JURASSIC PARK III

13 – An Esteemed Visitor

It seemed as though the Montana day couldn't get any more peaceful. The temperatures were perfect, the overcast clouds blocked the blinding sun and a steady breeze drifted about. Muldoon was thankful for this. He was also curious, too. He expected to be bombarded by dig site workers, by now, asking their various questions or coming to him with a crisis. Perhaps there was nothing going on. Or perhaps, they were just avoiding him. It always seemed Dr. Grant was up to his ears with site workers and college students whittling him down with questions and complaints.

Seeing how things were moderately easy going that fine afternoon, Muldoon decided he would finally get around to lunch. He had only been putting it off as he really hadn't hungry until now. He looked at Derek helping Cheryl carry a crate of excavating supplies into a tent for temporary storage. "If you need me, I'll be in the trailer."

"Yup," was all he got in response. Derek paid his uncle no mind and proceeded into the tent. "Let's set this down in that corner over there." He motioned with a nod of his head to the far corner at his left. "I have no idea what the Doc will want to do with this stuff."

The box was sat down and Cheryl rummaged around inside it. From there it turned into a back and forth between the two people. "Plaster spatulas…"

"Got too many of those to count already…"

"Chisels…"

"There's already chisels for days around here."

"Brushes…"

"As if we needed more."

"And I can't tell what the rest of this stuff is."

Derek rested his hands on his hips. "If it's anything like the last load of supplies we got, probably more gloves…a protective tarp or few…more cleaning solvents…. Crap we already have loads of that we haven't even used yet." Cheryl giggled. "Instead of the museum sending us shit we don't want, how about they ask the Doc what we need." He shook his head.

Derek stepped outside the tent and gazed out at the busy dig site. Since it was now summer, that meant more volunteer workers. And kids. He knew how much having loads of kids at the dig site bothered Grant. But, it's not like he could be choosey with the help that volunteered. It was either deal with the kids or lose a big chunk of workers between the middle of May and end of August.

Then there was always that one mouth breather kid that bothered Derek with his beady little eyes, chubby cheeks and sausage fingers that broke everything they touched.

Speaking of which, mentally, there he was. His stood there with that dumb look on his face and looking straight at Derek. Eew. Gross. His nose was running again. Wasn't it runny the last time he was at the dig site for winter break? Derek grimaced and turned his back to the kid, but it was no use. He could feel the snot nosed kid's stare bore through him. Something told him this was going to be a long, long summer. Maybe he would take a lesson from the good doctor and find a way to be away from kids by hiding in the office trailer reviewing reports. It worked for Grant.

The distant sound of a helicopter grew louder, Derek thinking nothing of it. It was most likely another tourist helicopter from a nearby town's lake aerial touring service. The pilots tended to fly over the dig site to give the tourists a thrill. He had heard a couple of the pilots joking about it in a diner one day. As long as they didn't fly too low to the dig site, Grant allowed it.

The helicopter continued to get louder until Derek couldn't ignore it anymore. This sounded way too close and too low for just a lake tour. He turned towards the source of the sound and squinted his eyes in focus. By now, Derek had memorized the appearance of the three different tour helicopters. They were all primarily white with a colored stripe going down the side. There was a red one, a blue one and lastly a yellow one.

The closer the helicopter got to the dig site, the more Derek tried to identify it. He didn't recognize the navy-blue aircraft with some light blue circular squiggle on the side paint style, but then again it was still too far to really see. Since most of the terrain around the dig site wasn't flat and very favorable to a helicopter landing, the pilot touched down at the only place he could; the primary dirt road leading in and out of the dig site instead.

Derek was now able to make out the paint scheme. The light blue design on the side wasn't just a squiggle but an M in a circle; the emblem of the Masrani Global Corporation. Everything inside Derek came to a sickening halt as a wave of nauseating dread overcame him. It was as though time came to a slow. The passenger door opened and out stepped the one man Derek hoped to never see in person ever again.

Before Derek realized what he was doing, he was shouting…no…desperately screaming, at the top of his lungs and running through the dig site to Quarantine. "Uncle Rob!" Not only did the billionaire's arrival gain a curious crowd of onlookers but Derek's frantic fit did too. Even Simon heard it as he got out of the helicopter and slightly furrowed his brow in concern.

Muldoon heard his nephew scream for him in a way he had never heard him before. Whatever it was, it was serious and he instantly dropped his sandwich on its plate and bolted out of the trailer. Had he waited a second later, he would have hit Derek in the face with the door. "What? What is it?"

Derek's features were sickly pale and his eyes wide in horror. "He's here."

"Who's here?"

"Masrani." The younger man panted and pointed towards the helicopter.

Muldoon visually followed the direction Derek was pointing to see the slate blue suited foreign man still standing by the helicopter, its prop winding down. "Oh my God."

"He knows about Pet. He has to know. Why else would he be here?"

Muldoon's insides knotted up and his expression hardened. He stepped out of the trailer and went straight towards the helicopter. Terrence was stumbling over an empty cooler trying to get out of the plastering tent, his arms up to his elbows caked thick in plaster. He saw the angrily tempered Muldoon with his nephew behind him.

What had them so riled up all of a sudden? He stepped around the tent to see the helicopter and its owner. "Oh no." Terrence grabbed a clean towel off the stack of many from inside the tent and rushed to the catch up to the others while wiping off his arms the best he could.

Muldoon stopped just outside the dig site's perimeter and clenched his jaw in unfathomable rage.

Simon's dark eyes slid over the all too recognizable man in debate. He had to be at the right place and the hybrid still here, too, if this man was here. Looking behind him revealed another face Simon was familiar with from InGen's personnel files, that being Terrence Mitchell.

