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Jodle turned and saw that Doshnikov felt the same thing they were all feeling—the electrical charge coursing through their bodies had increased five-fold in seconds. Jodle found he couldn’t move his lips or voice his warning.

  Ryan reached out and grabbed a hold of Sarah’s belt. She did the same with Anya. Will and Virginia huddled together, following suit. The room was erupting as the fifteen Russian guards quit paying attention to their charges and their strange behavior. Doshnikov’s heavy coat was almost ripped from his frame as the revolutions increased.

  Before anyone realized it, the large monitor sprang to life and the face of Xavier Morales filled the screen. The overhead speaker blared to life and that was the only thing everyone in the laboratory heard as Morales spoke.

  “I owe you one, Commander Ryan, I will get you back home, I promise, so … hang on!”

  The lasers burst into life. Without the required revolutions and the collider still dormant, the green and blue light burst from the spinning circle of the doorway, shot into the room, hit the far wall, and then an amazing thing happened—the lasers reflected off the old brick and burst backward through the doorway and smashed into the laboratory where the hurricane winds threatened to tear the people and the doorway apart. The electrical charge froze all and they spasmed and jerked. The handholds that Ryan and the others had were not quite enough and they were ripped from one another. The lights burst into a multicolored flash that engulfed the Russian and then the doorway came up to the dimensional-shift speed it needed. The entire room exploded. The guards watching the technicians collapsed into the cowering men and women, and the men next to Doshnikov felt their bodies being swept through the doorway.

  Niles froze as the view below was distorted by the blinding light as the Wellsian Doorway burped and then, like a fishing net, a bright circle of light surrounded all and a sparkling sensation filled the room. Before anyone could blink, the sixteen Russians, Joshua Jodle, Jason Ryan, Sara McIntire, Will Mendenhall, Anya Korvesky, and Virginia Pollock vanished as they were pulled into the shift with battering harshness.

  The Wellsian Doorway started to wind down as the main coolant lines erupted.

  In the observation room Niles Compton turned from the window and saw the two guards staring numbly at the spot where a moment before their boss had been standing with twenty-one other people. Some loose papers still swirled and floated and the static electricity seemed to make anything made of metal glow with light blue haze. The two guards were in shock at the sudden disappearance of Doshnikov and the others. Their mouths were gaping in disbelief. Compton excused himself as he easily reached past Moira and then grabbed the radio before the two Russians could gather their wits, and then the director simply clicked the transmit switch three times in rapid succession. As he did he hoped he had remembered the right number of clicks that Jack had explained earlier.

  The two guards turned and knew they had been had when the door burst open and two men—Sergeant Hernandez, who had lost himself in the shuffle and confusion when the intruders had herded everyone down below, and one other from a posted station outside—were on the two before they knew they were being attacked. The two powerful tranquilizer darts hit simultaneously and before the men could grab their chests where they had been struck, two more of the Pfizer chemical–supplied darts hit the men in the neck and shoulders respectively. Their vision clouded and their muscles froze and the paralyzing agent completed the cycle by momentarily cutting the oxygen supply to the brain, dropping the men cold within 1.2 seconds.

  “The Los Angeles?” Niles asked.

  Sergeant Hernandez rolled the first Russian over and then looked at the director.

  “The sudden turn for one hundred and fifteen percent power from a standstill fried a few of her circuits, but other than a small fire in the power transfer cable, the crew says she will be good to go in two hours.”

  “Thank God Xavier timed that right. Without the power we would have fried everyone inside that room.” After checking the family Koblenz and after Hernandez and the Marine had safely removed the baby carrier with the explosives, Niles went to the window to check on his other people.

  The technicians had all stood and started running for fire extinguishers, and the lone Russian left guarding them could only watch in stunned surprise after the shock of the dimensional displacement. As he tried to close his mouth his weapon was removed from his right hand. The Georgian gangster slowly turned with his toupee askew and saw the young blonde girl from UCLA holding the Glock nine millimeter in his face. Her smile never met her gorgeous green eyes.

  “What did you people do?”

