Chapter XII

            Lewis Dodgson stood on the deck of their newly leased transport as it headed out of port. The ship was too far up for the sea spray to hit his face, but the salty air cooled his face just as efficiently as it blew by him. The sun’s fall was just beginning to change the color of the sky from blue to deadly red, and the water below was loyally following suit. The clouds were thinning out and the stars were beginning to peak in on earth.

            Dodgson was not aware of any of this. His reason for being on deck was far more grounded. He found he was unable to stay in his cabin without becoming increasingly nauseous and so being on deck was really his only choice.

            Their current transport was a large, converted shrimp boat, at least 80 feet in length. Dodgson had been forced to downgrade from the freighter they had originally contracted for reasons both financial and practical, all of which had to do with his InGen contact getting cold feet. Without the manpower to use the fifteen Jeeps, Dodgson had decided against using the freighter and had instantly started looking around for alternative means of transportation.

It didn’t take him long. A man named Ford, captain of the Lucky Die—whose rusty hull had recently and hastily been painted over in a metallic silver—was more than willing to convey Dodgson and his company to Costa Rica, as they were between cargo jobs. Dodgson got the impression that Captain Ford was used to more clandestine clients than the freighter captain, and Ford proved this when, after learning of their destination, he failed to ask why they were going into a U.N. restriction zone. In less than an hour they had moved their equipment to the Lucky Die, secured two of the Jeeps to the front deck and were patiently waiting for the dock master’s go-ahead.

Dodgson had wanted only a single Jeep for their expedition but Basil Ross had forcibly insisted on a second.

“Look, Ross, that’s just going to cost us more.” Dodgson hadn’t paid for the freighter nor had he paid for the Jeeps (that was InGen’s problem), but his last bit of income was steadily dwindling into nothingness. Ford wasn’t a very cheap captain. “I can’t afford a second car. We don’t have much financial backing anymore, understand? We’re gonna need some of this for the return trip, got it?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ross said, placidly. “I’ll take care of it.”

But the money was really the least of Dodgson’s worries. He was more concerned about starting the journey. “But it’s going to take another half-hour to load it! Not to mention we’ve got to update our manifest—again—and then we’ve got to tell the fucking dock master, who is going to fucking expire if he doesn’t get a move on it! Why do we need another goddamn Jeep, anyway?”

“You never know, Mr. Dodgson. You hired me to keep us safe. And that’s what I’m doing. It’d be good to have a back-up.”

Dodgson couldn’t argue with that, though he still felt a violent impulse to skewer something in his impatience. It was another hour or so before they actually set sail, but when they finally did, Dodgson’s relief and eagerness were hard to hide.

It would take about a week and a half (?) to get to Puntarenas, a Pacific port in Costa Rica, making the stop only to retrieve their guide, a man who identified himself during the phone call only as “Valdez.” He was a former InGen contact, but Dodgson’s background check on him came up with nothing other than the name he already had. Dodgson’s suspicion was considerably raised, but he was much too tempted by Valdez’s extensive knowledge and his confidentiality to find someone else. Besides, for what Dodgson had found on him, Basil Ross didn’t exist either.

A haunting tune was being hummed behind him that made him look around. It was Ross himself, his battered green shirt and blue jeans billowing in the wind as he slowly walked around the Jeeps, kicking the tires and examining the interiors. “They exchanged the plastic cover for metal. Wise choice, I’d say, going where we’re going and all.” He resumed his humming.

“What is that you’re humming?” Dodgson asked over the sound of the wind, more out of boredom than curiosity.

“Just something I heard once.” For some reason, Dodgson didn’t believe him. Ross was silent for a few moments, lifting the hoods on the Jeeps to take a look at the engines, the small lamplights casting an odd sallow color to his face. “There is a saying in Saudi Arabia,” he said at last. “‘When danger approaches, you should sing to it.’”

“Music tames the savage beast?”

“Something like that, I guess.”

Ross finished his inspection and joined Dodgson next to the railing. “Your friend King is at the stern, ralphing up a storm.”

“He’s more a land kind of guy. Paleontologists tend to be so. He’ll be fine.”

The sounds of the engine, the waves slapping against the hull and Ross’ eerie humming filled the silence. Then, Ross said, “I watched a special on Discovery Channel, once. It was about Jurassic Park and the San Diego incident. A lot about the company, InGen, and the dinosaurs…a bit abut the events that led up to the incident. There’s a gap in the story, though,” he said thoughtfully, “because they never did figure out why that guy—Dennis something—shut off the power.”

Dodgson’s face remained impassive. Dodgson’s role in the fall of InGen and Jurassic Park was need-to-know, and Ross didn’t need to know. “Your point?”

“I don’t question my employers, Mr. Dodgson,” Ross said. “I’m a hired gun, as they say. I’m not paid to ask questions, I’m paid to do my job. It’s just a code of ethics for a mercenary. But I want to remind you what I said in our initial talks: my specialty is in war. I know everything there is to know about weapons and offensive technology and how to use them effectively against an enemy. I may have watched a documentary, but I don’t know the first thing about dinosaurs. I’m not sure how much good I’m gonna be.”

“The animals are why I brought that otherwise useless sack of crap,” Dodgson muttered, gesturing in the direction of the stern. “As I told you before, you’re not here to identify animals or point us in the direction of nests. We’ll be meeting a guy in Costa Rica, and he’s going to guide us around Sorna. You are here to blow the shit out of anything that tries to eat us. Not to advise, not to show us which animals are harmless and which can rip our balls off…but to kill. Got it?”

Ross stiffened slightly, but he kept his composure. “Call me concerned, then. Look at this from my point of view, Mr. Dodgson. This is like asking an elementary school teacher to program a supercomputer using basic mathematics. This isn’t my thing. I’ve never killed an animal bigger than a fly before. I’m not a hunter, I’m a damn mercenary. How can you expect me to do my job when I don’t even know what we’re going up against?”

“I’ve already paid you, Ross, don’t back out on me now.” Dodgson put all the veiled threat he dared into his voice. “Not like you can anyway.” He gave a mirthless laugh. “You bring this up on the boat, after we’ve already left port.”

“I’ve never turned down a job, Mr. Dodgson,” Ross said, staring first at the blackening water beneath them, and then at his employer, “and I wasn’t going to start now. But I’ve also never had this level of uncertainty on a job either. I just want some reassurance.”

“Reassurance of what?”

“That this isn’t a suicide mission, sir.”

“Oh, my God,” Dodgson groaned, “you’ve been talking to that dipshit, haven’t you? Look, King may know what he’s talking about when the topic is bones, or dinosaurs or great dig sites of China, but he doesn’t know shit about survival situations. The worst that’s ever happened to that man is a bad student and he probably broke down then. So don’t pay him any mind. I’m the brains here, not King. Understand this, Ross, and things will be much easier.”

Dodgson rubbed his temple. “Look, the best I can do is an info docket.”

“That’s more my type.”

“It’s top secret, so don’t read that around the crew, got it? It’s in my cabin, and it should never leave it at any time. The docket’s got all the information our InGen contact gave us about Isla Sorna: facilities, buildings, terrain, and everything they could think of for the animals themselves. If there’s not something you want in there, then you’re never going to get it.”

Ross nodded.

Dodgson closed his eyes tight against the outside world. When he opened them again, he was alone with the burgeoning night.