Minutes To Burn Part 6

"I think I can manage alone," Rex said. "Tempting as it sounds, I don't think I'm really in need of a 'buddy.'"

Derek ignored him. Tank sat down on one of the beds with a grunt, pulling off a boot. He snapped his fingers, and Justin pulled a can of Tinactin from his kit bag and tossed it to him.

When the others had finished putting away their M-4s and 9mm Sig Sauer p226s, Derek counted the mags in the cruise box, making sure they were all accounted for. Since he was standing watch, he kept a loaded pistol in his belt.

The sound of a crying baby issued through the thin wall. Derek stiff-ened, his face blanching. Cameron coughed loudly to draw attention away from him. The crying continued. Probably the baby that got sun-burnt.

Rex punched a number into his sat phone. He hung up and dialed again. "A recording says the north part of the city's still out. I tried before from the airport."

Some of the color was returning to Derek's face, but he still looked unsteady.

"So the north part of the city's out," Szabla said. "Who gives a s.h.i.+t?"

"That's where Dr. Ramirez's lab is."

Szabla looked at Rex with irritation. "Need I repeat my question?"

"I haven't had an opportunity to inform him of our departure time tomorrow. If he's going to meet us at the airport for the flight, he needs to know when it is."

"So go tell him."

"It's through the UN cordon."

"Now we're an escort service," Szabla said.

"Doubt you'd get many bookings in that line of work," Rex said. "Look, someone needs to accompany me. Why don't you take a vote or something?"

"This is the navy," Szabla said. "We don't vote."

"I'll go," Cameron said. "Me and Tank. That okay, LT? LT?"

Derek snapped from his trance. The baby's cries had stopped. "What?"

"Me and Tank'll accompany Rex to find Dr. Ramirez. That all right?"

Derek nodded. "With all the att.i.tude we're running into, I want you to keep it low-key around the UN troops. Change into civies and keep your Sigs out of view." Opening the weapons box, he pulled out two pistols and tossed them to Cameron and Tank. He slammed the lid, locked both padlocks, and looped the keychain around his neck.

"Anyone finds out you're carrying and it's my a.s.s. If you run into trouble with UN or domestic, flash ID; with the element, retaliate rea-sonably. I'm a.s.suming you'll be fine. It's broad daylight, and I'm pleas-antly surprised by the stability of the city, even beyond the checkpoints. We'll wait for you here, and see about dinner later." He flipped Cameron a rubber-banded wad of sucres, bluish-green on one side, red and orange on the other.

Cameron wedged the money into her front pants pocket, safe from pickpockets. The baby next door let loose with a scream, and she saw Derek's face tighten, as if he were bracing for a punch. He regained his composure quickly. No one else seemed to notice.

"The lab is out by Julian Coronel," Rex said. "It's not the nicest part of town."

Tank laid an enormous hand on Rex's shoulder, guiding him toward the door.

"Don't worry," Cameron said. She stole another glance at Derek before turning to follow. "You're in good hands."

CHAPTER 10.

--------------------- he paper crackled as he inhaled, the orange ring of the cherry inching its way down the length of the joint toward his generous lips and well-manicured mustache. Diego Byron Rodriguez held the burn in his lungs for a moment, his chest stretching the fabric of his cheap Darwin Station T-s.h.i.+rt, and surveyed the mess around him.

A filing cabinet lay with its top smashed into his desk, a webbing of cracks working their way from one end of the fine oak surface to the other. Supporting a slender laptop, a dissecting microscope, and a coffee can full of pencils, was a makes.h.i.+ft second desk, humbly erected from four fallen cinder blocks and a piece of plywood. A screensaver-flying marine iguanas-blinked across the computer, and the power cord plugged into an orange heavy-duty surge protector on a cable that threaded its way through the detritus and out the broken window to functional outlets in the Proteccin building next door. Amid the shat-tered gla.s.s from the two picture windows fluttered fallen papers and posters, diagrams of fire ants, the wings of stiffened insects in broken cyanide jars.

On the wall hung two photos, frames cracked and gla.s.s shattered from their many falls, of Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge-an homage to Diego's heroes.

