Tyrannosaur Canyon

PART SIX

THE TAIL OF THE DEVIL

The end came on a normal afternoon in June. Heat lay over the forest like a blanket, the leaves hung limp, and thunderheads piled up in the west.

She moved through the forest, hunting.

She did not notice, through the trees, the sudden brightness in the south. The light bloomed silently, a yellow glow rising into the pale blue sky.

The forest remained silent, watchful.

Six minutes later the ground shook violently, and she crouched to maintain her balance. In less than thirty seconds the tremor subsided, and she resumed the hunt.

Eight minutes later the ground shook again, this time rolling and pitching as if in waves. That was when she noticed the unusual yellow glow that continued to rise along the southern horizon, casting a second set of shadows among the great trunks of the monkey-puzzle trees. The forest brightened and she felt a source of radiant heat on her flanks, coming from the south. She paused in her hunt, watchful but not yet uneasy.

At twelve minutes she heard a rushing sound, like a great wind approaching. It grew to a roar and suddenly the trees bent double, the forest resounding with sharp cracking and exploding of tree trunks. Something that was neither wind nor sound nor pressure, but a combination of all three, pressed over her with immense force, throwing her to the ground, where she was lashed by flying vegetation, sticks, branches, and tree trunks.

She lay there, dazed and in pain, before her instincts came rushing in, telling her to rise, rise and fight. She rolled, righted herself, and crouched, facing the tempest, enraged, snapping and roaring at the hurricane of vegetation that assaulted her.

The storm slowly abated, leaving the forest a wreck. And into the calm a new sound began to grow, a mysterious humming, almost a singing. A bright streak flashed down from the sky, and another, and another, exploding among the wrecked landscape, until it became a rain of fire. The confused and terrified calls and trumpetings of animals arose on all sides like a chorus of fear. Packs of small animals raced this way and that through the wreckage as the fire rain grew in intensity.

A herd of heedless coelophysis ran before her and she swung her great head into them as they passed, tearing and snapping, leaving the ground strewn with twitching, wriggling limbs, bodies, and tails. She consumed the pieces at her leisure, occasionally snapping in annoyance at the fire rain, which soon subsided into a slow drift of grit from the sky. She finished eating and rested, her mind blank. She did not see that the sun had disappeared and that the sky was changing color from yellow to orange and finally to bloodred, deepening with each passing moment, radiating heat from everywhere and nowhere at once. The air itself grew hotter until it passed any heat she had known before.

The heat goaded her into action, as did the pain of the searing wounds on her back. She rose, moved to the cypress swamp and her habitual wallow, crouched down and rolled, coating herself with cool, black mud.

Gradually it became dark. Her mind relaxed. All was well.

1

MELODIE CROOKSHANK FINISHED organizing the data on her computer screen in HTML format, cropping images, writing captions, and doing a few final edits on the short article she had written in a burst of furious activity. She was running on empty-sixty hours with no sleep-but she still felt buoyed up. This was going to be one of the most significant papers in the history of vertebrate paleontology and it was going to cause an uproar. There would be doubters, naysayers, and self-appointed debunkers, and there might even be accusations of fraud-but the data was good. It would hold up. And the images were impeccable. What's more, she still had one raw slice of the specimen that she intended to offer to either the Smithsonian or Harvard for their paleontologists to perform an independent examination.

The pandemonium would begin as soon as she transmitted the article to the Journal of VP online. All it would take was one reader, and then everyone would be reading it, and her world would never be the same.

She was done-or almost done. Her finger was poised over the ENTER button, ready to e-mail the article.

A knock came at the door and she jumped, turned. The chair was still up against the knob. She looked at the clock: five.

"Who is it?"

"Maintenance."

She sighed and got up from the table, walked over to the door, and unhooked the chair. She was about to open the door when she paused.

"Maintenance?"

"What I said."

"Frankie?"

"Who else?"

She unlocked the door, noting with relief the ninety-eight-pound Frankie she knew so well, a sack of unshaven bones stinking of bad cigars and worse whiskey. He shuffled in and she locked the door behind him. He began going around the lab, emptying wastebaskets into a huge plastic bag, whistling tunelessly. He ducked under her desk, grabbed the wastebasket overflowing with soda cans and Mars bar wrappings, bumped his head as he pulled it out, scattering some of the empty Dr Pepper cans on the desktop, splattering the stereozoom scope.

"Sorry about that."

"No problem." She waited impatiently for him to finish. He emptied the basket, gave the desk a quick wipe with his sleeve, jostling the fifty-thousand-dollar microscope in the process. Melodic wondered briefly how it was that some human beings could invent the calculus while others couldn't even empty trash. She squashed that thought completely. It was unkind and she would never allow herself to become like the arrogant scientists she had dealt with over the past few years. She would always be kind to lowly technicians, incompetent maintenance men, and graduate students.

"Thank you, Frankie."

"See you." Frankie left, slapping the bag on the door as he went out, and silence reigned again.

With a sigh Melodic examined the stereozoom. Little droplets of Dr Pepper had sprayed the side of the scope and she noted that some had landed on the wet slide.

She glanced through the oculars to make sure no damage had taken place. There was precious little of the specimen left and every bit counted, particularly the six or seven particles she had managed to free from the matrix with such effort.

