Minutes to Burn Page 19

  Tucker smeared a handful of sunblock across her shoulders, rubbing it high on her neck and along the rims of her ears. Justin eyed the sun-block across Szabla's back. "I don't see what you need that shit for, given you're a native people."

  Szabla turned to face him with a half-smile. "You'd better watch your mouth, boy, or I'll tell your wife to bitch-slap your shit in line like she normally does."

  "Please don't," Justin said. "She's been doing a lot of curls lately."

  "Where the hell did Savage go?" Szabla asked, looking around.

  Tucker pointed down across the face of the cliffs. "He wandered off that way while you were pulling your shirt off."

  "He makes no causal argument," Justin said.

  Szabla rose and pulled her tank top on, adjusting her bra. "I'll go grab him."

  She took off at a jog along the beach, kicking the sand behind her in white sprays. She slowed when she stepped up onto the lava plain that spread like an apron out from the base of the Punta Berlanga cliffs. The lava was slick with sea spray, and the tide pools were clogged with brown floating algae and dotted with black-shelled snails.

  She put her foot down on something live and it twisted and squirmed out from under her. Leaping back, she stumbled and went down hard on her ass, breaking her fall with the heels of her hands. A shape moved on the rock, black against black, and she realized she'd almost crushed a marine iguana.

  A fat lizard about two feet long with tough folds of black skin and a row of spikes running from its neck to the base of its substantial tail, it had a prehistoric appearance. Two beady black eyes peered out from the lumpy white scales encrusting its face.

  Szabla stayed still for a moment, suddenly aware that all around her, the lava was covered with marine iguanas, some longer than two feet. Their gray-dusted black scales blended perfectly with the dark rock. Sev-eral were pushed up on their front legs in a position of elevated basking, allowing the breeze to cool them off. They all lazily rotated their heads toward her.

  One of the marine iguanas made a sharp sneezing sound, spitting through its nose to clear the brine, and a few others followed suit. Though Szabla knew they were harmless herbivores, they looked fierce, almost ferocious, and she rose quickly to her feet.

  A promontory abruptly interrupted the curve of the cliffs to the west, angling out into the sea with a spill of rocks. Szabla headed for the point, carefully avoiding tide pools and iguana colonies. She waded out around the cliff, navigating her way through patches of green sea urchins. The water surged in, forcing her toward the wall, but she held her ground, planting her boots underwater against a flat lava ledge as the undertow spent itself.

  A large spray of white mangrove sprouted from the outermost point of the promontory like a strange tumor. A fallen beetle floated on its back below the leaves, paddling in little circles with the bicycling move-ments of its legs. Szabla pulled back the mangrove, revealing a small crescent of black sand nestled just beyond the promontory, cliffs towering protectively above and around it. She inhaled sharply.

  Naked, Savage was standing on the dark beach, gazing out at the bril-liant aquamarine bay. Szabla drew back slightly, hiding behind an out-cropping.

  Savage rested his clothes in a mound atop his boots. He stepped into the water, dipping his hips beneath with a slight grimace, and backstroked in circles as the birds swooped to their nests in the cliffs above him.

  A penguin wiggled through the water and shot up onto a shady nook in the cliff, sticking out its belly to shade its feet. It was very small, standing little more than a foot tall, its white underbelly a dot against the dark lava. It opened its beak, panting to expel heat, and spread its wings to pick up the breeze. It shit on its feet to cool them off.

  A manta ray lazed through the water to Savage's left, and he turned on his side, avoiding it. He leaned back, pulling his bandanna free, his hair soaking in the water. He ducked underwater, then slicked his locks back over his head.

  Szabla watched in silence, the sun beating down on her. Sweat glis-tened across the top of her chest, and her forest-green tank top was ringed with moisture along the scoop neck. His back to her, Savage exited the water. He shook his hair from side to side, sending droplets of water flying. Szabla couldn't take her eyes off him.

  She hadn't realized how long his hair was since the bandanna took up most of its length, but seeing it now unbound, she would have bet it reached his shoulders in the back. For a man over fifty, Savage was in remarkable shape. His back was grooved with muscle, his calves firm knots. When he turned, Szabla was shocked by the definition of his chest and shoulders. A patch of hair spread across his pectorals. The hair was neatly contained; it didn't climb back over his shoulders.

  Her eyes traced over his naked body as he stood, slapping the sand from his feet. A scar compassed his right arm at the peak of the biceps. Her transmitter vibrated silently beneath the skin of her shoulder, sur-prising her. She started and had to step to regain her balance, her foot plunking loudly in the water. She looked up anxiously, standing in full view of Savage.

  He was still naked, holding his undershirt. He didn't look up, but he smiled as he bunched the shirt in his hands and pulled it over his head. "Tell 'em I'll be there in a minute," he said, not raising his eyes. He made no effort to cover himself.

  He had known she was there all along. The thought filled her like a chill and she took a step back. He still didn't look up.

  He leaned over to grab his pants, his dick visible beneath the hem of his shirt. Szabla moved quickly back across the boulders. When she was safely out of view, she leaned back, resting her head against the cliff wall, waiting for her heartbeat to slow.

  She waded back to the flat lava, her wet cammies heavy around her thighs, and began to jog back to base.

  Cameron recognized Szabla's distinctive run from a distance. Szabla arrived winded, her breath coming in gasps, and she doubled over before Derek's glare, leaning heavily on her knees. "Savage is…Savage is coming," she gasped.

  "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 embarrassed."

  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 belongings," 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 superstitious 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 n
ear to camp, maybe scout the area a little bit. Me and Cam'll assist 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 compass 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 additional gear. They waited patiently as Rex started and stopped, assessed 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, having 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 compass. 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 hell'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 brass 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 latitude, 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 hit it."

  Rex smiled. "Oh no," he said. "That was the easy part. The antenna has to be perfectly horizontal." He began to turn the knobs 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 attention 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

  Breathing hard, Szabla and Diego swung a cruise box down onto the grass 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 assurance 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 Ramon and Floreana Estrada's house from view.

  "Introduced species," Diego said, pointing with a grimace at the twinning 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 goddamn 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 shell 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 shit up," Szabla said to Tank. "You're sup-posed to be our workhorse. All this pulled muscle crap's getting old real fast." She crosse
d her arms, appraising the others. "Since I'm the bitch 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 shit."

  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 butterfly leaves, passion-fruit vines hung from the trees like scarves. Where they'd died, they were thin and brittle, holding the trunks in fragile embrace.