Rare Earth (24 page)

A
n hour later, Marc left the camp through the front gates. The pressure of the ticking clock pursued him down the trail and into the forest. He walked in silence with Deb and Crowder, Levi and Charles and Kamal. His team. The French camp director and his staff had apparently been taken by the assailants. Marc's young crews were busy doling out rations. Kamal estimated they had two weeks' worth of supplies in the godowns.

They emerged from the forest just as the sun touched the western rim. Kamal and Charles continued their assessment of the camp's current situation. The problem, they said, was medical treatment. The clinic was empty, the medical staff evacuated with the director. Marc half listened to their summary. Most of his attention remained gripped by the same dilemma that had propelled him from the camp. They had run out of options. The Kibera elders continued to scour the regions surrounding their former villages, but the extraction facility had not been located. Time remained their greatest foe.

Marc faced south by west, directly toward the volcano. The sunset was stained a livid green by the looming dust cloud. Marc thought he could discern a very real change to the eruption. The volcano still fumed, but the bone-shivering resonance was gone. The pillar of smoke and ash was thinner. Lightning streaked the high reaches only now and then.

Kamal was still talking and Charles translating. Together they predicted the first thing the camp would run out of was vaccines. Marc wanted to wave the words away, shout at them that unless they came up with the location of their enemies, the camp and all its problems would be wiped out.

It was not a matter of praying for guidance. He had been praying all day. He felt the pressure mounting with each passing minute.
Kitra
.
Serge
.
Levi
.
Philip
. All the outcast people. All the displaced villages. Counting on him, “the shujaa.”

Then it hit him.

Marc froze on the spot.

Crowder demanded, “What is it?”

Marc said to Kamal, “Run through for me what you just said again.”

Kamal frowned at Charles's translation and said, “Which part?”

“About the camp's newcomers. Repeat what you said.”

Kamal's frown deepened and was matched by Charles's own confusion. “We said that the number of new refugees was declining because the towns threatened by the volcano are already evacuated.”

“After that.”

“Families with frail old ones or sick children might have tried to wait it out—”

“No. After that.”

“The outlying regions are coming in now. People who might have thought to be safe—”

Marc snapped his fingers. “How do you know about this?”

Kamal said through Charles, “It is all they talk of at the regional depot.”

“Okay, okay. What next?”

Crowder said, “I'm lost.”

“Oh, good,” Deb said. “I thought I was the only one.”

“Hold,” Marc said. “Go on, Kamal. What came next?”

“The depot medical staff, they are seeing new ailments. The locals report the newest arrivals suffer from the same thing. Very bad abdominal cramps. They first thought typhus or dysentery, but now these are ruled out. Violent purges of the digestive system. The depot doctors are now thinking a poison from the volcano has leaked into the underground aquifer system—”

“That's it!” Marc wheeled about. “Come on!”

“Where are we headed?”

He had to shout over his shoulder, for he had already left them far behind. “To catch the bad guys!”

H
ard as they pushed, it still took them the rest of the day to make plans and set things in motion. As they gathered for the evening meal, Marc stared into the sunset and fought against the temptation to depart immediately. Levi certainly wanted to. Though Kitra's father held to his resolute silence, a desperate appeal burned in his dark gaze. But so did the exhaustion, something they all shared.

Later, as Marc rose from his chair, every eye in the mess hall turned his way. He said, “Everyone turn in. We leave at four. Charles.”

“Yes?”

“Have the mess staff understand we need a full breakfast ready at three. Rigby.”

“Here.”

“We'll travel in the SUVs from the game camp. Top them off from the generator's fuel tank.”

“On it.”

“Crowder, you and Kamal arrange watches. But I want you three to stand down. The team leaders need an uninterrupted night. There's no telling what tomorrow holds.” Marc left the mess hall, entered the bunkroom, pulled the mosquito net around his bed, and lay down fully clothed. He fell asleep to the sound of the ticking clock. He dreamed of a woman's soft breathing, somewhere in the far distance. Waiting for him.

