Cryptozoica (23 page)

“Just a symbol,” Belleau answered sullenly. “It has no significance. It’s an heirloom. Please return it.”

“Please?” Kavanaugh stared Belleau with exaggerated incredulity. “It must be damned valuable.”

Honoré turned toward them. “Jack, I think that’s the insignia of Aubrey’s lodge.”

“Like the Shriners or Elks?” Kavanaugh inquired dubiously.

“Nothing that mundane. He told me a bit about it. He called it the School of Night.”

Crowe snorted and cast a glance over his shoulder, not taking his hands from the wheel. “Pretty over-the-top name for a men’s lodge.”

Kavanaugh handed the pin to Mouzi. “See if that little doohickey is really a key.”

Mouzi examined it. “Looks about the same size.”

She inserted the symbol into the base of the padlock and gave it a twist. With a little click, the lock popped open.

“Hey, presto,” Kavanaugh said softly.

Belleau closed his eyes, as if by shutting out the sight, he would not have to acknowledge to himself that the girl had managed to get the box open. Mouzi lifted the lid and took out a leather-bound book, the dark front cover bearing no title or markings of any kind. She put it in Kavanaugh’s outstretched hand.

Honoré moved up beside him, looking over his shoulder. He flipped open the cover. A glass tube was affixed to the inside by a metal clamp. Soldered metal and wax served as a seal. Kavanaugh took it out of the clamp and held it up to the light, tilting it to and fro. The substance inside the vial slid slowly back and forth.

Mouzi gazed at it with narrowed eyes. “Looks like phlegm or somethin’.”

Honoré thumbed through the plastic-sleeved pages. “This appears to be part of the journal Aubrey showed me on the plane. There’s a lot more here than he led me to believe.”

“I’m sitting right here,” stated Belleau diffidently. “You might ask me.”

“Fine,” Honoré said. “What’s the difference between the journal I looked at on our way here and this one?”

Staring straight ahead, Belleau said, “What you have in your hands is the complete journal. Those are the original pages of the lost journal of Charles Darwin, protected within sheets of heat-sealed Mylar, as well as the suppressed log of the HMS
Beagle
as it pertains to the ship’s visit here in May of 1836. It also contains the original drawings by Conrad Martens, the
Beagle’s
draftsman. There are also notations written by the
Beagle’s
physician, Dr. Jacque Belleau.”

Kavanaugh cast him an inquisitive glance. “A relative?”

“My great-great-grandfather.”

Mouzi stood up to peer around Kavanaugh’s shoulder as he turned the pages. The yellowed parchment filled with florid, cursive penmanship looked exceptionally difficult to read. Honoré removed her wire-rimmed glasses from a shirt pocket and slipped them on.

Several of the pages held detailed drawings of Big Tamtung as seen from the sea, rendered in charcoal and ink. The quality of the work was very impressive.

“Doesn’t look like the place has changed all that much since 1836,” Kavanaugh commented.

“There’s no reason why it should,” replied Honoré. “No real estate developers have ever come calling, unless you count yourself and Captain Crowe.”

Kavanaugh lifted a page by a corner, turned it over—and froze. All the moisture in his mouth dried up, leaving a foul tang on his tongue.

Inscribed on the page in ink was the head and shoulders portrait of a creature whose face consisted mainly of two huge eyes set in a round, hairless head. The skull resembled an inverted teardrop in shape, terminating in a long pointed chin and prominent underjaw. The huge eyes looked as big in proportion to its face as those of a tarsier’s.

The nose consisted of a pair of flaring slits, and the pronounced maxillary bones gave the impression of a blunt muzzle. The wide, lipless mouth seemed stretched in a faint smile of superiority. A complex pattern of scalework pebbled the creature’s long, tendon-wrapped neck.

“That’s unique,” murmured Honoré. “I’d almost say that it’s an image of a Troodontid except that the cranium is too large and the snout isn’t as pronounced as the fossil reconstructions.”

Belleau snorted out a contemptuous laugh. “It’s not a Troodon.”

Honoré glared at him over the rims of her spectacles. “No?” she challenged. “Then what species is it?”

Shifting in his seat, Belleau stared levelly at Honoré. “Legends from all cultures have called it a Naga, a Sheti, the Anunnaki and even the Sarpa. But we’ve been calling it an anthroposaur.”

