At all costs

by John Gilstrap

  Jake pressed the transmit button through his suit. “Entry One to Entry Team. Let’s do one more radio check.”

  “Entry Three’s good to go.” As the only female on the team, Carolyn really didn’t need the numerical identifier, but protocol was protocol.

  “Entry two.”

  “Four.”

  “Five.”

  “Six.”

  Jake watched in turn as each person acknowledged him, making sure that all of them knew their own number.

  “You copy them all, Ops?” This was the last step before moving ahead down the road.

  “I got six,” Drew Price replied.

  “And six is the magic number,” Jake acknowledged. “Okay, people, let’s get to it.”

  The plan called for Jake’s three-man team, Entry Alpha, to enter the magazine and move to the right, while Entry Bravo, the other three-man team, worked around to the left. Ideally, they’d meet in the middle, then work up the center aisle to the front. Jake shared a quick glance with Carolyn, and they touched gloves as their team’s industrial hygienist-none other than smart-mouth Glenn Parker-fumbled with the lock. Designed to Department of Defense specifications, the assembly was huge. Resembling a standard padlock, only five times bigger, it dangled out of sight, hidden up inside a steel cowl. According to the locksmith who was called in to fabricate a key, the tumbler design was an oldie but a goodie-for all practical purposes, unpickable. Under normal circumstances, opening the lock would be a cumbersome task. Triple-gloved, with no sense of touch, it was a major undertaking.

  Like every other operation, this one had been rehearsed a dozen times on identical magazines, and Parker had gotten as proficient as anyone. The radios were silent and tensions were high as he reached his hands under the cowl. Instantly, a swarm of wasps appeared, scrambling from their invaded nest, and all six Silverados screamed like little girls, instinctively dashing for cover.

  The panic lasted for only a second or two-until they realized that even a bionic bee would bust a stinger on these outfits-but it was long enough to ignite a panic from the ops center.

  “Entry teams! What’s wrong?” Drew yelled into his mike.

  The fear gone, but his adrenaline through the roof, Jake laughed. “Um, sorry, Ops. We had a bit of an insect problem down here. Everybody’s okay. We’re fine.”

  “You people are on vox, goddammit,” Foley spat. Jake could just imagine him pushing poor Drew out of the way to get to the microphone. “Who’s on vox?”

  The ear mikes they used had an option for voice-activated transmission-vox-for use in one-on-one communications, but the procedure for the Newark site forbade its use. Too many people talking at once just created confusion. “Am I on vox?” Jake asked himself, but the words fell dead inside his suit.

  Then he heard “Test, te-” The speaker abruptly shut up. Jake saw number four-Carlos Ortega-snaking his arm out of his sleeve to access the radio holster on his belt.

  “Who was that?” Foley barked. “Who didn’t follow procedure?”

  Jake quickly waved Carlos off. No sense answering a question like that. “Um, Ops? We got it taken care of. Everyone’s off vox now. We’re proceeding with the entry.”

  “I want to know who it was!”

  Everybody looked at Jake, who grabbed his crotch and extended a gloved bird. He motioned to the lock and Parker went back to work.

  Jake marveled yet again at the total isolation the moon suits provided against the real world. There was Parker, not ten feet away, rattling metal against metal, yet the operation produced virtually no sound. The only reality for Jake was the weight of his gear, the fluttering sensation in his stomach, and the heat. God, the heat. With his arms dangling at his sides, he could already feel the accumulated puddles of sweat at his fingertips.

  Finally, Parker’s head nodded triumphantly, and he stood, displaying the lock as a trophy. “Okay,” Jake announced on the air. “The lock’s off. We’re making entry now.”

  Drew was back on the mike now. “Okay, Entry. Here’s hoping for an empty room.”

  Yeah, right.

  Jake thought for a moment that this must be what it’s like to open an ancient mummy’s tomb: walking into the unknown, unaware of whatever curses might be awaiting you. Parker pulled hard to get the door to move, but once started, it moved easily, propelled by its own momentum. A sharp blade of light cut across the inky blackness of the magazine’s interior. So much for an empty room, Jake mumbled. The place looked like somebody’s attic, stacked with a million boxes of varying types, sizes, and construction. Generally speaking, the contents of wooden boxes were considered scarier than their counterparts wrapped in cardboard, but there were so many of each that such distinctions brought little comfort.

