In Situ (8 page)

They wat
ched from a distance as the flames rose from the two trucks. There were several explosions and the flames leapt higher into the sky with each one. It was all-consuming. No one had any doubt that when it was over there would be nothing left of the other eleven dinosaurs. Even several hundred feet away, they could feel the intense heat converging with the cool night air of the desert, the smell of fuel and burning rubber heavy in the air.

The group was silent. Even the fuel truck driver who had caused the disaster had run out of apologies
. He was fully experiencing the shock of having just killed someone. He sat on the side of the road, perched on his fire extinguisher, smoking a cigarette, his hands shaking.

*

Pete and his team sat for over an hour quietly observing the inferno. He
finally looked up when he heard the sound of the immense rotors of a Chinook helicopter overhead, and watched silently as the landing lights came on and it touched down on the highway near the position his team had taken with the only thing they had left: one specimen.

C
hapter 8

T
he Doomsday Scenario

The clock on the desk in the Oval Office said 4:21 p.m.

President Arthur H. Long leaned
nonchalantly over the couch where he had been seated since lunch with a contingent of Chinese delegates, some of his staff, and a handful of interpreters. He snuck a look at the time, trying not to be obvious about it. They had been meeting all day to see if they could reach some agreement on currency, and to wrap up a few details of an extended trade deal. It was tough work and required his total concentration to keep up with the translations and make sure that no measure of etiquette was breached along the way. So far, they were making good progress. The President knew it was absolutely critical that the day end well, and he couldn’t wait for that moment. He imagined that if he sat much longer his ass was going to stick to his seat. Another hour or so, he thought, and maybe we can wrap this up.

The Ambassador was rambling on about something in Chinese when the President saw his most trusted aid
e quietly enter the room. Now what, Long thought, squirming. He had given orders that they were not to be disturbed except in the case of a dire emergency. Any interruption could be construed as bad manners, and could easily be taken as an insult that might jeopardize the entire meeting. The aide stood stoically by the door looking directly at the President, his hands at his sides, with only his index finger pointed to the floor. This was a pre-arranged signal indicating a Level One emergency. Reluctantly, the President asked one of the interpreters to apologize and say that he needed to be excused for just a moment. He waited until the words had been translated, smiled apologetically, and rose from his seat, the delegation members watching him disapprovingly as he made his way across the room.

“This better be good
, Anders,” President Long said quietly, trying to stay out of earshot of the rest of the delegates, aware that most of them actually spoke and understood English better than he. But Long had no doubt that the message would be important. Anders had been working for him since his days as a Senator, and they could practically read each other’s minds. Still, he couldn’t imagine a scenario bad enough to warrant the interruption, save a sudden all out nuclear war, and the only people he could think of that would really ever have the balls to try something like that were seated right behind him.

“Sir, I think we need to take this outside,” Anders said, looking at him seriously, opening the door in the process so the two of them could exit the room.

Long turned to the delegation, bowed and smiled awkwardly, then followed Anders into the corridor. Anders had already set off down the hallway.
“What’s this all about?” the President asked, matching his aide’s brisk pace.

“It’s a woman from Pan-STARRS
, Sir. She’s the Chief Astronomer, and she has been holding for the last hour. She says she has important news and that
her
‘protocol’ requires that she communicate with you directly,” Anders replied as they reached another office and a secure line. There was a light blinking on the phone in front of them.

“What the hell is Pan-STARRS
, Anders?” the President asked as he began to reach for the phone.

“It’s the observatory on Maui
, the one that tracks asteroids and comets. I checked before I came to get you, and she’s right about the protocol, if…,” Anders let the comment hang in the air.

“If what?”

“If there is a high chance of a significant impact within a ninety day window.”

“Impact?
Impact of what?”

“I think maybe you should just speak to her directly
, Sir.”

The President looked at Anders skeptically, punched the blinking button and picked up the receiver.
“This is President Long.”

“Err…
Sir…, this is Dr. Jennifer Daniels. I am Chief Astronomer at the Haleakala Pan-STARRS Observatory. I am sorry to interrupt you, Sir, but I have important information regarding the recent discovery of a NEO.”

“A what?”

“Sorry, Sir. A ‘near earth object,’ an asteroid, Sir.”

