The Terminals
Page 7
9. I LOVE BACON
by The Foodies
10. RUSTLE AND WHISPER
by Okee Kenochee
“Melt, melt, melt, like a schoolgirl’s dream.”
After an hour of rest they tumbled out of their beds and headed for the bunker. The remainder of the crew were already inside, arranged in their V formation in the conference room with Ward at the front. This time Pilot had joined him. He sat in a chair to one side, wearing his jumpsuit as though he might have to scramble the helicopter at any moment. He chewed a toothpick and wore large sunglasses. The chopper wasn’t actually at the compound. A beach landing was difficult with the uncertain wind coming over the bluff. Pilot came ashore by boat, a sea kayak he’d paddled from around the southern cliffs.
Zara smirked and Donnie frowned when Cam and Ari walked in. Cam rolled his eyes and headed to his seat in the back. Calliope sat nearby, but she drew cartoons with her pencil and pretended not to notice. Cam wondered if she was embarrassed about having shared so much of herself the night before at the keyboard, or if she too regarded him as a failure. Jules, however, patted his seat enthusiastically and greeted him with a huge smile.
“I’m glad you’re not a scoob,” she whispered, giving him a smile. “That means you’ll be with us.”
Ward held up a closed fist, and the room went silent.
“This is the briefing you’ve been waiting for,” he announced. “Today I reveal your first mission. You’ve all been training for your own specific tasks, except for our newcomer, Cam. And now we put it all together. This is where the whole becomes stronger than its parts.”
He pulled a cell phone and aimed it at the whitewashed bricks of the bunker wall. A beam shot out, and a photograph of eight huddled and frightened people appeared on the wall. They were lined up against a brick building—mostly Caucasian, but two Asian women stood hugging each other for comfort, and a tall black woman wore distinctive African clothing. Three looked Scandinavian. The different languages on several T-shirts told Cam they were of multiple nationalities. At least one looked American—a younger man in a Boston Red Sox hat.
Ward’s voice filled the room. He sounded like a reporter narrating a news story—yet another impressive skill. “These are doctors from the humanitarian aid collective Worlds Apart, Worlds Together. They were hijacked at sea by pirates. This is the ransom photo WAWT received. Not pictured are the head of the medical team and the captain of their vessel, because they’re already dead. The surviving eight are being held not far from our location. You’re going to rescue them.”
A murmur went through the room.
“Pirates?” Cam whispered to Ari.
“I think I’ve heard of these assholes,” Ari whispered back. “A South American gang just like this was demanding a million dollars from a Korean company to get its ship back not too long ago. They sent the captain’s hand to the company’s corporate office. Same ones, you think?”
Cam shrugged.
The other team members were whispering too. Ward had to hold his fist up for quiet again. Then he continued.
“They are being held in a country that is unstable due to its recent political shake-up. Pending new elections, its interim leader controls the military and has declared that any foreign action on its soil will be considered an act of war. No government will touch this.” Ward grinned. “But you will.”
He tapped a button, and a tactical map appeared on the wall. A group of shapes represented a compound not unlike their own. Waves depicted ocean. The shoreline was a thick solid line. Several simple squares nearby were buildings.
“The infiltration squad will troll the pirate zone by boat with the intent of getting captured. That squad includes Ari, Jules, Calli, Gwen, and now Cam. Owen will fill in as the fourth on scuba.”
Owen pumped his fist and patted Donnie on the back enthusiastically. Donnie just shrugged but eventually gave a thumbs-up, seemingly to stop Owen from touching him.
“Scuba will separate from the group at sea prior to contact and follow the vessel in after it has been commandeered. Wally will be airborne.”
Ward paused to the let the summary of their mission sink in. There were no more murmurs. Donnie clenched his fists, eager. Jules’s brow was wrinkled with concern. Wally had a crooked smile on his face. Cam just stared, bewildered. Pirates? He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but certainly not letting a bunch of murderous, gun-toting crazies capture him. The wide-eyed expression on Calliope’s face told him that she hadn’t expected it either. Gwen seemed less concerned about their mission—instead, she cast anxious glances at Donnie and Zara, clearly unhappy with the groupings.
