Minutes to Burn

Chapter 75

La Carretera al Canal, a poorly paved highway that led over the high-lands of Santa Cruz to the northern side of the island, was forty-two kilometers of mess. Scarps and cracks slowed the truck to a cautious crawl in the night. A few times, Diego had to stop before driving across a fissure, and wait for Rex and Ramoncito to remove the two planks from the bed of the truck and lay them across the gap. They hit one scarp particularly hard and Rex was convinced they'd blown a tire, but the truck rattled on, undeterred.

After what seemed a lifetime, they drove down the far side of the hill, coasting to the dock at the Itabaca Channel and gazing across the dark stream of water at the airport lights on Baltra.

The truck skidded to a halt, and they hopped out.

Rex looked at the stretch of water and cursed. "I forgot about that," he said. "There's no boat. What are we going to-" He glanced over, but Diego had already stripped down to his boxers.

Diego leaned back in the truck, grabbing the handcuffs from the rearview mirror. "I'm going to stop that plane if I have to handcuff myself to it," he said. He ran a few steps and hit the water with a graceful dive.

Ramoncito groaned and began to strip down. Rex watched him for a few moments before following suit.

Cameron awakened with the helo blowing sheets of wind across her body. Guided by the IR strobe, it flew low over the road, landing in the grassy field between base camp and the air vesicle. A soldier sat crouched behind the M-60 mounted in the door.

Three figures scurried from the helo, running to her body under the yellow blanket of the spotlight, white bands with red crosses standing out on their arms. They stopped dead in their tracks, Berettas drawn, when they saw the mantid's body beneath the tree. One shouted back to the gunner and two men emerged with flamethrowers. Cameron coughed, her throat lined with dirt and blood.

The flamethrowers burst to life with sporadic belches, obliterating the remnants of the virus from the base camp. Cameron raised a weary hand and held up two fingers, then pointed in the directions of Ramon and Floreana's house and of the specimen freezer-the two additional sites that needed to be sterilized by fire. One of the soldiers nodded and jogged off down the road, flamethrower in hand. This was all relevant, she realized, only if the water samples had come in clean.

Two figures moved in cautiously, eyes on the creature, and lifted Cameron onto a stretcher. Cameron tried to speak, to tell them where Justin was buried-that despite her last correspondence with Samantha, he was still alive-but her throat was caked with dust and no sound came out. Despite her protestations, they carried her briskly but carefully back to the helo. Behind her, the flamethrower claimed the mantid's body.

Cameron thrashed on the stretcher. "Stop, we have a man down," she managed to croak, but her voice was barely audible over the burst of the flamethrowers and the whir of the rotors. She pointed to the mound of upturned soil under which Justin was buried, but they moved right past it. Her and Derek's old tent was ablaze, along with the note she'd pinned to it.

She threw herself from the stretcher, grunting when she hit the ground. Justin's body was buried about ten feet away. The figures stopped, concerned, then leaned over her. She saw a needle flash in a gloved hand-a sedative. She rolled on her back, swinging roughly, and the figures backed off.

She turned and pulled herself toward Justin's grave, feeling the pinch of the needle in her ass. The world blurred and swam. She fought off unconsciousness, dragging herself forward with bloody fingernails. The figures waited for her to pass out.

Grunting, she yanked herself toward the plastic tube that protruded from the ground. Spots dotted her vision. She finally reached it and swiped away a handful of dirt, revealing the edge of Justin's cheek. One of the figures crouched over him, checking his neck for a pulse.

Cameron felt her body floating away.

Strapped to the stretcher, she came to when the Blackhawk struck pave-ment at Baltra. One of the corpsmen fiddled with an oxygen line. She leaned over Cameron and checked her pupils with a penlight, first pulling on a second set of latex gloves.

Resting in the tangle of an oxygen tube on her chest was a transparent Ziploc bag that held her necklace and wedding ring. The corpsman must have removed them from her neck to get a clear line to her pulse. Afraid the ring would get lost with all the activity, Cameron reached out weakly and fought the bag open, pushing the ring onto her finger. The necklace slid from her chest, falling to the helo floor. She wasn't used to wearing the ring properly-it felt large and unwieldy, yet comforting.

Cameron rolled her head limply to the side. Justin lay on the stretcher across the helo, his glassy eyes staring up at the roof. His face was pallid, like a corpse's, and awash in sweat and dirt. Cameron's eyes traveled down to his fingernails. They were blue; he was shunting blood to his heart and brain. A single tear rolled from the corner of his eye, but he did not blink.

"Baby," she said, her voice choked and broken. She sniffed and wiped the mucus roughly from her upper lip. Justin's body stiffened as a wave of pain wracked him, his thighs straining the vinyl straps, his back arched and contorted. His eyes seemed drugged, insensate, and for a moment Cameron thought she'd lost him already despite the steady blip of the monitor.

The soldiers disembarked, hardly taking note of them.

Cameron cleared her throat and fought to enunciate, but her words still came out a scratchy drawl. "Baby," she said. "Baby, look at me. Look at me."

