Tyrannosaur Canyon

PART FOUR

DEVIL'S GRAVEYARD

The T. Rex was highly intelligent. She had one of the highest brain-to-body ratios of any reptile, living or dead, and in absolute terms her brain was one of the largest ever to evolve on a terrestrial animal, being almost the size of a human being's. But her cerebrum, the reasoning part, was virtually nonexistent. Her mind was a biological input-output machine that processed instinctual behavior. Its programming was exquisite. She didn 't think about what she was doing. She just did it.

She had no long-term memory. Memory was for the weak. There were no predators she had to recognize, no dangers to avoid, nothing that had to be learned. Instinct took care of her needs, which were simple. She needed meat. Lots of it.

To be a creature without memory is to be free. The sand hills where she was born, her mother and siblings, the blazing sunsets of her childhood, the torrential rains that ran the rivers red and sent flash floods careening through the lowlands, the baking droughts that cracked the land-of these she had no memory. She experienced life as it happened, a single stream of sensation and reaction that lost its past like a river losing itself in the ocean.

She watched her fifteen siblings die or be killed and she felt nothing. She knew nothing. She did not notice they were gone, except that once they were dead their carcasses became meat. That was all. After she had parted from her mother, she never recognized her again.

She hunted, she killed, she ate, she slept, and she roamed. She was not aware that she had a "territory"-she moved following swaths of wrecked vegetation and uprooted ferns left by the great herds of duckbills, without recognition or recollection. Their habits were her habits.

Such human emotions of love, hate, compassion, sorrow, regret, or happiness had no equivalent in her brain. She knew only pain and pleasure. She was programmed in such a way that doing what her instinct demanded gave her pleasure, and not doing it was unthinkable.

She did not ponder the meaning of her existence. She was not aware she existed. She just was.

1

THE CROSSED RUNWAYS at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, lay sleeping in the predawn light, two stripes of blacktop on gypsum flats as white as snow. A terminal building stood to one side of the runway, illuminated by yellow sodium lights, next to a row of hangars. The air had an almost crystalline stillness.

A speck appeared against the rising brightness of the eastern sky. It slowly resolved itself into the twin-tailed, swept-wing shape of an F-14 Tomcat, coming in straight for a landing, the rumble of its engines rising to an ear-shattering roar. The fighter touched down, sending up two puffs of rubber smoke, rattling in its wake a row of dead yuccas along the verge of the runway. The F-14 reversed its thrusters, slowed to the end of the runway, turned, and taxied to a stop in front of the terminal building. A pair of ground crew busied themselves about the jet, chocking its wheels and rolling out fueling lines.

The cockpit opened and the thin figure of a man climbed out of the copilot's seat and leapt lightly to the ground. He was dressed in a blue track suit and carried a battered leather briefcase. He strode across the tarmac to the terminal, crisply saluting a pair of soldiers guarding the door, who returned the salute, startled at the sudden formality.

Everything about the man was cold, clean, and symmetrical, like a piece of turned steel. His hair was black and straight and lay across his forehead. His cheekbones were prominent, the two sharp knobs pushing out the smooth skin of his face. His hands were so small and so neat they looked manicured. His lips were thin and gray, the lips of a dead man. He might have been Asian if it weren't for his piercing blue eyes, which seemed to leap from his face, so strongly did they contrast with his black hair and white skin.

J.G.MASAGO PASSED through the entryway and entered the cinder-block terminal. He paused in the middle of the room, displeased that no one was there to meet him. Masago had absolutely no time to waste.

The pause allowed him to reflect that, so far, the operation had gone perfectly. He had solved the problem at the museum and sequestered the data. An emergency review and examination of the specimens at the NSA had produced results exceeding all expectations. This was it: the momentous event that Detachment LS480, the classified agency he headed, had been waiting for ever since the return of the Apollo 17 mission more than thirty years ago. The endgame had begun.

Masago was sorry about what he had done to the Brit in the museum. It was always a tragedy when a human life had to be taken. Soldiers lost their lives in war, civilians in times of peace. Sacrifices had to be made. Others would take care of the laboratory assistant, Crookshank, who was a lower priority now that the data and samples had been fully secured. Another regrettable but necessary discontinuance.

Masago was the child of a Japanese mother and an American father, conceived in the ruins of Hiroshima in the weeks after the bombing. His mother had died several years later, screaming in agony from cancer caused by the Black Rain. His father had, of course, disappeared before he was born. Masago had made his way to America when he was fifteen. Eleven years later, when he was twenty-six, the Apollo 17 landing module touched down at Taurus-Littrow on the edge of the moon's Sea of Serenity. Little did he know then that this Apollo mission had made what was arguably the greatest scientific discovery of all time-and that this secret would eventually be entrusted to him.

By that time, Masago was already a junior officer in the CIA. From there, because of his fluency in Japanese and his brilliance in mathematics, he followed a convoluted and branching career path through various levels of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He succeeded by virtue of ultra-cautious behavior, self-effacing brilliance, and achievement cloaked in diffidence. Eventually he was given the leadership of a small classified detachment known as LS480, and the secret was revealed to him.

The greatest of all secrets.

It was fated, because Masago knew a simple truth that none of his colleagues had the courage to face. He knew that humanity was finished. Mankind had gained the capability of destroying itself, and therefore it would destroy itself.

QED. It was as simple and obvious to Masago as two plus two. Was there a time, in all of human history, when humanity had failed to use the weapons at its disposal? The question was not if, but when. It was the "when" part of the equation that Masago controlled. It was in his power to delay the event. If he performed his duty, he personally might be able to give the human race five years more, maybe ten-perhaps even a generation. This was the noblest of callings, but it required moral discipline. If some had to die prematurely, that was a small price. If one death could delay the event by only five minutes . . . what flowers might therefore bloom? We were all doomed anyway.

