Race spun and saw Gaby Lopez, the team's archaeologist, standing over by the citadel with Walter Chambers.
She was certainly very pretty. She had dark hair, a beautiful Latin complexion and a compact curvaceous body. At twenty-seven, so Race had heard, she was the youngest Associate Professor in the Department of Archaeology at Princeton. Gaby Lopez was a very intelligent young woman.
Race shrugged inwardly. Doogie Kennedy could do a lot worse.
Cochrane slapped Doogie heartily hard on the back, spat out a gob of tobacco.
'Don't you worry, son. We'll make a man out of you yet.
I mean, take a look at young Chucky over there,' Cochrane said, indicating the next-youngest member of the unit, a beefy moon-faced 23-year-old corporal named Charles 'Chucky' Wilson. 'Why, only last week Chucky became a fully fledged member of the 80s Club.”
'What's the 80s Club?' Doogie asked, perplexed.
'It's tasty, that's what it is,' Cochrane said, licking his lips.
'Ain't that right, Chucky?'
'Sure is, Buzz.'
'Apples, man,' Cochrane grinned.
'Apples,' Chucky replied, smiling.
As the two soldiers laughed, Race eyed Cochrane cautiously, mindful of what the Green Beret had said on the plane when he had thought Race was out of earshot.
Corporal Buzz Cochrane appeared to be in his late thirties. He had red hair and eyebrows, a thickly creased face and a rough unshaven chin. He was also a big man—bulky across the chest—with thick, powerful arms.
Just from the look of him, Race didn't like him.
There just seemed to be something mean-spirited about him—the not-so-intelligent school bully who by the sheer virtue of his size had had it over the other kids. The kind of brute who had joined the Army because it was a place where people like him thrived. It was no wonder he was almost forty and still a corporal.
'Say, Doogie,' Cochrane said suddenly, 'what do you say I go over there and tell that cute little archaeologist that we got ourselves a dumb young soldier over here who'd like to ask her out for a burger and a movie—'
“No!” Doogie exclaimed, genuinely alarmed.
The other Green Berets burst out laughing.
Doogie went red in the face of their laughter.
'And don't call me dumb,' he muttered. 'I ain't dumb.'
Just then, Van Lewen and Scott returned from the other chopper. The soldiers' laughter stopped immediately.
Race saw Van Lewen look warily from Doogie to the others, in the way a big brother would glare at his little brother's tormentors. He got the impression that it was more because of Van Lewen's presence than Captain Scott's that the laughter had ceased.
'How're things progressing here?' Scott said to Cochrane.
'Not a problem in the world, sir,' Cochrane said.
'Then grab your gear and head on into the village,' Scott said. 'They're about to do the test.“
Race and the soldiers came into the village proper. It was still pouring with rain.
As he walked down the muddy street, Race saw Lauren standing with Troy Copeland over by the largest of all the Samsonite trunks.
It was a great big black case, at least five feet tall, and Copeland was unfolding its side panels, transforming it into a portable workbench of some sort.
The lean scientist flipped open the lid of the trunk, revealing a waist-high console made up of some dials, a keyboard and a computer screen. Beside him, Lauren was attaching a silver rod-like object that looked like a boom
microphone onto the top of the console.
'Ready?' Lauren asked.
'Ready,' Copeland said.
Lauren flicked a switch on the side of the Samsonite trunk and instantly green and red lights lit up all over the console.
Copeland immediately set to work typing on the unit's all- weather keyboard.
'It's called a nucleotide resonance imager, or NRI,' Lau- ten told Race before he could ask. 'It can tell us the location of any nuclear substance in the surrounding area by measuring the resonance in the air around that substance.'
“Say what?' Race said.
Lauren sighed and then said, 'Any radioactive sub- stance—be it uranium, plutonium or thyrium—reacts with oxygen at a molecular level. Basically, the radioactive substance causes the air around it to vibrate, or resonate. This device detects that resonance in the air, and hence gives us the location of the radioactive substance.'
