Minutes to Burn (2001) (20 page)

Diego watched. "Beautiful," he murmured. "So beautiful."

Juan stepped back, the redness fading from his face. He glanced around at the others, ashamed for losing his composure.

"We'll pay you well," Derek said.

Diego's laugh was tinged with lunacy. "Pay me in bullets."

"I'm sorry," Derek said. "I don't understand. How much do you want?"

Diego rose, slapping his hands together. "Two shots of bourbon. One neat, one on the rocks." He rose and glanced down at himself. "After I shower."

He walked past the others, pausing beside Juan for a moment. Juan looked down uncomfortably. Diego raised a hand to pat him on the side but lowered it again when he saw it was covered with blood. He headed down the walk back toward the Station.

"Come," he said.

Diego sat contentedly at the bar before two shots, one poured over ice. He threw back the first, set it on the counter, and took a sip from the second. Tucker watched hungrily, working the thimble on his key chain. He was drinking passion-fruit juice. A feral kitten had sneaked into the bar. It was playing near the door, sharpening its claws on a wicker chair.

The Galapason, a tropical theme bar at the eastern end of Avenida Charles Darwin, was open to the scorching sun, though a few pieces of plywood were laid across the high rafters, creating sporadic patches of shade. A pool table stood in the center of the bar, one leg propped up with a mound of old books. Hammocks swayed between 4x4s, and painted bas-reliefs of parrots stared out from the walls. A back alcove housed a junkyard tangle of broken furniture. A rat scurried across the dirt floor, disappearing between the yellow crates of Pilsener bottles, and the orange crates that held the smaller Club empties.

The soldiers were still finishing a ceviche of octopus, spiced with aji.It was served with soft, flattened potato patties mixed with campo cheese and onions and topped with salsa de mani, a peanut sauce. Savage signaled the bartender for another beer, which arrived quickly. He held up the bottle, regarding the upside-down Pilsener label.

Diego shrugged. "Ecuador," he said.

Cameron and Derek had grabbed a quick snack and left to stand guard over the gear, freeing up Szabla and Justin to eat. The soldiers and scientists sat in a row along the bar, ignoring the scurrying rats and the faint aroma of urine in the musty air. There were a few locals at the scat-tered tables, and two men played pool on the uneven table.

Having showered, loaded a bag with supplies, and changed into jeans and a long-sleeved nylon T-shirt, Diego was prepared to brave the sun and push out for Sangre de Dios. He drained the second whiskey.

The kitten rolled onto its back and swatted at the underside of the wicker chair. Diego glanced at it with enmity. After it put on a few pounds, it would be out like the other feral dogs and cats, scouring the landscape for tortoise eggs and land iguanas.

"You know," Rex said, "even if I set the GPS equipment on Sangre, we'll still need someone to receive the telemetric information here and relay it back to the States via computer."

"Well," Diego said, "you'll have to show me how the equipment works."

"I thought you retired," Juan said.

"That was the pig blood talking." Diego rose. "Let's get the gear set up at the Station. Then I'll pull the boat in and we'll load up."

They rose and headed for the door. Diego picked up the kitten by its tail on his way out. He stepped outside, twirled it once in the air, and smacked it against the wall. He tossed the limp body into a nearby trash can and started for the Station.

Chapter
24

T
hey didn't have the luxury of waiting for dusk to avoid extreme UV exposure. Before they loaded the gear on El Pescador Rico, Diego made them wash their boots at the pier, in case they were caked with dirt hiding seeds, insect eggs, or other communicable material. Cameron was fascinated by the ritual--it was hard for her to believe that the ecology of each island was so fragile that it could be upset by the transport of a single seed. Though Sangre de Dios had already been compromised eco-logically, Diego claimed that it could be further damaged by introduced species. Diego made Tucker throw out an apple he'd had in his kit bag since Guayaquil, and Savage had to hide his cigarettes in the top pocket of his shirt to save them from a similar fate.

The boat had been beautifully kept up--Cameron noticed Diego scrape some dried blood off the bow with his fingernail before board
ing
. Rex sat quietly on a cruise box, holding the padded nylon bags in his lap as they struck out for Sangre de Dios. Diego kept them motoring west at about eight knots. Derek threw the two Sigs back in the weapons box and locked it.

