Douglas Preston - Tyrannosaur Canyon

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DOUGLAS PRESTON
TYRANNOSAUR CANYON
For my son,
Isaac
PROLOGUE
December 1972 Taurus-Littrow Valley Mare Serenitatis
The Moon
ON DECEMBER 11,1972, the last manned Apollo mission to the moon touched
down at the Taurus-Littrow landing site, a spectacular, mountain-ringed valley at the edge of the Sea of Serenity. The
area promised to be a geological wonderland of hills, mountains, craters, debris fields, and landslides. Of particular
interest were several curious impact craters that had punched deep holes in the valley floor, spraying breccia and
glass across the valley. The mission had high hopes of returning with a treasure trove of lunar samples.
Eugene Cernan was the commander of the Lunar Module and Harrison "Jack" Schmitt its pilot. Both men were
ideally suited for the Apollo 17 mission. Cernan was a seasoned veteran of two prior missions, Gemini IX and Apollo
10; while Schmitt was a brilliant geologist with a Ph.D. from Harvard who had been involved in planning earlier Apollo
missions. For three days Cernan and Schmitt explored Taurus-Littrow with the help of the Lunar Rover. On their first
venture across the lunar landscape, it became obvious to all that they had hit the jackpot, geologically speaking. One
of the most exciting discoveries of the mission, and one that led indirectly to the mysterious find at Van Serg Crater,
occurred on the second day at a small, deep crater known as Shorty. As Schmitt got out of the Rover to explore the rim
of Shorty, he was astonished to see that his boots were kicking through the gray lunar dust to expose a layer of bright
orange soil under-neath. Cernan was so startled that he lifted his orange reflective visor to make sure it wasn't an
optical illusion. Schmitt dug a quick trench and discovered that the orange soil graded down to a brilliant red.
The "Backroom" at Houston excitedly debated the source and meaning of this strangely colored soil, and they
asked the two men to take a double-core sample to bring back to Earth. After Schmitt took the core, the two men hiked
to the rim of Shorty crater, where they saw that the impactor had blasted through the same orange layer, which lay
exposed along the sides of the crater.
Houston wanted to get samples of the orange soil from a second location. For that reason, they placed on the
exploring itinerary a small unnamed crater close to Shorty, to be explored on Day 3, which they hoped would have an
exposure of the same orange layer. Schmitt christened it Van Serg Crater, after a geology pro-fessor he had known at
Harvard who wrote humorous pieces under the pen-name of "Professor Van Serg."
Day 3 turned out to be long and grueling. Dust fouled their equipment and hampered their work. That morning,
Cernan and Schmitt had driven the Lunar Rover to the base of the mountains ringing Taurus-Littrow to examine a
gigantic split boulder named Tracy's Rock, which had evidently rolled out of the moun-tains eons ago, leaving a trail
in the soil. From there the two men explored an area called the Sculptured Hills, finding little of interest. With great
difficulty Cernan and Schmitt hiked partway up one of the hills to inspect an odd-looking boulder, only to discover it
was a scientific dud, nothing more than a "shocked piece of old lunar crust," which had been thrown onto the hillside
by an ancient impact. The two astronauts descended the steep, powdery hillside leaping like kangaroos, Schmitt
making noises as he jumped from side to side, pretending he was skiing moguls, joking, "Can't keep my edges.
Shhhoomp. Shhhoomp. Little hard to get good hip rotation."* Cernan took a spectacular, low-gravity tumble, landing
un-hurt in the deep, powdery soil.
By the time they reached Van Serg Crater, both men were exhausted. As Cer-nan and Schmitt approached, they had
to drive the Lunar Rover through a field of football-sized rocks blasted out of the crater. Schmitt, the geologist,
thought the rocks looked odd.
"I'm not sure what's happened here, yet," he said. Everything was coated in a thick layer of dust. There was no sign
of the orange layer they were after.
They parked the Rover and picked their way through the debris field to stand on the rim, Schmitt arriving first. He
described it for Houston: "This is at least a large, blocky rim crater. But even it has the mantle dust material covering
the
(*A11 conversations quoted above are from the original transcripts of the Apollo 17 mission, edited by Apollo Lunar Surface Journal
tftimi Eric M.Jones. Copyright © 1995 by Eric M. Jones.)
rim, partially burying the rocks. And it's down on the floor, as near as I can tell, and on the walls. The crater itself has a
central mound of blocks that's probably fifty meters in diameter-that's a little high-thirty meters in diameter."
Cernan arrived. "Holy Smoley!" he said as he gazed into the visually striking crater.
Schmitt went on. "The rocks are intensely shattered in that area, as are the ones that are on the walls." But as he
looked around for orange soil, he saw none, just a lot of gray lunar rock, much of it in shatter-cones caused by the
force of the impact. It appeared to be an ordinary crater, no more than sixty or seventy million years old. Mission
control was disappointed. Nevertheless, Schmitt and Cernan began collecting samples and putting them in numbered
specimen bags.
"These are very intensely fractured rocks," Schmitt said, handling a specimen. "And it comes off in small flakes.
Let's get this one, because this will be the best oriented one for documentation. Plus, why don't you get that one
you've got in-side there?"
Cernan took a sample and Schmitt picked up another rock in his scoop. "Got a bag?"
"Bag 568."
"That's a corner, I think, off the block that Gene documented here."
Schmitt held out another empty bag. "We'll get another sample that'll be from inside the block."
