Suvova felt the shudder of total fear, but she managed to stagger onwards, glancing fearfully over her shoulder.
Bulov simply froze, and collapsed onto his knees in the path of the racing creature. Snow puffed into the air as his knees hit the ground.
Then Abby was twenty metres away, sprinting in across the snowfield from Bulov’s left. Suvova couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
“Oi!” the girl yelled at the top of her lungs. “Oi! Baba Yaga!”
It was no hyperpredator roar. There was no infrasound component to stun her target. But the Tyrannosaurus broke stride slightly, distracted by the sound and the small movement to her left.
“Oi!” Abby yelled again, waving her hands for good measure. Would it turn for her? Would she be able to outrun an adult Tyrannosaurus if it did? Both questions occurred to her at once.
She was about to find out.
Baba Yaga glanced sidelong, but she was still intent on using the defenceless, defeated Bulov as a canape. Hardwired instincts urged a big predator to take any food that was offered when it was offered, the easier the better.
Abby shot the Tyrannosaurus in the flank.
She’d remembered the capture gun in her waistband. It was powerful, with a hell of a kick. It drove the dart deep into Baba Yaga’s weathered, hard skin, deep enough to sting.
The creature thumped to a halt ten metres from the kneeling Bulov, and shook her rump. She turned her head.
Abby yelled again. With freezing, snow-numbed fingers, she’d reloaded the capture gun with a dart from the shoulder bag. She aimed and fired.
Despite the crosswind, Baba Yaga was a big target. The second dart thukked! into the skin of her neck.
She had the Tyrannosaurus’s full attention.
With an explosive growl, the creature swung away from Bulov and came for her instead.
“Drugs?” she murmured. “Taking effect? Any time soon?
“Okay, not so much.”
Abby turned. And ran.
FIFTY-TWO
Jenny blinked. She shook her head.
Fragments of windscreen glass fell out of her hair. Everything was on its side and at a funny angle. She had a sudden terrifying flashback to a helicopter crash not so long ago. As much as the cold, the thought made her shiver.
Then she moved.
She was battered and bruised. The truck, destroyed by the Ankylosaur’s tail, was lying upside down in a gully beside the track. Snow was gusting in through the broken windows and torn-off doors, but it was very warm, almost hot. Snowflakes sizzled and turned into dew as they hit the crumpled metalwork. Jenny could hear the plastic crackle of flames nearby. She could see the dancing orange light of the forest fire.
“Hemple?” she called. “Hemple?”
She could also smell fuel, strong and pungent.
She clambered out into the open, and walked around the wreck. The driver had not survived. He was unpleasantly mangled into the front of the vehicle.
Zvegin and the guard had pulled themselves free. Both of them were injured. Zvegin’s face was badly gashed.
“Help me!” Jenny yelled, searching frantically for Hemple. “Help me!”
They ignored her. The guard was supporting Zvegin and they began trudging away along the track, as if they intended to walk back to the camp.
“Come back!” Jenny yelled. “Come back here and help me!”
“Help yourself!” Zvegin shouted back. “Come with us!”
“You need to help me!” she cried.
The blazing front of the forest fire was now less than thirty metres away from the track and sweeping towards the wreck. The heat was intense, like a hard wall. The light of the inferno hurt her eyes. The truck would soon be engulfed, and its fuel would catch.
“Come back and help me!” she shouted desperately at Zvegin and the guard, but they were already too far away, and clearly cared very little.
Jenny clambered back into the wreck.
“Hemple?”
She heard him groan.
“This isn’t very clever, is it?” he murmured.
“Are you hurt?”
“Um, no. Ow, yes. My leg. Right leg.”
“Let’s get you out. The fire’s right on top of us.”
She could see his eyes in the gloom and his teeth as he smiled.
“No can do,” he said. “My leg’s pinned.”
Jenny told him exactly what she thought of that as an excuse. She scrambled around, and got to his right leg.
“Ow!” he exclaimed.