They rounded Isabela's southern end, the foot of the massive island's boot. Smoke, visible even through the mist, curled ominously from the peaks of Cerro Azul and Sierra Negra. Fernandina came into view only as they left Isabela behind, settled back in the larger island's west bay. The odor of fresh lava thickened the air, making the heat even more oppressive. Finally, the sun began its drift to the water, looming ahead until it extinguished itself in the Pacific.

Save the reflections of the stars and the occasional glimmer of dead fish floating on the surface, the ocean was suddenly black. The breeze smelled clean, full of salt and distant vegetation. A full moon glowed overhead like a hole through the sky. Nearly twenty hours after they left Puerto Ayora, the moonlit, shadowy outline of Sangre de Dios cut from the mist, the crown of a timid, pelagic animal come to surface.

The squad members stirred and stretched. Justin laced his fingers and turned his palms outward, cracking his knuckles. Tank yawned. Savage flipped his Death Wind in his hand and deftly jammed it into his sheath. He caught Szabla watching him, but she quickly looked away. Cameron took note of the curt movements and restless gestures with some con-cern. After time off on the reserves, they'd all been slowly finding their feet the past few days. Normally, when transiting, the soldiers sat still and firm or prepared their gear. On this mission, however, there was nothing to prepare for. Just more waiting.

Concerned that the others' quiet unease would contaminate her, Cameron rose to stretch her legs. Juan was standing by himself, watching the water splash against the bow. She walked over and leaned on the railing beside him. The hull cleaved a luminous white groove in the black pane of the ocean.

"We've always been wrong, you know," he said.

"No," Cameron said with a slight smile. "I didn't."

"That we are the royalty of the earth, that we should have dominion over the land and the seas because we are the most upright creatures that inhabit it."

Something about Juan's expression made Cameron refrain from com-menting.

"All our importance has been robbed," he continued. "Before Coper-nicus, we thought we were the center of the universe; before Darwin, we thought we were created of the heavens." He chuckled, rubbing his chin. "Before Freud, we thought we were masters of our own minds." He gazed down at the waters below, tapping his ring on the railing. "And now this. Betrayed by the skies and the tides, by the earth's obligation to remain beneath our feet." He chuckled, but his eyes were pained.

"Not much of a point in faith anymore," Cameron said.

Juan looked over at her, surprised. "That's your conclusion?" he asked. He shook his head. "You must make your own faith. Your own little place in the midst of this chaos. Hold onto it like nothing else. That's what we all must do. Is that not why you joined the military?"

Cameron leaned forward, feeling the salty breeze across her cheeks. "Nothing quite so lofty," she said.

"Why then?"

She shrugged. "I never belonged anywhere. The teams gave me that. They gave me a place to belong."

Juan nodded, his mouth set in a firm line. "But they took something too, no?"

"Like what?"

He thumbed the edge of his ring but did not answer.

She felt herself growing defensive in the silence. "The military made an unquestioning commitment to me, and so I made one to it." She laughed, though she wasn't sure at what. "There are no complications for me here. Never." A small wave hit the bow and sent a splash onto her cammy shirt. She smoothed her thumb over the dark spot. "That's why I'm such a good goddamn soldier."

The boat banked and Cameron pushed off the railing and headed aft. She sat in silence for a few moments, watching Diego navigate the smooth waters as they closed on the island.

Cameron had glanced through the scant intel charts and maps during the tedious ride out. A roughly circular blob, Sangre de Dios had been formed by the Cerro Verde Volcano. It rose to an altitude of 515 meters at the apex of the dormant volcano. The peak sat off center, more than a kilometer in from the eastern coastline, a yolk floating to the right in a fried egg. From its peak to the eastern shore, the ground sloped sharply down to a cliff where, hundreds of years ago, an old fissure had fallen away, leaving only a vertical face. The stretch to the western coast fol-lowed a more gradual slope--eight degrees to the east side's twenty-- and on this half of the island the vegetation zones were strikingly apparent: the coastal zone, the arid zone, the transition zone, and the Scalesia zone which capped the summit, forming a fertile apron of forest interrupted only by the caldera at the top. These zones ran in bands around the island, so distinct one could mark the actual line at the eleva
tion
s where one zone ended and another began.

