Project Hannibal Page 4

  “Yeah, well, the mammoths . . .”

  “Right. The mammoths.” Brandon slumped. “Aren’t you getting tired of being a mammoth nanny? Don’t you ever think about settling down in a real home, maybe even have a real, human kid of your own?”

  “You sound like my mother.” Luis wasn’t in the mood for a let’s-talk-about-the-future with Brandon. “The last thing this world needs is another little carbon footprint. As far as I’m concerned, the mammoths are my posterity.”

  Brandon subsided with a pout. An experienced horse wrangler and trail rider, he’d been recruited by Luis to Project Hannibal the year before. They got on together well enough, sharing quarters at the research station and spending time off together at Luis’s Fairbanks apartment. That was about as permanent as Luis wanted to get, but lately, Brandon had been hinting he was interested in settling down together.

  Not going to happen. Brandon was like one of those Alaskan sled dogs: rugged and useful, eager to be in harness and run with the team. Luis considered himself more of a lone wolf: wide-ranging, solitary, and seeking company only when the sexual urge was strong. He’d already decided to part ways with Brandon at the end of this trip.

  But until the mammoths were in their new home, he needed Brandon.

  Luis tried to nap as the trucks bounced over pot-holed secondary roads. The constant banging of skull on spine made his head ache. He hoped the mammoths were coping with the motion better than his stomach was.

  All through the night hours, the two tractor-trailers traveled east until they met the infamous Dalton Highway, the “worst road in America.” Built to carry goods to the oilfields on the coast of the Arctic Sea, the Dalton Highway was four hundred miles of barely paved—and in long stretches, unpaved—rock-strewn road through windswept Arctic wilderness.

  On the Dalton, the hours of constant daylight dragged on. The mammoth transports ground their way north, covering mile after mile through a forbidding landscape of trees and rock nearly devoid of habitations and traffic.

  They stopped for fuel and restrooms at Yukon Crossing and, hours later, at the town of Coldfoot, named for the Gold Rush prospectors who’d turned back at that point. On the feeds from the transports, the mammoths exuded unhappiness in the droop of their heads and the shifting in their stalls.

  From the lead truck’s cargo bay came the banging of an angry trunk—the big bull Diamond objecting to confinement.

  After twelve grueling hours, the trucks slowed and turned east off the Dalton. Creeping at a snail’s pace, they followed a track that was nothing more than a trailhead into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A mile in, they stopped.

  The driver opened the window to the passenger compartment. “The GPS says we’re here, and I can’t go no farther.”

  “Thanks.” Luis and Brandon left the warm passenger cab to groan and stretch in the chill morning air. According to the satphone, it was five a.m., although the precise time had little meaning. In June, north of the Arctic Circle, the sun wouldn’t go down for weeks.

  The trailhead was a bare, rock-strewn hollow. Sparse grass grew in the crevices between boulders, purple-flowered fireweed sprinkled the hillside.

  One of the drivers approached. “Are you sure this is where you want to be? There’s no water or nothing.”

  “It’s perfect.” Luis had picked the place carefully: enough grass to keep the mammoths occupied for a while, but no water and no tasty trees to munch. They’d be ready to move when Luis gave the order. “Wait in the trucks. You shouldn’t be on the ground when we unload the livestock.”

  Bang, bang. Diamond, demanding release.

  In response, a fluting trumpeting came from the second transport—Ruby, the matriarch, issuing a location call. Her call wasn’t so much answered as overridden by Diamond’s scream.

  The driver’s eyes widened. “Sure, boss. Whatever you say.” He and his buddy scurried back to their cabs.

  “Diamond first,” Luis said. “He’ll hurt himself if he keeps hitting the wall like that.”

  Brandon snorted. “Hurting himself isn’t what I’m worried about. I swear, I’m afraid to turn my back on him.”

  “Then go back to the cab. He’ll be easier to handle if you’re not in sight.”

  Brandon and Luis pulled the heavy ramp from its slot under the rear loading doors.

  Bang, bang.

  “He sounds pissed,” Brandon said as they set the ramp braces. “Are you sure you’ll be able to handle him by yourself?”

