Thom surveyed the scene not only with his eyes but with all his senses, as well as the heavy gear allowed. Since rendezvousing on the south side, they had not seen any people but had also found no signs of anything amiss.
He did find, however, that MOPP gear, tropical islands, and intense heat did not make a good combination. Streams of sweat rolled down his back and along his arms, and conspired to fog the lenses of his gas mask.
As for smell, his nose sensed only the silicone rubber of the mask, making it the least usable of his senses for the time being. That equipment also muffled his hearing, which had yet to detect anything other than chirping insects singing in the night and their own footfalls, which were, he admitted, much louder than they should be due to the gear and Dr. Stacy's lack of stealth.
He turned to her and asked, "What's the ECAM say?"
Stacy consulted her "weapon," waving it back and forth, up and down in the process.
"Nothing. No airborne contaminants that I can trace. I think there's some ash in the air, though, from the volcano."
"Yeah," Wells said, "it's been spewing shit since we dropped in."
Gant turned away and once again surveyed the scene ahead. A blue and gold flag draped from a pole above a small front porch fluttered in a soft, warm wind. A bronze plaque labeled the place "Administration."
The light of the building shone on nothing. No bodies, no people … nothing. The same nothing they had found outside the clinic and outside the health spa. In each of those places, automatic lights had snapped on.
"Sooner or later," Gant sighed, "we are going to have to do more than take a peek. I do not like the idea of moving into the open until I have some idea what we are dealing with."
Stacy said, "This thing will pick up known chemical agents. I think we can rule out any kind of chem-weapons or industrial toxins, but it isn't so hot on the biological stuff."
Gant said the obvious: "So you're saying we could be in the middle of a biological weapons strike and not know it until we take these masks off?"
"Yeppers."
Wells jumped in: "I don't think so, sir."
The soldier pointed toward the building. It took Gant a moment to see what he meant, but then he spied the flutter of small wings as a tropical bird landed on the flagpole.
"Just sayin'," Wells finished.
Gant's frustration resulted in a long exhale that qualified as a sigh.
Dr. Stacy must have sensed his mood. She told him, "If there was something nasty in the air we'd probably be seeing it by now."
"I do not subscribe to that theory," Gant replied. "Biological agents do not always follow a particular playbook."
"I know that," Stacy said, nearly stomping her foot in annoyance. "But if something is wrong here, it happened quick. Fast enough that no one got off the island to report it. That rules out slow-working viruses or bacterial agents. Otherwise, we'd have reports from people who left the island before the event. So if there's a bio weapon at work, it's fast acting. That means it's more likely to have affected the environment in a manner we would see. I mean seriously, there are birds, bugs, and critters all around. No sign of a problem."
"Like the bird I saw," Wells added, as if hoping for credit.
Gant waited several seconds before replying, "I am not convinced yet. Masks on for a while longer."
"Look, it's the middle of the night. Everyone is probably sound asleep in their beds," Stacy said, voicing what sounded like wishful thinking.
Gant wondered if the realization of their situation had hit home with the young woman. She had just jumped from thirty thousand feet and now was sneaking about in the dark on an isolated strip of land that held the promise of unconventional dangers. Perhaps she was having second thoughts about joining the Archangel team.
If so, she is even smarter than I thought.
Of course, if her wishful thinking led her to make mistakes — like assuming the all-clear and removing their MOPP gear because she hoped everything was okay — then that would put the team at risk.
He shoved aside such considerations, something he found himself doing more often on missions. No matter how well he portrayed the image of a stalwart soldier focused only on the task at hand, Major Thom Gant had come to know in recent months that he was not nearly as focused as he liked to think.
As he had admitted to a friend in the dark bowels of the Red Rock Mountain Research Facility in Pennsylvania, he had questions about everything Archangel did and held no trust for his superiors. But he had been programmed well, and following orders — marching to whatever tune the brass played — was the path of least resistance.
Gant sighed again but quietly this time. He did not want Stacy to hear his exasperation. He then moved them away from the administration building through the growth of ferns and wildflowers.
"This is a party island," he told her in response to her theory that everyone on the island was tucked away safe in their beds. "There should be stoned diplomats stumbling around, drunken businessmen chasing girls half their age, and all other kinds of debauchery."
Wells mumbled, "My kind of place."
"So where are they?"
Gant told Stacy, "Let's start from the beginning. Our best information places Senator Kendal at one of the VIP bungalows. The call came from his security detail. We will go there."
The trio moved through the forest of palm trees and brush, occasionally slipping onto an isolated path. All the way they saw no movement and heard no sounds other than the occasional bird and a tiny marmot that scampered across their path. Stacy's detector did not register any indications of chemical agents or airborne toxins. The heat, however, took its toll in the form of exhaustion, heavy perspiration, and difficulty breathing inside the protective gear. Even Major Gant felt his energy tapped to the point that he ordered a ten-minute rest stop.
The further they moved away from the village center, the more they relied on night vision equipment. The goggles illuminated short stretches of jungle, just enough to avoid a bench here or a toppled tree there. Yet the inhibited, grainy view made Gant feel limited, and the reduction in peripheral vision created a sense of vulnerability. On top of that, the night vision did not marry well with the gas mask and required continual adjustment.
They reached the rim of a clearing marked by a band of well-maintained flowers. In the center of the clearing sat a bungalow with a small front porch. He saw no lights, but they had come across the first sign of trouble.
Maybe this is not a wild goose chase after all.
While the night vision did limit his field of view, Gant spied two vehicles. A crumpled hood and broken windows suggested one of the Jeeps had recently rolled.
Gant dared to stick his shoulders out from cover for a better view. At first, he thought he saw bundles of rags lying around the cars, as if someone's laundry bag had exploded. However, it took only a moment to realize that those bundles were, in fact, dead bodies.
As usually happened on missions such as this, Thom realized he had arrived at the turning point. Dr. Stacy was not the only one who had hoped this trip would be a waste of time. The sight of a wrecked car and dead bodies on an island that should have been packed with visitors yet was silent meant he had reached that moment of realization. Yes, something was terribly wrong on Tioga Island.
He opened his mouth to speak, but his eye caught something moving within the bungalow. It was hard to tell, but either his eyes or his instincts suggested something man-sized creeping inside. Just a glimpse, nothing concrete, possibly a false alarm.
Nonetheless, he said, "Movement in the building."
"I don't see shit," Wells answered softly while looking toward the hut.
Gant told them, "I think we found the senator's place."