“Hang on!” Cutter yelled.
Abby clung on. The ATV wasn’t behaving well in the blizzard, especially not from a ridiculous racing start. The back end swung out, and they side-swiped a trunk with a tooth-jarring impact.
In pursuit, the Tyrannosaurus butted them from behind, skipping them forward. Abby fell against a seat.
Cutter cursed and hit the brakes. He selected reverse with a violent twist of the stick, and put his foot down again.
The ATV leapt backwards and hit the creature like a battering ram. Baba Yaga roared. Cutter sped forward, and then selected reverse again and rammed her a second time.
The rear end of the ATV was a mess. When Cutter pulled forward again, he could hear crumpled bodywork dragging and clattering behind him.
Baba Yaga surged back at them in a frenzied attack. Her snout crashed into the side of the ATV just as Cutter tried to turn the wheel, and that was enough to flop the ATV over onto its side with a heavy crash.
The Tyrannosaurus fell on the ATV as if it were a major kill. She lifted one hind limb, and dug the massive claws of her foot into the bodywork, squealing them into the metal. Pressing down, she hooked her small but powerful front limbs into the side door and anchored them, causing the vehicle’s hull to bend outwards under the gigantic stress. Her head swung in, and she took the first of several bites at the cab end, smashing the windows and shredding the roof.
Cutter grabbed Abby’s hand and kicked out the crazed windscreen in one piece, rubber seal and all. They bailed out through the empty space and started to run again.
Baba Yaga saw them, and tore away from the ATV, kicking it aside in her eagerness to seize them. They had nothing like enough of a headstart to pull clear.
He tried to shield Abby, and it was his turn to see the metre-wide gape rushing at him.
At least it was going to be quick.
FIFTY-THREE
The Tyrannosaurus’s powerful lunge turned into a shivering headlong collapse. The creature’s chin hit the snowy ground hard and began to slide, with its body and churning limbs following close behind.
Cutter and Abby were smashed aside by the snout and sent tumbling, as if they’d been run down by a car.
Stretched out at full length, Baba Yaga rolled onto her back. Her raised leg twitched, and she lay still.
“Abby?” Cutter murmured.
“I’m okay,” she said. She rose, staring at the supine mass of the creature. “Wow,” she added.
“Indeed,” Cutter agreed.
She looked down at the capture gun in her hand.
“I guess now we know that an adult Tyrannosaurus takes three darts, and about five minutes for the drugs to fully metabolise.”
He grinned.
“Give or take.”
Suvova and Bulov came running out of the snow storm.
“Are you all right? Nicky, are you all right?”
“We’re both fine,” Cutter said. “We’ve got to find Connor and Koshkin fast. Have you seen them?”
Suvova shook her head.
“The whole place is in chaos,” she said. “Men are running in all directions because of the Tyrannosaurus.”
“And the fire is coming,” Bulov said, pointing at the advancing inferno out in the forest. “It’s moving this way really fast.”
“None of that matters,” Cutter replied, “not in the long run. We’ve got to find Connor. We’ve got to close the —”
He was interrupted by an enormous roar, the unmistakable bellow of a Tyrannosaurus.
They looked around in panic, but Baba Yaga was still stretched out like a small black mountain.
“Oh my God,” Abby said, despair thick in her voice.
“There’s another one,” Cutter said. “There’s another Tyrannosaurus in the forest, and it’s coming this way.”
“I don’t believe my heart can take another,” Bulov said.
“Shut up, Grisha!” Suvova snapped. “Nicky, what do we do?”
“We run,” Cutter said. “We run, and we find Connor.”
They started to move. Sixty metres away, on the other side of the camp, another black shape strode into view between the trees. It seemed to emerge from the raging forest blaze like a demonic beast, thick black smoke streaming around it.
