Minutes To Burn Part 17

"What were you two doing?" Justin asked.

"Jealous?" Rex interjected, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes," Justin said. "I've been desperately pursuing Savage, but he won't give me the time of day."

Savage approached the group, making no effort to speed up. Noting Derek's irritation, Cameron checked her watchface. 0759. Savage pulled up within the minute, calmly swept his hair back under his bandanna, and smiled at Derek innocently.

"All right," Derek said. "Diego, why don't you lead the others to the village so they can set base camp? I'm thinking we should set down in the eastern pasture, the one across the road from Frank's old camp. The village is deserted except for one family."

"A husband and wife," Diego said. "The woman is embarra.s.sed."

The others looked at him, nonplused. He stared at the sky, checking his English. "Pregnant," he corrected. "She's pregnant."

"Frank Friedman disappeared without bothering to pack his belong-ings," Derek said. "And he'd ordered a huge freezer to store specimens of some sort. Something weird went down around there."

"You don't buy that superst.i.tious nonsense, do you?" Rex asked. Cameron smirked-now that he'd put some distance between himself and Frank's camp, Rex was feeling tough and scientific again.

"You're the one with the missing colleague," Derek said.

"It's important that we not lose focus of our objectives," Rex said.

"Christ," Szabla muttered. "He's turned into Cameron."

"Frank probably got stuck in a lava tube somewhere or shot in Guayaquil," Rex continued. "I hardly think the tree monster got him."

"Tree monster?" Tucker asked.

Savage let his breath out in a quiet hiss of a laugh. "Tree monster," he said. "I've seen a few of them before."

"Tall tales have been trickling in from this island for years," Diego said. "But this tree monster is a new one."

"I want you to exercise caution," Derek said. He rubbed his temples, as if staving off a headache. "Stick near to camp, maybe scout the area a little bit. Me and Cam'll a.s.sist Rex with the first GPS unit, and we'll muster at the base in a few hours." When he looked over at her, Cameron was taken aback by the dark circles beneath his eyes.

Rex removed the equipment he needed to set one GPS unit, and he, Derek, and Cameron left the others grumbling around the gear. It would be a tedious hike for them, given that Tank could barely walk and would be unable to carry his share of the load. Diego gamely declined to join Rex, offering to help the others move upland.

After navigating the narrow trail up the cliffs, Rex headed west, occa-sionally consulting his Brunton compa.s.s and squatting to tap the ground with his rock hammer. Over his left shoulder, he'd looped one of the circu-lar nylon bags. Derek bore a tripod base in similar fashion, using the leather strap attached to one leg as a sling. Cameron hauled a backpack full of addi-tional gear. They waited patiently as Rex started and stopped, a.s.sessed and thought. He spent at least ten minutes at every fissure, jotting down meas-urements in a small notepad he kept wedged in his shirt pocket.

The sun hammered down on them. Rex felt his skin baking even through the thick layer of sunblock. They finally arrived at a flat wedge of pahoehoe onto which the surrounding saltbush had not yet encroached. Though it was an older flow, it had remained coherent, hav-ing survived the cooling with minimal cracking. It had already been instrumented, and Rex toed the weatherproof case of the old seismo-graph with disdain.

A pair of waved albatross clattered through their courtship dance, nuzzling beaks, sky-pointing, and exchanging squawks, but Rex hardly noticed. He focused instead on the basalt, taking into account its align-ment with the slope, and the readings from the Brunton compa.s.s. It looked stable, the lava less vesicular and porous than that surrounding it. He banged on it with his rock hammer and got back a nice "ping." More fractured rock would have absorbed the sound, giving off a duller "thud," but this stretch of lava was, for the most part, unjointed. He finally rose, tapping the rock hammer in his palm. "This'll do."

Cameron swung the heavy backpack off her shoulders, setting it down on the ground with a thump. "What the h.e.l.l's in this?" she asked. "Concrete?"

"Actually, yes." Rex removed a small bag of cement, then a gas-powered hand drill. He went to work on the ground, drilling out a circu-lar, six-inch indentation.

"What does this do exactly?" Cameron asked, indicating the equip-ment with a sweep of her hand.

Rex leaned back, sitting on his heels. He removed a bra.s.s plate from the backpack, to which was attached a one-inch hollow rod that extended vertically downward. A U.S. Geological Survey seal was stamped in the metal, and the center was notched with a broad cross. He drilled the plate into the ground, burying the rod in the lava.

"This plate is what we refer to as a 'benchmark,' " he said. "The GPS units as a whole measure the rates of deformation of the earth's crust, using the benchmark sites as reference points."

Rex signaled for the tripod, and Derek handed it to him. Once snapped open, the tripod was about five feet tall. Rex screwed a tribrach mounting plate into the top of the tripod, then centered it above the benchmark. He poured water from his canteen into the Redi-Mix sacrete and began stirring.

