Tyrannosaur Canyon

by Douglas Preston

  DANGER: UNMARKED MINE SHAFTS

  NO TRESPASSING

  OWNER NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ACCIDENTS

  It was quiet in the forest, the wind sighing ever so lightly through the trees. Maddox slipped past the sign. The trail mounted slightly, following the dry bed of a wash. Ten minutes of walking brought him to an old clearing. An open hillside rose on the right, with a trail angling up. He mounted the trail, which ran parallel but below the summit for a quarter of a mile before coming to a decrepit shaft house enclosing the entrance to an old mining tunnel. The shaft-house door sported a fresh padlock and chain, along with another no trespassing sign, both of which Maddox had affixed the day before.

  He slipped a key out of his pocket, unlocked the padlock, and stepped into the cool, fragrant interior. A pair of old railroad tracks led into a dark hole in the rock, covered by a heavy iron grate, also padlocked. He unlocked the grate and swung it open on freshly oiled hinges, inhaling the scent of damp stone and mold, then flashed his light around. As he proceeded he was careful to step over rows of old railroad ties and puddles of water. The tunnel had been cut into the living rock, and here and there where the rock was rotten and fractured the ceiling had been shored and cribbed with massive beams.

  After a hundred feet the tunnel veered to the left. Maddox turned the corner and his light illuminated a fork in the tunnel. He took the left branch. It soon came to a dead end, across which Maddox had built a wall of timbers bolted into the mine cribbing to create a small prison cell. He walked up to the timber wall and gave it a proud smack. Solid as a rock. He had begun at noon the day before and had worked straight to midnight, twelve hours of nonstop, backbreaking labor.

  He slipped through the unfinished opening into a small room built into the dead end of the tunnel. He plucked a kerosene lantern off a hook, raised the glass chimney, lit it, and hung it on a nail. The friendly, yellow glow illuminated the room, perhaps eight by ten feet. It wasn't such a bad place, thought Maddox. He'd laid a mattress in one corner, covered with a fresh sheet, ready to go. Next to it stood an old wooden cable spool serving as a table, a couple of old chairs dug out of a ruined house, a horse bucket for drinking water, another bucket for a toilet. Opposite him, affixed into the stone of the far wall, he had sunk four half-inch-steel eye bolts, each with a case-hardened chain and manacles – two for the hands, two for the feet.

  Maddox paused for a moment to admire his handiwork, and he marveled once again at his luck in finding a setup like this. Not only was the tunnel perfect for his purposes, but he had managed to find most of his timber on-site, old beams and boards stacked up in the back of the mine where they had survived the ravages of time.

  He broke off this pleasant reverie and glanced at his rough mechanical drawing, which lay on the barrel, curled up by moisture. He flattened it, weighing it down with bolts, and looked it over. A few more beams and he'd be done. Instead of a door, which would be vulnerable, he would bolt three beams over the opening – a simpler, stronger, and more secure solution. He would only need to go in and out at most a few times.

  The cave was humid and warm. Maddox stripped off his shirt and tossed it down on the mattress. He gave his well-muscled torso a flexing, ran through a series of stretching exercises, then picked up the heavy-duty Makita cordless and slapped in a fresh battery. He went to the old pile of beams, probed a few with a screwdriver until he had found a good one, measured it off, marked a spot with a pencil, and began drilling. The whine of the Makita echoed in the cave and the smell of old, damp wood reached his nostrils as brown ribbons of oak curled out of the drill hole. Once through, he grasped the beam and hefted it upright, muscling it into position. After tacking it into place with a nail, he drilled a matching hole in the fixed beam behind it, slid through it an eighteen-inch bolt, twirled on a hex nut, and cranked it down so hard with a socket wrench that it bit a good quarter inch into the wood.

  Nobody, no matter how desperate, was going to get that nut off.

  In an hour Maddox had finished all, leaving only the door opening. The three beams that would bar the opening lay stacked next to it, predrilled and ready to go.

