Minutes to Burn (2001)

by Gregg Hurwitz

  She brushed the wisp of hair aside, hooking it behind an ear, and headed to her and Derek's room. At first, she thought it was empty, and she was angry that the weapons had been left unguarded, but then the door to the balcony banged in the breeze and she crossed and saw Derek sitting out there alone. There was no sound of the baby next door.

  "Cam," he said without turning around.

  "Yeah?" She pulled the mag from her Sig and tossed it in the cruise box.

  Without looking at her, Derek pulled the key chain from around his neck and handed it to her. She unlocked the two padlocks on the weapons box and set her pistol next to Tank's on the foam. "I might need a little time alone tonight," he said when she handed him back the key. "Would you mind bunking in with Justin and Szabla? I figured you wouldn't mind sharing a bed, given he's your husband."

  Cameron leaned against the door to the balcony. "Well, I don't...I don't know that that's appropriate....Why don't--"

  "I'm the OIC," he murmured. "I decide what's appropriate."

  Cameron took a moment to digest the rebuff before speaking. "I paged Szabla. She said they're out at a restaurant down by the river. Sav-age took off somewhere." She paused, deciding how to phrase her next sentence. "I know everyone's antsy, but you gotta rein them in. We can't be scattered all over the city like this."

  "I know," Derek said.

  "Maybe I should go round them up."

  He nodded slowly but still did not turn around. She watched the back of his head for a moment, then reached out and set her hand on his shoulder. He did not seem to notice. She removed her hand, backed out of the room, and closed the door quietly behind her.

  Derek sat trance-like after she left, gazing over the rooftops as the minutes smeared into one another. The streets within his view were empty. The construction crews would be back in the morning, hammering things together--streets, buildings, sidewalks--readying them for the next wave of destruction. The noise of a guitar being badly played carried to him, and occasional high-pitched voices and peals of laughter. The night never faded in these towns, these South American towns; it just eased into daylight.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, felt the humidity on his cheeks, the tropical scent of life and rot in the air. Cameron was right; as the LT, he had to buckle down and keep things under better control. It would be some time before he felt as though his thoughts and emotions were put away where they belonged instead of sliding around inside him like bro-ken glass. The baby next door certainly wasn't helping. Though it hadn't cried in a while, he could still hear it, gurgling and cooing.

  Down below, a couple walked up the street, holding hands. The man stopped and helped the woman over a wide fissure in the sidewalk. A vivid image caught Derek by surprise--Jacqueline late in her pregnancy watering the roses out back, her belly a globe beneath a yellow dress, her smile wide and drifting, full of secret thoughts.

  He ran his fingers over the bump of the transmitter--his bug. Ever since Jacqueline had been committed to the institution, he'd awaken in the night, listening for the soft rasp of her breathing or the cry of the baby beneath the crickets, and the hum of the electric clock. But then he'd remember they weren't there. It was just him, just him and the crick-ets.

  He'd stopped by to say good-bye to Jacqueline before leaving on the mission.

  Her Haldol dosage had been increased again, the antipsychotic med-ication making her face fight itself--stretching, biting, popping like a carnival clown's. She'd stopped washing again; he'd noticed a thin line of dirt at the base of her hairline.

  As soon as Derek had gotten within her reach, she'd dug a finger painfully into his ear, searching for bugs. She'd twisted her nail so hard he'd had to check his ear for blood. She believed they were planting bugs on their minions--a conviction exacerbated or maybe even caused, he feared, by the penny-sized transmitter that stood out from the curve of his left anterior deltoid. She thought he'd been bugged under his skin.

  He had stood in the small, sterile hospital room, gazing at the woman who was his wife with tragic disbelief. In the hospital parking lot, he'd sat in his wife's old Subaru, pressing his forehead to the top of the steering wheel, a keen sense of loss moving inside him like a sharp-bladed tool. He hadn't been in his wife's car since Before; he'd only driven it that day because he'd banged his truck against a tree the night before coming home from a bar. Her car had echoed with memories of the unintelligi-ble cooing, sounds that wouldn't quite form themselves into words or laughter. Before driving off, he'd ripped the bright pink-and-white cush-ioned car seat from the upholstery and hurled it away.

