Minutes to Burn

A decrepit wooden pier stretched out from the hard pahoehoe lava. There were no boats anchored. When they drew near, they saw that the pier was a splintered mess, destroyed in the last quake.

Diego cursed. "We'll have to drop anchor out here and Zodiac in to the point."

He slowed the boat, letting it crawl behind a string of tuff cones about a mile off the coast. Born of the violent interaction of water and molten rock, the tuff cones were composed of agglomerated ash. Sculpted by the tides and wind-worn on their southeast sides, they stuck ten to fifteen feet out of the water, the crooked fingers of a submerged giant. Several sea lions awakened on the tuff cones, barking at the approaching boat.

Diego's brow furrowed. "I've never seen them swim out here before. This colony usually congregates on the beach."

He set the bow and stern lines, then dragged the Zodiac overboard and cracked the bottle, holding the small boat steady as it unfolded. The sea was still, as before a storm, though the weather forecast was clear. "We'll have to take the Zodiac in in shifts," he said.

"From here on out, buddy pairs are in full effect," Derek said. "Same as in Guayaquil. Juan, you join Tank and Rex."

The boat rocked and Rex stumbled, leaning against the cabin wall and knocking Diego's speargun from its mount. The speargun bounced on the slippery deck and disappeared into the dark waters with a splash. Diego shook his head but said nothing. First into the Zodiac, Tank offered Rex a hand, which Rex ignored. Diego, Szabla, Juan, and Justin followed, hauling their kit bags and loading the majority of the boxes.

From his seat near the throttle, Diego pointed to a backpack still on El Pescador Rico. "We'll need that," he said. Derek handed the bag down to Justin, who opened it, revealing a PRC104 high-frequency radio.

"In case we need to contact the Flintstones?" Justin asked. He tapped his shoulder near the transmitter bump. "We got comms covered."

Diego shook his head. "Our satellite radio at the Station overloaded," he said. "The only way to reach anyone in Puerto Ayora is with this."

Justin nodded, looping the bag over his shoulders, and Diego cranked the throttle. The Zodiac sped off, the sound of the engine fading into that of the waves. The others sat in the rocking boat and waited. Savage unsnapped the button on his knife sheath, then snapped it again with a click. After a while, Cameron heard the drone of the approaching motor. Diego steered the empty Zodiac to the side of the boat, thumping against the wood.

Cameron tossed her kit bag into the Zodiac and hopped down. The others grabbed several more cruise boxes and the weapons box and fol-lowed her. They motored quietly to shore.

Waves seethed up the barren, rocky shore at Punta Berlanga, sending crabs scuttling across the moist, black lava and through the tide pools. Large blocks of rock rose in the foreground of the sculpted cliffs, stained white with guano. The wind lazed slow and steady, rousing an occasional swallow-tailed gull from its roost.

To the right, the beach stretched along the curve of Bahia Avispa, a white strip. Glancing west to east, Cameron saw the abrupt line where the upthrust blocks of Punta Berlanga ended, giving way to the low sand dunes protected by the reef and subject to the quiet erosion of the southeast tide.

The soldiers leapt overboard when they felt the lava skim the bottom of the Zodiac, pulling the small boat forward with splashing steps to keep momentum from sea to land. The water was different from the nighttime air only in consistency; the temperature seemed identical. The surface of the pahoehoe was rippled and intestinal; it had been formed during flows when fresh lava oozed forth in tongues from beneath the quick-hardening crust. Mats of Sesuvium herbs, dense patches of ever-green mangrove, and low tangles of saltbush with fat green leaves had somehow pioneered the barren lava.

The rest of the squad met them, hoisting the Zodiac to keep the scraping to a minimum. With their woodland cammies and jungle boots, the soldiers were blurs in the night. They jogged the boat back toward the cliffs, setting it down where Rex and Juan waited. Aside from the birds stirring in the cliffs and the hiss of the surf, the island was surprisingly quiet. A few Opuntia cactus trees broke the skyline at the edge of the cliffs.

Cameron gazed up at the stars, more than she'd ever seen in the night sky.

"Not a creature was stirring," Justin murmured.

Tucker and Szabla unloaded the comms boxes and kit bags from the Zodiac as Cameron deflated it. They dragged them a few feet and stacked them side by side by the gear from the previous trip. Rex watched them carefully when they got to the GPS equipment. Szabla pretended to drop the box filled with tripods, and Rex nearly fell over trying to catch it.

Tank grabbed the two heavy cruise boxes that housed the general purpose tents and tugged them along the lava, the muscles standing out on his thick arms.