Gregg Hurwitz - Minutes to Burn

Feeling self-conscious before the others, Cameron found Justin's eyes, and he smiled at her reassuringly.

"Hey there, Mother Goose," Szabla smirked, holding one boot up before her. "I think I stubbed my toe. Would you mind kissing it to make it better?"

Cameron knocked Szabla's boot away. Szabla stumbled backward into Tank, who caught her under the arms and hauled her to her feet.

Derek and Rex emerged, and Derek signaled the squad to grab the gear. Szabla climbed up on the roof of the chiva and began lowering the cruise boxes and duffels to the others. Across the street, two men leaned up against a building, watching them unload. One of them, a tall, hand-some guayaquileno, wore an unbuttoned shirt to show off a dazzling array of gold chains. He watched Szabla bend over and blew her a kiss. His friend, a shorter man with his hair pulled back in a ponytail, laughed. Szabla squared herself on the roof of the chiva, facing them, and grabbed her crotch. The shorter man cheered and she curtsied before sliding off the roof.

Rex tried to lift one of the cruise boxes and couldn't get it off the ground. With a smirk, Szabla hoisted it up and motioned Rex ahead of her. "Why don't you be a gentleman and get the door?" she said.

Inside, the wallpaper was bubbled and peeled, the maroon carpet worn thin around the front desk. Savage stopped beneath a particularly gruesome sculpture of Christ on the cross, nailed to the wall beside reception. He ran a finger across the crown of thorns and rubbed his fingertips, as if expecting the blood to come off on them.

The squad followed Derek up the stairs, hauling the gear. They circled up in the first bedroom of the third floor, stacking the gear in the corner.

Derek opened the lid of the weapons box, revealing the foam interior. Removing the magazine from his M-4, he placed the gun inside, tossing the mag in a nearby cruise box, where it landed on one of the two spare ammo crates. He gestured for the others to do the same. "Make sure you clear and safe your weapons," he said. "Sigs too."

Rex looked up in disgust at the vents. "An ozone hole the size of Mars and the air conditioner's running full blast." He started for the dial on the wall, but Szabla blocked him.

"Not in this heat, you don't," she said. "CFCs be damned."

"It's precisely that kind of-"

Derek cleared his throat. "We'll take the rooms in buddy pairs. Me and Cam'll stay here. Szabla and Justin, you guys are straight across the hall. I want Savage and Tucker next door to you, and Rex and Tank in the next room down."

"I think I can manage alone," Rex said. "Tempting as it sounds, I don't think I'm really in need of a 'buddy.'"

Derek ignored him. Tank sat down on one of the beds with a grunt, pulling off a boot. He snapped his fingers, and Justin pulled a can of Tinactin from his kit bag and tossed it to him.

When the others had finished putting away their M-4s and 9mm Sig Sauer p226s, Derek counted the mags in the cruise box, making sure they were all accounted for. Since he was standing watch, he kept a loaded pistol in his belt.

The sound of a crying baby issued through the thin wall. Derek stiffened, his face blanching. Cameron coughed loudly to draw attention away from him. The crying continued. Probably the baby that got sunburnt.

Rex punched a number into his sat phone. He hung up and dialed again. "A recording says the north part of the city's still out. I tried before from the airport."

Some of the color was returning to Derek's face, but he still looked unsteady.

"So the north part of the city's out," Szabla said. "Who gives a shit?"

"That's where Dr. Ramirez's lab is."

Szabla looked at Rex with irritation. "Need I repeat my question?"

"I haven't had an opportunity to inform him of our departure time tomorrow. If he's going to meet us at the airport for the flight, he needs to know when it is."

"So go tell him."

"It's through the UN cordon."

"Now we're an escort service," Szabla said.

"Doubt you'd get many bookings in that line of work," Rex said. "Look, someone needs to accompany me. Why don't you take a vote or something?"

"This is the navy," Szabla said. "We don't vote."

"I'll go," Cameron said. "Me and Tank. That okay, LT? LT?"

Derek snapped from his trance. The baby's cries had stopped. "What?"

"Me and Tank'll accompany Rex to find Dr. Ramirez. That all right?"

Derek nodded. "With all the attitude we're running into, I want you to keep it low-key around the UN troops. Change into civies and keep your Sigs out of view." Opening the weapons box, he pulled out two pistols and tossed them to Cameron and Tank. He slammed the lid, locked both padlocks, and looped the keychain around his neck.

"Anyone finds out you're carrying and it's my ass. If you run into trouble with UN or domestic, flash ID; with the element, retaliate reasonably. I'm assuming you'll be fine. It's broad daylight, and I'm pleasantly surprised by the stability of the city, even beyond the checkpoints. We'll wait for you here, and see about dinner later." He flipped Cameron a rubber-banded wad of sucres, bluish-green on one side, red and orange on the other.

Cameron wedged the money into her front pants pocket, safe from pickpockets. The baby next door let loose with a scream, and she saw Derek's face tighten, as if he were bracing for a punch. He regained his composure quickly. No one else seemed to notice.

"The lab is out by Julian Coronel," Rex said. "It's not the nicest part of town."

Tank laid an enormous hand on Rex's shoulder, guiding him toward the door.

"Don't worry," Cameron said. She stole another glance at Derek before turning to follow. "You're in good hands."

The paper crackled as he inhaled, the orange ring of the cherry inching its way down the length of the joint toward his generous lips and well-manicured mustache. Diego Byron Rodriguez held the burn in his lungs for a moment, his chest stretching the fabric of his cheap Darwin Station T-shirt, and surveyed the mess around him.

A filing cabinet lay with its top smashed into his desk, a webbing of cracks working their way from one end of the fine oak surface to the other. Supporting a slender laptop, a dissecting microscope, and a coffee can full of pencils, was a makeshift second desk, humbly erected from four fallen cinder blocks and a piece of plywood. A screensaver-flying marine iguanas-blinked across the computer, and the power cord plugged into an orange heavy-duty surge protector on a cable that threaded its way through the detritus and out the broken window to functional outlets in the Protection building next door. Amid the shattered glass from the two picture windows fluttered fallen papers and posters, diagrams of fire ants, the wings of stiffened insects in broken cyanide jars.

On the wall hung two photos, frames cracked and glass shattered from their many falls, of Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge-an homage to Diego's heroes.

Diego's dark brown hair was sleek, his short ponytail seeming of one piece. His face was youthful, though traces of wrinkles remained for a few moments after he smiled or frowned, as if his face, coming into its fourth decade, had developed an aversion to change. His long hair seemed at odds with the neatness of his mustache, his faded T-shirt with his suit-bottom pants, the tassels of his Miami-bought Italian loafers with the stripes of bare, dusty skin visible at his ankles.

A pair of his boxer shorts was drying on the antenna of the PRC117 Delta satellite radio. Because he'd fried it two weeks ago by overloading the circuits, he now had to use an old-school, high-frequency PRC104 that the ejercito had dropped off on their last swing through. The rigid, ten-foot whip antenna that stood up like a coat rack from the low-tech PRC104 only permitted regional transmissions.