For ten years he had headed LS480, keeping the lowest possible profile. They were in a holding pattern, a waiting game, an interregnum. He had always known that someday the second shoe would drop.

And now it had.

It had dropped in a most unlikely place and in a most unlikely way. But he had been ready. He had been waiting for this moment for ten years. And he had acted swiftly and with decision.

Masago's sapphire eyes gave the terminal a second sweep, noting the wall of vending machines, the gray polyester carpeting, the rows of plastic chairs bolted to the floor, the counters and offices-cheerless, spare, functional, and typically Army. He had been waiting two minutes; it was close to becoming intolerable. Finally, out of an office stepped a man in rumpled desert camouflage, with two stars on his shoulder and a thatch of iron hair.

Masago waited for the man to reach him before extending his hand. "General Miller?"

The general took the hand in a firm, military squeeze. "And you must be Mr. Masago." He grinned and nodded out toward the Tomcat refueling on the runway. "Navy man once? We don't see many of those around here."

Masago neither smiled nor responded to the question. He asked instead, "Everything is ready as specified, General?"

"Of course."

The general turned and Masago followed him into a spare office at the far end. On the metal desk lay some folders, a badge, and a small device that might have been a classified version of a military satellite phone. The general picked up the badge and phone, and handed them to Masago without a word. He picked up the first folder, which had a number of red stamps on it.

"Here it is."

Masago took a few minutes to scan the folder. It was exactly what he'd requested, the UAV equipped with synthetic aperture radar, multi- and hyper-

spectral imagery. He noted with approval the diversion of one SIGINT KH-11 infrared photographic satellite for his mission.

"And the men?"

"A team of ten, previously assigned by the National Command Authority from the Combined Assault Group and DEVGU to a branch of the CIA Operations Directorate. They're ready to roll."

"Were they read in?"

"These men don't need to be read in, they already deal solely in classified ops. They received your Warning Order but it was pretty vague."

"Intentionally so." Masago paused. "There is, shall we say, an unusual psychological component to this mission which has just come to my attention."

"And what might that be?"

"We may be asking these men to kill several American civilians within the borders of the United States."

"What the hell do you mean by that?" the general asked sharply.

"They're bioterrorists, and they've got their hands on something big."

"I see." The general gazed steadily at Masago for a long time. "These men are psychologically prepared for just about anything. But I'd like an explanation-"

"That won't be possible. Suffice to say, it is a matter of the gravest national security."

General Miller swallowed. "When the men are given their patrol order, that should be dealt with up front."

"General, I will deal with these issues in the way I see fit. I am asking you for assurance that these men are capable of handling this unusual assignment. Now your response leads me to believe I might need better men."

"You won't get any better men than these ten. They're the best damn soldiers I've got."

"I will rely on that. And the chopper?"

The general nodded his grizzled head toward the helipad. "Bird's on the tarmac, ready to fly."

"MH 60G Pave Hawk?"

"That's what was requested." The general's voice had grown as cold as ice.

"The chalk leader? Tell me about him."

"Sergeant First Class Anton Hitt, bio in the folder."

Masago flashed an inquiring glance at Miller. "Sergeant?"

"You asked for the best, not the highest ranking," responded the general,

dryly. He paused. "The mission isn't here in New Mexico, is it? We'd appreciate a heads-up if this op's in our backyard."

"That information falls into the need-to-know category, General." Masago's lips, for the first time, stretched slightly in the semblance of a smile. As they stretched, they whitened.

"My USAF crew needs a briefing-"

"Your aircrew and pilots will be given mission cards and coordinates once in the air. The CAG/DEVGU team will receive the patrol order en route."

The general did not respond, beyond the slight twitch of a muscle in his jaw-line.

"I want a cargo helo standing by, ready to fly at a moment's notice to pick up a cargo of up to fifteen tons."

"May I ask the range?" the general asked. "We might have a potential fuel problem."

"The bird will fly seventy-two percent fueled." Masago slapped the folder shut, slipped it into his briefcase. "Escort me to the helipad."

He followed the general through the waiting room, out a side door, and across a broad, circular expanse of asphalt, on which sat the sleek black Sikorsky Pave Hawk, rotors whapping. The eastern sky had grown brighter, turning from blue to pale yellow. The planet Venus stood twenty degrees above the horizon, a point of light dying in the brilliance of the approaching sunrise.

Masago strode over, not bothering to shield himself against the backwash of the rotors, his black hair whipped about. He leapt aboard and the sliding door closed. The rotors powered up, the dust rose in sheets, and a moment later the big bird took off, nosed toward the north, and accelerated into the dawn sky.

THE GENERAL WATCHED the Pave Hawk disappear into the sky, and then he turned back to the terminal with a shake of his head and a muttered curse. "Goddamned civilian bastard."

2

AFTER MANACING TO find each other in the upper canyons, they had hiked all

night long, guided by the light of a gibbous moon. Tom Broadbent paused to catch his breath. Sally came up behind him and rested her hand on his shoulder, leaning on him. The badlands stood in silent repose, thousands of small gray hills like heaps of ash. In front of them lay a depression in the sand, with a cracked bed of silt whitened by alkali crystals. The sky had brightened in the east and the sun was about to rise.

Sally gave the silt a kick, sending up a whitish plume that drifted off. "That's the fifth dry waterhole we've passed."

"Seems the rain last week didn't extend out this far."

She eased herself down on a rock and gave Tom a sideways look. "I do believe you've ruined that suit, mister."

"Valentino would weep," said Tom, mustering a smile. "Let's have a look at your cut."

