The Last Dragon td-92 Read online

  He couldn't quite remember which way it worked. Up for close. Up and down for close and compress. Maybe it was down and up. He yanked the lever up.

  With a grinding of the mechanism, the hydraulics started toiling. The great slab of a sweep blade dropped and closed like a vault door. And stopped.

  Remo frowned. He tried yanking the lever another way. Nothing.

  Then a guard was shouting through the open door, "Hey, you!"

  "Yeah?"

  "You about done in there?"

  "Almost."

  "The guard captain wants to know what's taking you so long."

  "Sweep blade is stuck."

  "Well, get that smelly rig out of here and fix it on your own time."

  "You got it," said Remo, giving the ridged truck body a reassuring tap.

  Remo slid behind the wheel and trundled out toward the yard. He stopped at the gate and handed over a clipboard with a lot of unreadable signatures.

  "They don't pay you guys enough," said the guard, holding his nose against the smell while trying to sign the clipboard with one hand.

  "Working toward a cleaner planet is reward enough for me," Remo said airily.

  The gates rolled aside electronically, and Remo drove through without a problem. He ran the heavy truck a, quarter mile down the road, just fast enough to outpace the trailing smell, and pulled over to the side.

  Getting out, Remo walked around to the back, tapping the side with a knuckle that actually left a small dent.

  "We did it! We're out!"

  The "Yay" coming from inside lacked enthusiasm.

  "I'm having trouble breathing in here with all this slop," Orvis complained.

  "Be with you in a second," Remo promised.

  Remo took hold of the lever. There was a little light coming up now. It was dawn. The start of a new day. And in the light he found the metal plate that explained the proper way to work the hydraulic sweep blade. It was covered with grime. Remo swiped it clear with the sleeve of his gray-blue uniform.

  " 'Push up and then down to compress load,' " Remo read.

  So he pushed up and then down.

  The sweep blade was already closed. Now it behaved like a monster steel tongue the truck was trying to swallow whole. The blade went deeper and deeper, and the three convicts inside began to panic.

  "Hey! This slop's bunching up!"

  "What goin' on?"

  "My mistake," called Remo. "I think I yanked the lever wrong."

  "What happened to your great training?"

  "I had to rush through the lever part. I tried cramming for it, but you know how that sometimes goes."

  "I'm feeling crammed right about now," Orvis complained.

  "Do tell," said Remo.

  "Do somethin'!"

  "I'm open to suggestions," Remo said, casually leaning against the truck body and mentally counting off the seconds.

  "Use your magic finger."

  "Great suggestion." Remo counted five more seconds and said, "Oh-oh!"

  "What was that uh-oh?"

  "My magic finger isn't working."

  "What! What happened?"

  "Battery must have gone dead."

  They were screaming now.

  "You got fresh ones?"

  "Sorry. Fresh finger batteries would have set off the metal detector."

  "Oh, Mother of God," DeWayne groaned. "He's right!"

  "The best laid plans gang aft a-gley," Remo said sympathetically.

  "What was that last part?"

  "If you ever find out, let me know."

  Then they were screaming and their arm and leg bones were snapping. Howls came. Rib cages began splintering. Skulls were compressed and internal organs ruptured, merged, and became red masses of jelly.

  Finally, the only sound was that of the hydraulics completing their inexorable cycle.

  Satisfied, Remo drove the truck to the local office of the ACLU and after only an hour of trying, finally succeeded in getting the Leach Body to disgorge the truck's contents into the dumpster behind the office building.

  Then he returned the truck and borrowed uniform to the Department of Sanitation yard, where he called the local police.

  "Police Emergency."

  "I got a hot tip for you," Remo told the police operator. "The ACLU just broke three death row convicts out of prison, and when they refused to pay their legal fees, killed them and dumped the bodies."

  "Sir, there is a stiff fine for filing a false police report."

  "I'm calling, not filing. And if you don't believe me, check the prison. Then go talk to the ACLU. And here's a major clue: look in their dumpster."

