Landing Party: A Dinosaur Thriller (3 page)

The group was in agreement, and they quickly worked out a roster for each team, designated Slope and Boat. By the time they had finished with that, the pilot was hovering over the Slope Team drop zone.

“This is as good as it’s going to get for the slope. Looks like you have a little bit of semi- flat ground to get started on. After that, good luck!”

The helicopter descended to three feet above a rare level patch of ground and the four Slope Team members, each wearing a backpack, lined up to jump out. Richard Eavesley led the way, followed by geologist George Meyer, photographer Ethan Jones, and translator Kai Nguyen. The crunch of lava rock under boots was drowned out by the helicopter’s engine. After all four duck-walked out from beneath the rotors, the chopper lifted off while the team still on board waved their temporary goodbyes.

The pilot lifted the craft higher and then moved forward until they cleared the lip of the volcano. In the back, Anita and Skylar worked to unpack their small inflatable raft. It would float the four of them and their gear, but just barely. As they inflated it with a hand pump, they stuck the nose out the door. Meanwhile, the craft descended, and it became noticeably darker inside the volcano, light only penetrating from directly above.

“Anybody notice something funny?” Anita asked the group, her blonde eyebrows furrowing above sky blue eyes.

“What’s that?” Skylar didn’t look up from adjusting the straps on her backpack.

“We split the two teams into men and women.”

All four women of the Boat Team looked around at one another and burst out laughing. “Probably better that way, no distractions, right?” Lara said.

“On my go, people…” The pilot’s voice put an end to their banter. His hand moved over the controls as he steadied the aircraft a few feet above the lake’s surface, now whipped into a frenzy of whitewater by the rotor wash.

Anita grabbed hold of a rope tied to the raft. They had fastened a weight to the nose of the raft to make sure it would drop down and not get buffeted into the rotors, destroying their boat and possibly the helicopter, too.

“Here goes.” She and Skylar kicked the little boat out the door.

Even with the added ballast, the lightweight raft caught an updraft, and for one heart-stopping moment, it seemed the raft was going to hit the rotors, but then it slanted down at an angle and hit the water. Their luck wasn’t perfect, however, since it landed upside-down.

Anita cursed the turn of events. She still held the rope attached to the raft, keeping it from being blown across the lake by the rotor wash.

“Now what?” Joystna asked. “Haul it back up and try again?”

It was the helicopter pilot who answered. “No way. That was too close to the rotors. We’re not trying that again. Deal with it. Get down there and flip it over.”

Before anyone could say anything, Anita jumped out the door, splashing into the lake a few feet from the boat. Those in the helo looked down on her, waiting to see she if was okay. What if the water was still almost boiling hot? They’d all heard the predictions, based on science—it should be about the same as the surrounding ocean water, maybe a little warmer—but still. Here she was, actually taking the plunge. Another unsettling thought—what if the water wasn’t that deep and she hit the bottom hard?

But Anita gave a casual wave to let them know she was okay after making the drop. Then, using the rope, she pulled the raft to her. It was light enough that she was able to flip it over herself. She did so and then shrugged off her pack. She chucked it up and over, into the raft. Then she got in herself, kicking until she was able to flop inside.

Skylar Hanson was next to jump, followed quickly by Joystna Chandahar and Lara Cantrel. The chopper rose up and out of the volcano as soon as all of the passengers were clear, lessening the rotor wash for the swimmers. Anita helped the others aboard the raft, and then they craned their necks upward to watch as the pilot lifted the helicopter out of the cone and flew away from the island.

Expedition Gaia had landed.

Chapter 5

All of Boat Team, including Skylar, the geologist, had thought that the water in the lake would calm down once the helicopter had left, that all of the churning had been due to rotor wash. They could see now, however, that this was anything but the case. All around them the lake—which was in fact ocean water that had been trapped in the center of the forming volcano cone—bubbled and sputtered, with gasses rising off of it giving the whole place an eerie, ethereal feel.