"I can get it with the tongs real easy," Cernan replied.
Schmitt cast his eye about and saw another sample that he wanted-a curious-looking rock about ten inches long,
shaped like a tablet. "We ought to take that just as is," he told Cernan, even though it was almost too big for a single
sample bag. They picked it up with the tongs.
"Let me hold this end," said Cernan as they tried to maneuver the specimen into the bag. "Let me hold it, and you
put the bag on." Then he paused, looking closely. "Well, see that? See the white fragments in there?" He pointed to a
num-ber of white fragments embedded within the rock.
"Yeah," said Schmitt, examining the spots closely. "You know, it might be that these might be pieces of the
projectile. I don't know. 'Cause it doesn't look like . . . It's not subfloor. Okay. Pin it down."
When the rock was safely bagged, Schmitt asked, "What's the number?"
"It's 480," responded Cernan, reading out the number printed on the side.
Meanwhile, Houston had became impatient with the time being wasted at Van Serg, now that they had determined
there wasn't any orange soil there. They asked Cernan to quit the crater and take some 500mm photographs of North
Massif, while Schmitt did a "radial survey" of the ejecta blanket surrounding Van Serg. By this time, Schmitt and
Cernan had been out exploring for nearly five hours. Schmitt worked slowly, and during the survey his scoop
broke-dust problems again. Houston told him to forget the rest of the radial survey and pre-pare to close out the site.
Back at the Rover, they took one last gravimetric meet-ing and a final soil sample, did the closeout, and returned to the
Lunar Module. The next day, Cernan and Schmitt lifted out of the Taurus-Littrow Valley, be-coming the last human
beings (at least for now) to walk on the moon. Apollo 17 returned to Earth with a splashdown on December 19, 1972.
Lunar Sample 480 joined 842 pounds of other lunar rocks from the Apollo missions at the Lunar Receiving
Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Eight months later, with the end of the Apollo program,
the Lunar Receiving Laboratory was closed and its contents were transferred to a newly built, super-high-tech facility
at the Johnson Space Center, called the Sample Storage and Processing Laboratory or SSPL for short.
Sometime during that eight-month period, before the transfer of the moon rocks to the new SSPL, the rock known
as Lunar Sample 480 vanished. Around the same time, all entries related to its discovery disappeared from the
computer catalog and hard-copy card files.
Today, if you go to the SSPL and make a query to the Lunar Sample Registry Database under the entry LS480, you
will receive the following error message:
QUERY: LS480
?> ILLEGAL NUMBER/NO SUCH NUMBER
PLEASE CHECK LUNAR SAMPLE NUMBER AND TRY AGAIN
PART ONE
THE MAZE 1
STEM WEATHERS SCRAMBLED to the top of the Mesa de los Viejos, tied his burro to a dead juniper, and settled
himself down on a dusty boulder. Catching his breath, he mopped the sweat off his neck with a bandanna. A steady
wind blowing across the mesa top plucked at his beard, cooling him after the hot dead air of the canyons.
He blew his nose and stuffed the bandanna back into his pocket. Studying the familiar landmarks, he silently recited
the names-Daggett Canyon, Sun-down Rocks, Navajo Rim, Orphan Mesa, Mesa del Yeso, Dead Eye Canyon, Blue
Earth, La Cuchilla, the Echo Badlands, the White Place, the Red Place, and Tyrannosaur Canyon. The closet artist in
him saw a fantastical realm painted in gold, rose, and purple; but the geologist in him saw a set of Upper Cretaceous
fault-block plateaus, tilted, split, stripped, and scoured by time, as if infinity had laid waste to the earth, leaving behind
a wreckage of garish rock.
Weathers slipped a packet of Bull Durham out of a greasy vest pocket and rolled a smoke with gnarled,
dirt-blackened hands, his fingernails cracked and yellow. Striking a wooden match on his pant leg, he fired up the
quirly and took in a long drag. For the past two weeks he had restricted his tobacco ration, but now he could splurge.
All his life had been a prologue to this thrilling week.
His life would change in a heartbeat. He'd patch things up with his daughter, Robbie, bring her here and show her
his find. She would forgive him his obses-sions, his unsettled life, his endless absences. The find would redeem him.
He had never been able to give Robbie the things that other fathers lavished on their daughters-money for college, a
car, help with the rent. Now he'd free her from waiting tables at Red Lobster and finance the art studio and gallery she
dreamed of.
Weathers squinted up at the sun. Two hours off the horizon. If he didn't get moving he wouldn't reach the
Chama River before dark. Salt, his burro, hadn't had a drink since morning and Weathers didn't want a dead animal
on his hands. He watched the animal dozing in the shade, its ears flattened back and lips twitching, dreaming some
evil dream. Weathers almost felt affection for the vi-cious old brute.
Weathers stubbed out his cigarette and slipped the dead butt into his pocket. He took a swig from his canteen,
poured a little out onto his bandanna, and mopped his face and neck with the cooling water. He slung the canteen
over his shoulder and untied the burro, leading him eastward across the barren sandstone mesa. A quarter mile
distant, the vertiginous opening of Joaquin Canyon cut a spectacular ravine in the Mesa de los Viejos, the Mesa of
the Ancients. Falling away into a complex web of canyons known as the Maze, it wound all the way to the Chama
River.
