Landing Party: A Dinosaur Thriller Read online

  Richard didn’t bother to turn around as he replied. “As I said, I didn’t know I’d need them, they’re merely one of those little things I make a point to carry in my kit. A you-never-know kind of item. They serve multiple purposes: safety goggles for fire-starting or working with tools, swimming goggles of course, because that’s what they actually are, also protection against driving rain or snow…” He waved an arm at the vapor-shrouded landscape. “…or volcanic off-gassing. You just never, never know. Something over three decades of exploring has taught me.”

  Kai Nguyen, the translator, looked at Ethan and rolled his eyes as he marched by. Even he wore a bandana covering his mouth and nose, though. Ethan made a mental note to improvise something at the next rest stop, whenever that would be. What made Richard’s remark sting a little, though, was that he did sort of kick himself for not having the foresight to be a little more prepared. He had trusted the U.N. bureaucrats too much. They had recommended only the most basic of gear types: climbing equipment, basic diving and snorkeling gear, camping stuff, communications, and so Ethan, deciding to travel light and that “less is more,” did not augment that list. He had focused too much on his camera equipment to the exclusion of the expeditionary gear. Oh well. Next time.

  George Meyer brought up the rear. Ethan thought he probably couldn’t have heard the exchange, and he hoped not. But even if he was within earshot, the scientist was so engrossed in studying the surrounding geology that he may not have actually listened to any of it, anyway.

  “I see the barest touch of lichens, I think they are, beginning to take root, already colonizing this new land. Do you mind?” He looked at Ethan’s camera and then to a green patch on a rock.

  “No worries, mate.” Ethan knelt down and clicked off a few close-ups of the growth. He was just starting to stand up again when he heard Richard call out from up ahead. “Got something here!”

  Ethan and the others ran to catch up with him but soon had to slow down in order to negotiate a winding path between two jagged lava rock walls. Through cracks in these, they could see orange lava still flowing deep inside the strata. The three trailing team members threaded their way through the passage and joined Richard, who was bending down next to an oval-shaped boulder the size of a small car.

  Ethan was immediately taken with the sizable rock, and he began to photograph it. George, the geologist, was also intrigued.

  “This is very different from the surrounding geology,” the expert noted. Ethan began capturing video of the find, but Richard’s voice stopped them cold in their tracks.

  “Survivor!”

  Ethan, George and Kai walked around to the other side of the boulder, where they saw Richard kneeling, eyes open wide as he stared at the base of the rock, where a human lay pinned beneath it.

  The man was a Pacific Islander, with dark skin, a broad, flat nose and wild, bushy hair that was now streaked with ash. He was alive, but only just.

  “Not sure how we’re going to move him.” Richard eyed the man’s lower body. His legs protruded into a crevice, his feet eaten completely away by a lava pool there, his lower body having suffered horrific burns. The man muttered incoherently. He had clearly been trapped here for days, in this tortuous position, squeezed between jagged lava rocks and a huge boulder, splashes of running lava slowly burning him alive from the waist down. Forced to take nutrients the only way he could, he demonstrated how he had stayed alive, by licking the rough rock he could reach, to clear it of rain water and rocky nutrients. His tongue was swollen and bleeding from these efforts.

  Ethan extended a canteen to the trapped survivor. “Here, water!”

  Kai directed a question to him in Tongan, presuming him to be part of the Tongan landing party they had come to find. The man’s eyes twitched in surprise upon hearing his native language, and he nodded before descending once again into nonsensical babbling.

  Kai looked at the others. “He says he is part of the Tongan expedition.”

  Ethan reluctantly took photos of the trapped islander. It dismayed him to have to carry on with his work while someone suffered to such a degree, but this was absolutely something that needed to be documented, the state of a found survivor. Besides, Ethan thought, zooming in on the man’s burned leg stumps, he wasn’t sure what else he could do for him beyond providing water and food. He was wedged solidly beneath the boulder.

