the dry sand.
Hoblenz joined her onshore. 'Can I have a word with you?' Laura asked. Hoblenz glanced at his men and then jerked his head toward an empty stretch of beach. When they were some distance away, Laura said, 'You were at the town meeting last night, right?'
''Course,' Hoblenz replied, glancing back over his shoulder at his men.
'What did you think about Mr. Gray's speech?' Laura asked, looking up at the man. 'About phase two?'
Hoblenz stopped suddenly and turned to face her. He had a deadly serious look on his face. 'I'm ready.'
Something in the way he said it sent a chill through her.
'Ready for what?' she asked.
He gave a curt nod of his head. 'For what's comin'.'
Laura was totally unprepared for that turn in the conversation. 'And what is that?'
Hoblenz lost his patience. 'The fuckin' phase two!'
'Well… what's phase two?'
'War,' he replied simply.
The silence hung heavy around them. Laura was at a loss. 'War against whom?'
Hoblenz shrugged. 'Beats the hell outa me.' He seemed untroubled by his answer. 'Ya see, gettin' ready to fight a war isn't so much drawin' on maps. It's up here,' Hoblenz said, tapping his temple with a curled index finger. 'I don't think even Mr. Gray knows exactly what's comin', but he's right about one thing. We've always been at our best when challenged. We've always made our greatest strides during violent conflict.' Hoblenz was turned on — animated. 'All the 'cooperative,' 'noncompetitive' bullshit is just that — bullshit. It's a product of our affluence. A luxury we've been able to afford in recent years. But the time's comin'. The shit's gonna hit the fan big-time.'
'What in the hell are you talking about?'
'Judgment day. The reckoning. Whatever you wanna call it.'
Laura smiled in spite of herself. 'Did Gray start talking about the Bible or something?'
'No-o! Gray would never preach. But I knew what he was sayin'. There's no doubt in my mind.'
'Well, what words did he use?' Laura asked in frustration.
Hoblenz squinted, scrutinizing her with his head cocked to one side. 'He talked about the tree of knowledge growing and spreading.'
Laura stared back at him, then asked, 'What the hell does that mean?'
He waved a hand at her, unwilling to admit, she guessed, that he didn't understand the comment either. 'You had to be there.'
'I wish I had been! Somebody could've woken me up.'
'I asked Mr. Gray if he wanted me to send a car for you,' Hoblenz said.
Laura felt a stab of pain in her chest that was almost physical. She looked up. 'What?'
'I asked when we were settin' up the metal detectors if I should send a car up to get you.' Hoblenz shrugged. 'He said not to bother.'
Laura was devastated. They headed back to the others, Laura's head hung low against the glare from the sun.
'One of my men'll get you to the launch pad to catch a car. There should be plenty of 'em available now that the island's been somewhat depopulated.'
'I want to see where it happened.'
'Where what happened?'
'Where the soldier was killed,' Laura replied, looking up at him defiantly.
Hoblenz's strained attempts at politeness came to an abrupt end. 'Now what the hell for? It ain't no walk across the quad gettin' up in there, ya know, Doc. And I've done taken one shower today.'
She stared into the thick brush. The Dutch soldier went in there alone. At night. He never came out. The ATVs sat poised at the jungle edge. It was impossible to tell what color they were under the inch-thick coat of gray mud. The soldiers there looked around them, glancing over their shoulders at Laura and Hoblenz; 'Scared to go back in there, Mr. Hoblenz?' she said it loud enough for his [garbled] to hear.
She then lowered her voice. 'Mr. Gray said I had unrestricted access. I think that includes the jungle.' Without waiting for a reply, she headed for the nearest vehicle. Hoblenz followed. Laura stuffed her hair into one of the baseball-style caps they offered her and put on a pair of clear plastic goggles. She climbed onto the slant-nosed hood, and Hoblenz helped her step over the low windshield, grumbling the entire time. Laura resolved to ignore the mud covering the front passenger seat. She settled into the mess beside Hoblenz, who took the driver's seat with audible sighs. Once strapped in, Laura was surprised to see two men climb onto the back of the vehicle and attach themselves by straps to the roll bar — their rifles at the ready. She was even more surprised when the second vehicle started its loud engine, drowning out the faint but constant whoosh of the wind and the surf. It drove up behind them with four more armed soldiers aboard.
She felt her pulse quicken.
'You ready?' Hoblenz asked, and with a sudden roar their own engine sprang to life. The vehicle's light fiberglass chassis seemed a minor adjunct to the ATV's main features: its thunderous motor and the two rows of huge tires that formed black rubber walls to the left and the right. There was no steering wheel in front of Hoblenz, just two thick grips protruding from long slots on either side of his seat.
He twisted the vertical throttle like on a motorcycle, gunning the motor to ever-louder growls and shaking Laura's insides with the disconcerting vibrations. It felt like her seat was bolted directly to the massive engine block.
Hoblenz revved the engine again and shouted, 'Hang on tight!' He then thrust the two levers to the front of their slots. With a kick to Laura's back, the vehicle plowed straight into the solid jungle wall.
The ATV's sharp nose rose straight toward the sky. Laura's weight shifted. She thought for one horrible moment they were going to tip over backward and crush the two soldiers in back. She felt a lurch and a slip, and then a lurch forward and upward again.
One side rose above the other as Hoblenz worked the two throttles independently. But with a final roar from the engine, the vehicle rose onto the jungle roof — leveling and then scraping its way forward, half sunk into the scraggly brush beneath. She looked back through the legs of the two standing soldiers to see the second ATV rise up in their tracks. Its muddy belly was streaked white from clawing branches, and it crashed down onto the flattened path made by the lead vehicle.
They were going over the jungle brush instead of through it — the hull partially submerged in the upper reaches of the thick canopy. The giant tires thrashed at the branches with great violence, crawling forward at a snail's pace toward their goal.
'It's only thick like this around the edges of the jungle,' Hoblenz boomed into her left ear. 'It gets thinner when you get further in!' She barely heard him over the noise of the engine and the grinding of angry branches against the chassis.
After a short distance they began to sink into the thick growth like a submarine slipping slowly beneath the water. In jerking, side-to-side motions they descended further into the brush with every inch that the vehicle crawled forward. Laura's heart leapt into her throat with each slip downward, but the clinging limbs of the jungle growth kept them from plummeting to the ground in a great crash.
It grew dark as the green leaves closed in around and above them.
A watery slurp under the boat-like hull signaled their arrival on the soggy bottom. For a moment there was relative quiet as Hoblenz idled the engine. The jungle floor was immersed in perpetual shade, and it stank of a thousand decaying things. Laura flexed her fingers, which were sore from their firm grip on the dashboard handle.
'Here we go,' Hoblenz said, and he gunned the engine with another twist of the throttles. A roar rose up, followed instantly by the high-speed whine of spinning tires. Great sprays of mud flew up, coating her goggles, stinging her face, and splattering her clothes.
Laura's T-shirt stuck to her skin — its contact cold and uncomfortable.
'Ye-e-e-e ha-a-a-aw!' Hoblenz yelled over the maelstrom of noise.
She reached up and cleared two small windows in her goggles. All she could see of Hoblenz was his white teeth. The rest of him was thoroughly coated in dripping gunk.
Another tidal wave of mud was thrown up, and it covered her face and arms and chest. She gave up trying to
