Gregg Hurwitz - Minutes to Burn

Derek said, "Both crates and the mags. They got it all. We're essen-tially without weapons."

Savage thunked his boot down on the edge of Derek's chair. He pulled up the leg of his pants and yanked his blade from the ankle sheath. "Not really," he said.

"Yeah," Justin said. "I'm sure we could take on an army with that bad boy."

Derek knocked Savage's foot off his chair. "That's the good news," he said. "We don't need to take on an army. We lift out tomorrow morning, and the islands are a docile environment."

"How do you know that?" Rex asked.

"Guayaquil's basically a docile environment," Szabla said.

"Yeah, you guys seem to be breezing through this leg of the mission."

Szabla stiffened. "Look, you fuck-"

"I have been assured that the islands are not hostile," Derek said, "aside from the obvious seismic complications against which weapons will hardly be useful. Our mission is to assist you in distributing the GPS gear, which we can accomplish without ordnance."

"I'm just nervous about bandits, or random…" Rex stopped, looking around. "Well, it is a concern. The situation in Galapagos has gotten increasingly desperate."

"I think you'll find the seven of us adequate bodyguards," Derek said.

Szabla held up a hand, fingers spread. "One of us would be an ade-quate bodyguard." She rose from the bed. "But remember your request for a massive misallocation of resources? You see, to impress you and all the contacts you called in-"

"Szabla," Derek said, his voice raised in warning.

"— we all have to waste a week and wave guns around so you feel like you're well taken care of in a city less dangerous than New York on an average Saturday night."

"Szabla!" Derek barked. She looked down, fuming.

Rex applauded her performance. "Love the drama," he said. "And you're right, Guayaquil is much safer than New York City, if you ignore all the minor details of life here, like, say, those four journalists who were found two weeks ago with their dicks cut off and rammed down their throats. Hey, Guayaquil has even more advantages over the Big Apple. More of the cab drivers speak English… there's no Andrew Lloyd Web-ber… "

Szabla lunged for Rex, but Cameron stepped in her way. Szabla stopped before bumping into Cameron and stared at her, but Cameron didn't meet her eyes. "Why don't we all take a time-out here?" Cameron said softly, looking down at her boots. After a moment, Szabla took a step back. Cameron continued, "We no longer have weapons but, as Derek said, they're not essential for our mission objectives from this point. We'll get an armed escort to the airport tomorrow and from there, we can easily bodyguard Rex and Juan, assist in positioning the equip-ment, and get home."

"So everyone stow it and get some sleep," Derek added.

They grabbed their kit bags and headed for the door.

"Feliz fuckin' Navidad," Justin said.

Dusk had thickened the air by the time Diego steered El Pescador Rico, a converted twenty-two-foot fishing boat, to the waters just off Cormorant Point on Floreana. Already, he saw a herd of pigs bickering on the soft, white-sand beach, and he felt his stomach drop as he realized what the pigs were fighting over.

He pulled the Zodiac from its withered repose near the stern and heaved it in the water, engaging the dive bottle of compressed air secured on its transom. As the launch inflated, he debated pulling his speargun from its mount on the polished wood but decided that reloading it after each shot would take too long. Kicking off his loafers and tossing his rifle ahead, Diego leapt over the side of his boat into the Zodiac and headed for shore.

In the water ahead, he noticed a shadowy mass, and he cut hard to avoid hitting it. As he passed, the dark shape took form as two turtles- a small male mounted on top of a female, clinging to her with his flip-pers as she paddled to keep them afloat.

Diego cranked the throttle, landing the Zodiac hard on the beach. The pigs acknowledged him with grunts as he splashed toward them through the surf, yelling and cursing. The turtle nesting ground, the twenty-meter stretch of sand that crested the top of the beach, was trampled and uprooted, the pocked and mounded sand resembling the site of an archaeological dig. Snorting and rooting into the sand, the pigs were enjoying a lavish feast of eggs and hatchlings. Whatever eggs may have remained buried in the nests were surely crushed.

A spotted sow gobbled up a soft, pale-green sea turtle hatchling as it struggled toward the surf. Diego took off the top of the sow's head with his first shot. He hit two pigs dead in the chest with his next shots before missing, and they spit blood, their legs stroking the air like broken pis-tons as he paused and regarded the width of the herd.

When he stepped, his feet pulled from the sand with a sucking noise. Inland, a scattering of rocks gave way to low scrubby brush, broken only by the path leading back to the lagoon. The mineral crystals in the sand gave the beach a subtle, green cast that, with the darkening sky and the carnage ahead, made the events unfolding around Diego seem dreamlike.

He felt his chest tighten with grief and rage and he fired and reloaded, fired and reloaded even through the spray of blood, the wet and wounded snorts, the wriggling bodies that layered the sand. Pieces of hatchlings lay discarded on the beach, flippers and heads and peels of flesh dusted with sand. Halfway through the carton of bullets, Diego realized he was crying. He cursed the pigs as he fired, cursed the yolk and shell dripping from their sticky snouts, cursed their curled tails protruding from holes and their forked feet trampling the sand. Then he cursed the farmers who'd left them behind to roam the island. Despite the crack of the rifle, the pained squeals, and the stench of death emanating from the blood-drenched sand, the pigs refused to spook. They remained, rooting and chomping and falling dumbly, torn through with bullets.

There were at least ten pigs dead or wounded, but their numbers seemed inexhaustible; every time a pig dropped, two more seemed to spring from its shadow, running tight, excited circles in the sand. Seemingly oblivious, a large turtle was bedded down in the middle of the ruckus, continuing to lay her eggs, even as a piglet ate them right out of her body. Diego took aim with a blurry eye and fired, but the hammer clicked down on nothing. He dug through the carton, found it empty, and cast it aside. The turtle squeezed out another egg, directly into the waiting mouth of the piglet. Cocking the stock of the rifle back over one shoulder, his scream an echo from the pit of his stomach, Diego charged into the fray.

Ramon stirred in the night, feeling oddly uneasy. It had been hard adjusting to living on a deserted island, just he and Floreana. He had caught himself talking to one of his cows again today, and though he had laughed it off, it was increasingly difficult to deny that it was very lonely on Sangre de Dios.

He rolled over on the mattress, resting his hand on his wife's rounded belly. The bloque de hormigon walls of the small house were slightly aglow with the embers from the fireplace. He lay on his back, staring at the soft orange tint of the ceiling for a few minutes, counting the cracks and trying to wipe the feeling of discomfort from his mind. The cut on his index finger had healed, leaving a smooth strip of a scar.

Floreana murmured something in her sleep, her hand moving to rest atop his, though she didn't wake. He leaned over and kissed her softly on her temple, damp with sweat. It used to be cooler up in the highlands, but ever since the large hurricanes that damaged the skies, it had grown hotter, even in the night. He still made fires, but only for cooking and light.