The Terminals (16 page)

It wasn't a head. It was money. Tidy stacks of bills bound by rubber bands. U.S. currency. All hundreds, from the look of them. More cash than Cam had ever seen in his life. He pulled the pack out of the drawer and looked around nervously, like a shoplifter, but the watchful heads on the ground did not complain or shout in alarm.

Cam emerged from the room with the pack on his back, still shaky, and he jumped when Calliope put a hand on his shoulder. Ari was there too.

“Wally says there are lights coming our way from the south,” Calliope reported to them in a quavering voice.

“Dammit!” Ari muttered. “They must have called the nearby camp.”

Cam had forgotten about Wally, who was hovering overhead somewhere in the darkness.
Crazy redhead
, he thought.

Across the yard there was a loud boom, and a fist-sized hole appeared in the blocked wooden door. Given the size of the hole, it occurred to Cam that someone had a shotgun inside the room. Donnie, who stood beside the door, leaned out and stuck his dart rifle in the ragged void. He pumped two more quick shots into the room and then leaped back. A second shotgun blast created two holes, one in the door and one in Ranuel's torso. The body of the young pirate who'd only wanted to show Cam how good he was at soccer shuddered beneath the heavy man atop it.

I've killed him too
, Cam thought.

 

CAM'S PLAYLIST

16. BACKPACK FULL OF SOUL
  

by C. Aspen B.

17. DRIFT

by Slurpy

18. CAN'T BEAT ME

by Two-One-Two Zone

“Puts me in a sad mood.

But I can't cry 'cuz I'm a dude.”

Tegan found them—seven docs, alive and well. Truthfully, they looked incredibly screweddyi up. Their dazed expressions reflected how Cam himself felt. He watched them stumble across the yard toward the gate like zombies. Tegan hustled them along, flashing a signal to the group without slowing a step.

“Departure!” Ari snapped.

Cam started to run.

“Wait,” Ari said. “Help me grab Gwen.”

“Grab her?”

“Recover all fallen teammates. Ward was very clear about it.”

“Ari, we are
leaving
!” Donnie shouted from across the yard. Another shotgun blast ripped through the blocked door.

Cam bent over Gwen's body. Her glasses lay on the ground beside her, surprisingly intact except for a single perfect bubble of blood on one lens that looked like a cranberry. He reached out and plucked them from the dirt, sliding them into a pocket before helping lift her. He took one leg and an arm, while Ari grabbed the others.

Cam couldn't help feeling that being ordered to carry Gwen was a punishment for having killed her. Once they got moving, he had to run to keep up. Her head lolled and she bled on his feet. Ari had said she was extremely intelligent, but she'd had that idiotic crush on Donnie, who was little more than an adult manifestation of some popular football player she could never date in high school.
No need to reconcile her brains with her poor preference in men now
, Cam thought.

He made it halfway to the boat before stumbling and dropping her. Cam lay sprawled beside her until Donnie shoved him aside with his foot.

“Useless!” Donnie growled, kneeling and keeping his dart gun trained on the compound entrance. “Just get to the boat. Owen, help here!”

When they made it to the yacht, they quickly stowed Gwen's limp body in the Zodiac and stretched its cover over her. The rest of the team had already swarmed aboard, sweeping the decks with dart guns at the ready. They found only one pirate on the craft. He was sleeping in a cabin and smelled strongly of alcohol. They pulled his gun, then Tegan hauled him from the room like a rag doll and flung him over the side. Scuba had already disabled the pirate boats, and Ari had them launched and out to sea minutes later, just in time for Wally to ditch his hang glider in the water nearby. They scooped him up, and Ari lavished praise upon him for dropping flares in the trees to distract the pirates who'd been coming from another camp.

Wally laughed. “I had those idiots wandering around trying to find phantoms in the forest like Scooby-Doo!”

No one else laughed. They were too shaken up, and Wally wasn't particularly funny.

Jules was still shaking. “Oh-my-gawd, oh-my-gawd, oh-my-gawd!” she kept saying.

When they finally calmed her down, she asked about the doctors they'd saved. “How are they doing? They must be terrified.” Zara had taken them below and admitted them to one of the larger bedrooms with no more explanation than that they were being rescued.

“Their debriefing is not part of our mission,” Donnie reminded her.

“And why did the pirates kill the other three?” Jules persisted. “Maybe these survivors know.”

“We don't talk to them,” Donnie said more firmly. “Those are the orders.”

“That's true,” Ari said reluctantly. “We're all probably curious, but we're just supposed to free them, not interrogate them.”

“They thanked me,” Jules said, her voice still quavering.

“They should thank Gwen,” Calliope said quietly.

The words stabbed at Cam's conscience like a dart. “I'm sorry,” he said suddenly.

They all turned and looked at him. There was silence for a moment.

“For what?” Zara said finally.

Cam looked from face to face for accusation or blame. He saw none, but that didn't mean it wasn't there. “For Gwen,” he said.

“We're all sorry,” Ari replied, his tone strangely matter-of-fact.

“But I'm especially sorry.”

“Why?” Donnie said. “Were you looking to hook up with her?”

Owen giggled, and Jules shot Donnie an angry look.

“No,” Cam said, incredulous. “I got her killed.”

Ari didn't even look up from the wheel. “No, you didn't. You kept that dude from killing
all
of us.”