“Go on,” replied
Long, while he racked his brain trying to remember his briefing on the Pan-STARRS project. He could vaguely recall a lot of scientific jargon about ‘near earth objects’ and ‘impact probabilities,’ pretty boring stuff considering what he had on his plate. The briefing had been some time ago.

“Sir, we have strong reason to believe that an asteroid approximately
2.9 kilometers in diameter will strike the earth in less than twenty nine days somewhere near Mexico in the western Pacific Ocean.”

The President sat down, holding the receiver to his ear, searching for something to say
, the details of that long ago meeting snapping back into his head in living color.

“Sir?”

“Have you been able to come up with any calculations regarding potential damage?” the President finally managed to say.

“
Sorry, Sir, but I have spent the last five or six hours just trying to pinpoint the exact trajectory of the object and to confirm the impact probability before I called.”

“And?”

“Well Sir, as I said, as near as we can tell, somewhere around 25 degrees North and 118 degrees West. The impact probability is essentially one hundred percent. We are still working on a precise Torino number.”

“I’m sorry
, Doctor, I meant, can you say anything about damage.”

“Not yet
, Sir, as I mentioned…,”

“Doctor,” the President interrupted as calmly as he could, “can you give me a ballpark idea?”

“Well, roughly, something on the order of several million nuclear devices exploding simultaneously, Sir.”

The President looked over to Anders and covered his mouthpiece.
“We need to find Batter.”

Tom and Alex climbed over some rubble and entered
the rough opening, switching on their flashlights almost simultaneously. It was pitch black inside. Alex stepped carefully, sweeping her light high across the cave’s rafters, trying to get a sense of its size. The area they were in was large, with twenty to thirty foot ceilings and almost as wide. Aside from the hole Tom and his men had inadvertently knocked open in the ARC, it looked as if there were two other natural entrances; one which seemed to lead upward, and one down, all part of some sort of vast natural tunnel system.

“Which way, Tom?”

“That way,” he said, pointing his light at the entrance that looked like it went up, “only goes for about two hundred feet and then it’s totally blocked by a slide, but this way,” he said turning the other direction, “well, you’ll see.”

Alex followed Tom toward the second entrance. The cave narrowed considerably and then began to descend more rapidly. As they stepped off into the dark she stumbled into him.

“Watch it Alex,” he said, concerned for her safety, “shine your light down so you can see where you are going.”

Alex turned her flashlight to the floor of the cave and was astonished at what she saw. This cannot be, she thought to herself. She knelt down and looked at the area ahead of her, moving the light from side to side, touching the floor with her hands. Impossible.
“What would have… What could have? No, there must be some mistake,” she said to herself. “This has to be a natural phenomenon.” She realized she had tripped on a step!

“Amazing huh? Just like I promised,” Tom offered smugly.

“This must be some kind of natural rock formation, right?” Alex was looking at a series of steps that continued into the dark below. They were cut directly into the stone, approximately six feet wide from side to side, a foot and a half deep, and had a drop of about eight inches. Each one seemed perfectly proportioned to the next.

“You tell me
, Doctor,” Tom replied. “All I know is that one of the guys from the team that was down here earlier today said that they had found pre-K-T specimens and no other evidence of any other occupancy since, suggesting that these were cut, what, over sixty million years ago?”

“That’s impossible. What specimens
, Tom?” Alex continued to pan her light over the obviously manmade staircase, which defied logic if the cave dating was accurate at pre-K-T. “Oh my god! They must have made a mistake,” she said. She felt as if her head was going to explode. “Who was this guy you spoke to?”

“I don’t remember Alex,” he thought for a moment. “Wilson, yes, I think it was a guy by the name of Pete Wilson. Anyway, they didn’t exactly invite me along. All I know is that they commandeered a refrigeration truck from town and spent a good part of yesterday and almost all of today loading it up. Heck, they just left a few minutes before you got here. Batter was involved, so he probably knows the whole story. I had other issues so I didn’t get down here until this afternoon with
my…,” Tom hesitated.

“With your what, Tom?” Alex asked suspiciously.

Tom’s face reddened, “Come on Alex, I am under orders to finish this project a.s.a.p.”

“With your
what
?”

“With my demo guys Alex
. We’re going to blast this area in the morning and seal it. Those explosions this afternoon, that was my crew preparing the fill material up top.”