Weathers peered down. The canyon floor lay in blue shadow, almost as if it were underwater. Where the
canyon turned and ran west-with Orphan Mesa on one side and Dog Mesa on the other-he spied, five miles away,
the broad opening to the Maze. The sun was just striking the tilted spires and hoodoo rock formations marking its
entrance.
He scouted the rim until he found the faint, sloping trail leading to the bot-tom. A treacherous descent, it had
landslided out in various places, forcing the traveler to navigate thousand-foot drop-offs. The only route from the
Chama River into the high mesa country eastward, it discouraged all but the bravest souls.
For that, Weathers was grateful.
He picked his way down, careful with himself and the burro, relieved when they approached the dry wash along
the bottom. Joaquin Wash would take him past the entrance to the Maze and from there to the Chama River. At
Chama Bend there was a natural campsite where the river made a tight turn, with a sand-bar where one could swim.
A swim . . . now there was a thought. By tomorrow afternoon he would be in Abiquiu. First thing he'd phone Harry
Dearborn (the battery on his sat-phone had died some days back) just to let him know. . . Weathers tingled at the
thought of breaking the news.
The trail finally reached the bottom. Weathers glanced up. The canyon face was dark, but the late-afternoon
sun blazed on the rimrock. He froze. A thou-sand feel above, a man, silhouetted on the rim, stared down at him.
He swore under his breath. It was the same man who had followed him up from Santa Fe into the Chama
wilderness two weeks ago. People like that knew of Weathers's unique skill, people who were too lazy or stupid to
do their own prospecting and hoped to jump his claim. He recalled the man: a scraggy type on a Harley, some biker
wannabe. The man had trailed him through Espanola, past Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch, hanging two hundred yards
back, making no effort at deception. He'd seen the same joker at the beginning of his hike into the wilder-ness. Still
wearing the biker head scarf, he followed him on foot up Joaquin Wash from the Chama River. Weathers had lost
his pursuer in the Maze and reached the top of the Mesa of the Ancients before the biker found his way out. Two
weeks later, here he was again-a persistent little bastard. Stem Weathers studied first the lazy curves of Joaquin
Wash, then the rock spires marking the mouth of the Maze. He would lose him in the Maze again. And maybe this
time the son of a bitch would remain lost.
He continued scrambling down the canyon, periodically checking his back trail. Instead of following, however,
the man had disappeared. Perhaps the pur-suer thought he knew a quicker way down.
Weathers smiled, because there was no other way down. After an hour of hiking down Joaquin Wash he felt his
anger and anxiety sub-side. The man was an amateur. It wasn't the first time a fool had followed him out into the
desert only to find himself lost. They all wanted to be like Stem, but they weren't. He'd been doing this all his life, and
he had a sixth sense-it was inexplicable. He hadn't learned it in a textbook or studied it in graduate school, nor could
all those Ph.D.s master it with their geological maps and synthetic aperture C-Band radar surveys. He succeeded
where they failed, using nothing more than a donkey and a homemade ground-penetrating radar unit built on the
back of an old IBM 286. No wonder they hated him.
Weathers's ebullient mood returned. That bastard wasn't going to spoil the greatest week of his life. The burro
balked and Weathers stopped to pour some water into his hat, letting the animal drink, then cursed him forward. The
Maze lay just ahead, and he'd enter there. Deep in the Maze, near Two Rocks, was a rare source of water-a rock ledge
covered with maidenhair ferns, which dripped water into an ancient basin carved in the sandstone by prehistoric
Indians. Weathers decided to camp there instead of at Chama Bend, where he'd be an open target. Better safe than
sorry.
He rounded the great rock pillar marking the entrance. Thousand-foot canyon walls of aeolian sandstone soared
above him, the majestic Entrada For-mation, the compacted remains of a Jurassic desert. The canyon had a cool,
hushed feeling, like the interior of a Gothic cathedral. He breathed deeply the redolent air,
perfumed by salt cedar. Above, the light in the hoodoo rock forma-tions had turned from electrum
to gold as the sun sank toward the horizon.
He continued into the warren of canyons, approaching where Hanging Canyon merged with
Mexican Canyon-the first of many such branches. Not even a map would help you in the Maze. And
the great depth of the canyons made GPS and satellite phones useless.
The first round struck Weathers in the shoulder from behind, and it felt more like a hard punch
than a bullet. He landed on his hands and knees, his mind blank with astonishment. It was only
when the report cracked and echoed through the canyons that he realized he'd been shot. There was
no pain yet, just a buzzing numbness, but he saw that shattered bone protruded from a torn shirt,
and pumping blood was splattering on the sand.
Jesus God.
He staggered back to his feet as the second shot kicked up the sand next to him. The shots were
coming from the rim above him and to his right. He had to return to the canyon two hundred yards
away-to the lee of the rock pillar. It was the only cover. He ran for all he was worth.
The third shot kicked up sand in front of him. Weathers ran, seeing that he still had a chance.
The attacker had ambushed him from the rim above and it would take the man several hours to
descend. If Weathers could reach that stone pillar, he might escape. He might actually live. He
zigzagged, his lungs screaming with pain. Fifty yards, forty, thirty-
He heard the shot only after he felt the bullet slam into his lower back and saw his own entrails
empty onto the sand in front of him, the inertia pitching him facedown. He tried to rise, sobbing and
clawing, furious that someone would steal his find. He writhed, howling, clutching his pocket
notebook, hoping to throw it, lose it, destroy it, to keep it from his killer-but there was no place to
conceal it, and then, as if in a dream, he could not think, could not move ...
