Z. Raptor (13 page)

“What the—?” Pete rounded on Adam.

“Agent Chen, that's Loner!” The words spilled from Adam's mouth in a frantic rush. “The raptor in the video who helped Lisa and the others. Don't hurt him—”

“Soft-skins!”

The unearthly shriek heralded the coming of more Brutes in pursuit of Chen's group. As they came crashing out of the foliage, Pete shot a bolt into the quillcovered chest of the one closest. It yanked out the arrow shaft as though it were a splinter and bared its hideous teeth—just as Chen let rip again with the shotgun. The monster's open mouth seemed to explode in a hail of shattered teeth, but even as it screamed its pain, the Brute behind it dived forward. It was smaller than the others, with a hunched, misshapen back.

But it was no less vicious.

It jarred the crossbow from Pete's sweaty grip with a spray of acid and then the sickle claw on its hind leg swung up and cut him almost in half with a single slash. As Pete's lifeless body thudded to the ground, Chen screamed and fired two more shots at the hunchback, driving it back.

Adam was almost sick. He turned, trying to hide his eyes from the horror—and saw Loner staggering closer to the group. The Vel's face was a mass of weeping blisters. He pushed past Adam and stood in front of him protectively, squaring up to the Brutes.

“Wait!” Loner rasped.

The two Brutes hesitated.

“They'll kill him,” whispered Lisa as Harm's dark eyes opened—and quickly clouded. She put a hand over her lips, stifled a gasp as the Brute with the bloodied mouth took a step closer to Loner.

“It is him,” the creature spat.

“This is the wrong way. The wrong way.” Loner tried to stand tall, and the gashes in his blood-caked chest reopened. “I know you want these . . . people as bait. Bait to lure out Vels so you can attack. Kill. But my plan is better. Listen to me.”

“Where are our brother and sister?” Broken Teeth demanded. “You fought with them.”

“I had to stop them,” hissed Loner. “But I spared their lives. They will heal.”

The Brute's jaws swung open. “You will not—”

Loner shook his head. “Hurt us, and I will not help you destroy the Vels.”

“You are a Vel,” snarled Broken Teeth. “Not of our pack.”

“Not of any pack,” said Loner hoarsely. “The two I stopped . . . they were not clever like you. I knew they would not listen. Only a born leader is smart enough to listen.”

Broken Teeth said nothing, glaring at Loner.

“Only a leader would understand my plan.”

He's buying it,
Adam realized, holding his breath.
Loner's buttering him up, and he's buying it
.

“Wait.” The squat, hunchbacked Brute who'd killed Pete pushed in front of its gap-toothed brother. “You,” it whispered, cruel eyes fixed on Harmony. “You.”

Adam swallowed hard. Was the Brute going to attack?
“Perfect, sweet. Yes. You are mine,” it hissed.
Harm's breath came out in a whimper. “No.”

“You are mine.” Hunchback nodded. “Sweet. Perfect. You—”

“Stop it!” Harm shouted as Lisa took hold of her hand. “Stop it!”

Broken Teeth shoved the hunchbacked raptor back into the bushes, one clawed hand raised in warning. Then he turned back to Loner expectantly.

“These soft-skins you were chasing have no scent,” Loner went on, jerking his head toward Chen and Stone. “I know why.”

Stone glanced at Chen. “How can it know?” he breathed.

“Spare us, and I will share that secret with your group,” Loner went on. “Then the Vels will not scent you. You can kill with no warning.”

“Warning,” echoed Chen, quietly looking around at each of his group, opening his hand behind his back. Adam saw with a jolt that the man held a grenade in his palm. A metal pin fell silently to the grass at his feet.

Adam felt panic rising, saw it mirrored in Harm's eyes; she'd seen the pin too. What was Chen doing?

As Loner took another cautious step toward Broken Teeth, lowering his head, the hunchback grew agitated. “Kneel,” it rasped, pointing its claws at Loner. “Kneel low.”

Loner reacted as though struck in his black-burned face.

“Kneel low!”

“Quiet,” Broken Teeth snarled.