“Jesus
, Tom, what’s the hurry?” she demanded.

“I don’t really know
, but there is definitely a
big
hurry. Batter was emphatic that in no way were we to fall any further behind schedule. We’ve already been delayed almost a week because of this find. He’s given me only twenty days to finish.”

Alex was shaking. “You mean to tell me that you guys are going to purposely ruin what is possibly the most important discovery in the history of modern man over a friggin’ schedule?” She tripped again and Tom reached out to catch her.

“Alex,” Tom continued calmly, “Batter assured me that the scientists have already recovered or documented anything of importance down here, and that I need to get the project completed. As he said, ‘because
that
, Tom, is exactly what we are paying you to do.’”

“Well
, Tom, aren’t you just a little bit curious about what the rush is? I mean, didn’t you tell me that what you are building is some sort of doomsday shelter?” Alex asked him as if he were some kind of idiot.

“
Yes, of course I am, but I haven’t been able to discover anything yet that will tell me the real purpose behind it-and I ain’t asking. You know how the government is, Alex, cloaked in secrecy. All I know is that they are paying me big money to finish. Maybe the funds appropriated expire if certain deadlines aren’t met. I don’t know. But, Alex, think about it, hasn’t the world always been ‘coming to an end’ ever since we were kids? Someone in Washington has probably just taken that notion far too seriously.”

Alex had to admit that Tom was making some sense. That did not, however, justify the fact that his team was just about to destroy what might be the most
significant archaeological-paleontological find in history.

“I haven’t even shown you the good stuff yet Alex. You want to see it or stand here and argue all night?”

“Let’s go,” she replied.

They continued down the stone staircase. Alex noticed that the steps themselves had the usual slight indentations from years and years of foot traffic on them
, but they were cut wider and deeper than modern stairs, which made them somewhat awkward to traverse. The cave leveled out in places, and the stairs disappeared, then reappeared when the descent got steep again. Where level, the walls were cut near the bottom at ninety degree angles so the path could be kept perfectly flat. No question that they had been intelligently engineered. Alex also noticed that the temperature was dropping dramatically as they went down. She was glad that Tom had insisted on the heavy gear.

“Here it is,” he said. “There is this one last long stairway
, and then we’ll be there.”

Another fifty or so steps down and they emerged into a
nother large chamber. They were now about three or four hundred feet from where they had entered, but Alex wasn’t sure how much deeper they were. It was cold though, very cold, freezing in fact. Alex could see her breath in the beam of her flashlight. She swept it around and spotted several indentations in the floor and several more in the walls. In some spots, rectangular stones had been cut and put in place like tables or benches. She immediately thought that the room must have been some sort of burial chamber. Several caves seemed to branch off from this main room, but she could only see their black entrances.

“Amazing isn’t it?” remarked Tom. “Take a look at the inscriptions in front of the holes in the floor Alex.”

She approached the indentations which looked like rows of giant stone bathtubs cut directly into the floor, her heart in her throat. Inscriptions? She shot her light down at the edge of one of them. Sure enough, I did look as if something had been chiseled into the stone. She crouched down to get a better look. The marks were hard to make out, but they were definitely there. Her mind tried to rebel at the very idea, but the evidence was unmistakable. Whatever beings had occupied these caves not only knew how to carve stairs, but they knew how to write! This had to be manmade, or made by some far more recent ancestor. No way this was pre-K-T.

Alex panned her flashlight around the chamber, but it was hard to see anything clearly. “Tom, I have to have some better light. I noticed some portable floods in the back of that pickup
. We need to get them.”

“Oh
, Alex, come on,” he groaned, “we have to get out of here soon anyway. Here, let me help you.” Tom moved toward Alex with his light.

“Tom,” Alex said with an edge in her voice, “first of all
, you know I am not leaving here until you assholes blow the place up, and second of all, I need some light. Now, are you going to help me or not?”

Tom knew better than to cross Alex. Even he somewhat understood the import
ance of this discovery, and he had known all along that, once he brought Alex down, he would have a hell of a time getting her out. They were going to be here all night. At least if they went back for the lights, he might be able to get some dinner sent down. His stomach rumbled.

“O
K, let’s go get them,” he surrendered.