  “Oops,” she said as she jabbed the taller man in the ribs with the weapon. The young technician was thinking that she could very much get used to this. It was preferable to monitoring gamma radiation readouts.

  18

  ANTARCTICA, 227,000 B.C.E.

  Jenks cursed at the tight fit of the last laser emitter to be installed. It didn’t help any that Charlie was having a difficult time holding the ladder still as he tried in vain to check its wobbly movement on the uneven ground.

  The doorway was almost completed and it wasn’t noon on the second day yet. It would have gone faster if they had the help of Collins and Farbeaux, but since the colonel, on Jenks’s own recommendation, had shut down the radar-operated defense system to save precious battery life, necessitating a fifty percent security awareness around the camp. That didn’t stop Jack or Henri from cringing every time the master chief let out a long profanity-laced tirade at poor Ellenshaw.

  “There, damn it, that’s the last one,” Jenks said as he eased himself from the shaking ladder. He hit the ground and produced a cigar from his jacket pocket, then lit it with his lighter, the whole time staring a hole through Charlie. Once it was lit to his satisfaction he spit and then looked at Ellenshaw and was about to tear into him for trying to fling him from the ladder when he stopped himself. “Well, I guess I’ve had far worse assistants.” He chomped on the cigar and moved off toward the lone trailer in the center of the camp.

  Charlie smiled at the false praise heaped on him by Jenks and allowed the ladder to wobble until it tilted over and hit the centrifuge on its way to the ground. The master chief looked up and shook his head.

  “Almost got it, Master Chief?” Collins asked as he and Henri walked into the middle of camp drinking water.

  “Yeah, if Crazy Charlie there doesn’t send the whole thing rolling down this hill.”

  Jack looked at Ellenshaw as he struggled to get the ladder up. He nodded at Farbeaux, who reluctantly went to assist.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. The doc’s had a rough go of it.” Jenks removed the cigar and looked up from the interior of the trailer as he rummaged for the last two items to complete the doorway. “Hell, I’m used to losing soldiers and seamen. I have to remind myself that civilians don’t react like us old salts.”

  Jack nodded, knowing he didn’t have to say anything beyond what Jenks had just explained.

  “Is that the portable power unit everyone’s so paranoid about?” Collins asked as he finished his water.

  “Paranoid? Yeah, you can say that, Colonel. There are two in existence. This one and one that NASA and General Electric keep close to home. But even more important to our little science experiment is this.” He raised a small foam-encased box and opened it. Jenks held the box out to show Collins. “That is the electrical transducer. It transfers the power from this box”—he slapped the five-by-six-foot generator/storage unit—“to our doorway. Without this you may as well be in Europe with American electrical plugs. You’re shit out of luck. I don’t want to even ask the director how he managed to snag these babies since together they’re worth about the cost of an aircraft carrier and her fighter wing combined.”

  “Director Compton has his ways,” Jack said as he turned and looked at the sky. The ash cloud had thickened since morning and the white ash was falling at a far steadier rate. Jenks followed suit.

  “That�
��s another little development. I didn’t want to say anything to the doc, but that’s why he couldn’t hold the ladder straight, I just like yelling. But if you hadn’t noticed, fearless leader, the damn earth is moving in rather peculiar ways since about nine this morning, and the winds have shifted as you just saw. The bulk of the ash cloud is now coming from the southwest, directly from Erebus and her little bitch sisters, and, oh, by the way, the temperature has dropped by twenty-one degrees in the past two hours.”

  “Anything else, you sour bastard?” Jack asked as Henri and Charlie approached after hearing the last of Jenks’s wonderfully delivered report.

  “Yeah, there is,” Jenks said as he looked from face to face. “Since I’ve been standing here shooting off my big mouth we’ve seemed to have gathered an audience. About five hundred yards to your south.”

  Jack turned and saw several creatures gathering just outside of the protection of the jungle and the trees. He quickly raised his field glasses and took in the scene. Charlie and Henri followed suit.

  “It’s them!” Ellenshaw said loudly. “Raptors. V. Mongoliensis.”

