Rainn Delacourt (S/F)

Rainn Delacourt (2022)

Rainn Delacourt was an American poacher and animal trafficker who became notorious for his involvement with the underground dinosaur trade following the 2018 Lockwood Estate incident. He mainly operated in the United States, though by early 2022 he became an internationally wanted individual as he acted as a supplier for the black-market broker Soyona Santos. Delacourt was also involved with the 2022 kidnapping of Maisie Lockwood.

Delacourt died due to an animal attack in the Amber Clave night market in Valletta, Malta in the spring of 2022. At the time of his death, he was actively fleeing from American and French intelligence operatives.

Name

Rainn is a gender-neutral given name which originated in somewhat recent American history, though it has become widespread in English-speaking countries. It references the weather phenomenon of rainfall, and is often said to mean “blessings from above,” sometimes specifically an abundance or heavy shower of such blessings.

Delacourt is a version of the French surname De la Cour, literally meaning “of the court.” It originated with the Huguenots, who altered De la Cour into Delacour and Delacourt after moving to Ireland. This implies some French ancestry for Rainn Delacourt, and his accent further suggests that he was Cajun.

Biography
Early life

Little is known about Delacourt’s younger years, or what in his childhood led him into a life of crime. His year of birth is unknown, but Scott Haze, the actor chosen to portray him, was born in 1983; this may give some indication as to Delacourt’s age. He was born in the American South, as demonstrated by his slight Cajun accent. Most Cajuns live in Louisiana, descendants of those who lived there when it was controlled by France instead of the United States.

As an adult, Delacourt typically operated with minimal planning ahead, reacting more on instinct than any kind of critical thinking. This often stems from a childhood of uncertainty and instability, with common causes being abuse as well as poverty and other financial strain. Delacourt likely had a difficult life during his youth.

At some point he got at least two tattoos, one of a snake (intended to be a black mamba, but highly stylized) on his face and one of the number 24 on the left side of his chest, near his heart. Facial tattoos are generally only given to people who have high pain tolerance, and most tattoo artists will only do them for clients who have gotten several tattoos before. Those seen in the film were chosen by actor Scott Haze as a tribute to basketball player Kobe Bryant, but Rainn Delacourt in the film appears to have had these tattoos for some years; it is unknown what they mean to the fictional character.

In 1997, when Delacourt would have been a teenager or young adult, de-extinction became known as public fact after some years of claims and speculation. A theme park, called Jurassic World, opened in 2005 to exhibit the animals; the park operated for ten years, and though the creatures were initially seen as fantastical, by 2015 they had become mundane. Delacourt was probably never able to visit the park, owing both to his probable financial struggles when he was younger and to his criminal record later in life. The park closed in December 2015 due to a security incident in which several employees were killed, and the island was restricted by United Nations quarantine.

Criminal career

Even as an adult, life does not seem to have gotten easy for Delacourt. He had turned to crime as a means of getting by, and while he developed skills that made him effective at stealing and fighting, he would spend the rest of his days trying to stay one step ahead of the authorities. He became notorious to the Louisiana police and respected by other criminals. It is unknown what most of his crimes were during this early period of his life on the lam, but he seems to have mostly focused on acquiring valuable items, suggesting he was more involved with property crime than violent crime. He eventually began accepting illegal contract work from far more powerful criminals, and the money rewarded by these shady employers was enough to sustain Delacourt so long as he was not caught.

At some point he began running with a poaching gang in the American West, sometimes traveling in his 1985 Ford F-Series through the rural United States. However, they also sometimes rode on horseback, a band of modern-day outlaw cowboys. Delacourt kept a horse of his own, a light-colored gray mare. Their luck took a turn in June 2018 when other, better-funded poachers traveled to Isla Nublar, site of the fallen Jurassic World, to plunder its biological riches. The island had sat nearly abandoned, and with volcanic activity threatening it, the wealthy, unscrupulous, and opportunistic had gone there to acquire the valuable creatures before it was too late. Many of the animals escaped into the wilds in Northern California, but a number were sold on the black market, and so was the technology needed to create more. The animals were valued for many reasons, ranging from biopharmaceutical research to use as status symbols, all with the potential for massive financial gain. Delacourt, understanding this, turned his attention to the animals in the wild.

This was a risky business, with governments, corporations, and other powers vying for control of the animals and debating what to do with them. In America, it was decided by Congress that collection rights should be solely awarded to a company called Biosyn Genetics, and the national authorities got to work shipping animals from American soil off to Europe where the company headquarters were located. The CIA’s Dangerous Species Division and the Department of Fish and Wildlife, along with international organizations like the Department of Prehistoric Wildlife, were never too far away from someplace a prehistoric animal had been spotted. It was inevitable that Delacourt and his gang would cross them from time to time, and after he was arrested in Baton Rouge on October 30, 2020, he became known to the CIA as a dinosaur poacher, considered armed and dangerous. The details of his arrest in Baton Rouge are not well-known, but efforts to contain Delacourt seem to have failed, as he was not in prison afterward. He may have escaped and fled, or some outside party may have arranged for him to be released. Delacourt also spent time in Texas, which is where he acquired his Ford truck (as indicated by its license plate).