  Remo hung up, knowing that even if the police followed through, the ACLU would probably weasel their way off the hook in the end. He only wished he could stick around to hear them explain away the dead bodies.

  It was not an entirely happy ending, but in an imperfect world, it was as good as Remo sometimes got.

  He walked away whistling.

  Chapter 3

  Nancy Derringer was overcome by the urge to commit murder.

  She had never wanted to kill a living thing in her entire previous twenty-eight years on earth. She loved all living things. The stinger of the desert scorpion filled her with the same wonder as the delicate mechanism of a butterfly's wing. The beauty and terror of biology were two sides of the same wondrous coin to her. All life was sacred.

  Today, standing on the sloppy edge of a primordial pool, her nostrils filled with the fecund stench of swamp water, she wanted to throttle Skip King with her bare hands. Except that she was using them to cover her ringing ears. She had been standing directly beside him when he had unloosed the first volley of tranquilizer darts. That had pretty much paralyzed her left eardrum.

  Nancy barely heard the call to open fire. But she heard the rest of the guns opening up through her remaining good ear. It was one great blast of concussive noise, and then she was down on her knees in the muck trying to hold the sound out with both hands while screaming, "Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!"

  No one heard her. Not even herself.

  The rifles had long fallen silent when she felt it was safe to unblock her ears. They rang. Quasimodo seemed to be busy in either inner ear chamber, ringing his discordant bells.

  When she opened her eyes, Nancy saw the creature whose discovery was the culmination of her career slowly slip into the swamp water.

  The head was looking directly at her. The face, seen full on, was a bright dayglo orange paint splatter that shaded to black just behind the brow ridges. It looked as if it were wearing some abstract Halloween mask. The face was dull, but the eyes were growing sleepy.

  They were goat eyes, the pupils squared. The pupils were squeezing into vertical slits as the orange lids slowly dropped over them.

  The head was swaying snakelike from side to side, like a sleepy cobra trying to match the snake charmer's rhythm.

  It went haroooo, in a low, sick voice. Its tongue was green and forked, the dentition gray and worn from eating jungle roughage.

  Then, dimly, although he was standing at her elbow, Skip King yelled, "Skip King, king of the jungle, bags another brute!"

  Nancy jumped to her feet and slapped him so hard he lost his balance and his bush hat.

  "You jerk!" she screamed. "Look what you've done."

  King lay there, holding his face. "My job. I did my job."

  The beast's head was dropping by stages.

  "Your job! You agreed to be a corporate observer. Nothing more!"

  "I didn't see you take up arms when we were in danger."

  "The idea was to film it in the wild first. Document its habits. Now we've lost the opportunity forever."

  "Skip that biology crap. This is bring 'em back alive. Frank Buck time. Man stuff."

  The saurian head came up, wavered, and sank anew.

  "Not unless we do something fast," Nancy said in a lower register.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Look at the poor
thing. He's passing out on his feet."

  "That is the idea," King said stiffly.

  "In the middle of the swamp? If his head goes under, he'll drown. And all because you had to draw first blood!"

  Skip King got to his feet. He wiped his sweaty brow and squinted through the bright afternoon air at the beast's slow struggles.

  "Maybe it's amphibious," he murmured.

  "Those are nostrils at the tip of its snout, not gills," Nancy spat. "It's no more amphibious than you are."

  "You sure?"

  "Yes!"

  King's mouth dropped open. "Oh God."

  "Now do you understand?"

  "Understand? If that thing dies, it'll be my job! We gotta do something!"

  "Wonderful. Now you're getting it." Nancy swung on Ralph. "Thorpe, any help you might render would be appreciated."

  "Right." He turned to the natives and shouted out Bantu orders. Instantly, the natives dropped their rifles and pulled short machetelike swords out of their native clothing.

  They went to work on the trees on either side of the creature. The boles were thin. They surrendered quickly. It was lucky for the expedition that they did.

  Soon, the long thin boles were in the water, floating. The natives jumped in, completely without fear, and pushed the logs toward the wavering head.

