"The first thing I have to do is get my phone back," Ian told Bradford. They were riding in the Humvee, rumbling along the freeway. Ian had no idea where they were going.

"Unfortunately that phone is gone."

"Gone? Gone? Where, ah, where exactly did it go?"

It was left in Dr. Wu's apartment. You remember Renfro, the agent who was with me when we picked you up at Wu's?"

"Hard to forget," Ian answered.

"His team was supposed to sweep the apartment for evidence. They got his computer and all his stored data, and a filing cabinet full of notes. The phone was left behind."

"So can you take me, ah, to Dr. Wu's apartment? Surely he would still--"

"Henry Wu is dead."

Ian was too stunned to comment.

"Renfro's team were ordered to destroy the apartment and bring Wu to Eichmann. I never saw him again."

"So, so how do you know he's--"

"I broke into Eichmann's office. Something about the way he was detaining you didn't make sense, and I was determined to figure it out. It was in his files that I found out what happened to Wu…and a lot more information."

"You're sure the phone was in the apartment when it, ah, when it burned?"

"It didn't turn up in evidence. It was either in the apartment, or Renfro took a fancy to it."

Ian lay his head back on the seat of the Humvee. "This is a problem."

"How so?"

"There are some…very important phone numbers programmed into that phone."

"You don't have the numbers tucked away anywhere else?" Bradford asked, incredulous.

"I didn't expect to be, to be grabbed off the street like a war criminal," Malcolm retorted. Then he sat up suddenly.

"What?" Bradford asked.

"I know someone else who might have those numbers."

"Who?"

"InGen has a facility on the West Coast," Ian explained. "If I can contact them--"

"If you're talking about calling Charles Wallace," Bradford interrupted, "you can forget that idea, too."

"Is there anyone you people didn't kill?"

"Wallace isn't dead," Bradford explained, "but he may as well be. His instincts were better than ours were. He left our guys holding the bag, and went underground. He won't be found unless he chooses to be found."

Ian lay his head back again. "This is incredibly bad. What about John Hammond, is he dead, too?"

"No," Will answered, "but his facilities are all under twenty-four hour watch, including his residence, and his home phone is bugged."

"You people are thorough," Malcolm said acidly.

"If it puts your mind at ease any," Bradford said, "I'm no longer with the company."

"I gathered," Ian nodded.

"And it may also help you to know that plans are already in place for the recovery of Alan Grant and his team."

Ian froze, staring at Bradford in disbelief. "You knew about the team?"

"Not until a few days ago. But Eichmann did. He knew from the beginning. From the very beginning."

"I can see why you say, ah, that none of this makes sense."

"I'll explain it as best I can. First, we get you something to eat. You'll need your strength. It will have to be fast food, I'm afraid, because for the next few days everything is going to be fast.

"Second, we go to my house. I have some items there that I have to pick up and deliver to the Justice Department."

"Justice? Justice Department?"

"Evidence. Like I said, I'll explain it all as we go."

"Okay," Ian said, "then what?"

"Then," Bradford said, taking a deep breath, "I’m going to get my old job back."

"Incredible," Alan whispered.

The group had topped a low, rolling hill and stepped out of the thinning forest and onto a vast plain. Before them lay a lush, healthy field of bright green grasses, spotted with scattered clumps of trees. The plain went on for miles in any direction, and the only sign of jungle was a thin, dark line on the far horizon.

The plain itself was beautiful, but the dinosaurs that populated it were magnificent.

A herd of brachiosaurs moved slowly across the plain, grazing from the tops of the sparse trees as they went. In the midst of the herd, standing notably taller than even the giants around her, was a brightly-marked female. Her long, slender neck was adorned with narrow tiger-stripes of rich, deep brown. Across her back were broader stripes of a similar color, tapering to sharp points about midway down her sides.

A triceratops family was gathered in a protective circle, with six females and a huge bull on the outside and two young calves in the middle. They grazed quietly, indifferent to the other species around them.

Dozens of parasaurolophus and corythosaurs wandered the plain in a great mix, traveling in a group so closely packed that it might have been difficult to distinguish between them if not for the obvious differences in their head crests. The low, mournful notes of their trumpeting vocalizations were instantly recognizable--Lex remembered those as the sounds that had distracted the marauding tyrannosaur days before.

A half-dozen or so stegosaurs of varying sizes stood almost motionless at the edge of the forest, a few hundred yards to the right of Alan and his group.

A line of ankylosaurs, perhaps twenty in number, trundled purposefully across the plain from left to right. Some snapped up the occasional clump of tall grasses as they marched, but it was clear they had a destination in mind.

"The ankylosaurs are on the move," Dr. Cross pointed out. "They do this every month or so."

"They'll pass through again, going south, around this time next month," Tim added. "Right around the next full moon."

Alan turned to face Tim, a quizzical expression on his face.

Tim smiled and nodded. "They're on a lunar schedule. We have no idea why, but as far as we can tell, it's only them. The other animals don't do it."

"They're also very territorial," Cross said. "We've learned what areas they call home, and we stay well clear."

