Minutes to Burn

Chapter 12

As Cameron left the hotel with Rex and Tank, she noticed the man with gold chains who had harassed Szabla earlier. He seemed to rec-ognize her despite her civilian clothes. A sat phone raised to his ear, he blew her a kiss before ducking into an alleyway.

Rex led the way north a few blocks on Calle Chile. Along the way, shoe shiners called out from the pavement, smiling through crooked teeth and pointing to Tank and Cameron's scuffed jungle boots. A man stepped out from a shop across the street and scooped water from a bucket onto the sidewalk, using a detergent bottle with the top cut off. Dust mingled with the water, running off the fractured curb into the street.

"It's amazing, isn't it?" Rex said. "The resilience of these people. They're used to having no control over anything." He started to sit on a bench to get his shoes shined by an old man with no front teeth, but Cameron grabbed his sleeve and kept him moving.

"Getting your shoes stroked isn't the mission today," Cameron said.

A boy followed them with a shoe shine box, chattering away, tugging at Tank's pant leg and pointing to his boots. Cameron had a hard time keeping up with the Spanish; it was a more rustic form than she had studied, the consonants blurring together.

"If you didn't want a shoe shine," Rex said, "you should've worn sneakers."

On the corner, Otavalo Indians were still setting up for the day, stuffing T-shirts into metal racks bolted into the walls and scattering trinkets carved from Tagua nuts on blankets on the ground. Cameron found a street sign cemented into the wall of the corner building: Avenida 9 de Octubre. A number of American fast-food joints crowded the block. One franchise building had crumbled into the street, but the rubble had been bulldozed to one side to allow traffic to pass. Fragments of the red and white sign lay on top of the mound. One of Colonel Sanders's eyes was missing.

They waited for a break in the traffic, then sprinted across the street. The banged-up cars driving by or broken down roadside were built of mixed and matched parts, some of them tricked out with familiar emblems and gold steering wheels. A bus shuddered to a stop in front of them and a scrawny driver hopped out, removed his shirt, and crawled underneath with a wrench. They cut one street over and kept heading west. Rex bowed to a group of uniformed schoolgirls, removing his Panama hat, and they giggled and called out greetings in bad English.

A wide band of sweat darkened the lower half of Tank's shirt. Stop-ping on a corner, he pulled a tube of sunblock from his back pocket and smeared lotion liberally across his wide cheeks, which were already beginning to redden. Cameron felt her pants clinging to her legs. An orange electronic billboard flashed nearby: Minutos para Quemarse-3:40. She took the tube from Tank.

Cameron flashed ID at the UN cordon, and they headed into a dismal neighborhood. The street was bare and cracked, lined with deserted warehouses. Here the fallen buildings were left as they were, no con-struction crews in evidence. A man pissed against a wall, and a passing woman and child paid him no mind, stepping over the rivulet of urine on the sidewalk. Cameron kept in the lead.

After a few more blocks, Rex halted outside a brown box of a two-story building dotted with graying, cracked windows. A large section of asphalt had tilted up, leaving a two-foot lip in the middle of the sidewalk, and the building had settled unevenly across the hump. Rex rang the doorbell beneath a placard that read: Dr. Juan Ramirez.

Above their heads, a security camera rotated down so it was pointed at them. Then the door swung open, revealing a man with a hoop dan-gling from his nose, like a bull's ring. What was supposed to be a dragon peered out from his biceps, but it looked more like an obese lizard. He regarded Tank suspiciously, then spoke in rough-accented English. "What do you want?"

"Dr. Ramirez?" Cameron asked.

"That's not him," Rex said.

"No, I'm not el doctor. I just come to shut off la electricidad. He leave to wander around." He made a sweeping gesture with his arm, indicating the surrounding neighborhood.

"Well, it's extremely important that we find him tod-" The door slammed shut in Rex's face. He turned to Cameron. "O-kay. Now what?"

"What are our choices? We search for him. You know what he looks like, right?"

"Yes," Rex said, regarding the shady neighborhood around them ten-tatively.

"We'll sweep the area block by block, checking the bars and parks."

They tediously searched the neighborhood, sticking together, walking up and down the decrepit streets, peering at the faces of passing men. Cameron called in to Derek on her transmitter, updating him on the situ-ation and obtaining clearance to return late.

