duty: the area was a cesspool of oil, bubbling up from old wells that had never been capped.
“I’ll tell you something I heard,” Satch said. “The Civilian Authority is looking into whether or not some of those old wells can still be operated, for when the tanks go dry. We may find ourselves garrisoning down there before too long.”
Peter was startled; he’d never considered this possibility. “I thought there was enough oil in Freeport to last forever.”
“There’s forever and forever. In theory, yeah, there’s plenty of slick down there. But sooner or later everything runs out.” Satch squinted at him. “Don’t you have a friend who’s an oiler? One of your crew from California, wasn’t it?”
“Michael.”
Satch shook his head. “Walking all the way from California. That’s still the craziest story I ever heard.” He placed his palms on the table and rose. “If you hear anything from upstairs, let me know. If I had to bet, they’ll be sending all of us down to Midland to wade in the slick before too long.”
He left Peter alone. Satch’s words had done nothing to cheer him; far from it. A half dozen enlisted clomped into the mess, talking among themselves with the rough-edged, profanity-laced familiarity of men looking for chow. Peter wouldn’t have minded a little company to take his mind off his worries, but as they moved from the line in search of a table, none glanced in his direction; the tarnished silver bar on his collar and the poor spirits he was radiating were evidently enough to ward them away.
What could the senior officers be talking about?
To abandon the hunt: Peter couldn’t imagine it. For five years he had thought of little else. He’d signed on with the Expeditionary right after Roswell; a lot of men had. For every person who’d perished that night, there was a friend, or brother, or son who had taken his place. The ones motivated solely by a need for revenge tended to wash out early or get themselves killed—you had to have a better reason—and Peter had no illusions about himself. Payback was a factor. But the roots of his desire went deeper. All his life, since the days of the Long Rides, he’d longed to be part of something, a cause larger than himself. He’d felt it the moment he’d taken the oath that bound him to his fellows; his purpose, his fate, his person—all were now wedded to theirs. He’d wondered if he’d be somehow less himself, his identity subsumed into the collective, but the opposite had proved true. It was nothing he could speak of, not with Theo and the others gone, but joining the Expeditionary had made him feel alive in a way he never had before. Watching the soldiers eat—laughing and joking and shoveling beans into their mouths as if it were the last meal of their lives—he recalled those early days with envy.
Because somewhere along the way, the feeling had left him. As campaigns were waged and men died and territory was taken and lost, none of it seeming to amount to anything, it had slowly slipped away. His bond to his men remained, a force as abiding as gravity, and he would have sacrificed himself for any one of them without a flicker of hesitation, as, he believed, they would have done for him. But something was missing; he didn’t quite know what it was. He knew what Alicia would have told him.
Finally Peter could stand it no longer. He exited the tent and marched across the compound. All he needed was some pretext for knocking; with any luck, they’d let him inside, and he could glean some sense of what they were up to.
He needn’t have bothered. As he made his approach, the door swung open: Major Henneman, the colonel’s adjutant. Trim, a bristle of blond hair, slightly crooked teeth he showed only when he smiled, which was never.
“Jaxon. I was just going to look for you. Come inside.”
Peter stepped into the shade of the tent, pausing in the doorway to let his eyes adjust. Seated around the broad table were all the senior staff—Majors Lewis and Hooper, Captains Rich, Perez, and Childs, and Colonel Apgar, the officer in charge of the task force—plus one more.
“Hi, Peter.”
Alicia.
“There are two entrances I could find, here and here.”
Alicia was directing everyone’s attention to a map spread over the table: U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, SOUTHERN NEW MEXICO. Beside it was displayed a second map, smaller and faded with age: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, CARLSBAD CAVERNS.
“The main opening to the cave is about three hundred yards wide. There’s no way we can seal it even with our largest ED, and the terrain is too rugged to haul a flusher up there anyway.”
“So what are you proposing?” Apgar asked.
“We box him in.” She pointed to the map again. “I scouted another entrance, about a quarter mile away. It’s an old elevator shaft. Martinez has to be somewhere between these two entrances. We set off a package of H2 at the base of the main entrance, inside the tunnel that leads toward the shaft. This should drive him toward the bottom of the elevator, where we position a single man to meet him on the way out.”
“A single man,” Apgar repeated. “Meaning you.”
Alicia nodded.
The colonel leaned back in his chair. Everyone waited.
“Don’t get me wrong, Lieutenant. I know what you’re capable of. We all do. But if this thing is anything like the one you saw in Nevada, it sounds to me like a one-way trip.”
“Anybody else will just slow me down.”
He frowned skeptically. “And you’re positive Martinez is down there.”
“It all makes sense, sir. Babcock used a cave, too. And El Paso is just a hundred miles from Carlsbad. It’s his home turf.”
Apgar thought a moment. “I agree, the pattern fits, but how can you be so sure?”
Alicia hesitated. “I can’t really explain it, Colonel. I just know.”
Peter was seated at the far end of the table. “Permission to speak, sir.”
Apgar rolled his eyes. “Fine, Jaxon, go ahead and say what we all know you’re going to say.”
“I’m the only other person here who’s seen one of the Twelve. I trust Lieutenant Donadio. If she says Martinez is down there, he’s down there.”
“We’re all aware of your history, Lieutenant. That doesn’t change the fact that we’re just playing a hunch here. I don’t see risking anyone unless we know for sure.”
“So maybe there’s another way. All of the original test subjects were chipped, like Amy. We can use the signal to locate him.”
“I already thought of that. Just one problem. Radio waves can’t pass through rock. How do you propose to get a signal from a thousand feet underground?”
“We don’t get it from the surface. We get it from the cave.”
Peter drew their attention to the diagram again. “We do like Alicia says, positioning an H2 pack inside the tunnel that leads from the base of the main entrance into the other chambers. The Twelve are big, but in tight quarters that ought to be enough to get Martinez’s attention. The package is wired back to the base of the main entrance, where it’s connected to the surface by a radio detonator, so we can blow it at a safe distance. Call that Blue Squad.”
Apgar nodded. “I’m with you so far.”
“Okay, but we don’t send a single man down the elevator shaft to meet Martinez on the way out. We send two, with a radio direction finder. Call that Red Squad. The first thing Red Squad does is plant a second pack of H2 near the base of the shaft. We put it on a short timer, say fifteen seconds. Man one proceeds into the cave, using the RDF to locate Martinez, but man two holds his position at the elevator. The trick will be keeping lines of sight to maintain radio contact with the surface, so that’s man two’s job. He’s the go-between. Basically we use a daisy- chain system. Man one is connected by radio to man two, who’s connected to whoever’s positioned at the top of the shaft, call him man three, who’s connected to Blue Squad. That way we can coordinate all the elements of the operation. No guesswork.”
Apgar nodded. “Fair enough, but I’m already seeing the problems, Lieutenant. It’s a maze down there. What if men one and two lose contact? The whole thing collapses.”
“It’s a risk, but there’s no reason they should, so long as the first man doesn’t go any farther than these three junctures.” Peter showed them on the map. “It won’t give us a whole view of the cave, but we should be able