The second Tyrannosaurus was a young male, six tons and ten metres long — small compared to Baba Yaga’s magnificent eight-ton and fourteen-metre bulk — but he was still a huge and powerful hunting machine, and every bit a hyperpredator. He spurred forward, barking out his whooping, snarling roars.
“Go!” Cutter told the others. “Go!”
Hiding had its drawbacks, Medyevin decided. It was cold and uncomfortable, cowering under a truck’s back axle during a blizzard in Siberia. He’d waited long enough.
There had been some terrible sounds, and fear had pinned him to the spot, but fear of sitting still was getting to him. He decided he had to find Shvachko.
Then, possibly, if he could at all manage it, a transfer back to the institute in Sankt-Peterburg.
Medyevin slipped out of cover and looked around. Snowflakes landed on his eyelashes. He could smell smoke. He started to run through the camp, a great deal of which was torn to pieces. There was a crushed 4×4 and a shredded tent-hut. He tried to get his bearings.
Where was the command tent?
Up ahead of him, he suddenly saw Abby and Suvova. They were running.
“Abby!” he shouted. “Hey, Abby!”
He started to run towards them. There was Cutter, as well, and Bulov. They were also running.
“Hey!”
Abby saw him, and shouted something. She shouted something and waved her arms frantically.
Medyevin felt the ground quiver. He looked over his shoulder.
The young male Tyrannosaurus was black-on-black like the big female, but his belly was paler and his neck was leaner. Nevertheless, to Medyevin, he looked five times as big as Baba Yaga because he was so close.
Medyevin shrieked, and ran towards the nearest tent. He ducked inside, and scrambled through the side slit into the next tent, and then through into the next. In the third tent, he cowered down and made the greatest effort of anyone in the history of the human race not to make a sound.
A split second before he died, Nikolai Medyevin reflected that, as career moves went, the extravagant application of cheap cologne had not been a wise one.
The first Troodon lunged at Jenny and she knocked it out of the wreck with a sideswipe of the metal bar.
“Awful things!” she shouted. “Go away! Shooo!”
They were getting bolder. When the next one lunged, it grabbed the end of her bar and held on.
She kicked it instead.
“Go away!”
Chattering, they lunged and snapped again.
A loud bang shook the wreck. The swirling flames had reached the trees above them, and a huge bough had come crashing down in a blizzard of sparks. It thumped off the front of the upturned truck and flared up in a burst of angry flame.
The Troodons scattered in terror. They darted away, out of the shattered doors and windows. One ran over Jenny’s legs in an effort to find an exit.
“Please get out of the truck,” Hemple said.
Jenny didn’t bother to answer. She inserted the end of the bar back into the gap and hauled on it, bracing her feet against the doorsill for extra purchase.
There were flames all around them. The heat was stifling. The leaking tanks would catch any second.
“Jenny!”
“Now! Now! Drag your foot out!”
Hemple heaved and cried out in pain. His foot slid clear.
She released the bar, which dropped with a clatter, and fell on top of him.
“Come on!” she screamed, coughing as the smoke filled her lungs. “Come on!”
She grabbed his coat and began to drag him. He stuck out his arms to pull himself backwards. Flames billowed in through the shattered windscreen and began to engulf the front seats.
>
Jenny hauled Hemple backwards out of the rear of the truck and onto the slushy track. She pulled him across the half-melted snow as far as she could. The track was forming a limited firebreak.
With a sucking whooommff! the fuel caught, and the truck went up like a bonfire. They shielded their faces from the heat.
“Thanks,” he said, after a while.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You’d have done the same for me.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, “but that’s my job.”
They heard an engine. An ATV was coming up the trail in the opposite direction to the one they’d been heading in. Its headlights found them, helpless, in the middle of the road.
The ATV stopped, and men jumped out.
“How are you doing, chief?” Redfern asked.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Hemple asked. Garney and Mason were behind Redfern, and Murdoch sat behind the wheel.
“We saw that you weren’t with us any more,” Redfern said, “so we asked the Russian boys nicely if they’d mind turning around.”