  Maddox strolled the length of the finished wall, caressing the beams. Then with a yell he seized a beam between two massive hands, jerked it back and forth as hard as he could, this way and that, stepped back and side-kicked the beams, shouted, screamed, swore, slammed his shoulders into the wall again and again. He spun, picked up the wooden table, and hurled it against the wall of beams, all the while shrieking, "Sons of bitches! Bastards! I'll kill you all, I'll pull your guts out!"

  All at once he stopped, breathing heavily. From his knapsack he fished out a hand towel, dried the sweat off his chest and shoulders, patted his face, smoothed back his hair, then combed it back with his fingers. He picked up his shirt, slipped it on, flexed his back muscles.

  Maddox allowed himself a grin. Nobody was going to bust out of his jail. Nobody.

  Chapter 3

  WYMAN FORD SHOOK the dust out of the hem of his robes and sat down on the fallen, corkscrewed trunk of an ancient juniper. He had hiked almost twenty miles from the monastery and had reached the lofty heights of Navajo Rim, a great long mesa running for many miles along the southern boundary of the Echo Badlands. Far behind him lay the vermilion canyons of Ghost Ranch; and the view to the northwest was framed by the snowcapped peaks of the Canjilon Mountains.

  Ford removed four 1:24,000 U.S.G.S. topographical maps from his backpack, unfolded them, and laid them side by side on the ground, weighing down the corners with stones. He took a moment to orient himself, visually matching various landmarks to their corresponding outlines on the maps. With his binoculars he began searching the Echo Badlands, looking for a rock formation resembling the one on the computer plot. Whenever he saw something promising, he marked its location on the map in red pencil. After fifteen minutes he lowered the binoculars, encouraged by what he saw. He hadn't found a likely match, but the more he looked into the endless canyons crisscrossing the Echo Badlands, the more he was convinced that the formation containing the T. Rex would be found there. The domelike shape of the rock in the plot seemed to be typical of the badland formations he could see from his vantage point. The problem was that much of his view was blocked by intervening mesas or canyon rims. Adding to his difficulties, the computer plot only showed a two-dimensional slice through the rock. There was no telling what the formation might look like from a different angle.

  He raised the binoculars again to his eyes and continued searching, until he had covered all that he could see from that vantage point. It was time to move on to a point he had marked on the map as Vantage Point 2, a small butte at the far end of Navajo Rim that stuck up like an amputated thumb. It would be a long hike, but well worth the trouble. From there, he'd be able to see almost everything in the badlands.

  He picked up his canteen, shook it, estimating that it was still more than half full. He had another, completely full, tucked away in his pack. As long as he was careful, he would have no problems with water.

  He took a small sip and set off, following the edge of Navajo Rim.

  As he hiked, he fell into a pleasant reverie brought on by the physical exertion. He'd told the abbot that he needed some spiritual time by himself in the desert, and he'd promised to be back by Terce the following day. That was now out of the question, and if he went into the badlands it might be two more days before he got back. The abbot wouldn't mind – he was used to Ford going off into the desert on spiritual retreats. Only this time Ford had the vague feeling that he was doing something wrong. He had misled the abbot as to the purpose of this trip; just because he prayed, fasted, and denied himself bodily comforts while in the desert did not mean he was on a spiritual quest. He realized he had allowed himself to become swept up in the intrigue of it, the mystery, the thrill of finding the dinosaur. The monastery had taught him the gift of self-reflection, something he'd never been too keen on before, and now he used that to reflect on his motives
. Why was he doing this? It wasn't to recover the dinosaur for the American people, as much as he'd like to think he was acting from altruistic motives. It wasn't for money, and certainly not for fame.

  He was doing this because of something deeper, a flaw in his character, a craving for excitement and adventure. Three years ago he had made a decision, impulsive at the time but by now well considered and confirmed by prayer, to retreat from the world and devote his life to serving God. Was this little expedition serving God?

  Somehow, he didn't think so.

  Despite these thoughts, as if in thrall to a power not his own, Brother Wyman Ford continued to hike along the windswept cliffs of Navajo Rim, his eye fixed on the distant butte.

