by Randy Nargi
actually shocked. Brook had referenced a George Harrison song that was originally recorded for The White Album but not included in the final pressing.
“Well played, sir,” Alex says. He sets his guitar down. “Buy me an espresso and I will tell you a very interesting story about our mutual friend.”
Twenty minutes later, Brook leaves Old Town Plaza with everything he needed to know. As he walks back toward his car, Brook hears another song from The White Album echo through the Plaza. “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey.”
Fitting, Brook thinks. His next step is to find Sophia’s monkey.
18
That evening, Brook meets with his unit back at the Hyatt. Over beers in Fitz’s room, both teams make their reports.
McDaniel and Worth’s report is short and sweet: no sign of the creature.
As part of yesterday’s briefing, the Project HOBO scientists had plotted the megalania’s likely movement zone based on the location of its kills. They could say with 70 percent certainty that the creature was in an area of roughly 144 square miles. But much of that area consisted of extremely rough terrain—massive cliffs heavily wooded with towering spruce and fir trees and thick with dense underbrush. McDaniel and Worth had packed in two surveillance drones that ran a tight grid over the target area for nearly 10 hours straight, but there was no obvious evidence of the reptile. On their way back to the hotel, McDaniel and Worth dropped the drones’ SSDs back at the Labs for a frame-by-frame analysis.
“You never know. They could get lucky,” Worth says. “A tail slithering in back of a boulder or something. At least that would be some kind of lead.”
Fitz and Perecia had better luck. Well, mostly better. They tracked down and visited all but one of the families of the eight victims. Many were still in shock and didn’t even want to discuss the tragedy, but the families they did speak with were so distraught and withdrawn that there wasn’t much chance they’d make any trouble. Except for one guy.
Chris Diaz was the brother of Rico Diaz, a teacher who took his two kids on a hike last Thursday morning. None of them survived. Chris was a short, stout firefighter now on bereavement leave from the City of Albuquerque Fire Department. He bought the story about the rabid bear. In fact, he bought it too much. Diaz was organizing his hunting buddies to go out tomorrow and track down the bear themselves.
Fitz explains that he did his best to communicate that it was a bad idea on a number of levels. First, there were two dozen Game & Fish officers already deployed on the mountain, and they expected to locate the bear before the weekend. Second, contrary to popular belief, an animal with rabies doesn’t always display obvious symptoms such as a foaming mouth. Since there are an estimated 200 bears up in the Sandia Mountains, chances are that untrained hunters would not be able to identify the rabid bear responsible for the attacks. Finally, you don’t want to mess with rabies. It’s almost always fatal to humans and if you get it, you might not develop symptoms for a few months—and by that time it’s too late.
Perecia can’t be sure if Diaz was impressed enough to call off the hunt, but he’s pretty certain that Fitz did a convincing job of scaring off the fireman.
“Good work,” Brook says. “We’ll need to keep an eye on those yahoos, but they shouldn’t pose a problem.” He then begins to brief his team about Sophia Montclaire and his plan to infiltrate her operation.
19
Lee Brenneis is in a spare office in Building 800—a large, three-story brick structure that houses the Lab’s administrative offices. He’s trying to track down his wife at one of the local casinos when another call comes in to alert him that Matthieu Dupin, the managing director of Wiedlin, and his crisis management team is on the premises. The distraction is welcome because, as Brenneis thinks about what Lisa might be up to, the ache in his head gnaws a little deeper.
He rushes down to the lobby to meet Dupin, and doesn’t have long to wait. The Frenchman, trailed by three junior executives, arrives within six minutes.
Dupin is a relatively short man, but he is dressed in an expensive light-gray suit—perfectly tailored to make him appear taller and better proportioned than he actually is. Although they’ve never met, Dupin’s blue eyes light up with warm recognition as he clasps Brenneis’s hands.
“Dr. Brenneis? I’m Matthieu Dupin.”
“It’s an honor, sir.”
“The honor is mine. We all deeply appreciate your leadership in this time of crisis.” He touches Brenneis’s shoulder to make the point, then introduces his staff. “I, as well as my executive team, am at your disposal.”
