Burial Ground (6 page)

He pulled off the rubber hand-puppet
designed to mimic the head and neck of a female California condor
and set it in the sink for one of the volunteers to clean and
sanitize. It stank of chopped mice, but at least the condor chick
had eaten reasonably well this morning. She'd been getting scrawny
beneath that mass of white down, and for a while he had feared they
were going to lose her. When the hiker who discovered her in the
Los Padres National Forest, where she had presumably fallen from
her nest high up on a cliff-side, first brought her in, Galen had
been sure that death was inevitable, but now she was eating, at
least enough to survive, and he felt cautiously optimistic about
her prognosis. Unfortunately, the Center wasn't able to
rehabilitate all of the birds that were dropped off. Of the more
than forty raptors they were currently treating, everything from
the smallest hawks to golden eagles to the nearly extinct
California condor, perhaps only twenty-some would survive. The odds
were often depressing, but at least at the end of the day he could
hang his hat on the fact that he had done his part to ensure the
proliferation of bloodlines, if not entire species.

In addition to his obligations to the
university and the Center, Galen was Executive Officer of the
American Ornithologists' Union and served as Chair of the Standing
Committee on Conservation for the Raptor Research Foundation. He
spread himself too thin and he knew it, but if he didn't do it, who
would? It wasn't so long ago that the California condor perched
atop the food chain and had a range that covered the entire
American Southwest. And now? The encroachment of mankind had driven
it to the precipice of eradication. Only one hundred and thirty
individuals remained in the wild, and most of those were due to the
success of captive breeding efforts spearheaded by the San Diego
Zoo. How long would it be before the species was extinct, and would
anyone care when it happened? Galen passed through the incubation
room, which was suffused with a red glow from the heat lamps, and
the kitchen unit that reeked of worms and raw meat. At the end of a
short hallway, he entered his office, a small box no larger than
the standard cubicle. He slipped out of his brown corduroy jacket
as he walked through the doorway and hung it on the hook behind the
door. The half-length mirror affixed to it showed him what he
feared it would: a somewhat doughy man in his mid-forties,
sandy-blonde hair receding from his forehead and thinning on top,
glasses that grew thicker with each passing year, and a slender
face with crow's feet framing his sky-blue eyes. After a wasted
moment of self-pity, he turned away and slid behind his desk. There
were a couple of invoices he needed to check and a memo to write to
the membership of the RRF, and then he could formally begin his
day. He was already rolling his cuffed sleeves in anticipation when
he noticed the objects on his desk, which certainly hadn't been
there the night before, as it was a rare occasion when he wasn't
the one to turn off the lights on his way out.

He leaned forward and inspected the objects.
Three feathers had been precisely laid out on his blotter in a
clover formation, the calamuses meeting to form a single point.
They were remiges, the stiff contour feathers of the wing suited
for flight. The base color was mud brown with an extraordinary
green iridescence that shifted as it reflected the overhead
light.

"Pretty impressive, aren't they?" a voice
asked from the doorway.

Galen flinched at the sound and dropped the
feathers to the desktop. There was never anyone in the building for
at least another half-hour. He looked up to find a tall, wiry man
with short, spiked black hair and an expensive suit appraising him
through steel-gray eyes. The man raised an eyebrow.

"You...you shouldn't be back here," Galen
stammered. He cleared his throat and tried again with more
authority. "This is a restricted area. I'm going to have to ask you
to leave or I'll be forced to call the police."

The man merely shrugged, and entered the
office.

Galen reached for the phone, but the man's
words stopped him short.

"I don't think you can tell me which species
those feathers belong to, can you?"

The man was right, but Galen was loath to
admit it. They were obviously from a species of raptor, of that
much he had no doubt. The brown coloration was an expression of
melanin, but he had no idea where the strange green iridescence
might have originated. The refraction of light on yellow carotenoid
pigments like parrots have, possibly? Raptors didn't showcase the
flashy colors of smaller birds, even during mating season. They
were predators, which meant the last thing they wanted was for
their prey to see them coming. The length of the remiges placed
this animal's size at that of a condor, but these definitely
weren't from a condor as their feathers were nearly universally
black. So what did that mean? Had these feathers been doctored in
some fashion, or was he looking at some rare genetic mutation?
Maybe a new species entirely?

He looked up at the man, who watched him
with a curious expression. What did he know that he hadn't shared?
Galen decided to play it cool and buy himself some time with the
feathers to do some research. Preferably alone. This guy had no
business being in here anyway. Come to think of it, how
had
he entered the building? Galen was certain he had locked the doors
behind him when he arrived.

"I'll hold onto these feathers for a couple
days and try to match them against one of our databases. Every
species of raptor is catalogued in there somewhere."

"You'll find that this one isn't, but I have
a hunch you already know as much."

"I can run a mass spectroscopic analysis to
determine where they originated. It evaluates the ratio of stable
hydrogen ions---"

"They were recovered in the Andes Mountains
of Northern Peru."

"Impossible. That's the range of the Andean
condor. There's only so much room in any ecological niche for
predators and scavengers. And condors definitely aren't the kind to
share their niche."

"That's your area of expertise, Dr. Russell.
I'm only telling you what I know."

"What I know is that you're about two
minutes from being manhandled by campus security." He picked up the
handset and dialed.

The man casually crossed the room, sat on
the edge of the desk, and depressed the button on the phone to
disconnect the call before it even began to ring.

"Perhaps I should have started with an
introduction." The man smiled, though he still held his finger in
place. "My name is Marcus Colton. I work for Leonard Gearhardt and
Advanced Exploration Associates International. These feathers
were
found in the Amazonas Province of Peru just under two
weeks ago by Mr. Gearhardt's son. We're putting together an
exploration party to locate and excavate the region where we assume
the younger Mr. Gearhardt discovered the feathers." He released the
button on the phone and the dial tone droned in Galen's ear. "We
leave in the morning."

