B008IFNJZM EBOK (27 page)

             
Henry adds his comment.

             
“Then if something like a croc attacks, you have a little protection to shoot or drive it away.  They are not very good for protection and really only designed to give you a few seconds of protection from surprise attack.”

             
“Yeah, but they are no good on snakes.  They can just slither under the wire.  The cage doesn’t make any kind of ground seal but is better than nothing.”

             
“How far do we have to travel to cross this valley?”

             
“About a mile, maybe more.”

             
“So we are going to escort this party across the valley and return?”

             
“Yes.  Our camp will be up on the ledge area which will give us some protection.  During rest periods, we will have to post guards.”

             
“Guards for what?  If the steps up to this ledge are narrow and steep, what could possibly come out of the valley and attack us?”

             
Crosley and Jerrick looked at each other before responding to Shawn.  It was now time for the rest of the story.  First, they told them about the Meeratt or Bigfoot creature.  This did not scare the men, actually, it excited the group.  Catching a Bigfoot would be worth a Queen’s ransom.  That is when Crosley dropped the other shoe.”

             
“Tell me gentlemen, have any of you heard about a creature called the ‘Bunyip’?”

             
All the men had heard of the legend of a strange creature that was described as part panther and part seal.  They had all heard of this
carnivorous
creature that could close its jaws and bite a man in half.”

             
Henry looked up at the men.

             
“You’ve seen this creature?”

             
“We saw one swallow a Dodo in one bite.”

             
Willie smiled up at their leaders.

             
“Now that would definitely make us all millionaires.  If we could pull out just one family the world would pay hundreds of millions!”

             
Henry looked at the eager faces in the group and back up at their moderators.

             
“I’m in, hell, we are all in.  When do we leave?”

             
Crosley reached over and grabbed a handful of maps.

             
“Now, just as soon as you get a map.  We will meet you at our camp.  The road will be closed by the military.  Show them your papers and they will let you pass.  Bring any equipment you think you can use and two weeks of rations.  Each packet has a check for you to buy whatever you think we could use.  The military will supply the roller cages.”  The men scrambled up to get their set of directions.

             
Platt Neander & Berdy Hahn were in the lead to return to their base camp near the Merat Cave.  Crosley and Jerrick were a few hours behind them after attending and assisting their recruits with paperwork and supplies.  Three days had passed and only Elizabeth, Tom and the three ‘cold bloods’ were left behind.   The other new members of the ‘company’ would continue to trickle in all during the afternoon.

             
As Platt drove his Lori over a rise on the two lane asphalt road surrounded on both sides by trees and bush, he slowed his vehicle down to a crawl.  There in front of him was a road block manned by Game Wardens, police, and military.  Military trucks lined both sides of the road.  A military policeman came up to the vehicle.

             
“I am sorry sir, this road is closed.”

             
“I am Platt Neander and he is Berdy Hahn.  We are part of this exercise.”

             
The guard looked at his clip board and then at their vehicle’s tag.

             
“Ah, yes sirs.  You may proceed.  Please drive slow to your encampment.  Sorry for the check but we have sealed this area under special orders to prevent outsiders from entering this area until your assignments are completed.”

             
“Please check with the Sargent Major at your campsite.  I believe we have several shipments of equipment for both of you.”

             
“Really?  Any idea of what we have waiting for us?”

             
“Sir, I have no idea.  This entire exercise has been classified at the highest levels.  None of us are even allowed to go down the hole that seems to be the focus of your exercise.  I am sure the Sargent Major will brief you.”

             
“Thank you Corporal.”

             
“Thank you sirs… have a nice day.”

             
The barricades went up and Platt slowly proceeded through the check point.  Berdy kept counting the men.  He figured that there had to be tents and materials to support at least a hundred troops as well as several K-9 units.  A military helicopter passed overhead.  The heavy military canvas covered trucks lined both sides of the road.  The flaps were down on most of the cargo areas and the ones opened only showed unmarked crates.  They drove up to the camp and immediately had their credentials checked again and then allowed to enter the mission tent of Nathan.  Nathan waved them over to several large screens.  There was a military fuel truck and a generator running in the background.

             
“Man, your plan is working great!  All we have to do is ask for something and your government immediately delivers it.  We even have portable toilets and running water near the power station.”

             
“What have Tom and the girls been up to?”

             
“They are the night shift.  Every night from what I understand, the girls have been flying off.  Tom doesn’t say much.  He is getting more on edge since the days are getting fewer.”

             
“He hasn’t gone down into the cave while we were gone?  We are his protection.”

             
“I don’t think so.  Only I and Elizabeth have gone down.”

