Minutes to Burn (2001) (65 page)

"That's all right," Samantha said. "I'll wait."

She sat down and picked up a People magazine. She tilted a brass lamp over so she could fix her hair in the reflection.

"Ms. Everett," the receptionist said, trying not to smile. "Or is it Dr.?"

"Either," Samantha said. "Whatever."

"I think I can free him up for a few minutes at the end of the hour." She scanned the appointment book. "But I'm not certain. Maybe you'd like to wait somewhere more comfortable?"

"Sure." Samantha shrugged. "Where would you suggest?"

The receptionist smiled shyly. "Maybe it's the mother of four in me, but I always like the nursery."

"Huh," Samantha said. "Actually, that sounds nice."

She left the office and crossed the street to the Nelson Building, riding the elevator up to the second floor. A row of chairs was arrayed outside the long window where expectant mothers and fathers could see their infants for the first time. Samantha sat in an orange plastic chair, tilting it back on two legs. She stared at the rows of gorgeous, smiling babies.

Closing her eyes, Samantha thought of the Darwin virus, safely frozen in the Revco freezer back at Fort Detrick. There were still many tests to be run so that they could better understand its etiology and pathogenic-ity. Maybe some of the infected dinoflagellates had survived and were out there now, floating around in the ocean, the virus ready to find its way into another species if circumstances allowed. She prayed silently that it wouldn't again rear its head. In her mind, she sorted through the events of the past week, searching for any mistakes she may have made, any errors in judgment. It was the heaviest burden of her job--making tough decisions when lives hung in the balance. Complete accountability was difficult, but she wouldn't have had it any other way. She wondered how long she had before another deadly virus found its way to her from the Kenyan jungles, the Amazon basin, the scrubby plains of Australia.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and she opened her eyes, seeing Dr.

Foster's reflection in the nursery window. He stood behind her quietly. She felt the warmth from his hand. They stayed silently like that for a few moments, Samantha sitting and Martin Foster standing behind her. Without turning around, she reached up and took his hand.

The peace was broken by a tray clattering to the ground somewhere out of sight. Iggy's voice sailed loud and clear around the corner. "Is this where the fat lady said mommy was?"

Kiera's voice followed. "It's not nice to say fat, you idiot. She was big-boned."

Samantha heard Danny laughing and Maricarmen trying to shush all three children, and a broad smile spread across her face. She leaned back in the chair, admiring the healthy newborns laid out before her, the warmth of Martin Foster's hand on her shoulder, the noise of her chil-dren growing closer. This is how it's supposed to be, she thought. This is really how it's supposed to be.

For the first time she could remember, she reached down and turned off her pager.

Chapter
77

G
orged with fruit, the wicker cornucopia seemed to stare back at Cameron and Justin from its perch on the table in the waiting room. The glass tabletop had broken in a recent tremor; it had been replaced temporarily by a piece of plywood. Next to them, a new mother bounced her baby on her knee, its little hands opening and closing, grab-bing at nothing. The baby hiccuped and giggled as the mother leaned forward. They rubbed noses.

Justin held Cameron's hand as they waited side by side, his shoulder bandage bulky under his shirt. Cameron shifted a little in the chair, ignoring the pain in her hip. Toying with her necklace absentmindedly, she noticed that the clasp had worked its way around to the front. Justin extended his hand, wiggling his fingers and flexing, testing out his muscles. The reconstructive surgeries had restored to him full control of his arm. Using cutting-edge technology, the doctors had even managed to repair the plexus of nerves that ran down the arm.

Fiddling her wedding ring on her finger with her thumb, she gazed blankly at a Child magazine sitting under the curved brass reading lamp. On the cover, a pudgy, grinning boy of about two sat with his legs kicked wide out in front of him. He smiled proudly at the tower of colorful blocks he had stacked between his legs.

Despite her apprehension, Cameron forced herself to stare at the dark, solid door to the right. The door without a peephole. She thought of the choice before her should the fetus turn out to be healthy. When she turned back to the yellow door, she felt better, almost empowered.

The Darwin virus had not appeared in her or Justin's bloodstream, and Rex, Diego, and Ramoncito had been cleared as well. Because Cameron was pregnant, Samantha had asked that she have a full workup six weeks after the end of the mission, including a prenatal intake, chori-onic villus sampling, and a set of ultrasounds. The results awaited.

Diego had returned to Sangre de Dios, further sanitizing everything that had been in contact with the virus--the specimen freezer, the ves-tiges of the two camps, the areas where the mantids and larvae had been burned. He'd also set three more GPS units, finally completing the net-work.

Next to Cameron, the mother whispered lovingly to the baby as she burped him. Evidently he had spit up, because she dabbed at her blouse with a little white towel. The towel was decorated with cabooses.

Some footsteps sounded down the corridor, shoes clicking on tile.

The mother gazed at the cheerful yellow door ahead, then turned a kind smile to Cameron.

"So exciting, isn't it?" she asked.

Cameron looked at her, expressionless.

The door swung open, and the stocky Italian nurse filled the doorway, hunched slightly at the shoulders. The rings under her eyes looked dark, even darker than Cameron had remembered. Her hair stood out in graying wisps.

"Kates," the nurse said, her teeth discolored and crooked. "Cameron Kates. Your results are in. The doctor would like to discuss them with you."

Cameron felt Justin squeeze her neck reassuringly. She rose calmly. Justin kept his hand on her back to steady her as they followed the nurse back.

The room was small and claustrophobic. Cameron slowly undressed, put on the gown, and slid up onto the exam table, crinkling the paper. A small notch of a scar crested her deltoid where her transmitter had been removed.