The slide was fine. The Dr Pepper would make no difference-a few sugar molecules could hardly damage a particle that had survived a sixty-five-million-year burial and a 12 percent hydrofluoric acid bath.

Suddenly she paused. If her eyes weren't playing tricks on her, one of the crosspieces on the arm of a particle had suddenly moved.

She waited, staring through the oculars at the magnified particles, a crawling sensation at the nape of her neck As she watched, another arm of a particle moved, just like a little machine, clicking from one position to the next. As it did so the particle propelled itself forward. She watched, fascinated and alarmed, as the others began to move in the same clicking fashion. All the particles were beginning to move, the arms working like tiny propellers.

The particles were still alive.

It must have been the addition of sugar to the solution. Melodic reached under her desk and pulled out the last Dr Pepper. She opened it and with a mi-cropipette drew out a small amount, which she deposited at one end of the wet slide, forming a sugar gradient.

The particles became more active, the little arms rotating in a way that drove them up the gradient, toward the higher concentration of sugar.

Melodic felt the prickle of apprehension grow. She hadn't even considered that they might still be infectious. And if they were alive, they were certainly infectious-at least to a dinosaur.

In the herpetology lab down the hall, one of the curators had been breeding parthenogenetic lizards as part of a long-running experiment. The lab contained an incubator of in vitro cell cultures. A cell culture would make an excellent testing bed for whether the particle would infect a modern-day lizard.

She exited the lab. The hall was empty-after five o'clock on a Sunday she would be most unlikely to meet anyone. The herp lab was locked but her card key worked, and it was a matter of five minutes to obtain a petri dish full of growing lizard cells. She brought it back to her lab, loosened some cells with a squirt of saline solution, and transferred them onto the slide.

Then she put her eyes to the oculars.

The Venus particles stopped in their move up the sugar gradient. They turned in unison, almost like a pack of wolves on a scent, and headed for the cells. Melodic felt a sudden constriction in her throat. In a moment they reached the group of cells, clustering around them, attaching themselves to the cell membranes by their long appendages; then, with a swift cutting motion, each one entered a cell.

Melodic, riveted, watched to see what would happen next.

2

FORD MANHANDLED THE man in the track suit back into an angle of the rock,

where he was covered from the back and sides. The three soldiers had trained their weapons on Ford and the man he was holding. The sergeant made a motion with his hand and the other two began moving to either side.

"Stop moving, all of you, and lower your weapons."

The leader motioned them to halt.

"Like I said, this man's going to tell all of us what's going on or I'm going to kill him. Understand? You wouldn't want to report back to base with your handler in a body bag, would you?"

"You'll be in a body bag next to his," said Hitt quietly.

"I'm doing this for you, Sergeant."

"Us?"

"You too need to know what's really going on."

Silence.

Ford pressed the gun to Masago's head. "Talk."

"Release him or I'll open fire," Hitt said quietly. "One . . ."

"Wait," said Tom. "We're American citizens. We've done nothing wrong. Is this why you went into the military-to kill American civilians?"

There was just the faintest of hesitations. Then Hitt said, "Two . . ."

"Listen to me," Tom continued, speaking directly to the sergeant. "You don't know what you're doing. Don't blindly follow orders. At least wait until you know what's going on."

Again the sergeant hesitated. The two other soldiers were looking to him. He was the key.

Hitt lowered his weapon.

Ford spoke quietly, remembering what he'd been taught about interrogations years ago. "You lied to these men, didn't you?"

"No." He was already sweating.

"You did. And now you're going to tell them the truth, or I'll kill you--no second chances, no warnings, nothing. A bullet to the brain and then I'll take what's coming to me."

Ford meant it and that was key. The man knew it.

"Okay. First question. Who do you work for?"

"I'm director of Detachment LS480."

"Which is?"

"Established in 1973 after the Apollo 17 mission to the moon. Its purpose was to study a lunar sample known as LS480."

"A moon rock?"

“Yes.”

“Go on.”

Masago swallowed. He was sweating. "It was a piece of ejecta from a crater known as Van Serg. The rock contained fragments of the meteorite that formed the crater. In those contaminants were particles. Microbes."

"What kind of microbes?"

"Unknown. They appear to be an alien form of life. Biologically active. They could be weaponized."

"And the connection to the dinosaur?"

"The same particles were found in the dinosaur fossil. The dinosaur died of an infection caused by the LS480 particle."

Ford paused. "You're saying the dinosaur was killed by an alien life-form?"

"Yes."

"And the connection with the moon rock again? I'm a little lost."

"Van Serg crater is sixty-five million years old. The dinosaur died 65 million years ago following the Chicxulub impact."

"Chicxulub?"

"The asteroid that caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs."

"Go on."

"Van Serg crater was made by a fragment from that same asteroid. It appears the asteroid itself was riddled with the LS480 particles."

"What's the purpose of this op?"

"To clear the area, eliminate all knowledge of the dinosaur, and recover the dinosaur for classified research."

"When you say 'clear the area' you're talking about us."

"Correct."

"And when you say 'eliminate all knowledge of the dinosaur,' you're talking about killing us-am I right?"

"I don't take lightly the idea of killing American citizens. But this is an issue of the gravest national security. Our nation's survival is at stake. There's no dishonor in giving up your life for your country-even if it happens to be involuntary. At times it's unavoidable. You were CIA. You understand." He paused, fixing Ford with pinpoint eyes. "Those LS480 particles caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. In the wrong hands, those same particles could cause a second mass extinction-of the human race."

