Minutes to Burn

Chapter 25

The tremors subsided and soon Derek didn't even have to brace against the waves. The mound of lava rocks at the cliff shifted, sending a trickle down one side that flowed gentle and steady like hourglass sand before stopping. The air stilled.

Trailing long, slender streamers, a few red-billed tropicbirds circled overhead, preparing to return to their nests in the cliff walls. Baby Sally Lightfoot crabs scrabbled across the lava, their bright orange shells seeming to glow against the dark rock.

The soldiers waited silently for another aftershock, standing thigh-deep in the water. After about fifteen minutes, Derek sloshed up onto the flat lava plain. He turned to help Tank pull himself up, and the oth-ers followed.

The stack of cruise boxes and kit bags remained before the cliff walls, barely beyond the reach of the fallen rocks. The cruise boxes' hard tops had been dinged up, but they hadn't collapsed. The weapons box, along with several cruise boxes, was buried in the rubble with the Zodiac. Derek gazed at the collapsed section of the cliff. There was no way they'd be able to get Juan's body, the Zodiac, or any of the buried gear out from under that much rock. Not without a bulldozer. The weapons had been useless anyway, though Derek was not looking forward to filling out a report detailing the missing ordnance.

The soldiers assessed the terrain in silence. Rex looked pale, almost sickly, and he repeatedly glanced over at the mound of rocks burying Juan's body. Finally, Szabla smacked him on the chest. "Relax. All that staring's not gonna make him any less dead."

About a hundred yards east, the lava and cliffs faded into the low-lying sand dunes. The beach was well clear of the cliff and other over-hangs, safe from falling objects during earthquakes and tremors.

"We'll set an LUP down on the beach," Derek said. "Tomorrow, we'll see about moving up somewhere stable and establishing permanent camp."

The soldiers dragged the cruise boxes across the lava to the beach and began to set the lay-up point, assembling the tents and stacking supplies. Derek and Cameron took inventory.

They'd stay one buddy pair to a tent. Diego was supposed to have shared the fifth tent with Juan; now he'd have it to himself.

Tank could barely fit on the standard-issue foam sleeping pad, so he sprawled out on the ground. Once he lay down, he couldn't get back up. Tank was drowsy with the pain, which was a bad sign, given his extremely high threshold. Once, in Copenhagen, he'd sustained a rifle butt blow to the head without passing out. Justin tried massaging out the spasms in his legs, but the muscles were too tightly knotted. Though Justin's trauma bag was on the boat, he always carried a few extra items in his kit bag, including Toradol. He gave Tank a 60 mg injection.

They mustered near the tents around a hurricane lamp, Derek facing them with his back to the night, rubbing the exhaustion from his eyes. They'd pinned Tank's tent flap open so that he could look out on the meeting.

Cameron thumbed an eyelid, thinking of Juan sitting on the edge of the mausoleum, his wedding band a thin, gold streak in the night. She tapped her ring, checking it was still safe around her neck.

Rex cleared his throat nervously. "Look," he said. "I don't mean to be mercenary, but we're still going to complete the survey, right?"

Savage made a sucking noise, clearing something from between his front teeth. "I didn't drag my shit all the way here to turn tail and run at the first sign of a falling rock or a dead spic." He winked at Diego. "No offense."

Diego shrugged, not recognizing the slur.

"We're fucked on the Zodiac," Derek said. "Justin, tomorrow, you're gonna take a swim out to the boat, figure out how to get the rest of our gear to land. How's the Prick one-oh-four?"

Justin swung the backpack off, plunking it on the sand. The material was torn where it had been struck by the falling rock. "It took a blow," he said, as he carefully removed the radio. Cameron was relieved to see that the radio proper and the S-folded whip antenna both appeared to be intact. The size of an old-style VCR, the radio was a confusion of buttons and dials. The handset usually worked like a telephone, but both the receiver and transmitter were smashed.

