Tyrannosaur Canyon

by Douglas Preston

  The D-boys were back with the chopper. Their turn would come later.

  Masago's eyes moved to the second controller. He worked the UAVs three Multi-Spectral Targeting Systems with laser designation, range finder, electronic support and countermeasures, and a moving target indicator. The UAV had already expended one of its two Hellfire C missiles killing the monk.

  Masago's attention drifted back to the video display. Suddenly he stiffened.

  "Got something." The toneless voice of one of the operators murmured in Masago's headset.

  Masago could see two people, and a third, approaching the other two, a hundred yards away. A quarter mile up the canyon, a figure lay supine.

  "Zoom in to 900mm on the southernmost target," said Masago.

  The new image jumped on the screen. A man, lying against the canyon wall. A large stain – blood. A dead man. He had known of the monk and these two from his debriefing of the cop, Willer. But this third man, this dead man, was an unknown.

  "Back out to 240mm."

  Now he could see the three figures again. The one to the north had broken into a run. He could see his white upturned face for a moment. It was the CIA meddler, the so-called monk. Masago stared in surprise.

  "Looks like we missed the girl in the dress," murmured the MTS controller.

  Masago leaned intently over the picture, staring at it as if to suck out its essence.

  "Give me a closer look at the middle target."

  The camera jumped and the figure of a man filled the screen – Broadbent. The man he was looking for, critical to the plan. Broadbent had found the dying dinosaur prospector and he was therefore the one most likely to know the exact location of the fossil. According to Willer, both the wife and the monk were involved, although how it all fitted together wasn't clear. Nor did it need to be. His goal was simple: obtain the locality of the fossil, clear the area of unauthorized personnel, get the fossil, and get out. Let some paper pusher assemble the details for the ex post facto classified report.

  "Back me out to 160mm," he said to the payload console operator.

  The image on the screen jumped back. The three had joined up and were running for the shelter of the canyon walls.

  "Activating MTI," said the controller.

  "No," murmured Masago.

  The controller cast him a puzzled glance.

  "I need these targets alive."

  "Yes, sir."

  Masago scanned the canyon. It was eight hundred feet deep with stepped-back walls, narrowing at a bottleneck before opening up to the big valley of stone. The few side canyons all boxed up. It was almost a closed area, and it presented them with an opportunity.

  "See that point where the canyon narrows? About two o'clock on your screen."

  "Yes, sir."

  "That's your target."

  "Sir?"

  "I want you to hit that canyon wall in such a way to bring down enough material to block their route forward. We've got a chance to trap them."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Heading one-eighty, descend to two thousand," said the pilot.

  "Tracking stationary target. Ready to fire."

  "Hold until my signal," Masago murmured into his head set. "Wait." He could already see the drone was going to overshoot. The canyon rim loomed up and suddenly the targets were gone, hidden behind the thousand-foot wall of stone.

  "Son of a bitch," the pilot muttered.

  "Come around on a one-sixty heading," said Masago. "Get the vehicle down, follow the canyon."

  "They'll see–"

  "That's the point. Buzz them. Panic them."

  The scene shifted as the drone banked.

  "Back me out to 50mm."

  The scene jumped back farther to a wide-angled field of view. Now Masago could see both rims of the canyon. As the Predator came around, the three targets reappeared: three black ants running along the base of the sheer canyon walls, heading for the valley.

  "Target good," murmured the operator.

  "Not yet," murmured Masago. On his wide angle view he could see a turn in the canyon, then a straight stretch of at least four hundred yards. It was like running wildebeest from a helicopter. He watched the figures, which from that altitude seemed to be moving as slowly and helplessly as insects. There wasn't much they could do sandwiched between eight-hundred-foot cliffs. They cleared the bend, now running in the flat, still hugging the canyon wall, hoping it would provide cover.

  "At firing," Masago murmured, "switch me to video feed from the missile."

  "Yes, sir. Still locked on T."

  "Wait..."

  A long silence. They were running, faltering, clearly exhausted. The woman fell, helped up by the man and the monk. They were now four hundred yards from the target. Three fifty. Three twenty-five…

  "Fire."