Ford released him.

Masago jumped away and backed up, breathing heavily, then unholstered his Beretta. He positioned himself slightly behind Hitt.

"Sergeant Hitt, eliminate these three people. I don't need their information. We'll get it another way."

There was another long silence.

"You're not going to do this," said Sally. "Now you know it's murder."

"I'm waiting for you to carry out my direct orders, soldier," said Masago quiedy.

No one spoke. No one moved.

"You're relieved of command, Hitt," said Masago. "Private Gowicki, carry out my order. Eliminate these people."

Another intense silence.

"Gowicki, I didn't hear an acknowledgment of my order."

Yes, sir.

Gowicki raised his weapon. The seconds ticked by.

"Gowicki?" Masago asked.

"No," said Hitt.

Masago pointed his Beretta at Hitt's head.

"Gowicki? Carry out my order."

Tom hit Masago's knees with a flying tackle, the gun going off harmlessly into the air. Masago spun, recovered, but with an adroit movement Hitt landed a blow to Masago's solar plexus. Masago fell heavily and lay on the ground, doubled up, unable to make a sound.

Hitt kicked the gun away. "Cuff him."

Gowicki and Hirsch came forward and in a moment had secured his arms behind his back in plastic cuffs. He was gasping and coughing, rolling in the sand, blood trickling from his mouth.

A long silence ensued.

"All right," said Hitt to his soldiers. "I'm taking charge of the op. And it seems to me these three people need some water."

Gowicki unslung his canteen and passed it around. They all drank deeply.

"All right," said Hitt. "Now that we know what's really going on, we've still got an op to finish. Seems to me we're supposed to locate a dinosaur fossil. And you know where it is." He faced Ford.

"What do you plan to do with us?"

"I'm taking you three back to WSMR. General Miller'll decide what to do with you-he's the real commanding officer around here, not this"-his voice trailed off and he cast a glance at Masago-"civilian."

Ford nodded toward the great boulder that dominated the back of the cave.

"It's right behind there."

"No shit?" He turned to Gowicki. "You keep an eye on them while I confirm." Hitt vanished behind the boulder and came back a few moments later. "Now that," he said, "is one mean mother." He turned to his men. "Far as I'm concerned, the first part of the op is accomplished. We've located the fossil. I'm calling in the rest of the chalk. We'll rendezvous at the LZ, return to base, report to General Miller with these three individuals, and await further orders." He turned to Masago. "You'll come quietly, sir, and make no disturbance."

3

THE CHOPPER SQUATTED on the alkali flats like a giant black insect about to take flight. They approached in silence, Tom limping on his own, Sally being helped along by a soldier. Hitt came last with Masago in front of him.

The four other members of the chalk, called in by Hitt, lounged in the shade of a nearby rock, smoking cigarettes. Hitt motioned them toward the chopper and they rose, tossing away their butts. Tom followed them into the chopper and the sergeant gestured for them to take seats on the metal benches along the wall.

"Radio base," said Hitt to the copilot. "Report we've accomplished the first part of the operation. Tell 'em I felt compelled to terminate the command of the civilian Masago and disarm him."

"Yes, sir."

"I'll report the details in person to General Miller."

"Yes, sir."

A soldier slid the cargo door shut while the chopper revved up and lifted off. Tom leaned back against the netting next to Sally, feeling more exhausted than he ever had in his life. He glanced over at Masago. The man hadn't said a word. His face looked strangely blank.

The chopper rose out of the steep-walled valley and skimmed southwestward over the mesa tops. The sun was a large drop of blood on the horizon, and as the chopper gained altitude Tom could see Navajo Rim and beyond that the Mesa of the Ancients, its center riddled with the canyon complex known as the Maze. In the far distance, lay the blue curve of the ChamaRiver.

As the chopper made a lazy turn to the southeast, Tom saw a sudden movement out of the corner of his eye-Masago. The man had jumped up and was running for the cockpit. Tom hurled himself at Masago, but the man twisted

free, giving him a sharp upward blow with his cuffed hands. He pulled a knife from his pantleg sheath with both hands, spun and bounded through the open cockpit door. The other men had jumped from their seats to pursue him, but the chopper suddenly yawed, throwing them into the netting, while a gargling scream came from the cockpit.

"He's crashing the chopper!" Hitt cried.

The bird took a sickening downward lurch and a deep shudder came from the rotors. Tom staggered to his feet, gripping the netting, fighting against the dec-celeration as the chopper screamed and spiraled downward. He caught a glimpse through the cockpit door of the copilot, struggling with Masago-and the pilot lying dead on the floor awash with blood.

As the chopper pitched back, Tom used the motion to launch himself into the cockpit. He slammed into the flight console, righted himself on a seat, threw a punch at Masago, clipping his ear. As he staggered backward the copilot seized the man's cuffed wrists and slammed them down on the console, knocking the knife from his hands. The yawing chopper threw them both to the floor and Masago grabbed the copilot, choking him while both slid around on the floor slick with blood. Tom slammed Masago's head against the floor, rolling him off

the copilot.