"These units are capable of capturing the lat.i.tude, longitude, and ver-tical position of this point down to millimeter accuracy. Once we get five more GPS units in place, we'll have a whole network by which to judge any surface deformation. If the earth trembles, shifts, slides, cracks, or wiggles, we'll know it."

Derek leaned over and helped him cement the legs of the tripod in place. When they finished, Rex stood and carefully unzipped the padded nylon case, revealing a thin, discoid antenna. He mounted it atop the tri-brach, snapping it into place with its built-in clamps, then connecting it with a cord to a computer he pulled from Cameron's bag. He placed the computer in a tough, yellow briefcase, took off his Panama, and wiped his brow with his shirt sleeve.

Derek clapped his hands once. "All right," he said. "Let's. .h.i.t it."

Rex smiled. "Oh no," he said. "That was the easy part. The antenna has to be perfectly horizontal." He began to turn the k.n.o.bs on the tri-brach, delicately adjusting the tilt and glancing at the leveling bubbles.

Cameron took a gulp from her canteen and tossed it to Derek. When it became clear that Rex's meticulous adjustments would take a while, she sat down on the ground. Feeling a fleck of dirt beneath her right contact, she removed it, cleaned it in her mouth, and popped it back in. When she ran a sleeve across her forehead, it felt tender. The beginnings of a sunburn.

A mockingbird bounced out from the cover of a saltbush. Pausing, Rex raised his hand, forming a loose fist and kissing his curled index fin-ger, making a shrill, squeaking call. The mockingbird bounced up to Derek, fluttering its dusty brown wings. It peered up at the shiny metal canteen, and he pulled it back out of sight.

"You won't find many shy animals here," Rex said, turning his atten-tion back to the tripod. "They've grown up in a paradise of sorts. No native predators, abundant food, little exposure to man."

In a sudden burst, the mockingbird flew up and landed on Derek's head, its white underbelly brushing against his hair. It leaned over Derek's forehead and took a hesitant peck at one of his eyebrows, the jet of its tail feathers shooting straight up in the air.

Cameron laughed. Derek tossed the canteen on the ground, and the mockingbird flew over, balancing carefully on it and pecking it curiously.

Having established the baseline position, Rex engaged the antenna's self-leveling mechanism and stepped back. He glanced up at the sun, his squint resembling a scowl. "All set," he said.

A wave of fatigue struck Cameron when she stood, leaving her light-headed. She resisted the urge to rest a hand on her stomach.

Derek grabbed her shoulder gently to steady her. She laughed, a high-pitched, unnatural stutter. "Just sitting down too long," she said.

Derek looked at her with concern, then bent over and picked up the canteen, causing the mockingbird to flutter off to a nearby saltbush. It called to him in a shrill burst of annoyance. Rex leaned over, beginning to pack up the installing equipment.

Derek offered the canteen back to Cameron, but she shook her head. His eyes dropped from her face to her stomach briefly, and she turned away self-consciously.

"We'd better get you out of this sun," he said.

CHAPTER 31.

--------------------- reathing hard, Szabla and Diego swung a cruise box down onto the gra.s.s beside the others. Justin followed suit with an armful of can-teens and two kit bags. It had been their third trip hauling gear up the slope from the beach, and they were ready for a break. Savage had been surprisingly quiet, working with the steady a.s.surance of a mule.

They'd been stacking the supplies in the middle of a large field on the east side of the road, about a hundred yards from the Scalesia line up-slope. The balsas along the road cleft the two fields, blocking Ramn and Floreana Estrada's house from view.

"Introduced species," Diego said, pointing with a grimace at the twin-ning strips of trees along the road, taller and thicker than their endemic counterparts. "Balsas. Planted here by voyaging Norwegians close to seventy years ago. They cut down the Scalesias to clear pastures but left those aliens to spread." A lone quinine stuck out from the alley of balsas, its smooth, reddish bark striking a contrast with the gray balsa trunks. "I hate those G.o.dd.a.m.n trees." He went back to his bag, digging for his can-teen.

Tank limped over to a giant tortoise and sat on it heavily. It settled on the leathery stumps of its legs, retracting its head sleepily into its sh.e.l.l and emitting a hiss. Tank glanced down the road, past the watchtower to the sea.

"Get off the tortoise," Diego snapped.

Tank struggled to rise but could not. He kneaded the muscles of his thighs, the sun catching his scalp through his flattop. Diego turned away in anger.

"You'd better heal your s.h.i.t up," Szabla said to Tank. "You're sup-posed to be our workhorse. All this pulled muscle c.r.a.p's getting old real fast." She crossed her arms, appraising the others. "Since I'm the b.i.t.c.h in the group, I'm gonna play housekeeper and get camp up." She pointed to Savage and Tucker. "Why don't you two run a quick surveillance, edge of the forest? Get the lay."