Ward resumed. “After months of consideration, I’ve selected the team leader for this operation.”
Donnie and Zara eyed each other. Zara grinned. It’s a game to her, Cam thought. Donnie did not smile. To him this was serious business, a jock’s last chance to prove himself a winner. Donnie’s expression teetered between supreme confidence and desperation.
“Ari, you’re in charge,” Ward said simply.
Cam was still considering Donnie, who suddenly looked as though someone had peed in his Pepsi, when Ari nodded as though he’d known it all along. Cam shot him a surprised look.
“Brains over brawn,” his roommate whispered with a wink.
“Why not Gwen? She’s smart.”
“Too rigid. No flexibility.”
“Congratulations.”
Ari snorted. “Great. Did you notice that these pirates kill the leaders first?”
Calliope frowned and raised her hand tentatively. “Are we gonna have to, like, kill any pirates?”
Ward frowned back. “You’re gonna have to, like, try not to kill anyone, pirates or otherwise,” he replied. “The rules don’t change simply because the danger is heightened or the ethics of the individuals involved are questionable. You only take a life to save more lives. Everyone got that?” He cast a meaningful gaze around the room, meeting each pair of eyes in turn, lingering ever so slightly upon Donnie, Zara, and Wally.
There was more information—two hours’ worth. Ward rattled off instructions and logistics, flashing images on the wall. The pirates were a ragtag group, some of them veterans of drug wars, some merely the poor and the desperate—raw recruits. They were armed with a hodgepodge of rifles and pistols. Their modus operandi was to demand ransom and kill a couple of hostages to provide motivation. They were not known to mistreat their captives before they killed them, but Ward advised the females on the infiltration team to wear tampons to help discourage rapes, just in case. Jules and Calliope looked a little green. The team’s movements would be coordinated via Calliope’s earpiece, but their captors would likely deprive them of any timepieces. “Gwen will keep the time in her head,” Ward said confidently, though it seemed an impossible task. Calliope’s receivers would look like cheap earrings and her transmitter a tongue stud. They were to acquire the eight remaining doctors and return. Simple goal, yet a murderously difficult task.
The final revelation was that they would all see “the doc” for a checkup before they departed.
A doctor? Cam thought. The presence of a medical professional in the forest hadn’t occurred to him before. But of course they would have a doctor, he realized. We all have tumors in our brains busily killing us.
Ward finished the meeting off with a slogan and admonished them to go have some fun for the remainder of the evening. Cam couldn’t imagine how they could think of fun, given the gravity of the mission, but Wally leaped up.
“To the beach!” he shouted.
CAM’S PLAYLIST
9. I LOVE BACON
by The Foodies
10. RUSTLE AND WHISPER
by Okee Kenochee
11. LOVE RHYMES WITH SHOVE
by Lisa Ran Away
“You sizzle and pop, and you don’t stop.”
After the meeting they adjourned to the beach, heads swimming and tongues wagging. They chattered as they made their way t
o the moonlit lagoon, except for Donnie, who marched through the sand in silence with Gwen and Owen buzzing around him. Cam couldn’t help beginning to feel excited himself as they arranged themselves on a communal blanket.
The flat surface of the lagoon shone a tranquil silver. Occasional flashes of red and blue winked through it, speaking to the presence of the contented fish. The jungle noises were constant but distant and soothing, like beautiful background music.
“We should get some guns!” Wally said. “They have guns.”
“Blame her,” Zara replied. She nodded at Calliope. “Little Miss Fight Fire with Flowers.”
“I don’t get it,” Cam said. “Why aren’t we using guns?”
“I didn’t sign up to kill people,” Calliope said softly.
“The gun thing was decided before you got here,” Ari explained. “We try not to kill people to save people. You can see the philosophical conflict there. And it’s hard to incapacitate someone with a bullet in a nonlethal manner. We use darts filled with a local poison distilled from the lovely and hostile native flora and brewed up somewhere off-site. One dose will render you unconscious for hours, but you won’t die.”
“Yeah,” Cam said. “I got a small taste of that lovely stuff in my arm, and it still doesn’t feel right.”
