“My father knew a man who was killed by Mokèlé-mbèmbé,” another soldier said.
Deep Blue’s voice sounded in King’s head. “Mokèlé-mbèmbé is the local Loch Ness Monster. For over two hundred years, there have been reports of a river monster in the Congo. Some of the crazier theories suggest that it might be a dinosaur.”
King considered this. It sounded ludicrous, but so did a lot of the things he had experienced firsthand.
“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” Deep Blue continued. “People have been looking for it for over a hundred years with no success. There are plenty of things that can kill you in the jungle, but dinosaurs aren’t one of them.”
Deep Blue’s assurance notwithstanding, talk of the legendary river creature spread like a plague, with the soldiers relating more second hand accounts of Mokèlé-mbèmbé’s deadly rampages and discussing other monsters King had never heard of. What struck him most was that the soldiers, who seemed unfamiliar with the term ‘dinosaur,’ were describing animals that almost perfectly resembled creatures that had been extinct for more than sixty-five million years.
There was Kongamato, which translated to ‘breaker of boats,’ a flying creature that sounded suspiciously like a pterodactyl. One man’s uncle had been killed by Kongamato. Another soldier claimed to have actually seen Mbielu-Mbielu-Mbielu, an enormous beast that, if his description was to be believed, might have been a stegosaurus, but his story was challenged by another man who said the creature sounded more like Emela-ntouka, a horned animal larger than an elephant, with a beaked mouth and a bony frill around its head — a ceratops.
Deep Blue refrained from further commentary, but soon interrupted with news that was even more disturbing. “King, there’s been a development. Senator Lance Marrs just arrived at the Mombasa airport.”
King excused himself from the storytellers and found a corner of the boat that was marginally more private. “Marrs is free? What about Okoa?”
“No word on Okoa. Marrs was released unconditionally and put on a plane earlier this morning.”
“It sounds like you think that’s a bad thing.”
“As soon as he got off the plane, he started making calls to his colleagues in the Senate. I’m accessing the NSA call logs now. Stand by.” Despite ongoing concerns about invasions of privacy, King knew that the National Security Agency had continued to monitor international telephone calls using its sophisticated SIGINT monitoring network. While the sheer volume of traffic made it impossible to listen to every single call, the transmissions were nevertheless recorded and scanned by the NSA’s supercomputer for keywords that might indicate terrorist plots or other threats. “Okay, this is a call he just made to Roger Hayes, Chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Energy.”
King heard the scratchy sound of background static and then Marrs’ oily voice filled his head. “Roger? It’s Lance.”
“Lance? Damn it, it’s — what time is it? It’s the middle of the night here. I don’t care what it is you need—”
Marrs tried to cut in, but lag time caused the two voices to overlap for a few seconds. “Roger, just shut up and listen. This can’t wait. I need you to draft a resolution demanding the President formally recognize the government of President Patrice Velle of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”
“Formally… what?” Senator Hayes still sounded bleary. “Ah, crap. I heard you were involved in that Congo mess. I was hoping you were smarter than that.”
“I’ve been here for the last two days trying to negotiate a solution that will guarantee access to their natural gas reserves. But the situation has changed, and if we don’t act quickly, it will all go to hell. Velle controls the Congo’s natural gas reserves. If we don’t make a deal with him now, he’ll find someone else who’s willing to pay. Frankly, I don’t intend to let that happen.”
“Lance, simmer down. You know these two-bit African dictators never last. If he’s still around in a couple months, maybe then we can talk about formal recognition. No matter what he says right now, eventually he’s going to want what only we can give him.”
“It’s not going to work that way this time. Velle is threatening to destroy the Kivu natural gas reserves if we don’t recognize his government. He can and will make good on that threat.”
King stopped listening. “Shit.”
Deep Blue halted the replay. “Satellite imagery shows Velle’s troops leaving Kisangani. He’s heading for the Lake Kivu region.”
“Velle doesn’t matter. It’s Favreau we need to be worried about. She doesn’t give a rat’s ass about whether the US formally recognizes Velle’s government. She’s got the bomb, and she’s itching to use it.”
“I’m sending Crescent to pick you up.”
“What about Queen and Rook?”
“They’re… occupied.”
King did not like the evasive tone of the comment, but he let it go. Right now, the only thing that mattered was stopping the Red Queen before she could initiate her deadly endgame.
42
David tugged at Felice’s arm. “Come. There is a place where we will be safe.”
The passage through the cave had brought them to a ledge overlooking a vast subterranean plain that was teeming with…
“Dinosaurs,” she muttered, shaking her head. No matter what Bishop and Knight said, no matter what crazy things she herself had experienced, what she was seeing was simply impossible.
David led them along the ledge, which was nothing more than an irregular horizontal fracture in the wall of the cavern, one of many that formed a staircase leading down to the floor. There were a few raptors roaming about on the jagged protrusions below, and when they spied the group, they lifted their heads and stood motionless, watching, probably attempting to gauge whether the moving shapes were dangerous or edible.
The ledge ended abruptly at a steeply sloped debris field, the aftermath of a slide that had occurred at some point in the distant past. There were a few raptors near the lower reaches of the slide, watching them and humming their weird warning. David moved out onto the slide and then started climbing up. Bishop peered into the shadows above, then urged Felice to follow their guide. A short scramble brought them up to a recessed scallop in the cavern wall.
“Can they climb up here?” Bishop asked.
David stared at him blankly, then looked to Felice for a translation.
“What? Oh, sorry. He says he’s hidden here before. It’s safe.”
Her mind was racing.
Dinosaurs!
Dinosaurs were extinct. They had been completely wiped out by an asteroid impact sixty-five million years ago. The disaster had killed off seventy-five percent of all life on Earth, in what scientists referred to as the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction. The asteroid had thrown up a cloud of iridium rich-dust that had settled to form a distinctive black band in sedimentary rock around the planet. Below that band there were dinosaur fossils, but above it, there were not. If even a few dinosaurs had survived that extinction event, their population would have recovered and spread out to new habitats, and the story of that migration would have been recorded in the fossil record. It was not. Dinosaurs were extinct.
Nevertheless, she could not argue with what she was seeing. She lingered at the edge of the recess, staring down at the plain below.