Dinosaurs & A Dirigible (22 page)

To the guide’s surprise—and to Don Washman’s—Adrienne rustled to her feet and followed. “Mr. Vickers,” she said, “might I speak to you for a moment, please?”

Vickers looked at her. As the staff members did, and unlike the other clients, the blonde woman carried her weapon with her at all times. “All right,” he said. They walked by instinct to the shooting platform, standing thirty feet away at the end of the arc of tents. The torosaur heads were monstrous silhouettes against the fire’s orange glow. “Would it bother you as much if I were a man?” she asked bluntly.

“Anything that makes my job harder bothers me,” Vickers said in half-truth. “You and Don are making my job harder. That’s all.”

Adrienne stubbed out her small cigar on the platform’s rail. She scattered the remnants of the tobacco on the rocky soil. “Balls,” she said distinctly. “Mr. Vickers—Henry, for Christ’s sake—my husband was going to be impossible no matter what. He’s here because I was going on a time safari and he was afraid to look less of a man than his wife was. Which he is. But he was going to be terrified of his rifle, he was going to pack his trunk with Scotch, and he was going to be a complete prick because that’s the way he is.”

“Mrs. Salmes—”

“Adrienne, and let me finish. I didn’t marry Jonathan for his money—my family has just as much as his does. I won’t claim it was a love match, but we . . . we seemed to make a good pair. A matched set, if you will. He won’t divorce me”—her dimly glimpsed index finger forestalled another attempt by the guide to break in—“because he correctly believes I’d tell the judge and the world that he couldn’t get it up on our wedding night. Among other things. I haven’t divorced him because I’ve never felt a need to. There are times that it’s been marvelously useful to point out that ‘I
do
after all have a husband, dearest . . .’”

“This is none of my business, Mrs. Salmes—”

“Adrienne!”

“Adrienne, dammit!” Vickers burst out. “It’s none of my business, but I’m going to say it anyway. You don’t have anything to prove. That’s fine, we all should be that way. But most of my clients have a lot to prove, to themselves and to the world. Or they wouldn’t be down here in the Cretaceous. It makes them dangerous, because they’re out of normal society and they may not be the men they hoped they were after all. And your husband is very goddamned dangerous, Adrienne. Take my word for it.”

“Well, it’s not
my
fault,” the woman said.

“Fault?” the guide snapped. “Fault? Is it a pusher’s fault that kids OD on skag? You’re goddamn right it’s your fault! It’s the fault of everybody involved who doesn’t make it better, and you’re sure not making it better. Look, you wouldn’t treat a gun that way—and your husband is a human being!”

Adrienne frowned in surprise. There was none of the anger Vickers had expected in her voice when she said, “So are you, Henry. You shouldn’t try so hard to hide the fact.”

Abruptly, the guide strode toward his tent. Adrienne Salmes watched him go. She took out another cigar, paused, and walked carefully back to the fire where Washman waited with the alarm panel. The pilot looked up with concern. Adrienne sat beside him and shook her hair loose. “Here you go, Don sweetest,” she said, extending her cigar. “Why don’t you light it for me? It’s one of the things you do so well.”

Washman kissed her. She returned it, tonguing his lips; but when his hand moved to the zipper of her coveralls, she forced it away. “That’s enough until you go off guard duty, dearest,” she said. She giggled. “Well—almost enough.”

Jonathan Salmes hunched in the shadow of the nearest torosaur head. He listened, pressing his fists to his temples. After several more minutes, he moved in a half-crouch to the shooting platform. In his pocket was a six-inch wooden peg, smooth and close-grained. It was whittled from a root he had worried from the ground with his fingers. Stepping carefully so that his boots did not scrunch on the metal rungs, Salmes mounted the ladder to the pilot’s seat. He paused there, his khaki coveralls strained, white face reflecting the flames. The couple near the fire did not look up. The pilot was murmuring something, but his voice was pitched too low to hear . . . and the words might have been unintelligible anyway, given the circumstances.

Jonathan Salmes shuddered also. He moved with a slick grace that belied the terror and disgust frozen on his face. He slipped the dense peg from his pocket. Stretching his right arm out full length while he gripped the rotor shaft left-handed, Salmes forced the peg down between two of the angled blades of the stator. When he was finished, he scrambled back down the ladder. He did not look at his wife and the pilot again, but his ears could not escape Adrienne’s contented giggle.

