The Descent Part 7

'I'll keep the spiral loose and high and return to your grouping. Let's not mess with the b.a.s.t.a.r.d until it makes more sense.'

'Music to my ear,' Ramada approved, navigator to pilot. 'No adventures. No heroes.'

Except for a snapshot he had shown Branch, Ramada had yet to lay eyes upon his brand-new baby boy, back in Norman, Oklahoma. He should not have come on this ride, but would not stay back. His vote of confidence only made Branch feel worse. At times like this, Branch detested his own charisma. More than one soldier had died following him into the path of evil.

'Questions?' Branch waited. None.

He broke left, banking hard away from the platoon.

Branch wound clockwise. He started the spiral wide and teased closer. The plume was roughly two kilometers in circ.u.mference.

Bristling with minigun and rockets, he made the full revolution at high speed, just in case some harebrain might be lurking on the forest floor with a SAM on one shoulder and slivovitz for blood. He wasn't here to provoke a war, just to configure the strangeness. Something was going on out here. But what?

At the end of his circle, Branch flared to a halt and spied his guns.h.i.+ps waiting in a dark cl.u.s.ter in the distance, their red lights twinkling. 'It doesn't look like anyone's home,' he said. 'Anybody see anything?'

'Nada,' spoke Lovey.

'Negative here,' McDaniels said.

Back at Molly, the a.s.semblage was sharing Branch's electronically enhanced view. 'Your visibility sucks, Elias.' Maria-Christina Chambers herself.

'Dr. Chambers?' he said. What was she doing on the net?

'It's the old chestnut, Elias. Can't see the forest for the trees. We're way too saturated with the fancy optics. The cameras are cued to the nitrogen, so all we're getting is nitrogen. Any chance you might snug in and give it the old eyeball?'

Much as Branch liked her, much as he wanted to go in and do precisely that - eyeball the h.e.l.l out of it - the old woman had no business in his chain of command. 'That needs to come from the colonel, over,' he said.

'The colonel has stepped out. My distinct impression was that you were being given, ah, total discretion.'

The fact that Christie Chambers was putting the request directly over military airwaves could only mean that the colonel had indeed departed the command center. The message was clear: Since Branch was so all-fired independent, he had been cut loose to fend for himself. In archaic terms, it was something close to banishment. Branch had fragged himself.

'Roger that,' Branch said, idling. Now what? Go? Stay? Search on for the golden apples of the sun...

'Am a.s.sessing conditions,' he radioed. 'Will inform of my decision. Out.'

He hovered just beyond reach of the dense opaque ma.s.s and panned with the nose-mounted camera and sensors. It was like standing face-to-face before the first atomic mushroom.

If only he could see. Impatient with the technology, Branch abruptly killed the infrared night vision and pushed the eyepiece away. He flipped on the undercarriage headlights.

Instantly the specter of a giant purple cloud vanished.

Spread before them, Branch saw a forest - with trees. Stark shadows cast long and bleak. Near the center, the trees were leafless. The nitrogen release on previous nights had blighted them.

'Good G.o.d!' Chambers's voice hurt his ears.

Pandemonium erupted over the airwaves. 'What the h.e.l.l was that?' someone yelled.

Branch didn't know the voice, but from the background it sounded like a small riot breaking out at Molly.

Branch tensed. 'Say again. Over,' he said.

Chambers came back on. 'Don't tell me you didn't see that. When you turned your lights on...'

The comm room noised like a flock of tropical birds in panic. Someone was yelling, 'Get the colonel, get him now!' Another voice boomed, 'Give me replay, give me replay!'

'What the f.u.c.k?' McDaniels wondered from the floating huddle. 'Over.'

Branch waited with his pilots, listening to the chaos at base.

A military voice came on. It was Master Sergeant Jefferson at her console. 'Echo Tango, do you read? Over.' Her radio discipline was a miracle to hear.

