“That’s right, follow Dr. Moore’s directives”, the Major agrees, before turning to a woman which has joined the group in the meantime. “We just needed this meddlesome… Constantine, you can speak the language of these people. Ask him his name, where he comes from, whether he was alone and what was he doing around the crash site.”
The soldier who just joined is tall, with dark honey-colored skin, an exotic and harmonious beauty. Her deep black eyes, almost almond-shaped, give her an oriental tinge. She speaks with the boy by intercom, translating Macready’s requests in a strange language, full of aspirations.
The boy raises his head to those words, turning around to find the source of the voice, though unable to see.
The translator repeats the same words again, to entice him to answer.
After a moment, muted phrases emerge from the intercom. The boy’s tone is clearly nervous, and his voice takes on shrill peaks sometimes, betraying his youth.
“What did he say?”, asks Ironside.
“He says his name is Ahmed. Our suppositions were right, he belongs to one of the tribes living in small valleys between the rocky hills, southwest from here.”
The boy’s voice comes back to bite. His tone is scared, he raises his voice as if to speak with someone far away.
The translator face shows an uncertain expression, as if something is missing. They keep speaking for a few minutes, before Constantine translate to the others. “He was in his village when they saw the plane falling. He, along with his brother and two other members of the tribe, went to the crash site to rescue any survivors. He says they found only one man alive, an old man with a broken leg. He was unconscious. They loaded him on the back of one of the dromedaries. Their plan was to take it to their village and care for him, but they were attacked by… he calls them mavericks with weapons , on their way back. I think he means a gang of armed robbers.”
“Damn!”, erupts Macready, aware of the implications in the boy’s words.
“Constantine, go on, ask him what happened next.”
The woman continues to exchange a few sentences with the hooded boy, his voice broken with sobs.
“He says that he stayed behind, for he was on foot and his dog was very nervous and barked both to men and dromedaries. He was fast to hide behind a low dune when they were suddenly attacked by the robbers. He heard the gunshots of the attackers. He could approach only after they left, but he found just the bodies of his brother and two companions who were with him. The robbers killed also the dromedaries. There was no further sign of the survivor and the dog. According to him, the robbers headed for the desert, where there is nothing. He was afraid to venture out on their trail, and he could not walk back to his village. So he walked back to the crash site, following the footprints left by his group. He was looking for water and a shelter when our boys captured him.”
After some moments of tense silence Moore starts talking. “We must take a sample of his blood, so we can analyze it. He was among the first to set foot on the crash site, they found someone who miraculously survived. This guy may have been exposed to any infection.”
“Good idea. Well, he’s all yours, Doctor”, replies Ironside. Then he turns to Macready. “Major, we should send some men to the place where these events took place, if we’re lucky we’ll find some traces confirming what he told us.”
The hermetic door slides sideways with a hiss. Moore and Constantine, dressed in bio hazard protective suits, enter the room, approaching the hooded guy.
Moore speaks first, hoping the tone of her words is going to calm him down. Constantine translates for her in a low voice. “I’m sorry about your brother and your friends. Don’t worry, you’re safe now, we don’t want to hurt you. We just want to check you to make sure you’re okay.”
The boy is nervous, icy sweat drops slide down his back. He winces when the gloved hands of Dr. Moore touch his skin.
She pulls up the sleeve of his left arm, an awkward task due to the thick gloves of the suit and because Ahmed is still tied with his hands behind his back. At the sight of the dagger tied to the limb of the boy, the scientist stops uncertain, turning a questioning glance at the other woman, who is watching from behind the cover of her mask.
He’s barely older than a boy…
Constantine quickly untie the knots that secure the knife to his arm, muttering something about the idiots who have not inspected him properly.
Ahmed’s body tenses when the needle of the syringe pricks his skin, but he stays motionless, holding his breath until the operation is finished.
Moore is upset by the sight of a barely fifteen years old boy tied up and hooded like a criminal, but the words of Ivanov come to her mind for a moment, and her hands leave instinctively the boy’s skin at that thought. “That’s right”, Moore tells Constantine. “Please, reassure him. Tell him that he will return to his village soon, and he will be given back his weapon. Be sure that he doesn’t leave this room and stays under constant surveillance.”
BOEING CRASH SITE
The soldiers left on the site, bundled up in their suits, are working hard completing the sad task of collecting what is left of the unfortunate passengers. They fill a number of yellow plastic containers, oblong shaped.
“Holy Jesus, Brimley, I can’t wait to go back to the base and have a shower. I think that I’ll keep seeing this shit every time I go to bed, from now on.”
“Oh, come on… I don’t think there are many more left now. Keep that bag wide open”, replies his colleague, while he uses a large forceps to raise a big piece of blackened meat, stuck to the remains of a shirt and a jacket.
The piece of corpse makes a muffled noise falling into the yellow plastic bag.
“Ugh… I feel really sorry for all these poor people, but it’s a real crap…”, murmurs one of them.
The two move down to a piece of metal sheet that protrudes inclined from a low pile of sand, in a peripheral area of the crash site.
“Did you see that thing that looked like a burnt tree trunk? Holy God, what a shit! And Waters, what an idiot… He should have set it on fire and buried it under a mountain of sand… All but loading it onto the chopper…”
“Don’t remind me that, Hawk… If I close my eyes I can still see those faces. When Bishop will see it, he’ll make him turn back and bring it back here on foot.”
The soldiers reach the piece of metal sheet and walk by.
“There’s nothing here, just as well. Let’s move to the vehicles and see what the others are doing”, says Keith Brimley.
The other marine doesn’t seem to have heard him, and slowly crouches on the ground, as if to examine something.
“What’s up, Hawk, did you find anything?”
Brimley approaches moving sideways to look at the sandy ground in front of his colleague who has suddenly become silent. The sand is slightly loose, but no matter his efforts, he can’t see anything.
But one particular has not escaped Thomas Hawk who, proud to have true Native Americans among his ancestors, has spent much of his childhood hunting and learning how to recognize the tracks of his preys.
“There is a footprint here”, he exclaims softly.
Brimley stoops to look better, but he can still see nothing but sand.
“I can’t see anything Hawk, are you sure?”
The other gets up slowly, walking a few steps toward the desert beyond the perimeter of the area, then he squats again.
Brimley joins him puffing.
“Someone was here”, murmurs Hawk in an almost inaudible whisper. “It’s not a footprint of ours, it’s a small shoe, with smooth soles. Someone came out from the crash, and headed toward the desert.”