She let him peel off her jeans, and he carefully removed the improvised bandage. "No sign of infection. Does it hurt?"

"I'm so tired I can't even feel it."

He discarded the bandage and took a clean strip of silk from his pocket, earlier ripped from the lining of his suit. He tied it gently in place, feeling a sudden, almost overwhelming rage against the man who had kidnapped her.

"I'm going up on that ridge to see if that bastard is still following us. You take a rest."

"Gladly."

Tom scrambled up the slope of a nearby hogback, keeping just below the ridgeline. He crawled the last ten feet to the top and peered over the edge. Under

other circumstances it would have given Tom a rush to see the magnificent country they had just come through, but this time it only made him weary. In the past five hours they had hiked at least twenty miles, trying to put as much distance as they could between themselves and their pursuer. He didn't believe the man could have tracked them through the night, but he wanted to make damn sure they'd really shaken him.

He settled in for a wait. The landscape behind him looked devoid of human life, but many low areas and canyon bottoms were hidden; it might be a while before the pursuer emerged into the open. Tom lay on his belly scanning the desert, looking for the moving speck of a man, seeing nothing. Five minutes passed, then ten. Tom felt a growing sense of relief. The sun rose, a cauldron of fire, throwing an orange light that nicked the highest peaks and ridges, creeping down their flanks like slow-motion gold. Eventually the light invaded the badlands themselves, and Tom could feel the heat of it on the back of his head. Still he saw no trace of their pursuer. The man was gone. He was probably still up in Daggett Canyon, Tom hoped, staggering around, dying of thirst, the turkey buzzards circling overhead.

With that pleasant thought in mind, Tom descended the ridge. He found Sally with her back against a rock, sleeping. He looked at her for a moment, her long blond hair tangled up, her shirt filthy and torn, her jeans and boots covered with dust. He bent down and gave her a light kiss.

She opened her eyes, like two green jewels suddenly unveiled. Tom felt his throat constrict. He had almost lost her.

"Any sign?" she asked.

Tom shook his head.

You sure?

Tom hesitated. "Not totally." He wondered why he had said that, why a doubt lingered in his own mind.

"We've got to keep moving," she said.

She groaned as Tom helped her to her feet. "I'm as stiff as Norman Bates's mother. I never should have sat down."

They set off hiking down the wash, Tom letting Sally set the pace. The sun climbed in the sky. Tom popped a pebble in his mouth and sucked on it, trying to ignore his growing thirst. They weren't likely to find water until they hit the river, another fifteen miles distant. The night had been cool, but now that the sun was coming up he could already feel the heat.

It was going to be a scorcher.

3

WEED MADDOX LAY on his belly behind a boulder, looking through the 4x scope

of his AR-15, watching Broadbent bend over and kiss his wife. His nose still ached from the kick she'd given him, his cheek was inflamed by her vicious scratch, his legs felt like rubber, and he was getting thirstier by the minute. The sons of bitches had been hiking at an almost superhuman pace, never stopping to rest. He wondered how they managed it. If it hadn't been for the rising of the moon and his flashlight he would surely have lost them. But this was good tracking country, and he had the advantage of knowing where they were headed-to the river. Where else would they go? Every source of water they'd passed had been dry as a bone.

He shifted, his foot having gone to sleep, and watched them set off down the canyon. From where he was he could probably drop Broadbent, but the shot was dicey and the bitch might escape. Now that day had come, he'd be able to cut them off with a quick burst of speed and an oblique approach. He had plenty of country to set up an ambush.

The key here was not to betray his presence. If they believed he was still following, they would be a lot harder to surprise.

With the scope of his rifle he scanned the landscape ahead, being careful to keep the lens out of direct sunlight; nothing would give him away quicker than a flash of light off ground glass. He knew the high mesa country well, both from his own exploration and from having spent hours pouring over the U.S.G.S. maps that Corvus had supplied him. He wished to hell he had one of those maps now. To the southwest he recognized the great ridge known as Navajo Rim, rising eight hundred feet above the surrounding desert. Between here and there, he recalled, lay a broken country called the Echo Badlands, riddled with deep

canyons and strange rock formations, cut by the great crack in the earth known as TyrannosaurCanyon. Perhaps fifteen miles ahead, Weed could just barely see, like a line of haze on the horizon, the termination of the Mesa of the Ancients. Cut into its flanks were a number of canyons, of which JoaquinCanyon was the biggest. That led to the Maze, where he had killed the dinosaur prospector, and from there it was a straight shot to the river.

That was the way they were headed.

It seemed like a century ago when he had capped that prospector-it was hard to believe it had only been, what, eight days? A lot had gotten screwed up since

then.

He had the journal and was close to unscrewing up the rest of it. They'd be heading for the one trail across Navajo Rim, which meant they'd be hiking southwest through the badlands, crossing near the head of TyrannosaurCanyon. That formed a kind of natural choke point where several tributary canyons came together, and they'd have to pass through it.

He could make a loop southward, skirt the base of Navajo Rim, and come back up north to ambush them at the head of that valley. He would have to move fast, but in less than an hour it would be all over.

He crept down from his vantage point, making sure he wasn't seen, and set off at a fast pace southward through the badlands toward the sandstone wall of Navajo Rim.

This time tomorrow he'd be boarding that early flight to New York.

4

AS MELODIE COOKSHANK walked east on Seventy-ninth Street, the museum loomed up before her, its upper-story windows flashing in the early morning light. Sleep had been impossible and she had spent most of the night walking up and down a busy stretch of Broadway, unable to keep her mind from racing. She had stopped for a burger at an all-night eatery somewhere near Times Square, and again for tea in a diner near LincolnCenter. It had been a long night.

