Landing Party: A Dinosaur Thriller (18 page)

He glanced at the pilot and the winch operator, surprised that only two persons had unleashed so much mayhem. He didn’t recognize either of them; neither were part of the crew who had dropped the team off in the civilian helicopter, and neither wore military uniforms. Ethan rose unsteadily to his feet and moved to a jump seat next to the winch operator and sat down, gripping a hand strap to secure him in the event of turbulence.

The winch man looked at Ethan with a big grin. He wore mirrored aviator glasses, but looked Ethan in the eyes anyway. “Glad we saw your signal! Thirty more seconds and we’d have been long gone. You injured—anything that can’t wait?”

Ethan shook his head, accepting a first-aid kit from the airman that he would use to clean up his bloody nose.

“Thank you.”

The airman nodded, wrapping a blanket around Ethan and handing him a bottle of water and some food. “No, thank you, Mr., Jones. If it weren’t for you…” He shook his head slowly while staring down into the ocean speeding by below. “We’ll be in American Samoa in about two hours. Sit back, relax and enjoy the flight.” Then he joined the pilot up front in the cockpit, leaving Ethan to stare out the open door in silence.

The island was now not much more than a heap of smoldering lava, sending black smoke into the atmosphere. Ethan picked up his camera and aimed it at the devastation. He clicked off a shot as the island smoldered and crumbled into the sea from whence it came.

Chapter 36
Nuku'alofa, Tonga

CIA Special Agent Valea Esau sat on the bus with his teeth clenched as the king’s palace passed outside the window. All around him people sat and stood, some with small cages containing live chickens or roosters, some with bundles of whole fish. All chatted loudly, going about their day bringing goods to and from the markets with a comfortable routine that Esau envied. He could no longer really remember what it was like to have such a normal life, for he’d given his up to The Company long ago. His was a world of lies, dark networks, subterfuge, and a constant undercurrent of danger. And for what? To supposedly support a country he no longer even lived in, may never live in again for all he knew.

Maybe I’ve been in the tropics for too long
, he mused, watching the palace grounds whiz by outside. His stop would be three more past, so as not to be seen directly taking the bus to the palace. A walk of about a mile, but he was used to such inconveniences in the line of duty. They reached the first stop after the palace, and his gaze traveled reflexively to the bus doors as a new gaggle of riders got on. He watched them from behind his sunglasses, checking to see if any were scanning the people in the seats, beyond the normal
where should I sit
glances. None of them seemed to be anything other than what they appeared, but nevertheless, his fingers clutched down tighter on the object beside him in the seat.

It looked like an ordinary mechanic’s ratchet set case, with a well-known tool maker’s logo in raised plastic lettering on the side. It fit in perfectly with the grease-stained jumpsuit he wore with the local auto mechanic shop logo sewn on the breast pocket. But inside the case, one would not find the ordinary compliment of tools. In fact, the molded plastic inlays that were form-fitted to the tools they were supposed to hold had been removed altogether. This had been done by Valea himself in order to create more room inside the case for what he needed to carry inconspicuously: cash. One million dollars’ worth of U.S. bills, non-sequential and unmarked. Meant for the Tongan king as an under-the-table token payment for the failed Neptune’s Inferno attempt at creating a permanent new island on which a U.S. military installation could be supported in return for a revenue stream, Valea was meeting with the king today to give him this payment.

He passed the second bus stop after the palace and looked around the bus again. No suspicious activity. He gave himself the all-clear to exit the bus at the next stop, after a visual check of that area from inside the bus, of course. He looked down at the tool case, eyeballing the clasps, making sure they were secured for the hundredth time.
It’s a go,
he told himself, but as the bus churned on toward the third stop after the palace, he wasn’t feeling it. He ran his fingers over the case, his eyes seeing the bundles of greenbacks inside as though he had X-ray vision.

Was he really going to give all this money to a king? Literally, a king, someone whose life would not change a whit if he didn’t receive it. Whereas Valea himself, what did he have to look forward to without this money? Fifteen more years of government service, risking his life? The thought coalesced rapidly, forming itself from previous notions waiting to be assembled together. By the time the bus reached Valea’s planned stop, the thought had formed into a full-fledged plan.

To hell with it. I’m done, I don’t need this.
As a covert agent, technically a spy in the way most people thought of the term, Valea knew how to disappear. Even with the relatively meager resources he already had at his disposal, he could probably do it. But with an extra million in untraceable cash? He’d be set. Sure, the CIA will look for him, he had no doubts about that. He’d never be able to safely return to the U.S. or the South Pacific, but it’s not like he killed one of their own or something that would trigger a no-holds-barred international manhunt. They wouldn’t look too hard, especially if he stayed out of trouble, which he planned to. A low-key existence in some hospitable climate far removed from the intel community was just what he needed.
South America?
He’d think of something.