"Take the controls!" Tom screamed at the copilot, who needed no encouragement. The man lurched to his feet and seized the controls, the bird yawing wildly. With a sudden roar from the back rotors and a gut-wrenching deceleration, he righted the chopper. Masago was still thrashing wildly, fighting with almost superhuman strength, but Hitt had now joined Tom and they had him pinned. Above the screaming engines, Tom could hear the copilot calling in an emergency while he fought with the controls.

Suddenly, through the windscreen, the face of a cliff came rushing past; followed by a bone-breaking jolt and a machine-gun-like series of whangs as pieces of rotor tore like shrapnel through the fuselage. The copilot was hammered to one side by the flying debris, his blood splattering against the shattered Plexiglas of the windscreen. The screeching sound of metal tearing on rock was followed by a weightless moment of free-fall, and then a massive crash.

Silence.

Tom felt like he was swimming out of darkness and it took him a moment to remember where he was-in a helicopter wreck. He tried to move and found he was jammed up in a corner on his side, debris piled over him. He could hear screaming as if coming in from a distance, the dripping of hydraulic fluid (or was it blood?), the stench of aviation fuel and burnt electronics. All motion had

ceased. He struggled to free himself. A huge gash had ripped open one side of the chopper and through it he could see they had come to rest on a steep slope of broken rock. The helicopter groaned and shifted, metal rivets popping. Smoke began filling the air.

Tom climbed over the debris and found Sally all tangled up with a heap of netting and plastic tarps. He pulled the netting aside.

"Sally!"

She stirred, opened her eyes.

"I'm getting you out." He grasped her around the shoulders and hauled her free, relieved to see she seemed to be only dazed.

"Tom!" came the voice of Wyman Ford.

He turned. Ford was crawling up the pile of debris, his face running with blood. "Fire," he gasped. "We're on fire." At the same time there was a whooshing sound and the tail section burst into flame, the heat like a glow in their faces.

Tom wrapped his arm around Sally and carried her toward the tear in the fuselage, the only way out. He grasped the netting and struggled up, hooked an arm over the sill and hauled her up to the hole. She grasped the ragged edge and Tom helped her outside, on top of the fuselage where it was an eight-foot drop to the ground. He could see the fire was spreading rapidly along the tail, crawling along fuel and electrical lines, engulfing the chopper.

"Can you jump?"

Sally nodded. He eased her down the side, and she dropped.

"Run!"

"What the hell are you doing staying there?" she screamed from below. "Get off!"

"Ford's in there!"

"It's going to blow-!"

But Tom had turned his attention back into the chopper, where Ford, injured, was trying to climb up the netting to the opening. One of his arms dangled uselessly.

Tom lay on his stomach, reached through the hole, grasped the man's good arm, and hauled him up. Black smoke billowed out in a great wave just as he pulled Ford free and up on top of the fuselage, then slid him to the ground.

"Tom! Get off there!" Sally screamed from below, helping Ford away from the wreck.

"There's still Hitt!"

Smoke was now pouring through the opening. Tom dropped down into it and crouched, finding a layer of fresh air underneath. He crawled toward where he

had last seen Hitt, keeping low. The unconscious soldier lay on his side in the cockpit amid a shower of debris. Waves of heat from the fire scorched his skin. He slid his arms around Hitt's torso and pulled, but the soldier was huge and he couldn't manage it.

There was a muffled thump as something burst into flame inside the fuselage. A wave of heat and smoke rolled over Tom.

"Hitt!" He slapped the man across the face. The man's eyes rolled. He slapped him again, very hard, and the eyes came into focus.

"Get moving! Get out!"

Tom wrapped his arm around the man's neck and heaved him up. Hitt struggled to his knees, shaking his head, droplets of blood dripping from his hair. "Damn . . ."

"Out! We're on fire!"

"Jesus. .."

Hitt finally seemed to be coming back to reality, ready to move under his own power. The smoke was now so thick that Tom could barely see. He felt along the floor, Hitt crawling behind him. An eternity later they reached where the fuselage of the chopper curved upward. He turned, grabbed Hitt's arm, placed his meaty fist on the netting. "Climb!"

There was no air and the acrid smoke felt like broken glass in his lungs.

"Climb, damn you!"

The man started climbing, almost like a zombie, the blood running down his arms. Tom followed alongside, screaming at him, dizziness filling his head. He was going to pass out, it was too late. It was over. He felt his grip weakening . . .

And then arms reached down, pulling him up and throwing him off the side of the chopper. He fell heavily in the sand, and a moment later Hitt landed heavily next to him, with a groan. Sally jumped down beside them-she had climbed back up on the chopper to haul them out.

They stumbled and crawled, trying to get as far away from the burning chopper as possible. Tom finally collapsed, gasping and coughing, able to go no more. Half crawling, half lying in the sand, he heard a dull thud and felt the sudden heat as the last of the chopper's tanks blew, engulfing the wreck in flame.

Suddenly a bizarre sight appeared: a man emerged from the fire, sheeted in flame, his arm raised with a gun in his burning fist. With strange deliberation he stopped, aimed, fired a single wild shot-and then the figure slowly toppled like a statue back into the burning inferno and was gone.

Tom passed out.

4

NIGHT HAD FALLEN on the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves of the old sycamores in MuseumPark, and the stone gargoyles that haunted the rooftops squatted silently against the darkening sky. Deep in the museum's basement a light burned in the Mineralogy laboratory, where Melodic Crookshank sat hunched over the stereozoom microscope, watching a lump of cells divide.

