When I heard the whop-whop of blades, I knew why. The noise grew louder and then a helicopter appeared. It flew over us once, then turned around and came in to land behind the camp, its rotor wash tossing tents around. It was a Bell UH-1, the famous utility helicopter of Vietnam, painted a dark blue with no other insignia. Its turbines whined down and two men, the pilot and co-pilot I presumed, emerged and walked over to inspect the bones on the cargo net. They also conferred with one of the Russians and then Cade limped over. There was a lot of waving of arms and pointing at the bodies of Tanya and Edith. Then one of the pilots started walking back to the helicopter. He apparently meant to leave as this earned him a bullet in his back. The other pilot suddenly got a lot more cooperative. All the talking and gesticulating stopped and he started lifting the edge of the cargo net. Two of the mobsters helped him and they pulled it together over the bones and cinched it at its center.
There was some pointing in our direction and then the pilot and one of the Russians carrying an AK walked over to the helicopter and got in. As the rotors started to turn, I realized what that was all about. “We’re going to get strafed,” I said, thinking fast. “The cave by the mama T. We’ve got to get there.”
“No!” Pick yelped. “If they attack us there, they’ll hit her!”
“Shut up, Dr. Pickford,” Ray said. Then, to me, “Guess we’d better get going. I’ll lead.”
“OK. Ray then Amelia, Jeanette, Laura, Brian, and Philip. Pick, you and I will go last.”
The helicopter rose and dipped its nose to gather speed and gain altitude before turning back toward us. “Go!” I barked and Ray took off, Amelia on his heels. Jeanette was right behind her. Laura and the brothers tore after them, too. I pushed Pick ahead of me and we scrambled—falling, rolling, getting up, and running again. The helicopter came roaring overhead but if there were shots, I couldn’t hear them because of its rotor and engine noise.
We reached the cave and fell inside. Pick collapsed and started whining. “They’ll destroy the nest.”
I didn’t care about Pick and at that moment, not much about the dinosaurs. “Ray, get over here, help me set up a defense.” We stacked up some rocks and I motioned everybody to lie down.
When Pick kept complaining, Amelia said, “Dr. Pickford, didn’t you say that the mother T would watch over her nest forever? You said you could feel her. Won’t she still do that?”
Pick shook his head. I guess he didn’t have confidence in his own mystic philosophy when things got rough. Funny how that works.
The helicopter made a pass but the AK fire out of it was in effective. Then, two Russians on foot appeared below us and sprayed bullets into our cave. Fortunately, the bullets didn’t ricochet but were absorbed into the ancient mud of the Hell Creek Formation. I traded pistols with Amelia—the .22 just didn’t cut it for distance or impact—and Ray and I fired back, carefully squeezing off only a single round apiece, trying to make them count. Happily, I hit one of the Russians in his arm. He twirled around, then fell, before getting up and running away. The other Russian went with him. That was good but we were in a cave, not able to see much of anything, and that was bad. I said, “Ray, you and I need to get to the top of this hill.”
“No,” Jeanette said. “I’ll go with you. Ray, you hold the line down here. You’re the better shot.”
Ray hesitated and I said, “She’s right, Ray. We need you here.” I looked up, trying to recall the terrain above. We would need to go all the way to the top where there was a layer of sandstone slabs for protection. I told Jeanette what we were going to do.
“Now or never, Mike,” Jeanette said, catching a water bottle Laura tossed to her.
“Let’s go,” I said and we bounded out of that cave like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I guess I was Butch. We scrambled up, sending little landslides behind us, and were up that hill in a few seconds, falling down on top of it. No one shot at us. We crawled over to some boulders. I looked toward the camp and could see the helicopter had landed but just about everything else was blocked by the truncated top of Blackie Butte. To the north was a series of hills that we’d need to cross if we tried to break out toward the lake. There was no sign of the Russian sent to guard in that direction. No matter. We were stuck until nightfall.
Then I saw something interesting on the western horizon. “Look,” I said, nudging Jeanette. “Something coming our way.”
“Whoa,” she said, “a big’un.”