Diego's dark brown hair was sleek, his short ponytail seeming of one piece. His face was youthful, though traces of wrinkles remained for a few moments after he smiled or frowned, as if his face, coming into its fourth decade, had developed an aversion to change. His long hair seemed at odds with the neatness of his mustache, his faded T-s.h.i.+rt with his suit-bottom pants, the ta.s.sels of his Miami-bought Italian loafers with the stripes of bare, dusty skin visible at his ankles.

A pair of his boxer shorts was drying on the antenna of the PRC117 Delta satellite radio. Because he'd fried it two weeks ago by overloading the circuits, he now had to use an old-school, high-frequency PRC104 that the ejercito had dropped off on their last swing through. The rigid, ten-foot whip antenna that stood up like a coat rack from the low-tech PRC104 only permitted regional transmissions.

Leaning back on the ripped cus.h.i.+on of his leather couch, Diego exhaled, watching the jet of smoke unravel. He propped his feet up on a fallen TV and stared at the two items on the coffee table before him: a telephone, and the last box of .22 rounds on the Isla Santa Cruz. He ran his tongue over his teeth, leaned over, and tried the phone for the fourth time. Miraculously, the call went through.

A gruff voice answered. "Guayaquil s.h.i.+pping. Toms aqui." Though Diego had never met Thomas, he knew him well enough from the fat gringo accent and the self-a.s.sured cadence of his words-another American entrepreneur moved down to Guayaquil to play buccaneer and make a fortune off Ecuador's problems. Diego thought about switching to English but decided to humor him.

"Thomas, Diego Rodriguez. Acting Director, Darwin Station."

"Si, si. Hombre de ecology, no?"

"I'm gonna make this quick because we could get cut off any minute. My Proteccin Department has mostly deserted, we have feral animals overrunning two of the islands, and I'm s.h.i.+t out of .22s."

Thomas's chuckle made Diego grimace, but at least he switched to English. "That's right, you got wild dogs and goats and s.h.i.+t eating up all the b.u.t.terflies."

"Something like that."

"I remember 'cause we used to s.h.i.+p you guys out sodium monoflor-acetate-enough to poison the cast of Cats, if memory serves. But why are you handling eradication now? Isn't that supposed to be the Park's job?"

A noise of disgust escaped Diego's throat. "El Parque. The Park offi-cials split after the first tremor. Me and my staff have been handling everything." He looked around his empty office. "Small staff."

"Well, I can get you anticoagulants. Brodifacoum, klerat, more ten-eighty."

"The goats have become finicky, like cats. We've got to get ahold of more bullets."

"Even if I could get my hands on .22s, what makes you think you could afford them?"

"Maybe I have deeper pockets than you realize."

"Well, bullets are one commodity that even I can't locate. You know that."

Without domestic manufacture of bullets, Ecuador was dependent on imports from the United States and Israel. Ever since the Initial Event and the resultant social unrest, the U.S. had severely limited the export of bullets to Ecuador. The few attempts to make bullets in any quant.i.ty within the country had been abandoned by the organized crime leaders in Guayaquil due to earthquake disruptions.

Diego sat up, tugging at his ponytail. "Even on Santa Cruz, the goats are destroying the topsoil, eating what's left of the vegetation, digging up tortoise nests. And they're reproducing like rabbits. If you don't help me, these islands are gonna be what they started as-barren mounds of magma. Espanola's already been irreversibly damaged, chewed down to the rock. I know you have connections in the States. There must be bul-lets around Guayaquil. If you can get me even two, three cartons, it could make a big-" Realizing that he was pleading, Diego paused, try-ing to regain his composure. So this is what it's come down to, he thought. An island for a carton of bullets.

"Diego, buddy. There's nothing I can do. The ammo I do come across brings high prices you scientists can't pay. With all the rioting, the mili-tary, the armed guards...you should see it here."

"I need more bullets."

"Everyone needs, my friend. The home owners need for their armed guards, the military needs for the soldiers, the robbers need for the rob-beries. I don't have any bullets, but if I did, I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd have a big auction. Right in the middle of Parque Centenario."

"Your priorities are to be commended."

"Please. There are no priorities in times like this."

"There are always priorities. Especially in times like this."

