The Dinosaur Hunter(99)

Cade walked over and slapped Pick hard in the face. “We had a deal and you’re going to see it through,” he said as Pick choked back a sob.

I heard Edith’s voice. “Get over there with the others.” I saw Ray and Amelia walk from behind the cook tent with Edith behind them. Edith was holding two pistols, a .38 and Ray’s .44. Ray was holding Amelia at her waist, his hand on the small of her back as if urging her along.

“Sorry, Mike,” Ray said as they walked to stand with the others. “I thought Mayor Brescoe was on our side.”

I climbed to my feet. Jeanette walked over to stand beside me. Edith confronted us. “I told you to leave, Mike.”

“Tell me what’s going on here, Edith,” I said, grateful she’d put herself between Jeanette and me and the Russians. They hadn’t killed us yet and I wasn’t sure why. What was certain was I needed to kill them.

“We just wanted the skeleton of the little dinosaur Bill Coulter found,” Edith said.

“Pick made this all so damn complicated finding all these other bones.”

“Edith, shut up,” Cade said. “Everybody shut up.”

Jeanette ignored him. “Pick, what is this? You tell me.”

“I did everything for science,” Pick replied, looking miserable.

“For money, you fool,” Cade said. “You knew that.”

The Russian I’d shot kept eyeballing me like he couldn’t wait to tear me into little pieces. The other three were standing around, nonchalantly holding their pistols. I guess they were waiting to find out who to kill next. It appeared Cade was in charge and I suppose wholesale slaughter wasn’t his way although I had no doubt that would be the end result. It was either them or us. The scene of what was going to happen played itself out in my head. First, Cade was going to berate Pick for not doing what he was supposed to do. Pick, I understood now, worked for Cade. I didn’t know why but never mind. Then, based on what Pick told him, Cade was going to decide what to do with Pick and then us. I concluded he would decide there was no reason to keep us alive and therefore have us killed. We were probably just minutes away from that happening.

Anywhere else other than Montana (OK, maybe Texas), I think people in our situation would have waited, hoping not to be killed, and then got killed. Here, we did things differently. The relaxed posture of the Russians showed me they didn’t understand that. I glanced at Ray who still had his hand on Amelia’s back. He shifted his eyes and I understood why his hand was where it was. It was time to move. I didn’t run. I walked, crossing the open ground between me and where Tanya lay.

“Where are you going, Mike?” Cade asked.

“To see if Tanya is alive,” I said, which made the Russian who’d murdered her laugh.

I went down on my knees beside her. Jeanette called out, “Mike, she’s gone. You can’t do anything.”

What happened next took just seconds but I will describe it in slow motion. I cradled Tanya into my arms, turning her so I had the back of her bloody head leaning against my chest. The Russian who’d shot her came at me, his pistol raised. I lifted Tanya up, keeping her between me and him while my hand went into her front pocket where she’d put the .22 pistol I’d given her. I released its safety, pulled it out, and fired it. The bullet struck the Russian in his right eye with a satisfying spurt of blood. To my disappointment, it apparently didn’t have enough energy to penetrate his brain, probably lodging in a sinus cavity. It was, however, a definite distraction. He screamed and staggered around. “Run to the dig!” I yelled.

Jeanette, Brian, Philip, and Laura didn’t hesitate. They ran, scrambling up Blackie Butte. The Russians fortunately concentrated on me, their bullets striking Tanya’s corpse. I ignored them and shot at Cade with my little pistol, hitting him in the leg. Amelia knocked Edith down with a hard right to the jaw and took away her pistols. Ray withdrew Amelia’s pistol, hidden in the small of her back, and fired at the Russians, who all scattered. Ray then handed her pistol back to Amelia and took back his .44 before they ran together over to Blackie Butte. The Russian I’d shot in the eye was still staggering around, but Ray put him out of his misery by providing a little .44-caliber medicine. Ranch kids. You got to love them.

I scurried over to Edith, who was sitting up but dazed. I grabbed her by the back of her shirt and dragged her with me. The path up to the dig led slightly behind a fold in the hill, giving us cover. At the dig, I threw Edith down and did a quick count. We were all there—me, Jeanette, Ray, Amelia, Laura, Brian, and Philip—with sandstone boulders providing us with some cover. Pick was there, too, the little sandy-haired, pony-tailed rat.