2
TOM BROADBENT REINED in his horse. Four shots had rolled down Joaquin
Wash from the great walled canyons east of the river. He wondered what it meant. It wasn't hunting
season and nobody in his right mind would be out in those canyons target shooting.
He checked his watch. Eight o'clock. The sun had just sunk below the hori-zon. The echoes
seemed to have come from the cluster of hoodoo rocks at the mouth of the Maze. It would be a
fifteen-minute ride, no more. He had time to make a quick detour. The full moon would rise before
long and his wife, Sally, wasn't expecting him before midnight anyway.
He turned his horse Knock up the wash and toward the canyon mouth, fol-lowing the fresh tracks
of a man and burro. Rounding a turn, a dark shape sprawled in front of him: a man lying facedown.
He rode over, swung off, and knelt, his heart hammering. The man, shot in the back and shoulder,
still oozed blood into the sand. He felt the carotid artery: noth-ing. He turned him over, the rest of the man's
entrails emptying onto the sand.
Working swiftly, he wiped the sand out of the man's mouth and gave him mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation. Leaning over the man, he administered heart massage, pressing on his rib cage,
almost cracking the ribs, once, twice, then an-other breath. Air bubbled out of the wound. Tom
continued with CPR, then checked the pulse.
Incredibly, the heart had restarted.
Suddenly the man's eyes opened, revealing a pair of bright blue eyes that stared at Tom from a
dusty, sunburnt face. He drew in a shallow breath, the air rattling in his throat. His lips parted.
"No . . . You bastard . . ." The eyes opened wide, the lips flecked with blood.
"Wait," said Tom. "I'm not the man who shot you."
The eyes peered at him closely, the terror subsiding-replaced by something else. Hope. The man's eyes glanced
down at his hand, as if indicating something.
Tom followed the man's gaze and saw he was clutching a small, leather-bound notebook.
"Take ..." the man rasped.
"Don't try to talk."
"Take it..."
Tom took the notebook. The cover was sticky with blood.
"It's for Robbie . . ." he gasped, his lips twisting with the effort to speak. "My daughter . . . Promise to give it to her .
. . She'll know how to find it. . ."
"It?"
". . . the treasure . . ."
"Don't think about that now. We're going to get you out of here. Just hang
» m-
The man violently clutched at Tom's shirt with a trembling hand.
"It's for her . . . Robbie . . . No one else . . . For God's sake not the police . . . You must. . . promise." His hand twisted
the shirt with shocking force, a last spasm of strength from the dying man.
"I promise."
"Tell Robbie ... I... love ..."
His eyes defocused. The hand relaxed and slid down. Tom realized he had also stopped breathing.
Tom recommenced CPR. Nothing. After ten futile minutes he untied the man's bandanna and laid it over his face.
That's when it dawned on him: The man s killer must still be around. His eyes searched the rimrock and the
surrounding scree. The silence was so profound it seemed that the rocks themselves held vigil. Where is the killer?
There were no other tracks around, just those of the treasure hunter and his burro. A hundred yards off stood the
burro itself, still packed, sleeping on its feet. The murderer had a rifle and the high ground. Broadbent might be in his
sights even now.
Get out now. He rose, caught his horse's reins, swung up, and dug in his heels. The horse set off down the canyon
at a gallop, rounding the opening to the Maze. Only when he was halfway down Joaquin Wash did Tom slow him to a
trot. A great buttery moon was rising in the east, illuminating the sandy wash.
If he really pushed his horse, he could make Abiquiii in two hours.
3
JIMSON "WEED" MADDOX hiked along the canyon floor, whistling "Saturday Night Fever," feeling on top of the
world. The .223 AR-15 had been field-stripped, wiped clean, and carefully secreted in a crevice blocked with stones.
The desert canyon took a turn, then another. Weathers, attempting the same ploy twice, had tried to lose him in the
Maze. The old bastard might fool Jimson A. Maddox once. Never twice.
He strode down the wash, his lanky legs eating up the ground. Even with a map and a GPS he had spent the better
part of a week tramping around lost in the Maze. It hadn't been a waste of time: now he knew the Maze and quite a bit
of the mesa country beyond. He had had plenty of time to plan his ambush of Weathers-and he had pulled it off
perfectly.
He inhaled the faintly perfumed air of the canyon. This was not so different from Iraq, where he had done a stint as
a gunnery sergeant during Desert Storm. If there was a place the opposite of prison, this was it-nobody to crowd you,
nobody in your face, no faggots, spies, or niggers to spoil the peace. Dry, empty, and silent.
He rounded the sandstone pillar at the entrance to the Maze. The man he had shot lay on the ground, a dark shape
in the twilight.
He halted. Fresh hoofprints in the sand headed to and from the body.
He broke into a run.
The body lay on its back, arms by its side, bandanna carefully spread over its face. Someone had been here. The
person might even have been a witness. He was on horseback and would be heading straight to the cops.
Maddox forced himself to calm down. Even on a horse, it would take the man a couple of hours to ride back to
Abiquiii and at least several more hours to get the police and return. Even if they called a chopper it would have to fly
up from Santa Fe, eighty miles to the south. He had at least three hours to get the note-book, hide the body, and get
the hell out.
Maddox searched the body, turning out the pockets and rifling the man's day pack. His fist enclosed over a rock in
the man's pocket and he pulled it out and examined it by flashlight. It was definitely a sample, something Corvus had
pointedly asked for.
