Minutes to Burn

Two figures moved in cautiously, eyes on the creature, and lifted Cameron onto a stretcher. Cameron tried to speak, to tell them where Justin was buried-that despite her last correspondence with Samantha, he was still alive-but her throat was caked with dust and no sound came out. Despite her protestations, they carried her briskly but carefully back to the helo. Behind her, the flamethrower claimed the mantid's body.

Cameron thrashed on the stretcher. "Stop, we have a man down," she managed to croak, but her voice was barely audible over the burst of the flamethrowers and the whir of the rotors. She pointed to the mound of upturned soil under which Justin was buried, but they moved right past it. Her and Derek's old tent was ablaze, along with the note she'd pinned to it.

She threw herself from the stretcher, grunting when she hit the ground. Justin's body was buried about ten feet away. The figures stopped, concerned, then leaned over her. She saw a needle flash in a gloved hand-a sedative. She rolled on her back, swinging roughly, and the figures backed off.

She turned and pulled herself toward Justin's grave, feeling the pinch of the needle in her ass. The world blurred and swam. She fought off unconsciousness, dragging herself forward with bloody fingernails. The figures waited for her to pass out.

Grunting, she yanked herself toward the plastic tube that protruded from the ground. Spots dotted her vision. She finally reached it and swiped away a handful of dirt, revealing the edge of Justin's cheek. One of the figures crouched over him, checking his neck for a pulse.

Cameron felt her body floating away.

Strapped to the stretcher, she came to when the Blackhawk struck pave-ment at Baltra. One of the corpsmen fiddled with an oxygen line. She leaned over Cameron and checked her pupils with a penlight, first pulling on a second set of latex gloves.

Resting in the tangle of an oxygen tube on her chest was a transparent Ziploc bag that held her necklace and wedding ring. The corpsman must have removed them from her neck to get a clear line to her pulse. Afraid the ring would get lost with all the activity, Cameron reached out weakly and fought the bag open, pushing the ring onto her finger. The necklace slid from her chest, falling to the helo floor. She wasn't used to wearing the ring properly-it felt large and unwieldy, yet comforting.

Cameron rolled her head limply to the side. Justin lay on the stretcher across the helo, his glassy eyes staring up at the roof. His face was pallid, like a corpse's, and awash in sweat and dirt. Cameron's eyes traveled down to his fingernails. They were blue; he was shunting blood to his heart and brain. A single tear rolled from the corner of his eye, but he did not blink.

"Baby," she said, her voice choked and broken. She sniffed and wiped the mucus roughly from her upper lip. Justin's body stiffened as a wave of pain wracked him, his thighs straining the vinyl straps, his back arched and contorted. His eyes seemed drugged, insensate, and for a moment Cameron thought she'd lost him already despite the steady blip of the monitor.

The soldiers disembarked, hardly taking note of them.

Cameron cleared her throat and fought to enunciate, but her words still came out a scratchy drawl. "Baby," she said. "Baby, look at me. Look at me."

A glimmer of recognition rippled through his eyes, and Cameron bit her lip, fighting not to sob from relief. He turned, his eyes finding hers. A thin line of drool dangled from the side of his mouth.

"That's right," she breathed. "Just look at me. Look at me."

He watched her, his eyes lit through with pain. Weakly, he raised a trembling hand. It hovered in the space between their stretchers, reaching for her. Despite the excruciating pain in her shoulder, she reached for him too. For an instant, there was nothing else-no noise, no pain, no hammering rotors overhead, just the feeling of her husband's hand in hers, his eyes on her face.

The door swung open, and she saw a montage of images in the night-Rex sprinting for the open helo door, the B1 bomber on the tar-mac ready for takeoff, Diego lying down before the plane, his wrists handcuffed around the forward landing gear. It seemed as if Rex and Diego were wearing only boxer shorts.

Cameron blinked lazily, trying to make sense of everything. The bomber should already have taken off; it should have been heading to Sangre de Dios by now, bearing the neutron bomb in its belly. Diego must have delayed the takeoff by handcuffing himself to the wheel. A UN soldier pinned down Diego's arms with his knees as another strug-gled to undo the cuffs with a key. They came free, and the soldiers dragged Diego away struggling and shouting. A button popped from the soldier's shirt, pattering on the tarmac. Ramoncito, wearing a dirty pair of underwear, ran forward from seemingly nowhere, pounding one of the soldiers' backs weakly with his fists.

The bomber rolled forward, engines revving for the takeoff.