A glimmer of recognition rippled through his eyes, and Cameron bit her lip, fighting not to sob from relief. He turned, his eyes finding hers. A thin line of drool dangled from the side of his mouth.

"That's right," she breathed. "Just look at me. Look at me."

He watched her, his eyes lit through with pain. Weakly, he raised a trembling hand. It hovered in the space between their stretchers, reaching for her. Despite the excruciating pain in her shoulder, she reached for him too. For an instant, there was nothing else-no noise, no pain, no hammering rotors overhead, just the feeling of her husband's hand in hers, his eyes on her face.

The door swung open, and she saw a montage of images in the night-Rex sprinting for the open helo door, the B1 bomber on the tar-mac ready for takeoff, Diego lying down before the plane, his wrists handcuffed around the forward landing gear. It seemed as if Rex and Diego were wearing only boxer shorts.

Cameron blinked lazily, trying to make sense of everything. The bomber should already have taken off; it should have been heading to Sangre de Dios by now, bearing the neutron bomb in its belly. Diego must have delayed the takeoff by handcuffing himself to the wheel. A UN soldier pinned down Diego's arms with his knees as another strug-gled to undo the cuffs with a key. They came free, and the soldiers dragged Diego away struggling and shouting. A button popped from the soldier's shirt, pattering on the tarmac. Ramoncito, wearing a dirty pair of underwear, ran forward from seemingly nowhere, pounding one of the soldiers' backs weakly with his fists.

The bomber rolled forward, engines revving for the takeoff.

Rex stumbled up to the door, shoving the corpsman aside. Water dripped from his hair. "The water samples are clean," he said. "All of them."

Cameron tried to smile but couldn't.

"Did you exterminate the carriers?" he asked.

Cameron fought against the haze. She raised a pale hand and flashed a weak thumbs-up. Behind them, the B1 roared into its takeoff, engines screaming, cutting through the night air like a scythe. Justin mumbled something, but it was lost in the noise.

Diego kicked free from the UN soldiers and ran for the helo, his sleek ponytail bouncing, Ramoncito at his heels. "Did you do it?" Diego screamed. One of his elbows was bleeding, scraped by the tarmac.

Rex pulled out his bottom lip and removed the small disk of the transmitter from where he'd wedged it against his gums. Holding it in the palm of his hand like a jewel, he activated it, telling the operator to patch him through to Samantha. His leg hammered up and down nerv-ously as the B1 grew smaller over his shoulder.

On the runway, the Minutes to Burn electronic billboard sat blank, awaiting another morning, another reading. Diego muttered Spanish curses under his breath as they waited. Finally, Samantha's voice clicked through.

"They're back," Rex said. "The virus reservoir was exterminated. We're clear."

The phone rustled against Samantha's shirt, but they could still make out her yelling through the window at Secretary Benneton.

The B1 faded in the night, the blinks on the wingtips almost out of sight. Diego watched it go, clearly fighting off panic.

"He just issued the order to abort," Samantha said.

Diego's face went limp with relief. He began to sob with a slow urgency. Ramoncito leaned against him, burying his face in his side.

"I want you, Dr. Rodriguez, the boy, and Cameron to come straight here for tests. The C-130 is standing by."

Rex turned. "Yes," he said. "I see it."

A corpsman jogged over from the C-130. "How many cots should we prepare?"

Rex looked inside the helo, noticing for the first time how empty it was.

When the corpsman asked again, his voice was full of dread. "How many cots?"

Cameron nodded weakly.

"Two," Rex said. When he spoke again, his voice was little more than a whisper. "Just two."

In the distance, the sound of the B1's engines shifted, rising to a sharper pitch. The plane banked high and hard, a broad sweeping arc in the night, and headed back for the airport. Diego fell to his knees, his hair wet and hanging across his eyes in the front.

It was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.

Reclined on carefully secured cots, Cameron and Justin were out cold before the C-130 even took off. The acceleration caused Rex to lean in the cargo seat, but he quickly adjusted. The plane climbed rapidly and circled the island before heading northeast toward Maryland.

Wanting one last look at the islands, Rex rose carefully and crossed to the small round window near the propellers. One of the corpsmen tending to Justin urged him to sit down, but Rex waved him off. He peered outside, then turned and smiled at Diego and Ramoncito. "Come here," he said. "You've got to see this."

Diego was careful to keep his balance as he joined Rex. He reached out a hand, helping Ramoncito navigate his way from the seat to the window. The boy's wonder at the plane was evident.

Down below, the black mass of Santa Cruz was visible on the dark waters. Above the southern edge of the island, right near the heart of Puerto Ayora, the air was lit with dozens of fireworks, the bright sparks coasting to the ground like settling embers.

Diego instinctively reached out, ruffling Ramoncito's hair. The three of them stood and watched the brilliant flashes of light until the island passed from view. Diego's eyes moistened when he looked down at the boy at his side.

"Happy New Year," he said.