Part 7 (1/2)

'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.