It had been going on for three and a half hours. The Venus particles had triggered an amazing spurt of growth-triggering an orgy of cell division. At first Melodic thought the particles might have somehow set off a cancerous growth, an undifferentiated bunch of malignant cells. But it wasn't long before she realized that these cells were not dividing like cancerous cells, or even normal cells in a culture.

No-these cells were differentiating.

The group of cells had begun to take on the characteristics of a blastocyst, the ball of cells that form from a fertilized embryo. As the cells had continued to divide, Melodic had seen a dark streak develop down the middle of the blastocyst. It had begun to look exactly like the so-called primitive streak that developed in all chordate embryos-which would eventually form the spinal cord and backbone of the developing creature.

Creature.

Melodic, at the limit of exhaustion, raised her head. It hadn't occurred to her exactly what this thing that was growing might be, whether a lizard or something else, and it was too early in the ontological process to know.

She shivered. What the hell was she doing? It would be insane to wait around and find out. What she was doing now was not only foolish, it was extremely

dangerous. These particles needed to be studied under biosafety level four conditions, not in an open lab like hers.

She glanced toward the clock, hardly able to focus on the dial. She blinked, rubbed her eyes, rolled them to the left and the right. She was so tired she was almost hallucinating.

Melodic had no idea what these particles were, what they did, how they worked. They were an alien life-form that had hitched a ride to Earth on the Chicxulub asteroid. This was over her head-way over her head.

Melodic shoved back the chair and stood up, a little unsteady on her feet, gripping the side of the table for support, her hands trembling. She began to consider what she had to do. She cast around and her eyes lit on a bottle of 80 percent hydrochloric acid in the chemical stores. She unlocked the cabinet, took down the bottle, brought it to under the fume hood, broke the seal, and poured a few ounces of it into a shallow glass tray. With infinite care she removed the slide from the microscope stage, carried it to the fume hood, and slipped it into the hydrochloric acid. There was a faint foaming and hissing noise as the acid instantly destroyed and dissolved the hideous growing blob of cells until nothing was left.

She breathed a deep sigh of relief. That was the first step, to destroy the organism growing on the slide. Now to destroy the loose Venus particles themselves.

She added a strong base to the acid, neutralizing it and causing the precipitation of a layer of salt at the bottom of the dish. Setting up a Bunsen burner under the hood, she put the glass dish on the burner and began boiling away the solution. In a few minutes all the liquid had evaporated, leaving behind a crust of salt. She now turned up the burner as high as it would go. Five minutes passed, then ten minutes, and the salt began to crust up, glowing red-hot as the temperature approached the melting point of glass. No form of carbon, not even a buckyball, could survive that kind of heat. For five minutes she kept the Pyrex dish over the burner while it glowed cherry-red and then she turned off the gas and let it cool down.

She still had one more thing to do: the most important thing of all. And that was to finish the article, adding what she had just discovered. She spent ten minutes writing up two final paragraphs, describing in the driest scientific language she could muster what she had just observed. She saved it, read it over one final time, and was satisfied.

Melodic silently criticized her own lack of caution. Whatever the particles

were, she now believed they might be very dangerous. They was no telling what they might do to a live organism, to a human being. She felt a chill, wondering if she was infected. But that was impossible-the particles were too big to become airborne and besides, aside from those she had painstakingly freed from the rock, the rest were securely encased in stone, sixty-five million years old but still functional.

Functional.

That was really the crux of the matter. What was their function? But even as she asked herself the question, she knew the answer would take months, if not years, to answer.

She attached the article to an e-mail and readied it for sending, her finger poised on the ENTER key.

She hit ENTER.

Melodic leaned back in her chair with a great sigh, feeling suddenly drained. With that keystroke her life was changed. Forever.

5

TOM OPENED HIS eyes. The sun lay in stripes across his bed, a monitor beeping softly somewhere in the background, a clock on the wall. Through a haze of pain, he managed to locate Sally sitting in a chair opposite.

"You're awake!" She jumped up, taking his hand.

Tom didn't even consider raising his pounding head. "What-?"

"You're in the hospital."

It all came rushing back; the pursuit in the canyons, the helicopter crash, the fire. "Sally, how are you?"

"A lot better than you."

Tom looked around at himself, shocked to see himself so bandaged up. "So what's wrong with me?"

"Nothing more than a nasty burn, a broken wrist, cracked ribs, concussion, bruised kidney, and a seared lung. That's all."

"How long have I been out?"

"Two days."

"Ford? How's he?"

"He should be coming up to see you at any moment. He had a broken arm and a few cuts, that's all. He's a tough bird. You were hurt worst."

Tom grunted, his head still pounding. As clarity returned, he noticed a heavy presence sitting in the corner. Lieutenant Detective Wilier.

"What's he doing here?"

Wilier rose, touched his forehead in a greeting before settling down. "Glad to see you awake, Broadbent. Don't worry, you're not in any trouble-although you should be."

Tom didn't quite know what to say.

"I just dropped in to see how you were getting along."

"That's kind of you."

"I figured you'd probably have a few questions you'd want answered. Like what we found out about the killer of Marston Weathers, the same man who abducted your wife."

"I would."

"And in return, when you're ready, I'd like a complete debriefing from you." He raised his eyebrows in query.

