'Good God!' Chambers's voice hurt his ears.
Pandemonium erupted over the airwaves. 'What the hell was that?' someone yelled. Branch didn't know the voice, but from the background it sounded like a small riot breaking out at Molly.
Branch tensed. 'Say again. Over,' he said.
Chambers came back on. 'Don't tell me you didn't see that. When you turned your lights on...'
The comm room noised like a flock of tropical birds in panic. Someone was yelling,
'Get the colonel, get him now!' Another voice boomed, 'Give me replay, give me replay!'
'What the fuck?' McDaniels wondered from the floating huddle. 'Over.' Branch waited with his pilots, listening to the chaos at base.
A military voice came on. It was Master Sergeant Jefferson at her console. 'Echo
Tango, do you read? Over.' Her radio discipline was a miracle to hear.
'This is Echo Tango, Base,' Branch replied. 'You are loud and clear. Is there a situation in development? Over.'
'Big motion on the KH-12 feed, Echo Tango. Something's going on in there. Infrared
just showed multiple bogeys. You say you see nothing? Over.'
Branch squinted through the canopy. The rain lay plasticized on his Plexiglas, smearing his vision. He angled down to give Ramada an unobstructed view. From this distance, the site looked toxic but peaceful.
'Ram?' he said quietly, at a loss.
'Beats me,' Ramada said.
'Any better?' he spoke into his mouthpiece.
'Better,' breathed Chambers. 'Hard to see, though.'
Branch moved laterally for vantage and trained the lights on ground zero. Zulu Four lay not far ahead, nestled among stark spears of killed forest.
'There it is,' Chambers said.
You had to know what to look for. It was a large pit, open and flooded with rainwater. Sticks floated on top of the pool. Bones, Branch knew instinctively.
'Can we get any more magnification?' Chambers asked.
Branch held his position while specialists fiddled with the image back at camp. There beyond his Plexiglas lay the apocalypse: Pestilence, Death, War. All but that final horseman, Famine. What in creation are you doing here, Elias?
'Not good enough,' Chambers complained over his headset. 'All we're doing is magnifying the distortion.'
She was going to repeat her request, Branch knew. It was the logical next step. But she never got the chance.
'There again, sir,' the master sergeant reported over the radio. 'I'm counting three, correction, four thermal shapes, Echo Tango. Very distinct. Very alive. Still nothing on your end? Over.'
'Nothing. What kind of shapes, Base? Over.'
'They look to be human-sized. Otherwise, no detail. The KH-12 just doesn't have the resolution. Repeat. We're imaging multiple shapes, in motion at or in the site. Beyond that, no definition.'
Branch sat there with the cyclic shoving at his hand.
At or in? Branch slipped right, searching for better vantage, sideways, then higher, not venturing one inch closer. Ramada toggled the light, hunting. They rose high above the dead trees.
'Hold it,' Ramada said.
From above, the water's surface was clearly agitated. It was not a wild agitation. But neither was it the kind of smooth rippling caused by falling leaves, say. The pattern was too arrhythmic. Too animate.
'We're observing some kind of movement down there,' Branch radioed. 'Are you picking any of this up on our camera, Base? Over.'
'Very mixed results, Major. Nothing definite. You're too far away.'
Branch scowled at the pool of water. He tried to fashion a logical explanation. Nothing above ground clarified the phenomenon. No people, no wolves, no scavengers. Except for the motion breaking the water's surface, the area was lifeless.
Whatever was causing the disturbance had to be in the water. Fish? It was not impossible, with the overflowing rivers and creeks reaching through the forest. Catfish, maybe? Eels? Bottom feeders, whatever they were? And large enough to show up on a satellite infrared.
There was not a need to know. No more so than, say, the need to unravel a good mystery novel. It would have been reason enough for Branch, if he were alone. He yearned to get close and wrestle the answer out of that water. But he was not free to obey his impulses. He had men under his command. He had a new father in the backseat. As he was trained to do, Branch let his curiosity wither in obedience to duty. Abruptly the grave reached out to him.
A man reared up from the water.
'Jesus,' Ramada hissed.
The Apache shied with Branch's startle reflex. He steadied the chopper even as he watched the unearthly sight.
'Echo Tango One?' The corporal was shaken.
The man had been dead for many months. To the waist, what was left of him slowly lifted above the surface, head back, wrists wired together. For a moment he seemed to stare up at the helicopter. At Branch himself.
Even from their distance, Branch could tell a story about the man. He was dressed like a schoolteacher or an accountant, definitely not a soldier. The baling wire around his wrists they'd seen on other prisoners from the Serbs' holding camp at Kalejsia. The bullet's exit cavity gaped prominently at the left rear of his skull.
For maybe twenty seconds the human carrion bobbed in place, a ridiculous mannequin. Then the fabrication twisted to one side and dropped heavily onto the bank of the grave pit, half in, half out. It was almost as if a prop were being discarded, its shock effect spent.
'Elias?' Ramada wondered in a whisper.
Branch did not respond. You asked for it, he was thinking to himself. You got it.
Rule Six echoed. I will permit no atrocity to occur in my presence. The atrocity had already occurred, the killing, the mass burial. All in the past tense. But this – this desecration – was in his presence. His present presence.
'Ram?' he asked.
Ramada knew his meaning. 'Absolutely,' he answered.
And still Branch did not enter. He was a careful man. There were a few last details.
'I need some clarification, Base,' he radioed. 'My turbine breathes air. Can it breathe this nitrogen atmosphere?'
'Sorry, Echo Tango,' Jefferson said, 'I have no information on that.'
Chambers came on the air, excited. 'I might be able to help answer that. Just a sec, I'll consult one of our people.'
Your people? thought Branch with annoyance. Things were slipping out of order. She had no place whatsoever in this decision. A minute later she returned. 'You might as well get it straight from the horse's mouth, Elias. This is Cox, forensic chemistry, Stanford.'
A new voice came on. 'Heard your question,' the Stanford man said. 'Will an air-breather breathe your adulterated concentrate?'