Day of the Predator - Alex Scarrow [97]
The people up in Glen Rose had started calling this place Dinosaur Valley on account of the men and women from the museums and stuff who came digging for fossils last year. He smiled at that as he tugged at one of the twisted roots. It sounded kind of cool … Dinosaur Valley. He could imagine some of the gigantic beasts he’d seen in picture books striding across their Paluxy River, walking up and down the riverbanks, their long necks craning down to drink from the river …
Grit and dry soil tumbled down on to his arm. ‘Ouch!’
He let go of the root and it sprang up, releasing another small avalanche of loose clay-like earth. And then he saw it, half hanging out, and resting on a coil of tree root that looked like a pig’s tail. A palm-sized slate of shale. He reached up for it and it fell heavily into his hands.
For a moment, as he stared down at the almost triangular shape, he wondered whether it might just be another one of them tamahaken heads. But it didn’t have the telltale signs of being worked on, shaped by some skilled hand.
It was just a plain ol’ slice of rock.
He held it in his throwing hand, wondering how many bounces he’d get from skimming it across the river. It was nice and flat … a good spin on the throw and maybe he’d count seven, perhaps eight, before it settled and sank. He stood up, saw Saul on the far bank sunning himself on a dry boulder. ‘Hey! Saul!’
His brother’s head bobbed up. ‘What?’
‘I got me a skimmer. Reckon I get an eight with it?’
‘Nah,’ he called back, ‘cos you throw like a girl an’ all.’
Grady shook his head and sighed. His brother really could be annoying. ‘Well, why don’tcha just look and learn, you foo-bat!’
He cupped it in his palm, wondering which side was flatter … and then turned it over.
CHAPTER 54
2001, New York
On Sunday 9 September 2001, Lester Cartwright, a small narrow-shouldered man facing his last five desk years before his long-awaited retirement, went to bed with his plump wife. A man who, if you asked him to be honest, would admit to being a little bored with his unchallenging life. His job – yes, it might sound interesting if he was allowed to talk about it – was as a projects budget assessor for a low-profile US intelligence agency. But, in actual fact, despite the intriguing sound of working for a secret service, the work simply involved crunching numbers and balancing costs and expenditures. He might as well have been doing that for Wal-Mart, or McDonald’s, or some carpet store … the job would have been exactly the same.
Not exactly where he’d hoped to end his career when he’d first joined them back in the 1960s, a young man ready to serve his country in the field. A young man ready to kill or be killed for Uncle Sam. Now he was an old man who rubber-stamped expense forms.
That night he went to bed after walking their dog, Charlie, climbed into his pyjamas and picked up a Tom Clancy spy novel, hoping to enjoy at least a few aimless thrills today before turning the light out on his bedside table.
Later, as he slept, change arrived in the form of a subtle ripple of reality. A wave of reality systematically rewriting itself, a wave of change that had started in 1941 … with a young boy’s discovery of a strange rock beside a river in Texas. A boy who turned over a rock and saw something curious.
Lester’s boring life in that moment of darkness was replaced in just the blink of an eye, with a far, far more interesting one.
‘Sir! Sir!’ Knuckles rapped gently against the car’s rear passenger window. Lester Cartwright stirred, his mind had been off again, considering the incredible, the impossible.
Only, it isn’t impossible, is it, Lester?
He looked out of the window at Agent Forby, dark glasses, a suit, crew-cut hair and a face that looked like it had never told a joke while on duty. Lester wound his window down an inch. ‘Yes?’
‘Sir, it’s time,’ said Forby.
Lester looked down at his watch. Three minutes to midnight. Dammit … he must have been napping again.
Getting too old for something like this.
‘Forby, the area’s completely secure?