Day of the Predator Read online

  Becks shook her head slowly, her face impassive.

  ‘Negative. We are not terrorists.’

  Whitmore fel silent. His lips quivered with more questions he wanted to ask, but he was struggling to know what exactly to ask. Where to begin.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  Their heads al turned towards a boy with kinky ginger hair, neatly side-parted into a succession of waves, and thick bot le-top glasses that made his eyes seem to bulge like a startled frog. He pointed to his name tag. ‘My name’s Franklyn … you can cal me that. Or just Frank wil do.’

  He smiled at them uncertainly. ‘Uhh … I just wanted to say that … this is going to sound real y weird, but I guess I’l just come out and say it.’

  ‘What?’ snapped Whitmore.

  ‘Wel –’ he pointed up at the sky – ‘you see them?’

  ‘Wel –’ he pointed up at the sky – ‘you see them?’

  Al eyes drifted towards the top of some trees twenty yards away, a long branch leaning out over the clearing with strange dangling wil ow-like green fronds drooping to the ground. In among them, a pair of dragon ies danced and zig-zagged with a buzz of wings they could hear from where they stood.

  ‘Those are huge,’ ut ered Kel y. ‘Good grief! … Twofoot, three-foot wingspan at a guess?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Franklyn. ‘They’re real y big and I’m pret y sure I know what species that is.’

  The others looked at him.

  ‘It’s a petalurid, I think … yeah, I’m sure that’s the right name.’

  ‘Great,’ said Laura, ‘so now we know.’

  ‘No, that’s not the important bit,’ said Franklyn. He looked at her. ‘They should be extinct.’

  ‘Wel , obviously they’re not,’ she replied.

  ‘Oh yes they are. We’ve only ever had fossils of insects that size.’

  Whitmore stood up. ‘Oh my God! He’s right!’ He watched the two dragon ies emerge from the overhanging branch and dart out into the open, their wings buzzing noisily like airborne hairdryers. ‘Insects haven’t been that size since …’ He swal owed, looked at the others. ‘Wel …

  I mean, mil ions and mil ions of years.’

  ‘Petalurids,’ ut ered Franklyn again. ‘Late Cretaceous. I’m pret y sure of that.’

  Kel y got to his feet and stood beside Franklyn. ‘What Kel y got to his feet and stood beside Franklyn. ‘What are you saying?’

  The boy wiped a fog of moisture from his glasses, blinking back the bright day from his smal eyes. ‘What I’m saying, Mr Kel y, is those things haven’t existed, alive … in, like, wel , I guess something like sixty-ve mil ion years.’

  CHAPTER 22

  2001, New York

  ‘Maddy! Where are you going?’

  Maddy ignored Sal’s pleading voice as she strode across the archway, cranked up the shut er and stepped out into the backstreet.

  I can’t do this … I can’t do this.

  She felt the rst tears rol down her cheeks as she picked her way along the rubbish-strewn sidewalk towards South 6th Street at the top. Her rst proper mission in charge and she was already going to pieces. An impetuous decision on her part, stupid and hot-headed enough to go against Bob’s reasoned advice, and now she might just be responsible for kil ing Liam and the support unit. Not only that, but she’d probably also caused the deaths of dozens of others. And, most importantly, Edward Chan.

  ‘I can’t do this,’ she mut ered. ‘I’m just not ready for this.

  ’ She stepped out of the backstreet on to the corner and watched the busy intersection for a while: tra c turning right to pick up the bridge road, left towards the river; pedestrians making their way over to their jobs in Manhat an … al of them oblivious to the commercial jets already in the air and heading towards their doom. already in the air and heading towards their doom. She wanted Foster back. Needed him back. What possessed him to think for one moment she was actual y ready to run a eld o ce? His pre-recorded ‘how to’

  answers stored on the computer just weren’t enough. She needed him to talk to, to explain the technology to her more ful y, to tel her more about the agency and their place in it. There were so many gaps in her knowledge she didn’t even know enough to have an idea what questions to ask. She was oundering.

  ‘Damn you, Foster!’ she hissed under her breath, and wiped at her wet cheeks.