“A what?” Honoré demanded.

“You heard me.”

“Oh, I heard you—I just couldn’t believe my ears. An anthroposaur? That’s what you call it?”

Quietly, Kavanaugh stated, “Her, not it.”

A sudden splashing from astern and a hoarse cry from McQuay made them sit bolt upright in their chairs, then they leaped to their feet.

McQuay cringed away from the rear of the boat, falling to the deck as he fumbled with his camera. “Something is in the fucking water! Something huge!”

Kavanaugh and Honoré stood at the gunwales, gazing at the water swirling with sudden movement, wavelets forming and cresting. A head resembling that of a crocodile broke the surface less than six feet away. The wedge-shaped head rose at the end of a short neck.

Its jaws were gigantic, nearly eight feet long, with thick masses of scale-coated muscle swelling at the sides of its triangular head. Its armor-plated hide was of a repellant gray-brown hue. Only dimly seen amid the churning waves created by its gargantuan body, the creature looked to measure out to at least fifty feet from its snout to the tip of its lashing tail.

The cold yellow eyes beneath knobbed ridges stared at them in silent surmise. It uttered a deep exhalation like a whale blowing, spray flying from dilated nostrils. The head and body sank beneath the surface, leaving only spreading ripples and a few bubbles to commemorate its appearance.

Clutching his camera, McQuay gasped, “I gotta change my pants! I gotta change my pants!”

Honoré declared matter-of-factly, “It looked like a Sarcosuchus imperator, a crocodilian…none of the fossil finds have been larger than ten meters in length.”

Although she spoke with no discernable emotion in her voice, Kavanaugh noted her pronounced pallor and the way her hands trembled. “Maybe you’d better sit back down.”

Apprehensively, Belleau asked, “Have you ever seen that thing before, Kavanaugh?”

“If I did, I probably thought it just a regular old crocodile. What about you, Gus?”

Still at the cruiser’s wheel, Crowe shook his head. “Same here.”

Mouzi’s forehead creased with lines of worry. “Can it capsize us?”

Kavanaugh forced a condescending chuckle. “Of course not.” He cast a glance at Crowe. “Of course not…right?”

“I wouldn’t think so, but then I didn’t think a goddamn pterodactyl could crash a helicopter, either.”

“You like to fill a friend’s day with sunshine, don’t you?” Kavanaugh said sarcastically.

The
Alley Oop
entered a stretch of turbulent rapids and she picked up speed as the prow clove through foaming white water. Crowe piloted the boat through the central cascade of the current, avoiding the largest rocks. Spray drenched them, but since the river water was only slightly cooler than the air temperature, the relief was minimal.

The Thunder Lizard River widened and the current quickened as it rushed over half submerged rocks. Brown and white foam splashed over the boat’s prow. Kavanaugh returned the journal to the metal box, much to Belleau’s obvious relief. Brightly plumaged birds, disturbed in their perches among the great fronded trees overhanging the river, squawked angrily.

Honoré peered upward as they took wing and exclaimed, “Hey, those are archaeopteryx!”

“Yep,” Kavanaugh said shortly. “You didn’t think Huang Luan was the only one, did you?”

When the current slowed, Crowe notched back on the throttle. “If we’re going to meet the
Keying
halfway, we need to find a good spot to wait for her.”

“You really intend to stage an ambush?” Belleau asked skeptically.

“Less of an ambush and more of a hostage exchange,” replied Kavanaugh. “Whichever way it plays out, you’ll have a front row center seat.”

Belleau shook his head as if thoroughly disgusted. “You arrogant Yanks with your fixations on shootouts and bushwhacks.”

Crowe turned away from the cruiser’s wheel. “If it disturbs you so much, we can dump your sorry mini-ass overboard right here. Then you can examine that prehistoric croc from the inside.”

Belleau’s lips tightened but he said nothing more.

Kavanaugh joined Crowe forward and they studied both banks of the river. “We can assume if Jimmy Cao hijacked the
Keying
,” Kavanaugh commented, “that he has considerable firepower.”

Crowe nodded. “The Ghost Shadows probably took considerable casualties, too.”

“And,” Mouzi put in cheerfully, coming to stand between them, “they don’t know that we know they’re on their way. So we have the edge with the element of surprise.”

