It was a “big’un” all right. The layer of slate-black clouds blanked out the entire westward sky. Well, like old Bill Coulter said. A quiet day in Fillmore County is a temptation to God. We were going to be hit by a terrible blow.
The UH-1’s rotors started up, then it lifted off and moved to hover where the bones had been stacked in the net. When it rose, the net with its load was dangling beneath. The chopper flew over us to the east, the whop-whop of the blades diminishing to nothing in a few minutes. “There go our dinosaurs,” Jeanette said, sorrowfully, “at least part of them. How do you think they’ll move them, Mike?”
“The way I’d do it,” I said, “would be to have some big trucks waiting out there somewhere, maybe over by the Ogallala Indian Reservation where there’s hardly any traffic. I’d load up the trucks and drive south on the Interstate. Crossing the border into Mexico shouldn’t be much trouble with the right payoffs.”
“I’ve been such a fool,” Jeanette said. “You tried to warn me.”
“Well, maybe I should have listened to myself,” I said. “I’ve had a hunch for days we should get the hell away from here.”
She leaned back and allowed a sigh. “I’m sorry about Tanya.”
I hadn’t been able to think much about Tanya, not while dodging bullets and such. I didn’t want to think about her now, either. Time for that later if I was still alive, a doubtful proposition. “She was a fine woman,” was all I had to say.
The hours ticked by. I saw Cade once or twice limping around and then a couple of the Russians. They were moving more jacketed bones into another cargo net. Then I heard a small rock slide below. It was Pick climbing up to us. He fell over the top and crawled over. “What do you want?” Jeanette asked him in something less than a happy tone.
“I want one of your pistols,” he said. “I don’t intend to let them destroy the mother T and the nest. If necessary, I’ll go down fighting.”
“I told you,” I said, “that they’re not going to destroy anything. They plan on selling it.”
“They can’t remove the bones at this site. None of them are jacketed. All they can do is tear them up trying to get at us. Let me have some dignity, Mike. If the greatest discovery in paleontological history has to be destroyed, I’d just soon die with it.”
“No,” I said. “It’s not happening. We’re going to break out tonight.”
“Until then, can I stay up here?”
“The helicopter might try to strafe us again when it comes back.”
“I’ll take my chances. I don’t like that cave.”
I looked at Jeanette and she rolled her eyes. “All right,” I said. “Just don’t cause any trouble.”
“No, no. Of course not.”
Pick was a bit too agreeable to suit me but I had other things on my mind. The mobsters plus Cade were probably trying to figure out how to get at us. Two of them were wounded, one of the Russians in his arm, Cade in his leg, but no big thing to determined men. Most likely, anyway, they’d send the still healthy Russians to flush us out, then pick us off. But how? When I stopped to think about it, Pick was right. The best approach to the cave was over the mother T and her nest and I didn’t want that beautiful site destroyed, either.
Darkness started to settle in on us while the big storm edged ever closer. We could see flashes of lightning within its core and occasionally a flickering blue-white streak between the clouds and the ground. Thunder rumbled menacingly. If I’d been in my trailer, I might have decided it would be a good night to spend in the barn. It took me back to the night before Pick arrived. Beneath that storm, we had brought new life into the world. On this night, there was no chance of that. We were all potential killers.
Then we saw headlights from a vehicle coming across the Square C. It was a sport utility vehicle and out of it came four more men dressed similarly to the Russians. What was with the Hawaiian shirts? Blackie Butte wasn’t exactly the beach of Waikiki. Anyway, there they were, four more Wolves to come and get us. Where they’d come from, I didn’t know. Maybe an auxiliary group within a day’s drive or maybe they had been coming all along. Maybe they got lost. It wouldn’t be the first time city boys got lost in the vast state of Montana and Fillmore County. It didn’t matter. They were here and we were in even more trouble.
“We don’t have a chance, do we?” Jeanette said, more as a statement than a question.
“Well, to paraphrase Wellington after the Battle of Waterloo, it’s going to be a close-run thing.”