  “Well, Ops, so much for a short-term contract. This place is packed.”

  “Okay, Entry. Keep us informed.”

  No one moved until the two industrial hygienists said it was safe to do so. In this business, the patient man was the one who lived long enough to retire. People pretended not to care about all the safety shit during the lectures, but not one of the Silverados inside Magazine B-2740 questioned for a moment that a mistake might put them in an early grave.

  “I show zeros across the board,” Parker announced.

  “Me, too,” said Adam Pomeroy, Parker’s counterpart on Team Bravo.

  “Tallyho,” Jake said. Only Carolyn could hear the hesitation in his voice, and she looked over to him one more time. He looked away.

  The seam of light died quickly as they stepped deeper into the concrete cavern. Curiously, the blackness seemed most opaque right at the line separating light from dark.

  “Entry One to Operations, we’re inside.”

  “Okay, Entry One. Any first impressions?”

  The place was huge, extending far beyond the range of their hand lights, and it looked as full as it could possibly be. The wooden box that had spooked the EPA guy sat right where it was supposed to be, just inside the doors, near the center-virtually the first spot to be illuminated when the blast doors opened. U.S. Army-Danger Poison, it read, just above the telltale skull-and-crossbones symbol. Then, immediately below, Chemical Agent-Mustard Gas.

  But that was just the beginning. Beyond that one container, stretching on in all directions, was shelf after shelf of God knows what. Assuming that wooden containers with stenciled writing meant military hardware, and assuming that military hardware meant things that made craters, then this place was one huge bomb. Then there were the fifty-five-gallon storage drums, and the cardboard boxes, and the glass jars… It just went on and on and on.

  Jake palmed his mike button. “First impressions? Yeah. We underbid this contract by about a million dollars.”

  “Two million,” Carolyn added. In the darkness, everyone became faceless in the moon suits, but still, she knew her husband was smiling.

  With Parker leading the way, Jake’s Alpha team moved deeper into the shadows, and with each step, their world became progressively smaller, limited only to that which could be touched by the beams of their hand lights. The shelves stretched high toward the concrete ceiling, and on initial inspection, everything looked the same; every angle identical to the other. Jake found himself continually glancing back toward the shimmering white wall of sunlight behind them. As long as he could see the light, he told himself, he wouldn’t get lost. That visual anchor, though, was shrinking in size and getting further away by the second.

  “Talk to me, Parker,” Jake said.

  “Still zeros. Shouldn’t you guys be doing something more productive than following me?”

  It was a good point; in fact, it was the operational plan. The I.H. s bore the task of assessing the chemical hazards of the facility, and that required them to traverse the whole place, corner-to-corner. Jake and Carolyn and the other technicians should have already started writing down their inventory. Somehow, though, the sheer scale of the project drew them deeper into the magazine.

  “Hey, guys,
we’ve got something here.” It was Adam Pomeroy, and his voice was shaky.

  Jake pivoted all the way around, 360 degrees, but he couldn’t see a thing. “Where are you? What have you got?”

  Adam waved his hand light over his head, and Jake caught a glimpse through the shelving. He had no idea that they’d become so far separated. “I’m right here,” Adam said. “And I found a skeleton.”

  “Come again?” Jake said incredulously. “Did you say skeleton?” He walked as he spoke, trying to wind his way through the maze of crap.

  “You got it,” Adam confirmed.

  “Keep waving that light so I can find you.”

  “I see him,” Carolyn said, leading the way toward the front of the magazine.

  Jake put his hand on her shoulder, bringing her to a stop. He thought he heard something odd. A popping noise. Backfires maybe, from the breathing air compressor? Shit, that couldn’t be good news. “Do you hear that?” he asked on the air to anyone who wanted to answer.

  “Almost sounds like gunfire,” said somebody from Bravo.