They left while it was still dark and arrived at the regional depot around midmorning. The full-on panic Marc had witnessed during his last visit was gone. The camps were up and functioning, the tide of refugees somewhat reduced. The only frantic people Marc spotted were the medical staff. The makeshift hospital tents were full to bursting, with canvas lean-tos sprouting yet more beds. Staffers rushed and shouted. Marc nodded to Charles, who drifted away with Levi. Their job was to find out the precise origin of these incoming patients.

Marc and the others headed for where the noise was loudest. He spotted the pilot who had brought him into the depot. It seemed like a memory from a different lifetime. He said to Crowder, “Let's talk with this guy.”

The pilot leaned against his chopper's fuselage, making time with an off-duty nurse. The woman's surgical blues were stained, her expression very tired. They both looked over at Marc's approach. It took the pilot a long moment to recall, “You're that accountant. The guy from Philly, right?”

“Close enough.”

The pilot took in the crew that gathered in a semicircle around Marc—Boyd Crowder and his men, Kamal and his squad, Deb Orlando. All of them armed. The pilot's smirk vanished. “Guess you had what it takes after all.”

“We need you, and we need your chopper.”

“Hey, I'd like to help. But—”

“Actually we need two. Got any suggestions?”

Boyd Crowder said, “I've flown with that crew juicing up the Sikorsky over there. They'll do.”

“Okay, him.”

The nurse slipped away with a casual, “Later.”

The pilot scowled at her departure. “This is absolutely not happening. Look, I don't care how many guns you point at me, I'm—”

“Deb.”

She scarcely stood tall enough to meet the pilot's rib cage. But something in her gaze jammed the guy up solid against his chopper. Deb said, “This document is from the chief of UN global security, authorizing us to requisition anything and everything we need.”

“That's you,” Marc said.

“And your buddies gaping at us over by the other bird,” Crowder said.

Deb withdrew another document from her pack. “As you'll see from the letterhead, this comes straight from the White House.”

Marc had not even noticed the copilot until her head popped out of the rear hold. “Is this a joke?”

“No,” Crowder replied. “This is totally for real.”

The copilot leaped easily to the earth and leaned in beside her boss. Together they inspected the page. The woman asked her partner, “Whose coffee did you spit in?”

“Hey, I only saw this guy
once
, and all I told him was ‘be careful.'”

Deb said, “You are hereby ordered and authorized to do whatever Agent Royce commands.”

“Agent who?”

“Royce,” Marc said. “That would be me.”

Deb continued, “You are also ordered to tell no one what you are about to do. Ever.”

“Or we come gunning for you, your family, your pals, and your dog,” Crowder said. “Joke.”

Deb went on, “You are assigned to assist us for as long as Agent Royce requires.”

The copilot said, “The spaces for names here are blank.”

“Spell yours out for the lady,” Marc said. “Then fill your tanks.”

The pilot complained, “What do I put down for my flight plan?”

“Use your imagination,” Marc replied. “We leave in ten.”

Crowder and Deb and Levi and Charles and Kamal were in the first chopper with Marc. It made no sense to bunch them all together. But Crowder had insisted on going with Marc, and the others had simply piled in. When Marc objected, Crowder had replied, “Eyes are eyes.” Marc had let it go.

They flew toward the volcano.

The cone-shaped mountain loomed above an otherwise flat landscape. The eruption had blasted away the cone's upper fifth, leaving a ragged-edged maw that spewed a constant evil fount. Fire gleamed about the rim, but no new lava spilled out. Just a torrent of ash that tainted the sky.

“You're lucky the wind is strong.” The pilot had repeated this half a dozen times during their forty-minute ride. “I got to stay well clear of that gunk. Thirty seconds inside the cloud and my intake manifolds are clogged and we drop like a stone.”

The wind pushed with steady force from the south. The smoke pillar tilted slightly away from them. The sky directly overhead was a washed-out blue. The landscape below was blanketed by ash. Here and there the pale earth was riven by veins of frozen black lava.

“Okay,” Marc said. “Begin your search.”

“Tell me again what we're after,” the pilot repeated.

“A camp that does its best to remain hidden. Beside it will be a small mountain, maybe several. Unnatural hills that shouldn't be there,” Marc replied patiently. “Signs of recent truck activity will lead to and from the site.”

“And the hills are . . .”

“Slag heaps. There will probably be some form of surface water nearby.”