They passed a junk heap and a burning car. Up ahead, three shirtless men, their skin baked dark brown, were sitting on an overturned bathtub, throwing beer bottles at a wounded street dog. The dog lay on its side across the street, bleeding from a gash in its neck. Cameron noticed the dog's broken back leg, bent at a ninety-degree angle midway up the femur. She quickly fought away her anger.

"Here's where you earn your keep," Rex said, stepping between Cameron and Tank as they headed toward the men. The men, busy tor-menting the dog, ignored them.

"! Oye, perro callegero!" one of the men cried, hurling a brick at it. The brick shattered on the ground near the dog's head, sending splinters across its face. The dog struggled to move away, whimpering.

Tank clenched his jaw, his hands tightening into fists. Noticing the change in his demeanor, Cameron placed a hand on his back, moving him forward. "Not now," she said. "This isn't on our list of concerns."

The men were digging in the rubble for more bricks to throw. Cameron glanced nervously at Tank. She could see his arms were flexed even through his shirt. Rex had also taken note of Tank's growing anger. He fiddled nervously with his Panama, rubbing the rim with his thumbs.

As they passed the three men, Tank turned in time to see another brick flying at the dog. It struck the dog in its stomach, and it let loose with a series of pained yelps, unable to crawl away. Tank broke from Cameron and Rex and faced the men. Cameron grabbed his shoulder, but he shook her loose.

"What are you doing?" Rex yelled after him.

The men turned to face Tank, smacking their hands together to rid them of dust. One of them pulled a makeshift blade from the back of his trousers. When Tank was about fifteen yards away from the men, Cameron caught up to him, blocking him with her body.

The men howled with laughter, doubling over, clearly amused by the sight of an enormous man being restrained by a woman. One of the men imitated Cameron, standing with his hands on his hips and adding in high-pitched nagging for good measure.

Tank glared at Cameron, the first time he'd ever looked at her angrily. Anyone else he might have struck. "You're not gonna let this go, are you?" she said, her voice eerily calm.

Tank moved to step around her. Cameron pulled her Sig Sauer from the band of her pants and he stopped dead in his tracks.

She raised the pistol at the dog, took careful aim, and delivered a bul-let to its skull. The crack of the gunshot echoed up the empty street. The dog stopped whimpering. The men were silent.

"This is not our objective," Cameron said, her voice tight. She turned, grabbed Rex around one biceps, and proceeded up the street.

"Someone's gotta shut that baby up," Savage muttered. He lay on his back on the bed, playing with his knife, the hefty Death Wind. With a formidable six-inch blade of D2 steel and three-sixteenths-inch stock, it was an impressive killing tool. But it was also beautiful, at least to him. Eight ounces, an eleven-inch stretch from butt to tip. Black Micarta han-dle, tapered tang, no teeth to detract from the line of its edge. It was smooth on the way in, sliding through flesh like water. Of all his weapons, the Death Wind was his favorite. There was a rawness to killing with a knife, something lost in the pull of a trigger. The ultimate stealth tool. He'd even anodized the blade so it wouldn't glint.

Savage sheathed the knife and glanced over at the others. Derek traced the lines of discoloration on the glass, his forehead pressed to the window. Justin looked at Derek, then shot Szabla a look, his eyebrows drawn together in concern. She leaned back against one of the twin beds, kicking her legs out in front of her, and shrugged. Tucker sat Indian-style on the carpet, pretending he wasn't eyeing the minibar.

Savage tuned out the baby next door, who squealed on like a stuck pig. Five high-demand shooters holed up in a hotel on a field trip-the room reeked of bad mood. Boredom and restlessness usually led to trouble when there were Navy SEALs involved.

The baby finally quieted, and Savage could make out the mother's cooing voice.

Tucker grabbed the ashtray from the night stand and arranged two books of matches in it to form a miniature pyre. He moved back to his former position, sitting cross-legged on the carpet, and using his thumb, flicked matches at the ashtray. The first two missed and burned out on the cheap carpet, but the third hit and the ashtray ignited, sending up a three-inch flame that flared briefly before dying. Justin cleared the ash-tray unceremoniously, like a father taking an unsafe toy away from his child.

"Explosives," Szabla said. "The game the whole family can play."

"I thought that was incest," Justin said.

Tucker pulled another matchbook out of his sleeve. With a snap of his fingers, he spun the book around and laid a single match across the friction strip. Flicking his thumb, he lit the match, holding the flame before his eyes. He watched its familiar dance. Probably lost in thoughts of spoons and needles, C4 and trip wires.