Crowe’s lips quirked in a smile beneath his mustache. “That’s always the best kind of edge to have.”

“We still ought to have something resembling a plan,” said Kavanaugh.

“I’m working on it,” replied Crowe. “I’m a little out of practice.”

On the right-hand bank, a copse of pagke trees rose on high roots like towers elevated by stilts. The last time Crowe had piloted past them, the river had been at flood stage and the roots were submerged. He examined the trees carefully, then pointed. “That one looks good.”

He spun the wheel and held the cruiser’s stern straight for an opening between a pair of roots arched like a cathedral doorway. He reversed the props, backing water into bubbling foam. Expertly, he eased the boat between the roots, the hull scraping the wood.

He keyed off the engine and as the boat bobbed in the shallow water, Mouzi and Honoré cut broad leaves from overhanging branches, using them to camouflage the brightly colored hull. Other than the sounds of cutting and snapping, the jungle was quiet. The late afternoon mist veiled the river and the marsh reeds on the far shore.

At a sudden startled cry from McQuay, Kavanaugh turned to see gray, translucent lumps of jelly pulsating on the right side of his bandaged head. Another leech had set its sucker into the base of his blood-crusted neck.

Belleau and Oakshott leaned away from the cameraman. “The ruttin’ things dropped down from the tree!” blurted the big Englishman.

“They’re attracted to the blood,” Kavanaugh said calmly, picking up Mouzi’s butterfly knife.

“Get ‘em off, get ‘em off!”, shrilled McQuay, clawing at his head.

“Settle down,” Kavanaugh said, using the edge of the knife to carefully scrape the leeches away and fling them overboard.

“How the hell do they smell blood?” demanded McQuay. “The fucking things don’t even have noses!”

Kavanaugh didn’t tell him that denizens of jungles the world over shared a supernatural awareness of the presence of blood. Leeches were no exception. Nor were crocodiles, prehistoric or otherwise.

Honoré examined McQuay’s bandage and said, “You started yourself bleeding again. The dressing should be changed.”

McQuay said, “I’m all right for the time being.”

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

When he shook his head, she turned toward Belleau and Oakshott. “What about you two? Do you want something to eat?”

Belleau said stiffly, “No thank you.”

Oakshott said, “I wouldn’t mind some of that jerked beef.”

“I’ll feed him,” Mouzi volunteered, taking her butterfly knife from Kavanaugh. “But if you get fresh with me, Jumbo, I’ll fix it so you can’t eat anything ever again.”

Oakshott  said, “There is no reason to be afraid of me.”

“Yes, there is,” Mouzi shot back. “I’ve seen you fight, in Bangkok. You play dirty.”

Kavanaugh dropped into a seat, adjusting the Bren Ten in his waistband. “Now we wait.”

Honoré sat down opposite him and reached for the metal case containing the journal. She opened the lid and removed the book, flipping to the page containing the drawing of the creature Belleau called an anthroposaur. “Why did you say this entity was a female?”

Kavanaugh opened his mouth to answer and then shrugged. “I don’t know. Whatever I tell you won’t sound very scientific.”

“That’s for sure,” said Crowe, leaning against the console. “We always figured you were just out of your head from blood loss and shock.”

“Or just out of your head, period,” Mouzi put in with an insouciant grin.

Honoré thumbed through the pages. She paused at one, eyes flitting back and forth across the lines of handwriting. “According to this entry, Charles Darwin himself saw something very much like the bipedal anthroposaur creature, standing on the beach in the company of a theropod.”

Belleau said, “Darwin claimed that a crewman was attacked by a Deinonychus and would have been killed except a bird’s song seemed to distract it, drive it away.”

Kavanaugh swiveled his chair to stare at the little man. “Bird song?”

Belleau smiled at him mockingly. “Does that sound familiar?”

Instead of answering the question, Kavanaugh glanced toward Mouzi who tentatively held out a chunk of beef jerky to Oakshott’s lips. “Careful, honey. Don’t let him bite you.”

Belleau snickered. “If he did, I would imagine poor Oakshott would have to undergo a regimen of antibiotic shots.”

Whirling on him, Mouzi put the tip of her knife against the hinge of his jaw. “What’s that supposed to mean, Gollum?”