  The old man could be anywhere in New York, if, indeed, he’d decided to stay on in the city. He’d walked out on her on one of the Monday mornings, walked right out of the Starbucks with a bag over one shoulder, leaving her alone with her co ee. It was Tuesday today. If he was that desperate to see the world before he died, then he might just as wel be on a Greyhound bus to some other state or even on a plane to somewhere exotic. Face it. He’s gone for good.

  ‘She just got up and left!’ said Sal.

  > I sensed emotional stress markers in her voice.

  ‘Wel , duh! Of course she’s upset! She’s just … I mean, she may have just kil ed Liam!’

  Sal realized her own voice sounded shril and loud. ‘Oh jahul a! Is he dead? Did she kil him?’

  > Insu cient data. The residue signal suggests a sudden

  > Insu cient data. The residue signal suggests a sudden and violent enlargement of a dimensional pinhole, releasing a vast amount of energy.

  ‘Like a bomb?’

  > Correct. Just like a bomb.

  She slumped down in the o ce chair. ‘So, dead, then,’

  she ut ered, looking down at her lap and suddenly beginning to feel the stab of pain. The equivalent, in days, of almost three months had passed since Foster had pul ed her from a fal ing building. So much had happened in that time, a world almost conquered by Nazis and then in the blink of an eye reduced to a radioactive wasteland. Their trip to the basement of the Museum of Natural History, nding the clues … Liam’s message in the guest book. And al the clean-up and x-up after that whole nightmare. It almost felt like another life: Mumbai, Mum and Dad, the burning building.

  This place, this scru y archway criss-crossed with cables, had begun to feel like a home, and Liam and Maddy …

  even Bob, like an odd new family. Now, in one moment, with one simple mistake, she wondered if that was al gone. She looked up from her hands, wrestling each other in her lap, to see Bob’s silent blinking response on the screen.

  > Not necessarily.

  ‘What? What do you mean “not necessarily”? Do you mean not necessarily dead?’

  > A rmative. They may have been transported.

  ‘You mean like one of our time windows?’

  ‘You mean like one of our time windows?’

  > Correct. The sudden dilation of a dimensional pinhole being used to extract zero-point energy may have functioned in a similar way to a portal.

  ‘Where? Do you know where? Could we nd them?’

  > Negative. I have no possible way of knowing when they would have been transported to. It would be random.

  ‘But … but they could be alive, right? Alive, somewhere?’

  > A rmative, Sal. But in the same geographic location.

  ‘Is there anything we could do to try to nd them?’

  > Negative. We are in the same situation as before we sent the tachyon signal. If the explosion did not kil them, then they are sometime in the past or future. The rising hope she was feeling that there might be a way to nd them and bring them back in one piece began to falter.

  > My AI duplicate and Liam may at empt to establish contact with the eld o ce, provided it can be done with a minimum of time contamination.

  ‘You mean like Liam did with the museum guest book?

  A message in history?’

  > Correct. If they have not been transported too far in time, it may be possible for them to nd a way to communicate without causing a dangerous level of contamination.

  ‘So what … we wait? We wait and hope for a signal?’

  > A rmative. We must wait and we must observe. There is no other
viable course of action.

  CHAPTER 23

  65 mil ion years BC, jungle

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Laura. ‘When did you say?’

  Franklyn nished wiping his glasses dry and put them back on again. He took his time savouring the silent, rapt at ention of the others sit ing together in the clearing. ‘I said sixty-ve mil ion years ago.’

  The others shared a stunned silence. Eyes meeting eyes and al of them wide. The enormity of the fact taking a long while to sink in for al of them.

  It was Whitmore who broke the silence. ‘Sixty-ve mil ion years … so that de nitely takes us to near the end of the Cretaceous period.’ He looked at the boy, whose glasses were already beginning to fog up again from the humidity. ‘It is the Cretaceous, isn’t it?’

  Franklyn nodded. ‘Correct. Late Cretaceous, to be precise.’

  ‘We’ve travel ed in time?’ ut ered Kel y. ‘That’s … that’s not possible!’

  ‘Whoa!’ one of the other kids cried.

  Whitmore and Franklyn were looking at each other warily, a gesture not missed by Liam.

