composure.
'We'll pay you well,' Derek said.
Diego's laugh was tinged with lunacy. 'Pay me in bullets.'
'I'm sorry,' Derek said. 'I don't understand. How much do you want?'
Diego rose, slapping his hands together. 'Two shots of bourbon. One neat, one on the rocks.' He rose and glanced down at himself. 'After I shower.'
He walked past the others, pausing beside Juan for a moment. Juan looked down uncomfortably. Diego raised a hand to pat him on the side but lowered it again when he saw it was covered with blood. He headed down the walk back toward the Station.
'Come,' he said.
Diego sat contentedly at the bar before two shots, one poured over ice. He threw back the first, set it on the counter, and took a sip from the second. Tucker watched hungrily, working the thimble on his key chain. He was drinking passion-fruit juice. A feral kitten had sneaked into the bar. It was playing near the door, sharpening its claws on a wicker chair.
The Galapason, a tropical theme bar at the eastern end of Avenida Charles Darwin, was open to the scorching sun, though a few pieces of plywood were laid across the high rafters, creating sporadic patches of shade. A pool table stood in the center of the bar, one leg propped up with a mound of old books. Hammocks swayed between 4x4s, and painted bas-reliefs of parrots stared out from the walls. A back alcove housed a junkyard tangle of broken furniture. A rat scurried across the dirt floor, disappearing between the yellow crates of Pilsener bottles, and the orange crates that held the smaller Club empties.
The soldiers were still finishing a ceviche of octopus, spiced with aji. It was served with soft, flattened potato patties mixed with campo cheese and onions and topped with salsa de mani, a peanut sauce. Savage signaled the bartender for another beer, which arrived quickly. He held up the bottle, regarding the upside-down Pilsener label.
Diego shrugged. 'Ecuador,' he said.
Cameron and Derek had grabbed a quick snack and left to stand guard over the gear, freeing up Szabla and Justin to eat. The soldiers and scientists sat in a row along the bar, ignoring the scurrying rats and the faint aroma of urine in the musty air. There were a few locals at the scat-tered tables, and two men played pool on the uneven table.
Having showered, loaded a bag with supplies, and changed into jeans and a long-sleeved nylon T-shirt, Diego was prepared to brave the sun and push out for Sangre de Dios. He drained the second whiskey.
The kitten rolled onto its back and swatted at the underside of the wicker chair. Diego glanced at it with enmity. After it put on a few pounds, it would be out like the other feral dogs and cats, scouring the landscape for tortoise eggs and land iguanas.
'You know,' Rex said, 'even if I set the GPS equipment on Sangre, we'll still need someone to receive the telemetric information here and relay it back to the States via computer.'
'Well,' Diego said, 'you'll have to show me how the equipment works.'
'I thought you retired,' Juan said.
'That was the pig blood talking.' Diego rose. 'Let's get the gear set up at the Station. Then I'll pull the boat in and we'll load up.'
They rose and headed for the door. Diego picked up the kitten by its tail on his way out. He stepped outside, twirled it once in the air, and smacked it against the wall. He tossed the limp body into a nearby trash can and started for the Station.
Chapter 24
They didn't have the luxury of waiting for dusk to avoid extreme UV exposure. Before they loaded the gear on El Pescador Rico, Diego made them wash their boots at the pier, in case they were caked with dirt hiding seeds, insect eggs, or other communicable material. Cameron was fascinated by the ritual-it was hard for her to believe that the ecology of each island was so fragile that it could be upset by the transport of a single seed. Though Sangre de Dios had already been compromised eco-logically, Diego claimed that it could be further damaged by introduced species. Diego made Tucker throw out an apple he'd had in his kit bag since Guayaquil, and Savage had to hide his cigarettes in the top pocket of his shirt to save them from a similar fate.
The boat had been beautifully kept up-Cameron noticed Diego scrape some dried blood off the bow with his fingernail before boarding. Rex sat quietly on a cruise box, holding the padded nylon bags in his lap as they struck out for Sangre de Dios. Diego kept them motoring west at about eight knots. Derek threw the two Sigs back in the weapons box and locked it.
They rounded Isabela's southern end, the foot of the massive island's boot. Smoke, visible even through the mist, curled ominously from the peaks of Cerro Azul and Sierra Negra. Fernandina came into view only as they left Isabela behind, settled back in the larger island's west bay. The odor of fresh lava thickened the air, making the heat even more oppressive. Finally, the sun began its drift to the water, looming ahead until it extinguished itself in the Pacific.
Save the reflections of the stars and the occasional glimmer of dead fish floating on the surface, the ocean was suddenly black. The breeze smelled clean, full of salt and distant vegetation. A full moon glowed overhead like a hole through the sky. Nearly twenty hours after they left Puerto Ayora, the moonlit, shadowy outline of Sangre de Dios cut from the mist, the crown of a timid, pelagic animal come to surface.
The squad members stirred and stretched. Justin laced his fingers and turned his palms outward, cracking his knuckles. Tank yawned. Savage flipped his Death Wind in his hand and deftly jammed it into his sheath. He caught Szabla watching him, but she quickly looked away. Cameron took note of the curt movements and restless gestures with some con-cern. After time off on the reserves, they'd all been slowly finding their feet the past few days. Normally, when transiting, the soldiers sat still and firm or prepared their gear. On this mission, however, there was nothing to prepare for. Just more waiting.
Concerned that the others' quiet unease would contaminate her, Cameron rose to stretch her legs. Juan was standing by himself, watching the water splash against the bow. She walked over and leaned on the railing beside him. The hull cleaved a luminous white groove in the black pane of the ocean.
'We've always been wrong, you know,' he said.
'No,' Cameron said with a slight smile. 'I didn't.'
'That we are the royalty of the earth, that we should have dominion over the land and the seas because we are the most upright creatures that inhabit it.'
Something about Juan's expression made Cameron refrain from com-menting.
'All our importance has been robbed,' he continued. 'Before Coper-nicus, we thought we were the center of the universe; before Darwin, we thought we were created of the heavens.' He chuckled, rubbing his chin. 'Before Freud, we thought we were masters of our own minds.' He gazed down at the waters below, tapping his ring on the railing. 'And now this. Betrayed by the skies and the tides, by the earth's obligation to remain beneath our feet.' He chuckled, but his eyes were pained.
'Not much of a point in faith anymore,' Cameron said.
Juan looked over at her, surprised. 'That's your conclusion?' he asked. He shook his head. 'You must make your own faith. Your own little place in the midst of this chaos. Hold onto it like nothing else. That's what we all must do. Is that not why you joined the military?'
Cameron leaned forward, feeling the salty breeze across her cheeks. 'Nothing quite so lofty,' she said.
'Why then?'
She shrugged. 'I never belonged anywhere. The teams gave me that. They gave me a place to belong.'
Juan nodded, his mouth set in a firm line. 'But they took something too, no?'
'Like what?'
He thumbed the edge of his ring but did not answer.
She felt herself growing defensive in the silence. 'The military made an unquestioning commitment to me, and so I made one to it.' She laughed, though she wasn't sure at what. 'There are no complications for me here.