Savage knew the type well-loved having their hands in the plastics, being able to assemble what they could from wires and det cord and boosters. It was like assembling death. Like opening up Pandora's box and tinkering around inside. They got off on it all-the rigging, the det-onating, the blasts so bright you'd think you saw the eyes of God.

"You always been a breacher?" Savage asked.

Tucker nodded slightly, his eyes on the small flame. "Started when I was twelve, you could say. Firecrackers in mailboxes, bottle rockets in pipes, cherry bombs down toilets. Useful skills growing up in and out of boys' homes." He whisked a finger through the flame and back, then licked the black residue. "First night in my third home, an 'older brother' beat me unconscious with a sockful of quarters. Next day, I rigged his shoe, blew off half his big toe." His smile sprang up quick and goofy. "No one fucked with me after."

Derek slid his fingers down the pane to the sill, streaking the glass. Still spaced out.

"You all a remnant of a platoon?" Savage asked.

Szabla nodded. "Mostly. Me, Cam, Derek, and Tucker were platoon buddies in THREE off and on for four, five years. Justin and I have bud-died before, but he and Tank came up mostly on Team EIGHT. Dick for action, but pretty Danish girls." She jerked her head in Justin's direction. "Ain't that right, sunshine?"

"Beats desert and diaperheads."

"What does? Shit detail teaching Norwegians how to rig C4?" She snorted. "At least we got world ops, not endless scrimmaging."

The match burned down to Tucker's fingers, and Tucker threw it on the floor. He stuck a finger in his mouth, then pressed it on the glowing match head. It sizzled out, sticking to his finger when he raised it.

Savage pulled out a pack of cigarettes from one of his front pockets.

"You mind?" Tucker asked, gesturing to the pack with his eyes.

"No," Savage replied. "Not at all." He lit the cigarette and enjoyed a long drag, shooting the smoke out the side of his mouth. "Why don't you go back to watching that minibar, son? You're outta matches."

"Fuckin' prick," Tucker muttered, bending over to tighten the laces on his boots.

Savage leaned up a bit from his recline on the bed. "What did you say?"

"I said, 'Fucking prick,'" Tucker answered, enunciating clearly. "Park your attitude somewhere else. Things have changed just a touch since Vietnam."

Savage laughed, then his eyes went cold. "What the fuck do you know about Vietnam?"

"Not much," Szabla said. "Heard it was some fucked-up shit."

"You heard right," Savage said. He grinned, the glint in his eyes matching the cherry of the cigarette. He glanced at Szabla. "How old are you, princess?"

"Twenty-six."

Savage shook his head, making a humming noise. "We were out of there before you were even born."

"You're old," Tucker said.

"I'm experienced."

Justin glanced over at Derek, as if unsure of what to make of him. He looked back at the others. "Look, why don't we-"

"Experienced at what?" Tucker snarled. "Slaughtering villagers? Raping women?"

"What are you, boy? A fuckin' dove?"

"No, I was just trained with a military code of ethics. Some of the shit you guys pulled…"Tucker's voice trailed off with disgust.

Savage nodded calmly. "I seen some things," he said, as if agreeing. He raised his cigarette, lodged in the fork of his fingers, and pointed it at the track marks on Tucker's arms. "Bet you have, too."

Tucker sprang to his feet, but Savage leaned forward quickly on the bed, yanking his knife from his ankle sheath and setting his feet on the ground. He flipped the knife once, caught it by the handle, and smiled. Tucker stared at him a while then looked down, almost shyly, and walked out of the room. Over at the window, Derek still didn't move.

"You lay the fuck off," Justin said to Savage.

"You know what they say." Savage leaned back on the ripped pillow. "If you play with fire…"

Justin stood and began to change into civies. "We need to get the fuck out of here."

"Where the hell are we gonna eat?" Szabla said. "Anyone speak Spanish?"

"I only know three words," Savage said. "Casa de putas."

"What's that mean?"

Savage smiled. "Look it up."

Justin crossed to Derek and laid a hand on his shoulder. "We're gonna grab Tucker and find somewhere to eat," he said.

Derek turned slowly from the window, his eyes blank. "I'll take weapons watch." He stood and stepped out onto the small balcony, pulling the chair with him.