  “He usually behaves for me.” But Diamond had never been confined for so long before. The herd’s oldest and largest bull saw even human males as rivals to be driven off. Luis was the exception: he preferred to think it was his excellent rapport with the mammoths rather than a lack of masculinity that made him tolerable to Diamond.

  As Brandon retreated to the cab, Luis opened the rear cargo doors and clamped them back out of the way. He coughed in the stench of mammoth excretions—urine and feces, he’d expected, but there was a sharper, more pungent smell, strong enough for even a weak human nose to pick up—Diamond’s male hormones concentrated by twelve hours in the confines of the transport.

  Luis peered into the dim interior. In the farthest stalls, Emerald, Topaz, and Pearl shifted and grumbled. But in the stall nearest the rear door, separated from the females by a double-thick stall partition, was Diamond—six thousand pounds of muscle.

  Di spun to face the door, his three-foot tusks weaving dangerously over the wooden stall partition.

  I should be afraid. Di’s trunk was packed with forty thousand muscles, capable of tossing a man like an empty beer can. Each of Di’s legs was stouter than Luis’s waist; the flat feet could kick and crush. And the tusks . . . The dense ivory spears were pointed in Luis’s direction.

  After hours of imprisonment, the sight of the open door seemed to inflame the bull. He raised his trunk in a screaming cry. A wet streak from the glands on his temples stained the fur lining his broad forehead.

  Holy shit. He’s in musth. A bull in rut was the last thing they needed.

  Di slammed his tusks into the stall partition, splintering the top rail. The three females squealed in fright.

  “Easy, Di. Easy,” Luis called, but the bull was in no mood to be soothed.

  Bam! Di hit the barrier again. Shards of the broken barrier flew. Bam!

  To hell with this. It looked like Di wasn’t going to wait for Luis to open the stall.

  Luis slipped down the ramp and ducked for cover behind the transport’s massive tires.

  In a final, frenzied crash, Di destroyed what remained of the barrier. With a triumphant cry loud enough to freeze the blood, three tons of woolly mammoth thundered down the ramp, inches from where Luis crouched.

  Brandon peered out of the window of the truck’s cab. “You all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m under the truck. Stay where you are.”

  “No problem.”

  In the glare of daylight, Diamond paused beside the transport. His long-furred sides heaved, his trunk raised to test the air.

  “Why doesn’t he run?” Brandon asked. “He’s free—why doesn’t he run?”

  “He’s in rut, looking for a receptive female. He’ll calm down once we release the girls.”

  Brandon snorted. “And how do you propose to do that, with him ready to run down anybody in his way?”

  One of the females inside the transport trumpeted.

  Diamond pivoted, his hot glare falling on Luis peeking out from under the ramp.

  “Stay there,” Brandon called. “I’ll distract him while you get the girls out.”

  “No! Don’t . . .”

  But Brandon had already left the safety of the cab and was waving his arms over his head. “Here, Di, look at me!”

  Diamond spun, concentrating his sex-fueled frustration on Brandon. He stamped a foot, flaring his ears like flags.

  Luis held his breath. Brandon knew as well as he did, that was prelude to a charge.

&nbs
p; Brandon took a step backward. “Here, mammoth, mammoth, mammoth! Damn it, even bullfighters get a freaking cape.”

  Diamond raised his trunk and trumpeted.

  Brandon dived under the truck as Diamond, head lowered, made a feinting pass.

  Luis dashed up the rear ramp.

  Emerald, Topaz, and Pearl stamped and growled in their impatience to be released. Five years old and four thousand pounds each, Anjou had dubbed them the “troika” for their tendency to stick together.

  Luis took one of the harnesses from the hook on the wall. Kicking broken shards of stall partition out of the way, he approached the first of the females’ stalls.

  “Brum-rum, brum-rum, brum-rum.” Luis made deep rumbling noises, mimicking the way elephant mothers soothed their young.

  Emerald blew hay-scented breath at him, her muscular trunk caressing his face and arm and generally getting in the way. Her fur was coarse, foot-long hair overlaying a soft undercoat. Her tusks, a foot and a half of dense ivory, rubbed against the wall of the transport.

  “I love you too, Em,” Luis murmured, pushing her trunk off his shoulder. He climbed the partition to throw the harness over her six-foot-high back, then crouched beside her to buckle it across her chest and under her belly, cinching it tight over the long fur.