"Fair enough."

"Good. The man's name was Maddox, Jimson Alvin Maddox, a convicted murderer who appears to have been working for a fellow named Iain Corvus, a curator at the AmericanMuseum of Natural History in New York. He got Maddox an early release from prison. Corvus himself died the same night Sally here was kidnapped, apparently of a heart attack. Given the timing the FBI is looking into it."

Tom nodded. Damn, his head hurt. "So how did this Corvus know about the dinosaur?"

"He heard rumors that Weathers was on to something big, sent Maddox down to follow him. Maddox killed the guy and, it seems, took a sample off him which Corvus had analyzed at the museum. Something just went up on the Web about it and there's been a hullabaloo like nothing you've ever seen before. It's in all the papers." Wilier shook his head. "A dinosaur fossil. . . Christ, I considered just about everything, from cocaine to buried gold, but I never would've guessed a T. Rex."

"What's happening to the fossil?"

Sally answered. "The government's sealed off the high mesas and are taking it out. They're talking about building some kind of special lab to study it, maybe right here in New Mexico."

"And Maddox? He's really dead?"

Wilier said, "We found his body where you left it, or at least what was left of it after the coyotes worked it over."

"What about the Predator drone, all that business?"

Wilier eased back in his chair. "We're still untangling that one. Looks like some kind of rogue government agency."

"Ford will tell you about that when he comes," said Sally.

As if on cue the nurse came in and Tom could see Ford's craggy face behind her, one side of his jaw bandaged, his arm in a cast and sling. He was wearing a checked shirt and jeans.

"Tom! Glad to see you awake." He came and leaned on the footrest of the bed. "How the heck are you?"

"Been better."

He cautiously settled his huge frame down in a cheap plastic hospital chair. "I've been in touch with some of my old pals in the Company. Apparently heads have rolled over the way this whole thing was handled, the callous disregard for human life, not to mention the bungled op. The classified agency that ran the op's been disbanded. A government panel's looking into the whole business, but you know how it is . . ."

"Right."

"There's something else, something incredible. A scientist at the Museum of Natural History in New York got hold of the piece of the dinosaur, studied it, and has released a paper about it. It's explosive stuff. The T. Rex died of an infection-brought in on the asteroid that caused the mass extinction. No kidding-the dinosaur died of an alien infection. At least that's what they say." Ford told him how Apollo 17 brought back some of the particles on a moon rock. "When they saw the rock was impregnated with an alien microbe, they diverted it to the Defense Intelligence Agency, which in turn set up a black detachment to study it. The DIA named the black agency LS480, short for Lunar Sample 480. They've been studying these particles for the last thirty years, all the while keeping their antennae out in case any more showed up."

"But it still doesn't explain how they found out about the dinosaur."

"The NSA has a ferocious eavesdropping capability. We'll never know the details-seems they intercepted a phone call. They jumped on it immediately. They'd been waiting thirty years and they were ready."

Tom nodded. "How's Hitt?"

"Still in bed upstairs. He's doing fine. Pilot and copilot are both dead, though. Along with Masago and several soldiers. A real tragedy."

"And the notebook?"

Wilier stood up, took it out of his pocket, laid it on the bed. "This is for you. Sally tells me you always keep your promises."

6

MELODIE HAD NEVER been inside the office of Cushman Peale, the museum's president, and she felt oppressed by its atmosphere of old New York privilege and exclusion. The man behind the antique rosewood desk added to the effect, dressed in Brooks Brothers gray, with a gleaming mane of white hair brushed back. His elaborate courtesies and self-deprecating phraseology did a poor job of concealing an unshakable assumption of superiority.

Peale guided her to a wooden Shaker chair placed to one side of a marble fireplace and seated himself opposite. From the interior of his suit he removed a copy of her article and laid it on the table, carefully spreading it with a heavy veined hand.

"Well, well, Melodic. This is a fine piece of work."

"Thank you, Dr. Peale."

"Please call me Cushman."

"All right. Cushman."

Melodic leaned back in the chair. She could never be comfortable in this chair that would make a Puritan squirm, but at least she could fake it. She had a bad case of imposter syndrome-but she figured she'd get over it, eventually.

"Now let's see . . ." Peale consulted some notes he had jotted on the first page of the article. "You joined the museum five years ago, am I right?"

"That's right."

"With a Ph.D. from Columbia . . . And you've been doing a bang-up job in the Mineralogy lab every since as a... Technical Specialist First Grade?" He seemed almost surprised by the lowliness of her position.

Melodic remained silent.

"Well, it certainly seems time for a promotion." Peale leaned back and crossed

his legs. "This paper shows great promise, Melodic. Of course, it's controversial, that's to be expected, but the Committee on Science has gone over it carefully and it seems likely the results will withstand scrutiny."

"They will."

"That's the right attitude, Melodic." Peale cleared his throat, delicately. "The committee did feel that the hypothesis that this, ah, Venus particle might be an alien microbe is perhaps a bit premature."

"That doesn't surprise me, Cushman." Melodic paused, finding it difficult to say his first name. Better get used to it, she thought. The deferential, eager-to-please Technician First Grade was history. "Any major scientific advance involves going out on a limb. I'm confident the hypothesis will stand up."

