Minutes to Burn

Chapter 49

29 Dec 07

MISSION DAY 5

Derek lay on his back in the dark of early morning, watching the rain patter on the roof of the tent. It slid to the sides and formed puddles, moving patterns of darkness. The tent looked alive, as if he were lying in the belly of some great beast and watching its stomach digest him.

The rain slowed, then stopped, leaving the canvas above bowed. Though morning was only a few minutes away, the sky was still gray. Cameron slept soundly on her sleeping pad to Derek's right, and the cruise box containing the larva was still safely latched.

Again, he had not slept. Frustration had honed its edge on his sleep-lessness, but he resisted it. He rose and walked outside, where Justin was standing watch.

Justin turned his fingers in a reverse temple and cracked them sharply across his forehead as he yawned. He shifted on the log, groaning. "My ass feels like I just spent the night with the Marquis de Sade."

Derek stood with his hands on his hips, surveying the waving tops of the Scalesias. His face was swollen, puffy around the eyes and through the cheeks. He blinked long and hard and looked back at Justin, forcing his eyes to adjust. The spikes from the GPS tripods were lined up on the ground by Justin's feet. Beside them were four flares and the bolt Tank had taken from the specimen freezer.

He walked a few paces off and urinated into the higher grass. "Get the others mustered for recon," he mumbled over his shoulder.

The softness of the forest floor was surprising. Cameron felt it was yielding to her, giving way beneath her heavy boots. The spike swung at her side.

Moving stealthily through the trees in their cammies, their skin tender from the sun and greasy with sunblock, Cameron and Derek blurred from spot to spot like shadows. If they needed to, they could just disap-pear, stepping back against the trunk of a tree, lying flat on the forest floor, fading into bushes.

Once, in Iraq, she and Derek had been caught by surprise by a truck-ful of enemy soldiers. They'd been wearing their desert cammies, and they'd leaned back on the steep dune behind them, kicking sand over their black boots and letting more sand crumble down over their faces. The truck had rattled past them so close she'd been worried it would run over her feet.

Cameron led, forging through the branches with her shoulders and chest. When they didn't give way, she could usually snap them with a shove. Her legs were firm beneath her, solid through the thighs and ass. If she ever stopped working out, her figure would soften into volup-tuousness. She didn't plan to ever stop working out.

Derek followed in her wake. Trapped beneath the canopy, the air was thick with humidity, stirring with clouds of gnats and particles of leaves and bark. About every ten yards, they'd pause, surveying the area around them and listening for movement. At all times, they had 360-degree security coverage. Cameron scanned the area to the front and the sides, and Derek covered the rear, turning in circles to check behind them. Their patrolling formation was tighter than usual because of the limited visibility; the canopy made it seem like it was dusk.

They fell into a rhythm, Cameron and Derek, when they worked like this, sharing each other's senses, movements, and instincts. Years of functioning as a buddy pair had welded them into one entity. They tra-versed the forest, two beating hearts moving through the thickets and tree trunks. They did not speak. They never even had to gesture when they switched point.

Cameron always knew where Derek was, not because she could hear him or see him, but because she sensed him, sensed the life moving behind her among the trees, the life for which she was responsible. If something happened to Derek, she sometimes thought, it would be almost as upsetting as if something happened to her own husband. That made his recent behavior all the more alarming.

Since they weren't humping gear, they didn't stop to rehydrate every hour as they normally would. Cameron's movements became almost hypnotic-the rise of her feet, the sink of her boots into the thick mud, the pattern of her steps. One, two, three, and a crossing side step to dodge a tree trunk. Her breathing was slow and even, her face damp with the heat. She felt sweat stinging her eyes.

About halfway to the forest's peak, a small clearing opened among the trunks of the trees, a break of a few square yards matted with decaying leaves and dead ferns. Vines twisted their way along the ground, winding themselves through the low brush and darting up the trees around the clearing. The Scalesias stretched overhead, growing together in a living tapestry. Some of the larger trees faded away, their trunks reaching up and up until they were lost in the canopy.

The forest felt suddenly alive to Cameron. Like it was watching her.

She held up a hand, stopping Derek in his tracks. Her grip on the spike tightened. Derek sidestepped quickly behind a trunk, leaning against the white spotted bark.

The forest was moving all around her, leaves, fronds, and branches swaying in the wind. The slow, hypnotic motions reminded her of a mating dance. The air was musky with the scents of mud, hidden creatures, fresh and rotting fruit.

She scanned the area but saw only green and brown, vines dripping from branches like stalactites, foliage vibrating in the breeze. For a moment, she closed her eyes and listened. The buzz of insects, the flap-ping of a bird, the creek of bending trees. She opened her eyes again and saw nothing, though she still felt the eyes of the forest on her.

A length of vine by her foot hissed and slid away, rustling in the dark-ness. Between the trunks, the forest stretched on forever, a dim under-world.

Moving slowly to her right, stepping sideways foot over foot so that she could remain facing forward, Cameron headed out of the clearing. She counted off fifteen paces before Derek followed her. They disap-peared into the shadows ahead.

A spiderweb broke across Cameron's face, but she didn't flinch. She wiped it away using the back of her hand that held the spike. The spider fell to the ground, scurrying clumsily for cover, and she crushed it underfoot. A triad of birds left a tree in a burst of noise, darting through the branches and calling to one another.

Cameron raised her hand and snapped her fingers. Derek froze and they stood perfectly still, Cameron resisting the urge to swipe away the last strands of the spiderweb stubbornly clinging to the bridge of her nose. Finally, she signaled him forward with two fingers and pointed to the ground, where a gnawed head lay, about the size of a medicine ball- the male's head that the female had chewed off during mating.

Cameron stepped forward and picked up the head carefully, as if con-cerned it would spring to life. The shell of the head was intact, but much of the insides had been eaten by ants. She tilted it in a shaft of light fil-tering through the treetops, admiring the hard, jagged line of the mandibles.

"Looks like it's just us and the larvae now," she said.