The Big Burn. Terry Watkins
“Actually, it’s true. In fact, studies have shown that soldiers have done all kinds of things to avoid just that. Most ground-combat units in World War I rarely fired their weapons. When they did, they rarely fired to kill. They fired high. Some of them died because they couldn’t make themselves kill. Most killing was done from long range. Mortars, bombs, cannon and machine guns. But we’ve discovered advancements that overcome most of the natural resistance.”
“You consider this an advancement?”
“In combat, yes. Not in civilization. I’m not in the business of advancing civilization. I’m in the business of trying to protect it.”
“By uncivilized means.”
“By any means necessary.”
His apparent honesty was about the only thing she liked about him at the moment. “I’m exhausted,” she told him after a long yawn. “I’ve suddenly developed a loathing for this video game and I really don’t think you’re going to make much of a killer out of me in a hundred days, let alone one. I’d just like to take a nap. There’s no shower on this plane, is there?”
“No. You can shower when we get to Guam.”
“I can’t wait.”
He smiled, finally, a warm, charming smile, and she began to warm up to this strait-laced soldier until he said, “Neither can we.”
Chapter 4
Anna dreamed that she was naked and clean, lost between creamy white sheets, ecstatic with their cool embrace, but angry at the mattress for being so uncomfortable.
When she woke a second time she still didn’t open her eyes. Instead, she listened to the steady drone of the plane’s engines, considered getting up, but the thought took too much effort. Weeks of constant grind had taken their toll. It would take a week to recover. Every part of her body ached. She realized she hadn’t moved for hours. Her muscles had locked up and she had to work to get them unwound, get some circulation. She stretched one arm, then the other. She finally opened her eyes when a smell wafted to her that she responded to with enthusiasm.
Her body felt like a piece of lead as she undid her seat belt and pulled herself up. The five men on the plane were up front talking and drinking coffee. Three sitting, two standing.
She got up and went forward.
“Coffee’s fresh,” one of the men said. Brock was talking on a satellite phone.
She accepted the offer of coffee. She smelled of fire and sweat and tried to keep some distance between her smelly self and the men.
After he hung up, Brock brought her a blueberry bagel with cream cheese and another cup of coffee. She was starving again. Then he showed her the island on the computer screen.
They huddled shoulder to shoulder around a laptop and discussed the latest satellite images of the Malaysian and Indonesian fires. The images, acquired by the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, showed a thick soup of smoke.
The island was virtually invisible, covered by a massive cloud of dense smoke.
“Where are the winds?” she asked no one in particular.
“There’s no wind. It’s dead calm.”
Using a new technology she’d never heard of, the images were run though some kind of color spectrometer, and visual penetration became possible. She could see the heat pattern from the fires.
Brock pointed to an area. “This is where we’re getting our periodic beeps from. It’s the densest and hilliest part of the island. Jason was moving north, but apparently he can’t get over those mountains. He’s trapped about here,” he told her, gesturing to an area.
“How are we getting him out once we get to him?”
“We’re hoping to find a burned-over area and bring a chopper in. But the fires are now so big it’s getting hard to tell where to land. That’s going to be up to you.”
She studied the fire pattern, and the distance to the ocean. There were several lagoons, but they had limited information on the island’s trees.
“We were thinking of here,” Brock said, pointing to a spot. “It’s the closest point. The fires aren’t joined and that leaves something of an alley.”
“No. Too hot.” She explained the coloring of the fires. “Whatever the fuel load is in here, it’s very hot-burning. Unless you think walking through two thousand degrees won’t turn you into a puddle of glue. The best approach is from here.” She made a line from one of the lagoons inland. “These must be groves of old hardwood. The fires will be mostly crowning and high. There’s a river to the north we can escape to, if things get bad.” She pointed to the river. “Once we get to him, I’ll find a pickup zone and you can call your guys for a chopper.”
While Brock went over plans with his men, she closed her eyes and visualized the jump, the descent, the lagoon where she wanted to go in. Without wind, she’d be able to control the descent, though having to worry about Brock’s descent only made hers more risky.
Jumping into a fire from a high altitude at night and into a tropic combat zone was going to be something new. She wasn’t at all sure what would happen.
All she wanted to do was just get Brock to the ground and let him take it from there. He’s a leader with the most elite commando force on earth, she thought. He should know what he’s doing. Just get him in, and he’ll get us out.
That’s what she hoped for, anyway.
“We’ll refuel in the air, put down in Guam in about five hours. If you need more sleep, now’s the time.”
She walked back to her seat, thinking she might have trouble sleeping again. She cuddled up on her pillow, shut her eyes and immediately floated off into a deep sleep.
Pouco Vulcao Island
Jason Quick came out of a shaking sweat and forced himself to get up. He tried to focus so he could check his symptoms. He feared he was going into some kind of toxic shock syndrome. Septic shock was marked by fever. He had that. Malaise, he had that. Chills and nausea, check. Damn, he was four for four.
He pulled the bandages back and looked at his wound. It was nasty. He cursed bitterly. He had to get the hell off this island and into a hospital, soon.
Jason took a drink from a water bottle, then opened the laptop. He had only two, maybe three hours of battery power left. He closed the computer. He’d been able to translate enough of the text to know what he had, and it was critical he get it out as soon as possible.
Somewhere between Jakarta and Europe a cargo ship had three marine cargo containers with machine tools on board. Inside those machine tools, virtually undetectable by current methods, was enough uranium to make a dozen dirty bombs.
Jason had alerted his handler to the situation a week ago when the containers were first being loaded. It had cost him his cover and the life of his primary agent, a man deep in the terrorist network of Jemaah Islamiyah.
So far nothing had been done to find and stop that ship. But Jason now had a laptop with the information that would identify not only the ship, but where the deadly material was headed. What Jason didn’t have was the program that could break the code and get into the specific data on the laptop.
It was his opinion that the cargo was headed for a port in Europe, before heading elsewhere—most likely the States.
He made his way slowly and painfully to the front of the cave. He pushed aside the blanket and stuck his head outside. At times the smoke so completely blocked the sun he couldn’t tell if it was day or night but for his watch. The front of the narrow entrance was covered by thick vines and wide lantana fronds. He’d found the cave by accident as he’d fled the men hunting him.
He didn’t want