Sometime after he became wanted by the CIA DSD, Delacourt accepted a new member into his gang, a man called Wyatt Huntley. Delacourt trusted Huntley entirely, with Huntley often acting as Delacourt’s right-hand man.

2022 incident and death

Delacourt’s notoriety eventually grew beyond the United States. He became acquainted with a mysterious woman called Soyona Santos, a broker in the black market who was heavily involved in the illegal dinosaur trade. The animals captured by Delacourt were desired by people all over the world, and by supplying them to Santos, the world became much more open to Delacourt. Although Santos considered him a valuable asset, she was far from kind to him, often using backhanded compliments to keep him in line. He, on the other hand, offered Santos nothing less than the utmost loyalty.

In late 2021 or early 2022, Santos contracted Delacourt for a bigger job than he had ever been assigned before. He, Huntley, and the rest of the gang were to track down a very specific dinosaur, a female Velociraptor called Blue that had once been studied in Jurassic World and released into the wild during the 2018 incident. Santos’s contacts believed that Blue, due to genetic modification, could reproduce without a mate. Delacourt’s task was to track down the animal and capture any offspring she might have. This was not all: Santos’s buyers did not want only the raptor, but also a person, a young girl called Maisie Lockwood. This girl’s existence was the stuff of rumor and conspiracy theory, an illegal clone of a scientist who had died some years ago, kept in secret at the estate that the dinosaurs had escaped from in 2018. Supposedly, she had vanished at the same time as the dinosaur escape. Finding and recovering Maisie was up to another of Santos’s assets, Carolyn O’Hara, but she and Delacourt would be working closely together anyway: both Maisie and the raptor Blue were believed to be somewhere in Northern California.

Blue had been raised by a man called Owen Grady, who had worked at Jurassic World after he left the Navy. There was no evidence directly linking him to the dinosaur escape Blue had been involved with, but there was the distinct possibility he would at least know her location, tracking and protecting the animal he had raised. There was also the fact that he was associated with Claire Dearing, also a former Jurassic World staff member who had gone on to found the Dinosaur Protection Group. The DPG was under government investigation for involvement with the 2018 incident, and Dearing had vanished off the face of the earth when Congress denied a plan to relocate the dinosaurs safely. This was just two days before the dinosaurs’ appearance at the estate, which itself was simultaneous with Maisie Lockwood’s supposed disappearance. If Dearing was involved with the dinosaurs being brought to North America, it made sense to assume she was also involved with Maisie Lockwood, and Owen Grady seemed a likely candidate to harbor both of them.

Delacourt’s first encounter with Grady was actually unplanned and unexpected. He and six members of his gang including Huntley were poaching Parasaurolophus in the Sierra Nevada mountains, the animals’ powdered bones being a valued item on the black market, when they spotted a trio of people on horseback leading a lone parasaur along the riverside. He presumed them to be rival poachers. Delacourt had prepared a fake Fish and Wildlife agent’s badge for occasions like this, posing as a government official rounding up wild dinosaurs to protect them from poaching. His plan backfired somewhat spectacularly here: the three people were themselves agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service, led by Shep Wauneka. The man leading the dinosaur was Owen Grady. With their cover blown, Delacourt resorted to threats, intimidating Grady at gunpoint into handing over the lasso rope and leading the dinosaur off. On his way out, Delacourt taunted Grady, assuring him that they would cross paths again.

It is unclear at what point Delacourt recognized Grady’s identity, but their encounter gave him the opportunity he needed to track the man to his off-the-grid cabin some miles outside the nearest small town, where he was living with Dearing. There, all of their suspicions were confirmed. The raptor Blue was indeed living in the woods nearby, and she had a juvenile like Santos had described. What was more, Delacourt spotted Maisie at the cabin. Grady was indeed harboring the girl. Delacourt relayed this to Santos and O’Hara.

Catching both their targets would be a delicate operation, since Grady and Dearing would hardly let Maisie out of their sight. If either she or the young raptor were caught, Delacourt and O’Hara would have precious little time to get their respective teams out of the area before the parents (both human and dinosaur) caught up. Delacourt had planned to set up a trap at Blue’s nest to catch the juvenile, but O’Hara urged Delacourt not to spring the trap until she was certain Maisie could also be caught. Leaving without one or the other was not an option; they were unlikely to get a second chance here. Delacourt spied on the cabin from a nearby ridge, waiting for the perfect moment. A few days after he first encountered Grady, he got that chance. Maisie, while having breakfast outside, encountered Blue and the juvenile, and Grady went off to track down the nest. There was now an urgent need to spring the trap before Grady found the nest, but as Grady left the cabin, he and Maisie apparently had an argument that resulted in Maisie heading toward town without adult supervision. There was only one way from the cabin into town, and that was across a mostly-disused truss bridge only wide enough for one vehicle. Delacourt radioed O’Hara, and their teams got into position. O’Hara went with her driver, and Delacourt took three of his men, one of whom acted as driver while Delacourt rode shotgun (literally, armed with his rifle).

