side, more ravaged than he had realized. Hanging on to a handhold, Branch looked into the rear cavity. He braced for the worst.
But the backseat was empty.
Ramada's helmet lay on the seat. The voice came again, tiny, now distinct. 'Echo
Tango One...'
Branch lifted the helmet and pulled it onto his own head. He remembered that there was a photograph of the newborn son in its crown.
'This is Echo Tango One,' he said. His voice sounded ridiculous in his own ears, elastic and high, cartoonish.
'Ramada?' It was Mac, angry in his relief. 'Quit screwing around and report. Are you guys okay? Over.'
'Branch here,' Elias identified with his absurd voice. He was concussed. The crash had messed up his hearing.
'Major? Is that you?' Mac's voice practically reached for him. 'This is Echo Tango
Two. What is your condition, please? Over.'
'Ramada is missing,' Branch said. 'The ship is totaled.'
Mac took a half-minute to absorb the information. He came back on, all business.
'We've got a fix on you on the thermal scan, Major. Right beside your bird. Just hold your position. We're coming in to provide assistance. Over.'
'No,' Branch quacked with his bird voice. 'Negative. Do you read me?' Mac and the other gunships did not respond.
'Do not, repeat, do not attempt approach. Your engines will not breathe this air.' They accepted his explanation reluctantly. 'Ah, roger that,' Schulbe said.
Mac came on. 'Major. What is your condition, please?'
'My condition?' Beyond suffering and loss, he didn't know. Human? 'Never mind.'
'Major.' Mac paused awkwardly. 'What's with the voice, Major?' They could hear it, too?
Christie Chambers, MD, was listening back at Base. 'It's the nitrogen,' she diagnosed. Of course, thought Branch. 'Is there any way you can get back on oxygen, Elias? You must.'
Feebly, Branch rummaged for Ramada's oxygen mask, but it must have been torn away in the crash. 'Up front,' he said dully.
'Go up there,' Chambers told him.
'Can't,' said Branch. It meant moving again. Worse, it meant giving up Ramada's helmet and losing his contact with the outside world. No, he would take the radio link over oxygen. Communication was information. Information was duty. Duty was salvation.
'Are you injured?'
He looked down at his limbs. Strange darts of electric color were scribbling along his thighs, and he realized that the beams of light were lasers. His gunships were painting the region, defining targets for their weapons systems.
'Must find Ramada,' he said. 'Can't you see him on your scan?' Mac was fixed on him. 'Are you mobile, sir?'
What were they saying? Branch leaned against the ship, exhausted.
'Are you able to walk, Major? Can you evacuate yourself from the region?' Branch judged himself. He judged the night. 'Negative.'
'Rest, Major. Stay put. A bio-chem team is on its way from Molly. We will insert them by cable. Help is on the way, sir.'
'But Ramada...'
'Not your concern, Major. We'll find him. Maybe you should just sit down.'
How could a man just disappear? Even dead, his body would go on emitting a heat signature for hours more. Branch raised his eyes and tried to find Ramada wedged in the trees. Maybe he'd been thrown into the funeral waters.
Now another voice entered. 'Echo Tango One, this is Base.' It was Master Sergeant
Jefferson; Branch wanted to lay his head against that resonant bosom.
'You are not alone,' Jefferson said. 'Please be advised, Major. The KH-12 is showing unidentified movement to your north-northwest.'
North-northwest? His instruments were dead. He had no compass, even. But
Branch did not complain. 'It's Ramada,' he predicted confidently. Who else could it be out there? His navigator was alive after all.
'Major,' cautioned Jefferson, 'the image carries no combat tag. This is not confirmed friendly. Repeat, we have no idea who is approaching you.'
'It's Ramada,' Branch insisted. The navigator must have climbed from the broken craft to do what navigators do: orient.
'Major.' Jefferson's tone had changed. With all the world listening, this was just for him. 'Get out of there.'
Branch hung to the side of the wreckage. Get out of here? He could barely stand. Mac came on. 'I'm picking it up now, too. Fifteen yards out. Coming straight for you. But where the fuck did he come from?'
Branch looked over his shoulder.
The dense atmosphere opened like a mirage. The interloper staggered out from the brush and trees.
Lasers twitched frenetically across the figure's chest, shoulders, and legs. The intruder looked netted with modern art.
'I've got a lock,' Mac clipped.
'Me too.' Teague's monotone.
'Roger that,' Schulbe said. It was like listening to sharks speak.
'Say go, Major, he's smoke.'
'Disengage,' Branch radioed urgently, aghast at their lights. So this is how it is to be my enemy. 'It's Ramada. Don't shoot.'
'I'm vectoring more presence,' Master Sergeant Jefferson reported. 'Two, four, five more heat images, two hundred meters southeast, coordinates Charlie Mike eight three...'
Mac cut through. 'You sure, Major? Be sure.'
The lasers did not desist. They went on scrawling twitchy designs on the lost soldier. Even with the help of their neurotic doodles, even with the stark clarity of his nearness, Branch was not sure he wanted to be sure this was his navigator.
He ascertained the man by what was left of him. His rejoicing died.
'It's him,' Branch said mournfully. 'It is.'
Except for his boots, Ramada was naked and bleeding from head to foot. He looked like a runaway slave, freshly flayed. Flesh trailed in rags from his ankles. Serbs? Branch wondered in awe.
He remembered the mob in Mogadishu, the dead Rangers dragged behind Technicals. But that kind of savagery took time, and they couldn't have crashed more than ten or fifteen minutes ago. The crash, he considered, perhaps the Plexiglas. What else could have shredded him like this?
'Bobby,' he called softly.
Roberto Ramada lifted his head.
'No,' whispered Branch.
'What's going on down there, Major? Over.'
'His eyes,' said Branch. They had taken his eyes.
'You're breaking up... Tango...'
'Say again, say again...'
'His eyes are gone.'
'Say again, eyes are...'
'The bastards took his eyes.' Schulbe: 'His eyes?'