"What does this have to do with me?"

"We don't know precisely where the feathers
of this particular species might have been found."

"Why not ask the
younger Mr.
Gearhardt
?" Galen immediately regretted his mocking tone.

"Unfortunately, he is no longer with us. He
died before he could share this knowledge with anyone."

"That still doesn't answer my question. What
do you want from
me
?"

"Dr. Russell, from 1985 through 2001, you
worked extensively in the field tracking and studying birds in the
wild. Thanks in large measure to your efforts in conservation,
nearly a half dozen species of raptors have been placed on the
Threatened Animals List and significant portions of their natural
habitats declared preserves and conservatories. You understand
these creatures: their behavior patterns, their relationships to
their environment, their lifecycles. Your knowledge would be
invaluable in helping us find the proverbial needle in the
haystack. We're looking for one specific location in the middle of
a vast section high in the unexplored Peruvian Andes, and being
able to identify the natural range of this species will
significantly shrink the amount of ground we need cover. You will
be very generously compensated for your expertise, but more
importantly, when you eventually admit what we both already know,
you'll be the first to classify and study this new species. You'll
have the opportunity not only to publish potentially revolutionary
findings, but you'll also be able to
name
it."

"I can't just up and leave my post. The
university---"

"We've already made arrangements with the
university to secure your services."

"I haven't worked in the field for close to
a decade..."

"It's in your blood, Dr. Russell."

Galen felt himself waffling. The prospect of
actually working in the field again was both exciting and
mortifying. What if his skills had atrophied? What if he traveled
halfway around the world and couldn't help them find what they were
looking for? He locked eyes with the man across the desk, whose
expression betrayed nothing. If there was a chance of discovering a
new species that had somehow existed in complete isolation without
being found for thousands of years, then he owed it to himself to
take it. Even more exciting was the prospect that this could be a
recent evolutionary offshoot of an existing species. If he could
somehow identify the environmental factors that had triggered such
a change and localize the genetic factors that facilitated it, he
could advance evolutionary theories that would surpass anything
Darwin had even dreamed of.

"Did I mention there will be a film crew
tagging along to document our journey?" Colton asked. "Hence the
necessity to involve only the leaders in their respective
fields."

Galen ran his fingers through his hair.

Colton smiled like a cat that had finally
cornered a mouse.

"I'm going to need time to procure the
proper supplies."

"You have until tomorrow morning," Colton
said. He reached into the inner breast pocket of his jacket,
extracted a blue pamphlet, and tossed it down on the desk.

Galen opened it and examined the contents:
roundtrip airline tickets from LAX to Lima, Peru.

"I can't possibly be ready in so little
time," he said, but when he looked back up, Colton was already
gone.

Advanced Exploration Associates
International, Inc.

Houston, Texas

October 23
^rd

6:49 p.m. CDT

Leo opened the file and perused the images
for the thousandth time. They had cost him a pretty penny, and the
only life that had mattered to him other than his own. The ultimate
price had been so steep that to walk away now would be sheer
stupidity. Hunter's posthumous message confirmed that he had found
what they had known would be there all along. Now it was simply
time to claim it as his own.

Satellite prospecting. That's what he called
it. Soon there wouldn't be a single inch of the planet left
unexplored, a feat that would be accomplished from thousands of
miles away. Maybe the technology wasn't all the way there yet, but
soon enough they would not only be able to thoroughly map the
entire globe, from the deepest oceanic trenches to the most
inaccessible mountaintops, but they would be able to discern the
composition of the soil and anything buried beneath it. Then the
spoils of the planet would be laid bare for men who specialized in
creative solutions and high-risk extractions. Men like Leo, or he
had hoped, his son.

The anger flared again and he had to grind
his teeth to suppress it. This was not the time for emotions, which
were a variable he refused to allow into the equation he now
scrutinized. This was business, and business was never personal.
Once they safely reached their destination, however...

He returned his attention to the image on
the computer screen, which reminded him of viewing some sort of
rugged object through a microscope, only slightly out-of-focus to
soften and blur the edges. He had purchased the services of NASA's
Landsat 7 satellite to survey some of the densest unexplored
terrain around the world in hopes of finding something special. The
satellite had already proven its worth by locating and detailing
indigenous ruins throughout the Americas, even beneath otherwise
impregnable forestation and several feet of accumulated soil. Where
climate and terrain made aerial reconnaissance impossible, Landsat
stepped in and worked miracles. It didn't provide mere satellite
photographs. Landsat was equipped with an array of remote sensing
devices that could focus on areas as small as a few square miles,
with pixel sizes of 30 meters, and generate some of the most
detailed images imaginable. All Leo had needed to do was provide
exact coordinates---and a boatload of cash---and the brain trust at
NASA had been able to program the satellite to change orbit and fly
over. Granted, it had taken months to wade through the waiting list
and coincide the timing with the ideal weather conditions, but the
end result had surpassed even his wildest expectations.

He had specifically requested three
different types of remote sensing. The standard imaging provided a
topographical lay of the land, a generic map of sorts. The
multispectral imaging created a precise, color-coded picture based
on the absorptive and reflective properties of the minerals in the
rocks, soil, and vegetation. And the sonar signals constructed the
physical aspects and contours of the ground and upper strata of the
soil. Their combined data allowed for the creation of a digital
elevation model, a three-dimensional representation of the zone of
interest right down to the phosphorous soil beneath a grove of
Brazil nut trees.