The young raptor was snared in the net shortly after arriving back at the nesting site. Blue was rammed by Delacourt’s truck, sending her over a small ledge and giving Delacourt’s men the time they needed to get the net trap down and load the young animal into the truck bed. As they drove away, Delacourt spotted Owen Grady, taking a few shots at him with his rifle to drive him back while they made their getaway. Driving to the bridge, they met up with O’Hara, whose own car had Maisie trapped on the bridge. Delacourt’s driver maneuvered the truck on the opposite side, blocking escape by that route. Maisie was forced to go with O’Hara, and Delacourt tossed her bicycle into the river to cover their tracks.

From here, it was straight to Valletta, Malta where Santos would be waiting. He delivered the young raptor to one of Santos’s most trusted smugglers, Kayla Watts, before leaving the United States on a separate plane. Delacourt arrived in Valletta the next day with Huntley by his side. Both the young raptor and Maisie were handed off to Santos that morning, before Delacourt’s arrival at the harbor. From there he and Huntley went into town, through the bustle of the Amber Clave night market where Santos ruled supreme. When they met, she informed him that the raptor had arrived to its final destination in good condition. Their services had been quality enough that Santos offered them another job, a short flight to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for €50,000 (double the usual rate). The cargo was a quartet of genetically-modified Atrociraptors, a stockier and more brutish relative of the Velociraptor. Santos described them as trained to kill, and in a moment of unease, he prompted her to further explain. Delacourt learned that these were not simple guard animals: they would kill on command, their targets identified by a handheld laser light. Their keen sense of smell would guide their predatory instincts in relentless pursuit of the victims.

Delacourt accepted Santos’s offer, and was paid up front in cash. As soon as he took the money, though, there was a sudden commotion in the alley. American intelligence operatives surrounded them, demanding surrender, and to top it all off, Huntley suddenly turned on Delacourt as well. After a momentary delay in his comprehension he connected the dots, realizing that Huntley had been a double agent all along. Santos’s henchmen opened fire, and the American operatives returned, with Delacourt caught in the crossfire. When his bag of cash took a bullet, he abandoned it to make a quicker escape, disappearing through a door leading back into the market. The firefight occupied his would-be captors for now, but it was only a matter of time before they were in pursuit, eager to regain Delacourt and arrest him.

He rushed through the market, hoping to get out via one of the hidden entrances and escape into the streets of Valletta where he could disappear into crowds of tourists and locals. But hot on his tail was Owen Grady, who had likely struck a deal with the U.S. government in order to find the girl. Delacourt attempted to slow his pursuer down by knocking over displays and animal cages. As he neared the front of the market, he could see Grady was still close behind, so he took out his sidearm and fired at the chains of two huge shipping containers near the wall and struck both on the first try. These contained the market’s biggest animals, a female Allosaurus and a large, heavily-scarred Carnotaurus. The theropods wasted no time in emerging, aroused by the commotion, and Delacourt found that he and Grady were both in danger. He backed away as the carnotaur took a snap at him, and he fell over a railing into one of the fighting pits, losing his sidearm as he landed.

Delacourt faces the fighting Baryonyx

From an alcove off the main arena of the pit emerged one of the market’s veteran fighters, a juvenile Baryonyx with a prosthetic replacing the arm it had lost in battle. The animal charged him, but was held back by the chains around its body, which tethered it to the cement blocks around its alcove. Delacourt managed to back away in time, keeping his head out of its reach. He escaped, but seconds later, Grady tackled him into the neighboring pit. This one was set up for a fight that had been about to start before the chaos erupted, a small juvenile Carnotaurus and a male Lystrosaurus chained to opposite sides. Grady and Delacourt squared off, both drawing hunting knives while market patrons cheered them on and placed bets. Delacourt took haphazard swings at Grady, but his enemy’s military training gave him an edge: Grady knocked Delacourt to the ground, where the young carnotaur suddenly lunged out and clamped its jaws on his right hand. The Lystrosaurus, egged on by the violence, grabbed his left hand in the crushing grip of its beak.

On one side the bones of his hand were being violently fractured, and on the other much of his arm was being swallowed whole; together the animals each inadvertently acted to restrain Delacourt. In excruciating pain, Delacourt begged Grady to get the animals off, but Grady did not help. He demanded to know where Maisie was, and hoping that compliance would earn him some mercy, Delacourt confessed all he could; Santos had taken the girl, and he did not know what transpired after. Apparently this was not enough for Grady, who stood coldly and watched as the young Baryonyx pulled at its restraints in an attempt to finish the fight. It managed to break free, the concrete blocks broken from the walls of its alcove, each one dragging by its chain. Delacourt was helpless to save himself as the animal approached, and by now he knew that Grady would do nothing to save his life. Once again it focused on his head, clamping its long maw around its victim. His neck and head were punctured, crushed, and twisted to the side, breaking his spinal cord away from his brain. Delacourt swiftly died of his wounds. In the crowd, money was handed to those who had bet on Grady.

This was the end of Rainn Delacourt. It is unknown if he had any surviving family, and aside from his poaching gang, there would be few to mourn him. It is also unknown what happened to his body after he died, though parts of it were likely swallowed by the carnivorous Carnotaurus and Baryonyx that had slain Delacourt. Depending on how the authorities followed up after the sting, he may have been taken in as part of a criminal investigation, but if that location of the Amber Clave is still operational, its operators likely took care of it in their own way. It is unlikely they would have left any part of him to remain. Delacourt’s final presence in the Amber Clave may have come in the form of bone fragments that passed through the digestive tracts of the two carnivores involved in his death, and what became of these scant remains will probably be forever unknown.