El Pescador Rico approached the southeast edge of Sangre de Dios. A sheltered cove, Bahia Avispa, came into view, lined with a white beach. Diego swung wide to avoid the rare coral reef that fringed the bay's east-ern side. Sections of the reef had splintered in the quakes, leaving the bay full of jagged edges. He headed instead for Punta Berlanga, the western tip of the sheltered cove. A protruding horn, Punta Berlanga was named after the Bishop of Panama, Fray Tomas de Berlanga, who had accidentally discovered the islands in 1535. A mottled rise of salt-eroded columns and cliffs overlooking a stretch of flat, hardened pahoe-hoe lava, Punta Berlanga received the brunt of the prevailing southeast winds and waves. On the far edge of the point, a series of blowholes erupted with a screech as the heavy surf forced geysers through the porous rock.

A decrepit wooden pier stretched out from the hard pahoehoe lava. There were no boats anchored. When they drew near, they saw that the pier was a splintered mess, destroyed in the last quake.

Diego cursed. "We'll have to drop anchor out here and Zodiac in to the point."

He slowed the boat, letting it crawl behind a string of tuff cones about a mile off the coast. Born of the violent interaction of water and molten rock, the tuff cones were composed of agglomerated ash. Sculpted by the tides and wind-worn on their southeast sides, they stuck ten to fifteen feet out of the water, the crooked fingers of a submerged giant. Several sea lions awakened on the tuff cones, barking at the approaching boat.

Diego's brow furrowed. "I've never seen them swim out here before. This colony usually congregates on the beach."

He set the bow and stern lines, then dragged the Zodiac overboard and cracked the bottle, holding the small boat steady as it unfolded. The sea was still, as before a storm, though the weather forecast was clear. "We'll have to take the Zodiac in in shifts," he said.

"From here on out, buddy pairs are in full effect," Derek said. "Same as in Guayaquil. Juan, you join Tank and Rex."

The boat rocked and Rex stumbled, leaning against the cabin wall and knocking Diego's speargun from its mount. The speargun bounced on the slippery deck and disappeared into the dark waters with a splash. Diego shook his head but said nothing. First into the Zodiac, Tank offered Rex a hand, which Rex ignored. Diego, Szabla, Juan, and Justin followed, hauling their kit bags and loading the majority of the boxes.

From his seat near the throttle, Diego pointed to a backpack still on El Pescador Rico. "We'll need that," he said. Derek handed the bag down to Justin, who opened it, revealing a PRC104 high-frequency radio.

"In case we need to contact the Flintstones?" Justin asked. He tapped his shoulder near the transmitter bump. "We got comms covered."

Diego shook his head. "Our satellite radio at the Station overloaded," he said. "The only way to reach anyone in Puerto Ayora is with this."

Justin nodded, looping the bag over his shoulders, and Diego cranked the throttle. The Zodiac sped off, the sound of the engine fading into that of the waves. The others sat in the rocking boat and waited. Savage unsnapped the button on his knife sheath, then snapped it again with a click. After a while, Cameron heard the drone of the approaching motor. Diego steered the empty Zodiac to the side of the boat, thumping against the wood.

Cameron tossed her kit bag into the Zodiac and hopped down. The others grabbed several more cruise boxes and the weapons box and fol-lowed her. They motored quietly to shore.

Waves seethed up the barren, rocky shore at Punta Berlanga, sending crabs scuttling across the moist, black lava and through the tide pools. Large blocks of rock rose in the foreground of the sculpted cliffs, stained white with guano. The wind lazed slow and steady, rousing an occasional swallow-tailed gull from its roost.

To the right, the beach stretched along the curve of Bahia Avispa, a white strip. Glancing west to east, Cameron saw the abrupt line where the upthrust blocks of Punta Berlanga ended, giving way to the low sand dunes protected by the reef and subject to the quiet erosion of the southeast tide.