"Any time you want us back?" Justin asked. "LT?"

Szabla leaned forward, lowering her voice as she spoke to Savage. "Is it true?" she asked. "Did you really rape women there?" Her face was calm, but her eyes were excited.

Savage shrugged, enjoying the web of intrigue that he'd spun around himself. The new breed of soldier, raised with ethics books and dry-cleaned LTs, always expressed a certain disgust at anyone involved in the Vietnam mess. It had angered him at first, but he'd come to realize that the disgust was a form of respect. They knew he'd seen things that they'd never see, not in the push-button, long-range sniper world they lived in now. They knew he'd done things.

He sucked hard on the butt. "I was eighteen," he said. "It got lonely."

Szabla leaned back against the bed. She ran one of her hands up the curve of her arm, gripping her biceps. Justin had overheard Savage's remark. "You sick bastard," he muttered. "Rape, that's admirable."

Savage cocked his head, looking into Justin's handsome blue eyes. "Who ever told you war was admirable?"

The sunlight was dwindling, the brief equatorial dusk already under way. Tank and Cameron flanked Rex. Cameron was grateful to Rex for qui-etly letting the matter of the dog go. Frustration was setting in-they were beginning to realize just how difficult it was to locate one man in this neighborhood of dark streets and broken buildings. If they didn't find Juan to alert him of the take-off time tomorrow, Rex's survey would be compromised.

Cameron shooed away beggars as they approached, and watched for eyes darting to her boots so that she could thwart advancing shoe shin-ers. A woman walked by peddling newspapers-El Comercio's headline announcing another 120 dead in a Quito landslide.

They stopped at a vehicle underpass before Julian Coronel, a thor-oughfare with four lanes of quickly moving traffic. Across Coronel, an enormous white wall ran in both directions for as far as Cameron could see, broken only by large arches with locked metal gates. Ahead and to the left stretched a white pedestrian bridge, which Rex indicated with a gesture. "Might as well try there."

Underneath the bridge, colorful advertisements for ice cream were peeling from the concrete in strips. One strip ran through the smiling face of a light-skinned woman.

Steering wide of a group of homeless men, they climbed the pedes-trian bridge and walked over the busy thoroughfare. When they got halfway across, the land on the far side of the wall became visible, and Cameron gasped out loud. It was perhaps the most breathtaking sight she had ever seen. Against the backdrop of several small hills, white marble gravestones, tombs, and mausoleums stretched up into the air, forming what appeared to be a miniature city. Some of the tombs were so extravagant that they resembled residential buildings with distinct floors, each one featuring gates for the ornate caskets. A few others were domed, fronted with immense tinted-glass doors with polished metal handles. Paved walkways ran between the tombs, some of them as wide as small streets. Shrines, statues, and trees gave the cemetery a jagged skyline. Only a couple gravestones had fallen over; for the most part, the cemetery had been resistant to the tremors. It almost glowed in the dark-ening air, a small forest of white stone.

Even Tank stopped dead in his tracks.

"They call this 'La Ciudad Blanca,'" Rex said. "The White City." He grinned. "For obvious reasons."

Rex walked down the far set of stairs, descending down into the cemetery. It was almost nightfall, and Cameron glanced ahead at the rows of tombs, the myriad hiding places for muggers and thieves. Tank felt for the pistol in the back of his pants, so Cameron knew he was thinking the same thing.

"This is the history of Ecuador," Rex said. "Every important name, every important date, is here. Buried, gilded, commemorated."

As they walked through the grounds, Cameron noticed the family names carved into the white marble. Palm trees lined a slender, marble-paved lane, the trunks painted white. The silhouette of a man appeared in the middle of the path. He was genuflecting, staring up at the humbler monuments dotting the dark hillside.

Rex drew closer. "Juan?"

The man rose and threw his arms wide in greeting. He was an ugly man, with wide, uneven features, his cheeks deeply pocked. His skin was dark, his arms covered with hair. "Dr. Williams," he said in heavily accented English. "You are here in one piece, no?" He nodded to Cameron and Tank. "And the soldiers. A pleasure to meet you. Thank you for your offer to escort us."

"Offer?" Tank said, but Cameron elbowed him in the ribs.

"You might have waited at the lab," Rex said. "We've spent hours searching for you."