When she heard the doorknob turn, Cameron felt panic spreading through her, but she fought to quell it. Dr. Birnbaum entered, a bearded man with kind blue eyes. He glanced down at a chart, scratching his cheek with a pen. Cameron and Justin stared at him, eyes wide, too nervous to speak.

"I just got off the phone with Dr. Everett at the NIH," he said. "And together we concluded that your results are totally normal. It looks like you have a healthy baby on your hands." His smile lessened when he looked at Cameron. "Should you elect to keep it."

Cameron had thought she'd feel nothing, so she was completely unprepared for the wave of emotion that swept through her. Her mind danced across a landscape of memories, spinning with images. She thought of the larva, bucking and squealing and dying. She thought of the gnarled little creature on the floor of the Estradas' house. She thought of Derek and Jacqueline and their baby girl. She thought of all the frightful things she had seen--so many reasons to be afraid, so many reasons to pull back into herself where everything was neat and safe.

"Baby?" Justin was asking. "Do you want to? Do you think you're ready?" His eyes were as soft as they'd ever been--brave yet intensely vulnerable.

She could barely hear him because she was so far down in herself, swimming in fear and excitement and sheer elation. The answer was there like a bright beam of light, and with it came tears, hard and unremitting. She was pressing her face against his chest, weeping with joy, and from somewhere far away she heard herself saying yes over and over like a prayer.

Chapter
78

The
island's last remaining feral dog nosed through the ash and debris of the base camp, looking for food. Her paws were ragged, one of her nails torn off from a fight with another bitch. She'd caught a masked booby chick the previous day, which she'd eaten right in front of its squawking mother, sliding down to her belly and savoring the meal. But the hunger had returned again quickly, greeting her in the morning with the rising sun.

Maybe it was because she was pregnant.

She tugged on a scorched edge of canvas, searching for something edible beneath, but there was nothing, just a warped cruise box and a dented canteen. Finally giving up, she trotted toward the road, her head barely protruding from the high grass.

Leaping gracefully among the fallen balsas, she nosed her way through the cracks of the trunks, but again there was nothing. She was just about ready to head to the forest when she caught a whiff of some-thing faint, lining the southern wind.

She jogged up the road toward the source of the smell, her nose ele-vated and twitching. Stopping at the base of the watchtower, she sat, peering up its length.

In the shed at the top, the desiccated body of the larva lay beneath the dangling hook, protected by the shade of the shed. The abdomen and thorax had long rotted away in the sweltering heat, but the sclerotized head had just begun to crack. Green hemolymph oozed out, working its way slowly down the side rail of the dilapidated ladder, its pungent odor thick in the air. The bitch sat, head cocked, watching the ripe fluid slowly descend.

In the distance, the dot of a boat appeared on the horizon, Diego on the deck, Ramoncito laughing and swinging from the boom. It was still a good few hours away from shore.

The hemolymph pooled momentarily above a crooked 2 x 4 that served as one of the ladder's steps before spilling over and snaking the rest of the way down the side rail.

The dog stepped forward and began lapping.

Mission to Darwin's Backyard: An Interview with Gregg...

From his apartment in Los Angeles, the author responded to questions from Perfect-Bound on May 14, 2001.

PB: Minutes to Burn is a broad-ranging novel that incorporates numerous genres and fields. How would you label it?

GAH: Well, that's the problem, really. The book has a strong military component, but it's certainly not a straightforward military thriller. A virus plays a key role in the plot, but I'm not focused exclusively on that either. One of my aims in writing this book was to incorporate those aspects of thrillers I like--the military thriller, the Crichton science thriller, travel-adventure books in the tradition of Into Thin Air--and create something wholly new. Minutes to Burn is really an eco-thriller because it's not about the location alone, or the virus, or the animals of Galapagos, but rather the way all these things come together at a particu-lar time within a specific environment, to form a stressful and dangerous series of events. Ozone depletion, scorching sunlight, earth-shattering quakes--these aren't even the main concerns our protagonists have to contend with, they're merely the backdrop of this mission on which they embark.

PB: And though it features a creature, it's not a "creature book."

GAH: No, it's not. Most projects of this type with which we're famil-iar--Them or Aliens, for instance--feature these horrifying creatures that we know immediately are trouble. We know the right decision is for the protagonists to kill them. Here, I wanted to present a conflict closer to how it might occur in the real world. If a new species of animal was dis-covered in the Galapagos, one of the most important protected parks in the world, how would events really proceed? How would we treat this scientific phenomenon? I wanted to capture some of that excitement. Now what if you hypothesized that this animal might grow predatory, and what if you were alone on an island with it? That's a real problem with no easy solution. There's a legitimate environmentalist argument to be made, but also a legitimate protect-your-ass argument. If you were an ardent preservationist, but you were stuck alone in a room with a gun and a hungry panther, all of a sudden your options and convictions change. Perhaps.

PB: And the debate between the group on the mission--a squad of Navy SEALs and several scientists--progresses from there.

GAH: Yes, but I would hope in an unpredictable fashion. I wanted to portray a sufficiently ambiguous scenario so that members of both camps--the SEALs and the scientists--could make arguments for either side. So we have some unusual allegiances and some instances of perceived betrayal.

PB: There seems to be a variety of personalities among the Navy SEALs alone.

GAH: Well, I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with a broad range of team members, from old-school guys who'd been in for twenty years, to younger members who'd done a three-year stint, then gone into another line of work. The differences and occasional friction among old-and new-school was really interesting to me, and I made a point of repre-senting it in the book. William Savage is a hardcore, old-school, un-PC, take-no-prisoners warrior, yet he finds himself under the command of a younger, more politically aware, perhaps less operationally gifted crew.

PB: You portray the SEALs and the military-relevant aspects of the mis-sion very convincingly. Do you have a military background?