She turned into the service drive that led down to the employee entrance, and checked her watch. Quarter to eight. She had pulled plenty of all-nighters writing her dissertation, and she was used to it, but this time it seemed different. Her mind was unusually crisp and clear-more than lucid. She rang the buzzer at the night entrance and slotted her museum pass through the card-reader.

She walked through the central rotunda and passed through a succession of grand exhibition halls. It always thrilled her to walk through the empty museum in the early morning, before anyone had arrived, the cases dark and silent, the only sound the echoing of her heels on the marble floors.

She took her usual shortcut through the Education Department, swiped her card to call the elevator, waited while it rumbled its way to her, and used the key a second time to direct it to the basement.

The doors slid open and she stepped into a basement corridor. It was cool and silent in the bowels of the museum, as unchanging as a cave, and it always gave her the creeps. The air was dead and always seemed to carry a faint odor of old meat.

She quickened her step toward the Mineralogy lab, passing door after door of fossil storage: Triassic Dinosaurs, Jurassic Dinosaurs, Cretaceous, Oligocene Mammals, Eocene Mammals-it was like a walk through evolution. Another turn and she was in the laboratory hall, gleaming stainless-steel doors leading to

various laboratories-mammalogy, herpetology, entomology. She reached the door marked MINERALOGY, inserted her key, pushed open the door, and felt inside the wall for the light switch. The fluorescent lights stuttered on.

She stopped. Through the shelves of specimens she could see Corvus was already in-asleep over the stereozoom, his attache case at his side. What was he doing here? But the answer came as soon as she had asked the question: he had come early to check on her work himself-on a Sunday morning, no less.

She took a tentative step inside, cleared her throat. He did not stir.

"Dr. Corvus?" She stepped forward more confidently. The curator had fallen asleep on the desk, head laid on his crooked arm. She tiptoed closer. He had been looking at a specimen under the stereozoom-a trilobite.

"Dr. Corvus?" She walked over to the table. Still no response. At this, Melodic felt a faint alarm. Could he have had a heart attack? Unlikely: he was way too young. "Dr. Corvus?" she repeated, not managing to get her voice above a whisper. She moved around to the other side of the table and leaned over to look into his face. She jerked back with an involuntary gasp, her hand over her mouth.

The curator's eyes were wide open, staring, and filmed over.

Corvus had had a heart attack. She stumbled back another step. She knew she should reach out and see if there was still a pulse in his wrist, do something, give mouth-to-mouth-but the idea of touching him was repellent. Those eyes . . . there was no question he was dead. She took a second step back, reached out, picked up the museum phone-then paused.

Something wasn't right. She stared at the dead curator, slumped over the microscope, head on his crooked arm as if he had laid it down in weariness and gone to sleep. She could feel the wrongness of the scene crawling up her spine. And then it came to her: Corvus was looking at a trilobite.

She picked up the fossil and examined it. An ordinary trilobite from the Cenozoic, of the kind you could buy for a few bucks at any rock shop. The museum had thousands of them. Corvus, who was sitting on the most spectacular paleontological discovery of the century, had chosen that very moment to examine a common trilobite?

No way.

A feeling of dread invaded her gut. She walked over to her specimen locker, spun out her combination on the lock, jerked it open.

The CDs and specimens that she had locked up there at midnight were gone.

She looked around, spied Corvus's attache case. She slipped it away from his dangling hand, laid it on the table, unlatched it, rifled the contents.

Nothing.

All record of the dinosaur was gone. All her specimens, her CDs, vanished. Like they had never existed. And then she remembered another small fact: the lights had been off when she entered the lab. If Corvus had fallen asleep over his work, who turned off the lights?

This was no heart attack.

It felt like a piece of dry ice had just formed in her stomach. Whoever had killed Corvus might come after her too. She had to handle this situation very, very carefully.

She picked up the museum phone and dialed security. A lazy voice answered.

"This is Dr. Crookshank calling from the Mineralogy lab. I've just arrived. Dr. Iain Corvus is here in the lab and he's dead."

After a moment, in answer to the inevitable question, she said, with great deliberation: "Heart attack, by the looks of it."

5

LIEUTENANT WILIER STOOD in the doorway of the Disputation Chamber and watched the sun rise over the buttes above the river. The sound of chanting drifted down from the church behind him, rising and falling in the desert air.

He dropped the butt of his second-to-last cigarette, stomped it out, hawked up a gobbet of phlegm, and shot it to one side. Ford hadn't returned and there'd been no sign of Broadbent. Hernandez was down at the cruiser, making one last call. Santa Fe already had a chopper standing by at the police heliport, flown up from Albuquerque and ready to go-and still the airspace was closed with no word on when it would reopen.

He saw Hernandez duck out of the cruiser, heard the door slam. A few minutes later the deputy came toiling up the trail. He caught Willer's eye, shook his head. "No go."

"Any word on Broadbent or the vehicle?"

"None. Seem to have vanished into thin air."

Wilier swore. "We're doing nothing here. Let's start searching the Forest Service roads off 84."

"Yeah."

Wilier took a last glance up at the church. What a waste of time. When Ford got back, he'd haul that so-called monk downtown by the short hairs and find out just what the hell he'd been doing out there in the high mesas. And when Broad-bent surfaced, well, he'd get a kick out of seeing how that millionaire vet liked sharing a basement cell with a crackhead and eating corn dogs for dinner.

Wilier headed down the trail, his nightstick and cuffs jangling, Hernandez following. They'd grab some breakfast burritos and a couple of gallons of coffee at

Bode's. And a fresh carton of Marlboros. He hated the feeling of being down to his last smoke.

He seized the door handle of the cruiser and was about to jerk it open when he became aware of a distant throbbing in the air. He looked up and saw a black dot materialize in the dawn sky.