Alan nodded, fascinated, still trying to take it all in. He turned back to the tranquil scene on the plain.

"I say we break here for lunch," Lex suggested. "The food is still bad, but the entertainment will be great."

The group was seated in a broken line along the edge of the forest. They were just finishing up with their rations and preparing to get to the business of planning their next move. Tim, however, had something else he wanted to discuss.

"What happened between you and Dr. Grant?" he asked bluntly.

"When we were still students, I found a new species of dromaeosaurid," Lyndsey Cross explained. "Mr. Ego over there swore it was just another deinonychus."

"And I was right," Alan argued.

"I'm talking to Tim," Dr. Cross said haughtily. "Anyway, since it wasn't his find--"

"This is ridiculous," Alan protested.

"--he refused to accept that it was a new species. He swore it was deinonychus. Deinonychus, deinonychus, deinonychus, he said, and you know what? The instructor and the SVP believed him. It was the discovery of the year, if not the decade, and he shot it down."

"She's leaving out the best part of the story, kids," Alan said coolly. "The funny thing about that whole discovery is, she completely agreed with my classification of her deinonychus until I met Kathryn Valner."

"Whose father happened to be a professor at the university, by the way. Boy, what an interesting coincidence that was. But the dromaeosaurid was only one instance. Even when did internships we ended up getting teamed together on a dig, and he was always getting me screwed. The doctor in charge of the site would compare the notes of the members on each team. Grant's stratigraphic and sedimentology data always contradicted mine."

"Only because you were always wrong," Grant retorted.

Tim smiled. "So that's why you blew up when I questioned your stratigraphy," he said, his face alight with the excitement of the discovery. "You've got issues, Dr. Cross."

Lex stood suddenly. "You people are talking over my head. I'm going to go over there with Rick. Surely one-syllable words and grunting are better than this."

"We need to try to reach Ian again," Alan suggested.

Lex sat beside Rick and opened her pack. "You okay?" she asked.

Rick shrugged. "It's going to take a while," he said.

Lex auto-dialed Ian's number. She canceled the call on the ninth ring and tried Charles Wallace. A few moments later, she canceled that call as well.

Then the satellite phone issued a series of short beeps, indicating the battery had finally given up the struggle. The green display went black.

"You've still got the phone I gave you, right?" Rick asked.

Lex nodded, returning to her pack to search for Rick's phone. It was the only working phone left among them, since Carlisle's backpack and its contents had absorbed the initial dinosaur attack. When they found Carlisle's phone, it had a deep, funnel-shaped indentation in its face, and the plastic casing was cracked. Alan guessed that a toe claw had pierced it.

She took Rick's phone out of her pack and switched it on. "Not good," she announced. "About half the battery left."

"We should wait," Rick suggested. "Try later."

"No," Lex said. "They haven't answered yet, so I'm guessing they're not going to. I don't know why, I don't know what the hell is going on, but we have to contact someone who can fix this situation." She dialed hastily, then put the phone to her ear.

"Who are you calling?" Rick asked.

She held up a finger, shushing him. "Mom? Hey, it's Lex," she said, clearly trying to sound as if nothing was out of the ordinary. "Good, great," she said. A short pause, then, "I don't know, mom, he just really wasn't for me, I guess. Listen, the reason I called…I was wondering if you could give me Grandpa's number."

There was a long silence, then Lex closed her eyes, mouthing the numbers, trying to commit them to memory. "I know," she said at last, "I thought it was in my book. I'll keep up with it this time. Anyway, I gotta go, okay? I'll probably swing by and visit next weekend sometime."

With a cheerful goodbye, Lex ended the call. She paused and dialed again.

"What about a radio?" Rick asked. "Shouldn't there be something, somewhere on this island?"

"The power's been out on this island for a long time," Alan answered, shaking his head. "We'd be lucky to find a radio at all, to say nothing of finding a way to power it."

"What about a portable generator?" Dr. Cross suggested. "Surely they would have some sort of emergency power supply in a place like this."

"Possibly," Alan agreed, "but there's no guarantee that the fuel would still be usable after nearly a decade of disuse."

"Still, it's possible," Cross said sharply.

"I never said it wasn't possible," Grant responded.

"No, but you tried to shoot down the idea."

"I wasn't trying to shoot down anything, I was trying to be realistic."

"Trying to be a negative, crabby old horse's ass, you mean."

Alan stood up slowly, wincing with the effort. "I'm in no way obligated to take you off this island with me," he said, pointing a warning finger at Dr. Cross.

"What are our other options?" Tim asked.

Alan considered the question. The possibility of finding a boat moored on the river, as he and the Kirbys had done, was remote. Surely he couldn't be that lucky twice.

"We keep calling, as long as the phone batteries will allow. Then…" he hesitated, not wanting to finish the thought.

"Then what?" Tim asked.

"Then we try to locate a radio," Alan sighed. He turned away quickly, but couldn't manage to avoid catching sight of the self-satisfied smirk on Lyndsey's face.

"This stuff is so bad for you," Ian said, taking a sizeable bite of his dripping cheeseburger. "I can feel my arteries hardening as we speak."

Bradford laughed. "I see that doesn't stop you from eating it."