“Two darts will put a man down for good, though,” Zara added.
“Yeah, so the extremists among us can still kill if they really want to,” Ari said. “It’s a compromise.”
“We all want to do good,” Jules said.
Dinner came, and they fell to with gusto. Ward delivered pulled pork tacos he’d made from some sort of wild boar he’d killed himself. A “pakira,” he called it. They were piled high on a platter amid assorted greens, and the team passed sweet guava juice in a huge wooden pitcher. Cam drank three full glasses, and Wally sprayed a mouthful in the air all over everyone in celebration of the mission. When they’d all eaten their fill and more, they lounged, listening to the waves lap at the sand. After five tacos, Cam felt like he was part of a family of bloated sea lions.
“Now that we’ve got our first mission, we should go around the circle and all say why we’re here,” Jules suggested.
Zara smirked. “What’s this, some touchy-feely bonding exercise?”
“We all swore the same oath,” Owen said. “That pretty much covers it for me.”
Cam thought the simple oath probably did cover it for Owen. The round-eyed guy who was already balding at nineteen didn’t strike Cam as an independent thinker. He didn’t seem to see much past Donnie strong, Zara hot.
“No,” Jules insisted. “I mean why we’re really here. Our personal reasons. It was a big decision for me to join. I’ll even go first.” She picked up a spiral shell, held it like a microphone, and took a deep breath. “I always wanted to travel. I went to Europe for a year abroad. But when I was diagnosed, my doctor said I had to go home for treatment. No more than a few days away from the hospital until, well, you know. I thought I’d never go anywhere again. But now, here I am.”
Yes, Cam thought. He’d feared the same—that he’d never leave his small hometown.
Calliope sat up and took the shell. “I want to help people. Truly help them. Through art or music or education, though. I don’t like all this commando stuff.”
“We know,” Zara mumbled impatiently.
Calliope ignored her. “I talked to Pilot for hours when he came to the clinic. He promised me we would make a bigger difference in a year than most people make in a lifetime. And that I’d have a piano.” She passed the shell to Tegan, who sat beside her.
“My dad couldn’t afford treatment,” Tegan said, holding the shell limply at his waist, and then he fell silent again. That seemed to be the entirety of his explanation.
Gwyneth nudged him, annoyed, and grabbed for the shell. He let her take it, and she rose to address the group, adjusting her glasses. She stood with her back very straight, Cam noticed.
“Upon diagnosis, I was presented with multiple options,” she said, her voice sharp and abrupt. “It was a simple matter of choosing the best from among them. One could attempt to prolong treatment in the hope that a cure might be forthcoming, or…”
Cam watched Gwen’s mouth move, but her words seemed to run together. They were too big and she used too many of them. And her glasses bobbed up and down as she spoke them, which was very distracting. She talked for a long time, it seemed, and she repeatedly touched Donnie’s wide shoulder as if to reassure herself that he was still sitting beside her. She was obviously smart as hell. And if Cam hadn’t noticed, he was sure she’d have told him so herself, though without using the word “hell”—she seemed too fussy for profanity. But when she finally finished, Cam still had no idea why she’d chosen to join. In fact, out of all of them, only Calliope seemed a less likely candidate.
Gwen sat and pressed the shell gently into Donnie’s palm, making sure to touch his shoulder once again.
Donnie stared at the shell. He hadn’t spoken since Ari had been named team leader. He sat up and looked out past the circle of his dying comrades and spoke to the night as much as to them.
“I’m here for the mission,” he began. “I mean it. I’m all in, and I don’t believe in compromise. That’s how you become the best at something—you commit yourself to it one hundred and ten percent.”
“Mathematically impossible,” Ari mumbled.
Donnie paused, and Cam noticed he was panting. His face was red, and a vein in his forehead bulged like a subsurface worm. He took a big deep breath, bracing himself for his next words. “I accept that Ari is leader,” he declared. “For this mission anyway. You’re smart. I get that. I’ll follow you. But ultimately, I serve the mission.”
He passed the shell. Cam and Ari glanced at one another. Cam raised an eyebrow.