  It had been a long road since the wedding five years ago. Jacqueline had been nineteen years old then, just a baby, her rich brown hair pulled back in a French braid. She used to wear a pair of round glasses that made her look like a librarian. Bad genetics, his friends from the teams would joke, referring to her bad eyesight, but they wouldn't have joked if they'd known how right they were.

  Since her father had asphyxiated himself on the fumes of his '77 Dodge Ram in the garage two days after she'd turned eleven, Jacqueline had been raised by her mother alone. By the time Jacqueline began high school, her mother was already having delusions, and around Jacque-line's sophomore year, she'd started hearing the voices of the three mon-keys and was moved to the Whitehill Psychiatric Institution. Jacqueline had been raised in Utah by a stern spinster aunt.

  It had been difficult for Derek to admit that his wife needed to be institutionalized. He'd fought the reality for months and it had cost him everything. He'd never forget the morning he finally drove through the wrought-iron hospital gates and left her there with the battered brown suitcase she'd packed with three dresses and a rain slicker when she'd fled Utah for college. Now, one continent and nearly four thousand miles away, the images still maintained their vise-grip on him. It felt pretty barren now, his life, and it didn't look as if it would be changing anytime soon.

  He was snapped from his thoughts when the building lurched, throwing his chair to the side. He grabbed hold of the balcony railing to steady himself, but it pulled free from the stucco and plummeted to the street. He staggered inside the hotel room, falling over and banging his head on a cruise box. His Sig Sauer fell from his belt. One of the walls was undu-lating so fiercely, he thought it might buckle. Pulling himself to his feet and wiping the blood from his forehead, he fought his way to the weapons box, the floor shuddering beneath his feet. He double-checked both padlocks, then turned, lurching out into the hallway in time to see Tank rush Rex to the stairs. The woman from next door flashed down the stairs to safety, the baby cradled to her chest.

  Rex was grinning a madman's grin. "Feel those compressional waves?" he yelled.

  Derek pointed Tank down the stairs and Tank yanked Rex along with him. The stairs seemed to be swaying from side to side. The three men crashed through the lobby and stumbled onto the street. The quake finally subsided.

  "Here," Rex said, pulling them into an arched stone doorway across the street. People ran past in both directions. Shattered glass was strewn across the sidewalks, and a few fingers of asphalt had risen in the street, but no buildings had gone over. The hotel guards were arguing with a construction worker at the end of the block.

  Derek felt for his gun and noticed it missing. "Fuck!" he barked.

  Eyes glowing with excitement, Rex didn't seem to hear him. "We're practically sitting on the epicenter," he cried, banging his fist into his palm. "Those roller coaster waves--those are the shear waves. Usually there are all sorts of heterogeneities by the time they reach you, but those fuckers were clear as day." He leaned out the doorway to look up the street, but Derek forced him against the wall, his forearm pressing into the top of his chest. "That must've been a six!" Rex crowed, straining to see over Derek's arm.

  They huddled together until some of the commotion settled on the streets. Soon it was quiet, save the long, wailing moans of a woman somewhere in an apartment nearby. Derek stepped cautiously from cover. He gla
nced up an alley alongside the building and realized that it was the same side street his room overlooked. He located his balcony and saw a man frozen in the window, looking right at him. He was the man they had seen earlier, the handsome guayaquileno with the unbut-toned shirt and gold chains. They stared at each other for a moment, then the man bolted from the window and Derek sprinted for the lobby.

  A worker tried to restrain Derek at the door, but Derek sent him flying with a straight-armed shove. He was up the stairs two at a time, and he kicked through the door to his and Cameron's room, splintering one of the wooden panels. The cruise box holding the two spare ammo crates and all the jammed mags was empty, and Derek didn't see his pis-tol on the floor. The weapons box and the other cruise boxes were banged up, some of them flipped over, but they all seemed to be intact.

  Cursing, Derek leapt back through the doorway and glanced in both directions. At the far end of the hall, a large window, newly shattered, looked out onto Calle Pedro Carbo. Derek sprinted the length of the hall and stuck his head out, cutting his hands on the bits of glass stuck in the bottom of the frame. Holding the last ammo crate, the man with the gold chains ran to a waiting truck. The back was covered, but through the flap, Derek saw the other ammo crate, and a bag he assumed held the Sig and M-4 mags. The man turned back and laughed, spreading his arms. He blew Derek a kiss, jumped in the passenger seat, and the truck was gone.