Savage looked up. Spit. "Why us?"

"Because I'm the ranking officer and I don't feel like doing it," Szabla said. She flashed a dead grin. "Move your s.h.i.t."

Savage and Tucker walked side by side to the front rank of Scalesias. As they rose, the trees seemed to spread to bouquets, green, intertwining sprays that resembled broccoli tops. Vines twisted their way down the thin, scrubby trunks as if seeking out Amazonian waters. Small pepper plants waved in the breeze. Savage stopped.

Tucker rotated his Iron Man watch around his wrist to clear the sweat from beneath it. "What is it?"

Savage closed his eyes. Behind them, the wind hummed through the watchtower. Two dragonflies zoomed together in a crazed dance, and a cow mooed somewhere in the distance. The heat came off the ground in waves. Opening his eyes again, he stared into the forest, seeing how it grew dense and claustrophobic just a few paces in.

"Nothing," he said. He stepped forward, and Tucker fell in behind him. Though they'd never called wind for each other, and though they were both years from their last mission, they fell into a recon step by force of habit, patrolling about fifteen meters apart-the distance of a frag grenade's casualty radius.

The trunks leaned and bent; one even swooped in a loop-de-loop before rising up and sprouting branches. In places, the bark was overrun by bright, red-orange lichen. Thick with yellow b.u.t.terfly leaves, pa.s.sion-fruit vines hung from the trees like scarves. Where they'd died, they were thin and brittle, holding the trunks in fragile embrace.

Savage made his way through the dense terrain, a.s.sessing the wilder-ness around him. Elsewhere on the island, the creatures were curious and unafraid, having evolved to lounge in safety. Marine iguanas could be picked up by their tails; hawks could be pushed from trees with shovel handles; turtles could be piggybacked to deeper waters. There was even something frank about the vegetation of the other zones; the solitary sil-houette of the cactus against the sky, the vulnerable stands of man-grove, the exposed dots of the palo santos s.p.a.ced like trees in an orchard.

The forest alone held secrets. Treetops dusted with mist. Strange calls from unseen birds. Large rocks that rumbled and walked away on tor-toise legs.

A vermilion flycatcher swooped between the leaves, a bright red dart in the shady understory, and Tucker grinned, pointing and looking over at Savage. But Savage wasn't there. Tucker spun to his right, where he'd last seen him. Savage let out a high-pitched whistle and Tucker turned again. His reddish beard shaped in a smile, Savage stood five yards off behind him. A tiny star spider scurried across a leaf inches from his face.

Tucker ran his tongue along the inside of his lip. "Didn't see you walk over there."

"I didn't. I floated." Savage shot him a quick wink. "Why don't I take point for a while?" Tucker nodded his consent, but Savage had already turned and headed off into the foliage. Tucker followed him into the shadows.

Not a trace remained of their casual, off-duty att.i.tudes. They moved like two legs of a single animal-always maintaining s.p.a.ce and close-ness, forging ahead with a consistency of pace and movement. Savage's shirt was soaked through with sweat, the sleeves clinging to his biceps when he swung his arms. He fell into a trance of sorts, letting his eyes blur so they took in the plants and birds and dappled shadows.

The parts of the creature's mouth bristled eagerly in antic.i.p.ation. She sensed the presence of something living with her antennae and from the subtle vibrations of the ground. She rotated her head so that she could view her surroundings directly through the center of her compound eye, where her vision was sharpest. Her binocular vision enabled her acute depth of field perception.

The approaching prey triggered special receptors in her head, and she sent out nerve impulses, expertly gauging the distance and angle of her impending strike.

Underfoot, the clay gave way to mud, Savage's boots making a wet suck-ing noise when he pulled them free. He slowed, the span of his shoul-ders a green stroke against the cooler green of the forest. His hand flickered out to his side. It moved just three inches in the dim light, but Tucker halted immediately. Lowering his foot, Tucker eased his weight down gradually, even after his boot struck the mud.

They stood in perfect stillness for a long time before even daring to turn their heads and look around. Savage gazed at the line of trees, his eyes fighting to adjust to the shadows and small patches of intense sun-light. He backed up to Tucker, his blade out and hanging loose at his side. He moved slowly, making no sound save the brush of his cammies. He halted next to Tucker. They waited, listening in the breeze.

"There's something there," Savage said softly. His face was slick with the humidity, dark with sweat at the sides of his head along the edge of the bandanna.

He and Tucker stood side by side, breathing in unison. They stared ahead at the shadows, the trunks of the trees, the waving leaves. Some-thing wasn't right up ahead, but Savage couldn't put his finger on it.

