At or in? Branch slipped right, searching for better vantage, sideways, then higher, not venturing one inch closer. Ramada toggled the light, hunting. They rose high above the dead trees.
'Hold it,' Ramada said.
From above, the water's surface was clearly agitated. It was not a wild agitation. But neither was it the kind of smooth rippling caused by falling leaves, say. The pattern was too arrhythmic. Too animate.
'We're observing some kind of movement down there,' Branch radioed. 'Are you picking any of this up on our camera, Base? Over.'
'Very mixed results, Major. Nothing definite. You're too far away.'
Branch scowled at the pool of water. He tried to fashion a logical explanation. Nothing above ground clarified the phenomenon. No people, no wolves, no scavengers. Except for the motion breaking the water's surface, the area was lifeless.
Whatever was causing the disturbance had to be in the water. Fish? It was not impossible, with the overflowing rivers and creeks reaching through the forest. Catfish, maybe? Eels? Bottom feeders, whatever they were? And large enough to show up on a satellite infrared.
There was not a need to know. No more so than, say, the need to unravel a good mystery novel. It would have been reason enough for Branch, if he were alone. He yearned to get close and wrestle the answer out of that water. But he was not free to obey his impulses. He had men under his command. He had a new father in the backseat. As he was trained to do, Branch let his curiosity wither in obedience to duty. Abruptly the grave reached out to him.
A man reared up from the water.
'Jesus,' Ramada hissed.
The Apache shied with Branch's startle reflex. He steadied the chopper even as he watched the unearthly sight.
'Echo Tango One?' The corporal was shaken.
The man had been dead for many months. To the waist, what was left of him slowly lifted above the surface, head back, wrists wired together. For a moment he seemed to stare up at the helicopter. At Branch himself.
Even from their distance, Branch could tell a story about the man. He was dressed like a schoolteacher or an accountant, definitely not a soldier. The baling wire around his wrists they'd seen on other prisoners from the Serbs' holding camp at Kalejsia. The bullet's exit cavity gaped prominently at the left rear of his skull.
For maybe twenty seconds the human carrion bobbed in place, a ridiculous mannequin. Then the fabrication twisted to one side and dropped heavily onto the bank of the grave pit, half in, half out. It was almost as if a prop were being discarded, its shock effect spent.
'Elias?' Ramada wondered in a whisper.
Branch did not respond. You asked for it, he was thinking to himself. You got it.
Rule Six echoed. I will permit no atrocity to occur in my presence. The atrocity had already occurred, the killing, the mass burial. All in the past tense. But this – this desecration – was in his presence. His present presence.
'Ram?' he asked.
Ramada knew his meaning. 'Absolutely,' he answered.
And still Branch did not enter. He was a careful man. There were a few last details.
'I need some clarification, Base,' he radioed. 'My turbine breathes air. Can it breathe this nitrogen atmosphere?'
'Sorry, Echo Tango,' Jefferson said, 'I have no information on that.'
Chambers came on the air, excited. 'I might be able to help answer that. Just a sec, I'll consult one of our people.'
Your people? thought Branch with annoyance. Things were slipping out of order. She had no place whatsoever in this decision. A minute later she returned. 'You might as well get it straight from the horse's mouth, Elias. This is Cox, forensic chemistry, Stanford.'
A new voice came on. 'Heard your question,' the Stanford man said. 'Will an air-breather breathe your adulterated concentrate?'
'Something like that,' Branch said.
'Ah hmm,' Stanford said. 'I'm looking at the chemical spectrograph downloaded from the Predator drone five minutes ago. That's as close to current as we're going to get. The plume is showing eighty-nine percent nitrogen. Your oxygen's down to thirteen percent, nowhere close to normal. Looks like your hydrogen quota took the biggest hit. Big deal. So here's your answer, okay?'
He paused. Branch said, 'We're all ears.' Stanford said, 'Yes.'
'Yes, what?' said Branch.
'Yes. You can go in. You don't want to breathe this mix, but your turbine can. Nema problema.'
The universal shrug had entered Serbo-Croatian, too. 'Tell me one thing,' Branch said. 'If there's no problem, how come I don't want to breathe this mix?'
'Because,' said the forensic chemist, 'that probably wouldn't be, ah, circumspect.'
'My meter's running, Mr Cox,' Branch said. Fuck circumspect.
He could hear the Stanford hotshot swallow. 'Look, don't mistake me,' the man said.
'Nitrogen's very good stuff. Most of what we breathe is nitrogen. Life wouldn't exist without it. Out in California, people pay big bucks to enhance it. Ever hear of blue-green algae? The idea is to bond nitrogen organically. Supposed to make your
memory last forever.'
Branch stopped him. 'Is it safe?'
'I wouldn't land, sir. Don't touch down, definitely. I mean unless you've been immunized against cholera and all the hepatitises and probably bubonic plague. The bio-hazard's got to be off the scale down there, with all that sepsis in the water. The whole helicopter would have to be quarantined.'
'Bottom line,' Branch tried again, voice pinched tight. 'Will my machine fly in there?'
'Bottom line,' the chemist finally summarized, 'yes.'
The pit of fetid water curdled beneath them. Bones rocked on the surface. Bubbles breached like primordial boil. Like a thousand pairs of lungs exhaling. Telling tales. Branch decided.
'Sergeant Jefferson?' he radioed. 'Do you have your handgun?'
'Yes sir, of course, sir,' she said. They were required to carry a firearm at all times on base.
'You will chamber one round, Sergeant.'
'Sir?' They were also required never to load a weapon on base unless under direct attack.
Branch didn't drag his joke out any longer. 'The man who was just on the radio,' he said. 'If he proves wrong, Sergeant, I want you to shoot him.'
Over the airwaves, Branch heard McDaniels snort his approval.
'Leg or head, sir?' He liked that.
Branch took a minute to get the other gunships positioned at the edges of the gas cloud, and to double-check his armament and snug his oxygen mask hard and tight.
'All right, then,' he said. 'Let's get some answers.'
0425
He entered from on high with his faithful navigator at his back, meaning to descend at his own pace. To go slowly. To winnow out the perils one by one. With his three gunships poised at the rear like wrathful archangels, Branch meant to own this blighted real estate from the top down.
But the Stanford forensic chemistry specialist was wrong. Apaches did not breathe this gaseous broth.
He was no more than ten seconds in when the acid haze began sparking furiously. The sparks killed the pilot flame already burning in the turbine, then, sparking more, relit the engine with a small explosion beneath the rotors. The exhaust-gas temperature gauge went into the red. The pilot flame became a two-foot wildfire.
It was Branch's job to be ready for all emergencies. Part of your training as a pilot involved hubris, and part of it involved preparing for your own downfall. This particular mechanical bankruptcy