  Derek stood for a moment leaning in the direction it had gone, breathing the heat, watching the truck's exhaust fade into the air. Behind him, a bare bulb dangled from a wire, its protective casing smashed. Light danced around the narrow hall as the bulb swayed from an after-shock. When Derek shifted his weight, he noticed the glass digging into his palms, so he lifted his hands from the sill. Turning, he sank to the floor, leaning back against the wall. He raised his hands to his face and pushed back the skin of his cheeks until his eyes slanted.

  There was a momentous rumble from the stairs, then Tank ran down the hall toward Derek, Rex following close behind. Tank stopped before Derek, breathing hard. "What?" he asked.

  Derek lowered his hands. His cheeks were smeared with blood from his palms, two crimson marks like war paint. "The ammo," he said. "They got the ammo."

  The squad convened at the hotel immediately following the earthquake, Cameron having successfully rounded up the others. Derek sat in the wooden chair, the soldiers circled silently around him. The cuts on Derek's hands were superficial; Justin had easily picked out the glass, then applied antibacterial gel. They all stared at the boxes, which Derek had already opened and inventoried.

  "At least they didn't take the geodetic equipment," Rex said.

  Szabla's smooth cheeks drew up in a squint. "The black marketeers will be devastated."

  "I contacted Mako, who put me in touch with the UN colonel who runs this AO," Derek said. He spoke in a soft, angry voice. "As you can imagine, the colonel was less than helpful in fielding my request for replacement ordnance, despite the fact that this happened in their fucking backyard. The UN does not seem to be making us the highest prior-ity, which in light of the ammo shortage down here, puts us somewhere worse off than shit out of luck. They did promise armed transfer to the airport tomorrow."

  "Whoopee," Szabla said.

  Tank started checking the weapons to see if anyone had accidentally left a round chambered. "Nothing left?" Tucker asked. Tank shook his head.

  Derek said, "Both crates and the mags. They got it all. We're essen-tially without weapons."

  Savage thunked his boot down on the edge of Derek's chair. He pulled up the leg of his pants and yanked his blade from the ankle sheath. "Not really," he said.

  "Yeah," Justin said. "I'm sure we could take on an army with that bad boy."

  Derek knocked Savage's foot off his chair. "That's the good news," he said. "We don't need to take on an army. We lift out tomorrow morning, and the islands are a docile environment."

  "How do you know that?" Rex asked.

  "Guayaquil's basically a docile environment," Szabla said.

  "Yeah, you guys seem to be breezing through this leg of the mission."

  Szabla stiffened. "Look, you fuck--"

  "I have been assured that the islands are not hostile," Derek said, "aside from the obvious seismic complications against which weapons will hardly be useful. Our mission is to assist you in distributing the GPS gear, which we can accomplish without ordnance."

  "I'm just nervous about bandits, or random..." Rex stopped, looking around. "Well, it is a concern. The situation in Galapagos has gotten increasingly desperate."

  "I think you'll find the seven of us adequate bodyguards," Derek said.

  Szabla held up a hand, fingers spread. "One of us would be an ade-quate bodyguard." She rose from the bed. "But remember your request for a massive misallocation of resources? You see, to impress you and all the contacts you called in--"

  "Szabla," Derek said, his voice raised in warning.

  "--we all have to waste a week and wave guns around so you feel like you're well taken care of in a city less dangerous than New York on an average Saturday night."

  "Szabla!" Derek barked. She looked down, fuming.

  Rex applauded her performance. "Love the drama," he said. "And you're right, Guayaquil is much safer than New York City, if you ignore all the minor details of life here, like, say, those four journalists who were found two weeks ago with their dicks cut off and rammed down their throats. Hey, Guayaquil has even more advantages over the Big Apple. More of the cab drivers speak English. . . there's no Andrew Lloyd Web-ber... "

  Szabla lunged for Rex, but Cameron stepped in her way. Szabla stopped before bumping into Cameron and stared at her, but Cameron didn't meet her eyes. "Why don't we all take a time-out here?" Cameron said softly, looking down at her boots. After a moment, Szabla took a step back. Cameron continued, "We no longer have weapons but, as Derek said, they're not essential for our mission objectives from this point. We'll get an armed escort to the airport tomorrow and from there, we can easily bodyguard Rex and Juan, assist in positioning the equip-ment, and get home."