  "Magnificent!" Nancy said. "It could work."

  The PR officer hovered close. "Should we be filming this, Mr. King?"

  "And film my career going up in flames?" King spat. "I'll fire the first man who uncaps his lens."

  The videocams remained capped.

  More trees crashed down. Soon, there was a logjam, and slowly, the great beast known to the Bantu as N'yamala surrendered to the powerful narcotic coursing through his massive system.

  The eyes closed completely before the chin settled onto the logjam. There was a breathless moment before they knew if the logs would support its weight.

  Nancy closed her eyes and clasped her hands together. She was praying.

  Everyone else held their breath.

  "Somebody tell me to open my eyes if it's good news," Nancy said earnestly.

  "Just a mo, Dr. Derringer."

  Then Skip King made a guttural throat noise that almost brought hot tears to Nancy's eyes.

  It was followed by him saying, "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!"

  "You can look now, Dr. Derringer," Thorpe said quietly.

  Nancy opened her blue eyes. The beast stood in the middle of the pool, still on his feet, like a preposterous elephant, but with his long serpentine neck undulating along the scattering of logs, where it had come to rest.

  The head had plopped on a thickest part of the logs. Swamp water lapped at the lower part of the upper lips, but the nostrils rode high above the water, where they quivered and blew out air that smelled faintly of mushrooms.

  "Thank goodness," Nancy breathed. And she was so relieved her knees began shaking and she let herself down onto the muck to give her legs time to calm down.

  She was in no position to stop what happened next.

  Skip King turned to the team and said, "Okay, cameras out. Get the banner into position."

  "Banner?" Nancy said blankly.

  The cameras came out. There were three in all. Two zoomed in on Skip King, who had recovered his hat and his rifle and was striking a kneeling pose at the swamp's edge, the rifle stock set in the muck. Almost as an afterthought, the third cameraman was shooting the slumbering reptile.

  Two natives finished unpacking a long object and brought it up to King. It resembled two short rugs rolled together.

  "Open it up." The natives separated, walking backward, and slowly a white banner unfurled between two rolling masts.

  Nancy eyed it with growing horror.

  BROUGHT TO YOU BY BURGER TRIUMPH KING OF CHEESEBURGERS

  Above the banner was Skip King's lean face, and over his shoulder the dappled orange shape of the reptile was distinctly visible.

  "I don't believe this," Nancy said in a sick voice.

  King cleared his throat and began speaking in a deep unnatural baritone. "This is an historic day in the glorious annals of corporate history. Only a fast food giant like Burger Triumph, Inc. could have done it. Only its marketing chief, namely me-could have conceived it."

  "King!"

  "Cut!" King shouted. His face was red as a beet. "What's the matter with you? We're rolling here!"

  "Our agreement was that there would be no overt commercialization of the expedition," Nancy reminded him.

  "These are home movies."

  "Then why do you sound like a commercial announcer?"

  "A copy will go into the corporate vaults, of course," King said in an injured voice. He turned his attention to the others. "Okay, from the top."

  As Nancy watched, she could feel the steam rise from under her collar. King repeated his spiel, and then picked up where he had left off.

  "For over a hundred years explorers have returned from the Dark Continent with rumors of dinosaur survivals in the far reaches of the legendary Kanda Tract. White men scoffed at these native tales, but still the stories came out. Until the day Skip King, visionary adventurer, public relations genius, heard the tales-and believed."

  He puffed out his chest like a proud adder.

  "Behind me, ladies and gentlemen, lies the first known Brontosaurus ever to be-"

  "Apatosaurus," Nancy shouted.

  "Not again! Nancy, what do you want now? I gave you your fifteen minutes of fame at that last recording stop."

  Nancy folded her arms. "You said Brontosaurus. It's an Apatosaurus. I explained that to you back in the States."

  "Not now!"

  "My professional reputation is riding on this expedition, too. It's an Apatosaurus. Nothing but."

  "Glory hound," King muttered. To his camera team, he said, "Okay, we'll take it from the point where I say, 'Behind me, ladies and gentlemen.' Got that?"