  “Vamongo what?” Jenks asked as he saw the gathering of about fifteen of the small animals.

  “Mongoliensis, a Velociraptor.” Ellenshaw slowly lowered his own glasses and looked out at the scene before them. The look on his face made Collins take a second look at Charlie. “They shouldn’t be here.”

  “What do you mean?” Henri asked as he saw the creatures just standing there and looking at the camp in the distance.

  “They died off sixty-five million years before our current time frame.” He looked at Jack. “They should not be here. Plus the feathered raptors supposedly died off before the more modern version we are used to seeing in the movies. But here they are, almost as if they reversed their evolution.”

  “They don’t seem too damn reversed to me. Four of them evil buzzard-looking things are carrying sticks long enough that you have to qualify them as spears.”

  Jenks was right—four of the small brightly colored raptors held long poles like the one that flew into camp earlier. As Collins studied the curious group, he noted the feathers were somewhat thicker and more colorful on the winglike arms and the tail, where they ended in a graceful plume like an at-ease peacock’s.

  “Uh-oh,” Charlie said as he saw what the animals were doing.

  “Are they pushing those others out into the open?” Farbeaux asked, amazed at what he was witnessing.

  In the distance the group as a whole were using their strange humanlike hands to push two of the raptors from their cover. One of them even used one of the sharpened sticks to encourage the two chosen guinea pigs forward.

  “What the fu—” Jenks started to say.

  “Did I just see that?” Charlie asked incredulously.

  Collins was amazed as two of the raptors forced spears into the hands of the chosen two. “Henri?”

  Collins heard the charging of an M-4 as an answer to his inquiry.

  “Should I turn on the defense system?” Jenks asked.

  “If this is just a probing action, no, I’m not ready to ascribe to your smart-chicken theory, Doc, we can manage without the lasers.” He lowered the glasses and looked at Jenks. “But stay by that damn switch in any case.”

  “Here they come,” Henri said as he lowered his own glasses and brought up the M-4 and sighted on the lead raptor as it charged with wings hanging low to the ground. Its spear was in its left hand and was only inches from the ground as both raptors came on at close to forty miles per hour. Jack also brought his weapon up and started sighting.

  “This is beyond anything we know about their behavior. They’re just not supposed to be here and they surely shouldn’t be able to use tools!” Charlie’s fear and excitement grew as the two animals charged the camp.

  “That’s it, they’re not slowing,” Jack said as he took aim at the raptor on the right. He fired a single round. The birdlike animal stumbled and then fell, skidding to a halt and blurring the twin experience of the second colorful raptor as the Frenchman struck his mark. The dust slowly settled. Collins raised his field glasses and looked again. The scene was getting darker as the ash fell heavier than just ten minutes before.

  “I have four, looks like they’re pumping themselves up.”

  Jenks was right as the others soon saw. Four of the raptors circled the group of eight and were bobbing their necks back and forth, raising the long sticks up and down. Then they broke from the pack and their group watched on in interest from near the tree line. They charged as the first two had.

  This time the example was made far earlier as Jack and Henri made short work of the second set of attackers.

  “Jesus!” Jenks screamed as he turned just in time as four of the raptors broke through the camp from behind. They had drawn the attention of the team while others maneuvered around them and then attacked using stealth. Jack was stunned at the sudden problem-solving skills exhibited by the once-extinct creatures.

  Charlie was quicker than anyone would have thought possible as he fired his Glock nine millimeter at the closest raptor. It fell but tried to rise again as Charlie shot it three more times.

  A spear, this one smaller, struck the trailer next to Jenks and pierced the aluminum. He turned and quickly fired. The weapon was on full auto instead of the three-shot burst. The powerful rounds almost cut the raptor in half. Still, the grasping gray-scaled hand reached for Jenks’s leg. The master chief fired once more into the upturned, ugly face of the lizardlike muzzle. And even after the bullet struck its head the jaws still snapped at empty space as the nerve center kept firing even after death.