“But they didn’t seem very keen on the idea,” Mason continued.
“So we decided to take charge of things,” Garney concluded, rubbing his knuckles.
“Where are they?” Hemple asked.
Redfern jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
“About a mile back that way, walking home in their underwear,” he said.
Garney racked the bolt of a captured AK-74.
“So,” he said to Jenny, “where to, miss?”
They saw the Tyrannosaurus take the tent Medyevin had been hiding in, blood gushing from the folds in the fabric, and then stride on after other prey. Cutter sent Suvova and Bulov off in the opposite direction, towards the forest to the west of the camp.
“Just keep running,” he told them. Suvova nodded. Bulov ran.
Cutter grabbed Abby’s hand again, and they headed into the camp. Fire had reached the first of the tents at the eastern end.
In the middle of the camp, they stopped and looked around. Most of the soldiers had fled. A couple were driving 4×4s away across the snow.
“Where could he be?” Abby asked.
“I don’t know,” Cutter replied.
“Do you think he’s managed to do it?”
“I really don’t know.”
“So which way?”
They turned left, meaning to head for the command tent.
The young male Tyrannosaurus strode into view twenty metres ahead, saw them, and turned their way. It started to accelerate.
Cutter and Abby ran. As she sprinted, Abby reached into the shoulder bag for another dart to fit in the capture gun.
There were none left.
They’d set up the laptop on a tree stump just inside the treeline, away from the chaos of the camp. Snow was swirling around them, and the forest seemed as bright as day, thanks to the glow of the approaching fire.
Koshkin paced while Connor watched the work bar slowly loading. His arm really ached. The pain was so great, it was making him feel lightheaded and even a little nauseous. Every now and then he looked up into the dark vaults of the black trees around them, and watched the snowflakes swirling into the constellations of sparks and drifting cinders.
Fire and ice, tiny worlds in collision.
“How much longer?” Koshkin asked.
“Fifty seconds,” Connor replied. There was an electronic ping.
“What was that?”
“Uhm,” Connor began, checking. “Battery low. That was the battery low signal.”
He looked up at Koshkin.
“Not really anywhere to plug it in around here, is there?”
Koshkin looked at the power light.
“There’s enough power to get us there. It’ll be enough.”
“I certainly hope so.”
There was another chime.
“Okay,” Connor said, reading the new window on-screen. “It’s there. We’re good to go. The platform is re-aligned, the target vectors are set, confirmed and locked. All I have to do is select the approval and confirm options, and then press, you know, ka-powie.”
“Step away from the laptop.”
They both looked up. Dried blood caked Shvachko’s face. He had found a pistol, and he was aiming it at them.
“Step away,” he insisted. He seemed a little unsteady.
Koshkin tensed slightly, weighing up the optimum moment to make a move and attempt to disarm him.
Shvachko shot him.
Connor yelped. Koshkin jerked as he was hit and staggered back-wards. He hit the trunk of a fir tree, shaking snow out of its lower boughs, and slid down onto the ground.
“I’m taking no chances,” Shvachko said.
It was Cutter’s turn to fall. He caught his ankle on a loose guy wire from a collapsed tent that was half-buried in the deepening snow and crashed onto his face.
“Get up!” Abby screamed, pulling at his arm.
The young male Tyrannosaurus came bounding in, his jaws opening, his head sweeping down to striking height.
Baba Yaga slammed into him and smashed him sideways. A couple of Abby’s darts still dangled from her flesh. She had just woken up, and she was in a foul mood.
Her jaws clamped around the male’s throat as she brought him down. Abby and Cutter felt the serious impact of the two entangled creatures as they hit the ground, locked together.
The young male howled and spluttered, thrashing to get free. Their tails lashed. Baba Yaga held on, and tightened her bite. Her right leg came up to tear at his flank and belly. Black-on-black skin slid against black-on-black skin. Arterial blood jetted onto the snow.
