John Gilstrap - At all costs

“Entry One to Ops. You there?”

“I got you, Entry One.”

Jake shot his hand down to the volume control, cringing as Drew Price’s voice pierced his brain.

“A bit loud there, honey?” Carolyn laughed on the air.

Jake stuck his tongue out at her. “Hey, Ops, give me a short test count, will you?”

He could hear the smile in Drew’s voice as he replied, “Test for Jake. One, two, three, four, five. Five, four, three, two, one. That okay?”

Jake touched his chest again. “Peachy. Thanks.”

While the rest of the teams went through their radio check protocols, Jake and Carolyn fitted their masks to their faces and tightened the straps.

“You look like an anteater,” Carolyn’s voice said in his earpiece.

“Well, we can’t all be as beautiful as you, sweetheart,” he replied.

“Can it, guys.” Foley was on the air now. Mr. Personality. “From this point on, it’s all business, understand?”

“Got it,” Carolyn said sheepishly.

Jake flipped him off-well out of sight, of course.

The Donovans and their fellow moon-suiters moved to the final dressing stage, where secondary decon personnel stood waiting to seal them into their “protective ensembles.” They called themselves the Silverados, thanks to the aluminized fire-resistant outer layers of their suits, which had been specially manufactured for this job. According to theory, the outer layer would buy the owner of the suit an extra ten to fifteen seconds in the event of a fire. Jake thought it was hysterical. They were dealing with explosives, for God’s sake. If it burns, you die. Any questions?

The Silverados stood with their arms extended out to their sides, and their feet stuffed into their booties, as the decon toads helped them wriggle into their heavy armor, guiding their arms and hands into their corresponding holes.

Jake felt a quick rush of panic as the big hood was lifted over his head and the vaporproof zipper was pulled closed. It had happened to him before, and just like last time, he was able to swallow the feeling before it became a problem.

A body bag with a window.

His brain launched a shiver. Once zipped inside, there was no escape from that suit without help; the zipper was simply not accessible. Always a borderline claustrophobic, he’d had nightmares about being stranded inside as he sucked his air pack empty, then slowly suffocated. The thought was absurd, but he nonetheless kept a six-inch Buck knife in the pocket of his coveralls.

Literally sealed off from the outside world now, Jake could hear nothing but the sound of his own breathing: an eerie hiss that sounded remarkably like Darth Vader. He turned to survey the status of the rest of his team and caught a glimpse of his own reflection on the suit’s visor. Just his eyes, actually, and they looked huge. Last came the syringes of atropine-the only known antidote for what they might find. These were duct-taped to the outside of their suits, on the opposite shoulder from each Silverado’s dominant hand.

Jake pressed the transmit button through his suit. “Entry One to Entry Team. Let’s do one more radio check.”

“Entry Three’s good to go.” As the only female on the team, Carolyn really didn’t need the numerical identifier, but protocol was protocol.

“Entry two.”

“Four.”

“Five.”

“Six.”

Jake watched in turn as each person acknowledged him, making sure that all of them knew their own number.

“You copy them all, Ops?” This was the last step before moving ahead down the road.

“I got six,” Drew Price replied.

“And six is the magic number,” Jake acknowledged. “Okay, people, let’s get to it.”

The plan called for Jake’s three-man team, Entry Alpha, to enter the magazine and move to the right, while Entry Bravo, the other three-man team, worked around to the left. Ideally, they’d meet in the middle, then work up the center aisle to the front. Jake shared a quick glance with Carolyn, and they touched gloves as their team’s industrial hygienist-none other than smart-mouth Glenn Parker-fumbled with the lock. Designed to Department of Defense specifications, the assembly was huge. Resembling a standard padlock, only five times bigger, it dangled out of sight, hidden up inside a steel cowl. According to the locksmith who was called in to fabricate a key, the tumbler design was an oldie but a goodie-for all practical purposes, unpickable. Under normal circumstances, opening the lock would be a cumbersome task. Triple-gloved, with no sense of touch, it was a major undertaking.

Like every other operation, this one had been rehearsed a dozen times on identical magazines, and Parker had gotten as proficient as anyone. The radios were silent and tensions were high as he reached his hands under the cowl. Instantly, a swarm of wasps appeared, scrambling from their invaded nest, and all six Silverados screamed like little girls, instinctively dashing for cover.

The panic lasted for only a second or two-until they realized that even a bionic bee would bust a stinger on these outfits-but it was long enough to ignite a panic from the ops center.

“Entry teams! What’s wrong?” Drew yelled into his mike.

The fear gone, but his adrenaline through the roof, Jake laughed. “Um, sorry, Ops. We had a bit of an insect problem down here. Everybody’s okay. We’re fine.”

“You people are on vox, goddammit,” Foley spat. Jake could just imagine him pushing poor Drew out of the way to get to the microphone. “Who’s on vox?”

The ear mikes they used had an option for voice-activated transmission-vox-for use in one-on-one communications, but the procedure for the Newark site forbade its use. Too many people talking at once just created confusion. “Am I on vox?” Jake asked himself, but the words fell dead inside his suit.

Then he heard “Test, te-” The speaker abruptly shut up. Jake saw number four-Carlos Ortega-snaking his arm out of his sleeve to access the radio holster on his belt.

“Who was that?” Foley barked. “Who didn’t follow procedure?”

Jake quickly waved Carlos off. No sense answering a question like that. “Um, Ops? We got it taken care of. Everyone’s off vox now. We’re proceeding with the entry.”

“I want to know who it was!”

Everybody looked at Jake, who grabbed his crotch and extended a gloved bird. He motioned to the lock and Parker went back to work.

Jake marveled yet again at the total isolation the moon suits provided against the real world. There was Parker, not ten feet away, rattling metal against metal, yet the operation produced virtually no sound. The only reality for Jake was the weight of his gear, the fluttering sensation in his stomach, and the heat. God, the heat. With his arms dangling at his sides, he could already feel the accumulated puddles of sweat at his fingertips.

Finally, Parker’s head nodded triumphantly, and he stood, displaying the lock as a trophy. “Okay,” Jake announced on the air. “The lock’s off. We’re making entry now.”

Drew was back on the mike now. “Okay, Entry. Here’s hoping for an empty room.”

Yeah, right.

Jake thought for a moment that this must be what it’s like to open an ancient mummy’s tomb: walking into the unknown, unaware of whatever curses might be awaiting you. Parker pulled hard to get the door to move, but once started, it moved easily, propelled by its own momentum. A sharp blade of light cut across the inky blackness of the magazine’s interior. So much for an empty room, Jake mumbled. The place looked like somebody’s attic, stacked with a million boxes of varying types, sizes, and construction. Generally speaking, the contents of wooden boxes were considered scarier than their counterparts wrapped in cardboard, but there were so many of each that such distinctions brought little comfort.