Ferns as tall as pine trees loomed in the sweltering heat, and dragonflies the size of hawks flitted among the lush greenery, hunting mosquitoes that could pass for skinny sparrows. This was primeval, primordial, hot, wet, and dank in ways far beyond a tropical rain forest.
The wide-base Humvee hit a dip and a mound of humus that might grow up to be part of an oil field in twenty or thirty million years. The front wheel on the passenger side bounced into the air and clawed at nothing, but the other three studded tires had enough traction to clear the decaying lump before dropping the vehicle back on all fours.
Jay's teeth clacked together, hard.
Belted into the passenger seat, Saji said, 'Damn, Jay! You want me to drive?'
Jay gunned the powerful engine. The Humvee lurched forward. 'Like you could do any better.'
'I don't see how I could do any worse. Unless maybe I drove off a cliff.'
The damp ground leveled out a little, and the tire studs dug in and pushed the wide-track along a little faster. 'It's not as easy as it looks.'
'Well, the way you do it,
He was trying to come up with a killer comeback when he spotted the smashed ferns. He slowed, crept a few feet closer to the downed plants, then pulled the UV over and put it into neutral. He glanced at Saji. 'You can stay here while I go look. Stand by the gun, if you want.'
There was a.50-caliber water-cooled belt-fed Browning machine gun mounted on the uncovered rear deck of the Humvee. Clipped to the deck was also a shoulder-operated, laser-guided antitank rocket launcher and half a dozen rockets. Jay had considered bringing rifles and shotguns but decided not to bother. Anything smaller wouldn't do the job. He would have preferred a tank and spent-uranium armor-piercing rounds to shoot from it, but, relatively speaking, the rocket launcher was the biggest thing he could carry in this scenario. Anything more powerful simply wouldn't work. Unfortunately.
'I'd rather not,' Saji said. She wore a set of bush khaki shorts and shirt, with Nike waffle-stompers and knee socks rolled down. She was gorgeous in the tropical clothing. He wondered what she looked like without any clothes.
'All right. Slide over and take the wheel, then. Leave the engine running. We might need to take off in a hurry.'
He alighted and walked toward the smashed fern boles over fairly springy ground covered with what looked like green moss.
He could hardly have missed the footprint: three toes and a pad, no heel. A little water had seeped into the bottom of the print, which was big enough that, if you completely filled it, you could sit down and take a bath.
Jay swallowed dryly. Jesus, look at that thing. He followed the direction of the toes. Twenty-five feet ahead was another footprint, and there was a definite path through the brush ahead of that, as if somebody had driven a big diesel tractor-trailer through the forest, knocking down anything that got in its way.
Jay stared at the trail of destruction. It wasn't a truck. Nope. It was Rex Regum, the king of kings, Carnosaur Supreme, the ultimate predator. Made your average tyrannosaur look like somebody's pet iguana. The thing could run from one end of a football field to the other end in a dozen steps. Probably was fifty feet tall, not even counting the tail.
Following its trail wasn't gonna be a problem. But like a dog chasing a car, the question was, what would he do if he caught it? That machine gun might not be enough to accomplish the job, and if he got close enough to use the rocket launcher and he missed, he wasn't gonna get a second shot.
He turned and headed back to the car. 'Move over,' he told Saji.
'Doesn't look as if cutting sign is going to be a problem,' she said.
'No, I don't think so.' He put the car in gear and started following the monster's trail.
Since his brain had more or less started working again, albeit somewhat slowly, Jay had turned the problem over and over, trying to come up with an explanation — any explanation — as to how such a brute could exist. What could have created it? And with technology as he knew it, there wasn't any answer. But as they drove down the VR path looking for the beast, he thought again about the old Sherlock Holmes dictum about eliminating the impossible and dealing with the unlikely remainder. Nothing he knew about had this kind of power, and he knew a lot about computers. But, given that the thing existed, what could be responsible? What would it take? There weren't too many possibilities, only one that made any sense, and it was theoretical; the hardware didn't exist to make it work.
But what if, by some miracle, it
'Better go left here,' Saji said.
'Really? I thought I'd just drive into that big tree instead.'
'Just trying to be helpful.'
He shook his head. 'Sorry. I'm distracted.'
'Something on your mind?'
'A theory.'
'Want to bounce it off me?'
Jay looked at the swatch of destruction that ran through the VR jungle. He had to catch up with Godzilla's nasty brother, but the more he knew about him, the better. Anything to clarify his thoughts was good. 'Sure,' he said.
His lordship had gone off to his club, escorts fore and aft, and Peel was in the little church, on the telephone, currently on hold. Outside, along with Peel's regular crew, the man from Chetsnya waited in a rental car, watching for potential enemies. He should be safe here, Peel figured, but he couldn't bet his life on that.
What was he going to do about the bloody scientist? Should he kill him now?
Naturally, the first thing Peel had tried to do when he started worrying that maybe Bascomb-Coombs wasn't on the level with him was to try to withdraw the million from the Indonesian bank. Had he been able to transfer the money into England, he would have felt a lot better, and that would also have gone a long way toward assuaging his fears. Unfortunately, all kinds of electronic transactions had been disrupted, courtesy of Bascomb-Coombs's infernal computer. All Peel had been able to get from his computer log-in was a 'transfer pending' notation, awaiting some final clearance that never happened.
Given the computer problems worldwide, this could have been a legitimate response. It was possible.
But it was also possible that this might be a clever ruse by Bascomb-Coombs, one easily hidden by the chaos he had himself caused. By the time things cleared up, Peel might be dead.
'This is Vice-President Imandihardjo,' came a man's voice. 'How may I help you?'
Peel turned his attention back to the phone. At last, the bloody Indonesian banker. 'Right. I need to check the status of my account.'
He could almost hear the man frown. Check an account? For this you needed a vice-president? 'Your name and password, please?'
Peel gave it to him.
There was a long pause. 'Ah, Mr. Bellsong, yes, I see it.'
Peel shook his head. Bellsong. The song of a bell, and thus Bascomb-Coombs's little joke:
'You have my account information?'
'Yes, sir, I certainly do.' The VP's voice shifted; it now had that obsequious tone that big chunks of money sometimes brought from those who weren't rich. This was good.
'I should like to transfer part of the account into another bank.'
'Certainly, certainly. If you will give me the particulars?'
Peel rattled off his English account number and password. He would move it, and once he was sure it had cleared, he would breathe a lot easier.
A moment later, the banker said, 'Ah, Mr. Bellsong, there appears to be a problem with our system.'
'Really?'
'Yes, sir, I'm sure it's nothing major, but I'm afraid I can't access anything but the balance. The computer won't let me make a transfer.'