Now the notebook. Oblivious to the blood and entrails, he searched the body again, turned it over, searched the
other side, kicked it in frustration. He looked around. The man's burro stood a hundred yards off, still packed, dozing.
Maddox undid the diamond hitch, pulled off the packsaddle. Yanking off the manty, he unhooked the canvas
panniers and emptied them into the sand. Every-thing fell out: a jury-rigged piece of electronic equipment, hammers,
chisels, U.S.G.S. maps, a handheld GPS unit, coffeepot, frying pan, empty food sacks, a pair of hobbles, dirty
underwear, old batteries, and a folded-up piece of parch-ment.
Maddox seized the parchment. It was a crude map covered with clumsily drawn peaks, rivers, rocks, dotted lines,
old-time Spanish lettering-and there, in the middle, had been inked a heavy, Spanish-style X.
An honest-to-God treasure map.
Strange that Corvus hadn't mentioned it.
He refolded the greasy parchment and stuffed it into his shirt pocket, then re-sumed his search for the notebook.
Scrabbling around on the ground on his hands and knees, combing through the spilled equipment and supplies, he
found everything a prospector might need-except the notebook.
He studied the electronic device again. A homemade piece of shit, a dented metal box with some switches, dials,
and a small LED screen. Corvus hadn't mentioned it but it looked important. He better take that, too.
He went back through the stuff, opening up the canvas sacks, shaking out flour and dried beans, probing the
panniers for a hidden compartment, ripping away the packsaddle's fleece lining. Still no notebook. Returning to the
dead body, Maddox searched the blood-soaked clothes a third time, feeling for a rec-tangular lump. But all he found
was a greasy pencil stub in the man's right pocket.
He sat back, his head throbbing. Had the man on horseback taken the note-book? Was it coincidence the man had
showed up-or something else? A terrible idea came to him: the man on horseback was a rival. He was doing just what
Maddox had been doing, trailing Weathers and hoping to cash in on his discov-ery. Maybe he'd gotten his hands on
the notebook.
Well, Maddox had found the map. And it seemed to him that the map would be as important as the notebook, if not
more so.
Maddox looked around at the scene, the dead body, the blood, the burro, the scattered mess. The cops were
coming. With a great force of will, Maddox con-trolled his breathing, controlled his heart, calling up the meditation
techniques he had taught himself in prison. He exhaled, inhaled, quelling the battering in his chest down to a gentle
pulsing. Calm gradually returned. He still had plenty of time. He removed the rock sample from his pocket, and turned it
over in the moonlight, then took out the map. He had those and the machine, which should more than satisfy Corvus.
In the meantime he had a body to bury.
4
DETECTIVE LIEUTENANT JIMMIE Wilier sat in the back of the police chopper, tired
as hell, feeling the thudding of the rotors in every bone. He glanced down at the ghostly nightscape slipping by
underneath them. The chopper pilot was following the course of the Chama River, every bend shimmering like the
blade of a scimitar. They passed small villages along the banks, little more than clusters of lights-San Juan Pueblo,
Medanales, Abiquiii. Here and there a lonely car crawled along High-way 84, throwing a tiny yellow beam into the
great darkness. North of Abiquiii reservoir all lights ceased; beyond lay the mountains and canyons of the Chama
wilderness and the vast high mesa country, uninhabited to the Colorado border.
Wilier shook his head. It was a hell of a place to get murdered.
He fingered the pack of Marlboros in his shirt pocket. He was annoyed at be-ing roused out of his bed at midnight,
annoyed at getting Santa Fe's lone police chopper aloft, annoyed that they couldn't find the M.E., annoyed that his
own deputy was out at the Cities of Gold Casino, blowing his miserable paycheck on the tables, cell phone turned off.
On top of that it cost six hundred dollars an hour to run the chopper, an expense that came straight out of his budget.
And this was only the first trip. There would have to be a second with the M.E. and the scene-of-crime team before
they could move the body and collect evidence. Then there would be the publicity . . . Perhaps, thought Wilier
hopefully, it was just another drug murder and wouldn't garner more than a day's story in the New Mexican.
Yeah, please make it a drug murder.
"There. Joaquin Wash. Head east," said Broadbent to the pilot. Wilier shot a glance at the man who'd spoiled his
evening. He was tall, rangy, wearing a pair of worn-out cowboy boots, one bound together with duct tape.
The chopper banked away from the river.
"Can you fly lower?"
The chopper descended, slowing down at the same time, and Wilier could see the canyon rims awash in the
moonlight, their depths like bottomless cracks in the earth. Spooky damn country.
"The Maze is right down there," Broadbent said. "The body was just inside the mouth where the Maze joins
Joaquin Canyon."
The chopper slowed more, came back around. The moon was almost directly overhead, illuminating most of the
canyon bottom. Wilier saw nothing but silvery sand.
"Put it down in that open area."
"Sure thing."
The pilot went into a hover and began the descent, the chopper whipping up a whirlwind of dust from the dry wash
before touching down. In a moment they had come to rest, dust clouds billowing away, the thudding whistle of the
rotors powering down.
"I'll stay with the chopper," said the pilot. "You do your thing."
"Thanks, Freddy."
Broadbent piled out and Wilier followed, keeping low, his eyes covered against the flying dust, jogging until he
was beyond the backwash. Then he stopped, straightened up, slid the pack out of his pocket, and fired one up.