  ‘What? Either of you gentlemen going to tel us what a bleedin’ late crustation is?’ Liam studied them suspiciously. bleedin’ late crustation is?’ Liam studied them suspiciously.

  ‘You two fel as looked at each other al funny just then. That means something, right?’

  Whitmore pursed his lips, his eyebrows arched as if in disbelief at what he was about to ut er. ‘If Franklyn here is right,’ he said, watching the foot-long dragon ies hover and drop among a cluster of ferns nearby, ‘then this is dinosaur times. We’re in dinosaur times.’

  Laura gasped. ‘Oh God.’ She took two or three deep breaths that hooted like a steam train coming down a tunnel, like a woman in labour. ‘Oh my God! I was watching Jurassic Park last night! I don’t want to be eaten by a rex. I don’t want to be eaten by a –’

  Several of the other students, not al of them girls, began to whimper at the prospect; the rest began to talk at once. Liam watched Whitmore struggling with the situation himself, shaking his head incredulously and bal ing his sts in silence. Kel y meanwhile was gazing up at the blue sky and the slightly odd-coloured sun as if hoping to nd an answer up there.

  Somebody needs to take charge, thought Liam. Or they’re al going to die.

  He was damned if he was going to volunteer, though –

  to be responsible for this lot. He and Becks were probably going to fare much bet er on their own. One of the three men was going to have to step up and take care of these kids. But, as it happened, as Liam was beginning to wonder how the pair of them were going to discreetly extract themselves – with Edward Chan in their possession extract themselves – with Edward Chan in their possession

  – the decision was made for him.

  ‘You!’ said Whitmore, his lost expression wiped away, al of a sudden remembering there was an issue as yet unresolved. His voice cut across the clamour of al the others’. ‘Yes, you! The goth girl,’ he said, pointing at Becks. He looked at Liam. ‘And you. You know what happened, don’t you? The pair of you weren’t in my party. And you knew that explosion was going to happen. So you’d bet er start tel ing us who the heck you are!’

  There was an instant silence as al eyes swivel ed to him and Becks.

  Liam grinned self-consciously. ‘Uh, we … that’s to say me and Becks here, we’re not er … students as such. We’re sort of agents from another time.’

  Fourteen pairs of eyes on him and none of them seemed to have anything close to a grasp on what he’d just said.‘See, we’re time travel ers and we came along today to try to protect him,’ he said, pointing at Edward Chan who was sit ing on the grass, arms wrapped round his huddled knees.

  Edward Chan’s eyes widened. ‘Uh? Am I in trouble?’

  ‘You, Edward. We came to nd out how we were going to protect you from an at empt on your life.’

  The others looked at the smal Chinese boy then back at Liam.

  ‘You bet er explain about him, Becks,’ said Liam.

  ‘You’ve got al the facts in your head.’

  ‘You’ve got al the facts in your head.’

  Becks nodded. ‘Listen careful y,’ she began. ‘Time travel wil become a viable technology in the year 2044 when a Professor Roald Waldstein wil build the world’s rst time machine and successful y transport himself into the past and return safely to his time. The practical technology developed by Waldstein in 2044 is largely based on the theories developed and published in Scienti c American by the Department of Physics, University of Texas in 2031. The article is entitled “Zero-point Energy: energy from space-time vacuum, or inter-dimensional leakage?”.’

  Kel y’s tired face lit up. ‘You got a be kidding?’

  Whitmore looked at the bewildered young boy hugging his own knees on the ground in front of him. ‘So how does this a ect this boy?’

  Becks’s cool grey eyes panned smoothly across to Chan.

  ‘The article published in Scienti c American is a reproduction of a maths thesis presented by one Edward Aaron Chan. An act of academic plagiarism by his supervising professor.’

  Edward looked up at her. ‘Me? Real y?’

  ‘Correct. You wil submit your dissertation to the Department of Physics for evaluation with an almost identical title in the summer of 2029, when you are twenty-six years of age. The department head, Professor Miles Jackson, wil at empt to take credit for your work when it is approved for publication several months later, but he wil be exposed as a plagiarist shortly after the article’s publication.’

  article’s publication.’