Skylar picked up the paddle, but seeing Anita reminded her that the professional explorer on Boat Team was an experienced boater, so she gave it to Anita. Skylar wondered if Anita might be irritated that Richard’s comments about her boating experience were coming to pass, but these thoughts were interrupted by Anita, who asked, “Where to?”

All of them looked around, and Skylar produced a powerful flashlight to use as a search beam. She directed its illumination onto the jagged shoreline, sweeping the beam around in a clockwise circle.

While she did this, Joystna put her hand in the water. “Warm. About the same as the outside ocean water.”

“That’s because it is outside ocean water,” Skylar said. “This subsea volcano formed underwater, and as it grew, it formed a caldera, a depression formed by the caving in of an empty chamber of magma. Then, seawater rushed in to take its place. It looks like an enclosed lake, or bowl of water, but it’s most likely connected to the ocean through openings and chambers below the surface.”

“Good to know it’s warm in case we have to swim.” Lara put a walkie talkie to her lips and spoke into it. “Boat Team to Slope, you copy?”

Static issued from the radio speaker but then Richard’s English accent became decipherable. “We copy you, Lara. Still getting situated right where we got dropped off, but almost ready to move out. How’s the boat?”

“Wet, but we’re in it, safe and sound. Same situation here, basically, we’re ready to move out.”

Richard’s laughter pealed out of the speaker, followed by the words, “Roger that, we’ll check in later, then. Toodles!”

“So which way, then?” Anita asked again, paddle poised above the water.

“I don’t see anywhere we can get out on so far.” Skylar continued playing the torch beam around the volcano’s interior. She studied the walls of the volcano leading up, narrowing as they reached toward the sky.

Joystna gazed up with what appeared to be trepidation. “All I can say is if we can’t find a way out from in here somewhere, it’s going to be one hell of a climb up. Either that, or we’ll have to sit in this raft until the helicopter comes back to pick us up.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Skylar agreed. “But it’s a big island, and in my professional opinion, the chance that it’s one hundred percent solid down here except for the lake is remote.”

No sooner had she completed her sentence than Skylar steadied the search beam on an area of shoreline. “Look here.” A narrow depression pockmarked the otherwise smooth surface of the curved shore.

“Looks like it could go back a ways. Let’s check it out.” Anita dug the oar into the water, paddling them toward the spot. As they progressed, a loose chunk of rock fell from somewhere high above on the inside volcano wall, making scraping sounds on the way down and finally splashing into the lake, a reminder that the brand new island was far from stable. Anita stopped paddling as they reached the mouth of an opening in the rocky wall of the lake chamber. Sheets of mist or vapor wafted from the surface of the lake, obscuring visibility into the opening.

“What do you think?” Skylar asked no one in particular.

Anita looked around the lake walls, seeing no other opportunities for exploration short of getting into full-on rock climbing. “I say we take the boat in a little ways and see where this goes, if anywhere.”

The rest of the group voiced uneasy agreement, and Anita paddled the raft into the misty cave.

Chapter 6

Ethan Jones wiped his eyes again as he trotted ahead of the group so that he could turn around to snap a photo. He wanted an image to prove they were really here, boots on the ground, doing their job kind of thing. A public relations type shot. Document the expedition, that’s what he was here for. But his eyes kept tearing up before he could compose his shot.

“Air up here is murder on the eyes.”

Richard Eavesley led the Slope Team past Ethan along a rare horizontal section of the volcano’s outer mountainside. “Sulfuric gasses coming from deep within the Earth. You should have thought to bring goggles. They’re always a part of my kit.” He made it a point to turn and look at Ethan with his plastic bug-eyes on.

“I see you’re the only one wearing them. Thanks for letting the rest of us know,” Ethan shot back. “Besides,” he added quickly, deciding he’d come off a little harsh, “I couldn’t really take good pictures with those on.”

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 something. 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.