  Jake looked over in their direction. Damned if it doesn’t.

  In a microsecond, their world erupted into brilliant white light. Jake felt a pulse of wind and instantly became disoriented. There was a sense of flying through the air and then the reality of impacting something hard. There should have been noise, and there should have been pain, but there was neither. Only searing heat as something caught fire over where Bravo used to be. Thoroughly disoriented, he couldn’t tell if he was lying on the floor, or if he’d been thrown against a wall. Up and down had no meaning in all the confusion.

  A second flash rocked the inside of the magazine, and this time the noise was deafening. Yellow flames joined the white for just an instant, before the heavy black smoke enveloped everything and the heat became invisible.

  He had to get out. This was the nightmare; the scenario that could never happen. In that instant, he knew that he was dead.

  “Jake!”

  He whirled to his right, expecting to see Carolyn, but found himself greeted by more blackness.

  “Jake! Where are you!”

  His earpiece! Christ, she could be anywhere, but her voice would always be inches away. He found the transmit button and mashed it. “Jesus, what was that?”

  “Thank God, Jake. Where are you?”

  “I don’t have a clue. Where are you?”

  A third grenade screamed over Jake’s head, missing him by inches as it sought and found the right rear corner of the magazine. This time the explosion had a physical dimension. He felt the heat pulse pick him up and deposit him butt-first into a stack of shelving, which quickly collapsed under his weight. In the brilliance of the flash, he saw Carolyn’s silver outline against the roiling billows of smoke as she was deposited within feet of him.

  “Carolyn! Are you okay?”

  His only answer came from somewhere in the back of the magazine, well beyond the thick black veil of smoke. An ungodly shriek rose from those depths; a howl, really, whose volume increased geometrically until it finally drowned out all other sound. Then it fell silent.

  “Carolyn!” he screamed. “Carolyn, where are you?” He could barely hear himself, and he wondered if he’d been deafened.

  Out of nowhere, a pair of hands landed heavily on his shoulders, and he felt his suit pull tight at the crotch as someone dragged him across the floor. He struggled first to his knees and then to his feet, cheering aloud as he caught a glimpse of the big “3” on the silver suit in front of him. Carolyn was alive!

  Still disoriented, Jake stumbled after her, on the assumption that she knew where she was going. The fire behind grew larger by the instant, made bigger still by secondary explosions, as munitions cooked off. Suddenly he wasn’t stumbling anymore. He was running, and pushing Carolyn along in the process.

  Flames and smoke billowed through the door frame as they dove face-first onto the grass-stubbled roadbed. Slapping his hand against his transmit button, Jake yelled, “Run! Run! Run!” But he still couldn’t hear himself.

  Together, they scrambled to their feet and dashed for the decon line, but Carolyn stopped short, causing Jake to stumble one more time. This time he caught himself before he fell. Then he saw it. Carnage. Bodies everywhere, in twisted heaps on the ground.

  What the…

  Carolyn heard the shots, then saw the shooter: a faceless monster, blended perfectly with the trees but for the muzzle flashes and the bucking of the rifle at the end of his arm. He seemed so close. She wondered how they could still be alive, and in the instant the thought flashed into her head, she saw a spray of Plexiglas explode from the facepiece of Jake’s suit. She screamed and caught him before he could fall to the ground.

  “Oh, God! Oh, my God, Jake!”

  But Jake didn’t fall. Instead, he grabbed her by the arm and scrambled for cover on the far side of the magazine. He climbed the steep mound first, then practically threw her the rest of the way.

  Then they ran. And ran. The woods crashed by in random flashes of green and yellow and white as they charged through the forest, away from the monster with the rifle, away from the looming smoke cloud, toward nothing in particular. They needed distance, and they needed it right now.

  With each step, the heavy air tank on Carolyn’s back shifted wildly between her shoulder blades, wearing away her skin under the fabric of her coveralls. Suddenly, her feet felt unsure, clumsy. A loop of vine reached up from the forest floor and snagged her by the ankle, pulling her down heavily into a pile of leaves at the base of a fallen tree.