  Luis had trained the girls since infancy to carry burdens, all in preparation for this one journey to freedom.

  Bam! Di was taking his anger out on the other trailer.

  “Luis! Hurry it up!”

  “Coming.” He unclamped the stall partition and pivoted it out of the way. “Go on, Em,” Luis urged. “Tcha.”

  At Luis’s move-out signal, Emerald strolled cautiously down the ramp.

  In her stall, Topaz cried querulously at being left behind.

  “Don’t worry, Topie, you’re next,” Luis crooned.

  She stamped impatiently as he buckled on the harness, this one with stirrups for a rider and a thin pad that rested over her shoulders. When he opened the barrier, Topaz paused long enough to stroke her trunk over his back before racing down the ramp.

  “Brandon?” Luis called. “Are you all right?”

  “Still under the truck. He won’t go away. Shoo, Di. Damn it, go play.”

  Pearl occupied the last stall. Usually docile, she grumbled and swayed and shifted her feet like a kid waiting for recess, making it awkward to get the harness on.

  “Luis!” Brandon shouted. “Look out—Diamond’s coming your way!”

  CHAPTER 7

  Musth

  Bam! Bam! Bam! Huge, flat feet pounded up the ramp. A huffing, furred form blocked the light from the door, long tusks ready to skewer anyone who stood in his way.

  Pearl squealed in fright, twisting in the stall as if trying to find an avenue of escape.

  “Easy, Pearl. Brum-rum.” Luis was in danger of being pinned against the wall in her panic. Squashed by an extinct elephant—what a ridiculous way to die.

  “Move, girl.” He poked her flank hard with his fist, the sort of correction an elephant mother would administer to a pushy calf.

  Pearl shifted over far enough for him to straddle the partition between her and Diamond.

  Minutes before, Di had demanded to get out of the truck. Why was he now so determined to come back?

  The answer had to be Pearl.

  But Pearl and the others were pregnant—she couldn’t possibly be giving off mating hormones.

  Unless . . .

  Pearl had been implanted with an engineered mammoth embryo three months ago. But if the implant had failed, she might be coming into mating condition again. She couldn’t be far into estrus, or she would welcome Di’s advances with enthusiasm instead of revulsion.

  Damn. Just when Luis needed things to go smooth. Was Diamond’s training strong enough to override his randy instincts?

  Still straddling the rail, Luis slipped his tablet from his pocket and keyed a command. A low, deep rumble came from the speaker—the recorded sound of a mother elephant reproving a youngster. “Back, Di. Listen to your mother. Back.”

  Di took a step backward.

  Luis repeated the recorded call. He slipped off the rail, holding his arms out to make himself bigger. “Move out, Di. Tcha.”

  Diamond swayed for a moment, then turned and descended the ramp.

  Luis breathed a sigh of relief. As soon as he moved the partition out of the way, Pearl was out and down the ramp, escaping into the brush, Diamond in hopeful pursuit.

  “What the hell was that about?” Dirty and disheveled, Brandon emerged from under the truck, brushing off his jeans. The drivers, safe in their cabs, shouted catcalls.

  Luis ignored them. “Pearl doesn’t seem to be pregnant anymore. It looks like Diamond will get his chance to breed earlier than expected. Start loading the gear while I get the rest out.”

  In the second truck, Opal occupied the stall nearest the door. Since she was already carrying a hundred pounds of developing baby, she got a pass on being harnessed. Before releasing her, Luis passed his hands down her sides. The hard lump deep inside didn’t seem to have shifted toward the birth channel yet.

  Luis patted her flank with relief. “All right, Opal, you’re good to go. Tcha.”

  In the next stall, Ruby, the herd’s matriarch, swayed and swung her trunk.

  “Hey, old girl.” Luis rubbed the side of Ruby’s hairy face.

  Parents should love their children equally, but Ruby had been Luis’s favorite since Anjou had first decanted her from the incubation tank.

  She raised her trunk-tip to blow a greeting to Luis. He drew from his pocket a small turnip, a special treat he’d saved just for her. “Don’t tell the others,” he whispered. God, he was going to miss her.

  Ruby wrapped the tip of her trunk around the treat and deftly tossed it into her mouth.