After tuning the radio, Justin keyed the handset to break squelch, pushing the button on the side so that a burst of static would go through. "There's no way," he said. "We can't speak or get anything back."

"And my phone's buried over there." Rex gestured to the fallen cliff. "So that's it? We have no contact with the outside world?"

"Just not with the other islands," Derek said. He tapped his shoulder, indicating his subcutaneous transmitter. "We can still reach base through these. They're satellite."

"We gonna call in?" Justin asked.

"I don't see what for," Derek said. "Our job was to get Rex here, help him get his trinkets in place, and split. Far as I can see, that objective has not been compromised."

"I'd like to get one of the GPS units set early tomorrow morning," Rex said. He pointed at a narrow trail that led up through a break in the cliff walls of Punta Berlanga. "I'm thinking right up there if I can find suitable rock. After that, we gotta survey the island for other locations."

Derek crouched, letting a handful of the fine, flourlike sand run through his fingers. "We have camping gear, food, and kit bags with clothes and personals. From the boat, we need to grab medical supplies, scuba gear, mosquito netting, backup white fuel for the hurricane lamps, extra MREs, and K-bars. All the GPS equipment intact?"

"Yes," Rex said. "One of the tripods is a little bit-"

"That's good," Szabla said. "Then we can focus on getting the shit up and running and getting the fuck out of here."

Tank moaned inside his tent, trying to straighten his legs.

Derek rose, brushing his hands off on his pants. "Anyone…" He stopped to clear his throat. "Anyone want to say anything? About Juan?"

A silence filled the air, broken only by the soft sounds of the ocean behind them. Justin toed the sand.

"A few words or anything?" Derek added.

Savage coughed. Tucker blinked.

"Guess not," Szabla said.

Cameron helped pull several cruise boxes around the hurricane lamp to serve as makeshift benches. The others' eyes were heavy with exhaustion. She knew she looked equally spent, but sleep seemed unappealing with the memory of Juan's death so vivid.

Savage sat off by himself on the beach, legs crossed Indian-style, staring out at the dark water. Szabla watched him, the light from the hurri-cane lamp flickering across her face. Diego lay on his back across two of the cruise boxes, his arms dangling so his fingers brushed the sand. Szabla's face darkened when she glanced in the direction of Juan's buried body. "What a waste," she said.

Rex was leaning back against the cruise box, his face tilted up toward the heavens. "Have you heard of Enrico Caruso?" he finally asked.

Clearly annoyed, Szabla studied the hard surface of the cruise box between her legs as the other soldiers exchanged glances. "The tenor?"

"The tenor. On April eighteenth, 1906, after a riveting performance in Carmen, he retired to his suite in the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. The quake hit at five twelve in the morning, took the rear wall clean off the building. Well, Caruso was something of a superstitious guy." Rex lowered his eyes from the stars finally, looking at Szabla. "Italian," he said. Szabla bit back a smile, and Rex continued. "His conductor found him weeping in his room. To calm Caruso down and distract him from the aftershocks, he convinced him to look out on the devastation and sing. And Caruso did. Streets rent and broken, streetcars bent like toys, water mains shooting geysers, people sobbing and running and bleeding, and here's Caruso, singing at the top of his lungs, his voice ringing through the rubble, clear as a bell." Rex paused, shaking his head.

"This all looks like a mess to you," he continued. "A big fucking mess. The quakes and the sun, falling rocks and dead animals. But it all has rules. Nature always follows definable rules." He pointed at the crum-bled cliff wall in the distance, the mound of rock that formed Juan's makeshift grave. "The principal shock must've been east-west, given the damage moved along a north-south vector. That means this rumble was a little gift from the East Pacific Rise." He scratched the stubble on his chin, his eyes on the dark sky. "The earth's movements can be regulated, sometimes predicted. That can save lives."

He caught Szabla's eye again and stared her down. "Getting these GPS units in place is my way of singing through the disasters, of trying to win something back for our side." He laughed a short, dying laugh and ran his hand through his lanky black hair. "I know you all think the military has better things to do right now. I know that I'm an arrogant, narcissistic bastard, and that doesn't help much either. But we have the opportunity to accomplish something here. So what do you say you all just back off a few steps and give me a hand?"

