Then they found places to wait, rifles at the ready and videocams whirring.
Soon, the ground was rumbling under their feet and the dayglow saurian face loomed out of the bush like the Serpent of Eden.
"No one shoot until I say so," King warned. "Cameramen, come in tight on me."
The creature lumbered closer, the Bantus coming ahead of it, placing food.
"Thorpe!" King snapped. "Tell them to stop. I want a whole pile of it dumped out right where that flat rock is."
Thorpe came out from behind some nettles and collected the last basket of toadstools. He set the basket down onto the flat rock, and found cover again.
Old Jack paused. Its head swung around as if searching for something familiar.
"He doesn't see the damn toadstools!" King hissed.
"I'll fix that," Nancy said, running out.
She got in the creature's path and waved her arms.
"Here! Jack! Follow me!"
The beast looked at her. It made a low sound.
"Just a little closer."
It started forward. Nancy backed away. The reptile shook the dry ground with each step, throwing up dusty puffs that hung low a long time in the still African air.
Nancy walked backward until one heel touched the basket. Then she quickly turned and dumped it out, stomping the fungi into a malodorous morass.
"That should do it," she said, joining Thorpe in the bush.
The creature picked up its pace. The thumping of the earth came at closer intervals.
It stopped, straddling the straps and attacked the food that had been laid out for it.
Skip King popped out of the bush and put his rifle to his shoulder. He gave his cameramen three seconds to frame the shot, then fired three times into the thickest part of the creature's tail.
Only then did he shout, "Now! Open fire!"
Rifles poked out of the brush all around, bucked, and made harsh noises.
Tranquilizer darts feathered different places in the monster's anatomy.
Nothing happened.
"Why doesn't he go down?" King wailed, eyes sick.
"It takes a while," Nancy said. "The Apatosaur circulatory system is huge so the tranquilizers have a lot of bloodstream to run before they reach the sleep receptors of the brain."
It took nearly three minutes, but the great legs began shuddering. Slowly the dinosaur eased itself down into an awkward kneel, lowering its stomach to the dusty earth. The head came up from its meal and craned back as if to see why the body was not being supported by the sequoia-thick legs; finally the eyes surrendered and the head came to rest curled back toward the body, like a sleeping cat.
"Shakes-call in the cavalry!"
"Cavalry?" Nancy muttered.
Sergeant Shakes got on a walkie-talkie. Before long the sky was reverberating with the racket of a massive helicopter skycrane. It was white, its stick-thin wheel assemblies hanging insectlike from the gaping space where a cargo container would normally be carried.
Nancy stood watching it with her mouth hanging open and a look of disbelief on her face.
"This can't possibly work!"
"Might," Thorpe allowed.
It did.
Under King's frantic direction, the Bantus swarmed over the inert carcass. The cable ends were brought together on the back of the creature's spine and affixed to cables lowered from the hovering skycrane.
When it was all rigged, King gave a prearranged signal.
"Lift!"
The skycrane began to lift, its rotors making the tawny savanna grass shiver in sympathy. The cables lifted, grew taut, and everyone held their breath.
The head, being lighter, lifted up first. The meaty part of the tail came off the ground.
The helicopter engine whined and grew shrill from strain. It seemed for a long time the weight of the great saurian would defeat it, but then the hindquarters came off the ground, followed by the breast and the belly.
Slowly; the monster was brought over the string of cars and-with infinite patience-aligned with the reinforced flatcar.
King ran around frantically checking and screaming into the walkie-talkie.
"Okay, begin lowering. And the pilot who screws up will be flying a crop duster in darkest Iowa the rest of his life."
The long flatcar platform received the belly with a groaning of springs and a threatening squeaking. The hanging legs bent up at the knees and assumed unnatural positions that brought to mind a dressed turkey, but meant the legs would not be crushed by the weight of the body.
The head, limp and lifeless, dropped into the dirt and looked dead.
"The poor thing," Nancy said plaintively.
The tip of the tail dropped off the end, but the thick root lay safely on the flatcar bed. There came a final groan of complaining steel, and no more.
The skycrane sank lower and the cables grew lax.
"Looks like it's going to work," King said, voice strung tight. "Looks like . . . Yes! Yes! Yes! It's another triumph for Burger Triumph!"
The cables were unsnapped and stowed along the sides of the cars, ready for later off-loading. Folding gates were raised to form a low cage, but it was obvious that should the cargo ever shift, nothing could prevent a catastrophe.