Skills
Weapons skill

An adept shot with both rifles and sidearms, Delacourt showed great confidence with his firearms in all manner of situations, able to get the draw even on U.S. government officials. His rifle of choice was a Mossberg 500 Mariner Cruiser, while his sidearm was a Chiappa Rhino 50DS. He had good accuracy, managing in the 2022 Valletta incident to hit two chain wall-anchors while running at high speed without missing a single shot. On the other hand, he missed two shots at Owen Grady while his rifle was stable in the window of a vehicle that had only just started moving and was not at full speed yet, but there is no evidence that he ever actually used his guns to shoot a person. Instead of shooting to kill, he used his guns for intimidation and to create obstacles, but does not appear to have ever taken a human life.

In addition to guns, Delacourt armed himself with a hunting knife, though he preferred to avoid close-quarters fighting and used this only as a last resort. While firearms forced him to construct at least a bare minimum plan in a fight, his knife tactics were more befitting of his madcap, hectic fighting style. It was during a knife fight that he ultimately died, though his foe was notably a former sailor in the U.S. Navy who was professionally taught actual combat tactics.

Hunting and tracking

Most of Delacourt’s jobs saw him stalk and capture living creatures to sell, and those worth the greatest reward were often the hardest to find. He tracked his prey with the aid of a team of poachers, though since his arrest record is the one which caught the attention of the CIA, he was the most notorious of them. He appears to have gotten his start in Louisiana, and some context clues suggest he grew up there, so it was terrain he knew well. However, during his life he ventured into a wide range of environments, from swampy to montane. Delacourt was known for his poaching in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, located in the Pacific Northwest.

His typical method would be to follow evidence of his target’s territory until he made a visual sighting, then stalk it over a period of days to determine its behavior patterns. He was good enough at concealing his location when watching his targets that he could remain hidden from even human enemies for days at a time. Once he had a decent idea of when his prey would be vulnerable, he could set traps and plan a capture. The methods he used for the capture itself often paralleled the species he was targeting. When hunting larger herbivores, he often rode horseback, putting himself on equal footing with his quarry. If his target was a crafty predator, Delacourt would resort to trickery too.

Once a struggle actually began, any semblance of a careful plan was discarded. Delacourt was conditioned to think on his feet, and this often got him into trouble. For example, when poaching a parasaur from a group he assumed to be fellow poachers, he pretended to be a Fish and Wildlife ranger, but does not seem to have considered that he might run into actual Fish and Wildlife personnel. His disguise was sloppy at best, consisting only of a badge, and when introducing himself as an agent he seems to have nearly forgotten the “Wildlife” part of the department title (referring to it as “Department of Fish,” then adding “and Wildlife” at the last second; he could even be seen giving himself a subtle nod of self-assurance after correcting his mistake). Upon realizing that his attempt to impersonate a federal agent had been used against actual federal agents, his backup plan was to make explicit threats. Taking the loss does not seem to have ever crossed his mind; for poaching, he would face three to five years in jail, but for killing a federal agent, he could face life imprisonment or even capital punishment.

Driving skill

Delacourt was skilled at driving under duress, his rapid reaction time aiding him. It is likely that he dodged pursuit a few times during his criminal career, as he could handle a truck both on and off-road quite well. At the time of his death in 2022, he drove a 1985 Ford F-Series Regular Cab XLT Lariat with Texas plates, though considering his status as a wanted person by the U.S. federal government, he probably did not have a valid driver’s license at the time.

Leadership

Though his tactics were sometimes slapdash and unpredictable, Delacourt’s successes in poaching were well-known enough to gain the confidence of others. As of 2022, he was the apparent leader of a gang of at least five others, all men (a sixth man, Wyatt Huntley, was an undercover operative of the Central Intelligence Agency and so is not counted in this total). He seems to have commanded their respect, and they followed him even into dangerous situations including direct confrontations with government agents. With his men backing him up, Delacourt oversaw many a fruitful hunt.

While Delacourt was an effective leader, his interpersonal skills were far from perfect. As a person he was more than a little rough around the edges, and his personal grooming left much to be desired. His wardrobe seems to have been extremely limited (including a single pair of mismatched gloves) and during longer operations he might go days without properly washing himself, leaving his hair a greasy mane. Delacourt also commonly misplaced his trust in others; he does not seem to have noticed Soyona Santos’s thinly-veiled insults, and his trust in Wyatt Huntley played a major role in his downfall. He brought Huntley with him to the cash-for-cargo exchange in Malta, despite Huntley being presumably a newer gang member than the others, and appeared to trust Huntley more than his other men. Be it born of confidence or a need to feel respected, Delacourt’s trust in Huntley was entirely misplaced, as this man was a spy working on behalf of the CIA. This led to his ultimate betrayal, and then his death during the escape attempt.