  He placed on her a harness with a pad and stirrups: Ruby would be his mount. When he opened the stall, she padded down the ramp as docile as a two-ton dog.

  Ruby’s year-old calf, Jet, was in the third stall. Jet was special: the first calf born from a mammoth womb rather than an incubation vat; the first calf raised on mammoth milk and not formula. Anjou had touted Jet as proof that Project Hannibal could produce a viable mammoth herd, but to Luis, he was as precious as a first grandchild.

  Luis fondled the stringy hair on the calf’s head as Jet followed his mother down the ramp. Already five hundred pounds and no longer nursing, he still stayed close to Ruby for protection.

  Last, Luis released Turquoise, a spunky four-year-old male. “Time to go to your new home, Turq. Go on, boy. Wide open spaces. A whole world of trees to munch.” In another year, he’d be old enough to provide breeding competition for Diamond.

  All now free, the mammoths clumped beside the trucks in an orgy of trunk-twining and trumpeting, lifting their long noses to sniff the new environment. Forced separation for so long was unnatural for animals so closely social as mammoths. Males strayed on the fringes of the herd, often wandering away for days at a time, but even they stayed in touch through scent and the infrasonic vocalizations that could carry for miles through air and ground.

  Brandon had unloaded the two backpacks and a heap of made-for-horses saddlebags, already packed with their camping gear and all the supplies they’d need for a month in the wild. He muttered soothingly to Emerald as he strapped baggage onto her harness.

  Pearl had escaped Di’s amorous attention once he’d had a chance to sniff her closely. Now she lounged at the edge of the group, consoling herself with mouthfuls of grass.

  “Pearl, hey-up,” Luis called. She wandered to him and let him secure the remaining saddlebags to her harness.

  Brandon did a double check of the gear and counted mammoths. “Di’s still wandering. Are you going to call him in?”

  “A male in musth? I’m not worried. He’ll follow the girls.” Luis checked the tablet: the bull was a few hundred yards north, over a small ridge.

  “You all set, then?” one of
the drivers asked.

  “All set.” Luis approached closer and spoke low. “You know what to do?”

  The man nodded. “Back to Fairbanks, no unnecessary stops, no talking about the cargo or where we unloaded. Clean the trucks like it was a cattle run. If anybody asks, it was just a load of supplies going to Deadhorse.”

  “Good.” Luis passed cash, supplied by Anjou, to each driver.

  “Good luck, buddy.”

  As the trucks maneuvered their way out, Brandon put an arm around Luis. “Ready?”

  “Ready.” They shared a kiss for luck.

  With a grin, Brandon strode to the mammoths. “Topaz, kneel.”

  Topaz dropped her hindquarters to a sitting position and lowered her chest to the ground. Putting a foot on her right knee, Brandon swung himself onto her back, perching on her shoulders. Topaz rose with a grunt.

  “Ruby, kneel.” As soon as Luis mounted, Ruby rose, hoisting him six feet above the ground. He pressed his toes forward behind Ruby’s ears. “Move out, tcha.”

  Hannibal had the right idea. Riding atop his mammoth’s shoulders, Luis felt like the original Hannibal, leading an army of elephants across the Alps to challenge the mighty forces of ancient Rome. The mammoths’ long legs climbed over boulders and crossed gullies that would have been impossible for horse-drawn carts, easily outpacing even the best-trained infantry.

  Luis let Ruby choose her own path as long as she kept moving east. He was in no hurry, hoping on this first day only to get the mammoths away from the highway and used to trekking.

  His goal was to take the herd east to map grid Hb27, the wide uninhabited plain on the south slope of the Brooks Range. Satellite measurements had shown the permafrost in that area was in retreat and patches of forest were moving in. Luis expected that a few years of grazing would demonstrate to the science community the difference that mammoths would make: the trees would be gone, and the ground temps would have stabilized at well below the freezing point.

  In the first hour of riding, the terrain went steeply downhill. It took a bit of practice to maintain balance on his swaying mount, leaning back, his boots tucked into stirrups. The stirrups had been Brandon’s suggestion. The mahouts who rode work elephants in Asia never used them, but they were a useful addition for riders more used to horses. There were no reins to turn the mammoth’s head. Like a mahout, Luis guided Ruby by moving his feet on her neck.