Part 36 (1/2)

'Those are uniforms,' someone said. 'Look here, U.S. Army.'

'What do we do? They're all dead.'

'Unbuckle them. Get them out.'

'The buckles are melted shut. We'll have to cut them out. Let it cool off some more.'

'What were they doing in there?' one of the physicians wondered to Ali.

The dead limbs lolled. One man had bitten off his tongue, and the flap of muscle lay on his chin. Then they heard a moan. It came from below the hatch opening, where the third man hung suspended and out of their reach.

Without a word, Ike vaulted into the smoking interior. He straddled the bodies at hatch level and slashed at the webbing, clearing out the dead first. Crawling deeper, he got the third man cut free and dragged him to the hatch, where a dozen hands finished the extraction.

Ali and a few others were tending the dead, laying bits of burned clothing across their faces. The man uppermost in the cylinder, where the heat and fire would have been worst, had shot himself through the mouth. The middle man had strangled on a strap now fused into his neck. Their clothing had caught fire, leaving them dressed only in their harnesses and strapped with weapons. Each bore a pistol, a rifle, and a knife.

'Check these scopes out.' A geologist was sweeping the river with one of the soldier's rifles. 'These things are rigged for sniper work at night. What were they coming to hunt?'

'We'll take those,' Walker said, and his mercenaries collected all the other weapons.

Ali helped lay the third man on the ground, then stood back. His lungs and throat had been seared. He was coughing up a clear serous fluid, and his temperature control was shot. He was dying. Ike knelt beside him, along with the doctors and Walker and Shoat. Everyone was watching.

Walker peeled back a piece of charred cloth. '”First Cavalry,”' he read, and looked at Ike. 'These are your people. What are they sending Rangers down for?'

'I have no idea.'

'You know this man?'

'I don't.'

The doctors covered the burned man with a sleeping bag and gave him water to drink. The man opened his one good eye. 'Crockett?' he rasped.

'Guess he knows you,' Walker said. The whole camp stood breathless.

'Why did they send you?' Ike asked.

The man tried to form the words. He struggled beneath the sleeping bag. Ike gave him more water.

'Closer,' said the soldier.

Ike leaned in. He bent to hear.

'Judas,' the man hissed.

The knife drove straight up through the sleeping bag.

The fabric or pain spoiled the a.s.sa.s.sin's thrust. The blade skipped along Ike's rib cage but did not enter. The soldier had enough strength for a second slash across Ike's back, then Ike caught his wrist.

Walker and Shoat and the doctors fell back from the attack. One of the mercenaries reacted with three quick shots into the burned man's thorax. The body bounced with each round.

'Cease fire!' Walker yelled.

It was over that fast.

The only sound was the water flowing.

The expedition stared in disbelief. No one moved. They had seen the attack and heard the soldier's whispered word.

Ike knelt in their midst, dumbfounded. He still held the a.s.sa.s.sin's wrist in one hand, and the gash along his ribs flowed red. He looked around at them, bewildered.

Suddenly, a terrible keening noise rose up from him.

Ali didn't expect that. 'Ike?' she said from the ring of onlookers. No one dared go closer.

Ali stepped out from the circle and went to him. 'Stop it,' she said. They had depended on his strength for so long that his frailty endangered them. Before their eyes, he was coming undone.

He looked at her, then fled.

'What was that all about?' someone muttered.

For lack of shovels, they drifted the bodies out into the river. Many hours later, two more cylinders were lowered to them, each filled with cargo. They ate. Helios had sent them a feast for a hundred people: smoked rainbow trout, veal in cognac, cheese fondue, and a dozen different kinds of bread, sausages, pasta, and fruit. The crisp green lettuce in the salad brought tears of joy. It was, said a note, meant to celebrate C.C. Cooper's birthday. Ali suspected otherwise. Ike was meant to be dead, and this banquet was in effect a wake.

The attempt on Ike's life had no explanation or context or justice. What made it all the more irrational was that Ike was their most valued member. Even the mercenaries would have voted for him. With him as scout, they had felt like the Chosen People, destined to exit the wilderness on the heels of their tattooed Moses. But now he had been labeled a traitor, and was inexplicably marked for death.

The communications cable to the surface had been fried by the magma zone overhead, and so the expedition had only conjecture and superst.i.tion to fall back upon. In a way they all felt targeted, for in their experience Ike had been the best of men, and he was being punished for sins they had never known. It felt as though a great storm had opened upon them. The group's response was a little worry, then a lot of denial and bravado.

'It was a matter of time,' said Spurrier. 'Ike was going to come unwrapped sooner or later. You could see it coming. I'm surprised he held up this long.'

'What does that have to do with anything?' Ali snapped.

'I'm not saying he brought it down on himself. But the man's definitely in torment. He's got more ghosts than a graveyard.'

'What do you do to get the U.S. Army on your case?' Quigley, the psychiatrist, wondered. 'I mean that was a suicide mission. They don't throw good men away on nothing.'

'And that ”Judas” stuff? I thought once the court-martial was over, they were finished with you. Talk about bad luck. The guy's a born outcast.'

'It's like the whole world's against him.'

'Don't worry about him, Ali,' said Pia, for whom love had come in the form of Spurrier. 'He'll be back.'

'I'm not so sure,' Ali said. She wanted to blame Shoat or Walker, but they seemed genuinely disoriented by the incident. If Helios had meant to kill Ike, why not use their own agents? Why involve the U.S. Army? And why would the Army involve itself with doing Helios' bidding? It made no sense.

While the rest slept, Ali walked from the light of their camp. Ike had not taken his kayak or his shotgun, so she searched on foot with her flashlight. His footprints loped along the bank's mud.

She was furious with the group's smugness. They had depended on Ike for everything. Without him, they might be dead or lost. He had been true to them, but now, when he needed them, they were not true to him.