Physical strength

Delacourt did not have the build of a powerful person, but he was still wiry and agile. He spent much of his time in the outdoors tracking wild animals, a physically demanding lifestyle involving hiking, horseback riding, and hunting over long distances as well as setting up traps, blinds, and other temporary structures. Wrangling smaller animals and working to restrain larger ones was also an important part of making a living for Delacourt. In a fight, he preferred to be slippery, dodging attacks and evading pursuers rather than standing his ground; he would only retaliate if he had no other options, or the backup of his gang. His greatest survival skill was his sheer unpredictability, making it impossible for a foe to accurately determine what he would do next. Unfortunately, this also was Delacourt’s greatest weakness, as he flew so much by the seat of his pants that he seldom knew what he would do next.

Skill with animals

One might assume Delacourt to have been uncaring about animals, considering his profession was centered around capturing them on behalf of people who seldom had their best interests at heart. However, one would be wrong; Delacourt owned a white-colored gray mare at the time of his death, and this horse appeared rather well cared for. Delacourt was a skilled rider, and was impressively able to keep his horse calm around gigantic dinosaurs. Even a well-trained horse can be easily spooked by large, fast-moving things like vehicles and other large animals, and while feral horses have been known to associate with Parasaurolophus in the American West, a domestic horse would have to be habituated to these animals by its owner. Horses can take a long time to develop trust with a person, and require extensive maintenance to remain healthy, but Delacourt appears to have accomplished both.

Even Delacourt’s dinosaur-handling skills were surprisingly good. His handling of an adult parasaur, for example, was easily on par with those of Owen Grady with the same creature. Grady was a highly-trained animal behaviorist who learned his skills from the U.S. Navy and later from International Genetic Technologies’ Security Division, so his skill with animals in general or dinosaurs specifically are nothing to overlook. Rainn Delacourt, who likely did not have professional training, would have had to learn these skills on his own.

Views
Ethics

Poaching animals for the black market necessitates a disregard for ethics from a legal standpoint and from a variety of moral standpoints. It is not exactly known how Delacourt came into a life of crime, but his general demeanor and the level to which he was accustomed to this life suggest that he had few other options open to him. Whatever the origins of his criminal career, Delacourt had sunken far by 2022, aiding in the kidnapping of Maisie Lockwood at the behest of Soyona Santos. He never learned what Santos wanted the girl for, or who she gave her to; he was more involved with the acquisition of the juvenile raptor, and did not inquire to Santos about Maisie after the job was done. A disinterest in ethics helped him survive the criminal underworld and ensured he always got paid.

For what it is worth, there may have been some lines he was unwilling to cross. He has never been confirmed to have taken a human life, even when doing so would have been quite easy. For example, when confronting three federal agents and stealing a parasaur off of them explicitly for the black market, he and his gang had six guns trained on their enemies and could have overwhelmed them, but Delacourt never gave an order to shoot. He allowed all three federal agents to leave with their lives, despite having seen Delacourt’s very distinctive face and witnessed his crime, all while Delacourt was already wanted by the federal government. Later he had the opportunity to kill Owen Grady, the only witness to a second poaching crime and one that Grady was likely to retaliate for, but only gave warning shots. It would be easy to assume he had simply missed twice, but he was established as a skilled sharpshooter, able to hit even very small targets under extreme duress: when being pursued on another occasion, he opted to use his gun to create obstacles to Grady rather than simply shoot the man, who was himself unarmed except for a large knife. He also showed some apprehension about Atrociraptors being used as attack animals, but suppressed any doubt in order to get paid for the job. It seems that while he avoided directly killing anyone, he would accept payment to facilitate violence so long as he could look the other way.

On de-extinction

The existence of de-extinction was of at least passing interest to everyone, but it only became relevant to Delacourt after the incident of 2018 that introduced the animals to both the black market and the wilds of the American West. There were dozens of potential scientific applications for de-extinct animals, as well as the far more unscrupulous use of the animals for bragging rights and dubious folk medicine. It is unknown whether Delacourt himself truly believed any of the medicinal qualities dinosaur bone powder was purported to have, but he knew for certain the amount of money it was worth.

So, while Delacourt had no known opinions regarding the bioethics of de-extinction, he was certainly willing to take advantage of the strange situations this technology created. As prehistoric animals found themselves transplanted into an unfamiliar new environment, Delacourt saw opportunity and turned to exploit it.

On authority

Little could match the obvious disdain Delacourt had for legal authority. During confrontations with U.S. authorities, he often mocked and taunted them (even his 2020 mugshot from Baton Rouge clearly shows him smirking). Delacourt’s attempt to impersonate a special agent of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was not particularly convincing, demonstrating a poor understanding of how a federal agent would conduct themselves in the field, though he only expected to encounter other poachers. His confrontation with Owen Grady and two actual Fish and Wildlife agents is a highly notable example of his attitude toward authority figures, as he not only taunted them but threatened to shoot; in this case he had not even been apprehended yet, and left them with an assurance toward Grady personally that they would cross paths again. Much of this behavior may have been posturing to impress his gang members, but his hate for the controlling arm of the law was genuine.

Unlawful authority was another matter. Delacourt was clearly beholden to Soyona Santos of his own volition, committing his most morally bankrupt acts on her orders. To her he showed complete loyalty, the only superior to whom he gave this honor.