“Hank, she just isn’t handling right this morning,” Don Washman said. “I’m going to have to blow the fuel lines out when we get back. Must’ve gotten some trash in the fuel transferring from the bladder to the cans to the tank. Wish to hell we could fuel the bird directly, but I’m damned if I’m going to set down on the intrusion vehicle where it’s sitting now.”

Vickers glanced down at the treetops and scowled. “Do you think we ought to abort?” he asked. He had not noticed any difference in the flight to that point. Now he imagined they were moving slower and nearer the ground than was usual, and both the rush of air and the muted turbine whine took on sinister notes.

“Oh . . .” the pilot said. “Well, she’s a lot more likely to clear herself than get worse—the crud sinks to the bottom of the tank and gets sucked up first. It’ll be okay. I mean, she’s just a little sluggish, is all.”

The guide nodded. “M—” he began. After his outburst of the night before, he was as embarrassed around Adrienne Salmes as a boy at his first dance. “Ah, Adrienne, what do you think?”

The blonde woman smiled brightly, both for the question and the way it was framed. “Oh, if Don’s willing to go on, there’s no question,” she said. “You know I’d gladly walk if it were the only way to get a tyrannosaurus, Henry—if you’d let me, I mean. We both know that when we go back in today, I’ve had my last chance at a big carnosaur until you’ve rotated through all your clients again. Including my husband.”

“We’ll get you a tyrannosaur,” Vickers said.

Adrienne edged slightly closer to the guide. She said softly, “Henry, I want you to know that when we get back I’m going to give Johnnie a divorce.”

Vickers turned away as if slapped. “That’s none of my business,” he said. “I—I’m sorry for what I said last night.”

“Sorry?” the woman repeated in a voice that barely carried over the wind noise. “For making me see that I shouldn’t make a doormat of . . . someone who used to be important to me? Don’t be sorry.” After a pause, she continued, “When I ran for Congress . . . God I was young! I offended it must have been everybody in the world, much less the district. But Johnnie was fantastic. I owe what votes I got to hands he shook for me.”

“I had no right to talk,” Vickers said. By forcing himself, he managed to look the blonde woman in the eyes.

Adrienne smiled and touched his hand where it lay on the forestock of his rifle. “Henry,” she said, “I’m not perfect, and the world’s not going to be perfect either. But I can stop trying to make it actively worse.”

Vickers looked at the woman’s hand. After a moment, he rotated his own to hold it. “You’ve spent your life being the best man around,” he said, as calm as he would be in the instant of shooting. “I think you’ve got it in you to be the best person around instead. I’m not the one to talk . . . but I think I’d be more comfortable around people if more of them were the way you could be.”

With a final squeeze, Vickers released Adrienne’s hand. During the remainder of the fifteen-minute flight, he concentrated on the ground below. He almost forgot Washman’s concern about the engine.

Dieter Jost flicked a last spade full of gritty soil from the drainage ditch and paused. Steve Brady gave him a thumbs-up signal from the gun tower where he sat. “Another six inches, peon,” he called to the guide. “You need to sweat some.”

“Fah,” said Dieter, laughing. “If it needs to be deeper, the rain will wash it deeper—not so?” He dug the spade into the ground and began walking over to the table. They had found a cache of sauropod eggs the day before. With the aid of torosaur loin and freeze-dried spices from his kit, Brewer had turned one of them into a delicious omelet. Brewer, Mears, and the McPhersons were just finishing. Dieter, who had risen early to finish ditching the tents, had worked up quite an appetite.

“Hey!” Brady called. Then, louder, “Hey! Mr. Salmes, that’s not safe! Come back here, please!”

The guide’s automatic rifle leaned against the gun tower. He picked it up. Jonathan Salmes was carrying his own rifle and walking at a deliberate pace down the trail to the water. He did not look around when the guard shouted. The other clients were staring in various stages of concern. Cradling his weapon, Dieter trotted after Salmes. Brady, standing on the six-foot tower, began to rotate the heavy machine gun. He stopped when he realized what he was doing.

The guide reached Salmes only fifty yards from the center of the camp, still in sight of the others. He put a hand on the blond man’s shoulder and said, “Now, Mr. Salmes—”

Salmes spun like a mousetrap snapping. His face was white. He rang his heavy rifle off Dieter’s skull with enough force to tear the stock out of his hands. The guide dropped as if brain-shot. Salmes backed away from the fallen man. Then he turned and shambled out of sight among the trees.