Oakshott started to push himself to his feet but Crowe said loudly, “Settle down, girls.”

“Apologize to the young lady,” Kavanaugh suggested.

Belleau didn’t speak or even move. Only when Mouzi withdrew the knife from his throat did he say quietly, “I’m sorry, Miss. My remark was not only uncalled for but inappropriate and disrespectful. I hope you will forgive me. I used to be a decent fellow.”

Mouzi nodded curtly and returned her attention to Oakshott. She shoved a piece of dried meat the size of a matchbook cover into his mouth. “Let your saliva soften it before you swallow it,” she instructed, “or you’ll choke. I’ll be damned if I’ll perform the Heimlich maneuver on you.”

Honoré flipped back to the illustration of the anthroposaur. “You were saying, Jack?”

Kavanaugh dry-scrubbed his hair, sighed, and said, “Cranston, Jessup and Shah Nikwan wanted dinosaur trophies, but they didn’t want to risk their lives to get them. So they chose snufflegalumpus—the Hadrosaurs, which if any dinosaur can be compared to cattle, those are in it. So one afternoon, I took them up in the chopper and we landed about eighteen miles thataway.”

He jerked a thumb over his right shoulder. “Near the tributary of this river, not much more than a stream.”

“You said in your deposition that you didn’t know they had guns aboard.”

Flatly, he said, “I knew they did, even though I didn’t see them until we landed and they all pulled out their custom .600 Nitro Express rifles. Elephant guns. I always carried a Winchester 30.30 whenever I went in-country. My old man’s rifle.”

Kavanaugh paused, his eyes growing vacant as if a veil passed before them. “It was about half an hour before sunset. The herd came out to drink at the stream. While I led the men over, I kept feeling like we were being watched, sized up, but not like by an animal. I don’t know how to explain it but—I sensed intelligence.”

Honoré’s eyes widened. “A human intelligence?”

“Human level. I don’t know about human.”

“Are you sure you didn’t imagine it?”

Kavanaugh smiled bleakly. “I’m not a very imaginative man, so I don’t usually imagine much of anything. I used to be a fighter pilot in the Air Force and you don’t get to be one of those if your mind has a tendency to play tricks.”

She nodded in understanding. “Go on.”

“By the time we got to where the snufflegalumpus—the Hadrosaurs—had gathered, it was just about sunset. I had the feeling that if we just turned around and left without firing a shot, everything would be fine. When I told Jessup, Cranston and Shah Nikwan that the deal was off, that we were going back, they looked at me like I was a lunatic. They threatened to ruin me, to ruin Gus and Mouzi if I interfered with them. So, because they’d paid me thirty grand, I went along with them, following the curve of the stream.

“Jessup was the youngest of the three idiots—about fifty—and the most impatient. He drew a bead on a Hadrosaur with a calf and fired. The animal went down. Then he killed the calf. The other animals got spooked and went running crazy, bawling and stampeding all over hell and gone. Nikwan and Cranston just opened up on them like they were in a carnival midway shooting gallery.”

Kavanaugh paused, took a breath, held it then said, “Not to put too fine a spin on it, but they just shot the shit out the herd—adults, males, females, calves, wounding them, crippling them, maiming them. It was a slaughter. Those big bullets tore holes the size of my fist right through them…the way they screamed—

Kavanaugh broke off, squeezing his eyes shut, lifting his hands as if to cover his ears. Belleau, with a surprising degree of civility said, “Not exactly sportsmen, I take it.”

Opening his eyes, Kavanaugh shook his head. “Not unless you count the old-time buffalo hunters shooting from the backs of moving trains as sportsmen. Anyway, I can’t begin to describe what happened next because even after all this time, it’s still not clear. It was like being attacked by jumping shadows made of daggers or spears. They came out of the sunset, out of the underbrush, out of everywhere, all claws and fangs and shrieks.”

“They?” inquired Honoré. “The Deinonychus pack?”

He nodded. “I’d only seen them from a distance before. Now they were all over the place, leaping, running, tearing. They moved faster than anything I’d ever seen, as vicious and as ruthless as monsters out of a horror movie. I managed to get off a couple of shots with my Winchester, then I was knocked down and ripped open. I had a knife and I fought back as best as I could. I killed one of them.”