Contrary to what he might have expected, once he had resolved himself to this new course of action, to this new life, he became more relaxed, less nervous. That didn’t mean he would drop his situational awareness. He would never be able to afford to do that. But as he stared at a map of routes on a placard at the front of the bus, he knew where he was going right now.

Valea remained seated as the bus came to a halt for the third stop after the palace. Outside the window, he saw nothing out of the ordinary that would have prevented him from making his planned exit. He pictured Malo’s face, his reaction when he would give him the money, the shots of liquor he’d have lined up for them once he turned it over.
Sorry, Your Majesty, your drinks are good but they’re not that good. Not a million bucks good.

The bus started up again and left the third stop behind. Valea clutched his tool case and smiled. A new island had risen from the sea, and with it, a pile of cash. Soon that island would be blasted back into the sea, and the money, too, would retreat.

With Valea.

Epilogue
Washington, D.C., The White House Situation Room

President Linda Mallory addressed the dozen or so people seated around the table. None of them looked particularly happy, including herself. “So, this was taken when?”

She nodded to a photo on a large wall monitor of
Hunga Tonga- Ha'apai
sinking beneath the waves in a fiery, hell-born fury. Even with no manmade elements in the photo, it depicted a scene of chaotic destruction.

James Elkweather, a mid-career CIA analyst, responded from behind thick spectacles. “This was taken about twelve hours ago by the lone surviving member of U.N. Expedition Gaia, Australian wildlife photographer Ethan Jones.”

The president reflected a moment longer as she stared at the hypnotic image. “So the planet’s newest land is no longer.” She shook her head slowly, as if she couldn’t believe it, or was perhaps contemplating the significance of it.

Elkweather nodded. “That is correct, Madam President. The seamount—that’s an undersea mountain—is closer to the surface now than it was before the…eruption…but it will always remain permanently submerged.”

The president’s face took on a stern look as she addressed those in attendance. “I was told that the goal of Neptune’s Inferno was to deliberately trigger earthquakes that would, in turn, result in desirable chain reactions—such as directed tsunamis, volcanoes that form new land—not prehistoric animals.” She ended by glaring at the scientist responsible for spearheading the ultra-secret project. That man, Hungarian-American János Gombos, shrugged before meeting her gaze with a level stare.

“Call the dinosaurs an unintended side-effect. As you know, the purpose of the program was to create a new island that might be used as a strategic base by the U.S. and its allies in the region. We were never one hundred percent sure on how exactly that might take shape. That is why we had a spy in the expedition, to keep us apprised of unintended consequences and to stack the deck in our favor in case things did not go our way, which they didn’t.”

The president’s eyes flicked to her laptop screen for a moment. “Richard Eavesley, the British explorer?”

Elkweather, the analyst, nodded. “He was our mole.”

“Do we know what happened to him? Is it certain he’s dead, is what I’m asking, because if this ever gets out…”

“He’s dead. Mr. Jones said he was eaten by a hadrosaur.”

“What’s that?” the president asked.

Elkweather nodded to an assistant who cycled through some images on a laptop PowerPoint and then displayed one on the wall monitor. It depicted a large four-legged dinosaur (with silhouette figure of an adult human male for comparison), with a fleshy waddle on its head. Most of those around the table grimaced or looked away as they imagined how terrible Eavesley’s fate must have been.

Elkweather continued. “If we’re lucky, he even has video of it. They’re all dead except for Jones and the helicopter crews who brought the expedition in and out, that is confirmed. The entire Tongan landing party who got there first were confirmed perished by the U.N. team, as well.”

A moment of silent reflection ensued during which everyone seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Until it was broken by an aide for the Secretary of State. “Unfortunately, Madam President, Richard Eavesley is not the worst of our problems with respect to leaking details of Neptune’s Inferno.”

The president glared at the middle-aged, balding man who had delivered this unpleasant news. “Explain yourself.”

“The State Department has received official word from Tonga—from King Malo himself—that the United States has not kept its word on a deal regarding the formation of a new island. He’s threatening to go public if he doesn’t receive a one million dollar cash payment that he says was promised to him directly by CIA operative, Valea Esau. Esau was our field agent based in Tonga, attached to our embassy in Fiji.”

“And what does Agent Esau have to say about this? I presume you’ve been in contact with him?”

The aide looked uncomfortable, but proceeded. “In fact, Madam President, we have been unable to reach Agent Esau after numerous attempts to contact him. He appears to be missing in action. Additional agents are being dispatched to Tonga now to look for him.”

The president nodded and then waved a hand dismissively. “All right. Pay Tonga the million, right away.”

The aide nodded, making a note on a pad. “In the meantime, we’ll track down the money that we gave—”

“Do it
now
!” the president yelled. “We don’t need this to become an international incident. Pay the man.”