"Hey," said Hernandez, squinting, "isn't that a chopper?"

"It sure as hell is."

"Not five minutes ago they told me it was still on the tarmac."

"Idiots."

Wilier slid out his last butt and lit it up-Freddie the pilot always carried a couple of packs.

"Now we can get this show on the road."

He watched the helicopter approach, his feeling of frustration evaporating. They'd crash the canyonlands party of those bastards. There was a lot of country out there, but Wilier felt pretty sure the action was up in the Maze, and that's where he'd direct the chopper first.

The black speck was beginning to resolve into something larger, and Wilier stared with growing puzzlement. This was no police chopper, at least none that he'd ever seen. It was black and a lot bigger, with two pods hanging off either side like pontoons. With a sickening lurch it suddenly occurred to Wilier what this was really about. The closing of the airspace, the black helicopter. He turned to Hernandez.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"FBI."

"Exactly."

Wilier swore softly. It was just like the feds to say nothing, let local law enforcement stumble along like blind idiots and then arrive just in time for the bust and the press conference.

The chopper banked slightly as it approached, slowed, and hovered for a landing in the parking lot. It leaned back as it settled down, the backwash from its rotors lashing up a blast of stinging dust. With the rotors still whapping, the side slid open, and a man in desert fatigues, holding an M4 carbine and sporting a backpack, hopped out.

"What the hell is this?" Wilier said.

Nine more soldiers hopped down, several loaded with packs of electronic and communications gear. Last to jump was a tall man, thin, with black hair and a bony face, wearing a tracksuit. Eight of the men disappeared up the trail toward

the church, jogging single file, while the other two stayed with the man in the tracksuit.

Wilier sucked on the last of his butt, chucked it on the ground, exhaled, and waited. These weren't even feds-or at least any feds he knew.

The man in the tracksuit strode over, stopped in front of him. "May I ask you to identify yourself, Officer?" he said in the neutral voice of authority.

Wilier let a beat pass. "Lieutenant Wilier, Santa Fe Police. And this is Sergeant Hernandez." He didn't move.

"May I ask you to please step away from the cruiser?"

Again Wilier waited. Then he said, "If you've got a shield, mister, now's the time to show it."

The man's eyes nickered, barely, toward one of the soldiers. The soldier moved forward-a brawny kid in a crew cut, face painted, all puffed up with a sense of duty. Wilier had seen the type before in the Army and he didn't like it.

"Sir, please step away from the vehicle," the soldier said.

"Who the hell are you to tell me that?" He wasn't going to stand for this shit, at least not until he saw some gold. "I'm a detective lieutenant homicide in the Santa Fe Police Department and I'm here on official business, with a warrant, pursuing a fugitive. Who the hell gave you jurisdiction here?"

The man in the tracksuit spoke calmly. "I am Mr. Masago with the National Security Agency of the Government of the United States of America. This area has been declared a special operations zone, closed under a state of military emergency. These men are part of a combined Delta Force commando team here on a mission involving national security. Now, final warning: step away from the vehicle."

"Until I see-"

The next thing Wilier knew, he was on the ground, doubled up, desperately trying to suck some air into his lungs, while the soldier deftly relieved him of his service weapon. Finally, with a great gasp, he got some air in, drinking it greedily. He rolled over, managed to get up on his hands and knees, coughed and spat, trying to keep from puking, the muscles in his stomach jumping and cramping like he'd swallowed a jackrabbit. He rode it out, got to his feet, and straightened himself up.

Hernandez was still standing there, dumbfounded. They'd pulled his weapon too.

Wilier watched in disbelief as one of the soldiers went into his cruiser-his cruiser-with a screwdriver. He emerged a moment later with the radio in one hand, wires dangling. In the other he had the cruiser's keys.

"Surrender your portable radio, Officer," said the man in the tracksuit.

Wilier sucked in another lungful of air, unsnapped the keeper, handed over the radio.

"Surrender your nightstick, cuffs, pepper spray, and all other weapons and communication devices. As well as any other keys to the vehicle."

Wilier obeyed. He could see Hernandez being put through the same drill.

"Now we will walk up to the church. You and Officer Hernandez will go first."

Wilier and Hernandez walked up the trail toward the church. As they passed the Disputation Chamber, Wilier noticed the monastery's laptop lying in the dirt outside the door, smashed to pieces; lying near it was a broken satellite dish, trailing wires. Wilier got a glimpse of soldiers busy inside, setting up racks of electronics. One was on the roof erecting a much larger dish.

They went into the church. The singing had stopped and all was silent. The monks were huddled at one end in a group, guarded by two of the commandos. One of the soldiers gestured for Wilier and Hernandez to join them.

The man in the tracksuit stepped forward in front of the silent group of monks. "I am Mr. Masago from the National Security Agency of the Government of the United States of America. We are conducting a special operation in this area. For your own safety, you will be required to remain here, in this room, with no communication to the outside world, until it is over. Two soldiers will remain here to serve your needs. The operation will take between twelve and twenty-four hours. All the facilities you need are here: bathroom, water, a small kitchenette with food in the refrigerator. I apologize for the inconvenience."

He nodded at Wilier, pointed to a side room. Wilier followed him in. The man shut the door and turned, speaking quietly, "And now, Lieutenant Detective, I'd like to hear all about why you're here and who this fugitive is."

6

THE SUN HAD risen hours ago and the hidden valley had turned into a dead zone, an inferno of boulders reradiating the pounding heat of the sun. Ford hiked along the dry wash at the bottom, musing that Devil's Graveyard seemed an even more appropriate name during the day than it did the previous twilight.