Broadbent walked ahead. Wilier switched on his Maglite and shined it around. "Don't step on any tracks," he
called to Broadbent. "I don't want the forensic guys on my case." He shined the Mag up the mouth of the canyon.
There was nothing but a flat bed of sand between two walls of sandstone.
"What's up there?"
"That's the Maze," said Broadbent.
"Where's it go to?"
"A whole lot of canyons running up into Mesa de los Viejos. Easy to get lost in there, Detective."
"Right." He swept the light back and forth. "I don't see any tracks."
"Neither do I. But they have to be around here somewhere."
"Lead the way."
He followed Broadbent, walking slowly. The flashlight was hardly necessary in the bright moonlight, and in fact it
was more of a hindrance. He switched it off.
"I still don't see any tracks." He looked ahead. The canyon was bathed from wall to wall in moonlight, and it looked
empty-not a rock or a bush, a footprint or a body as far as the eye could see.
Broadbent hesitated, looking around.
Wilier started to get a bad feeling.
"The body was right in this area. And the tracks of my horse should be plainly visible over there . . ."
Wilier said nothing. He bent down, snubbed his cigarette out in the sand, put the butt in his pocket.
"The body was right in this area. I'm sure of it."
Wilier switched on the light, shined it around. Nothing. He switched it off, took another drag.
"The burro was over there," Broadbent continued, "about a hundred yards off."
There were no tracks, no body, no burro, nothing but an empty canyon in the moonlight. "You sure this is the right
place?" Wilier asked.
"Positive."
Wilier hooked his thumbs into his belt and watched Broadbent walk around and examine the ground. He was a tall,
easy-moving type. In town they said he was Croesus-but up close he sure didn't look rich, with those crappy old
boots and Salvation Army shirt.
Wilier hawked up a piece of phlegm. There must be a thousand canyons out here, it was the middle of the
night-Broadbent had taken them to the wrong canyon.
"Sure this is the place?"
"It was right here, at the mouth of this canyon."
"Another canyon, maybe?"
"No way."
Wilier could see with his own damn eyes that the canyon was wall-to-wall empty. The moonlight was so bright it
was like noon.
"Well it isn't here now. They're no tracks, no body, no blood-nothing."
"There was a body here, Detective."
"Time to call it a night, Mr. Broadbent."
"You're just going to give up?"
Wilier took a long, slow breath. "All I'm saying is, we should come back in the morning when things look more
familiar." He wasn't going to lose his patience with this guy.
"Come over here," said Broadbent, "looks like the sand's been smoothed."
Wilier looked at the guy. Who the hell was he to tell him what to do?
"I see no evidence of a crime here. That chopper is costing my department six hundred dollars an hour. We'll return
tomorrow with maps, a GPS unit-and find the right canyon."
"I don't believe you heard me, Detective. I am not going anywhere until 1 ve solved this problem."
"Suit yourself. You know the way out." Wilier turned, walked back to the
chopper, climbed in. "We're out of here."
The pilot took off his earphones. "And him?" "He knows the way out." "He's signaling you." Wilier swore under
his breath, looked out at the dark figure a few hundred
yards off. Waving, gesturing.
"Looks like he found something," the pilot said.
"Christ Almighty." Wilier heaved himself out of the chopper, hiked over. Broadbent had scuffed away a dry patch
of sand, exposing a black, wet, sticky layer underneath.
Wilier swallowed, unhooked his flashlight, clicked it on.
"Oh, Jesus," he said, taking a step back. "Oh, Jesus."
5
WEED MADDOX BOUGHT a blue silk jacket, silk boxer shorts, and a pair of gray
slacks from Seligman's on Thirty-fourth Street, along with a white T-shirt, silk socks, and Italian shoes-and put them all
on in the dressing room. He paid for it with his own American Express card-his first legitimate one, printed right there
on the front, Jimson A. Maddox, member since 2005-and stepped out into the street. The clothes drove off some of the
nervousness he'd been feeling about his upcoming meeting with Corvus. Funny how a fresh set of clothes could make
you feel like a new man. He flexed the muscles of his back, felt the rippling and stretching of the material. Better, much
better.
He caught a cab, gave the address, and was whisked uptown.
Ten minutes later he was being ushered into the paneled office of Dr. Iain Corvus. It was grand. A blocked-up
fireplace in pink marble graced one corner, and a row of windows looked out over Central Park. The young Brit was
stand-ing at the side of his desk, restlessly sorting through some papers.
Maddox halted in the door, hands clasped in front, waiting to be acknowl-edged. Corvus was as wound up as ever,
his nonexistent lips tight as a vise, his chin jutting out like the bow of a boat, his black hair combed straight back,
which Maddox guessed was the latest style in London. He wore a well-cut char-coal suit and a crisp Turnbull and
Asser shirt-collar buttoned down-set off by a bloodred silk tie.
Now here was a guy, Maddox thought, who could benefit from meditation.
Corvus paused in his sorting and peered over the tops of his glasses. "Well, well, if it isn't Jimson Maddox, back
from the front." His British accent seemed plummier than ever. Corvus was about his own age, mid-thirties, but the two
men couldn't be more different, from different planets even. Strange to think that a tattoo had brought them together.
Corvus held out his hand and Maddox took it, experiencing the crisp shake that was neither too long nor too
short, neither limp nor aggressive. Maddox suppressed a welling of emotion.