  "So everyone stow it and get some sleep," Derek added.

  They grabbed their kit bags and headed for the door.

  "Feliz fuckin' Navidad," Justin said.

  Chapter 16

  Dusk had thickened the air by the time Diego steered El Pescador Rico,a converted twenty-two-foot fishing boat, to the waters just off Cormorant Point on Floreana. Already, he saw a herd of pigs bickering on the soft, white-sand beach, and he felt his stomach drop as he realized what the pigs were fighting over.

  He pulled the Zodiac from its withered repose near the stern and heaved it in the water, engaging the dive bottle of compressed air secured on its transom. As the launch inflated, he debated pulling his speargun from its mount on the polished wood but decided that reloading it after each shot would take too long. Kicking off his loafers and tossing his rifle ahead, Diego leapt over the side of his boat into the Zodiac and headed for shore.

  In the water ahead, he noticed a shadowy mass, and he cut hard to avoid hitting it. As he passed, the dark shape took form as two turtles-- a small male mounted on top of a female, clinging to her with his flip-pers as she paddled to keep them afloat.

  Diego cranked the throttle, landing the Zodiac hard on the beach. The pigs acknowledged him with grunts as he splashed toward them through the surf, yelling and cursing. The turtle nesting ground, the twenty-meter stretch of sand that crested the top of the beach, was trampled and uprooted, the pocked and mounded sand resembling the site of an archaeological dig. Snorting and rooting into the sand, the pigs were enjoying a lavish feast of eggs and hatchlings. Whatever eggs may have remained buried in the nests were surely crushed.

  A spotted sow gobbled up a soft, pale-green sea turtle hatchling as it struggled toward the surf. Diego took off the top of the sow's head with his first shot. He hit two pigs dead in the chest with his next shots before missing, and they spit blood, the
ir legs stroking the air like broken pis-tons as he paused and regarded the width of the herd.

  When he stepped, his feet pulled from the sand with a sucking noise. Inland, a scattering of rocks gave way to low scrubby brush, broken only by the path leading back to the lagoon. The mineral crystals in the sand gave the beach a subtle, green cast that, with the darkening sky and the carnage ahead, made the events unfolding around Diego seem dreamlike.

  He felt his chest tighten with grief and rage and he fired and reloaded, fired and reloaded even through the spray of blood, the wet and wounded snorts, the wriggling bodies that layered the sand. Pieces of hatchlings lay discarded on the beach, flippers and heads and peels of flesh dusted with sand. Halfway through the carton of bullets, Diego realized he was crying. He cursed the pigs as he fired, cursed the yolk and shell dripping from their sticky snouts, cursed their curled tails protruding from holes and their forked feet trampling the sand. Then he cursed the farmers who'd left them behind to roam the island. Despite the crack of the rifle, the pained squeals, and the stench of death emanating from the blood-drenched sand, the pigs refused to spook. They remained, rooting and chomping and falling dumbly, torn through with bullets.

  There were at least ten pigs dead or wounded, but their numbers seemed inexhaustible; every time a pig dropped, two more seemed to spring from its shadow, running tight, excited circles in the sand. Seemingly oblivious, a large turtle was bedded down in the middle of the ruckus, continuing to lay her eggs, even as a piglet ate them right out of her body. Diego took aim with a blurry eye and fired, but the hammer clicked down on nothing. He dug through the carton, found it empty, and cast it aside. The turtle squeezed out another egg, directly into the waiting mouth of the piglet. Cocking the stock of the rifle back over one shoulder, his scream an echo from the pit of his stomach, Diego charged into the fray.

  Chapter 17

  Ramon stirred in the night, feeling oddly uneasy. It had been hard adjusting to living on a deserted island, just he and Floreana. He had caught himself talking to one of his cows again today, and though he had laughed it off, it was increasingly difficult to deny that it was very lonely on Sangre de Dios.