'This is Echo Tango, Base,' Branch replied. 'You are loud and clear. Is there a situation in development? Over.'

'Big motion on the KH-12 feed, Echo Tango. Something's going on in there. Infrared just showed multiple bogeys. You say you see nothing? Over.'

Branch squinted through the canopy. The rain lay plasticized on his Plexiglas, smearing his vision. He angled down to give Ramada an un.o.bstructed view. From this distance, the site looked toxic but peaceful.

'Ram?' he said quietly, at a loss.

'Beats me,' Ramada said.

'Any better?' he spoke into his mouthpiece.

'Better,' breathed Chambers. 'Hard to see, though.'

Branch moved laterally for vantage and trained the lights on ground zero. Zulu Four lay not far ahead, nestled among stark spears of killed forest.

'There it is,' Chambers said.

You had to know what to look for. It was a large pit, open and flooded with rainwater. Sticks floated on top of the pool. Bones, Branch knew instinctively.

'Can we get any more magnification?' Chambers asked.

Branch held his position while specialists fiddled with the image back at camp. There beyond his Plexiglas lay the apocalypse: Pestilence, Death, War. All but that final horseman, Famine. What in creation are you doing here, Elias?

'Not good enough,' Chambers complained over his headset. 'All we're doing is magnifying the distortion.'

She was going to repeat her request, Branch knew. It was the logical next step. But she never got the chance.

'There again, sir,' the master sergeant reported over the radio. 'I'm counting three, correction, four thermal shapes, Echo Tango. Very distinct. Very alive. Still nothing on your end? Over.'

'Nothing. What kind of shapes, Base? Over.'

'They look to be human-sized. Otherwise, no detail. The KH-12 just doesn't have the resolution. Repeat. We're imaging multiple shapes, in motion at or in the site. Beyond that, no definition.'

Branch sat there with the cyclic shoving at his hand.

At or in? Branch slipped right, searching for better vantage, sideways, then higher, not venturing one inch closer. Ramada toggled the light, hunting. They rose high above the dead trees.

'Hold it,' Ramada said.

From above, the water's surface was clearly agitated. It was not a wild agitation. But neither was it the kind of smooth rippling caused by falling leaves, say. The pattern was too arrhythmic. Too animate.

'We're observing some kind of movement down there,' Branch radioed. 'Are you picking any of this up on our camera, Base? Over.'

'Very mixed results, Major. Nothing definite. You're too far away.'

Branch scowled at the pool of water. He tried to fas.h.i.+on a logical explanation. Nothing above ground clarified the phenomenon. No people, no wolves, no scavengers. Except for the motion breaking the water's surface, the area was lifeless.

Whatever was causing the disturbance had to be in the water. Fish? It was not impossible, with the overflowing rivers and creeks reaching through the forest. Catfish, maybe? Eels? Bottom feeders, whatever they were? And large enough to show up on a satellite infrared.

There was not a need to know. No more so than, say, the need to unravel a good mystery novel. It would have been reason enough for Branch, if he were alone. He yearned to get close and wrestle the answer out of that water. But he was not free to obey his impulses. He had men under his command. He had a new father in the backseat. As he was trained to do, Branch let his curiosity wither in obedience to duty.

Abruptly the grave reached out to him.

A man reared up from the water.

'Jesus,' Ramada hissed.

The Apache s.h.i.+ed with Branch's startle reflex. He steadied the chopper even as he watched the unearthly sight.

'Echo Tango One?' The corporal was shaken.

The man had been dead for many months. To the waist, what was left of him slowly lifted above the surface, head back, wrists wired together. For a moment he seemed to stare up at the helicopter. At Branch himself.

Even from their distance, Branch could tell a story about the man. He was dressed like a schoolteacher or an accountant, definitely not a soldier. The baling wire around his wrists they'd seen on other prisoners from the Serbs' holding camp at Kalejsia. The bullet's exit cavity gaped prominently at the left rear of his skull.

