Blake started to weigh the alternatives. They would just have to collect as much data as possible and either hope for a break in the storm, or haul ass for its edge once the effects of radiation sickness looked like ending the mission.
“Sergeant, we need to stop for a moment.” It was the spook, Burrows.
“Sir, we’re still several clicks from the hypocenter.”
“I’m aware of that, Sergeant. Now pull over.”
Blake knew not to argue, although looking out through the cabin’s toughened-glass ports he was damned if he could make out the reason for it. The dust storm still raged. He couldn’t see more than twenty feet in any direction but what he could see was just Arizona scrub. The readings on the spectrometer hadn’t spiked and the shallow valley between sand dunes they were traversing had been an unremarkable shithole even before the detonation.
“We’re going out,” Burrows said. “Ready the airlock.”
Burrows sealed his suit and pulled the bulky mask down over his face before pulling the hood of his JSLIST suit tight around it. His old companion was already suited up and standing at the rear door with that equally ancient elephant gun.
Blake gave the order and the collapsible airlock — little more than a thick rubber tent that folded out from the Stryker’s rear hatch — was erected. The two men entered and closed the armored hatch behind them before unzipping the outer door and stepping out into the dust storm.
Blake followed them on the video camera built into a hardened pod on the outside of the hull, panning it around with a tiny joystick built into the console until he had them both in frame.
“What the fuck are they doing out there?” Blake muttered.
Carroll, the old man, was easily recognizable as he towered above his much slighter CIA handler. The man took something out of the thigh pocket of his suit — it looked like a metal snake. When Carroll unwrapped it, Blake saw that it was a long length of motorcycle chain, the sort of thing greasers used to beat the crap out of each other back in the sixties. The chain was crimped together at its ends so that it made a circle. Carroll spun it around and then cast it into the dirt with a flick of his wrist so that its rotation pulled the heavy chain out into a perfect circle.
When it landed in the dirt, Carroll took a second to sprinkle it with some water from his canteen before sitting inside the circle, cross-legged like some goddam Indian guru. He pulled some more objects from his pocket and laid those out against the perimeter of the circle in front of him.
The dust storm and the camera’s shitty resolution meant Blake couldn’t make out any of the objects. He did notice that Carroll kept that big rifle close at all times.
“Williams, you reading anything?” Blake asked.
PFC DeShawn Williams manning the spectrometer shrugged. “I’m reading plenty,” he said, “but it’s all the same shit I’ve been seeing for the last five miles.”
What the hell were they doing? They had pin-pointed the center of the explosion seconds after the bomb had detonated. They knew exactly where it was and even in the storm, they knew exactly where they were in relation to it. If there was anything to find, any tell-tale concentration of residual elements that might give some clue as to the origin of the bomb then their best chance of finding it was miles away.
This was needless exposure, and as for the old man singing Kumbayah in the dirt, Blake started to wonder if they hadn’t all had more of a radiation dose than they thought.
“Okay Sergeant, we’re done here,” said Burrows over the com. Even at such short range, his voice sounded distant and scratchy.
“Roger that, sir. Readying the decontamination shower now.”
“No need for that, Sergeant.”
“Sir, I can’t let you back in without decontamination. The dust on your suit would contaminate the whole vehicle.”
“I know that, Sergeant. We’re going to hitch a ride on the outside. I need you to continue toward the hypocenter.”
They continued across the desert, stopping half a dozen times for the old man to throw his chain in the dust and rest his old bones inside the circle. Sometimes, after performing their little ritual, Blake got new orders: either a new direction to take or an instruction to take readings on the mass spectrometer. Blake tracked their progress on his map, it was painfully slow. Their path picked a meandering line in a rough direction about two points west of the center of the explosion. At this rate they would be testing the limits of their air reserves before they even reached their goal.
The rest of the team was growing impatient too. They all knew theirs was a one-way mission. They had to feel like it meant something; that their sacrifice wasn’t going to be in vain.
Blake did his best to keep them focused. “Williams, get on the periscope,” he ordered. “Keep an eye out for any survivors.”
“Survivors? For real?”
“We’re still outside the kill zone, Private.”
“Sergeant’s right, DeShawn,” said Lyons from the driver’s seat. “At Hiroshima they found survivors just a few hundred meters from the hypocenter.”
“This wasn’t no fuckin’ airburst, man. This was a bad-ass truck bomb. Anyone inside a few hundred meters would have been atomized. We’re probably driving through a cloud of your ‘survivors’ right now.”
“Contact right!” shouted Lyons.
“Halt!” Blake ordered while DeShawn Williams panned around with the short periscope on the Stryker’s roof.
“Contact, my ass. There ain’t nothin’ out there.”
“What did you see, Marine?”
“A person, I think. It was real quick. They looked like they were crawling… like they were on all fours.”
“What’s up?” asked Borrows over the ‘com. “Why have we stopped?”
“Sir, we have a possible survivor. Lyons saw—”
“Where?” This time it was Carroll. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”
“It was only for a second,” Lyons said. “Something moving in the dust storm.”
“Williams, you stay on that scope,” Blake ordered. “Fernandez, Howard, you’re with me. Prep the portable decontamination shower and get a spare suit ready. If there’s anyone alive out there I want to get as much dust off them as possible and get them inside a suit and breathing clean air.”
“Roger that,” said the two marines in unison.
After buttoning up their JSLIST suits and checking each other for breaches, they stepped out through the airlock into the radioactive storm. Blake made his way carefully around to the right of the Stryker, where Lyons had said he had seen his survivor. The wind was almost strong enough to knock him off his feet. It was like being sandblasted; all he could see was the swirling brown dust, and his ears were filled with a sound like static from countless tiny impacts.
“Williams, do you have eyes-on?” Blake asked over the ‘com.
“Negative, Sergeant.”
“Roger that. Switch to thermal, see if that helps.”
“Switching to thermal imaging.”
Blake scanned his surrounds, but could see nothing except the swirling dust until Carroll and Burrows advanced around the Stryker’s nose — both had their rifles raised. Blake imagined what the Stryker would look like to a survivor, let alone the five strange figures, armed and masked with bulky re-breathers. Whoever was out there would be scared shitless.
“Lower your weapons,” Blake said over the ‘com.
“Son, you’d better get back inside,” said Carroll. His voice was deep and calm, like the measured tones of a news anchorman.
Blake ignored him. “How’s the thermal camera looking, Marine?”
“Still sketchy. Wait… I got a signal but it’s moving too fast. Doesn’t look like— Holy shit!”