5

Brit Silver was a troublemaker from way back. The child of a broken, though wealthy home, his parents had used him as a pawn in their psychological battles with each other, indulging his every desire in a bid to make him choose the "love" of one over the other until they'd finally realized he had turned the tables on them both at an early age and been playing them against each other. His father eventually left the country to settle down with a gorgeous olive-skinned beauty in Italy, and the day Brit turned eighteen his fed-up mother threw him out of the house and her will. A manipulative con artist, he'd been held back a year in school on two separate occasions due to bad behavior and not a lack of intelligence, so that he graduated high school at the age of twenty…although he never showed up to collect his diploma. His brilliant, though misguided nature had intrigued the inquisitive young McKenna, himself a bit of a loner due to his advanced intellectual and emotional maturity. Teamed up, the pair managed to just barely elude serious trouble on a number of occasions, nearly always thanks to Geoff's quick thinking and honest reputation.

They occupied a booth upholstered in red vinyl inside of a dimly lit strip mall Italian-themed restaurant. Geoff thanked the waitress when she dropped off the pizza and served each of them their first slice. He unfolded his paper napkin and set it across his lap while Brit lifted his steaming hot slice and bit off the narrow point, nearly knocking over his Mountain Dew in his haste to lessen the damage to his tongue and upper palate.

"Of course you realize it's very hard to believe," Geoff admitted calmly as he dusted his slice with grated Romano cheese, red pepper flakes, garlic powder and black pepper. He lifted his butter knife and fork, inspecting the cheap flatware for food detritus or water spots before neatly severing the first bite of his slice free and spearing it with his fork.

"You think I care? I don't never care 'bout what anybody believes about things. I deal in facts, man. That and cold, hard cash."

McKenna blew on his tiny triangle of pizza and twirled the fork to wind the strings of mozzarella onto it. His old friend had filled him in on some of the details on the ride over. "First of all, how did they find you?"

"Oh, I dunno," the guy said, taking another bite followed by another soothing gulp, a string of cheese bisecting his stubbled chin. "Maybe from someone from when I was in jail."

McKenna's eyes closed. It had been a matter of time before Brit had gotten caught at something. "I see. So a total bunch of strangers find some random kid in prison and decide he'd be the perfect candidate to send on a mission—a very expensive mission—to a remote island somewhere in the middle of the Pacific-"

"I wasn't a prisoner," Brit interrupted, finally wiping at his mouth with a paper napkin. "I was a plant. They wanted me to get close to this guy so I could get some information out of him."

Geoff chewed thoughtfully. Brit told effective lies because he was so good at mixing just the right amount of truth into them. It made it difficult to know when he was making stuff up. "Who is this they?"

"Well, it's not the same they. This time it was a different they, but they knew what I had done, so clearly someone had made contact with someone else about me."

And this sort of evasive conversation meant no better details would be gained by pressing matters further. Geoff spread the fingers of his left hand and shook them above the table as though surrendering to Brit's command to halt. "Fine. Somehow it's decided that you will be sent on a mission to a remote island-"

"Certified scuba diver," the other guy revealed. "They had me deliver spare air tanks along a preplanned underwater route so I could follow them later without having to bring the boat in close to shore."

"You were on a diving vacation."

"For all intents and purposes, yes," he agreed, picking loose olive slices from his paper plate and folding them into what was left of his slice. "The area's a diving hot spot. Alleged shipwrecks, pirate loot and stuff."

"Of course." Geoff cleared his throat and took soda through his straw. "So you swam to this island and saw what exactly?"

"Small place," he said while chewing. "Thick jungle. You remember the Amazon? That was like a freakin' pasture compared to this place. They told me to open up these sealed packages in small clearings a few feet away from the underbrush. Packages were dead cats." Brit reached for his drink and a second slice. "Stuff was soaked in vodka. Told me to take a walk, but be suspicious of everything and don't get caught."

"By whom?"