  The screen jumped again as the video feed switched from the Predator to the camera onboard the missile, first a stretch of empty sky, then the ground swinging up, fixing on the left canyon wall, high up. The wall rapidly grew in size as the missile zeroed in with laser tracking. As the missile made contact the feed automatically switched back to the Predator's television camera, and suddenly they were back above, looking down – at a silent cloud of dust billowing upward along with soaring chunks of rock. The figures had dived to the ground. Masago waited. He wanted them badly shaken up – but not dead.

  The movement of air in the canyon began to push the dust cloud away. And then the figures reappeared – running back the way they had come.

  "Look at those sons of bitches go," muttered the controller.

  Masago smiled. "Bring the UAV back to ceiling and keep tracking them. I'm putting the bird up. We've got them now, three rats in a hot tin can."

  Chapter 7

  TOM RAN JUST behind Sally, the roar of the explosion still ringing in his ears, dust from the explosion boiling down the canyon toward them. They rested for a moment in the shelter of the canyon wall. Tom paused, leaning on the rock, breathing hard, as Ford joined them.

  "What the hell is going on–?" Tom gasped.

  The monk shook his head.

  "What was that firing at us?"

  "A drone. It's still up there, watching us. It's out of missiles, however. They only carry two."

  "This is surreal."

  "I think the drone fired only to block the canyon. They want to trap us."

  "Who's they?"

  "Later, Tom. We've got to get out of here."

  Tom squinted up and down the canyon, examining the walls on both sides. His eye was arrested by a broad, sloping crack, at the bottom of which stood a long pile of talus. The sloping crevasse offered plenty of handholds and footholds, where falling rocks had jammed, creating natural climbing chocks.

  "There," Tom said. "We can climb that crack." He turned to Sally. "Can you do it?"

  "Hell, yeah."

  "You, Wyman?"

  "No problem."

  "There's a good climbing line up the right-hand side to that ledge."

  Ford said, "You lead the way."

  "You know what's beyond?"

  "I've never been this far into the high mesas."

  Tom looked down at his four-hundred-dollar handmade Italian shoes, battered beyond recognition but still holding up. At least he had ordered the ones with rubber soles. As he looked back up, the tail end of dust from the explosion came rolling lazily over them, casting a sulfurous-colored pall across the sky.

  "Let's go."

  He grabbed the first handhold and hoisted himself up. "Watch where I put my hands and feet and use the same holds. Maintain a ten-foot gap. Sally, you come next."

  Tom braced his knee against the stone and worked his way up. He tried to ignore the fact that his mouth felt like it was full of grit. The agony for water had gone beyond thirst; it had become physical pain.

  It was hard, vertiginous climbing, but there were plenty of handholds. Tom climbed methodically, checking every minute to see how Sally was doing. She was athletic and got the
hang of it quickly. Ford climbed fearlessly, like a monkey – a true natural. As they ascended, space yawned below, vast and terrifying. They were free-climbing with no ropes, no pitons, nothing. It was what climbers euphemistically called a "no-fall pitch" – you fall, you die.

  Tom focused his eyes on the rock face in front of him. He had moved beyond tiredness into unknown territory beyond. They came to a small ledge, pulled themselves up, and rested. Ford took out his canteen.

  "Oh, my God, is that water?" Sally asked.

  "Very little. Take two swallows."

  Sally grabbed the canteen and with trembling hands drank. She passed it to Tom, who drank. The water was warm and tasted of plastic, but it seemed the most marvelous fluid Tom had ever drunk in his life and it took a supreme act of will to stop. He passed it to Ford, who put it back in his pack without taking any.

  "You aren't drinking?"

  "I don't need it," he said tersely.

  Tom looked up. He could still hear the faint, mosquitolike buzz of the drone but he couldn't see it. He pressed himself back against the stone, still trying to wrap his mind around the attack. "What the hell is going on?"

  "That thing hunting us is a forty-million-dollar Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, classified tail to wingtip."