“Try pulling it,” she insisted.
“I have been,” he replied. “Jenny, it’s really stuck. It’s pinned between the floor plate and the side of the door. It’s got me like a bear trap.”
“We’ll just have to un-get you, then.”
“You’re going to bend metal, are you?”
“If I have to.” She looked at him. “It’s either that, or saw your leg off.”
“Listen,” he said, “Jenny, please listen to me. There’s no time to get me free. I’ll keep trying. If you can find me a lever, maybe a crowbar, I will keep trying. But you’re not staying in here.”
“Rubbish.”
“Jenny,” he said, “the fire is right on us. I’m supposed to protect you. Keeping you alive is my job, not the other way around. If you try to help me, you’ll get yourself killed, too, and I’m not prepared to let that happen.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I’m not going to leave you in this mess.”
“You are. Go. Now. I insist.”
She ignored him and rummaged around.
“This might do for a crowbar,” she said.
“It’s a bit of seat, but it might work. Give it to me.”
“You can’t do it. I’ll do it.”
“Jenny!” Hemple was getting cross. “Give me the bar and get out. I protect you. That’s the way it works. Don’t put yourself at risk trying to look after me.”
Jenny scowled at him.
“For a smart bloke, sometimes you talk the most ridiculous nonsense. This is no longer about job descriptions. I’m not leaving you in here to burn. Now move your arm and let me get at your foot.”
She wriggled past him, and pushed the end of the metal bar into the tight gap where Hemple’s lower right leg was clamped. She exerted a little pressure.
“Is it moving?”
“No,” he replied.
“How about now?” she panted, pushing hard.
He groaned.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no’,” she said.
“Let me help you,” he said. “Let me get hold of it and pull with you.”
She shuffled around. Outside, the roar of flames sounded like rushing water. She was beginning to perspire. It was as hot as an oven inside the twisted metal box of the truck.
Hemple leaned over and got both hands around the end of the bar. She put her hands next to his. In the dark, she could feel the tack of blood on his knuckles.
They heaved.
She heard metal creak.
“It’s no use,” he gasped.
“Again!” she ordered.
They heaved again. The twisted bodywork moaned in protest. Still his leg would not come free.
“We’ll just have to do it again,” she told him.
“Please, Jenny...” he began.
She shushed him and looked up. She could hear a crackling sound coming from the mangled cab. For an awful moment, she thought that the flames had finally reached the truck and taken hold.
It wasn’t the fire. Things were moving in the cab-end of the truck, small, slender shapes with long tails that darted and twitched like birds.
Jenny saw several pairs of big, golden eyes as they caught the firelight. Something chattered.
They were the lizards that Helen Cutter had called Troodons, the vicious, bright-eyed things that had carried Jenkins off and feasted on him.
Driven by the fire and drawn by the smell of blood, they had come to the wreck, a
nd already they were beginning to feed on the driver’s corpse.
Several of them were pushing up through the broken wreckage to get at Jenny and Hemple. They trilled and barked.
“Get out,” Hemple ordered, breathlessly. “Jenny, get out.”
Jenny pulled the bar out of the gap and jabbed it at the advancing Troodons. They skittered back, hissing and clacking.
“Go away!” she yelled at them. “Go away!”
The Troodons chattered again. Big, smart eyes stared gleefully at her in the gloom.
They weren’t scared of her at all.
“There’s a fully grown Tyrannosaurus loose in the camp,” Connor said.
Shvachko shook his head. He was covering Connor and Koshkin with his rifle.
“Anything to distract my attention, eh?” he said.
“I just thought you should know,” Connor remarked. “It could be a valuable piece of information to have if, for example, you were planning on getting through the day without being eaten.”
“Stop wasting your time,” Shvachko said. “This is over. You’re both dead. This is an execution offence, Koshkin. You know that.”
A deep and resonant roar split the air. It was long and drawn out, ten long seconds of booming rage that wasn’t the thunder.