“Goddamn!” Steve Brady said, blinking in surprise. Then he thought of something even more frightening. He unslung his grenade launcher and jumped to the ground without bothering to use the ladder. “If that bastard gets to the intrusion vehicle—” he said aloud, and there was no need for him to finish the statement.

Brady vaulted the guide’s body without bothering to look at the injury. The best thing he could do for Dieter now was to keep him from being stranded in the Cretaceous. Brady’s hobnails skidded where pine needles overlay rock, but he kept his footing. As the trail twisted around an exceptionally large tree, Brady caught sight of the client again. Salmes was not really running; rather, he was moving like a man who had run almost to the point of death.

“Salmes, goddamn you!” Brady called. He raised the grenade launcher. Two dromaeosaurs burst from opposite sides of the trail where they lay ambushed. Their attention had been on Salmes, but when the guard shouted, they converged on him.

The leftward dromaeosaur launched itself toward its prey in a flat, twenty-foot leap. Only the fact that Brady had his weapon aimed permitted him to disintegrate the beast’s head with a point-blank shot. Death did nothing to prevent the beast from disemboweling Brady reflexively. The two mutilated bodies were thrashing in a tangle of blood and intestines as the remaining clients hurtled around the tree. They skidded to a halt. Mr. McPherson, who held Salmes’ rifle—his sister had snatched up Dieter’s FN a step ahead of him—began to vomit. Neither Salmes nor the other dromaeosaur were visible.

Jonathan Salmes had in fact squelched across the mud and up the ramp of the intrusion vehicle. He had unscrewed the safety cage from the return switch and had his hand poised on the lever. Something clanged on the ramp behind him.

Salmes turned. The dromaeosaur, panicked by the grenade blast that pulped its companion’s head, was already in the air. Salmes screamed and threw the switch. The dromaeosaur flung him back against the fuel bladder. As everything around it blurred, the predator picked Salmes up with its forelegs and began methodically to kick him to pieces with its right hind foot. The dinosaur was still in the process of doing so when the submachine guns of the startled guards raked it to death with equal thoroughness.

The broad ribs of the sauropod thrust up from a body cavity that had been cleared of most of its flesh. There was probably another meal on the haunches, even for a beast of the tyrannosaur’s voracity. If Adrienne missed the trophy this morning, however, Vickers would have to shoot another herbivore in the vicinity in order to anchor the prize for the next client.

Not that there was much chance that the blonde woman was going to miss.

Adrienne held her rifle with both hands slanted across her chest. Her hip was braced against the guardrail as she scanned the forest edge. If she had any concern for her balance, it was not evident.

“Okay, down to sixty,” Don Washman said, barely enough height to clear the scrub oaks that humped over lower brush in the clearing. The lack of grasses gave the unforested areas of the Cretaceous an open aspect from high altitude. Lower down, the spikes and wooden fingers reached out like a hedge of spears.

The tyrannosaur strode from the pines with a hacking challenge.

“Christ, he’s looking for us,” the pilot said. The carnosaur slammed aside the ribs of its kill like bowling pins. Its nostrils were flared, and the sound it made was strikingly different from the familiar bellow of earlier occasions.

“Yeah, that’s its territorial call,” Vickers agreed. “It seems to have decided that we’re another tyrannosaur. It’s not just talking, it wants our blood.”

“S’pose Salmes really hit it yesterday?” Washman asked.

Vickers shook his head absently. “No,” he said, “but the way you put the platform in its face after it’d warned us off . . . Only a tyrannosaur would challenge another tyrannosaur that way. They don’t have much brain, but they’ve got lots of instinctive responses; and the response we’ve triggered is, well . . . a good one to give us a shot. You ready, Adrienne?”

“Tell me when,” the blonde woman said curtly. Washman was swinging the platform in loose figure eights about 150 yards distant from the carnosaur. They could not circle at their present altitude because they were too low to clear the conifer backdrop. Adrienne aimed the Schultz and Larsen when the beast was on her side of the platform, raising the muzzle again each time the pilot swung onto the rear loop of the figure.

“Don, see if you can draw him out from the woods a little farther,” the guide said, squinting past the barrel of his Garand. “I’d like us to have plenty of time to nail him before he can go to ground in the trees.”