"Even if I could get bullets, which I can't, and even if you could afford them, which you can't, how the h.e.l.l would I get them to you? We haven't had boats out of here or Manta in three weeks, and-you for-get-TAME stopped running all flights last Sunday. The only thing we see of Galpagos anymore are its citizens was.h.i.+ng up on the coast in pirated fis.h.i.+ng boats, broke, stinking, and looking for somewhere to sleep."

There was a long silence. Diego relit his joint.

"I am sorry, my friend," Thomas said. "But such is life."

Either the line cut out or Thomas hung up. Diego toked, held the burn.

A fourteen-year-old boy ran up to the building and addressed Diego through the open window. He wore a T-s.h.i.+rt tied around his head, draped down over his neck foreign-legion style.

Diego instinctively lowered the joint to his side so that the boy wouldn't see it, but then he gazed about the ruin of the office and raised it in offering instead. The boy shook his head and Diego shrugged. Desper-ate times call for desperate measures.

"Pablo left," the boy said.

"What do you mean, he left?" Diego's words were clouded with smoke.

"He left. As in, hopped a fis.h.i.+ng boat to the mainland. Like everyone else."

Diego cursed under his breath. "Who do we have in Proteccin?"

"Pablo was Proteccin. There's no one left. Except you."

"There must be. What about the other departments? Plantas y Inver-tebrados?" The boy continued shaking his head. "Bio Mar? Proyecto Isabela?"

"Look around, Senor Rodriguez. The Station is empty. Even those earthquake guys who took over the Bio Mar building are gone. The fat guy left yesterday morning with his wife, took the new computer with him." The boy scratched his hair behind his ear. He was an odd-looking child, with a round, squat head perched precariously atop a slender neck. The T-s.h.i.+rt tied around his head only served to accent its width all the more. "Just the locals are left. And you."

"I'm not a local?"

The boy laughed. "The closest you can get, I suppose."

Diego took another toke. He mashed his tongue up against his teeth.

It felt large and unwieldy. He stubbed out the joint, vowing to quit. "So what's the bad news, Ramoncito?"

"How do you know there's bad news?"

"Because you're only around when there's bad news. You're like a vul-ture. Or the paparazzi."

"Paparazzi?"

"Never mind. Tell me. Not more nonsense tales from Sangre, I hope."

"There's no one there to tell tales anymore. Just my parents." The boy paused, and Diego braced himself for bad news. "Carlos just got back from Floreana, and he said he saw the Menendez family loading up on an oil tanker headed for Manta."

"G.o.dd.a.m.nit, I hope they killed the livestock."

Ramoncito shook his head. "Pigs. Loose everywhere."

"Chucha madre!" Diego sprang to his feet. "They'll go after my tur-tles."

For seven years, Diego had worked tirelessly to revive the dwindling Pacific green turtle population. The process had been slow; he first had to wait for the turtles to mate in captivity so that he could incubate the eggs indoors, safe from the devastating UV rays that so easily compro-mise the integrity of the sh.e.l.ls; then he'd nurtured the hatchlings, keep-ing them in darkened boxes for the first hours of their lives to simulate nest conditions. He'd moved them to rearing pens and indoor pools as they grew, waiting for their sh.e.l.ls to harden sufficiently to withstand the onslaught of radiation they'd meet back in the wild, and giving them time to reach s.e.xual maturity. Only last May he'd released them off the sh.o.r.es of Floreana, eagerly antic.i.p.ating their return to their nesting grounds at Cormorant Point.

Diego ran his hand back and forth across the front of his slacks. "If this nesting period doesn't yield offspring...if those pigs get out there... we've got to...I'm going to..." Pulling another joint from his pocket, he lit it with a soggy match. He paced, stepping carefully over the debris on the floor, before returning to his seat on the couch. He twirled a pen around his finger and tapped it against the table, some-times holding it against the wood. Tap tap hold tap. Tap tap hold. Hold tap hold tap. Hold tap hold.

Ramoncito laughed. "Did you just spell 'f.u.c.k'?"

"Huh? I don't...yes, I suppose I did. How do you...?"

"Maybe I listen to your lessons better than you think."

Diego held the pen against his full lips, leaning back on the couch. Accustomed to his moods, Ramoncito watched him, waiting for him to return from his thoughts.