Ford sat down on a rock, unshouldered his canteen, and took a small sip. It was only with considerable effort that he stopped himself from drinking more. He screwed the top back on and hefted the canteen, estimating that about a liter remained. On a flat rock at his feet he carefully spread out his map, which was already beginning to come apart at the folds, and took out a pencil stub. He gave the tip a quick touch-up with his penknife and marked off another quadrangle futilely searched.

His feelings of being close to discovering the fossil had started to fade in the harsh reality of the landscape he had been tramping around in since dawn. Three big canyons and many smaller ones came together in an absolute chaos of stone-a dead land gutted by erosion, ripped by flash floods, scarred by avalanches. It was as if God had used it as a dumping ground of Creation, a trash heap of all the leftover sand and stone he couldn't find a use for elsewhere.

On top of that, Ford had seen no sign of any fossils at all-not even bits and pieces of petrified wood, so common elsewhere in the high mesas. It was a lifeless landscape in every sense of the word.

He shook the canteen again, thought what the hell, took another sip, checked his watch. Ten-thirty. He had searched about half the valley. He still had the other half left to explore, along with any number of side canyons and dead-end ravines-at least another day's work. But he wouldn't be able to finish unless he

found water; and it was pretty clear there was no water in this infernal place. If he didn't want to die of thirst, he would have to set off for the river absolutely no later than dawn the next day.

He folded up his map, slung the canteen over his shoulder, and took a quick bearing with his compass, using as a landmark a sandstone needle that had split off from the canyon face and was leaning at a precarious angle. He trudged across the sandy flat, crossing yet another dry watering hole, his sandals kicking up white alkali dust. He got back into the rhythm of his stride and quickened his pace, passing the needle and turning up a fingerlike wash behind it. He had eaten very little that morning-a few tablespoons of rolled oats boiled in a tin cup- and his stomach had that hollow feeling, by now familiar to him, of a hunger beyond mere hungriness. His legs ached, his feet were blistered, his eyes were red from the dust. On a certain level, Ford welcomed these mortifications of the flesh, the denial of bodily comfort. Penitence itself was comforting. On the other hand, there was a point where discomfort, pushed too far, became itself an indulgence. Right now, he was well into the danger zone, a place where there was no room for accident or error. A broken leg, even a sprained ankle, would be a death sentence: with so little water he would die before any rescue effort could find him. But this was nothing new; he had taken far worse risks in his life.

He hiked on, filled with conflicted feelings. The wash turned in a tight curve against a wall of sandstone, forming an undercut some fifteen feet high, creating a half-moon of shade. Ford rested for a moment. A single juniper tree stood nearby, stock-still as if stunned by the heat. He took a couple of deep breaths, fighting the impulse to drink again. Up the canyon he could see where part of the cliff face had collapsed into a gigantic rockslide, a five-hundred-foot pile of car-sized boulders.

In that pile of boulder's he saw something. The smooth face of one of the boulders was turned at just the right angle to receive the raking light of the sun. And there, outlined with perfect clarity, was an exquisite set of dinosaur footprints-a large, three-toed dinosaur with massive claws, which had evidently crossed what had once been an ancient mud flat. Ford slung his canteen back over his shoulder and walked to the base of the slide, feeling an electric surge of energy, all his weariness evaporating. He was on the right trail, literally and figuratively. The T. Rex was here, somewhere in this maze of rocks-and God only knew, these might be its very footprints.

That was when Ford heard the noise, just audible against the vast silence of the desert around him. He paused, looking up, but only part of the sky was visible among the towering rocks. It grew louder and Ford concluded it was the faint buzz of a small plane. The sound faded away before he could pinpoint it in the

blue sky above. He shrugged and climbed up the heap of fallen rocks to examine the footprints more closely. The rock had cleaved along the bedding plane, exposing a ripple-marked surface of mudstone, almost black in color, compared to the brick-red of the layers above and below. He followed it with his eye and traced its continuation as a dark stripe running through the surrounding formations, about four inches in thickness. If these were T. Rex footprints-and they certainly looked like them-that dark layer was like a marker-indicating the layer around which the T. Rex would probably be found.

He climbed down and continued working his way up the small canyon, but after a few more turns it boxed up into cliffs and he was forced to turn back. At that point he heard the sound of the small plane again, louder this time. He looked up, squinting against the glare of the hot sky, and saw a flash of sunlight off a small aircraft passing almost directly overhead. He shaded his eyes, but it disappeared in the harsh glare. He pulled out his binoculars and searched the sky, finally locating it.

Ford stared in surprise. It was a small, windowless white aircraft, about twenty five feet long, with a bulbous nose and a rear-mounted engine. He recognized it immediately as an MQ-1A Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.

He tracked it with his binoculars, wondering what the heck the CIA or the Pentagon would be doing flying a highly classified piece of aviation over what was essentially public land. This Predator, Ford knew, was the operational version of something that had only been in the planning stages when Ford was with the CIA; it was a drone using ICCG technology, an Independent Computer-Controlled Guidance system, which allowed the aircraft to operate independently when temporarily out of contact with its remote human pilot. This greatly diminished the personnel requirement necessary to fly the drone, allowing it to be operated by a three-man ground team with a portable ground station instead of the usual thirty-foot trailer and team of twenty. Ford noted that this Predator carried a pair of Hellfire C laser-guided missiles.

He watched it pass by, flying west. Then, perhaps five kilometers from his position, it banked in a lazy turn and came back around toward him. It was losing altitude and gaining speed-fast. What in the world was it doing? He continued watching it through the binoculars, spellbound. It appeared to be engaged in a simulated attack.

There was a faint puff and the Predator seemed to take a small leap upward- it had just launched one of its missiles. This was unbelievable: who or what could possibly be the target? A split second later, with a profound shock, Ford realized who the target was:

Himself.