The billionaire re-centered his attention back on the piercing grey eyes set in a scarred and pained face. He stepped closer to the ex-game warden until they were four feet apart. Simon knew after hearing stories from Jacobs and from what he learned from the disk the files that he would need to be very cautious when approaching this very protective man. "Mr. Muldoon. I see I have found the right place as per Mr. Hammond."

"Whatever your business is here, I advise you get back in that helicopter of yours and leave immediately."

So, Jacobs was right; this man was confrontational. "I am not here for the reason you and the others so strongly believe. I mean no harm to the girl. Dr. Jacobs told me about your abducting him a little while back. While it was a rather unconventional approach to the problem at hand, it was nonetheless a move for the best. Your timing couldn't have been better which is why I have come here in person. Veronica. She is very ill, Mr. Muldoon. Time is of the essence for her and I know you're aware of this more than anyone."

Terrence studied everything he could about the new comer from his facial expression, posture to even how he stared unblinking at Muldoon. "Everything about this guy says he's being honest."

Derek didn't look at the man standing to his right when he spoke. "Is that your doctorate in psychology talking or are you just making assumptions?"

"What do you think, asshole?"

Muldoon barked, "Shut it you two." He remembered what Jacobs said in the bunker, about how this disgustingly rich man was trying to find a cure for Pet. He took a step closer to Masrani, a painfully uncertain look twisting his lips and filling his grey eyes. "How do I know you're not telling me a bunch of rubbish in order to get her in your custody? So InGen can finally finish what they've been so eager to since the day she was created?"

"I didn't spend as much money as I did trying to find Ms. Hammond a cure just to have InGen kill her."

"Why?" Muldoon snipped. "Give me one reason why I should believe a damn thing you're telling me."

Simon could still see the look in John Hammond's eyes and hear it in his voice when recalling the memory of their last meeting. "I met with Mr. Hammond shortly before his passing. He trusted me with a disk that was password encrypted. He said, everything I needed to know about his company's greatest creation…his greatest achievement…was on that disk. When he gave me the disk, his words were and I quote, 'I am trusting you to do what is necessary to continue what I cannot.'"

Derek scoffed. "Hammond trusted you to protect her? Why you?"

Dark eyes rested on chocolate brown ones. He vaguely recognized the younger man as the driver of the red Jeep he saw that day in InGen's parking lot. This must be the mouthy nephew to Robert Muldoon, Dr. Jacobs had told him about. "With money comes power. I am a powerful man and can make things happen a lot of people can't. Such as ensuring Ms. Hammond is not to be harmed after having a meeting with InGen's board of executives." Simon looked back at Muldoon. "I give you my word she is under my strictest protection." It appeared as though the concrete exterior of the scarred game hunter was about to crumble to pieces in a confliction of hope and skepticism. "I can cure her of her illness that's been plaguing her since she was a child, Mr. Muldoon. But the only way I can help her is if you help me. I need to know where she is."

"She's not here," Muldoon blurted before thinking. He bit his tongue with the damnation that he was falling into a cleverly laid trap. He had already fallen into one trap and still bore the scars of it.

"Is she in town?"

As Muldoon stood there, all he could think about was Pet's upmost hope that this man was still as kind hearted as she remembered him to be in Kenya. It was something that even he, himself, had come to hope. He just didn't realize it till now. "No. She's gone…with Dr. Grant and his protégé on a business trip out of the country."

Simon arched a brow. "To where, if I may ask?"

"To the islands…to Jurassic Park."

"Oh my-" he choked back a gasp with the absolute horror of realization. "The plane crash…"

Derek heard the barely audible words. "Wait, what? Plane crash?! What plane crash?"

Simon looked to Muldoon and was certain the aghast expression he was seeing on the man's face mirrored his own. "I received a phone call from the Costa Rican government earlier today regarding a suspected plane crash that happened on Isla Sorna yesterday morning."

Muldoon's heart shattered in his eyes. "Pet…"

Simon brow dropped in despair. "She was on the plane?"

Derek answered. "So was Dr. Grant and his assistant."

Terrence spoke up next. "And two other people, too. Paul and Amanda Kirby. They hired Dr. Grant to be a kind of tour guide for some wedding anniversary fly over of the islands."

"Then I must leave immediately," Simon forcibly said through a constricted throat.

"Not without me." Muldoon sprang in step to stand in front of the surprised billionaire.

"Or me," Derek stated, joining his uncle.

Muldoon continued. "If you're going to that island to find and rescue her and the others then I'm coming too. I know that island better than anyone else you're going to find and on such a short notice. That and if you try to approach her if even in the least, all you'll do is scare her. Should that happen, she'll either run off and go into hiding or attack violently out of defense. If she sees me there then she won't run or try to fight back."

Simon was relieved things were going better than he anticipated even with the latest dreadful news still weighing down on him and suffocating him. "You're trusting me to help her, then?"

The muscles in Muldoon's jaw tightened as did his fists at his side. That concrete expression was back joined by an acidic scowl and venomous tone of voice. "I don't trust you, not in the least, but I trust Pet. She's been holding onto the belief you were still that nice person she met in Kenya all those years ago and not like the other previous InGen CEOs and executives out to kill her after Hammond lost control of the company. Right now, you and I want the same thing; Pet. Whether or not your intentions are genuine to help her is something else. I've already killed one person who tried to hurt my little girl. Don't think I won't do it again."

Simon really didn't take too well to threats but this man had his respect. "Then by all means, let us make our way down to Isla Sorna."