“It was a good throw,” Zara added.

Cam glanced at Calliope, looking for a softer opinion, but she afforded him none. Her face was blank, her eyes empty—the emotion of her musical soul was buried somewhere behind them. Only Jules seemed outwardly distressed, but she didn't blame him either.

“It's what she wanted, Cam,” Ari assured him. “It's why she signed up.”

“A quick, easy death,” Donnie snapped. “That's the deal here, or didn't you get the memo?”

“Yeah, I got it,” Cam said, growing testy.

Ari intervened again. “She went out a hero.”

“With a bang,” Donnie said.

“And she sure doesn't have to worry about that tumor anymore,” Owen added, looking to Donnie for support. Donnie rewarded him with a smirk.

“Jerks,” Jules mumbled.

They're punchy
, Cam thought.
Jacked up. One more bad joke and they'll descend into a giggle fit.
It was tough to condemn them—anyone might be half crazed from the insanity and adrenaline rush they'd just lived through. He didn't feel so good himself, although he thought he was more likely to puke than laugh.

It suddenly felt crowded and hot in the pilothouse, and Cam's head began to swim. He excused himself and slid out onto the deck for some air.

Feeling his way along the rail in the moonless night, he wondered if he might fall overboard and drown.
A quick, easy death
, he thought. No such luck—he found himself on the bow again. The sea and the sky were black together, and the yacht bore him blindly through both with a steady hum and a rhythmic rise and fall. It made him think of the metal band Necromoor and their song “The Endless Nothing.” It was not so different from falling out of the helicopter, a weightless headlong rush into the unknown.

Even after Cam returned to the pilothouse, they cruised for another half an hour with no lights, trusting a fluorescent compass Ari kept below the dash. When Ari finally switched the interior overheads back on, there was a collective sigh of relief. The team found seats, and each sat quietly with his or her thoughts, or they mumbled about what was left to do on the mission checklist. Jules and Calliope had gone to the stern to busy themselves cooking food that had not been taken by the pirates. They were all waiting for Ward to check in, and they no longer spoke of the loss of Gwen.

Their guests were quiet and confined to the big bedroom where Zara had tackled Cam. Their spokesperson had banged on the door and demanded to speak with whoever was in charge. But Donnie had gone down and made it clear that there would be no speaking except among themselves, apparently while brandishing his dart gun.
Nice
, Cam thought. After the terror of the pirate camp, the last thing they needed was someone with a gun locking them up without any explanation. The survivors were all women, a fact Cam hadn't realized until he'd had a chance to calm himself. The Scandinavian man, the young doc in the Red Sox hat, and the boat captain had all been reduced to heads in the dirt. Perhaps some bizarre notion of chivalry among pirates had saved the women, he thought. The image of the surprised face of the young man in the Sox cap leaped into his head. Just out of med school, from the look of him. Like a future version of Ari. And, like Ari, his life had been condensed before he could reap the benefits of his intelligence and hard work in school.

“We're out of pirate waters,” Ari announced. “Ward should be checking in any moment now.”

Moments later, the yacht's phone rang. Ari turned and wiggled his eyebrows.

“Good call, boss,” Zara said, reaching over to flip on the speakerphone.

“Ari? You there, kid?” Ward's voice was easily recognizable, even with the poor connection.

“Right here.”

“So you're alive. Great. And the outcome?”

“They killed another doc. We rescued seven.”

“Understood. How many team casualties?”

“Gwen.”

The room went silent while they waited for Ward to comment, and Cam realized that they had no idea whether the mission had been a success or disaster.

“That's it?” Ward said finally.

“And one pirate,” Cam added, thinking of Ranuel and the yawning red shotgun hole in his torso.

“That dirtbag doesn't count,” Donnie growled.

“Yes, he does,” Ward said. “Cam is correct. All people count. But is two truly the sum total of the collateral damage?”

“Yes.”

“Wow!” Ward exclaimed, sounding genuinely impressed. “Excellent job, everyone. Top notch. I'll look forward to receiving you upon your return. In the meantime, quarantine the doctors, and there's champagne for all of you hidden behind a false panel in the cupboard to Ari's right. Raise one glass for Gwen's graduation and stow her in ice for burial here. This is the only time we'll use the yacht, so enjoy the cruise back. See you at home.”

Home?
Cam thought. A compound on a remote beach with nine—
no, eight
—other college kids whose last names he didn't know sounded cool, but it didn't sound like home.

 

CAM'S PLAYLIST

17. DRIFT
  

by Slurpy

18. CAN'T BEAT ME

by Two-One-Two Zone

19. BROKED APART HEART

by The Shitkickers

“If you look to the sea, you'll find me

drifting, drifting, drifting.”

Gwen's ceremony was brief. Celebrating felt wrong, so they didn't open the champagne for it. Ari said a few words, ending his eulogy with their spoken oath, “My life for the good of the many.” Cam recovered his Clip Chip player from its hiding place and played “Cool Cruel Sunset” by Shocking Pinkies over its tiny speakers. Then they covered her with ice to keep her corpse from rotting, as Ward had suggested.

Ari said it had been a quick, painless way to go. Cam thought it terrifying, horrible, and violent, but didn't say so. He kept her glasses. He wasn't sure why. Perhaps because of the anonymity of her death. Without a token of her, it might feel as though she had never existed at all.