Calculations showed that the earth was as dark as night for months afterward, the air filled with choking soot and dust, the rain so acidic it dissolved rocks. The asteroid impact had created perfect conditions for the massive spread
of disease among the survivors-the landscape would have been littered with dead and dying animals, the rest starving, burned, injured, their immune systems in collapse. Under those conditions, a devastating epidemic wouldn't just be possible ... it would be inevitable. The asteroid killed off most of the dinosaurs; and the plagues that followed killed the rest.
There was another twist to her theory-a big twist. Melodic was still undecided if this twist was too crazy to put in her paper, if it was a product of going fifty hours without sleep. The twist was this: the Venus particle did not look like a terrestrial form of life. It looked, well, alien.
Maybe, just maybe, the Venus particle had arrived with the asteroid.
11
MASAGO HOPPED OUT of the chopper, the whistle of the rotor blades powering
down above his head. He cleared the landing area and looked around the badlands. The Predator drone indicated that the targets had descended from the rim of the plateau above them into this unnamed valley. The chopper had landed in the middle of the valley, in the center point toward which the four men in the perimeter would draw.
Hitt came up beside him, followed by the last two men in the chalk, Pfc. Gowicki and Hirsch. The terrain was difficult and complex, but their targets were more or less trapped in the valley, cut off by cliffs. The four men had been dropped at the only four exit points, and they were tightening the noose. Now all that remained was for Hitt and his two men to go in and flush them out. There was no chance-none-that they could escape.
The chalk leader with his two specialists had already offloaded and shouldered their kits and were now working their GPSs, while murmuring on the chalk frequency to the team members who were executing the pincerlike movement.
'Move out,' said Masago.
Hitt nodded and on his hand signal the men moved to adopt a triangular formation, acute point trailing. Masago, as planned, stayed one hundred yards in the rear, carrying his usual sidearm, a Beretta 8000 Cougar, in a shoulder holster. Pfc. Gowicki and Sgt. Hitt took point, Hirsch the 'drag,' and together they moved cautiously up a dry wash toward the area to which the three had fled, according to the drone. Masago scanned the sandy floor for footprints, but could see none. It was only a matter of time.
They moved up the wash until it broadened out and divided. Here they
paused while Hitt climbed and reconnoitered. A few minutes later he came down with a short shake of his head. Another gesture, and they continued on toward a row of mushroomlike standing rocks.
Not a word was spoken. They spread out as the wash leveled and advanced toward the curious forest of standing stones, soon entering the shady confines.
'Got a print here,' came the murmured voice of Gowicki. 'And another.'
Masago knelt. The prints were fresh, made by a man in sandals-the monk. He cast about and found the others-the woman's, a smaller size, six to seven, and the man's, size eleven and a half or twelve. They'd been moving fast. They knew they were being hunted.
Hitt led them deeper into the shadowy stones. Masago was virtually certain they would not be ambushed: it would be suicide, trying to take down a patrol of D-boys with a few handguns, if they even had any. They would go to ground . . . and they would be ferreted out. The first stage of the op would soon be over.
They came to where several enormous rocks leaned together, necessitating a crawl through a gap underneath. Hitt waited while Masago caught up. He pointed to some fresh scuff marks in the hard sand. They had come through, and not long ago at all.
Masago nodded.
Hitt went first, dropping to his hands and knees. Masago went last. As he rose, he saw how the area boxed up, with flaming cliffs mounting like staircases on all sides. He took a moment to check his map. Their quarry seemed to have walked into a box canyon, a dead end, from which not even they could climb out.
Masago murmured into his headset: 'I need them alive until I get the information I need.'
12
'WAIT HERE,' FORD said. 'I'm going up there to take a look.'
Tom and Sally rested while Ford scrabbled up a boulder and reconnoitered. They were in the middle of badlands with hoodoo rocks all around. They had seen the helicopter land less than a mile away in the middle of the valley, and Ford felt sure their trail had been picked up. He also knew, from his CIA training, that they must have dropped men at potential exit points, who would be moving in to cut them off. Their only chance was to find an unexpected route out of the canyon-or a hiding place.
He looked toward the far end of the canyon. A series of ashy, barren hills gave way to yet another cluster of bald rocks, like serried ranks of cowled monks. Several miles beyond loomed a series of vermilion cliffs, like stairs leading to another plateau. If they could slip out that way, they might just make it, but it didn't look promising. He glanced down at Sally and Tom. They were both weakening fast and he didn't think they would be able to continue much longer. They had to find a place to go to ground. He climbed down. 'See anything?' Tom asked.
Ford shook his head, not wanting to get into it. 'Let's keep going.' They continued up the wash and into the forest of standing rocks. An oppressive heat had collected in the enclosed space. They continued along, scrambling over fallen rocks and squeezing between sandstone boulders, sometimes in sun, sometimes in shade, driving as deeply into the mass of standing rocks as they could. Sometimes the rocks were leaning so close together that they had to crawl on their hands and knees to get through.
Just as suddenly, they came out against the face of a cliff, which curved back on both sides, forming a kind of coliseum. At the far end, about fifty feet above the canyon bottom, a long-gone watercourse had hollowed out a cave. Ford could see a faint series of dimples in the rock, depressions where ancient Anasazi Indians had pecked out a hand-and-toe trail up into the cave.
'Let's check that out,' Ford said.
They walked to the base of the cliff, and Tom examined the ancient hand-and-toe trail. He glanced up.
'They'll find us in there, Wyman,' Tom said.
'There's no other option. The cave may go somewhere. And it's possible they may miss us, if we erase our footprints down here.'
Tom turned to Sally. 'What do you think?'
'I'm beyond thinking.'
'Let's do it.'
After erasing their prints as best they could, they climbed the hand-and-toe trail. It was not a difficult climb and in a few minutes they were in the cave. Ford paused, breathing hard. He himself was getting toward the end of his own endurance, and he wondered how Sally and Tom could even walk. They both looked like hell. For better or worse, this cave was the end of the road.
The cave was shaped like a soaring cathedral dome, with a floor of smooth sand and sandstone walls that curved upward. The indirect sunlight from outside filled it with a reddish glow, and it smelled like dust and time. An enormous boulder sat at the far end of the cave, apparently having fallen from the ceiling eons ago, worn and rounded off by the action of water coming through a web of crevasses in the roof.
As they walked deeper into the cave, they disturbed a colony of nesting canyon swallows, which flitted about in the shadows above, making shrill cries.
'The cave may continue on behind that large rock,' said Ford.
They walked toward the back of the cave, approaching the displaced rock.
'Look,' said Tom. 'Footprints.'
The sand had been carefully brushed, but in the gap between the rock and the side of the cave they could see marks from a chevron-lugged hiking boot.
They squeezed through the gap and entered the back part of the cave, behind the massive boulder.
Ford turned and there it was, the great T. Rex, its jaws and forelimb, emerging from the rock. No one spoke. It was an extraordinary sight. The beast looked as if it was engaged in a fierce struggle to break out, to tear itself free from the tomb of stone. The dinosaur lay on its side, but the tilt of the fallen rock had set it almost upright, giving it a further grotesque illusion of life. Looking at it, Ford could almost feel the great beast's last raging