"Delighted to hear it. Of course, I'm only a museum president"-and here he gave a self-deprecating chuckle-"so I'm hardly in a position to judge your work. They tell me it's quite good."

Melodic smiled pleasantly.

He leaned back, placed his hands on his knees, flexed them. "I had a talk with the Committee on Science and it seems we'd like to offer you a position as Assistant Curator in the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology. This is a fine, tenure-track position which will lead, in time, if all goes well, to an appointment to the Humboldt Chair, which might have been occupied by the late Dr. Corvus had he lived. Naturally there will be a commensurate increase in salary."

Melodic allowed an uncomfortable amount of time to pass before responding. "That's a generous offer," she said. "I appreciate it."

"We take care of our own," said the president pompously.

"I wish I could accept it."

Peale's hands came apart. Melodic waited.

"You're turning us down, Melodic?" Peale looked incredulous, as if the idea of not wanting to stay at the museum was preposterous, unthinkable.

Melodic kept her voice even. "Cushman, I spent five years in the basement doing first-class work for this museum. Never once did I receive one iota of recognition. Never once was I thanked beyond a perfunctory pat on the back. My salary was less than the maintenance workers who emptied my trash."

"Of course we noticed you . . ." Peale was nonplussed. "And things will change. Let me say our offer to you isn't engraved in stone, either. Perhaps we need to take it back to the Committee on Science and see if there isn't something more we can do for you. An associate curatorship with tenure might even be possible."

"I already turned down a tenured position at Harvard."

Peak's brows shot up in perfect astonishment, quickly concealed. "My, they're quick on the draw." He managed a strained chuckle. "What sort of offer? If I may ask."

"The Montcrieff Chair." She tried to keep from grinning. Damn, she was enjoying this.

"The Montcrieff Chair? Well, now that's . . . quite extraordinary." He cleared his throat, eased back in his chair, gave his tie a quick adjustment. "And you turned it down?"

"Yes. I'm going with trie dinosaur ... to the Smithsonian." "The Smithsonian?" At the mention of the name of their big rival, his face reddened.

"That's right. To the NationalMuseum of Natural History. The government plans to build a special Biosafety Level four laboratory in the WhiteSandsMissileRange in New Mexico to study the dinosaur and the Venus particles. They've asked me to be the assistant director in charge of research, which comes with a tenured curatorial appointment at the national museum. Being able to continue my work on the specimen means a lot to me. The mystery of the Venus particles has yet to be cracked; I want to be the one to do it." "That's your final decision?" "Yes."

Peak rose, extended his hand, and mustered a weak smile. "In that case, Dr. Crookshank, allow me to be the first to congratulate you."

Breeding had produced one fine quality in Peak, thought Melodie: he was a good loser.

7

THE HOUSE, A small bungalow, sat on a pleasant side lane in the town of Marfa, Texas. A large sycamore tree cast a mottled pool of shade across the lawn, enclosed by a white picket fence. A 1989 Ford Fiesta was parked in the driveway, and a hand-painted sign that read STUDIO hung outside a converted garage.

Tom and Sally parked on the street and rang the doorbell.

"In here," a voice called from the garage.

They walked around and the garage door came up, revealing a pleasant art studio inside. A woman appeared wearing an oversized man's dress shirt flecked with paint, her red hair tied up in a cloth. She was short, brisk, and attractive, with a small upturned nose, boyish face, and a pugnacious air. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm Tom Broadbent. This is my wife, Sally."

She broke into a smile. "Right. Robbie Weathers. Thanks so much for coming."

They followed her into a surprisingly pleasant studio with a clerestory. The walls were white and hung with landscape paintings. Odd rocks, weathered pieces of wood, old bones, and rusty pieces of iron were arranged like sculpture on tables against the far wall.

"Have a seat. Tea? Coffee?"

"No thanks."

They sat on a futon folded up to be a couch, while Robbie Weathers washed her hands and pulled off her head scarf, shaking out her curly hair. She pulled up a wooden chair and sat opposite them. The sun streamed in. There was an awkward silence.

"So," she said, looking at Tom, "you're the person who found my father."

"That's right."

"I want you to tell me all about it, how you found my father, what he said

everything."

Tom began to tell the story, relating to her how he heard the shots, rode to investigate, found her father dying on the canyon floor.

She nodded, her face clouding. "How had he ... fallen?"

"On his face. He'd been shot several times in the back. I turned him over, gave him CPR, and his eyes opened."

"Might he have lived if they'd gotten him out in time?"

"The wounds were fatal. He didn't have a chance."

"I see." Her knuckles hid whitened where her hand gripped the side of the chair.

"He was clutching a notebook in his hand. He told me to take it and give it to

„ you.

"What were his exact words?"

"He said, It's for Robbie. . . My daughter. . . Promise to give it to her. . . She'll know how to find the. . . treasure ..."

"Treasure," repeated Robbie, with a faint smile. "That's how he used to talk about his fossils. He never used the word 'fossil,' because he was paranoid about someone jumping his claims. Instead he used to pose as a half-crazed treasure hunter. He often carried around a conspicuously fake treasure map, to mislead people into thinking he was a quack."

"That explains one thing I long wondered about. Anyway, I accepted the notebook from him. He was . . . close to death. I did what I could but he didn't have a chance. His only concern was for you."

Robbie swiped a tear out of her eye.