This was the man who got him out of Pelican Bay.
Corvus took Maddox's elbow and guided him into a chair in the little sitting area at the far end of the office, in front of
the useless fireplace. Corvus went to his office door, said something to his secretary, shut and locked it, and then sat
down opposite him, restlessly crossing and uncrossing his legs until he seemed to get it right. He leaned forward, his
face dividing the air as cleanly as a cleaver, his eyes shining. "Cigar?" "Gave 'em up." "Smart fellow. You mind?" "Hell
no."
Corvus took one from a humidor, clipped the end, lit it. He took a moment to draw a good red tip on it, then
lowered it and looked at Maddox through a turn-ing veil of smoke.
"Good to see you, Jim."
Maddox liked the way Corvus always gave him his full attention, speaking to him like an equal, like the stand-up
guy he was. Corvus had moved heaven and earth to free him from prison; and with one phone call he could put him
back in. Those two facts aroused intense, conflicting feelings that Maddox hadn't yet
sorted out.
"Well," said Corvus, sitting back and releasing a stream of smoke.
Something about Corvus always made him nervous. He withdrew the map from his pocket and held it out.
"I found this in the guy's pack."
Corvus took it with a frown, unfolded it. Maddox waited for the congratula-tions. Instead, Corvus's face
reddened. With a brusque motion he flipped the map onto the table. Maddox leaned over to pick it up.
"Don't bother," came the sharp reply. "It's worthless. Where's the notebook?"
Maddox didn't answer directly. "It was like this ... I followed Weathers into the high mesas, but he shook me. I
waited two weeks for him to come back out. When he did, I ambushed him, killed him."
There was an electric silence.
"You killed him?"
"Yeah. You want the guy running around to the cops, telling everyone you jumped his claim or whatever you call
it? Look, trust me, the guy had to die."
A long silence. "And the notebook?"
"That's the thing. I didn't find a notebook. Just the map. And this." He took the metal box with the switches and
LED screen out of the bag he was carrying and laid it on the table.
Corvus didn't even look at it. "You didn't find the notebook?"
Maddox swallowed. "Nope. Never found it."
"He had to have had it on him."
"He didn't. I shot him from the top of a canyon and had to hike five miles to get to the bottom. Almost two hours.
By the time I reached him someone had gotten there first, another prospector, hoping to cash in. A guy on
horseback, his tracks were all over. I searched the dead man and his donkey, turned everything inside out. There was
no notebook. I took everything of value, swept the site clean, and buried him."
Corvus looked away.
"After burying Weathers, I tried to follow this other guy's tracks, but lost him. Luckily the guy's name was in the
papers the next day. He lives on a ranch north of Abiquiii, supposedly a horse vet by profession, name of
Broadbent." He paused.
"Broadbent took the notebook," Corvus said in a monotone.
"That's what I think, and that's why I looked into his background. He's mar-ried, spends a lot of time riding around
the back country. Everybody knows him. They say he's rich-although you'd never know it from looking at him."
Corvus locked his eyes on Maddox.
"I'll get that notebook for you, Dr. Corvus. But what about the map? I mean-
"The map's a fake."
Another agonizing silence.
"And the metal box?" Maddox said, pointing to the object he had retrieved from Weathers's burro. "It looks to me
like there's a computer in there. Maybe on the hard disk-"
"That's the central unit of Weathers's homemade ground-penetrating radar unit. It has no hard disk-the data's in
the notebook. That's why I wanted the notebook-not a worthless map."
Maddox turned his eyes away from Corvus's stare, slipped his hand into his pocket, and retrieved the chunk of
rock, putting it down on the glass table. "Weathers also had this in his pocket."
Corvus stared at it, his whole expression changing. He reached out with a spi-dery hand and plucked it gently
from the table. He retrieved a loupe from his desk and examined it more closely. A long minute ticked by, and then
another. Finally he looked up. Maddox was surprised to see the transformation that had taken place on his face.
Gone was the tightness, the glittering eyes. His face had
become almost human.
"This is... very good." Corvus rose, went to his desk, slipped a Ziploc bag out of a drawer, and placed the rock
inside with the utmost care, as if it were a
jewel.
"It's a sample, right?" Maddox asked.
Corvus leaned over, unlocked a drawer, and removed an inch-thick stack of hundred-dollar bills bound in a block
with rubber bands.
"You don't need to do that, Dr. Corvus. I've still got money left over-" The man's thin lips gave a twitch. "For any
unexpected expenses." He pressed the book of notes into Maddox's hand. "You know what to do." Maddox parked
the money in his jacket. "Good-bye, Mr. Maddox."
Maddox turned and walked stiffly toward the door Corvus had unlocked and was holding open for him. Maddox
felt a burning sensation prickling the back of his neck as he passed. A moment later Corvus arrested him with a firm
hand on his shoulder, a squeeze that was just a little too sharp to be affectionate. He felt the man bending over his
shoulder, whispering into his ear, overpronouncing
each syllable.
"The note book."
His shoulder was released and Maddox heard the door close softly. He walked through the now empty secretary's
office into the vast, echoing corridors beyond.
Broadbent. He'd take care of that son of a bitch.
6
TOM SAT AT the kitchen table, leaning back in his chair, waiting for the coffee grounds to settle in the tin pot
on the stove. A June breeze rustled the cotton-wood leaves outside, stripping the trees of their cotton, which
drifted past in snowy wisps. Across the yard Tom could see the horses in their pens, nosing the timothy grass
Sally had pitched them that morning.