  Chapter 4

  IAIN CORVUS, STANDING at the window, heard the phone-set chime on his desk and the voice of his secretary announce, "Mr. Warmus from the Bureau of Land Management is on line one."

  Corvus slipped quickly around behind his desk, picked up the phone, and assumed his friendliest voice.

  "Mr. Warmus, how are you? I trust you received my permit application."

  "Sure did, Professor. Got it right here in front of me." The western cracker accent grated across Corvus's ear. Professor. Where did they find these people?

  "Any problems?"

  "As a matter of fact there are. I'm sure it was just an oversight, but I don't see any locality data here."

  "That wasn't an oversight, Mr. Warmus. I didn't include that information. This is an exceptionally valuable specimen, highly vulnerable to looting."

  "I 'preciate that, professor," came the long-distance drawl, "but the high mesas are a big place. We can't issue a museum paleontological collection permit without locality info."

  "This specimen is worth millions on the black market. Giving out that information, even to the BLM, is a risk I'm reluctant to take."

  "I understand that, sir, but here at the BLM we keep all our permit data under lock and key. It's very simple: no locality, no permit."

  Corvus took a deep breath. "We could certainly give you a generalized location–"

  "No, sir," the BLM man interrupted. "We specifically require township, range, section, and GPS coordinates. Otherwise we can't process it."

  Corvus took a deep breath, tried to moderate his voice. "I'm concerned because, as you may recall, last year up in McCone County, Montana, a first-rate diplodocus was nicked right after the permit was filed."

  "Nicked?"

  "Stolen."

  The nasal voice went on tediously, "I'm not in the Montana district of the BLM, so I wouldn't know about a nicked diplodocus. Here in New Mexico we require locality coordinates to issue a collecting permit. If we don't know where the specimen is, how are we supposed to give you permission to collect it? Or to prevent someone else from collecting it? Should we put a moratorium on all nonprofit fossil collecting in the high mesas until you get your specimen? I don't think so."

  "I understand. I'll get you the locality data as soon as possible."

  "See that you do. And another thing."

  Corvus waited.

  "There aren't any photos or a survey attached to the application. It's supposed to be in Appendix A. It's spelled out right there in the rules and regulations: 'Permittee must attach a scientific survey of the site, showing the fossil in situ, along with any remote-sensing surveys, if existing, as well as photographs of said specimen.' We've got to have some kind of proof that there's a fossil out there."

  "The discovery is recent and the site is remote. We haven't been able to return for a survey. The point is, I wanted to be sure of establishing precedence, on the off-chance another application comes in for the same fossil."

  A bureaucratic grunt. "Precedence goes to the first 501(c)(3) museum or university in official standing to file a legal permit. I have to tell you, Professor, that there isn't enough in this here permit of yours to qualify for precedence."

  Corvus gritted his teeth. This here permit. "Surely there must be a way to establish precedence without giving the exact coordinates."

  There was a long, superior sniff at the other end. Corvus felt the blood pounding in his temples. "As I said, when you get your paperwork in order, we'll issue the permit. Not before. If someone else submits a permit for the same fossil – well, that's not our problem. First come first served."

  "Bloody hell, man, how many complete T. Rex's could there be out there?" Corvus exploded.

  "Hold your horses, Professor."

  Corvus made a huge effort to control himself. This was the last man in the world he could afford to alienate. He was the bureaucrat who had the power to grant him permission to collect the fossil on federal land. The man could just as easily give it to that bloody bawbag Murchison at the Smithsonian.

  "My apologies for speaking precipitously, Mr. Warmus. I'll get you the required information just as soon as I can."

  "Next time," the man intoned, "when you're applying for a fossil collecting permit on federal land, take the time to get the application right. Makes our job easier. Just because you're a big New York City museum doesn't mean you don't have to play by the rules."

  "Again, my sincerest apologies."

  "Have a nice day."

  Corvus placed the phone back in its cradle with elaborate care. He took a long breath, smoothed back his hair with a trembling hand. The arrogant little prick. He glanced up: it was just five o'clock, which made it three o'clock in New Mexico. Maddox hadn't called in forty-eight hours, damn him. The last time they talked he seemed to have everything under control, but a lot could happen in two days.

