“Son of a bitch!” yelled Tappan. “You just shot Emilio!”
The captain spun around and whipped his gun across Tappan’s face, then stepped back as two soldiers held the entrepreneur while he struggled. Vigil lay on the ground in a soaking pool of blood. Toth sobbed, on her knees, holding her calf, blood flowing through her fingers.
“Get them in the bird,” the captain said, gesturing with his gun. “Now. Next person who talks gets a bullet.”
Nora, numb with shock, was given a hard push toward the closest helicopter, with Tappan following, then Toth, two soldiers supporting her. In a moment they were shoved through the door and yanked over to the webbing frames.
The door slammed shut and the chopper rose into the night. Nora could see, on the dwindling landscape below, soldiers from the second chopper, cautiously approaching the fresh excavation.
She turned to Tappan, sitting next to her, blood streaming from a cut over his eye, and their eyes met. His were full of fury.
52
GREG BANKS STEPPED out of the thirty-foot Airstream “dining car” and looked around, taking in the Quonset huts, helipad, motor pool, and small neighborhood of trailers and motor homes that made up base camp. He refused to call it “home,” even temporarily: the landscape was simply too forbidding, too alien for someone raised in London. And, speaking of bloody aliens, the foul mood he’d been in all day hadn’t lifted. Nor did he much want it to. Bloody Cecilia. Why had she been allowed to go out to the advance site today? It was likely to prove historic, or at least bloody interesting, and he’d had as much right to go as she had. Probably more.
With the sat phones and even the internet down for some reason, he’d had little to do that afternoon. As a result, he’d had all the more time to brood.
He turned his gaze toward the new site. Or at least, in its general direction: everything was cloaked in the starlit mantle of night and there was little to see.
Tappan could be such a cipher. His easygoing manner was at least part fa?ade, concealing the imperiousness Banks assumed was characteristic of all billionaires. Had Tappan been upset because he hadn’t located Bitan? Banks had tried his best—they all had.
He decided it didn’t merit further consideration: he’d never know for sure, and Tappan wouldn’t tell him. One way or the other, the project would be over fairly soon, and then he could—money in his pocket—tell the billionaire to get stuffed.
As he’d relished this delightfully sour fantasy, Banks had stopped paying attention to his surroundings. But now, he realized that lights had appeared on the horizon. He peered at them closely through the dark. Two pairs of what were obviously headlights, bouncing up and down as the vehicles navigated the terrain of the alkali flats.
He glanced at his watch—eight twenty—then turned and hurried back into the dining car. The table was still mostly occupied by the first dinner shift: support staff, guards, flight-line workers. Everyone was taking their time, enjoying coffee and dessert, well aware that the forward team wasn’t yet on the way back. Banks ducked through the door leading to the large, well-equipped galley, where Antonetti, the chef, was juggling four copper saucepans simmering with different ingredients. Despite being a two-star chef, Antonetti had once worked the line on an aircraft carrier, and he hadn’t lost his obsession for running by the clock. If the second dinner shift—the scientists and bigwigs—wasn’t on hand and hungry by eight thirty, he began to get agitated.
“Hey, Tony, it’s cool,” Banks said, using the chef’s nickname. “They’re on their way back—I can see their lights. Twenty minutes.”
Antonetti’s reply was to mutter under his breath, bang a few pots, and tell Max, the skinny youth next to him—sous chef, saucier, and kitchen dogsbody all rolled into one—to hold off on the beurre noisette.
Banks went back out into the dining room. “Twenty!” he yelled at the diners, letting them know how soon they’d have to get the hell out. This bit of thoughtfulness was rewarded by groans, derisory hoots, and a variety of rude gestures.
He stepped back out into the evening. As he did so, Kuznetsov and one of the postdocs, Scott, wandered up. So did Mitty, Skip Kelly’s big dog. Apparently he was hungry, too.
“Chow’s going to be a little late, boys,” Banks informed them. “I told Tony to hold off a little while.”
“Why the hell did you do that?” asked Kuznetsov, aggrieved. On occasion, Antonetti had gone full prima donna and promptly served “second seating,” regardless of whether all his clientele was back in camp or not.