s, making the place feel a lit le more alive.

  CHAPTER 35

  65 mil ion years BC, jungle

  Liam watched Becks and the men lowering the bridge between them. He was surprised at the strength of the vine rope, showing no signs yet of fraying and snapping despite the tree trunk having been raised and lowered a dozen times already. It thudded down on the boulders on the far side of the river, bouncing and exing as it set led into place.

  ‘Al right,’ he shouted over the roar of the river.

  ‘Everyone who’s not staying … let’s go.’

  The rst of those that were going along on the trip began to careful y bum-shu e their way along the log, get ing damp with spray from below. Twelve of them in total, leaving four behind to man the camp: Joseph Lam and Jonah Middleton, Sophia Yip and Keisha Jackson. Lam, as the only adult, was in charge, and Becks had made sure he ful y understood how important it was to keep the

  ‘windmil ’ rotating its arms.

  The contraption was a post with a balanced crossbar like a pair of scales and someone’s rucksack on one side slowly leaking – one at a time – pebbles on to the ground. As the weight adjusted and the ‘scales’ slowly tilted, it turned a simple windmil : a long, thin spar of wood that turned a simple windmil : a long, thin spar of wood that swung through the air with a regular rhythm. Every few hours the rucksack needed to be topped up again to maintain the blade’s swinging action. It couldn’t be al owed to stop.

  Lam understood enough of its purpose already –

  maintaining a regular metronome-like signature of movement. Becks also briefed him on the warning signs that the area in the immediate vicinity was being probed: heat, a momentary localized jump in temperature of about ten degrees and a slight visual shimmering. If a probe actual y did occur while they were gone, she’d continued, there would almost certainly be another one directly afterwards to ‘double-check’ the rhythmic interference. And, provided the windmil was stil waving and duplicating the same unnatural pat ern, he could expect a two-yard-wide time window to open and for someone to emerge from it, looking for them.

  Lam assured them he’d set up a rota to keep the contraption turning and then wished them al luck. They’d spent a few days preparing to set o on the trip. Sixty miles heading north-east, with no idea at al what sort of terrain they were going to have to cross. It could be jungle al the way. It could turn to desert for al they knew. Which was why they each carried in their school rucksacks as many plastic bot les as had come through with them ful of drinking water. They had some food too, parcels of gril ed sh meat wrapped in broad waxy leaves and tied up with vine rope. Enough food and water to last them a up with vine rope. Enough food and water to last them a few days and hopeful y they could forage for more along the way.

  Kel y was rst across and waited for the next with a helping hand extended.

  Everyone also had a weapon now, either a spear or metal-shard hatchet, or both. Juan had even managed to produce three surprisingly good bows from suitably sturdy branches and a quiver ful of arrows from sharpened bamboo canes, with etching made from thin strips of bark. The arrows had proved to be rubbish against the hard wood of a tree trunk, splintering on impact. But, tested on the long bulky carcass of one of those huge sh, the arrows had gone almost entirely through. Liam wondered, however, if a vol ey of their arrows would do lit le more than irritate a T-rex, if they met one. Sixty miles. He hoped the terrain ahead of them was as free of lumbering prehistoric monsters as this jungle had so far proved to be. Other than those ugly mud sh in the river, and that bloody carcass they’d encountered over a week ago, the only living things he’d seen had been dragon ies the size of seagul s and bugs the size of rats, although at night the jungle seemed to echo with the curious haunting cal s of a host of unknown creatures. The others were mostly across now, wet from the spray of the river and the sweat of exertion in this hot and humid jungle. Becks was the last one across. She walked nimbly and con dently along the exing trunk. Perfect balance and absolutely no fear of fal ing into the turbulent balance and absolutely no fear of fal ing into the turbulent froth beneath.

  Liam pursed his lips, jealous of that. To know no fear, to not have that gnawing sensation of terror in your stomach every time something thudded heavily out there in the dark of the jungle. Not that he could a ord to show it. His stupid grin and the casual ick of his hand was al he al owed himself every time something happened that made him want to whimper. For example, he truly wished they’d not happened across that bloody ribcage. That meant something – or things – was out there sharing the jungle with them. Something they’d yet to see. Becks jumped o the end of the log on to the silt riverbank beside Liam. ‘Are you ready to proceed, Liam O
’Connor?’

  He sucked air through his teeth as he glanced around at the others. They al seemed to be looking at him to lead the way. ‘North-east, you say, Becks?’

  Becks’s eyelids ut ered once as she consulted onboard data. ‘Three hundred and eleven degrees magnetic,’ she said, pointing her nger towards the thick apron of trees ahead of them. ‘We must proceed in that direction.’

  ‘Right, then,’ he said, grasping his spear in both hands. He looked back over his shoulder at the four they’d left behind on the far side of the river, and cupped his mouth.

  ‘I’l have a pint of stout to celebrate when we get back!’

  They cocked their heads and looked confused. So did everyone on this side.

  ‘Stout? … Ale?’ he said. ‘You know?’

  ‘Stout? … Ale?’ he said. ‘You know?’

  Whitmore scratched his beard thoughtful y. ‘Do you mean beer?’

  Liam shook his head. ‘You Americans real y have no idea what a good beer is, do you?’

  Whitmore shrugged. ‘I had a Guinness once.’

  Becks shook her head earnestly. ‘Liam O’Connor, we do not have any alcoholic beverages in the camp. You wil not be able to have a stout.’

  ‘Oh, doesn’t mat er,’ he sighed. ‘I was only trying to be funny. Shal we just get on with this?’

  ‘A rmative.’ She looked up. The sun was breaching the tree tops, sending a scat ering starburst of rays across the morning sky. ‘I calculate we have nine and a quarter hours of daylight before the sun sets again.’

  ‘Then let’s get a wriggle on,’ said Liam. ‘We got a lot of miles to cover.’

  Broken Claw watched them step o right past him and into the jungle. Right past him. He was amazed at how lit le the new creatures seemed to see with their smal eyes. Broken Claw could quite easily have reached out from the hummock of tal grass he was crouching behind and touched one of them.

  The rest of his pack were there with him, dot ed around beneath the shelter of ferns, behind the slender trunks of the trees that lined the river, as many hunting males as he had teeth in his mouth. The females and the younger pack members, a lit le further back in the jungle for safety. So members, a lit le further back in the jungle for safety. So many of them hiding within a few yards of them, and yet none of these curious pale upright creatures seemed to have any idea they were being watched.