  Richard and George began pushing against the big rock, while Kai explained to the man in Tongan that they were trying to free him. But the massive stone refused to budge. The two men stood back and reappraised the situation, out of breath, the skin on their hands torn from the brutal lava rock.

  “Maybe if we fashion some kind of lever…” Richard suggested. No one said anything as the Tongan groaned, but George removed a rock hammer from his pack. “This is the longest tool at my disposal that might be used as a pry bar—anybody have anything better?” No one did, so he set about wedging it beneath the rock. Then he and Richard grabbed hold of the handle while Ethan and Kai pushed against the rock itself.

  They lifted up on the handle to no avail. Still the rock would not move as the wooden handle creaked, threatening to break.

  “Hold up.” The geologist stood, catching his breath while eyeing the distressed Tongan. “I’ve got an idea.” He bent down and retrieved his rock hammer. “Might as well try using this thing for what it’s intended.” He hefted the rock hammer, which featured a blunt striking surface and a tapered, lethal-looking pick at the opposite end. Then he approached the rock, eyeing it for the best place to start chipping away.

  “Maybe I can crack it enough for you guys to be able to pull him out.”

  Everyone agreed, except apparently for the Tongan himself, who caterwauled loudly, waving his arms in the most frantic of motions his limited mobility would allow.

  “Wait!” Kai raised an arm, and George backed off with the hammer. Kai leaned into the Tongan, who spoke his most coherent string of syllables thus far. Kai’s face took on a confused expression, and he looked up at the others.

  “He’s still a little hard to understand, but from what I can tell he’s worried about a…” He hesitated, as if unsure of how to phrase his next words.

  “A what?” Richard prompted, slightly annoyed. The trapped man uttered some more words.

  “…a ‘devil beast.’ I think he’s saying that he doesn’t want us to break the rock open.”

  Richard laughed and made eye contact with the Tongan, speaking in English. “Look, pal, you’re in quite the situation, here. If we can’t get this rock off of you—and soon—you’re going to die, do you understand that?” He shifted his gaze to George. “Crack it apart if you can. It’s his only hope.”

  George concurred and stepped up to the boulder once more with the rock hammer. He began striking the rock with the pick end of the tool. The Tongan screamed at him and shook his head.

  “He’s delirious from his ordeal. Keep going,” Richard said calmly.

  Kai told the man to relax, that they were doing their best to get him out, while George continued hammering. After a few minutes, a fragment of the boulder chipped away. George kept working the same spot, hoping he’d found a weak fissure to exploit. Meanwhile, Richard and Ethan pushed on the rock, still trying to budge it, hoping that each blow of George’s hammer would be the one to loosen it enough to move.

  The Tongan’s protests, meanwhile, continued to fall on deaf ears.

  A sizable hunk of rock fell away, and the boulder began to tip with the efforts of Richard and Ethan. “Almost there,” Richard grunted. “Maybe one more piece, mate.”

  He and Ethan stepped away while George brought his hammer back for a big blow. Richard looked over at Ethan, saw the man resting with his hands on his knees, eyes closed for a moment while taking a much-needed breather. Seeing an opportunity, Richard stepped behind the nearest rock formation. He waited for two seconds to be sure no one would immediately call out his name, wondering where he went, or ask him to do someth
ing. Then he extracted a satellite-phone from his pocket, one whose existence was kept secret from the team. It had been given to him by Baxter, the CIA man.

  Richard had accepted his offer that day in the British Explorers Club. Though he was not exactly wanting for money, his penchant for never-ending globetrotting excitement did not come cheap, and what the heck, he figured. There was that Italian villa he’d been eyeing for a vacation home to bring the missus to. This not-so-little bonus he’d worked out with Baxter would make that happen. He was going to the island anyway, so he might as well get more than the pittance the U.N. was paying him for doing the same thing, right? After a career of risking his hide in the far-flung corners of the planet, seeking out the highest reaches and dankest depths where most fear to tread (unlike most of his present company), he’d earned it.