Sally came in, still wearing her nightgown. She passed before the sliding-glass doors, backlit by the rising sun.
They had been married less than a year and everything was still new. He watched her pick up the tin coffeepot on the
stove, look into it, make a face, and put it back down.
"I can't believe you make coffee that way."
Tom watched her, smiling. "You look bewitching this morning."
She glanced up, swept her golden hair out of her face.
"I've decided to let Shane handle the clinic today," Tom said. "The only thing on the docket is a colicky horse
down in Espanola."
He propped his boots on the stool and watched Sally prepare her own elabo-rate coffee, foaming the milk, adding a
teaspoon of honey, then topping it off with a dash of powdered dark chocolate from a shaker. It was her morning ritual
and Tom never got tired of watching it.
"Shane'll understand. I was up most of the night with that. .. business up in the Maze."
"The police have no theories?"
"None. No body, no motive, no missing person-just a few buckets of blood-soaked sand."
Sally winced. "So what are you going to do today?" she asked.
He sat forward and brought his chair back down on its four legs with a thump, reached into his pocket, removed the
battered notebook. He placed it on the table. "I'm going to find Robbie, wherever she is, and give her this."
Sally frowned. "Tom, I still think you should have given that to the police."
"I made a promise."
"It's irresponsible to keep evidence from the police."
"He made me promise not to give it to the police."
"He was probably up to something illegal."
"Maybe, but I made a promise to a dying man. And besides, I just couldn't bring myself to hand it over to that
detective, Wilier. He didn't strike me as be-ing the sharpest knife in the drawer."
"You made that promise under duress. It shouldn't count."
"If you'd seen the look of desperation on that man's face, you'd understand."
Sally sighed. "So how are you going to find this mysterious daughter?"
"I thought I'd start up at the Sunset Mart, see if he stopped in to buy gas or groceries. Maybe explore some of
those forest roads back up in there, looking for his car."
"With a horse trailer attached."
"Exactly."
Unbidden, the memory of the dying man once again came into his mind. It was an image he would never shake; it
reminded him of his own father's death, that desperate effort to cling to life even during those final seconds of pain
and fear when all hope is lost. Some people could not let go of life.
"I might also go see Ben Peek," Tom said. "He spent years prospecting in those canyons. He might have an idea
who the guy was or what this treasure was he was looking for."
"Now there's an idea. There's nothing in that notebook?"
"Nothing except numbers. No name or address, just sixty pages of numbers- and a pair of gigantic exclamation
marks at the end."
"You think he really found a treasure?"
"I could see it in his eyes."
The man's desperate plea still rang in his ears. It had affected him deeply, per-haps because his father's death was
still fresh in his mind. His father, the great and terrible Maxwell Broadbent, had also been a prospector of sorts-a tomb
robber, collector, and dealer in artifacts. While he had been a difficult father, his death had left a huge hole in Tom's
psyche. The dying prospector, with his beard and piercing blue eyes, had even reminded him of his father. It was crazy
to make the association, but for whatever reason he felt the promise he had made to the unknown man was inviolate.
"Tom?"
Tom blinked.
"You've got that lost look again."
"Sorry."
Sally finished her coffee, got up, and rinsed her cup in the sink. "Do you real-ize that we found this place exactly
one year ago today?"
"I'd forgotten."
"You still like it?"
"It's everything I always wanted."
Together, in the wild country of Abiquiu at the foot of Pedernal Peak, they had found the life they had dreamed of:
a small ranch with horses, a garden, a riding stable for children, and Tom's vet practice - a rural life without the hassles
of the city, pollution, or long commutes in traffic. His vet business was going well. Even the crusty old ranchers had
begun calling him. The work was mostly outdoors, the people were great, and he loved horses.
It was a little quiet, he had to admit.
He turned his attention back to the treasure hunter. He and his notebook were more interesting than forcing a
gallon of mineral oil down the recalcitrant throat of some ewe-necked, rat-tailed bucket of guts down at Gilderhus's
Dude Ranch in Espanola, a man legendary for the ugliness of both his horses and his temper. One of the perks of
being the boss was delegating the scut work to your employee. He didn't often do it, and so he felt no guilt. Or maybe
only a lit-tle ...
He examined the notebook again. It was evidently written in some kind of code, laid out on each page in rows and
columns in a fanatically neat hand. There were no erasures or rewrites, no mistakes, no scribbles - as if it had been
copied from something else, number by number.
Sally stood up and put an arm around him. Her hair swung down over his face and he inhaled the fragrance of it,
fresh shampoo and her own warm biscuit smell.
"Promise me one thing," she said.
"What?"
"Be careful. Whatever treasure that man found, it was worth killing for."
7
MELODY CROOKSHANK, TECHNICAL Specialist First Grade, kicked back and
cracked a Coke. She took a sip, gazing pensively around her basement lab. When she had gone to graduate school at
摘要：

DOUGLASPRESTONTYRANNOSAURCANYONFormyson,IsaacPROLOGUEDecember1972Taurus-LittrowValleyMareSerenitatisTheMoonONDECEMBER11,1972,thelastmannedApollomissiontothemoontoucheddownattheTaurus-Littrowlandingsite,aspectacular,mountain-ringedvalleyattheedgeoftheSeaofSerenity.Theareapromisedtobeageologicalwonder...

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