Relationships
Soyona Santos

The most lucrative employer Delacourt ever had was also his last, a mysterious black market broker named Soyona Santos. She had truly capitalized on the underground dinosaur trade after the 2018 incident, becoming a supreme power in the Amber Clave night market in Malta. Those who showed her loyalty would be rewarded with the spoils of her reign, Delacourt counting himself among the most loyal. During their encounters, the expressions on his face suggested a deep sense of admiration and potentially infatuation. These feelings did not go both ways: to keep him in line, Santos would give backhanded compliments and other toxic forms of false affection. Whether Delacourt noticed what she was doing is unknown, but seems unlikely.

It was Santos who gave Delacourt his most significant job, and subsequently his last. She sent him to confirm the existence of and then capture a juvenile Velociraptor, and to help her other agent O’Hara kidnap a girl called Maisie Lockwood. While Santos hires only the best, her response upon Delacourt’s success with this mission was simply an expression of surprise that he and his gang “didn’t cock this up.” Despite the insult, she was clearly satisfied with his work, and as she had no cause to complain, Delacourt was offered a new job. This time, it was the transportation of four trained Atrociraptors to Saudi Arabia. He showed a mix of curiosity and apprehension upon learning that the animals had been taught to kill on command, but still accepted the offer. This job would go uncompleted, though: as soon as he accepted payment, they were surrounded by U.S. intelligence operatives, turning the back alley into a hail of bullets when Santos’s bodyguards opened fire. Delacourt fled, leaving the money behind as it would only slow him down. They never encountered each other again; Delacourt was killed during the conflict after he fled.

Black market connections

While Soyona Santos was Delacourt’s most famous contact in the underground, she was not the only one, and had been far from the first. His successes in poaching attracted other criminals to him, including a band of at least five men who worked with him in 2022. Whenever they went out on missions, he was always the leader, and they were successful enough to make Delacourt a wanted person to the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Most of his buyers remain unknown, though by the early 2020s he began supplying to Santos in the Amber Clave.

Being a part of this renowned criminal enterprise gave Delacourt more connections than ever before. It is unknown how many times he visited the Amber Clave, though when he was there in 2022 he was seen greeting one of the people preparing de-extinct animal meat at a grill; he may have known the cook personally, or perhaps he was simply having a good time. He is also known to have worked with Santos’s favored smuggler Kayla Watts at least once, for the transport of the young raptor Beta who he captured in the Sierra Nevada. He and Watts were both in Valletta the following day for reasons tangentially related to this job, but they did not run into each other. It is unknown how well they knew one another, though behind the scenes DeWanda Wise has described imagining them as being well acquainted through their shared employment. He also made the acquaintance of Carolyn O’Hara, a trafficker who worked with Santos. She and Delacourt combined their efforts during the fateful 2022 operation in the Sierra Nevada, though his impatience and impulsivity seemed to bother her.

Although Delacourt made more connections in the black market after becoming an international criminal, this was not enough to save his life. When he was fleeing from Owen Grady and American intelligence operatives, he ended up trapped in a cockfighting pit with his enemy. Rather than help him, Delacourt’s fellow market patrons began placing wagers on which of the two would be victorious. Delacourt ended up on the floor, attacked by the animals which had been about to be pitted against each other before Delacourt and Grady interrupted. The animals’ owners took no action, nor did anyone step in to help when a juvenile Baryonyx escaped its confinement and attacked Delacourt in front of everyone. His peers watched, thrilled and mildly disgusted, as he was killed; no one confronted Grady on his way out. Delacourt had caused no small amount of chaos in the market during his escape attempt, and his death was not the only one, but while some of the patrons tried to defend their friends from danger no such efforts were made for Rainn Delacourt.

Horse

At the time of his death in 2022, Rainn Delacourt owned a horse, a white-colored gray mare. The horse’s name is currently unknown, as is her origin. She may have been from the same place as the other horses used by Delacourt’s gang. Wherever she came from, she was one of Delacourt’s trusted companions, coming along on his escapades into the remote American West on the hunt for escaped dinosaurs to capture and sell. Though it might seem surprising for a poacher like Delacourt, his horse was healthy, cared for, and loyal; the loyalty of a horse is not easily won and takes constant effort and upkeep. Delacourt’s horse trusted him enough to be ridden alongside dinosaurs larger than herself without issue, and had probably seen more than one dangerous situation.

Horses are quite expensive to own and maintain, especially to keep them as healthy as Delacourt’s. It is likely that a considerable amount of Delacourt’s income went towards horse maintenance, possibly more than he put into his truck and definitely more than he put into into personal grooming. It is unknown what became of Delacourt’s horse after his death; she was probably left in the care of other members of the gang when he left for Malta.

Government authorities

In the early 2020s Delacourt was considered a person of interest, and was wanted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s Dangerous Species Division. He had gained notoriety in Baton Rouge, where he was arrested and first drew the CIA’s attention. The poaching of de-extinct animals had become a huge problem not just on American soil where Delacourt was wanted, but also abroad; it was only a matter of time before Delacourt entered the international scene under the wing of the feared criminal Soyona Santos.