  Richard entered the passcode for the phone and then placed a call to the only number stored in its memory. As promised, Baxter himself answered, knowing who it was due to the dedicated number he’d assigned for this purpose.

  “Hello, Richard. You have news?”

  “Yes, but not much time to talk. Real quick: We found one of the Tongans. He’s alive, but barely.”

  “Good! Then we know they made it there. Anyone else?”

  “Not so far, only the one Tongan, but he’s really bad off. I doubt he’s going to make it, but we’re doing our best to save him.”

  “Did he say what happened to the rest of them?”

  “The translator’s trying to get that out of him as we speak but he’s pretty incoherent. The Tongan, I mean, not the translator.”

  “I can do without your lame attempts at humor, Richard. Can you—?”

  At that moment, Ethan’s voice called out from the boulder. “I think this next one’s going to do it. Everybody get ready…”

  Richard whispered into the phone. “Gotta go, mate. I’ll be in touch.”

  “If this is the only survivor and he dies, make sure you drop those materials when you can, Richard.”

  “Copy that, out.”

  The explorer disconnected the call and pocketed the phone. He put his hands to his zipper like he was doing up his fly in a hurry as he came out from around the rocks, but it was a needless gesture since none of the team was looking his way.

  Ethan swung the rock hammer in a two-handed grip, sideways through the air at full strength. It slammed into the side of the rock, above where the last chunk had been knocked loose, casting a spark—a tiny manmade speck of fire added to an island born of it.

  That did it. The entire side of the boulder slid away, more than enough to allow it to be shifted. Ethan moved back into position at the boulder with his hands, where Richard joined him. Ethan was confident they’d be able to reposition the burdensome stone now that he’d chipped away at it some.

  But before they placed their hands on the rock, it began to move on its own.

  Chapter 7

  Skylar played the light beam around the cave walls while Anita paddled the boat team deeper into the opening.

  “This goes back quite a ways, and there’s a fork in the road up ahead, too.” Skylar illuminated a junction about a hundred feet away where two watery passageways led off to the right and left.

  “Which way should we take?” Anita held her paddle poised over the water as the boat glided toward the fork.

  “Let’s try left.” This from Lara who, as a communications expert, had no particular expertise in cavern navigation or volcanism. But to Skylar and Anita, it was as good a guess as any.

  “Left it is.” Anita dipped the paddle and angled the raft toward the left fork. The ceiling became lower as they entered the new tributary, and also more fractured. Veins of molten lava shimmered here and there behind the cave walls. Small offshoots led off to the right and left, a labyrinthine complex of magma chambers and lava tubes. Anita led them into one of these small side-chambers.

  “Doesn’t look like it leads anywhere,” she said after paddling inside for some distance. “We should go back out to the main chamber.” As she turned the raft around, Skylar played her light on the low ceiling, which she noted had a different composition than the jagged lava walls. While the other three women talked about which way they should turn the boat once they emerged from this chamber, Skylar took out a small rock hammer from her pack. As the raft passed beneath a particularly low-hanging section of ceiling that forced her to duck from her sitting position on one of the pontoons, she chipped away at a shiny inclusion. The others were laughing now about something, and none of them turned to see what she was hammering away at.

  Just as the boat passed beneath the low section, the chunk of shiny rock fell into Skylar’s left hand. Her headlamp reflected brilliantly from the specimen, which was breathtaking in its clarity, luminescence, lack of impurities, and most of all—its size. Skylar sucked in her breath as the realization of what she held in her hands hit her hard.

  A diamond.

  By far, the largest diamond specimen she’d ever encountered in both her professional—and personal—life. It was still raw, unprocessed ore and not a polished jewel, but still, the thing was damn near the size of a football! She looked up at the ceiling again, and even the upper walls of the cavern. Sparkles everywhere. Thick veins of the clear gemstone ran throughout the cave walls. A surge of adrenaline spiked through her body as she realized that this entire volcanic cave system was practically made of diamonds.