  "Why?"

  Ford shook his head. "I'm not sure."

  Heat radiated off the canyon wall. Tom examined the rest of the cliff above, picked out a route, and began climbing. The others followed in silence. They were now two hundred feet up, but the pitches were getting easier. In another five minutes they had scaled the sheer part of the cliff. The rest of the climb consisted of an exhausting scramble up steep talus slopes and benches. At the top, Sally stretched herself out on the flat stone, gasping, Tom next to her. He looked up at the empty sky, which was silent, the plane apparently gone.

  Ford slipped a tattered map from his pocket and opened it.

  "Where are we?" Tom asked.

  "Just off the map." He folded it back up.

  Tom looked up, examining the landscape ahead. The mesa top was slickrock, a plateau of naked sandstone hollowed and carved by the action of wind and water. Some of the lower areas had filled with wind-blown sand, rippled by the constant wind. Here and there a wind-blasted juniper clung to a crack. The mesa ended a quarter mile away in blue sky. Tom squinted, peering ahead. "I'd like to see what's beyond that rim. We're sitting ducks up here."

  "We're sitting ducks everywhere, with that eye in the sky."

  "They're still watching us?" Sally asked.

  "You can be sure of it. And I have little doubt they're sending a helicopter after us. I'd say we've got ten to twenty minutes."

  "This is truly insane. You've really no idea what's going on?"

  Ford shook his head. "The only thing I can think of is that dinosaur."

  "What interest could they possibly have in a dinosaur? It seems to me a lot more likely that a bomber accidentally lost an H-bomb, or a classified satellite crashed – something like that."

  Ford shook his head. "Somehow, I don't think so."

  "But even if it was the dinosaur, why come after us?" Tom asked.

  "To get information."

  "What information? We've no idea where it is."

  "They don't necessarily know that. You've got the notebook and I've got the GPR plot. With either of those, they could find it in a few days."

  "And when they get what they want from us?"

  "They'll kill us."

  "You don't really believe that."

  "I don't believe it, Tom. I know it. They already tried to kill me."

  Ford climbed to his feet, Tom painfully following suit and helping Sally up. The monk set off across the stone plateau at his usual breakneck pace, his brown robes sweeping the ground with each step, heading toward the rim on the far side.

  Chapter 8

  THE ROTORS WERE already spinning up as Masago hopped into the chopper, shielding his face against dust and gravel. He threaded past the seven members of the CAG/DEVGU chalk that made up the operation and took a rear-facing seat near the front. The crew commander handed him a pair of headphones with a mouthpiece, plugged into the ceiling by a black cord. He fitted it over his head and adjusted the mike as the bird lifted off and peeled out, doors still open, just clearing the upper canyon rim and skimming above the buttes and mesas, once in a while passing the gaping crack of a canyon plunging down into the earth. The sun was almost directly overhead and the landscape below looked red-hot.

  On the matted floor of the chopper Masago unrolled a U.S.G.S. 1:24,000 topo of the target area. He still preferred paper maps to GPS electronic maps; somehow, paper gave him a feeling for the landscape that the electronic version didn't. The images from the drone, circling invisibly at twenty-five thousand feet, showed the objectives had managed to climb out of the canyon after all and were heading toward a deep, complex valley beyond. It was a hell of a place to look for someone, but on the other hand it had the advantage of being a defined area whose perimeter could be secured.

  When Masago had finished marking up the map with a red pencil he passed it to the chalk leader, Sergeant First Class Anton Hitt. Hitt examined the map in silence and began punching the way points marked on the map into his GPS unit. The men had received their final Patrol Order just before liftoff without comment or apparent difficulty, especially when Masago briefed them on the possible need to kill American civilians. Of course, he'd laid it on about how they were bioterrorists in possession of a doomsday microbe. Most people were not equipped to deal with complex truths – better to simplify.

