She looked up as he approached. “Don't touch anything.”
“I wasn't planning on it.”
“Look at this,” she said, pushing the corpse with her foot.
“Wait, why do you get to touch it?”
“Just look.”
AJ squinted. The blood smear behind it was black, almost venal, but it was too black. It wasn't the only weird thing, either. It took him a moment to realize what it was: it was the smell. The body had an odd odor, something like dead flowers.
“It looks almost like… like those things below, doesn't it?”
“I don't like it, whatever it is. And since we're out here playing doctor, you might as well call me AJ.”
“This stuff, it's still growing, AJ. It looks like it's gotten onto the bodies here.”
“You're wrong about that,” he said. “That spatter came from inside his body. If that stuff was growing in him, it was growing in him before he died.”
They looked at each other, and then both took a step backwards. AJ felt his skin crawl. He didn't know a thing about biology, but if this stuff was growing inside of people before they died, he didn't have to.
“There's something else,” Kate said. “Take a look at the uniform. You recognize that symbol?”
The patch on his arm showed a pair of crisscrossed anchors. “Christ.”
“What?”
“Argentinian navy.”
“What?” she repeated, as if she hadn't heard him correctly.
“They're not terrorists, that's for damn sure.”
“So what are you telling me, that they're the good guys?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Melvin asked. He was walking up behind them. Jin Tae, now sporting a bright white bandage around his left arm, was not far behind.
AJ stepped aside. “Have a look.”
Melvin did, but this just seemed to irritate him. “That don't make any goddamned sense.”
Jin shook his head. “So what is this? A bunch of Argentinians just decided to hijack an oil platform?”
Mason, who'd been patrolling the level, finally sensed something amiss. AJ remembered he had a nose for it and wasn't surprised when the big man came striding over. “What's going on here?”
“Why don't you tell us, boss?” Melvin said. “They ain't jihadies. So what the hell were they doing here?”
To his credit, Mason looked believably perplexed. “You got me, son. All I know is that they shot at us first, and they got what was coming.”
“No argument there, sir,” Jin said.
“What are you two doing snooping here, anyways,” Mason asked. Just like that, he shifted the focus to Kate and AJ. Clever.
“You're the one who told me to find something to report to the shareholders,” Kate said. “So that's what I'm trying to do. It looks like you just iced half a dozen navy crewman.”
“Navy, huh?” Mason sounded unconcerned.
Just then, Hal appeared at the top of the stairs. AJ guessed the man had gone down to the boat docks and back. Judging by the sweat on the man's face, that seemed like a pretty good guess.
“The lady is right. There's only one boat down there, and it's marked RDF.”
Kate looked puzzled, so AJ leaned over. “Rapid Deployment Force. They're like the Special Forces of the navy.”
“Like SEALs.”
“Yeah.”
“What about the rest?” Mason asked. “According to the intel, there should be half a dozen transport boats below.”
Hal shook is head. “It's a twister.” By that, he meant a brain-twister. “Ropes are cut. Nothin' on the surface. If you ask me, I'd say they were scuttled.”
“How could that be?”
Hal shrugged. “Those satellite images are twenty-four hours old now. The boats were there, but now they're not.”
A silence fell onto the group. AJ felt his mind spinning. There were a dozen possibilities that could explain the RDF here, and none of them were good. The bigger question was what Mason knew and what he was withholding from the rest of the grunts. And where the hell was The Aeschylus crew? So far as AJ could tell, none of them had been found.
A moment later, the big man broke the silence. “All right, we're not out of the woods yet. Sectors One through Four and Six are secure. The northwest wing is still hot.”
“The barracks?” Hal asked.
“That's affirmative. The north bridge has been destroyed, and the bottom stairwell is barricaded. That means there's only one way in. That right, Calle?”
Melvin nodded. “Yeah, boss. West bridge only.”
“Then it's time to get your heads out of your asses. We've met hostile resistance on the main deck here, and it's entirely possible more of them are ahead. You know what to do. Stay sharp, and stay alert. We move in pairs up the walk. Vy and St. Croix will secure the bridge, then we move in nice and easy. Jin?”
“Yeah?”
“I want that fifty cal set-up on our side, and I want you to be ready for anything. We haven't found the bodies yet.”
5
Bodies.
Kate shuddered. They hadn't expected survivors from the get-go. How could they have known? Somebody wasn't telling her something, and she knew it. She looked down and saw her hands were shaking. A moment later, AJ turned and put a hand over hers. It was warm, and despite what her better judgment was telling her, not entirely unwelcome. Over his shoulder, she watched as Jin mounted the large machine gun to the deck. The other men were taking position around the bridge leading to the barracks, crouching behind crates and checking their weapons.
She came to a realization then, and as she looked into AJ's face, she understood that he knew it too. “We're together in this, aren't we?”
“I guess maybe we are.”
“It's us and them, isn't it? It has been from the start. They know something, don't they?”
He looked at the others and then nodded. “You told me back in Puerto Aisén that nobody knew what was going on here, right? That the workers were missing and that's all you knew?”
“That was the truth. For me, anyways.”
“Doesn't look much like a search and rescue to me. Does it?”
She shook her head.
“Just stay close to me and Dutch.”
She felt a smile work its way onto her face and couldn't help it.
“What?”
“I was just thinking about what I would have said an hour ago if you would have told me the same thing.”
He grinned. “I'm a slow-starter but not a no-starter.”
That didn't make sense, not exactly, but she got it. And maybe he wasn't so bad after all. Even so, she was still shaking. She couldn't remember a time when she had been so scared.
“Just stick close to me,” AJ repeated. “Whatever they find over there, just stay close.”
6
Mason felt a tickle in the back of his mind. Something wasn't right, and he knew it, but that was hard to reconcile with how amped he felt. They'd just taken out an entire squad of hostiles with only one injury, and that was to the newest kid on the team. Mason might be getting old, but he still had it, whatever it was. When he made his bang off of this job and retired, he could do it knowing that it wasn't because he was slowing down. He'd led his team and they had prevailed, same as always. The fact that the hostiles were Argentinian RDF and not an MTP-funded guerrilla cell, that was admittedly troubling. Well, at least they looked like RDF. For all Mason knew, the terrorists could have stolen RDF uniforms. That was a little easier to swallow, but he had cleared three-quarters of the platform and still didn't have any answers. And what if they were the real deal, out here investigating the same thing Black Shadow was sent to do? In that case, they could always dump the bodies, sink their boat, and get Valley Oil to play dumb. Why not? With no evidence, there would be nothing to prove the RDF team made it out here at all. He was sure VO would want it that way. His executive contact had made it clear from the start that they didn't want any outside interference. So he let his mind return to the plan: secure the location, set up a perimeter, reestablish communications.