The second slice was not as hot as the first had been. Brit Silver folded it and took large bites. "I dunno." He gulped. "The place wasn't occupied—so they said—but there might be field teams doing research and stuff. Scientists maybe, or caretakers." He wiped at his greasy lower face. "'cause they were using these islands to see how these cloned animals would react, y'know, if they could survive in modern times."

McKenna had issues with the whole DNA extracted from a mosquito trapped in amber thing. The insect's biological functions would have had to have ceased almost immediately after ingestion in order to preserve the blood it had extracted intact. Odds were that most samples obtained would have undergone damaging processing within the insects' guts. Had someone tried to fill in gaps and patch over damaged sequences with that of a modern relative? Either way, it was impossible that anything successfully cloned would turn out to be an exact duplicate of any once-living creature. The clones would be hybrids at best, distorting any data already extrapolated through study of the fossil record. "Vodka makes sense," he allowed, consuming his crust. "Odorless, and the animal would likely incapacitate itself before actually overdosing." He had captured flocks of chickens this way, soaking their feed in alcohol, and then collecting the stupefied birds with ease.

"See," said Brit, jabbing at him with the point of a fresh pizza slice. "I knew you'd know this stuff."

The waitress returned to check on their progress. Brit placed an order for a basket of French fries.

"I've kinda been eatin' what I can when I can," he confessed, suggesting he'd been on the run for a while.

Geoff plucked an errant olive slice from a piece of pizza. They had ordered the pie with half Brit's choice of toppings and half McKenna's. "So it's a carrion-eater. You grabbed one and then what?"

"Well, approaching the place was the hard part. Getting off the island was easy. Once I bagged one I sent up a flare and they just raced the boat in to get me."

"And at some point things went wrong."

"There were boat patrols. We'd timed it so they should have been on the far side of the island, but I guess somethin' tipped 'em off, and as soon as they saw us they gave chase. They ordered us to stop. We were in a thirty-three foot, three-tiered Chris Craft and they had a Crystaliner runabout. They boarded to search us, though it wasn't likely they knew what we had or if we had even taken anything. I tied off the sack I had the little bastard in so it hung off the side of the bow. They didn't find anything, so they let us go. Told us the island was quarantined—that they were studying animals that carried leprosy. We told them we never saw any animals 'cept a few birds. They asked us all about the birds. We asked them if it was safe to eat fish caught near the island and they said they didn't know, that we should dump any we'd caught just to be sure. It was a regular horse pucky buffet," he said, grabbing his last slice and staring at it as it lay harmlessly on his grease-stained paper plate. "We had some, they had some, we smiled at each other and nobody believed a word anyone said."

"What did they look like?" Geoff asked, using his hands to eat now that the pizza was manageable.

"Too casual, if you know what I mean. Like feds undercover—you can still tell. Frayed shorts, faded shirts, expensive shades, perfect hair. They didn't dress like security, but you could tell they were. Quality guys, at that. Best Hammond can afford."

"Best what?"

"John Hammond? Gazillionaire? Plastics and stuff? He's in the news now and then—you shoulda heard of him."

Geoff shook his head.

"Yeah-oh, thanks, Hon," he told the waitress as she dropped the fries off and promised to return with ketchup. "It's all his baby. Soon as they said they could clone somethin', this guy starts thinkin' big."

"But cloned animals have a notoriously short lifespan," Geoff interjected.

"He's rich. What does he care? So it seems this guy is using these islands to try and figure out what he has to do to make them livable for when he makes the bigger, more expensive dinos-"

"Waitaminute. What?"

Brit smiled grimly. "Rumor is he's not stopping with little piddly rat-sized things that eat scraps. He's supposedly workin' on bigger things like T. rex and Stegosaurus and stuff."

"This is really too hard to believe," McKenna reiterated.

"Like I said, I don't care what you believe. What do you think it was you were cuttin' on last night? Plucked chicken?" He lifted a crinkle-cut fry and dropped it. "Hot." The waitress deposited a squeeze bottle filled with ketchup between them without speaking a word or even slowing her stride. "Doesn't matter. So I'm stealin' this thing for some rival zillionaire and his corporation I guess so they can learn trade secrets or somethin'."

"You got caught."