They sat in silence, listening to the sounds of the island. Rex cuffed his sleeves, revealing a deep scar on the back of his right forearm.

"What's that?" Cameron asked, indicating the scar with a flick of her head.

Rex glanced down at it, as if noticing it for the first time. "Candle-stick, eighty-nine World Series. The Loma Prieta quake. I caught a flying hot dog vendor's box on the arm." He laughed. "Hardly heroic."

Szabla dug a piece of dirt out from under a blunt fingernail. She sat up straight and pulled off her cammy shirt. Her skin was dark and smooth, the blocks of her stomach standing out like bricks beneath her jog bra. She turned around, revealing a knot of scar tissue just below her left shoulder blade.

Diego glanced over from his sprawl on the cruise boxes. He was tick-ling his face with a strand of beach morning glory. Clearly uninterested in their story telling, Savage began doing push-ups on the sand outside their circle, slow and methodical.

"Trying to help an old lady in Bosnia," Szabla said, patting her scar. "House caved in, she was stuck beneath some stones. Picked her up, threw her over a shoulder to clear her from the building. She pulled a knife on me."

"That's a stab wound?" Rex asked.

Cameron smiled, knowing the story. Szabla hooked Justin's neck with her hand and yanked it roughly and affectionately. "You think my buddy over here would let me meet my end from Mother-fucking Hubbard?"

Justin grinned. "I hit her with a board."

"And missed."

"Well, Szabla tripped and dumped the old bitch-"

"And the board hit me instead, right on the shoulder."

"A board left a scar like that?" Rex asked.

Szabla and Justin exchanged a glance, starting to laugh. Cameron smiled, looking down and shaking her head. "It had a nail in it," Justin said.

"So genius over here wallops me, I got a two-by-four stuck in my ass, and the cunt claws her way up and takes off down the street like Jesse fuckin' Owens."

"You think that's bad? You want to talk stupid?" Cameron stood up, pulling down her pants and turning around to display a four-inch scar beneath her right buttock.

"Cam, Jesus," Justin said.

She yanked her pants back up and zipped them, forgetting the top button. "We're lifting out to Alaska of all places, for a block of winter warfare training. I have my blade out to get through a canvas strap on one of the supply bags and I catch a glimpse out the window of the sun setting over the tundra-just beautiful. So I put down the blade and lean forward, watch for a few seconds until it dips below the horizon. I sat back down, right on my knife."

"She screamed so loud the pilot thought we were under attack," Derek said. "Thirteen stitches. Right on the helo, in fact." Derek laughed. "Cam bent over the corpsman's knee like a wayward school-girl."

"And boy did she holler," Tucker added.

"I did not. Not after I first sat down and the damn thing went up my ass."

Szabla grinned. "There was definitely some whimpering going on, girl."

Justin shook his head. "I should have married a teacher." He looked at his wife. "All right, baby. Button your pants."

"What? Oh." Cameron looked down and fixed her top button.

"Gotcha beat," Tucker said with a wry smile. He held up his left hand and spread it before the light. His entire palm was scarred with dark burn tissue.

"Jesus, Tucker, when did that happen?" Cameron asked.

"About a year back. I was fucking around with my thermite grenade, spinning it around, watching a little tube. Well, the spoon flew and I didn't notice. So I keep spinning it, Duke's up four in the third quarter, and all of a sudden I look over, the thing's glowing that hard white flame. So I yell, try to dump it, it's stuck to my hand for a second and I shake it loose. It burns through the sofa, the floorboards, and down into the apartment under mine. I had to run down the stairs, bang on the door to warn them." He ran the hardened flesh across his cheek. "Went straight through their kitchen table."

They all laughed, and Tucker lowered his eyes to the light of the hur-ricane lamp.