"I am sorry. It is hard for me to be in the lab now, you see." Juan fid-dled with his wedding ring nervously, rotating the gold band around his thick knuckle. Despite his warmth, he exuded a gentle sadness. "I do not know how much longer it will exist. There is no funding. I've had to let go my assistants. Many of the experiments will not be finished. And the islands are in bad shape, my friends. I was doing a longitudinal study, tracking a population of masked boobies on Espanola…"Heshook his head. "But with the feral goats taking over the past few years…"

"They're bad?" Cameron asked. "The goats?"

"Animals aren't good or bad. They're just sometimes in the wrong place. If they don't belong, they can threaten the entire ecosystem. Gala-pagos are especially fragile. Many of the animals evolved on the islands with no enemies, so they have no way to contend with predators if they arrive. And man has brought many predators, most of them seemingly benign, protected by their very…how do you say?…banality. Puppies and kittens, hamsters…all killers. All capable of wiping out whole pop-ulations of endemic species. Like the goats on Espanola with my masked boobies…eating the eggs, the chicks…" He sighed heavily. "All dead. I received a report from a friend at the Darwin Station telling me not to bother coming back." He tapped his hand against the corner of a nearby gravestone, his wedding band making a soft clicking noise. "There's so much we've lost." He looked away, his eyes growing moist.

Tank dug something out of his teeth with a finger.

"We really should get back," Rex said.

Cameron reached out and touched Juan gently on the sleeve. "I'm sorry," she said.

Juan's smile was a faint, dying thing. He looked back up at the hillside. "Those graves up there, those are the graves of the poor." Evidently, the families of the dead buried on the hills couldn't afford marble; the gravesites were decorated with bright fabrics and flowers. A number of these plots were recent additions, with dark, freshly turned soil. "So much death, so quickly."

"Let's be honest," Rex said. "This is nothing new. Life has always been cheap here. Children succumbing to preventable diseases, poison-ous snakes in the Oriente, buses colliding on windy pueblo roads. Death happens here."

Juan shook his head, studying the fresh graves in the hills. "Not like this."

A church bell tolled somewhere in the distance, and Rex glanced down at his watch. "I need to get back and check in with Donald." He shoved a slip of paper with the flight time and survey procedures into Juan's hand. "See you tomorrow."

Juan nodded and walked off a short ways, sitting on the ledge of a particularly broad mausoleum. Cameron found Rex's abruptness in the face of Juan's grief to be offensive. "Tank'll escort you back," she said. "I'll be along in a minute."

Tank followed Rex into the darkness. Cameron walked over and pulled herself up on the ledge beside Juan. The echo of the church bells lingered in the darkness. The air was thick, humid, foreign. It smelled sharply of bark, burning wood, and stale food.

"I come here often at night," Juan said softly.

Cameron gave him the silence, listening to the rush of cars beyond the high cemetery wall.

Juan pulled off his wedding band and set it on his knee. He regarded it for a few moments. "I lost my wife," he finally said. "And my baby girl. I was teaching at Universidad when the apartment building collapsed. That was…that was almost three years ago, but still I feel it sharply on quiet nights like this." He picked up the ring, tilted it so that he could catch the blur of his reflection in the gold, then slid it back on his finger.

When she realized that he was crying, Cameron wasn't sure what to do. She popped a stick of gum in her mouth and worked it over, waiting uncomfortably through the silence. Juan finally wiped his cheeks and raised his head.

"I am sorry. You do not need this. There's just something in your eyes, some softness that lets me talk where I haven't before. That's unusual for Americans. They often come down here and see our ways and the vio-lence, and think us primitive." He shook his head. "Death is part of our culture. During the conquest, half our population was killed by disease, civil war. But no country can endure this kind of disruption, this kind of…" With a sweeping gesture, he indicated the cemetery before them. "Loss."

A man stumbled by, his head lowered, carrying an armful of flowers. When he passed Cameron and Juan, he paused and looked up at them. Cameron couldn't make out his face, because he was wearing a hat pulled low over his eyes. "No, gracias," she said, waving him away.

The man spoke back to her in a soft but angry voice. He gestured at her several times, and she felt for the pistol, just to make sure it was still there.

"What did he say?" she asked Juan when the man finished speaking.

Juan slid off the ledge onto his feet. "He asked that we get off his family's mausoleum, that he can lay the flowers there for them."

He nodded an apology at the man and headed back toward the foot-bridge.