"Holy shit," he said. "Kid motored this thing all the way from Santa Cruz."
Chapter 59
They headed back for base camp, Cameron taking a long detour through the field where they'd burned the mantid. She returned to the others, who had assembled in Derek's old tent. It felt divine to be out of the sun in the soothing shade of the tent. Ramoncito was lying on his back on a sleeping pad. Diego and he spoke softly as the others looked on.
"I got the SOS," Ramoncito said. "And I understood it." He tried to smile, but the movement cracked his lips even more, and he winced from the pain.
Justin leaned over, examining the blistering on Ramoncito's back. He winked at Cameron. The burns weren't too bad.
"Single thirty-five-horsepower engine bringing you one seventy-some nautical miles at ten knots." Diego pushed Ramoncito's hair off his fore-head and rubbed more lotion onto his sunburnt face. "You must've been on the open water for seventeen hours."
Ramoncito tried to smile. "Sixteen."
"Glass sea state," Cameron murmured.
Diego said, "You never should have come."
"You asked me to."
"Not you. If you received the message, I thought you'd get help."
"From who? I know my way home better than anyone. Besides, who would have listened to me?"
"The Captain of the Port."
"Yeah right. I had to steal the TNT from him. Fresh in from the army."
"You stole the-" Diego cut himself off, shaking his head. "Puta madre."
Szabla was on her knees in the corner, looking through one of the TNT boxes Ramoncito had brought along. Row after row of two-pound blocks lined the bottom beneath coils of wire and a scattering of blasting caps. Szabla picked up an olive-drab Clacker detonator and examined it with a smile. The two sides of the Clacker could be pushed together like a stapler to detonate a charge.
"Why'd you bring so much?" Diego asked. "There must be two, three hundred pounds here."
"I thought there might have been a slide, and we'd have to blast some-thing out from under tons of rock. Like we did with that generator up by Media Luna. That was fun." He propped himself on an elbow and drank some more from the canteen.
"Not too much too quickly," Diego cautioned.
"You sound like papa." Ramoncito lowered the canteen. "Where are my parents?"
Diego turned to the soldiers. "You'd better give us a moment alone," he said to the others in English. Cameron nodded and led the other soldiers out. It was clear from Ramoncito's face that he was anticipating bad news.
Savage stopped at the flap. "Kid," he said. "You're one brave little motherfucker."
They all walked a few paces from the tent, leaving Diego to tell Ramoncito that his parents had died. Rex shook his head. "What a thing," he said.
"What're we gonna do?" Szabla said. "Our extraction's not till tomor-row night, but there's no way that boat can pull the weight of all of us, not on limited gas like that."
"Plus there's a space issue," Justin said. "Even once we toss the emp-ties, there's at least thirteen full fuel cans, and it'll take all of them to get back to Santa Cruz." He glanced at the others. "I don't know who the hell's gonna want to wait behind, though."
Cameron was watching a hawk hover above a knotted patch of shrubs just beyond the watchtower. It folded its wings, accelerating toward the ground. It dipped and then rose, and Cameron made out the silhouette of a rat struggling in its talons as it flew toward the sun. "We're the only thing that'll hold them on the island," Cameron said.
Szabla looked at her, head cocked. "Excuse me?"
"The creatures. You heard what Donald said-we're the only 'sizable and appropriate food source.' If those larvae metamorphose into adults, they're gonna be hungry. If there's no food here, they could very well fly elsewhere in search of it." Her face hardened. "I don't want that virus leaving the island."
"You want to stay here?" Justin asked. "As bait?"
"Yes," Cameron said. "I do."
"It's not likely that the adults can fly," Rex said. "Even though they have wings."
"But we know that the larvae are amphibious. Diego even said that the first one we found could very well have been heading down to the ocean. They could drift with the currents, wind up God knows where. If we're not here to track them down…"
Diego stepped out of the tent, his face heavy, and approached the others. "He wanted to see the bodies, but I told him…" He scratched his cheek, letting the sentence trail off. "He's too upset to even argue with me about staying."
Cameron nodded. "I'm sorry," she said.
"Yes," Diego replied. "So am I."
"You and Rex collected lots of water samples yesterday, didn't you?" she asked.
Diego scratched his forehead at the hairline. "Yes. From various points on the island and all along the coast, especially from the dino-rich waters flowing in from the deep-sea core holes."
"If you don't want this island bombed, I'd suggest you get back to the Darwin Station, run virus tests, and pray to God none of the samples are infected," Cameron said. "Contact Donald and Dr. Everett at Fort Det-rick, where the decision's being made." She pulled her hand from her pocket and opened it to reveal a small silver disk, Tucker's transmitter that she'd pulled from the ashes of the mantid's belly. "Heat-resistant to two thousand degrees," she said. "Picked it from the bones. I already tested it. Just activate it and ask the operator to patch you through. Med-ical Division Wing, Slammer Two."
"We can't leave you all here," Rex said. "With… with the possibility of-"
"We have TNT," Cameron said. "We're soldiers. You're scientists. And you'd better get that kid out of here in case all hell does break loose." She looked at the other soldiers. "We came here a squad, I say we stay here a squad. We still have some business to take care of."
Tank nodded first, then Justin murmured his assent.
"What the fuck," Savage said. "Got nothin' better to do."
Szabla stared at Cameron long and hard, the line of her cheekbones glistening with sweat.
"You'll be in charge," Cameron said.
"Girl, that gets harder and harder with you around." Szabla shook her head. "Fuck it. We can't all fit in that boat, and it's our responsibility to clear the civilians." She nodded at Cameron. "I'm in."
"We shouldn't leave you here," Rex said.
Szabla smirked. "No need to be valiant for the sake of the ladies when we can both kick your ass."
Rex nodded seriously. "True," he said. "True."
Szabla stretched her arms with a groan. "We're minute to minute here. What's our defense if we can't get to those last two larvae in time? The adults are pretty antsy, pun be fucked. I can't see one just staggering into a pile of explosives and det cord. Look at the Rambo shit Savage had to pull just to get near it." She let out her breath, puffing her cheeks. "I mean, we can't exactly lob around blocks of TNT."
"Why not?" Rex asked.
Szabla bit back a smile. "This ain't a Road Runner cartoon. If we throw it, we can't time the explosion. Timing sucks in general with TNT, since it's not meant as a killing explosive. It's too unreliable to light a fuse set for less than thirty seconds anyways. It's always better to detonate it."
"The fuses aren't made for that," Cameron concurred. "Plus TNT has no frag-there's no shrapnel to expand the killing radius. We need to lock the creature's location before we detonate, hold it close to the explosives. Hopefully within an enclosed space so it'll blow like an inter-nal charge. Walls won't allow the explosion to dissipate as easily."
Rex nodded. "Greater overpressure."
Tank formed a gun with his hand and tilted it at Rex with a clicking noise. "Freezer?" he asked.