“Well, that’s reassuring,” Ari whispered once Donnie had turned his attention elsewhere.
Zara held up the shell, then flipped it in the air and caught it between her fingers.
“Live life to the fullest,” she said simply. She looked at Cam and caressed the shell, then held her finger up in front of Owen with the shell riding atop it like an elaborate hat.
Owen plucked it carefully from her finger as though nervous that if he touched her she might practice a judo throw on him.
“I agree with Donnie…,” Owen began, and it went downhill from there, as far as Cam was concerned. Owen next repeated some things Gwen had said, then a few slogans Ward quoted over and over. In fact, Cam wasn’t sure Owen said anything that was his own.
The shell passed to Ari.
Ari scooped up some sand in the shell, and then tilted it to let the sand drain out slowly. “I think it’s a simple matter of what you want to get done while you’re on the planet. What’s the best use of your time? However much you have. I always wanted to be a doctor and save lives. That or a NASCAR driver. And once I was diagnosed I was pretty sure I could save more people’s lives here than I could back home in a hospital. Ironic, eh?”
He tipped the last of the sand from the shell, and then gave it a tap to make sure it was empty before he handed it to Cam.
Cam wasn’t sure what to say. It had all been said, and Owen had sounded like a moron repeating it.
“I miss my parents,” he said suddenly.
He didn’t know why he said it, and he wanted to kick himself as soon as he had barfed it out. Jeezus, he thought, I sound like the scared kid at camp, and I’ve been here one whole day. He sounded even stupider than Owen, he decided. But when he looked around the circle he saw the glint of tears in several eyes—Calliope, Jules, and, unexpectedly, Tegan, whose dad couldn’t afford treatment. At least he was not alone. He passed the shell without further comment. He didn’t want to make it worse.
Ari rescued him. “So Wally, why did you join?” he said, luring both the sympathetic and disapproving eyes away from Cam.
Wally frowned and then grinned. “Why the hell not?” He laughed and lea
ped up, smashing the shell on a nearby rock. “C’mon, let’s go skinny-dipping!”
Wally tore off his shirt and then yanked down his shorts, splashing into the lagoon nude. And alone. Even Zara didn’t budge.
Wow, Cam thought, his tattoo really does run into his butt crack.
CAM’S PLAYLIST
10. RUSTLE AND WHISPER
by Okee Kenochee
11. LOVE RHYMES WITH SHOVE
by Lisa Ran Away
12. BOY FEVER
by Wind Chimes and Grace
“Your friends are talking ’bout me,
but mine are talking ’bout you too.”
After his disastrous share session at the blanket, Cam snuck off and down the beach back to his condo. As was his habit, he looked for his music as soon as he walked in. He needed a song—something dark that matched his sullen mood, something to help him descend into a full wallow and hit bottom so he could rebound. But his earbuds weren’t on the small desk where they should have been.
It was strange. Ari hadn’t been to the hut since Cam had left the buds on the desk. And he never misplaced his music. The black buds were like a pair of glasses he rarely took off. The small Clip Chip–brand player that held all of his music had not been separated from them for nearly a year. It fastened easily to his clothing or even to the thick of his sand-colored hair in the hollow of the back of his head, if he was working out shirtless. Everyone had to know they were important to him, even after the first day. He’d worn them all over the compound. Once, Ward had even told him to “pocket the damn things” in front of the entire team. Maybe someone was playing a joke, Cam thought, or sending him a message. He began to hunt, knowing he wouldn’t relax until he found them. It was a small hut, and a quadrant-by-quadrant search wouldn’t take more than an hour, he calculated. He started with the floor on the south side.
The floor turned out to be a poor place to start. Fifty-four minutes later, Cam found the buds and Clip Chip at the highest point in the condo, on his suspended bunk—the last place he looked. They were tucked neatly beneath his pillow, where, if he hadn’t been searching, he would have found them only when he laid his head down at night and thrust his hands underneath. At first he thought Ward might have come to make their beds and stuck them there for safekeeping. The guy seemed to provide every other service. But the covers were still disturbed from the afternoon when Cam had been lounging and chatting with Ari.