“Back!” bellowed Chen. The world seemed to slow as he lobbed his grenade at Broken Teeth's legs.

Then the grenade went off low with a blast of roiling flame and a boom so deep it punched Adam's guts and flung his hearing into a ringing void. The shock wave threw him to the ground. The raptors, engulfed in smoke and flame, vanished from sight.

Loner included.

Lost in shock, Adam felt someone grab his arm. Lisa. Even with her burned legs, she had the strength and the sense to guide him. His ears ached and his balance was shot as she hauled him along, limping with pain.

The whole ragged bunch of them scrambled into the cover of the forest, breaking through the thick foliage, leaving the bone pit far behind. But Adam knew he could never outrun the image of the grenade going off so close to Loner, engulfing him in the fireball.

Slowly, Adam's hearing returned, sound rattling loosely as though distorting through speakers. He could hear Harm, who was sprawled on the ground, weeping. “You killed Loner! He looked out for us, he helped us.”

“We'd all be dead without him,” David stormed.

“You'd all be dead back there with him if I hadn't done something,” Chen shot back. “You saw what those things did to Pete.”

“Maybe—maybe Loner's all right?” Lisa said.

“He was beat up pretty bad before.” Adam leaned hard against a tree, pushing back wet hair from his forehead. “But then, Geneflow breed their wildlife tough as tanks. He could've made it.”

“Oh, yeah,” Chen said impatiently. “I was forgetting you're the dinosaur whisperer.”

Adam glared at him. “That's why you kidnapped me, wasn't it? Because of what I know?”

“Well, I know we all need to rest up and shut up for a bit,” said Stone, examining Lisa's blistered legs. He pulled a little bottle from the battered medicine bag on the ground. “I have some iodine here. I'm afraid it'll sting real bad. . . .”

Lisa threw back her head and gasped through gritted teeth as the antiseptic made good on his promise.

Adam noticed some cuts on Harm's face.

“Harm needs some too,” he said.

She shook her head and winced. “I'm fine,” she insisted.

“You're not,” said Stone. “Those monsters will smell the bleeding a mile away.”

Stone passed Harm the bottle. “Better get the spray, John. If any of those creatures survived the blast, we all need to be invisible.”

“Invisible—if only,” said Lisa. “I honestly thought we were dead this time.”

“Me too.” Harm winced as she dabbed the iodine on her wound. “And now . . . with no Loner watching out for us—”

“Look. And listen.” Chen pulled a canister from a Ziploc bag. “But don't bother sniffing. This is the antistink spray Geneflow uses to keep its staff off the dino-radar. Deadens your scent to the wildlife's smell receptors or something.”

Lisa stared. “You mean we really can hide from the raptors?”

“Those Brutes back there seemed to have your scent in their nostrils well enough,” David observed.

Stone shook his head. “They didn't smell us, they saw us,” he explained.

“That canister,” Adam said. “How'd you get hold of it?”

“Three cans were recovered from the Geneflow base at Fort Ponil you know so well,” Chen told him. “Forensics even salvaged some intel on its development.” He shrugged. “I tried it out with some of the guys, hunting deer in the Rockies. The stuff works.” He sprayed Adam, who coughed as the aerosol engulfed him. “I don't know how much is enough or how much we've got left. Had another canister, but it got lost in the water.” He shook his head bitterly. “I felt so sure this stuff would give us the drop on the wildlife.”

“You never change, John,” Stone said, not unkindly. “When did your hunches ever work out? You always did spend a second thinking and a week feeling sorry.”

Adam watched as Chen sprayed Harmony from top to toe. “What brought you here?”

“The tide and a strong front crawl,” Chen replied. “Lucky for the doc here, he clung on to a life vest in the water. It helped him wash up onshore along with his bag.”

Stone snorted. “I've been washed up for years.”

“This isn't a joke. You know exactly what I mean.” Adam could hear his voice getting high and squeaky, fought to bring it down lower. “You've kidnapped me and my dad, you've got your own friends killed, and I just need to know—”

“Why I came here.” Chen moved on to spray Lisa, who screwed up her eyes and tried not to choke. “Well, it's simple. I need to talk to Josephs.”