“In this drought?”

“Which will make any pool or underground-sourced lake highly visible.”

“Any water around these parts will be polluted by the fallout.”

“Not as polluted as it will be when they're done with it,” Marc said.

The pilot's cabin had three fold-down seats that were occupied by Deb, Crowder, and Marc. They were connected to the others by headphones and bulbous mikes held directly in front of their lips. The volcano's static formed a constant background hiss. The pilot's voice crackled with each word as he asked, “Anything else?”

“Factory-type buildings,” Marc said. “Again, they'll try their best to be hidden away.”

“Hidden,” the pilot repeated. “As in, hard to spot.”

“Exactly,” Marc said. “Your target is what they can't hide so easily.”

“A mound of dirt,” the pilot said. “In this.”

“Far enough away from the destruction that the workers can breathe when the wind is against them,” Marc agreed. “Close enough to hide beneath the ash.”

Their pilot had to almost sit on top of the other machine to communicate through the volcanic hiss. Every time lightning sliced the cloud to their north, the static crackled like gunfire. Everyone winced and focused grimly on their hunt.

The two choppers had worked in tandem before. The pilots both had military training, and adopted a standard search-and-rescue pattern—tight weaves that coiled around the border zone surrounding the mountain.

Ten minutes into the search, Crowder said, “Explain to me how you got this idea.”

Deb replied for Marc, “He's been through all this.”

“Hey. Where else can I go for my entertainment?”

Marc didn't mind. It filled the empty spaces and helped clarify the situation. “It started with something Levi told the Kibera elders. The Chinese don't care. They will pollute and destroy without a backward glance.”

“If you need evidence,” Levi said from the rear hold, “look no further than the air over their own cities.”

Crowder said, “So they hide their extraction plant by the volcano, and the volcano makes them sick. Just like this latest stream of refugees.”

“No,” Marc replied. “That's not it at all.”

“Explain.”

“The Chinese use the most primitive extraction technology because it's the cheapest. Even though cleaner systems have been developed, right, Levi?”

The wind through the open rear door buffeted Levi's microphone as he replied, “Our system releases no toxins into the environment. None.”

“So the volcano—”

“Forget the volcano,” Marc said. “It's not the volcano causing these people to grow ill. Their extraction process has poisoned the groundwater. Maybe they didn't plan to. Maybe the tremors created a leak between their retention pool and the underground water system. Maybe they just don't care. Whatever the reason, the poisons resulting from their outdated extraction process have worked into the water supply.”

“And the people are showing up at the camps and the depot,” Deb Orlando said, “and they're sick. But the doctors can't figure out what it is that's affected them.”

“Because the doctors are looking for a tropical-based ailment, or they're thinking maybe it's something from the volcano.” Marc confirmed. “That's what Levi and Charles went asking about. That's why we're focusing on this region between the mountain and the three cities from which the sickest of these new patients are arriving.”

“But the illnesses they're seeing don't have anything to do with the volcano, so they're misdiagnosing the problem,” Crowder said, nodding slowly. “This makes sense.”

Levi's worry resurfaced as he asked, “So you think my Kitra may still be alive?”

Marc rose from his seat and folded it back against the wall. He slid open the metal door separating the cabin from the rear hold. The pilot glanced over his shoulder at the wind and noise, but did not speak. When Levi met his eye, Marc said, “
Think
. Why would they have taken Kitra?”

Levi just stared at him.

“Someone had to have told them.”

Levi sat immobile in the jump seat beside the open rear door. He tasted the air. “You think . . . Serge?”

“Imagine how that conversation might have gone,” Marc pressed. “Serge tells his captors, ‘There are all these staffers getting sick. I need help. I need a trained nurse, someone who has hands-on experience with regional ailments'.”

Deb leaned back to observe them. “Whoa.”

Marc went on, “He says, ‘I know this great nurse. She's got exactly the skill set we need. You've got to get into this camp and bring her here. If anyone can make them better, it's her'.”

Levi groaned, “Why would he have them take his own sister?”

“
Think
,” Marc repeated. “It was
never
about taking Kitra. Serge was sending us a message.”

Crowder cut off Levi's reply. “Heads up! I think we've got us a match.”