It made Shvachko glance away for a second.
Just a second.
Koshkin tackled him. He grabbed the rifle and twisted it through ninety degrees, so that, as Shvachko fired, the burst of rounds punched through the roof of the command tent. He head-butted Shvachko, knocking him backwards. Shvachko replied by throwing a kick that cracked at least one of Koshkin’s ribs.
Koshkin tried to counter with a brutal elbow chop, but he missed. Shvachko, even with blood running down his face from his split nose, was fast and utterly focused. His fist fractured Koshkin’s left cheekbone. The side of his other hand chopped down onto Koshkin’s collarbone. Another high kick drove the bigger man backwards.
That gave Shvachko the break he needed. His hand snatched for his pistol to shoot Koshkin dead before he could rally.
The holster was empty. He’d given his pistol to Medyevin.
Koshkin punched Shvachko square in the face. Shvachko snapped away. The back of his head struck the main ceiling post of the tent with a loud crack.
He collapsed, overturning the camp table.
“Is this what you special forces people do all day?” Connor asked. “Smack each other silly?”
“Just get the laptop,” Koshkin gasped. Blood was dribbling from his nostril, and his eye was already swelling.
The laptop had been knocked onto the ground. Connor scooped it up, braced it with his splinted arm, wincing, and jabbed a few keys.
“It’s not working,” he announced. “It’s broken. Koshkin, seriously, it’s broken.”
“Let me see,” Koshkin said in alarm.
“Oh, it’s okay,” Connor said. “Phew, I’ve got a wake up. Screen’s back.”
The Russian righted the camp table, and Connor put the laptop on it.
“What happens now?” he asked.
Koshkin began to type on the keyboard, entering codewords and working his way through a series of security screens.
“I’ll get you in,” he said. His fingers flashed over the keys.
Protocol barriers parted. Military-grade security software opened, stage by stage.
“Here,” Koshkin said. “See? Here?”
Connor slid the laptop around to face him. He scanned the wealth of information on-screen rapidly.
“Hang on, hang on,” he said. “God, this is a bit, you know, complex. Let me see. What about...? No, not that.”
He typed something experimentally.
“Okay,” he said, “this is looking more promising. I’ve got a sub-menu called ‘slave platform/attitude’. Well, I’ve got plenty of attitude.”
“That’s not what it means,” Koshkin said.
“I know, I know!” Connor said, typing again. “That was a joke. Note to self: don’t make jokes at moments of tension. Okay, look, look. Now I’ve got this. What does this mean? What’s it asking me?”
“I don’t know,” Koshkin said.
Connor typed one-handed.
“Neither do I. Let’s try this, then.”
He fell silent as he worked quickly, trying and retrying different approaches. Several minutes passed.
“Well?” Koshkin asked at length. “Can you do it?”
“I dunno,” Connor said doubtfully. The laptop pinged. “Correction, yes I can! Alrighty, here we go. New window. It’s asking me for something... blah, blah, blah... Okay, Koshkin, I’ve got to enter accurate GPS co-ordinates for the anomaly. Any ideas?”
Koshkin looked over his shoulder.
“Maybe you need to switch to the map screen, and then re-select the guidance menu?”
“Good call. That makes sense.” Connor worked fast, humming to himself.
“Okay,” he said. “This is beginning to look the way I want it to look. Now, I did select the Siberia map screen and not the North American one, didn’t I?”
“Are you joking again?” Koshkin asked.
“It seems so,” Connor said. There was another electronic ping.
“What is it saying?”
Connor grinned.
“It says ‘platform retasking — orbital re-position in process — stand by’.”
“Stand by? For how long?” Koshkin asked.
“There’s a work bar,” Connor said. “The satellite will be in firing position in... eleven minutes and counting.”
He looked at Koshkin.
“Is that going to be fast enough?” he asked.
Outside, above the thunder, another roar shattered the air. It sounded much closer.