The aide nodded again and left the room. The president turned back to those still seated at the table. “Anybody else have anything pressing that I should know about?”

No one said anything. The president went on. “What about the dinosaurs, then, are they a threat? Can they reach other, populated islands? I’m not going to wake up tomorrow to headlines about
T. rex
es chomping tourists on the beaches of Tahiti or somewhere, am I? Hell, I’m
going
to Tahiti this winter, right?” She turned to an assistant who consulted a schedule on a smartphone before nodding.

Another man answered, one of the scientists on Neptune’s Inferno, Dr. Marcus Ollenstein, a marine geophysics expert. “Most of the dinosaurs surely perished in the bombing, but it is possible that a few individuals escaped. However, we think it unlikely that two or more breeding individuals could have made it, so when the lone stragglers die off due to natural causes, that should be it for those evolutionary throwbacks.”

The president looked away from Ethan’s photo at her expectant group. “Overall, would you say the technology utilized in Neptune’s Inferno was successful? It
will
trigger earthquakes, generate tsunamis on demand…?”

János Gombos nodded convincingly. “Absolutely.”

The president’s gaze returned to Ethan’s image. “Wait a year and try again somewhere else.”

THE END

Read on for a free sample of Spinosaurus

Prologue: Tshikapa, Congo

Arthur Mabele dug in the muddy clay of the Vermeulen mines next to the Kasai River, a tributary of the mighty Congo and itself deeper than most rivers in the world. On the other side of the river from the mine is thick rainforest jungle, most of which has never been charted by man, even today. Satellites cannot see through the ceiling of foliage, and there would be little reason to do so anyway—it is a terra incognita, which isn’t worth the trouble financially, and scientists or others interested in penetrating its mysteries are not the kind who get funding.

But Vermeulen Mining Corp. and other commercial miners of rare earth metals and diamonds do find it very financially rewarding to occupy that part of Congo. Diamonds are dug up by hand by the people of the area, some from holes dug fifty feet into the banks of the Kasai where the water has to be pumped out by methods old when the Romans built their aqueducts.

So the miners dig by hand, getting maybe five dollars for a gem that, when cut and polished, will bring ten thousand or more. Diamonds are very plentiful in Tshikapa, so supply and demand keeps prices shrinkingly low and lets Vermeulen and other companies buy them for almost nothing.

Arthur Mabele had been extraordinarily lucky at his mining endeavors, and got his entire family spending fifteen hours a day digging for what passed for treasure there. They lived in the tent city at the mines like everyone else to protect them from the militias that wanted control of Vermeulen’s property, but they had a television set and one of those dishes that gets television from space back at home, plus a box that let them watch everything for free.

His favorite show when they took days off, which was infrequently, was Cryptids Alive! a show in which the beautiful Ellie White led viewers on a search for mythical creatures that probably actually existed. They had never found one that they could get video of, but that didn’t matter. They were always so close, and that’s what was exciting. It was in English, but that didn’t matter—monsters were monsters, and there were lots of “artist’s conceptions” and Ellie running toward or away from giant cryptids to keep Arthur and his family mesmerized.

It was night at the mine, too dark to see anything except the security lights on at the Vermeulen building, and Arthur was bone-tired after a day in which he found six rocks—six, enough for his family to have something other than gristle and skin for their meal. But, as sometimes happened, his body was too thoroughly worn out for him to immediately fall asleep, so he left his sleeping wife and boy and girl in the tent as he went out to look at the stars. It was relaxing and reminded him that there was a universe outside the diamond mines, a mysterious universe that enchanted him as much as the mysteries on Cryptids Alive!

It was also as silent as it got this close to the rainforest’s edge. He could hear the cawing birds and the occasional screech of the monkeys, but the sounds themselves were muffled, swallowed by the thick vegetation. That’s why he could hear a motorboat revving across the river and landing on the mine’s side. That sound was followed by loud whispers and the slap-slap-slap of someone in boots running through the mud of the mine area—they had to know what they were doing, because the bank was marked by deep holes and shallow ones—and then between the workers’ tents, heading for the far side.

Arthur couldn’t make them out well, except as silhouetted by the company building’s floodlights, but he could see it was two men in military-type uniforms and caps, one of them carrying … a big smooth rock? Something inside a sack? Whatever it was, it seemed heavy and the man carrying it let out a huge sigh of relief when he put it down next to the tent closest to the mine complex’s entry gate. Then, as far as Arthur could tell since they ran off into the darkness, they left through that way. He heard a vehicle start up and drive off.