7

MADDUX CLIMBED OVER the last ridge and paused to survey the canyon below. Here, two canyons joined to become one larger canyon, creating a rock amphitheater with a smooth floor of yellow sand. He was breathing hard, having hiked like a bat out of hell to reach this junction, and he was beginning to feel lightheaded-whether from the heat or thirst he couldn't say. He mopped the sweat from his brow and neck, dabbing carefully at the swollen areas where the bitch had kicked and scratched him. The grazing bullet wound on his thigh throbbed painfully, and the sun was burning the hell out of his bare back. But his biggest worry was water: it had to be a hundred degrees and the sun was now almost directly overhead. Everything shimmered in the heat. The ache of his thirst was growing by the minute.

His eyes traced the deep cleft of the central canyon. This was the canyon the Broadbents would be coming down.

He swallowed, his mouth feeling like it was filled with old paste. He should have thrown a canteen into his car before he took off after them-but it was too late now, and besides, he knew Broadbent and the bitch had to be suffering from thirst at least as much as he was.

Maddox cast his eyes around for a good position from which to kill them. The many boulders that had rolled down from the canyon rims gave him plenty of options. His eye roamed the talus slopes, picking out a spot where a couple of giant stones had jammed up-directly opposite the canyon his quarry would walk out of. It was an ideal place for an ambush, even better than the one from which he'd killed Weathers. But he needed an easy shot: he had two kills to make instead of one and Broadbent was armed. On top of that, he didn't feel too good.

He wasn't going to screw around anymore; no more talk, no bullshit, just kill the bastards and get out of this hellhole.

He picked his way down the ridge, slipping and sliding as he went, grabbing on to scrub and sagebrush for balance. At one point a coontail rattlesnake, hiding in the shade of a rock, jerked into an S-coil and buzzed. Maddox gave it a wide berth; it was the fifth one he'd seen that morning. He came to the bottom of the wash, hiked across, and scrambled up the talus slope, all the while being careful not to leave tracks. He paused at the cluster of boulders and looked around for more rattlers, seeing none. It was in the direct sun and hotter than hell, although it provided an ideal view of the opposite side. He unslung his .223 AR-15 and sat down Indian style, the gun laid across his knees. He gave the weapon a quick check, and then, satisfied with its operability, moved into shooting position. Two boulders leaned together, forming a V, which made a perfect firing notch. He rested the barrel in it, crouched, and sighted through the 4x scope, panning the rifle back and forth. A better field of fire could not be asked for: he was looking straight down on the canyon they would exit from, two sheer walls of sandstone with nothing but a flat bed of sand in between. There was no cover, no bushes, no place to run except back up the canyon. The scope's built-in digital range finder told him his targets would be 415 yards away when they came around the last bend; he would let them come on for at least another two hundred yards before firing. It would be clean shooting without a breath of wind.

Despite his aches and pains, Maddox smiled as he previsualized the kill, the rounds knocking the bastards back, their blood spraying on the sand behind them. The air smelled of dust and heated rocks, and he felt a momentary dizziness. Jesus Christ. He closed his eyes and repeated his mantra, trying to bring some clarity and focus into his mind, but he was too thirsty to concentrate. He opened his eyes, looked down the canyon again. They would be at least another ten minutes. He reached in his pocket and removed the notebook; greasy, dogeared, no more than six inches by four. He was amazed at how insignificant it looked. He flipped through the pages. It was numbers, some kind of code-and there, on the last page, two big exclamation points. Whatever it meant, it wasn't his concern; Corvus would know what to do with it. He shoved it back into his pocket, shifted position, and wiped his sweating neck with his handkerchief. Despite his exhaustion, he could feel the buildup of adrenaline, the clean edge of awareness that came before a kill. The colors seemed brighter, the air clearer, sounds most distinct. This was good. This would see him through the next ten

minutes.

He gave his rifle a final check, more as a way of keeping himself occupied. The weapon had lightened him by almost two bills but he'd gotten good use out of it. He stroked the barrel and pulled his hand back: it was burning hot. Christ Almighty.

He reminded himself that he wasn't doing this job for money, like some hired hit man. He was doing it for higher motives. Corvus had sprung him from prison; and he had the power to put him back in. That created a true sense of duty in Maddox.

But the highest motive of all was his own survival. If he didn't kill both of them, no one, not even Corvus, could save him.

8

EVERY STEP Tom could feel the intense heat of the sand coming through the soles of his Italian leather shoes. His blisters had long since broken and the raw spots rubbed with each step. But as his thirst grew, the pain seemed to lessen. They'd passed several tinajas, potholes in the rock that normally held water. All had been dry.

He paused in a sliver of shade against an overhanging rock. "Take five?"

"God yes."

They sat down, trying to maneuver as much into the shade as possible. Tom took Sally's hand. "How are you doing?"

She shook her head, shivering her long blond hair. "I'm okay, Tom. And you?"

"Surviving."

She fingered the silk pants of his "Mr. Kim" suit and smiled wanly. "Did it work?"

"I should never have left you alone."

"Tom, stop blaming yourself."

"Do you have any idea of who that man is who kidnapped you?"

"He bragged to me all about it. He's a hired gun, working for a curator at a museum back east. He may not be educated, but he sure isn't stupid." She leaned back, her eyes closed.

"So he killed "Weathers to get the notebook and then came after you. Christ, I never should have gone to Tucson, I'm sorry-"

Sally laid a hand on his shoulder. "Let's save the apologies for when we're out of here." She paused and asked, "You think we really lost him?"

Tom didn't answer.

"You're still worrying about him, aren't you?"

He nodded, gazing down the canyon. "I don't like the way he just disappeared. It's just like what happened back at the ghost town."