Before the Initial Event, Floreana, like most of the other islands in the archipelago, had a few inhabitants. As it became clear that the after-shocks would be intense and unremitting, more and more settlers had elected to move to the mainland rather than try their lot on volcanic islands caught over a hot spot near the intersection of three tectonic plates. For the most part, the exoduses had been panicked, ill-advised ventures. A few spots would open up on a fis.h.i.+ng boat, or an oil tanker would pa.s.s nearby, and families would pack the belongings of a lifetime in a frenzied twenty minutes and crowd expectantly onto docks and into pangas. Parents kissing children goodbye, husbands embracing wives. And when families were fortunate enough to find s.p.a.ce together, their houses and farms were left as they were-kettles on stoves, doors bang-ing in the breeze, goats and pigs nosing their way out of pens.

If the Menendez family had left a herd of pigs behind on Floreana, given the absence of indigenous predators, the population growth would be astounding. A dozen or so feral animals could quickly grow to hundreds. The island of Santiago was already a lost cause-over 100,000 feral goats had turned it into a virtual wasteland; having exhausted the native vegetation, the goats had outlived their food sources and were dropping of starvation in tremendous numbers. Diego had sailed past the island en route to a survey on Pinta last month, and the stench from the goat carca.s.ses reached him almost a kilometer offsh.o.r.e. He was determined not to let Floreana meet a similar fate.

Since arriving in Galpagos to conduct research for his masterado, Diego had developed an intense, almost obsessive commitment to the islands. They embodied the very essence of life, of selection and design. Each island to Diego was a wonder of ecological balance, a monument to the ability of species to persist, endure, adapt, and even thrive. The fragility of the islands was so extreme as to be frightening; an island's entire ecology could be irreversibly altered by the arrival of a single ant, or one wasp hitchhiking in a bait bucket on the deck of a boat. The examples were endless: six wild dogs had attacked a colony of Isabela land iguanas in June, leaving over four hundred bodies to rot; black rats that had stolen rides to the islands in the bellies of s.h.i.+ps had quickly out-competed endemic rice rats, causing their extinction on four islands; qui-nine trees cut reddish swathes into Scalesia forests on the Santa Cruz highlands; lantana camara shrubs metastasized through the nesting areas of the dark-rumpled petrel on Floreana, choking the birds there out of existence. Changes borne of carelessness, of expediency, of shortsight-edness. To oppose them, Diego had his scientific training, an extensive background in ecology, herpetology, and the eradication of introduced species. He had the rapidly diminis.h.i.+ng staff and resources of the Dar-win Station. He had determination, stubbornness, an uncompromising commitment to the life of the islands. And he had one carton of .22s.

Diego flicked the joint on the floor and rose, grabbing the ammo.

Ramoncito regarded Diego suspiciously. "What are you doing?"

Diego unearthed a rifle from beneath a pane of crumbled Sheetrock and rested it against his shoulder. "Looks like I just added animal control officer to my list of jobs." He wedged the carton of bullets into his pocket and headed out. When he slammed the door behind him, it left the hinges and continued right into his office.

CHAPTER 11.

--------------------- he creature drew herself to her full nine feet, rearing up on her hind legs. Pigmented a leafy green and dappled with dusty brown high-lights, she picked up the hues of the Scalesia forest, blending with the crisscross shadows of the branches.

She was segmented into three major parts: a head with antennae, a thorax, and a long, full abdomen heavy with eggs. Her brown forewings, the tegmina, were leathery, covering and protecting her delicate under-wings.

The creature was for the most part slender. Her abdomen and wings, which made up most of the length of her body, ran parallel to the ground. When she raised her head, her thorax swooped upward from her abdomen like the torso of a centaur, giving her a remarkably human erectness and orientation. Her abdomen, normally the breadth of two oil drums, was swollen even wider with her eggs, striking a con-trast with her lean muscular thorax and four spindly rear limbs. A series of holes ran along her abdomen on each side, spiracles through which she drew air.

Her enormous raptorial forelegs protruded from the top of her tho-rax, just beneath her head, and they were usually held close to her body. The insides of these legs were furnished with sharp spines, those on the femurs angled in the opposite direction from those on the tibias so that they'd snap shut on prey like a bear trap. At the end of both tibiae were two curved hooks that served to rake her prey to her.