"He said, 'It's for her. . . Robbie. Give it to her. . . No one else. . . No one, especially not the police. . . You must. . . promise me. 'And then he said, 'Tell her I love her.

"He really said that?"

"Yes." He didn't add that he hadn't managed to say the last word-death had come too quickly.

"And then?"

"Those were his last words. His heart stopped and he died."

She nodded, bowing her head.

Torn pulled the notebook from his pocket and offered it to her. She raised her head, wiped away her eyes, and took it.

"Thank you."

She turned to the back, flipped through the blank pages, stopped at the two exclamation points, smiled through her tears.

"I do know this: from the time he found that dinosaur to when he was murdered, he was certainly the happiest man on earth."

She slowly closed the book and looked out the window into the sun-drenched South Texas landscape, and spoke slowly. "Mom left us when I was four. Who could blame her, married to a guy who dragged us all over the West, from Montana to Texas and every state in between? He was always looking for the big one. When I got older he wanted me to go with him, for us to be a team but... I didn't want any part of it. I didn't want to go camping in the desert and hunting around for fossils. All I wanted was to stay in one place and have a friend that would last me more than six months. I blamed the dinosaurs. I hated dinosaurs."

She took out a handkerchief, wiped her eyes again, folded it up in her lap.

"I couldn't wait to get away to college. Had to work my way through-Dad never had two nickels to rub together. We had a falling out. And then he called a year ago, saying he was on the trail of the big one, the dinosaur to end all dinosaurs, and that he would find it for me. I'd heard that one before. I got mad. I said some things to him I shouldn't have, and now I'll never have the chance to take them back."

The room filled with light and afternoon silence.

"I wish like hell he were still here," she added softly, and fell silent.

"He wrote you something," said Tom, removing the packet. "We found them buried in a tin can in the sand near the dinosaur."

She took them with trembling hands. "Thank you."

Sally said, "The Smithsonian's having an unveiling of the dinosaur in a new lab custom-built for it out in New Mexico. They're going to christen it. Would you like to come? Tom and I are going."

"Well... I'm not sure."

"I think you should . . . They're naming it after you."

Robbie looked up sharply. "What?"

"That's right," said Sally. "The Smithsonian wanted to name it after your father but Tom persuaded them that your dad intended to name it 'Robbie,' after you. And besides, it's a female T. Rex-they say the females were bigger and more ferocious than the males."

Robbie smiled. "He would have named it after me, whether I liked it or not."

"Well?" Tom asked. "Do you like it?"

There was a silence and then Robbie finally smiled. "Yeah. I guess I do.”

EPILOGUE

JORNADA DEL MUERTO

In four hours, the darkness was complete. She crouched in her wallow, eyes half-closed. The only light came from ribbons of fire burning here and there in the cypresses. The swamp had filled with dinosaurs and small mammals, swimming, thrashing, floating, crazed with fear, many dying and drowning.

She awoke, fed easily and well.

The air became hotter. When she breathed it hurt her lungs, and she coughed in pain. She rose from the water to fight the tormenting heat, ripping and tearing at the air with her jaws.

The heat increased. The darkness increased.

She moved to deeper, cooler water. Dead and dying meat floated around her, but she ignored it.

A black, sooty rain began to fall, coating her back with a tarlike sludge. The air became thick with haze. She saw a red light through the trees. A huge wildfire was sweeping the highlands. She watched it move, exploding through the crowns of the great trees, sending down showers of sparks and burning branches.

The fire passed, missing the swampy enclave where she had taken refuge. The superheated air cooled slightly. She remained in the water, surrounded by bloated, rotting death. Days passed. The darkness became absolute. She weakened and began to die.

Death was a new feeling for her, unlike any she had experienced before. She could feel it working inside her. She could feel its insidious, silent assault on her organs. The fine, downy coat of small feathers that covered her body sloughed off. She could barely move. She panted harder now and yet could not satisfy her hunger for oxygen. Her eyes had been scorched by the heat and they clouded and swelled shut.

Dying took days. Her instincts fought it, resisted every moment of it. Day after day, the pain grew. She bit and kicked at her sides, tearing her own flesh, trying to reach the enemy within. As the pain rose, her fury increased. She struggled blindly toward land, heavy on her feet. Freed of the buoying force of water, she staggered and fell in the shallows. There she bellowed, thrashed, kicking and biting the mud, tearing in a fury at the earth itself. Her lungs began to fill with fluid as her heart strained to pump the blood through her body.

The hot, black rain fell.

The biological program that had carried her through forty years of life faltered. The dying neurons fired in one last orgiastic blaze of futile activity. There were no more answers, no programming, no solution for the ultimate crisis. Her fruitless bellowing strangled itself in a shudder of wet, groaning flesh. The left hemisphere of her brain crashed in a storm of electrical impulses, her right leg jerking a dozen savage epileptic kicks before falling into a rigid clonus, the claws flexing open, the tendons popping from the bones. Her jaws opened and snapped shut, opened wide and locked in that position, fiercely agape.

A shudder traveled the length of her tail, vibrating it against the ground until only the tip trembled-and then all neural activity ceased.

The program had run its last line. The black rain continued to fall. Gradually, she became coated with slurry. The water rose, pushed by great storms in the mountains, and within a day she had been buried in thick, sterile mud.

Her sixty-five-million-year entombment had begun.