"It's what you said. He got lost following us."

"He knows if he doesn't kill us, he's finished. That's a pretty good incentive."

Sally nodded slowly. "He's not the type to give up." She laid her head back against the rock and closed her eyes.

"I'm going higher for another look back."

Tom scrambled up a scree slope to a bench. But there was nothing behind them, just an empty wilderness of stone. They were still at least twenty miles from the river, but he had only a vague notion of where they actually were. He cursed under his breath, wishing he had a map; he had never been this deep into the high mesa country before and he had no idea of what lay between them and the river.

He climbed back down and stood over Sally for a moment, looking at her, before touching her. She opened her eyes.

"We'd better keep going."

She groaned while he helped her to her feet. They were just about to set off when a deep rumble, not unlike thunder, rolled across the badlands, echoing strangely through the canyons.

Tom looked up. "Funny. There's not a cloud in the sky."

9

FORD LAY HUDDLED in the lee of the cliff, facedown, arms wrapped around his head, as the deafening roar of the missile strike rolled away like a hundred thunderbolts reverberating down the canyons. A rain of sand and gravel continued as the echoes died away. He waited until all was silent, and then raised his head.

He was inside a dull orange cloud. He coughed, covered his mouth with the hem of his robe, and tried to breathe, still half-stunned from the blast wave. The roar had been so powerful that it almost seemed as if the sound itself could have killed him. And yet here he was, alive and unhurt. He could hardly believe it.

He stood up, steadying himself against the canyon wall, his head pounding and his ears ringing. He had taken refuge in the scooped-out undercut in the canyon wall, a lucky decision. Great shattered chunks of stone littered the ground all around him, but the overhang had protected him well. Slowly the dust began settling and the orange fog turned into a haze. He noticed a peculiar smell, a choking mixture of pulverized rock and cordite. The dust, trapped between the walls of the canyon, drifted slowly, taking a long time to dissipate.

The dust. . . The dust was now his protection. It would hide him from the penetrating eyes of the video cameras onboard the Predator drone, which was no doubt still circling overhead doing damage assessment.

He retreated back under the overhang as the dust finally drifted off, pushed away by an imperceptible movement of air. He crouched, remaining motionless, so thickly coated with dust himself that he figured he probably looked like just another rock. He could still hear the drone making a whispery buzz from somewhere in the sky. Ten minutes passed before the sound faded away.

Ford staggered to his feet, coughing up mud and spitting it out, slapping the

dust off his robes, shaking it out of his hair, and wiping his face. He was only now beginning to grasp the inexplicability of what had just happened: a Predator drone had deliberately fired a missile at him. Why?

It had to be a mistake, a test gone awry. But even as the thought came into his mind, he discounted it. For one thing, he knew that a classified drone would never be tested over public land, especially not in New Mexico, which already had WhiteSandsMissileRange, the nation's largest proving ground. Nor could the Predator have somehow escaped from WSMR and ended up there-it didn't have the range. The turn, dive, and fire maneuver the drone had executed was beyond ICCG capability: a remote human pilot had been behind that maneuver- a pilot who could see who he was and what he was doing.

Could they be hunting someone else? Was it a case of mistaken identity? Ford supposed it was possible, but that would be a gross violation of the first rule of engagement: secure visual identification of the target. How could he, in his monk's robes and sandals, be taken for someone else? Was the CIA after him specifically for something he knew or had done? But it was inconceivable the CIA would murder one of its own-it was illegal, of course, but more to the point it was utterly contrary to CIA culture. Even if they did want to kill him, they wouldn't send a forty-million-dollar classified drone after him when it would be much simpler to assassinate him in his own bed in his cell in the unlocked monastery, and dress it up to look like the usual heart attack.

Something else was going on here, something truly strange.

Ford slipped off his robe, shook the rest of the dust out of it, and put it back on. He scoured the sky with his binoculars, but the drone had disappeared. He next turned his attention to the butte the missile had struck. He could see the fresh orange scar in the darker sandstone, a gouged-out hole in the rock still dribbling plumes of sand and dust. If he hadn't thrown himself under that undercut in the canyon wall, he would surely have been killed.

Ford began walking down the canyon, his ears still ringing. What had just happened was still inconceivable, but he began to feel that the attack had something to do with the dinosaur fossil. He couldn't exactly say why; it was more a hunch than a deduction. But nothing else made sense. How did that old Sher-lockian saw go? When all else has been discarded, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

For some unfathomable reason, Ford mused, a government agency was so desperate to get their hands on that dinosaur fossil and leave no witnesses that they were willing to kill a U.S. citizen to do it. But that raised the additional question:

how did they know he was out hunting the dinosaur? Only Tom Broadbent knew that.

During his CIA years, Ford had sometimes had dealings with various classified sub-agencies, special task forces, and "black detachments." The latter were small, highly classified teams of specialists formed for specific investigative or research purposes, disbanded as soon as the particular problem had been solved. In CIA lingo they called them Black Dets. The Black Dets were supposed to be under the control of the NSA, the DIA, or the Pentagon, but in actuality they didn't play by anybody's rules. Everything about the Black Dets was classified: purpose, budgets, personnel, their very existence. Some of the Black Dets were so highly classified that top CIA brass couldn't get clearance to interface with them. He recalled those few he had dealt with: they all had important sounding acronyms, the TEMP-WG (Thermonuclear Electromagnetic Pulse Working Group; ANDD (Allied Nations Disinformation Detachment); and BDGZD (Bioweapons Defense Ground Zero Detachment).

Ford recalled how much he and his colleagues at the CIA despised the Black Dets: rogue agencies, accountable to no one, run by cowboy types who felt the end justified the means-whatever means and whatever end.

This situation fairly reeked of Black Det.