date was different. It read
06/18. This video had been shot two weeks earlier than the SEAL patrol.
'Who are these people?' a voice asked.
The heat signatures took on distinct faces. A dozen became two dozen, all strung
out. They weren't soldiers. But with their night glasses on, it was impossible to say exactly who or what they were. The first array of tunnel lights automatically engaged. And suddenly the figures on screen could be seen yelling happily and stripping their glasses off and generally acting like civilians on a holiday.
Their Helios uniforms were dirty, but not tattered or badly worn. January made a quick calculation. At this point, the expedition had been in its second month of trekking.
'Look,' she whispered to Thomas.
It was Ali. She had a pack on and looked healthy, if thin, and better fit than some of the men. Her smile was a thing of beauty. She passed the wall camera with no idea that it was taping her.
Without turning her head, January noticed a change in the soldiers around her. In some way, Ali's smile testified to their nobility.
'The Helios expedition,' Sandwell said for those who did not know.
More and more people filled the screen. Sandwell let his commanders appreciate the whole potpourri. Someone said, 'You mean to say one of them planted the cylinders?' Again Sandwell set them straight. 'I repeat, it was one of us.' He paused. 'Not them. Us. One of you.'
January fastened upon Ali's image. On screen, the young woman knelt by her pack and unrolled a thin sleeping pad on the stone and shared a candy with a friend. Her small communion with her neighbors was endearing.
Ali finished her preparations, then sat on her pad and opened a foil packet with a folded washcloth and cleaned her face and neck. Finally she folded her hands and exhaled. You could not mistake her contentment. At the end of her day, she was satisfied with her lot. She was happy.
Ali glanced up, and January thought she was praying. But Ali was looking at the lights in the tunnel ceiling. It verged on worship. January felt touched and appalled at the same time. For Ali loved the light. It was that simple. She loved the light. And yet she had given it up. All for what? For me, thought January.
'I know that son of a bitch.' It was one of the ClipGal commanders speaking.
At center screen, a lean mercenary was issuing orders to three other armed men.
'His name's Walker,' the commander said. 'Ex-Air Force. Jockeyed F-16s, then quit to go into business for himself. He got a bunch of Baptists killed on that colony venture south of the Baja structure. The survivors sued him for breach of contract. Somehow he ended up in my neighborhood. I heard Helios was hiring muscle. They got themselves a cluster-fuck.'
Sandwell let the tape run another minute without comment. Then he said, 'It's not
Walker who planted the prion capsules.' He froze the image. 'It's this man.'
Thomas gave a start, all but imperceptible. January felt the shock of recognition. She looked at his face quizzically, and his eyes skipped to hers. He shook his head. Wrong man. She returned her attention to the image on screen, searching her memory. The vandalized figure was no one she knew.
'You're mistaken,' a soldier stated matter-of-factly from the audience. January knew that voice.
'Major Branch?' Sandwell said. 'Is that you, Elias?'
Branch stood up, blocking part of the screen. His silhouette was thick and warped and primitive. 'Your information is incorrect. Sir.'
'You do recognize him then?'
The image frozen on screen was a three-quarters profile, tattooed, hair trimmed with a knife. Again January sensed Thomas's recoil. A click of teeth, a shift in breathing. He was staring at the screen. 'Do we know this man?' she whispered. Thomas lifted his fingers: No.
'You've made a mistake,' Branch repeated.
'I wish we had,' said Sandwell. 'He's gone rogue, Elias. That's the fact.'
'No sir,' Branch declared.
'It's our own fault,' Sandwell said. 'We took him in. The Army gave him sanctuary. We presumed he had returned to us. But it's very possible he never quit identifying with the hadals who had captured him. You've all heard of the Stockholm syndrome.' Branch scoffed. At his superior officer. 'You're saying he's working for the devil?'
'I'm saying he appears to be a psychological refugee. He's trapped between two species, preying on each. The way I look at it, he's killing my men. And taking aim at the whole subplanet.'
'Him,' breathed January. Now the shock was hers. 'Thomas, he's the one Ali wrote us about just before leaving Point Z-3. The Helios scout.'
'Who?' asked Thomas.
January drew the name from her mental bank. 'Ike. Crockett,' she whispered. 'A recapture. He escaped from the hadals. Ali said she was hoping to interview him, get his remembrances of hadal life, enlist his knowledge. What have I gotten her involved with?'
'Judging by his work so far,' Sandwell continued, 'Crockett is attempting to lay a belt of contagion along the entire sub-Pacific equator. With one signal he can trigger a chain reaction that will wipe out every living thing in the interior, human, hadal, and otherwise.'
'Give me your proof,' Branch insisted stubbornly. 'Show me one clip or one picture of Ike planting CBs.' January heard heartbreak mixed in with his defiance. Branch had some connection with this character on screen.
'We have no pictures,' Sandwell said. 'But we've retraced the original batch of stolen Prion-9. It was stolen from our West Virginia chemical weapons depot. The theft occurred the same week that Crockett visited Washington, D.C. The same week he was to face a court-martial and a dishonorable discharge, and then fled. Now four of those cylinders have been discovered in the very same corridor he's guiding the Helios expedition through.'
'If the contagion goes off, he dies too,' said Branch. 'That's not Ike. He wouldn't kill himself. Anyone who knows him can tell you. He's a survivor.'
'In fact, that's our clue,' Sandwell said. 'Your protege had himself immunized.' There was silence.
'We interviewed the physician who administered the vaccine,' Sandwell went on. 'He remembered the incident, and for good reason. Only one man has ever been immunized against Prion-9.'
A photograph flashed on the screen. It showed a medical release form. Sandwell let them have a minute with it. There was a doctor's name and address at the top. And at the bottom, a plain signature. Sandwell read it aloud: 'Dwight D. Crockett.'
'Shit,' grunted one of the commanders.
Branch was stubborn in his loyalty. 'I dispute your proof.'
'I know this is difficult,' Sandwell said to him.
Men stirred uneasily, January noticed. Later she would learn that Ike had taught many of them, saved some of them.
'It's imperative that we find this traitor,' Sandwell told them. 'Ike has just made himself the most wanted man on earth.'
January raised her voice. 'Let me understand,' she said. 'The only person immune to this plague, today, is the man who is planting it?'
'Affirmative, Senator,' Sandwell said. 'But not for long. In order to contain the prion release, we've closed the entire ClipGal corridor with explosives. We're evacuating the subplanet within a two-hundred-mile radius, including Nazca City. No one goes back in again until they get vaccinated. We start with you, gentlemen. We have medics waiting for you in the next room. Senator, and Father Thomas, you're both welcome
to be vaccinated too.'
Before January could decline, Thomas accepted. He glanced at her. 'In case,' he said. A map filled the screen. It zoomed in on a vein within the earth. 'This is the Helios expedition's projected trajectory,' the general continued. 'There's probably no way we can catch them from behind, meaning we have to intercept