“We don’t both need to go
. Please, Tom! I am just going to stay down here and have a look around.”

“I am not feeling real good about that Alex.”

“Oh come on. It’ll just take you a few minutes, and it will give me some more time. You said it yourself, I don’t have much,” Alex countered, pleading.

“
Alright Alex,” he said, doubtfully. “But you have to promise me that when I say time is up, it’s up. My guys are going to begin closing this up around 5 a.m., so we have until then, but that is it. Agreed?” Tom knew he would probably have to carry her out over his shoulder regardless of her answer.

Alex checked her watch. It was already 8:15 p
.m.—that would give her eight or nine hours to look around. Not much time, but better than nothing. “Agreed.”

“
I am going to see what I can scare up for dinner while I’m up there. Anything else?”

“No,” Alex said, suddenly distracted by something she could see on one of the walls. “Go ahead
, Tom, I’ll be fine. Good luck on dinner, I am starving. Maybe some hot coffee?”

“I’ll do my best. Be careful Alex,” he pleaded.

“You, too. See you in a minute.” Alex looked toward Tom and shot him a reassuring smile, then watched for a moment as he turned and began to ascend the stairs that led back to the entrance.

“Tom, are you sure that guy sa
id he’d dated this place to pre-K-T?” she called out.

Tom turned back. “That’s what he said Alex. I know
, it seems incredible to me too. But I have no reason to think he was lying. He was probably just wrong. I’ll be right back.”

It wasn’t long until the light from Tom’s flashlight vanished
and Alex could no longer hear his footfalls. An eerie quiet fell over the cave, which was quite unnerving in its stillness. Alex shook it off. He’ll be back in a minute, she reassured herself.

“
OK, Alex, game on. What do we know?” She could hear her father’s voice speaking to her again. We have stairs and we have some sort of storage or burial chamber with some sort of inscriptions. If it were truly pre-K-T it would pre-date the most ancient writings ever discovered by, oh, only by about 65 million years! By default, mankind would not be the only intelligent beings to ever have lived on earth. In fact, they would be far from the first. If all of that were proved to be true, then even Darwin himself would probably roll in his grave. Such a discovery would pose a monumental philosophical problem for the Christians, the Jews, the Muslims…. Intelligent life other than man?
Before
the first human? No way! Most all of the world’s religions would have a collective heart attack. This would have to be kept secret or half of the world’s culture, more than half, would have to be essentially shit-canned!

Those bastards, that’s why they came in here and cleared everything out
, and that’s why they are going to seal the cave! That’s why Batter had no worry letting Tom show me the place, because no one would believe me even if I had some physical proof. They would figure out a way to discredit anything I produced. It would be easy. Why? Because the whole notion is totally impossible, and tomorrow any hard evidence of it will be gone!

Alex suddenly recalled the
tractor trailer and the government vehicles she had seen leaving earlier, and felt her stomach turn to knots. She realized that Batter’s guys had probably cleaned the place out and loaded the most important specimens on the truck. I have got to find something I can take out of here, she thought, preferably before Tom gets back. Now she was glad she brought her pack. There was no way that he would knowingly let her remove any artifacts.

She panned her light into the holes in the floor looking for something
, anything, she could take with her. One thing was for sure, whoever Pete Wilson was, he and his team had done a thorough job. It was clear to her that someone had literally cut any specimen right out of the stone floor, which was very unusual. Must have taken them hours, she thought. Most of the spots were completely barren, but in one of them she noticed a splinter of some kind of resin. She reached over and picked it up. It looked like amber, or something very similar. Alex examined the piece for a moment then shoved it in her bag and trolled around the cave with her flashlight. Obviously, the team had completely stripped it. Nothing else looked unusual, just…

Wait
. What is that weird spot on the wall? The place Alex was interested in was about six feet over the level of the floor, a rectangular indentation that otherwise blended almost perfectly with the wall’s stone surface. She moved towards it, carefully avoiding the large holes in the floor. “What the hell?” As she ran her light over it, Alex could see that whatever was covering the hole was translucent. It looked almost like the amber material she had just found. Then, she could feel her pulse rise. Below the amber material, almost at eye level, she could see the same type of hash stroke writing that was by each hole in the cave floor-a series of symbols scratched into the stone.