The Deep Zone

“Yeah, probably so.” Kathan paused. “We lost a guy like that in Iraq.”

“Like what?”

“The hajis cut his head off,” Kathan said. “His name was Stanton. They put spikes through his eyes and hung his head from a road sign. There was so much blood, you could tell they put the spikes in before they killed him.”

“A buddy?”

“Closest kind,” Kathan said. “Him and me and Dempsey were on our third deployment together.”

“Why’d you get out? You and Dempsey, I mean.”

Kathan hawked, spat. “It wasn’t our choice, you want to know the truth. After we lost Stanton, we had some problems interrogating hajis near Fallujah.” Kathan’s eyes went vague, then refocused. “It wasn’t like we did a My Lai. Just three hard-core hajis. And we got good intel, too.” He took in a long breath, exhaled, gazed toward the cave mouth. “But then, look how it’s all turned out. We’re making five times the money, and the benefits definitely don’t suck.”

“Plus which,” Stikes said, “as much as it pains me to say this, the benefits just got better.”

Kathan nodded. “Yeah. We’ll split ol’ Demp’s share. It would have been the same if they’d got you or me.”

“The way it works.”

“Sure enough. And those other benefits, too.”

“Other benefits?”

“Come on, man. The tall blonde. Honest to God, Stikes, I can’t stop thinking about that one.” Kathan winked, grinned, but Stikes saw no trace of humor in the other man’s face. More like hunger. She’s gotten into his brain and there’s only one way to get her out.

“No?” Stikes said.

Kathan glanced at him. “Hey, don’t worry, man. There’s plenty for two there, count on it.”

Stikes saw that Kathan had misunderstood. “She’s all yours.”

“You don’t want some of that?”

“It’s not my thing, Kathan.”

“Not your thing? What’s that supposed to mean?” Kathan’s gaze suddenly hardened, turned suspicious. Stikes saw that he was going to have to talk this through.

“It’s my last run. I’ve been doing this long enough. I’m getting out.”

“Getting out?”

“Give it another ten years or so, see how you feel then. Yeah, I’m getting out.”

“Getting out.” Kathan repeated the words as though they were in some foreign tongue.

“Come on. Don’t you ever think about it?”

Kathan rubbed a hand over his eyes, looked out at the forest. “What the hell would I do?”

Stikes shrugged. “Anything you wanted to.”

“I don’t want to do anything else. I like this work. What are you thinking about doing?”

“Starting a business. Boxing gym, or maybe a martial arts academy. For kids in the ’hoods.”

“Jesus Christ.” Kathan studied him for a few moments, as though sensing that he was missing something. Then he grinned. “You have a woman back there, don’t you?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“What’s her name?”

“Keyana.”

Kathan repeated the name slowly, enunciating each syllable. “Nice name, the sound of it.”

“What about you? Who do you have back there?”

“You mean, like wife or girlfriend?”

“Yeah.”

“Nah. I got the work, is all. And you know what? I like it, man. Don’t tell me you don’t get off on it.”

“Sometimes, some part of it. But not like it was once.”

“You really getting out?”

“Absolutely.”

“Told Gray yet?”

“I gave that some thought. I figured the best time is after we’re back and I have my money.”

“Good call.” For just a moment Kathan’s eyes changed and he looked like he might say more, but then they hardened again. He finished collecting his gear and moved off toward the hide.

THIRTY

HALLIE, HOLDING UP HER HAND, WHISPERED, “AL… TURN YOUR light off.”

“What’s the matter?” His voice, like hers, was thick with fatigue.

“Turn off your light.” She had turned hers off already. Cahner did as he was told, and the darkness rushed over them like black water closing around two drowning people.

“What are we hiding from?” He kept one hand in contact with her pack.

“We’re not hiding. Look past my right shoulder.”

He did. Gasped. “My God, Hallie.”

“I know. Amazing, isn’t it?”

A faint blue glow. Fifty yards ahead, the route turned right, and the glow was coming from beyond that turn.

“That’s it, then? The moonmilk chamber?”

“That’s it.”

Five minutes later they stood in a roughly circular chamber fifty feet in diameter. The floor was gravel and sand, sloping gently downward toward an exit passage, the ceiling about thirty feet overhead. The chamber’s walls were vertically fluted yellow-and-white flowstone. Off to their left glowed the moonmilk colony. It was a microbial mat, five feet square, six inches thick. It looked like a big, glowing blue-green brain hanging from the cave wall.

The glow was bright enough here that they could see without their lights. It felt like being under azure Caribbean water. It was not a steady glow but instead wavered and flowed like the northern lights.

“How in God’s name does it survive down here?” Cahner was still whispering. It was like being in a cathedral, somehow. They had moved away from the watercourse, its sound now distant and faint. There was nothing but the softly pulsing blue light. The air in this chamber felt different, drier and slightly warmer.

“We don’t know.” Hallie’s voice was reverent, tinged with awe. “But it does. Has for eons, apparently.”

“I could stand here and look at it for hours.” Cahner sounded mesmerized. “It’s like staring into a fire.”

“I know. There’s a feel to it, too, Al. Are you getting that?”

“Yes, a little. It’s like warmth.”

They dropped their packs. Still operating in the light given off by the moonmilk colony, Hallie retrieved an Envirotainer, an aluminum cylinder eighteen inches long and six inches in diameter. Inside were four test-tube-sized stainless steel containers. In the Envirotainer’s base was a battery-powered EMU—environment maintenance unit. Moonmilk, she had learned the hard way, had a very narrow range of survivability: plus or minus about four degrees in temperature, plus or minus 5 percent in humidity. It had zero tolerance for light, natural or artificial. Not that any of those things were surprising, given that it had evolved in an environment where the conditions were hyperstable and absolutely dark.

“Now comes the hard part.” Hallie set the four containers on the cave floor beneath the moonmilk colony. As she did so, the biomass’s colors changed subtly, a hint of pink flowing in.

“My God. Look at that.” Cahner stopped moving.

“I know. Amazing, isn’t it?”

“Changes colors. Like an octopus.”