             
“You know the two of you shouldn’t go down there without us either.  It’s our job to keep you safe as well.”

             
“I know.  We just ran to the ledge and back.  It was daytime.”

             
“Yes, well most of the Bigfoot sightings are in the daytime.”

             
“Yes that is true, but the information we got is fantastic!  Later, I will play back the hard drive for you and the others.  You have got to see this.  The Sargent Major gave me three miles of cable and we now have video cameras out on the ledge with telescopic lenses.  We have collected a great deal of data.”

             
“Well we are going to eat.  We have an hour or two before Crosley & Jerrick show up.  What has Elizabeth been doing?”

             
“Gathering everything we can off of the Internet.  We now have high speed Internet via unrestricted military satellites.”

             
“I wasn’t aware we had such hardware deployed in space.”

             
“They have been granted access to the United States orbital military hardware.”

             
“Good, we will look forward to your briefing.”

***

             
As the two mercenaries ate, the Sargent Major came over and went through the equipment now on station for their immediate usage.  Crosley and Jerrick finally pulled in and joined the others eating.  After a short meeting, the four men went back to Nathan’s tent.  Tom came through the top of the semi and immediately met up with his sister and they too, entered the briefing tent.  Nathan stood next to the equipment as the others gathered around and Elizabeth picked up her sheets of data that she retrieved from the Internet.  Crosley noticed that none of the military seemed to be authorized to enter Nathan’s tent or have a ‘need to know’ privilege.

             
“Okay, the second the Sargent Major arrived and his men began to seal off this area, the first truckloads of supplies arrived as well.  His men set up spools of cables and stayed topside as Elizabeth and I rolled out cable to reach the ledge overlooking the valley.  We then set up cameras that can be controlled from here to begin watching the valley below twenty-four hours a day.”

             
Jerrick was curious.  There hadn’t really been any Bigfoot sightings since we arrived.

             
“So you were able to set up all this equipment without having to confront the Meeratts?”

             
Elizabeth responded to Jerrick and the others.

             
“No and we did make a considerable amount of noise rolling spools of cable down to the ledge and then unrolling each spool until we had enough to reach back here.  It was almost as if the Meeratts were avoiding us.”

             
Everyone could tell that Nathan was excited about what they were about to observe on the monitors.

             
“But about two hours after the cameras were operational, we began to get great footage.”

             
Nathan froze the screen on an area of neck high tall grass.

             
“First came the Bunyips.  You can see four black tails moving through the grass.”

             
Elizabeth points to the screen as the tails are moving through the tall grass whipping the thick weeds.

             
“We believe that these are the females.  They are going out hunting at the same time.  The females hunt as a pack for their young.”

             
Nathan added his commentary.

             
“We believe that there are four families of these creatures in this part of the valley.”

             
“From what I have been able to ascertain from the Internet, these creatures are like rats.  A male rat will only have a single female rat as a mate for life.  If that female dies, the male will never take another mate just like rats.”

             
Berdy is taking this all in.

             
“We must let the others know that if they attack, these females will be using coordinated attack patterns.  They appear to hunt as a team much like what is believed to be the same tactics used by prehistoric raptors.”

             
The group watches as the females attack and kill a croc.  As the one female leaves with the kill in her jaws, the others focus in on a group of dodo birds and quickly attack and kill a single bird each.  The females then retreat to lairs.  The footage is sped forward to another point in time where the four males are now out in the same area of tall grass.  They are taller and their backs, necks and heads are above the weeds. 

             
“Notice that the four males in this pride don’t really travel together, but instead, are going to appear to be scouting their portion of the valley with one of them in the lead.  We believe this one out in front is the ‘alpha’ male.  What bothered us about this is that given the size of the pride being four males and four females why didn’t their appetites for food exhaust the populations of the crocs and the dodo birds.”

             
Elizabeth interrupts Nathan.

             
“You see gentlemen, we are talking about this community of Bunyips needing four to five hundred pounds of food every four days.  That would mean that after the litters of new cubs have their cubs, all it would take is one or two generations of young to increase the total demand for food and exhaust all the resources in the valley.”

             
Nathan then added.

             
“What we don’t know is how often each female has a litter of young and we don’t know how many each one has.”

             
Elizabeth looks at her notes.

             
“We did find one ancient legend that a female could give birth to as many as six cubs.”

             
“So the math didn’t make sense until we caught this.”

             
The video off of the hard drive is advanced to a point and a camera angle that shows an opening in the far wall on the other side of the valley.  A pair of Bigfoot creatures come out on a ledge and seems to be discussing the valley below.  The entire group strains to get an observation of the seven foot hairy creatures. 

             
“Well they can definitely communicate.”