  He watched Hitt work. The chalk leader was an African-American man of few words, in superb physical condition, with a high mahogany brow, clear pale brown eyes, and a demeanor of great calmness. He was dressed in desert multi-cam fatigues and combat boots, carrying an M4 chambered for the 6.8SPC, equipped with Aimpoint electronic sights. As a sidearm he had a Ruger .22 Magnum revolver, an eccentric choice for a special forces soldier, but one that Masago approved of. For a fixed blade he carried a Trace Rinaldi, another choice that spoke well for him. Masago had allowed Hitt to make the decisions regarding equipment: and the sergeant had decided his men should go in light and fast, carrying no extra ammo, one-liter canteens only, no grenades or extra magazines, and without the usual Kevlar body armor. No Squad Automatic Weapons either. This wasn't, after all, an op in downtown Mogadishu with heavily armed bad guys spilling out of every doorway.

  When Hitt was finished, he passed the paper map back to Masago.

  "The four men we're dropping in won't need to maintain radio silence. We're setting up a perimeter around our objectives and drawing it tight. It's a very simple plan. I like simple."

  Masago nodded.

  "Any final questions?" Masago asked.

  Hitt shook his head.

  "Sergeant Hitt," Masago asked slowly, "the time is coming when I will ask you to kill several unarmed American citizens. These individuals are too dangerous to entrust to the courts. Will you have a problem with that"

  Hitt slowly turned his clear eyes on Masago. "I'm a soldier, sir. I follow orders."

  Masago settled back, arms crossed. General Miller had been right after all: Hitt was good.

  The chopper thudded on, and then Hitt, checking his GPS, pointed to one of the men. "Halber, ten-minute warning to drop point Tango."

  The man, a twenty-year-old with a shaved head, nodded and began running the final checks on his weapon. They flew on, following a long, deep canyon that ran to the valley where their objectives were headed, the shadow of the bird rippling up and down directly below them. It was a hellish, corroded landscape, an open sore on the face of the earth, and Masago was looking forward to getting back to the muggy greenness of Maryland.

  "Five-minute warning," Hitt said.

  The Pave Hawk began to bank, coming around the side of a stone butte, and flew below the escarpment, easing down into a hover where a side canyon debouched into badlands. Halber rose, steadying
himself in the netting. The rope, which was coiled neatly before the open door, was kicked out. Halber grabbed it and roped down, disappearing from view.

  A moment later the rope was pulled up and the chopper lifted.

  "Sullivan." Hitt pointed to another man. "Drop point Foxtrot, eight minutes."

  Once again the chopper sped over red desert. To the north, Masago could see the irregular black outline of an ancient lava flow; and far to the right some forested foothills rose to meet a line of snow-covered peaks. He had the country pretty well scoped out by now.

  "Sullivan, one-minute warning."

  Sullivan finished his weapon check, rose, grabbed the netting as the chopper eased into a hover, the rope was kicked out again, the man was gone.

  Five minutes later they had done their fourth and last drop – and then the helicopter headed off toward the landing zone in the valley at the head of the great cleft marked "Tyrannosaur Canyon" on his map.

  Chapter 9

  FORD REACHED THE rim first, and looked down into a valley. With a shock, he recognized they had circled back around and were at the far end of Devil's Graveyard. It amazed him that even with his wilderness experience and knowledge of the desert, the landscape was so complex it had turned him around. He took out his map, checked it, and saw they had just entered the area from the northwest.

  He glanced around, expecting at any minute to see a black dot on the horizon and hear the familiar sound of a rotary aircraft approaching.

  He had been in plenty of tough situations in his life, but nothing quite like this. What he always had before was information; now he was operating blind. He knew only that his own government had tried to kill him.

  Ford paused, waiting for Tom and Sally to catch up. They were amazingly resilient, considering that both of them were injured, exhausted, and severely dehydrated. When they hit the wall, it would pretty much stop them wherever they were. It might even come in the form of heat exhaustion, hyperthermia, in which the body lost control of its ability to maintain body temperature. Ford had seen it once in the jungles of Cambodia; his man had suddenly stopped sweating; his temperature had soared to 107 degrees, he went into convulsions so severe they snapped off his teeth – and in five minutes he was dead.