  I was right! My research is confirmed.

  But diamonds, of course, were not supposed to be her concern. She was here as a professional scientist, not a gem collector. But…wow! The diamond ore in this chamber alone would probably be enough to lower the worldwide asking price of diamonds were it allowed to flood the market all at once. Imagine, Skylar thought, rendering diamonds worth less than cubic zirconium, or even quartz! Not that she had the resources or ability on this little sortie to collect them all. That would require a full-fledged mining operation. No wonder the Pacific Island nations were fighting over this place so much, she thought. Perhaps they knew? She was aware that many times local people had knowledge of their environment that was not represented in the scientific corpus.

  Then Anita was calling her name, asking her if they should go back and take the next right-hand fork along the main chamber. Skylar hurriedly dropped the huge hunk of diamond into her backpack. “Yes, yes. Let’s check out that right fork.”

  “What are all those glittering stones?” Joystna asked on the way out.

  They all looked to the geologist, who carefully dropped her pack to the bottom of the raft. “They’re just mica deposits. They sure do look pretty, but they’re not worth much at all.”

  Chapter 8

  Ethan moved to the Tongan, believing the boulder was now rocking in place and about to fall back onto the imprisoned castaway. “It’s moving. Pull him out of there before it falls back on him! Where were you, anyway, Richard?” The others bore confused looks as they stared at the wobbling rock.

  “Sorry, had to take a leak. When you gotta go, you gotta go. So is this an earthquake? Is the island destabilizing?” Richard speculated. But nothing else around them was moving. And then, before anyone could answer, the giant rock transformed in the most unexpected, most brutal of ways.

  An animal burst forth from the inside of the rocky covering. A living, breathing creature. A reptile, Ethan noted, hatching from an egg. Yet this wasn’t any animal, nor was it simply a very large one. Ethan not only failed to take any pictures, such was the depth of his flabbergasted stupor, but he even let his best camera drop to the ground, the uncovered lens landing on a sharp piece of dried lava.

  He didn’t even notice the piece of terrible luck, something that would normally have him mentally calculating how many pictures he’d have to sell to replace the lens. In his mind’s eye, he was taken back to his childhood, a childhood where video games and on-demand cable TV programming had yet to rule the day. Books had been Ethan’s entertainment of choice. Even before he
could truly read, he enjoyed looking at picture books, especially of animals. And of those, the ones about dinosaurs had been his favorite. Which was why now he recognized the creature standing in his midst as an ankylosaurus.

  A dinosaur.

  He didn’t see how it could be possible. Were he in America or even Europe, he’d have guessed he was on the butt end of some kind of high-tech prank, or maybe an entertainment stunt for one of the nature channels he worked for. But way out here in the middle of nowhere? No one was going to bring some technological wizardry all the way out here. No way, no how. This was as real as it gets.

  As if to emphasize that, the ankylosaurus began to move, first lifting its stout legs to clear the ruins of its protective cocoon, and then swinging its iconic tail weapon, that intimidating spiky ball Ethan remembered so well from his flashlight reading under the covers as a child. Also the rows of spiked armored plates along the back and sides. Unmistakable, yet at the same time unbelievable.

  The primitive beast almost fell as it lurched forward in an attempt to remove one of its front legs from the rock. It lost its balance but did not topple. When its foot came down, however, it landed square on the head of the Tongan, crushing the man’s skull. His brains slopped into a puddle of lava where they sizzled and burned, smelling like cooked meat for just a second before being consumed entirely, now a part of the island he had come to conquer on behalf of his nation.

  “Look out, it’s alive!” Ethan shouted while backpedaling without looking backwards—not a wise move in this environment, but preferable to being trampled by a prehistoric behemoth. A few steps back and he tripped over a lava rock spike, slashing his Achilles though not severing it, and landing him flat on his back, bashing both elbows on the razor sharp lava rock ground.