Cutter got up and pulled Abby away from the mortal combat.
“Seems Baba Yaga doesn’t like competition,” he said.
“Seriously, I’m going to press this,” Connor said, finger poised, “so you’d better shoot me if you’re going to.”
Shvachko laughed and took aim.
There was a solid crack. Connor winced. When he reopened his eyes, he found, to his relief, that there were no bullet holes in him.
Shvachko pitched face-first into the snow. There was a bloody wound on the back of his scalp.
Natacha Antila lowered the log she was clutching.
“Pig-man!” she declared.
She ran over to Koshkin and applied pressure to his gunshot wound.
“Tell him!” Koshkin gasped up at her. “Tell him to press the button!”
“He says you should press the button,” Antila relayed.
“Okay,” Connor said. He hesitated.
“Can you ask him,” he added, “and I know it’s last minute, but it’s only just occurred to me: are we safe here?”
“What?” Koshkin wheezed. “What is he saying now?”
“Lie still!” Antila snapped.
“I was just wondering,” Connor called. “Should we really be this close to the target zone? I mean, it’s only just over there. Is this a good idea?”
“Is not pressing it a good idea?” Koshkin asked him.
“No, I suppose not,” Connor admitted, “end of the world and that.
“Well, here goes everything,” he said, and he pressed the button.
FIFTY-FOUR
The helicopter’s giant rotors began to cycle up, stirring the cool mid-morning air.
“Of course,” Koshkin was saying, “this entire circumstance is beyond secret. There will be significant exchanges between our governments at intelligence level, but nothing formal, and nothing can be made public.”
“Sorry, mate,” Connor said, “I’m selling my exclusive to the tabloids.”
Koshkin looked at him. The specialist was pale from the painkillers, and his arm was strapped up to ease his chest wound.
“You —” he began.
“Joking,” Connor said with a grin.
The Russian just scowled.
The convoy of trucks and 4×4s bumped along the airstrip and pulled up beside the transport chopper
. Their passengers all climbed out.
“Are you sure you won’t stay, Nicky?” Rina Suvova asked as she hugged him.
“I’m quite keen to get back home,” Cutter said, smiling.
“We could really use your help,” Bulov said, shaking Cutter’s hand. “The anomaly may be closed, but the forests are still full of erratics.”
“And you’ll have years of fun finding them all,” Abby said, also smiling. She hugged Professor Suvova, and then kissed Bulov on the cheek. He blushed.
“I think the EM pulse did the trick,” Cutter said to Koshkin. “I think it’s sealed the Tunguskan anomaly permanently. But you have to monitor the site from now on. If there’s even a hint that it’s opening up again, you know what to do.”
Koshkin nodded.
“Of course.”
“Those are some majorly scary satellite weapons you’ve got there, comrade,” Connor added. “I promise not to tell anyone about them, ever. Cross my heart and hope to die.”
He winked at Koshkin.
“Ta for letting me play with them, though.”
Koshkin nodded again. His scowl seemed less severe.
Alpha team had dismounted from the truck behind them. Hemple was walking on crutches with help from Jenny and Natacha Antila.
“Are we all set?” Cutter asked.
“The flight’s waiting,” Koshkin said. “You will transfer to an airliner in a few hours. It should be a more comfortable trip home than the one that brought you here.”
Antila came over and gave first Abby and then Connor a firm embrace.
“Ow!” Connor said.
“What?” Antila asked.
“I think,” he said, adjusting his shoulder, “I think you might have pulled my arm out with that hug. It’s probably best if you give me a thorough physical before we leave, you know, otherwise...”
“Get onto helicopter,” she said.
An honour guard of Russian soldiers assembled at the side of the airstrip to see them off. Abby saw Vols standing in line in the front rank and ran over to him.
“You look after yourself,” she told him.
“You go to be home,” he said.
“That’s right.”