To ascertain Delacourt’s movements and plans, as well as gain an eyewitness to his criminal activity, the CIA DSD appointed Wyatt Huntley as an undercover operative. He posed as a poacher and successfully joined Delacourt’s gang, accompanying them on hunts for Santos and other black market connections. As a part of his mission, Huntley characterized himself as the perfect right-hand man for Delacourt, eventually becoming his most trusted associate. He did his best to both mitigate the damage Delacourt caused while keeping his cover, such as warning three federal employees (including Fish and Wildlife agents Shep Wauneka and Rosa Delgado) away from a confrontation with Delacourt’s gang under the guise of making a threat. Delacourt never suspected a thing, and while Huntley was not a part of the group which captured Beta the Velociraptor (and thus did not witness Maisie Lockwood being kidnapped by Carolyn O’Hara), he was invited to a meeting with Santos in the Amber Clave.

The CIA was not only planning to obtain Delacourt, they intended to use him to get to Santos. Both American and French agents, including DGSE operative Barry Sembène, surrounded the alley where Delacourt and Huntley were to meet with Santos for their next job. As soon as Delacourt accepted the money, the operatives sprung their trap, and Huntley revealed where his loyalties really lay. It took Delacourt a moment to process this fact, but before he could react, Santos’s bodyguards initiated a firefight. The sting was ultimately successful at capturing Santos, though Huntley and other operatives were killed; Delacourt escaped the agents, but Owen Grady had been with them, and he had little interest in Santos, instead pursuing Delacourt and ultimately enabling his death.

Maisie Lockwood and family

The crime for which Delacourt is perhaps most infamous is the kidnapping of Maisie Lockwood, though technically he was not the head of this particular operation. He was mainly contracted for capturing a Velociraptor living adjacent to the property where Maisie was located, but aided Maisie’s kidnapper Carolyn O’Hara by stopping Maisie from escaping during the kidnapping and then disposing of evidence. The public knew little of Maisie and her existence was considered something of an urban legend by many, a supposed secret clone of a deceased scientist hidden away in Northern California by one of the founders of InGen Technologies. The government was supposedly searching for Maisie, as were other interested parties. Delacourt may have had a little more information provided by Soyona Santos, who orchestrated both Delacourt and O’Hara’s missions, but she likely only told him as much as he needed to know to aid O’Hara in her side of things. There is no evidence that Delacourt had any idea what Maisie’s ultimate fate was to be once Santos had her, nor that he ever asked.

Maisie had been taken in by two people, an animal behaviorist and former Navy sailor named Owen Grady and a corporate-manager-turned-animal-activist named Claire Dearing. Delacourt encountered Grady by chance while poaching in the mountains in his neighborhood, initially mistaking him for a fellow poacher and posing as a government official in order to take a parasaur from them. When Grady’s associates revealed themselves as actual government officials, he dropped the act and intimidated them instead, convincing Grady to hand the animal over. Pleased by his own victory, he taunted Grady and assured him they’d meet again. True to his word, he tracked Grady to his cabin nearby, discovering his own mark as well as Maisie Lockwood. While capturing the raptor, he took shots at Grady, though he did not hit him; Delacourt normally had good aim, so these shots seem to have been meant to drive Grady back rather than to kill. He helped O’Hara obtain Maisie, having spotted her leaving the house without supervision, and threw the girl’s bicycle into a river to hide evidence.

The last Delacourt saw of Maisie was her being sent off to Santos; he never learned more about what happened to her. The young raptor was also handed off by some of his new Maltese associates in Valletta, where Santos met with him and Huntley the day after the kidnapping. It turned out they had been set up by Delacourt’s supposed friend Wyatt Huntley, who had not only led the CIA to them but also Maisie’s adoptive father Grady. While the CIA operatives were focused on fighting Santos and tracking down the cargo she attempted to hide from them, Delacourt managed to escape into the Amber Clave marketplace, but Grady had little interest in Santos. Delacourt attempted to throw him off his trail by knocking over obstacles and freeing animals in the market, but ended up putting himself in danger too. He fell into the cockfighting pits, where Grady attacked. Although Delacourt defended himself aggressively, Grady’s military background gave him an edge, and Delacourt was knocked to the ground where some of the fighting dinosaurs (which had been just about to start a scheduled pit fight) bit his limbs. Now, with Grady also threatening him, he confessed that he knew Maisie had been handed off to Santos, but that he did not know where she was now. The truth, however, did not set him free. Another escaped dinosaur attacked him, and Grady did nothing but coldly watch as Delacourt was killed.

De-extinct animals

In 2018, the world was rocked by the appearance of de-extinct creatures on the American mainland. They had been poached from Isla Nublar, home to the abandoned Jurassic World, on the cusp of a destructive volcanic eruption that would have killed off many of the animals; while plenty of them escaped into the wild, more were bought by wealthy criminals and transported to all corners of the underground world. The technology to create new dinosaurs, and resources to aid in doing so, were also sold: no longer did a tiny handful of biotechnology companies have sole access to the power to rebuild the ancient past. The animals had immense value, both scientific and otherwise, so anyone who could get their hands on them could become rich indeed.