  Jack turned and saw he was going to be too late for the third attacker as it hopped into the trailer and hissed at a startled Charlie. The creature poked at the cryptozoologist with its sharpened stick, actually stabbing Ellenshaw in the side and drawing blood. Ellenshaw yelped just as the fourth raptor jumped into the trailer alongside the first. This one screamed a horrible sound that raked their nerves. The beast raised the spear and threw it. Henri stepped away at the last second as the sharpened shaft hit the earth at his feet.

  “Son of a bitch!” Charlie screamed and shot the first raptor, sending it flying from the trailer and Henri finished it with a quick three-round burst.

  The last raptor hissed and spat angrily at the four men and then quickly reached down and grabbed something with its hand. With colorful wings spread wide the raptor sprang from the trailer and hopped over the remaining perimeter trailers and sprinted for the tree line to the north just as a multitude of sharpened spears came flying into camp. They managed to dodge the high-arcing weapons but by the time they recovered, the last raptor had vanished into the falling haze of white ash and jungle beyond their reach.

  “That was just a little bit beyond probing our defenses. What in the hell was that all about?” Henri asked as he ejected his magazine, checked the loads, and then popped it back in.

  “At West Point they discussed the Viet Cong tactic of attacking a spot to cover the real objective, and they didn’t care how many they sacrificed to do it.”

  “Well, they had a goal, all right, and if they knew what they were doing they couldn’t have hurt us more, buckos.” Jenks cursed as he slammed the empty Styrofoam box back into the trailer. “That smart-ass chicken just made off with our power coupling, and they even managed to cut our tethers to the signal balloons.”

  “And this means what?” Henri asked, afraid of the answer.

  “It means, Froggy, we’re screwed as far as getting home goes or even signaling Everett that friends are here. As I said, truly screwed.”

  Jack cursed and then reexamined the perimeter with his field glasses. He knew then that they had to go hunting in a land where they could quickly become the hunted.

  “If they stole that thing with the intention of coming back for the doorway, tell Compton that I quit. First Russians and now buzzards with an attitude and smarts.”

 
“For once, Master Chief, I am in total agreement,” Farbeaux said angrily as he glared at Collins, who would more than likely succeed in getting him killed after all.

  “That just makes my day, Froggy. I’m so happy to have you onboard my way of thinking.”

  Henri ignored Jenks, who was showing his fear and frustration.

  “Big, crazed chickens and Frenchmen—what’s next, a friggin’ asteroid?”

  At that moment the trees to the south were illuminated with a bright flash of brilliantly colored light and then the jungle and dense tree canopy where the team had originally shifted to erupted in flame and noise.

  It wasn’t an asteroid.

  * * *

  The pain was almost merciful as it caused such a shock to their systems that they lost consciousness. The last sensation Ryan felt was his hold on Sarah’s belt as she was ripped away from him with a force that made his strong grip seem like a child’s. The noise was ear-shattering and the light blinding. The electricity popped through their bodies as if firecrackers were being set off in their very bone marrow.

  Jason felt the impact as the large group was ejected from the doorway. All sound, light, and sensation had vanished and all felt as near death as any had ever felt.

  Sarah was the first to shake off the effects of the displacement. She felt herself smoldering but for the life of her she didn’t know what it was she was supposed to do about it. The heat started on her arm and was slowly working its way up. She knew her eyes were open because she had the sensation of her lids moving up and down. She heard a loud pop from very far away. Then another.

  “Oh, crap!” came the voice Sarah immediately recognized as Will Mendenhall’s. Because of the heat and the pain in her arm her eyes finally cleared and then opened. That was when she saw Will with blood on his face as he started slapping at her. At first she was shocked by his actions until she felt the heat and pain on her arm lessen to the point that she regained some of her lost composure and senses. Suddenly she heard more loud popping noises. Sarah rolled over in time to see Anya and Ryan as they seemed to be wrestling with someone. Finally, as Mendenhall lifted her to her feet, she saw that they had removed a weapon from a severely burned man on the ground. The pistol Jason held was still smoking. Sarah again looked at the man who must have been spasming and firing his pistol off through pure instinct. The Russian stopped moving as his smoking corpse settled and finally gave in to death.