  He paced his office, turned at the window, and paused to look out. The evening rowboats were just venturing out into the pond, and he found himself looking for the father and son. But of course they weren't back, why would they? – once was enough.

  Chapter 5

  SIX O'CLOCK. THE sun had fallen below the canyon rim and the heat of the day was going down, but it was still stuffy and dead between the sandstone walls. Willer, trudging up yet another endless canyon, suddenly heard an eruption of baying from the dogs from just around the bend, followed by Wheatley's high-pitched shouting. He glanced at Hernandez, met his partner's eye.

  "Looks like they found something."

  "Yeah."

  "Lieutenant!" he heard Wheatley's panicked voice. "Lieutenant!"

  The hysterical baying of the dogs and Wheatley's yelling echoed down to him distorted by the narrow canyon walls, as if they were trapped in a giant trombone. Even though he was fed up with searching, Willer had dreaded this moment.

  "About time," said Hernandez, his short legs churning him forward.

  "I hope to hell Wheatley's got those dogs under control."

  "Remember last year when they ate that geezer's left–"

  "Right, right," said Willer hastily. When he rounded the last bend, he saw that Wheatley did not have the dogs under control. He'd lost the leash of one and was unsuccessfully trying to haul back the other, both dogs frantically trying to dig into a patch of sand at the base of a tight curve in the canyon wall. Hernandez and Willer rushed forward and snatched up the leashes, hauling the dogs back and tying them up to a boulder.

  Huffing and red-faced, Willer examined the scene. The bed of sand had been disturbed by the dogs, but it was no great loss, considering that the hard rain of the past week had already swept it clean of any traces. As he examined the area he could see nothing that indicated anything lay under the sand – beyond a faint, unpleasant odor that the breeze wafted past his nostrils. Behind him, the dogs whined.

  "Let's dig."

  "Dig?" Hernandez asked, his round face showing alarm. "Shouldn't we wait for the SOC team and the M.E.?"

  "We don't know we've got a body yet. Could be a dead deer. We can't chopper a whole SOC team out here until we know."

  "I see your point."

  Willer heaved off his backpack and slipped out the two trowels he had brought, tossing one to Hernandez. "I doubt it's very deep. Our killer
didn't have a hell of a lot of time."

  He knelt and began scraping the trowel across the loose sand, removing one layer at a time. Hernandez did the same at the opposite end of the area, making two careful piles that the forensic team would later sift through. As he swept the sand aside he kept an eye out for clues – clothing or personal articles – but nothing came to light. The hole deepened, moving from dry sand into wet. There was something down there, for sure, Willer thought, as the smell intensified.

  At three feet his trowel scraped against something hairy and yielding. A sudden wave of stench, thick as soup, hit his nostrils. He scraped a bit more, breathing through his mouth. It had been buried five days in wet sand in ninety-eight-degree heat and it smelled the part.

  "It's not human," said Hernandez.

  "I can see that."

  "Maybe it is a deer."

  Willer scraped some more. The fur was too coarse and matted to be a deer, and as he tried to clear more sand off it to see clearly the fur and skin began coming away in patches, exposing slimy, brownish-pink flesh underneath. This was no deer: it was a burro. The prospector's burro, the one that Broadbent mentioned.

  He stood up. "If there's a stiff it'll be next to it. You take that side, I'll take the other."

  Once again they began scraping away the sand, piling it carefully to one side. Willer lit a cigarette and held it between his lips, smoking it that way, hoping to chase off some of the stench.

  "Got something."

  Willer abandoned his side and went over to where Hernandez was crouching. He troweled some more sand away, exposing something as long and swollen as a boiled kielbasa. It took Willer a moment to realize it was a forearm. A second foul wave of odor seemed to strike him bodily, a different and far worse smell. He inhaled a lungful of smoke, but it did no good: he could taste the dead body. He stood up, gagging, and backed off. "Okay. That's good enough. It's a stiff – that's all we need to know."