Diego pulled himself up from where he was lying and stood in the center. He faced the others, his features shadowed. "There's a tiny cat-fish, a parasite that resides in the warm waters of the Amazon," he said. "Lives on blood. It normally slithers into the gills of larger fish and erects a sharp dorsal spine to lodge itself into place." He held up a fin-ger, mock-teacherly. "The problem is, it can mistake a stream of urine underwater for the small water currents passing through the gills of a fish. It swims up the urethra of the unfortunate skinny dipper and…" He made a popping sound, splaying his fingers wide to indicate the dor-sal spine erecting. Cameron bit her bottom lip. The others stared at him, wide-eyed. "Has to be removed surgically," he continued.

"The whole thing?" Szabla asked breathlessly.

"No," Diego said. "Just the fish." He pulled his belt free, unbuttoned his pants, and pulled them down, his underwear along with them. He cradled his uncircumcised penis in his palm. Szabla stared at the elon-gated scar with a mix of horror and reluctant interest. Justin reached up with his hand and pushed his own jaw closed.

Diego raised his arms and slapped them to his sides, letting himself hang free in the night air. He pulled up his pants, shot Szabla a wink, and headed for his tent.

After washing his face in the cool, salty water, Savage returned to the ring of cruise boxes and the flickering hurricane lamp. The others had already retired to their tents. Justin had stopped to check on Tank, leaving Szabla alone in their tent. It was lit inside by a lamp, and Savage saw Szabla's shadow clearly defined against the green glow of the canvas. He froze outside the small circle of tents, transfixed by her silhouette.

Szabla pulled off her shirt and lifted her tags over her head, winding them around her hand. Probably hated sleeping with anything around her neck. Her undershirt was tight enough that Savage could make out the exact lines of her body. Szabla didn't have large breasts; hers were more like plates rising solidly off her chest. Cameron had the only real pair of knocks on the squad.

Voices murmured within Tank's tent. Cameron and Derek's lamp faded, then turned off. Savage watched Szabla bend to remove her shoes, then she took off her pants, wriggling as she pulled them over her hips. She tossed them in the corner where they landed silently on the sand. He adjusted himself in his pants, wondering if she knew he was watching her. He bet she did. He looked out across the ocean, trying to ignore the silhouette to his left. The waves rolled in, easing up the shore and fizzing as the foam smoothed over. When he looked back at Szabla's tent, the lamp was off.

He paced around the small ring of tents a few times, then walked back to the camp and straddled a cruise box. He glanced over and someone was sitting right next to him. He jerked back, sliding off the cruise box, the Death Wind out of the sheath before he realized that it was Szabla. She laughed quietly, her teeth flashing in the darkness.

"You better be grateful you didn't swing that thing at me, boy, or you'd be wearing it right about now." She was wearing ripped camo shorts and a white undershirt. Her clavicle showed above the collar of her shirt, an elegant line beside the hard curve of her deltoid. Her skin was wet with the ocean mist, humidity, and sweat.

Savage couldn't help glancing down at her hard body, though he tried not to. He thought she might have noticed because she smiled. He scratched his head, lowering his eyes. "I should put a cowbell around your neck," he said.

"I'll try not to read too much into that," she said. He laughed. "Couldn't sleep," she added. "Just wanted to come out and say hey."

"Hey."

Her lips pressed together, betraying her amusement. "Hey."

He was trying to look everywhere except at her eyes, but it finally got too awkward, so he raised his head. She was looking straight at him. Szabla wasn't a flincher; she had no qualms about staring right through him. They stared at each other for a few moments, not touching, not knowing what to say.

Szabla started to speak, but then Justin stumbled sleepily from Tank's tent, massaging his neck with one hand and yawning. He froze when he saw them. Szabla looked at him with wide eyes, like a deer caught in headlights, and then he shook his head, just once, and walked to his and Szabla's tent.

When Szabla looked back at Savage, her eyes were different. He didn't drop his stare even as she turned, trailing a hand on the cruise box, and headed back to her tent.