“Thank you, sir.” Brenneis doesn’t quite know what to make of Dupin’s deference. Matthieu Dupin has a reputation as one of the most brilliant and powerful men in commercial science. He’s the driving force behind a multi-billion-dollar international corporation—one that’s outpacing all its competitors. By all rights, Brenneis should be groveling at Dupin’s feet. Especially given what’s going on.
“Dr. Brenneis, I know you must be quite busy. I was hoping to meet with Dr. Schultz to perhaps offer her my assistance…”
“Of course. Right this way.”
Brenneis leads Dupin and his group up to the top floor toward Elizabeth Schultz’s office.
20
September 15th. Sandia Mountains. Elevation 7,800 feet.
She basks in the late afternoon sun on a rocky cliff overlooking a meadow. After a lifetime of darkness, the warmth feels good. She lifts her massive head and swings it from side to side, detecting a mosaic of scents from as far away as five miles.
Most of the scents are new to her. She knows her own smell, of course, and the smell of her kind. She also knows the scent of her captors (which is the same as her most recent prey). But there are new animal signatures as well. Scents she’s only recently discovered. Birds, coyote, rabbit. And other animals that are larger. More suitable to eat.
She’s been tracking a small herd of mule deer for the past hour or so. She’s never encountered these types of animals before. But their size and the way they move signal that these deer will be good to kill.
The gray-tan–colored deer are foraging early today. They have wandered into an alpine meadow—surrounded by a fringe of pinon trees and a field of large granite boulders leading to a rocky cliff. The deer graze on juniper and pinon foliage, lifting their heads up and down and flicking their large ears, alert for trouble.
She climbs down from the cliff and glides through the brush, upwind of the deer—a stocky doe and two yearlings. Her target is the doe—three-and-a-half feet tall at the shoulders and weighing 250 pounds. Although the deer are vigilant, they don’t sense her approach. She moves closer—almost within striking range.
But then she smells a new arrival. Another unfamiliar scent signifying an unfamiliar creature. Frozen under a wide pinon, she tilts her head toward where she believes the newcomer to be. After a few moments, a telltale movement in the brush reveals the creature. A 200-pound male mountain lion emerges, and he’s eyeing the very same deer she’s been stalking.
The mountain lion is nine feet long, less than half the length of her, but he’s well-muscled with enormous claws. Definitely more of a challenge, she thinks.
Still unaware of any danger, the deer continue to nibble at the brush. All at once, the mountain lion explodes into a leap—right onto the back of the doe. As the yearlings bounce away in terror, the doe tries to buck the mountain lion off her, but the big cat has locked onto the doe’s neck. Within moments, the deer is dead.
The mountain lion doesn’t have a chance to savor his victory.
A half-ton creature he’s never seen before slams into him, slashing at his flank and ripping at his throat with enormous serrated teeth. Dazed, the mountain lion tries to escape, but a tail as thick as a tree trunk smashes into him and everything goes black. The mountain lion never wakes up.
She climbs on the big cat’s body and scratches at it with her claws, taking in the scent of its blood. But
she doesn’t feed—not on the mountain lion, not on the deer. In fact, she isn’t even hungry.
21
September 16th. Northwest Albuquerque.
The City Limits is a seedy little hole-in-the-wall bar located at what was once the edge of Albuquerque. These days it’s surrounded by warehouses, industrial buildings, and not much else.
A Subaru Forester pulls into the dark parking lot. It’s the only foreign car among the pickup trucks and beaters.
After a moment a man exits the Forester and walks into the bar, clutching a small piece of paper.
Inside he’s assaulted by the blast of a stereo system playing songs that are all older than he is. The man looks around the crowded bar. His name is Vic and he’s athletic, clean-cut, and dressed in Eddie Bauer and Timberland. Definitely out of place here.
Vic scans the rough crowd—careful not to linger on any one face. This is definitely the kind of place where he could get his ass kicked for the wrong kind of glance.
The building is an old converted cantina—expanded over the past 50 years. The bar area is in the newer section of the structure, while the back room is clearly the original adobe cantina.
Vic approaches the bar and notices two large paintings hanging on the back wall. One is of a nude woman on a horse. The second is of a one-armed Mexican man with a cruel look in his eyes. Not the kind of art he’d ever seen in any of the galleries up in Santa Fe