Rainn Delacourt was no scientist, and he could not use the newly-unlocked biotechnology to breed dinosaurs as so many others were doing, but he could certainly find the ones in the wild. The population that had originally escaped was now being supplemented by new animals created by people who had bought de-extinction resources; escapes from illegal facilities and deliberate releases were far from unheard of. As the animals expanded their domain, Delacourt acclimated quickly to the changing world, hunting down dinosaurs in the wild for all manner of buyers. He was good enough at this to draw the attention of other criminals who worked with him, and government agencies which tracked him down.

Captured animals were sold off to criminals of all sorts, often for purposes quite inhumane; Delacourt was known for poaching in the Sierra Nevada, where herds of Parasaurolophus were established. These dinosaurs were especially valuable for their bones, which could be ground up into powder for supposed folk medicine which could sell for $3,000 an ounce. The threat of poaching was enough to prompt the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to round up the animals for transport to sanctuaries, but Delacourt still did manage to get his hands on some of the creatures, sending them off to be slaughtered. Other animals were sold to research corporations which were willing to go around the law in order to be the first to find a salable discovery, or to people who simply wanted the status of owning a dinosaur.

After he began taking jobs for Soyona Santos, his quarry expanded to include more challenging specimens. Delacourt needed to adapt his approach when tackling some species, such as the rare and highly sought-after Velociraptor. In early 2022, he was tasked with confirming the existence of and then capturing a juvenile raptor produced by a former Jurassic World research specimen called Blue. He successfully tracked down the adult, an animal already confirmed to have a body count of several trained mercenaries, and spotted a small juvenile accompanying her. Delacourt plotted with his gang how to capture the little animal, laying a trap near their nest while they were away. Once the young was captured, they rammed Blue with Delacourt’s truck to knock her over a ravine and sped off with the juvenile in the truck’s bed. They handed their quarry off to a pilot called Kayla Watts who worked for Santos, and this was the last Delacourt saw of the animal.

Upon his arrival to Malta the following day, he entered the Amber Clave market, a hub of illegal trade where many of his specimens probably ended up. Live animals were for sale here, and betting on cockfights was open. Delacourt seems to have known a cook in the marketplace who sold the meat of de-extinct animals, including smoked cuts of prehistoric lamprey and skewered giant locusts; it is unknown if he ever partook in eating them. On this particular occasion, he met with Santos for another job: the transportation of four thoroughbred Atrociraptors (named Ghost, Red, Tiger, and Panthera) to Saudi Arabia.

Before he could begin, though, he was caught up in a sting operation by joint American and French intelligence operatives and forced to flee. While running through the Amber Clave, he knocked over several displays and cages to slow the pursuing Owen Grady, inadvertently freeing some of the smaller animals such as Compsognathus. The junior novelization describes Dimorphodons being freed as well, though their clipped wings prevented them from getting far. To create more obstacles for Grady, Delacourt freed two of the market’s largest theropods, a battle-scarred Carnotaurus and a female Allosaurus, which were scheduled to fight each other that summer. The carnotaur lunged at Delacourt, who was too close when it emerged from its crate; he backed up to avoid it, falling into a fighting pit and losing his sidearm. A juvenile Baryonyx, a veteran fighter with a prosthetic left arm, lashed out at him here. It targeted his head, but its chains kept it from reaching him and he escaped before it took aim anywhere else. Grady fought him in an adjoining pit when he attempted to get away; here, when he was knocked to the ground, his right hand became the object of ire for a very young Carnotaurus which was scheduled for an immediately-upcoming fight. Its opponent, a male Lystrosaurus called Leonard, was egged on by the carnotaur’s violent attack and bit Delacourt’s left hand. As Leonard crushed Delacourt’s hand and the carnotaur forced much of his forearm into its throat, the one-armed Baryonyx broke free of its restraints and closed in on the commotion. Delacourt’s head once again proved too tempting to resist, and the animal grabbed his skull in its jaws, killing him.

Portrayal

Rainn Delacourt is portrayed by Scott Haze. Originally, Colin Trevorrow simply described the character as a villain that audiences would want to root against, though he went through a few iterations; some early descriptions characterized him as a villainous parallel to Owen Grady. While in the final film they have little in common, they are portrayed as rivals who clash on a few occasions. In one of the earlier scripts, his name was Zane Maxin, and he worked directly for Biosyn rather than being contracted by Soyona Santos. He is not based on any character from Michael Crichton‘s novels, instead being an original character created for Jurassic World: Dominion.

While Trevorrow always intended for Delacourt to have a facial tattoo in order to give him a memorable look, Scott Haze was the one who suggested a snake to designer Sian Grigg. According to him, the snake is intended to be a black mamba, an homage to recently-deceased basketball player Kobe Bryant and his “mamba mentality.” Bryant, who used the nickname “Black Mamba” as a means of comparing his own accuracy on the court to that of the swift snake, was a major source of inspiration to Haze. The number 24 is less conspicuously tattooed on Delacourt’s chest; this references Bryant’s player number. Rainn Delacourt’s use of horses in the Sierra Nevada parallels Scott Haze’s own love of horses as well, though it is unknown if this similarity is deliberate or coincidental.