“Let’s hope so,” Koshkin said. “In the meantime, grab the laptop. We need to find somewhere safer to wait.”
Abby ran back through the camp, and the bewildered soldiers scattered as they saw what was coming after her.
She risked a glance over her shoulder.
The immense black shape of Baba Yaga was pounding through the snow behind her, head lowered. She was moving more slowly now, but it wouldn’t matter. Another couple of Tyrannosaurus-size strides and it would catch her.
Abby jinked left, between two tents, and then threw herself down, rolling frantically through the snow on her side to slot herself under the chassis of an ATV.
She felt the creature reach her. Above her, the ATV jarred as Baba Yaga’s snout rammed into the side of it. It rammed again, and the whole vehicle lifted off its wheels on one side for a second, before flopping back down.
Abby couldn’t stay under the vehicle any longer. She rolled out on the other side, and sprang up again.
Raising her head above the ATV, the Tyrannosaurus saw her. With her prey reacquired, Baba Yaga accelerated again, barging the ATV aside, crushing its front end like kitchen foil under a massive, clawing foot.
Abby turned. She loaded another dart into the capture gun, and she fired it, but it missed. Running, she reloaded and turned again, shooting up at the breast of the oncoming predator. The dart wedged fast, just above the short forearms.
“Bulov, you bastard! You told me the drugs were strong!” she yelled as she resumed her breakneck sprint.
Baba Yaga rolled out another infernal roar, and trampled through a row of tents to get at her.
Abby had faith in the idea that she was small and light and fast, and that if she kept switching direction, she might be able to out-turn the comparatively ponderous giant, despite its alarming stride. She veered around a parked 4×4, but the snow and ice were against her. As a shivering spear of lightning shattered the sky above, Abby lost her footing and went sprawling.
Baba Yaga didn’t go around the 4×4, she went over it, standing on it like a steeplechaser stepping on the rail to clear the water jump. All fourtyres of the 4×4 blew out simultaneously under the gross weight, and the vehicle collapsed onto its axles.
The Tyrannosaurus lunged towards Abby. She saw a gape a metre wide swinging down towards her.
A hail of automatic gunfire struck Baba Yaga, and she recoiled hard, coughing out short, deep grunts of surprise. She took a step back, her tail sweeping around like an angry snake.
“Abby!” Cutter was running towards her, firing an AK-74 up at the Tyrannosaurus.
“Get up! Get up!” he yelled. She scrabbled to her feet. Cutter fired again. The assault rifle kicked hard and squirted out a bright flare of ignited gas. Cutter knew some firearms, but not modern military weapons like this one. The AK was entirely unfamiliar. He felt as if he were clumsily hosing bullets in all directions.
Some of them were hitting, though. He could see dark, glinting wounds against the matt slate-and-black skin of the hyperpredator.
Cutter backed away with Abby, firing again.
“How many shots have you got left?” she yelled.
The AK stopped firing abruptly.
“None!” he shouted back.
Baba Yaga bellowed into the storm and swung at them, wounded and angry. They ran. Cutter threw open the side door of an ATV and dragged Abby inside. He slammed the door shut, and the door skin immediately buckled as the snout drove into it from outside. The ATV rocked. Cutter and Abby were both lurched off their feet.
A corner of the roof suddenly scrunched up — Baba Yaga was biting the ATV’s roofline. Several long teeth plunged through the metal into the cabin, like swords inside a magician’s trick box.
With a firm, biting hold, she began to shake and worry the ATV. Cutter clambered forward and got into the driving seat. The keys were in the ignition, because the power plant had been left on, connected up to a heater in the adjoining tent. He started the engine, found a forward gear and put his foot down.
The wheels of the anchored ATV spun in the wet snow. Neck hunched, like a dog refusing to let go of a stick, Baba Yaga held on.
Metal shredded. The ATV lurched forwards with a huge tear along its roof. Baba Yaga staggered back. The fan heater unit and its connecting vent and power cable tore out of the back of the tent and tumbled after the ATV.