One of the men standing along the right side of the entrance let out a low, howling moan. He swayed, and I could see the canvas corner he was holding sag. There was a thin, whistling scream of air escaping. I jumped forward. Just as he collapsed, I seized the edge he'd been holding and slammed it hard against the rock. The whistling stopped. He went down with a dull, sickening thud into the rock floor. Than grabbed him by the collar with his one good hand and dragged him back away from the barrier.
I could feel it full force now, the heat, the unbearable heat. Fire swirled just inches from my fingers, kept at bay only by the canvas and plastic. I could feel the heat redden my fingers, scorching them now, and still I held on. It was not a matter of courage ― there was simply no choice.
Just as suddenly as it was upon us, the main fire stormed past. It was consuming fuel at a prodigious rate, and the scant vegetation around the cavern gave out quickly. I could hear it as it passed, the Doppler lowering of the frequency of the noise, just like the change in sound an aircraft makes as it passes overhead, or a train whistling off into the distance. The heat abated noticeably, but was still well above my pain threshold.
The air was hot, almost too hot to breathe. I took shallow breaths, sucking it in between clenched teeth and trying to let what little moisture remained in my mouth cool it before it seared my lungs. We were all breathing like that, short quick pants, held uptight and in place only by fear and adrenaline.
But there was hope now, as there had not been before. The temperature continued to drop, and I felt the tug of the canvas in my hands decrease slightly. The wind continued, though, as the fire sucked in fresh air behind it. Still, we held on.
It might have been minutes, it might have been hours. I'd lost all sensation of the passage of time, my world defined simply by the urgent need to hold onto the fabric in my hands, the dead, throbbing pain in my hands. We waited, silent.
Than spoke. "It is safe now." Still, I held on, and it wasn't until one of the other men pried my hands from the rock wall that the reality sunk in.
We were alive.
My fingers refused to move at first, locked into position by fear and heat. The men were oddly gentle now, easing me back from the wall and gently prying my hands off the canvas. I sank back against the wall, slid down into a sitting position, and studied my hands. They were red, blistered, and crusted now, black in a couple of spots. There was no real pain ― the nerve endings had been seared by the heat ― but that would come soon enough. I looked across the small cavern at the other men, who were similarly injured. "How is he?" I said to Than, gesturing at the man on the ground.
He shook his head, stared down at him, and prodded him gently with one foot. "The heat. I do not know ― the heat kills more quickly than anything except perhaps the fire."
"Or suffocation," I reminded him.
"Yes, that too." Than knelt down beside the man, touching his forehead briefly. He looked up at me. "He needs water, something cool ― we have none here."
Indeed we did not. We'd all emptied our canteens onto the canvas, expending every last drop dousing it. It hadn't seemed important at the time, not with the fire almost upon us. Besides, we knew that the lower regions of the mountain range were honeycombed with creeks and rivulets.
"I'll go get some," I offered. Another man, evidently understanding my suggestion, stood up and walked over to stand next to me.
Than shook his head again. "It is still too hot outside. The fire, it is past, but the ground is nothing but burnt wood and coals. It is still on fire."
I stepped out of the cavern and onto the rock ledge to look at what was left. The heat radiated up through my jungle boots, immediate and painful. Than was right ― I couldn't even stand on the rock ledge, much less hike down to the stream through the charred embers that had once been such lush vegetation.
The land around me was a harsh, barren devastation. The trees were stripped of leaves and limbs, and the sky was now visible. In place of the brilliant greens and yellows, there was only black, and a little gray where ash had formed. The only color that remained was in the sky, brilliant and serene. Smoke wafted up from the charred landscape, thick and cloying. I turned back to Than. "In a few hours perhaps."
"He does not have that much time." Than's voice was blunt and matter-of-fact. "If he survives, he survives." With this final assessment, he turned back to the man and made him as comfortable as he could. He extracted a first-aid kit from one pocket, the same one we had used to treat Than earlier, and a preloaded hypodermic. He found a clear patch of skin on the man's shoulder and plunged it home, depressing the cylinder to eject the full dose into the man. "Morphine," he said in response to my questioning glance.
I nodded. Absent water, morphine was the next best thing. If we could not save him, at least we could keep him comfortable during his final hours.
That night, we posted no guard, secure in the frail protection of our sheltered cave. I woke once at about two that morning, and wondered what had disturbed me. No nightmares that I could recall, and I was still so tired from surviving that day that it seemed impossible I had woken at all.
As sleep drifted back in, I pondered the possibilities. The fire had been moving west, the same direction as the second camp. The lifeline to my father that had seemed so strong in the earlier camp now seemed the thinnest of leads. Was that what the message had meant? And how far west? The possibility that I'd misunderstood his meaning, or even that Horace Greeley was the name of another man in the camp, ate at me.
I drifted back down into sleep without any answers. At the very edge of consciousness, I heard a sound that brought me bolt upright from my hard pallet on the rock floor.
Aircraft ― a helicopter to be specific. And not one of ours, not from the sound of it.
I rolled out of my pallet and went to Than, to wake him and tell him of the helicopter. Even though he had no guard mounted, he would want to know.
I should have been expecting it, but the night held one more surprise for me. The spot where I'd seen Than curl up under a coarse cotton blanket was empty.
I walked to the edge of the cave, stared out into the night, and wondered.
8
I could tell by the look on his face that Lab Rat had bad news. When it's good, he's practically bouncing as he stands at my door and waits for permission to come in. When it's bad, his already small form seems twenty pounds lighter. He shrinks into the door frame, slinks into the room, and his voice is barely above a mumble.
This was one of those times.
"It's still operational," Lab Rat said flatly. "The latest imagery shows aircraft moving in and out of the hangar. And they're already repairing the airfield. We knew that wouldn't take long, but it's going even faster than we predicted."
"What about the SAM sites?" I asked. I was convinced I could eventually knock a hole in the top of those nasty little revetments, but I had to be able to get my aircraft in to do it.
"They're mobile. Not fixed sites."
More bad news. We'd maintained meticulous plots on the electromagnetic transmissions from the anti-air sites, and I was hoping to take them all out the next time. "Can you tell where they're headed?" I asked.
Lab Rat shook his head. "They're moving under cover of the jungle canopy, Admiral. I get a few glimpses of them, some heat sources, but that's about it. We've looked at the terrain, the tactical disposition, and I've simply got no good predictions."
I leaned back in my chair and considered the matter. Intelligence was fine, but sometimes I needed ground troops. "Have you talked to the Marines? They might have some other ideas on where they'd put the SAMs if they were the bad guys."