  ‘But you said you’d come to protect him from an at empt on his life … why would someone want to kil Chan?’ asked Whitmore.

  ‘Edward Chan is the true originator of time travel,’

  replied Becks. ‘In the future, 2051, time-travel technology becomes forbidden under international law because of the danger it poses to al mankind. This law is a result of years of campaigning by Roald Waldstein, the inventor of the rst viable time machine, to prevent any further development of the technology.’

  ‘Wald–… the man who builds this rst machine?’ said one of the students, a tough-looking Hispanic boy. Liam noticed his name tag was stil on his chest: JUAN HERNANDEZ. Becks’s gaze panned across to him. She waited silently for him to continue.

  ‘Why?’ asked Juan. ‘Why build the thing, then, you know, campaign against usin’ it? Don’t make any sense.’

  Liam answered. ‘Waldstein never ever revealed what he saw on his rst and only trip into the past … never talked to anyone about it. It was a big secret what he saw. But he was once heard to say that he’d looked upon the very bowels of Hel itself.’ Liam could have added more, could have added that maybe he’d glimpsed, for a few seconds, something of that himself.

  Becks continued. ‘Waldstein’s campaign gained popular support. It is logical to presume that it may be one of his more fanatical supporters who has somehow managed to travel back in time to nd Chan and at empt to kil him, to travel back in time to nd Chan and at empt to kil him, to retroactively prevent him writing his thesis, and thus prevent or forestal the invention of time travel.’

  A long silence fol owed l ed only with the gentle rustle of the jungle’s trees and the far-o high-pitched squawk of some jungle creature. It was Whitmore who cut it short.

  ‘Wel , OK … that’s al very fascinating, but what just happened? Where are we and how do we get back?’

  Becks’s eyelids ut ered for a moment. ‘The

  geopositional coordinates wil not have changed. We are exactly where we were.’

  ‘Yeah, right, man!’ snapped Juan. ‘There ain’t no jungle like this. Not in Texas!’

  ‘We’re stil in the same place,’ said Liam, ‘but it’s when we are that’s changed. Right?’

  ‘A rmative.’ Liam nudged Becks. ‘Yes …’ Becks corrected herself.

  ‘Which, if Franklyn is correct, is sixty-ve mil ion years ago,�
�� said Whitmore, loosening his tie and unbut oning the top but on of his sky-blue shirt, already stained with dark underarm patches of sweat.

  Liam smiled thinly. ‘Yup, that’s about it.’

  The technician who’d survived and come through with them dipped his head and shook it. ‘Then we real y are total y, total y in trouble, man.’

  Liam wanted to say something like he’d been in this kind of mess before, that there might possibly be a way out of here for them, that at the very least they had a genetical y enhanced and very lethal combat unit, with an genetical y enhanced and very lethal combat unit, with an embedded supercomputer, disguised as an oversized gothic Barbie dol , here to help them al out. But he gured right now that would probably be one detail too many for them to have to cope with.

  Kel y removed his linen jacket, no longer looking smooth and groomed and, like Whitmore, sweating large dark patches in the hot and humid air. ‘So what are we going to do now?’

  And, once more, al eyes rested on Liam.

  Aw, Jay-zus … What? I’m in charge now?

  It looked like he and Becks weren’t going to be able to sidle away, that they were lumbered with the others. Liam sighed. ‘Survival,’ he said eventual y. ‘I suppose we’d bet er start thinking about that. You know? Water, food, weapons, some sort of a camp. The rest … if there is a rest

  … wel , I suppose that can come later.’

  CHAPTER 24

  65 mil ion years BC, jungle

  Howard took a break from the work of hacking at the vines and bamboo canes with his improvised machete: a jagged strip of metal – part of the reactor’s shel – with a handle made of coarse leaves wrapped round one end and secured with shoelaces. As a machete it worked surprisingly wel and, from the other jagged strips of reinforced al oy that had materialized in the past with them, they’d managed to produce nine very useful cut ing implements like this one.

  The Hispanic boy, Juan, was working alongside him while across the clearing, shimmering with the heat of the midday sun, he could see some of the others fashioning simple spears out of the thicker bamboo canes they’d cut down.