“— I repeat! Implement level-five quarantine procedures now!”
He hit the SEND button. The screen read out,
TRANSMISSION SENT.
TIME UNTIL RECEPTION:
2:56:18…17….16…
Christ, he thought, almost three hours before they’d even get the message…The pounding at the door redoubled. Almost methodical now. Thud. Thud. Thud.
He turned to see that the metal door was denting inward. This room was supposed to be supremely reinforced, ultrahigh security. And he wasn’t safe even here.
He turned desperately back to the comm screen.
2:56:11…10…9…
And a feeling washed over Carmack as he watched the hopeless countdown. A feeling that was also a realization of his fate.
So this is it, he thought.
This is what doom feels like.
Two
REAPER IS ON point, that hot, wet dusk on the edge of the methane fields, five miles north of the fuel-processing center. Reaper is buzz cut, clean-shaven, with sharp features, two dark slashes for eyebrows, and dark eyes as grim as his name. His real name is John Grimm; the other guys in the “Privines” — slang for Privatized Marines — called him Reaper, and by now he answers to it. Monikers are a tradition in their unit.
So the Japanese guy coming through the Amazonian rain forest after Reaper is just Mac; and after him, part of their single-file patrol, is a bulky, implacable black man, who goes by Destroyer — which’d be a nickname to induce eye-rolling if he hadn’t earned it thirty or forty times; then, tall and wiry, comes Duke.
After Duke is Jumper — a red-haired soldier twitchy with nervous energy, perpetual loopy grin, and a humorous squint to his green eyes, always spoiling for a fight. His real last name is Cable — he’s been there for Reaper since boot camp.
Then there’s Goat. Long face and tuft of beard that goes with the name, mutters under his breath — you can never make out what he’s saying — and his hands shake when he’s not in a firefight. Brutally efficient when he is.
Bringing up the rear, sunken-eyed and sullen, is plain old Portman — he hasn’t been with them long and hasn’t earned a combat name.
Each man wears helmets with headsets, lightly armored cammies, RRTS insignia on one shoulder, United Aerospace Corporation patches on the other: UAC Special Assignment. Each carries an M-100 combination assault rifle and grenade launcher — they’ve been specially assigned for the mission…
Maybe not the right weapons, Reaper is thinking. Their usual arsenal is what they’d trained with…
Somewhere far away, John Grimm shuddered under Plexiglas. He was lying on a cushioned table, with electrodes taped to his temples, the sensors slowly rotating over his cranium scanning his brain, the military therapist having insisted…
“I must insist, John,” she’d said. “I must insist…”
“They insisted on these fucking M-100s,” Reaper is muttering, as Duke draws up beside him, on the edge of the clearing. Reaper slings his rifle over his shoulder, raises his right hand to signal a halt, the other hand wiping sweat from his head as he scans the tree line. Interlocked umbrella-shaped trees, branchless for a hundred feet up, make a canopy over most of the rain forest. The path leads through the clearing to the methane fields, but there is no way Reaper is going to take his men into that clearing, an ideal spot for an ambush, without checking it out first. Intel has anti-UAC guerillas heading for the general area of the methane fields, probably bent on sabotage. Maybe they’ll hit this one — or maybe not.
“These rifles — I think we’re in a goddamn test drive…” Reaper adds, swinging the rifle back into readiness again.
“We’re testing these weapons?” Duke asks softly, looking down at his weapon. “You mean all they did was, like, fire at some targets somewhere?”
“That’s what I mean. M-100 hasn’t been significantly field-tested. Meaning not tested for reaction to humidity, for starters.”
“And goddamn if it ain’t humid here,” says Duke, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.
“We should’ve brought our regular ordnance, left these in the…Hold on, you see something move, over about three o’clock, under that tree there?”
“That tree? That’s like pointing out a snowflake in a blizzard.”
“That yellowish one that’s leaning, Duke — look, right there, two frog’s hairs to the left —”
“I make the tree, but I don’t see any — wait. Yeah. There’s someone there…I see a weapon! Let’s hit cover, John.”
Reaper nods and signals the others. The patrol melts back into the underbrush — but they’ve been spotted and some anxious guerilla opens fire. A flock of something red and feathery takes to the air, startled by the rattling submachine gun…Twigs and leaves shower down close to the patrol as the SMG rounds cut through the brush.
“Anybody hit?”
“No.”
“Negative…How many are there?”
“No telling. Portman, Duke, you head northeast, see if you can flank them, you other guys with me…But not you, Jumper…”
Reaper tensed under the glass, fitfully opening his eyes, but seeing only that day in the rain…Seeing…
“Yes, sir?”
“Jumper, I’m just a corporal, and you don’t have to call me sir, goddammit…”
“Hey — I like calling you sir, you’re such a macho hot pants of a swingin’ dick.”
“And you’re a talented comic. Now lay some fire down over at three o’clock, do not expose yourself…” Knowing that was contradictory directions. Firing at the enemy would itself expose Jumper.
“Deploying…sir!” Jumper grins and, hunching down, slips off into the brush as another probing strafe of SMG fire chips across a tree trunk, just over their heads.
“Permission to return fire, sir,” Destroyer says.
“Nah, not yet, bro,” Reaper answers. “You and Portman watch my six, I’m gonna push their lines, see how far I can get before they push back…”
“Roger that.”
Hunched over, Reaper leads Destroyer and Goat around to the right, skirting the edge of the clearing. It’s getting darker: shadows lengthening, air seeming to thicken to transparent blue gel as the sun eases into the horizon. He hears stuttering gunfire from Jumper, jabbing at the guerillas’ flank, hears the guerillas returning fire.
Reaper hurries, trying to take advantage of the decoy fire, and finds himself in a narrow opening in the leaf-carpeted, underbrush —
And suddenly there’s a young guerilla, SMG in his hands, popping up from behind a lichen-coated fallen tree, his face drawn in fear as he fires sloppily at them — firing in sheer hysteria.
Reaper fires back, and the guerilla goes spinning backward, seeming to fall in slow motion…
Reaper writhed under the electrodes, wanting out, feeling trapped in the dimly sensed glass coffin — and trapped in the past. A voice from somewhere was saying, “I think he’s fighting the therapy, maybe we’d better…”
“No,” a woman’s voice said, “if he doesn’t relive this now, he’ll relive it as repression stress, he’ll snap in combat…”
Goat vaults the log, comes down beside the kid, gun butt at ready to smash his head in if he’s still got any fight in him…Hesitates. Stares.
The young guerilla — not more than fifteen years old, Reaper guesses — has been torn open just under the rib cage by the close-range burst from Reaper, and he’s lying on his back twisting like a salted slug. Whimpering.