"You have to consider--"

Bradford cut him off with a wave of his hand, and turned up the volume on the Humvee's FM radio. The voice of a news announcer blared at them, in the midst of his midday news brief.

"--geneticist whose attempts at re-creating dinosaurs received national media attention a decade ago. While the details are not yet clear, sources say that Hammond's arrest is in connection with misappropriation of government funds intended for use in the gorilla rescue operation known as Project Silverback. The highly successful project, which involved--"

Bradford snapped the radio off. "This is bad," he said soberly.

"Arrested? Hammond arrested?"

"Eichmann's notes were very clear on Hammond. He was not to be touched. He was too well-known, and popular opinion has skyrocketed since the conservation programs started taking affect."

"You arrested me," Ian protested. "It's not exactly as though I'm unknown."

"But you're not very popular," Bradford said. "People actually like John Hammond."

Ian stared blankly at Bradford for a moment, then asked: "What does this mean, exactly?"

"Eichmann's diverging from the plan," Bradford explained. "That generally only happens when something's gone terribly wrong."

"Meaning…?"

"By now Eichmann knows you're gone, and I'm most likely classified as a rogue agent. They'll be looking for me."

"And this vehicle," Ian added.

"We'll have to secure another one," Bradford said matter-of-factly. "Then we find a place to stay put until dark."

"The phone's gone," Lex announced. "We might have one more call in it, as long as it's a quick one."

Alan sighed. He hated to go along with Lyndsey Cross' suggestion of searching for a radio, but there seemed to be no other option.

Tim unfolded a rough, hand-drawn map from the pocket of his vest.

"There's a concentration of InGen buildings near the center of the island," Cross explained. "They're built at the base of a mountain, surrounded on three sides by natural barriers. We noted the position of the compound when we passed through the area during our second week."

"Where is this compound, in relation to us?" Alan asked.

Tim looked around, taking in the position of the sun and checking it against the reading on his watch. "We know we're on the southern tip of the island, and I figure we're moving west. So…" he raised his arm and pointed, then slowly moved the arm in a wide arc, stopping in a position to his right. "That way."

"You're sure?" Lex asked.

"We were moving south when we came through before," Tim said. "That route brought us here. If we go north, we should be able to see the mountain long before we get to it. We can correct our approach from there."

Cross agreed. "I think Tim's right. Somewhere back in that direction."

"What's in the buildings?" Lex asked. "Did you check it out?"

"No," Tim answered. "We were here to observe the dinosaurs, not the architecture. It was a cluster of buildings, different sizes and shapes. The biggest one had all kinds of antennas, and a helicopter pad built above it on one side."

"That's a good place to look for a radio," Rick observed. "Several buildings in one place, they probably have some way of communicating from there."

Alan nodded. "All right, then, we'll move north from here."

"Not a good idea, Dr. Grant," Tim said, shaking his head. "Look," he said, offering the map to Alan.

Alan studied the map quickly, then looked back at Tim.

"See that blue mark by the mountain? That's the compound. Now look just a bit south of it."

Alan studied the map, following Tim's instructions.

"See this valley?" Tim continued, tapping a spot on the map for emphasis. "We lost two members of our team there in the second week. It's the favorite hunting ground of the two major velociraptor prides on the island. Dr. Reilly nicknamed that place 'the valley of the shadow'."

Alan looked closely at the roughly drawn, hand-lettered map in his hand. He could see the valley Tim referred to, sketched lightly near the mountain in the center of the island.

"Dr. Grant," Tim said, "I'd like to suggest that we continue west-northwest and then turn back east somewhere near the beach."

"No," Lex snapped. "That could take us days out of our way, and Dr. Grant doesn't have time to waste. Why would you want to go the long way, Tim?"

"Did you miss the part where I mentioned two large prides of velociraptor?"

"Tim," Lex said softly, "we don't have a lot of time. Dr. Grant is going to get sick before long. Those bites are already becoming septic."

Tim ran a hand through the unkempt tangle of his hair. "Still--"

"Don't argue," Lex insisted. "I'm not going to let Alan Grant get sick and die here while we follow long shortcuts."

Tim and Dr. Cross exchanged a long, serious look.

"We go straight through," Rick said.

"I second that," Lex added.

"No way," Tim argued.

"They're right, Tim," Dr. Cross said at last, "Dr. Grant's survival may well depend on how quickly we get to the compound and contact the outside world."

"Hold on," Alan cut in. "All of our survival might depend on staying as far away from raptors as possible."

"Okay," Lex said, "but who's to say that we won't run into them anyway? It's not like they're stuck in that valley with no way out. What if we walk two days out of our way, and then run right smack into them on our way around?"

Tim hesitated, looking around at them all. "Okay," he said at last, nodding slightly.

Alan considered the situation carefully. Lex was right about the velociraptor packs, of course; there was no reason to believe the animals would remain confined to the valley. He thought of the red, welted bites peppering his lower legs, and the weakness he was beginning to experience.

After several long moments, Alan nodded reluctantly. "Okay. We go through the valley."

2/8/2003 2:49:00 AM

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