This close Emily could see the damage to the buildings was mostly cosmetic: Large chunks of stucco had been ripped from the fascia and windows had been blown out, the broken glass crunching under their booted feet. Sheets of paper, the contents of some filing cabinet, blew through the space between the buildings before collecting like snow in a drift against the wall of the hangar.
When they came to the farthest corner of the building, MacAlister flicked a quick hand signal and the two leading sailors sprinted across the open space between buildings. “Let’s go,” he whispered when the men had reached the cover of the next building and the rest of the team sprinted to join them. They continued the same leapfrogging maneuver from building to building until they were as close to the two helicopters as they could get.
Emily watched MacAlister closely, his eyes scanning the buildings and the aircraft, looking for any movement, anything out of the ordinary. When he caught her watching him, he smiled, “Ready?”
She nodded.
“Let’s go,” he said. They dashed across the concrete to the two helos, coming to a standstill next to the fuselage of the first helicopter. It was huge, far bigger than Emily had thought it would be, but then the closest she’d ever been to a helicopter was on TV.
“It’s a Black Hawk,” MacAlister said, running the flat of his hand over the machine’s nose. “Haven’t flown one of these since Iraq.”
The machine was badly damaged; a support strut for one of the two front landing wheels had snapped, tipping the Black Hawk to the ground. Two of the blades of the tail rotor, the one that would stabilize the craft in flight, had been bent, as though something heavy had hit them. The side door of the helicopter must have either been left open or blown open by the storm, because the interior was a wreck of debris and rain damage. It was useless.
“Well, I don’t think this is going to be much use to us,” Parsons said, patting the side of the machine like it was a dead horse. “Let’s take a look at the other one.”
They walked around the front of the damaged aircraft and over to the second helicopter. This one looked to be in much better condition; it was upright, the door hatches for both the passenger area and pilot’s cabin were closed, and as far as Emily could tell, everything that was supposed to be there was where it should be.
“This looks promising,” said Parsons as a rare smile bordering almost on adoration lit up his face. He skirted around the edge of the helicopter, checked underneath it, and then moved his attention to the twin General Electric T700 turboshaft engines sitting just below the main rotor on the roof of the Black Hawk. The smile faded from his face.
“Bastard!” he spat. “The damn things are full of that red shit. ’Scuse my French.”
Emily followed the others around to the front of the helicopter to get a better look. Sure enough, the air intakes of the engines were spilling over with bunches of red veins, reed-thin stalks that had grown or were blown throughout the engine housing, clogging the intake.
“What do you need?” asked MacAlister.
“I need a metric fucking ton of weed killer, is what I need. Spray these bastards all the fucking way back to where they fucking came from.” The Welshman was red in the face. “Sorry. ’Scuse my language again, Miss.”
“No fucking problem,” said Emily, which brought a sudden and incongruous burst of laughter from everyone on the asphalt.
Parsons reached for the handle of the hatch to the passenger area of the helo. He pulled hard and the door popped out and slid backward along the fuselage, revealing a spotless interior.
“I have to give it to you Yanks,” Parsons said as he climbed first onto the lip of the bulkhead, then eased himself up into a standing position, his body inside the helo and his head outside. “You certainly know how to build a flying machine.” With one hand holding the upper lip of the frame for support, he reached up with his free hand and began to rip out clumps of the red vegetation. The severed ends oozed red goo that dripped onto Parsons’s chest and down the front of his tunic.
Emily felt an automatic revulsion at the sight of the red fluid, memories of the red rain flooding back into her mind. She didn’t think whatever was running through the plants was anywhere near as deadly as that first fall of red rain, but still, she wouldn’t want any of that stuff on her. It either didn’t cross Parsons’s mind or he could not have cared any less; he dug in and continued to pull handfuls of the weeds out and toss them on the ground beneath the helicopter.
“Alrighty tighty,” he said after a few more clumps of red splattered on the ground. “Maybe it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. It’s still going to take me a couple of hours to clean this bugger out before we can even think about giving her a test drive. I’ll be able to give you a better idea of where we are then.”
“Anything we can do to help?” Emily asked.
“Unless you feel like keeping me company, you can make yourself scarce for a while.”
Emily turned to MacAlister. “How about we check out the buildings over there? See if there’s anything worth scavenging?”
“Sounds like an idea. Better than standing here and working on our suntans, at least. Rusty! You’re with us. Come on lad.”
The young sailor had settled himself against one of the helicopter’s landing wheels. He pulled himself to his feet, grabbed his rifle, and joined MacAlister and Emily.
“Just scream if you need us,” said MacAlister as they walked off toward the nearest group of buildings.
Emily saw a hand rise from behind the cowling, a single index finger extended.
Jesus, Emily thought good-heartedly, these guys should have their own damn comedy show.
The buildings near the hangar rose three stories high and looked as though they had probably been used for administrative purposes. The parking lot at the front of the building was still filled with cars, a clear indication that most of the base staff had apparently remained at their posts when the rain hit. That fact made Emily oddly proud and afraid at the same time.
The approaching jungle had not yet managed to completely consume the buildings, but it lay just a matter of a few feet away, and leafy runners had already extended out in front of the main wall of vegetation, creeping over the concrete pavements.
The entrance of the nearest building was covered in the same ropelike vines Emily had spent the first few days clearing from the buildings on Point Loma. MacAlister pulled enough of the vines away from the door to clear an entrance, then pushed the door carefully open.
“Wait here, please, Emily,” he said. He was no longer the wisecracking sailor she had begun to grow so infuriatingly attached to; now he was all soldier, his rifle pulled to his shoulder as he edged his way inside the building. He swept the muzzle from left to right, checking corners and nooks and crannies, the flashlight on the barrel of his weapon illuminating even the darkest spaces. Then he disappeared around a corner and Emily felt a sudden sense of nervousness as she lost sight of him.
A few minutes later, he reappeared and walked back to the door.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” he said, holding the door open and gesturing Emily and Rusty inside with a dramatic sweep of his hand. “Let’s go see what we can steal.”
Emily spotted large patches of the same creeping red lichen that seemed to have covered most open ground growing on the walls and floors of the building they now stood in. It wasn’t as prevalent inside, but the ubiquitous red carpet seemed to be independent of the larger body of jungle vegetation that grew just feet away.
Emily had been right about the place being offices. They were standing in a reception area with a set of stairs that climbed up to the second floor, and corridors running north and south.