  Rest, she thought. I just need to rest here for a minute. Get my breath…

  But then Jake’s hands were on her again, and she was on her feet, being dragged toward God knows where. Yanking herself free from his grasp, she punched the transmit button between her breasts.

  “I can’t keep running,” she said. Her lungs burned from the effort, her head reeled. The inside of her suit had become a sauna-hotter than she’d ever been. “We’ve got to take a rest.” Jake wouldn’t answer her, so she tried it again, thumping the button and this time yelling, “Slow down, goddammit!”

  “… slow down. Later.” Jake’s voice seemed distant in her earpiece, and she’d walked on his transmission, talking at the same time he was trying to talk.

  She felt like she was still running, but the passing foliage had slowed down to the pace of a barely brisk walk. “I can’t hear you!” she shouted. Like yelling somehow made the signal stronger. Now he wasn’t answering her at all. Was he hurt? Jesus, he was shot in the face! Of course he was hurt. “Jake!”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Jake couldn’t hear anything but himself. Why won’t she answer me?

  He could barely see through the spiderweb of broken Plexiglas in front of his face, but that didn’t slow him down a step. He’d never run this hard; never felt so frightened. Yet Carolyn kept slowing down. Then she wouldn’t answer up on the radio. He saw her hitting the transmit button once, but his earpiece remained silent.

  His earpiece! That was it. It must have jarred itself loose as he was being tossed around. He considered stopping to correct the problem but dismissed the notion as crazy. He had a hole in his fucking suit! The bullshit lectures from Nick Thomas flooded back into his brain as he tried to remember the details.

  Time, distance, and shielding. He remembered that: the three factors that controlled exposure to toxic chemicals. Limit the time, increase the distance, and shield yourself from the hazard. Well, shit! He’d been standing in a damn smoke cloud for who knows how long with a hole in his goddamn suit.

  The negative thoughts opened the door for terror, and the panic that it brought. What had Nick said during the last pep talk? Oh yeah. A little dab’ll do ya. Big laugh, lots of grab-ass. Now this stuff was going to kill him!

  So he kept running, dragging Carolyn by whatever body part he could find. They’d be out of air soon, he knew. They had forty-five minutes’ working time under normal
conditions. Certainly, the designers had never run numbers that assumed their customers would be blown up and shot at before running like deer through the woods. How much air was left? Thirty minutes? Less? How long had it been already? No telling. It felt like a week.

  At least his air pack was still working; he was breathing clean air. That was his greatest concern. Out of nowhere, Nick’s voice popped into his head again and contradicted him. Three routes of entry. That’s what he said, wasn’t it? Inhalation was the worst, but that left absorption and ingestion. Chemical agents are designed to be toxic by absorption through the skin.

  And I’ve got a hole in my goddamn suit!

  Jake’s worries about panic started to materialize as the real thing once he realized how light-headed he felt. Oh, God, I’m going to pass out! He fought with growing desperation for control of his mind, trying to remember the signs and symptoms of overexposure, but the details just weren’t there.

  If it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck…

  That was one of Nick’s favorite expressions. Sure, it was hot as hell out there, and he was more frightened than he’d ever been in his life, and he was probably dehydrated down to zero, but was that the reason he felt sick, or was it this big fucking hole in his suit?

  Jake yelled-literally yelled-as the low-pressure warning vibrated his facepiece.

  “Oh, shit! Oh, fuck! God damn it!” This was it. Five minutes to live-no, make that three, the way he was gulping lungfuls of air. He stopped dead in his tracks, unaware that he continued to hold a fistful of Carolyn’s suit, and he fought to clear his head. It was his nightmare come true: stranded inside a suit with no one to help.

  He sat down heavily in the leaves-fell down, really-and snaked his arm out of his sleeve to find his ear mike, dangling against the sweat-soaked belly of his coveralls. His fingers did all the seeing for him, locating the mike, then winding its way up toward his ear. Over the din of his alarm and the heaving of his breath, he could hear the buzzing of Carolyn’s panicked cries.