Lots of weird things happened in a Congo mine, but this was crazy. The military in Tshikapa never entered the Vermeulen area, it being officially Belgian property, even a poor miner like Arthur Mabele knew that. But the militias who everybody knew wanted control of the mines and to force out the Belgians, they snuck into the mines whenever they could, something butchering the unfortunate workers as a warning not to work for foreigners, to refuse to mine for them so they would leave and the militias could take what “belongs to the people of Congo.”

The murders certainly didn’t help morale among the miners, but what could they do? They had to work if they were to eat. It wasn’t like the militias were inviting them to dinner so they wouldn’t have to toil for the Belgians.

Was it a bomb, this thing that the two soldiers had placed next to that far tent? Arthur wasn’t religious and had no interest in being a martyr, but he found a mystery even as probably banal as this one irresistible. He stood up from the crouch he had assumed when he heard the men coming and very slowly and silently placed his bare feet in the mud, then the dirt, as he approached the edge of the tent city, where the object lay.

With excitement, he peeked around the corner of the tent—pointlessly, he knew, if it was a bomb; it wasn’t like a piece of fabric was going to protect him from an explosion. He didn’t have a flashlight and the floodlights from the building illuminated nothing this far away. So he bent down and put his hands on it.

It was smooth, like a river rock. Or an egg. He pushed on it a little and it was so heavy it barely even moved. It had a weird, kind of musty smell, exactly like one would expect from a dredged-up river rock—

HRANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNH!

Arthur almost fell down at the sound, thinking at first a plane from the town’s little airport had crashed and blown up. But that wasn’t what it sounded like, not really. It was more like a roar. Like a—

HAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNNNHHHHH!

That one was even longer and louder. What in the name of his ancestors was that? He couldn’t see anything in the dark, but he could see just enough to get back to his family’s tent, seeing that many miners had been awakened by the unholy shrieking, snarling, screaming ROAR that he could tell had come from the far side of the Kasai.

“Get up! Get up! Come with me!” he roused his family in Swahili, grabbing his children by their arms and dragging them out of the tent until they had woken enough to walk on their own. Arthur’s wife was slow to awaken, but once she realized the children were gone, she snapped to and rushed out of the tent to follow her family into the brush on the edge of the tent city.

Some fires had been lit inside tents, no doubt instinctively at the outset of some kind of chaos, and Arthur could see the fires were around rags around tree branches, the fabric doused with cooking oil to make torches.

Another blast from what Arthur knew now had to be some kind of animal, and something raged out of the dense jungle. They could feel more than see the giant thing’s stomps, which ceased with a splash.

The blood froze in Arthur’s veins as he realized what that had to mean: The roaring, epically enraged monster was swimming to the mine side of the river. Their side.

Men, being men, had massed with their torches near the water’s edge, trying to see what was making the horrifying sounds and making the ground shake beneath their feet. Arthur could see what was going to happen as if it were already a memory, and if he didn’t have his wife and little ones with him, he would have shouted to them to get out of the way, run away, GO!

But they stayed grouped together, the torches illuminating their patch of ground.

Then the river heaved and the torches showed Arthur the monster climbing out of the water. The light showed a crocodile’s head on a lion’s body, four legs as thick as an armored car, and, when it crashed down on the screaming men, making the torches fly and set the tents aflame, the huge fin on the thing’s back. It roared again and now everyone was screaming, some coming out of their tents to run, others huddling and hoping not to be seen.

None of it did any good. Arthur and his family watched in horror as the Kasai Rex—that’s what it was, a Kasai Rex, the river monster of legend, a dinosaur that never died out, a predator, a death machine Congolese parents told their children about to scare them into good behavior—stomped and ripped and bit and swallowed and ate, the fire spreading all around it but the building-sized creature not even noticing.

It trampled every tent, killed every single person in the way, until it got to that final tent, the one that the militia had placed the bomb or rock next to, and it let out a roar so loud that it made Arthur’s eyes water even though his hands were clamped hard against his ears. Roared and roared and roared until Arthur, his wife, and his children all had been forced into unconsciousness.

***

When Arthur Mabele woke in the light of the morning, his wife was already awake, shaking from cold and fear but watching over their children, who were still sleeping. The tent city was a smoldering mess of mud, bodies, body parts, and ruined wood and fabric.

His wife looked at him and said but one thing:

“Kasai Rex.”

Arthur nodded. He had never in his life made an international phone call, never tried to find the number for a telephone in America, but knowing his family was safe, he knew it was his responsibility to tell the world so the Kasai Rex, taller than the Vermeulen building and almost as long as the tent city itself, killer of everything it encountered, could itself be killed.

It took him the better part of a week even to locate a telephone—miners were not welcome inside the Vermeulen building. It took still longer to find where and whom he should contact, and almost three weeks had passed before Arthur could find someone who spoke English and Swahili to place the call for him and interpret his story. But finally he was able to tell what had happened, tell the only people he knew would believe him.

He called
Cryptids Alive!

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