  The cameras rolled. The native bearers looked bored. They had turned their Burger Triumph T-shirts inside out as a form of silent protest.

  Nancy felt her legs again and struggled to her feet.

  And Skip King doggedly resumed his spiel.

  "Behind me, ladies and gentlemen: Thunder Lizard! Twenty tons of Halloween-colored monster."

  "Thunder Lizard is incorrect," Nancy called, enjoying the way King's sharp features turned red as a fox when she interrupted him.

  "What is it with you! Didn't I give you enough face time back on the trail?"

  Nancy folded her arms. "I'm not interested in face time," she said distinctly. "You said Thunder Lizard. You should have said Deceptive Lizard. Apatosaurus means 'Deceptive Lizard,' not Thunder Lizard. Actually, Deceptive Reptile is the preferred term."

  "Maybe you'd like to make up a bunch of cue cards," King said acidly.

  "Not really."

  "If you had been on the moon when Neil Arm strong stepped off the Eagle, he'd never have got to say, 'One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.' "

  "Actually, he said, 'One giant leap for a man,' " Nancy corrected.

  "He did not."

  "I say he did."

  "I imagine Dr. Derringer is right," Thorpe said.

  "Who asked you?" King snarled.

  "No bloody body." Thorpe undertoned in a voice that was edged with steel. "But you might start giving some thought to what we're going to do when the beast wakes up," he added in a more polite tone.

  "There's plenty of time."

  "We don't know that."

  "That's right," Nancy added. "We're dealing with an animal whose metabolism has never been studied. No one knows how long he'll stay tranked."

  "Long enough to get him to the railhead at M'nolo Ki-Gor," King snapped. "Where suitable transportation has been arranged."

  "And how do you propose to do that?"

  "Actually, the idea was to coax him to walk that far himself. But I guess I got carried away when I saw him."

  "That was your pl
an? To lure him!"

  "Don't have a platypus. We've haven't tried it yet. It could work."

  "Except how did you envision getting him to walk? By leaving a trail of jungle chocolate for him to follow?" Some of the natives understood English. They laughed among themselves at the white woman's words.

  King's face froze. Nancy met his glare with one of her own.

  "Actually, I had figured on setting fire to the jungle behind it," King said. "The flames would have stampeded him in any direction we wanted."

  The natives suddenly stopped laughing. Now it was their turn to glare.

  "Burning a virgin rain forest!" Nancy shrieked. "Are you mad!"

  "You have a better way?"

  "You can't burn forest like this," Thorpe said laconically. "Not so soon after a hard rain. So let's all put any thought of burning out of our minds, shall we?"

  "We can try," King said stubbornly.

  "You can try," Thorpe answered. "But I rather doubt the native boys will cotton to the idea."

  "Who asked them?"

  "It's their country."

  "Like hell it is. I have permission from President Oburu to do whatever I have to to fulfill the mission."

  At the sound of the name of Oburu, the Bantus grew narrow of eye. Some spat into the ground. A few hissed through perfect teeth.

  "Guess they voted for the other guy," King muttered uneasily.

  "In Gondwanaland," Thorpe said, "there is no other guy."

  "Okay, I'll find another way."

  He stomped off into the bush.

  "Think he'll come up with anything?" Thorpe asked Nancy.

  "Not in a million years."

  But only a few minutes later he was shouting frantically for them to come running. They came upon Skip King standing in the flank of one of the misty rises that from a distance resembled small hills, but which they now realized were great escarpments swallowed by low-hanging jungle mists. There was an opening in the foot of the biggest of these. It was huge. And it had fallen in. The mouth was choked with red earth.

  Leading in and out of the mouth were great saurian prints.

  "I think I found its lair," King whispered.

  Nancy knelt to examine the prints. When she stood up, her features were pale.

  "These prints are fresh," she said.

  "Of course," King said. "Made since the last rain."

  "And there are three distinct sets," Nancy added. "Larger than the one we found."