"Me? Nah. I guess they went back and found my tracks on the shore, found a few more dazed little dinosaurs and decided they wasn't through with us yet." He squeezed copious squiggles of ketchup over the fries and bit into one, reaching swiftly for his drink again. "Serve stuff hot here, huh? Want one?"

"No, thank you."

"This time I'd transferred to another boat and the guys who'd taken me to the island had remained in the area, pretendin' to fish. Maybe they really were fishin'—doesn't matter. I'm on my way, high-tailin' it back to the mainland. We got a good start on 'em, 'cept we head back into port and there's like harbor patrol or water cops or somethin' all over the place. Even if you manage to dock, they're haltin' everybody, askin' questions and stuff, probably got my description. So I ask for a mesh bag, a snorkel, a small cooler, and the dinghy. I leave 'em, promise to hook up later. I got a number memorized.

"So I drift off a ways while they pull right on into the mess, eatin' a sandwich outta the cooler. When I'm done I anchor out of the way of traffic, grab a little sun. Then I make my way over to a likely area and drop overboard with the snorkel, pretendin' to be lookin' for pearls or treasure or trash or whatever-"

Geoff interrupted, "But the animal-"

"Still in the bag with a T-shirt draped over it."

"Hot and suffocating."

Brit barely acknowledged the remark. He shoved three fries in his mouth and chased them with soda. "Anyhow, I kill some time and nobody's payin' me mind like I figured and I'm watchin' the sailboats on this one dock, tryin' to figure out which one to take-"

Geoff nodded, balling up his napkin and setting it on the empty aluminum pizza platter. "You stole a boat. I suppose they didn't care who left—just who was coming in."

"Right. So I head south 'cause no one's expectin' that-"

"South?"

"Yeah. Americano, he heads north, right? So I head south outta Costa Rica knowin' I gotta ditch the boat before it's reported stolen."

"Y'know, I don't need to hear every detail of your escape." The waitress returned to top off their beverages from red plastic pitchers that rattled with ice. "So you made it back here eventually, and why is this animal at my place?"

Brit pretended to sulk. "You should let me tell the rest of it sometime. Thought it was all pretty clever myself."

"As usual. You arrived in the States and?"

"Well, that's the thing, see? I knew how much I was getting' from the bozos who hired me, but I thought maybe our…common benefactor might be willin' to offer a little more."

McKenna stiffened. Not too long ago, while on a paleontological dig in Montana, a previously unknown extinct mammal had been discovered. About the size of a collie, possessing rear hooves and front paws, the scientist who'd discovered it had named it uniceras to describe the single, long, slightly curved horn it had protruding from the center of its skull. Because it resembled historical descriptions of a rather specific mythological creature, interested parties began popping up like fleas in a kennel, each attempting to procure the fossilized skeleton or, at least, its horn. McKenna had ultimately ended up with it and traded it to an anonymous collector of rare artifacts for a tidy sum of banded bricks of cash. Since then, employees of the mysterious collector had encountered him again when he'd been on the run from an enraged Amazonian tribe on the border of extinction. Brit had been working for them all along, seeking proof that the legendary tribe even existed, and Geoff had been paid off yet again for his involvement, reluctant though he had been. He remained suspicious of them and preferred to avoid any future dealings with them. Of course it would be his old on again off again pal Brit Silver who'd bring him to their attention again. "Not knowing who these people are, do you really think you should be playing games with them?"

"To the guys who hired me, I'm just a small potatoes crook willin' to pick up the odd job. To them, I'm a proven asset. They gave me an address in Jersey. I told them I should be there in a couple of days."

"But your captive got sick."

"I didn't know where else to go."

McKenna's eyes closed and he slumped in his seat. "Why didn't you go up to the house?"

"They picked up my trail. I had to throw it out as I rode by so they wouldn't know where it went."

"They…the original guys you were working for?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "I think so."

"Did they follow you this morning?"

"I went to an airport. Dropped off the car, laid low in a hotel room last night. Picked up a new rental car this morning."

Geoff lifted his head. "You're sure nobody followed you?"

"Far as I know."