For maybe twenty seconds the human carrion bobbed in place, a ridiculous mannequin. Then the fabrication twisted to one side and dropped heavily onto the bank of the grave pit, half in, half out. It was almost as if a prop were being discarded, its shock effect spent.

'Elias?' Ramada wondered in a whisper.

Branch did not respond. You asked for it, he was thinking to himself. You got it.

Rule Six echoed. I will permit no atrocity to occur in my presence. The atrocity had already occurred, the killing, the ma.s.s burial. All in the past tense. But this - this desecration - was in his presence. His present presence.

'Ram?' he asked.

Ramada knew his meaning. 'Absolutely,' he answered.

And still Branch did not enter. He was a careful man. There were a few last details.

'I need some clarification, Base,' he radioed. 'My turbine breathes air. Can it breathe this nitrogen atmosphere?'

'Sorry, Echo Tango,' Jefferson said, 'I have no information on that.'

Chambers came on the air, excited. 'I might be able to help answer that. Just a sec, I'll consult one of our people.'

Your people? thought Branch with annoyance. Things were slipping out of order. She had no place whatsoever in this decision. A minute later she returned. 'You might as well get it straight from the horse's mouth, Elias. This is c.o.x, forensic chemistry, Stanford.'

A new voice came on. 'Heard your question,' the Stanford man said. 'Will an air-breather breathe your adulterated concentrate?'

'Something like that,' Branch said.

'Ah hmm,' Stanford said. 'I'm looking at the chemical spectrograph downloaded from the Predator drone five minutes ago. That's as close to current as we're going to get. The plume is showing eighty-nine percent nitrogen. Your oxygen's down to thirteen percent, nowhere close to normal. Looks like your hydrogen quota took the biggest hit. Big deal. So here's your answer, okay?'

He paused. Branch said, 'We're all ears.'

Stanford said, 'Yes.'

'Yes, what?' said Branch.

'Yes. You can go in. You don't want to breathe this mix, but your turbine can. Nema problema.'

The universal shrug had entered Serbo-Croatian, too. 'Tell me one thing,' Branch said. 'If there's no problem, how come I don't want to breathe this mix?'

'Because,' said the forensic chemist, 'that probably wouldn't be, ah, circ.u.mspect.'

'My meter's running, Mr c.o.x,' Branch said. f.u.c.k circ.u.mspect.

He could hear the Stanford hotshot swallow. 'Look, don't mistake me,' the man said. 'Nitrogen's very good stuff. Most of what we breathe is nitrogen. Life wouldn't exist without it. Out in California, people pay big bucks to enhance it. Ever hear of blue-green algae? The idea is to bond nitrogen organically. Supposed to make your memory last forever.'

Branch stopped him. 'Is it safe?'

'I wouldn't land, sir. Don't touch down, definitely. I mean unless you've been immunized against cholera and all the hepat.i.tises and probably bubonic plague. The bio-hazard's got to be off the scale down there, with all that sepsis in the water. The whole helicopter would have to be quarantined.'

'Bottom line,' Branch tried again, voice pinched tight. 'Will my machine fly in there?'

'Bottom line,' the chemist finally summarized, 'yes.'

The pit of fetid water curdled beneath them. Bones rocked on the surface. Bubbles breached like primordial boil. Like a thousand pairs of lungs exhaling. Telling tales.

Branch decided.

'Sergeant Jefferson?' he radioed. 'Do you have your handgun?'

'Yes sir, of course, sir,' she said. They were required to carry a firearm at all times on base.

'You will chamber one round, Sergeant.'

'Sir?' They were also required never to load a weapon on base unless under direct attack.

Branch didn't drag his joke out any longer. 'The man who was just on the radio,' he said. 'If he proves wrong, Sergeant, I want you to shoot him.'

Over the airwaves, Branch heard McDaniels snort his approval.

'Leg or head, sir?'

He liked that.