The sky cracked with lightning, followed quickly by thunder. They heard the rain before they saw it, pattering atop the leaves of the canopy. It filtered down to them slowly, trickling through the network of tree-tops and branches. The air around them split in several narrow falls of water. "What do you think?" Tucker whispered.

Savage looked ahead again, but the surroundings were losing focus. "The rain's gonna cut visibility and the ground'll go to s.h.i.t. Even more."

"Any bears or anything like that?"

Savage shook his head. "No predators. Just a hawk or two, a harmless snake. Nothing dangerous in here."

Tucker shook off a chill. "Guess we just spooked."

Savage reached out a hand, letting a stream splash onto his palm. "Been known to happen," he said. He glanced back into the forest, the air gray and heavy with rain. "Let's see if those slippers made it back to base yet."

He kept the lead on the way back.

CHAPTER 32.

--------------------- ase camp was set by the time Cameron, Derek, and Rex returned, the five tents spotting the pasture. The sky over the forest was clear now; the rainfall had stopped as quickly as it had begun, never straying beyond the high alt.i.tude side of the transition zone. The gra.s.s around the base camp and the canvas tents were wet.

Since they were short on white fuel for the hurricane lamps, Tucker, Diego, and Justin cleared a fire pit. There was plenty of wood to burn, and in addition to providing light, a fire would make a good gathering site. Finding a few trees that had fallen in the recent earthquake, they'd rolled over the broken segments of trunk to serve as benches. Then, they'd torn up the gra.s.s within the ring of logs to ensure the fire wouldn't spread, leaving only a circle of dirt.

Tank had fallen asleep sitting on the tortoise, which was now walking slowly toward a mud wallow. His boots dragged along the ground, his head lolling with each of the tortoise's tedious steps. He'd accidentally left an empty cruise box open beside his tent during the rainfall; it had caught the water running off the tent roof in its waterproof liner, filling with water.

Szabla shadowboxed behind her tent. Savage whittled something into the bark of a nearby quinine tree. He didn't bother to look over as Cameron, Rex, and Derek approached. Though she'd been looking for-ward to seeing him, Cameron shot Justin a stern glance as he approached, to stop him from greeting her warmly.

The team circled up around the fire pit, pulling out their meals, ready to eat. Sealed in thick brown plastic bags, the MREs were high-energy, high-protein, and easy to prepare. Savage sliced the top of the tough plastic with his Death Wind and slid the contents out onto the ground- a plastic spoon, a vacuum-sealed cookie bar, a tiny Tabas...o...b..ttle, apple jelly in a tube, cocoa beverage powder, vacuum-sealed crackers and tube cheese, cardboard boxes holding pouches of potatoes au gratin and ham omelet, and a packet containing gum, coffee grounds, matches, sugar, salt, and a few pieces of toilet paper for when the need arose, as Justin often put it, to "take a squeeze."

A long, thin plastic heat bag warmed up when exposed to water. Sav-age filled it from his canteen, slid the omelet pouch inside, stuffed the whole thing back into the cardboard casing, and set it at a tilt against a nearby rock.

Tank lay flat to rest his intercostals, his hands laced across the back of his neck. Justin was already digging into his meal, spooning mushy bar-becue pork into his mouth. Rex watched him with disgust until Szabla tossed him a heated MRE pouch.

Rex glanced at the carton. "Tuna with noodles? You expect me to eat this?"

"Sorry, princess," Szabla said, squeezing a tube of cheese onto a cracker. "We're outta lobster."

"What chemicals are used to heat this c.r.a.p?" Rex asked angrily, reach-ing for Szabla's heater bag. Szabla slapped his hand, and he withdrew it, surprised.

"Doubt they're biodegradable, Doc, if that's your concern," Savage said through a mouthful of cookie bar.

"Heaters and processed food." Rex shook his head. "So much waste. Did you know geothermal energy sources could provide the world's energy twenty times over?"

"Fascinating," Szabla said.

"But what do we have instead? What legacy do we leave? Ozone depletion, acid rain, anthropogenic emissions, industrial pollution, nuclear waste, urban smog, high-alt.i.tude cooling, increasing global mean surface temperature, fossil fuel combustion, bioma.s.s burning, defor-estation. We're like children. Stupid, vicious children." Rex paused, exas-perated. "What's next?"

"The Red Sox'll win the World Series." Szabla leaned forward, forked a hunk of tuna noodles from Rex's pouch, and ate it. Tank grabbed the pouch from Rex and tilted it back over his open mouth, emptying it.

Derek stuck his spoon into his apple jelly tube and turned it upside down like a Popsicle before throwing it aside. Cameron eyed the tube in the gra.s.s. "Diet?" she asked.

Derek ran a hand over his stubble, and Cameron noticed how gaunt he looked. "Yeah," he said. "Need to slim down for swimsuit season."