“Why?” Adam demanded.

Chen shook his head. “Remember I told you that there was someone in the FBI I knew who had taken bribes from Josephs?” He sighed. “Well, that someone . . . was me.”

Adam's stomach turned a cartwheel. He stared at Chen in uncomprehending disappointment. “You . . . you're working for her?”

David leaned forward angrily and gripped Chen's wrist. “What is this?”

Chen shook him off and looked at Adam, and his eyes seemed haunted. “Look, I made a mistake a while back, all right? That's what this is all about.” He pushed the spray can into David's hands and sat on the grass, hugging his knees. “Almost three years ago, I was investigating an industrial espionage case. High-tech secrets going missing. Josephs's name was in the frame, and my team was that close to nailing her. She found out. . . .” He shrugged. “And so she bought me off.”

“You took her money? Let her get away with it?” Adam realized that he and Harm, David and Lisa were fixing Chen with the same look of disgust.

“It was so much cash.” Chen was gently rocking, resting his head on his knees. “And I thought Josephs was stealing the info just to sell it, you know?”

“Oh, that's okay, then,” said David sarcastically.

“Yes, because every one of you chose the right thing to do your whole life long, didn't you?” Chen shook his head, quieter now. “You know what I'm saying—it's all fat-cat companies and their bottom lines, right? No one gets hurt, no one dies. That's what I thought, anyway.” He looked down at his feet. “Then I saw what had gone down at Fort Ponil. The carnage there. The corpses. That crazy stuff we dug up about . . . about dinosaurs. And when I found Josephs's name attached . . .” He looked up at Adam, and finally it was as if there were someone alive and feeling behind those dark eyes. “I needed to know exactly what it was I had helped her make possible. Find out how big this is. How responsible I am.”

“And to see if you could cover up your involvement,” Adam said, his loathing for Chen growing by the moment. “That's why you didn't go to your bosses. Why you dragged my dad out here in secret as your science adviser, why you brought no proper backup.”

Harm was giving Chen looks hard enough to bludgeon. “You helped this whole nightmare to happen!”

“No. But I did nothing to stop it,” Chen conceded calmly. “And I know now that I should've. I didn't want anyone to die. Believe me, if I could do the whole thing over again—”

“I do believe him,” Lisa said. She looked at David and Harm. “I bet he came here for the same reason the people we loved came here from death row. For a shot at redemption. To start over.”

I'm sure you'd like to believe that,
thought Adam.
But if those prisoners were on death row to start with, they could've come here just because they had nothing to lose
.

“Death row?” Chen looked at Lisa. “Like your husband?”

“He wasn't killed in jail like you thought,” Adam cut in. “Him and a whole lot of others like him got taken here by Geneflow—”

“And they were fed to the raptors,” said Harm. “End of story.”

Stone looked at David, his face haunted. “Why, for pity's sake?”

No one had an answer.

Chen rubbed his temples. “Well, you can all hate me as much as you want. But at least I'm bringing the cavalry.”

Adam frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, the
Pahalu
will be sailing back to Hawaii by tomorrow morning.”

“What?” Adam felt shaken. “But Dad wouldn't leave me.”

“And my guys out there wouldn't leave me and Doc Stone behind if they had a choice. But what can they do with those things in the water guarding the way?” Chen shook his head. “They're under strict instructions that if there's no word from me within thirty-six hours, they're to turn tail and get in touch with our old friend Marrs at the United Nations.” He shrugged. “I lost my radio in the big washout, so there you go. Cavalry.”

“How long will that cavalry take to get here?” Harm asked slowly.

“Days? Weeks, even.” David sprayed himself with the antistink. “And the experiment might finish anytime. When it does, Josephs and Geneflow will bail. Whoever comes here will find nothing.”

“Except us.” Lisa's voice sounded so fragile the breeze could've bruised it.

Or rather our chewed-up bones,
thought Adam. He wanted to cry at the thought of his dad sailing farther and farther away without him.
At least you'll be okay, Dad.

“Wait,” said Stone. “I think something's coming.”