Life Goes On by Tayell, Frank (large ebook reader txt) 📗

“Fifty percent correct,” Dr Avalon said. “Which is a good grade for a soldier.”

“Ex-soldier,” Clyde said.

“This is really in the European Union?” Zach asked.

“It really is,” Clyde said.

“Was,” Avalon said.

“That’s just weird,” Zach said. He swatted at the swirling cloud of insects that, almost universally among the passengers aboard the boat, had selected him as their appetizer.

The humidity lay so thick, Tess was surprised the boat didn’t defy gravity and sail up to the brush-thin clouds. Those were meagre, wispy remains of the sky-slashing storm. Night arrived two hours too early. Rain had hammered the deck, dense enough to swim through. But after ten minutes, the storm grew bored and headed inland, leaving nothing but collar-sponge humidity, and a two-week-forgotten-corpse odour. Some of that stench was caused by the small boat churning through the surface-layer of silt, washed into the river from either side of the wide river. Mixed in, inescapable, was the smell of death.

“There! Caught one,” Avalon said, holding out her hand. On her palm, and nearly as big, was an iridescent green insect with protruding front legs, long body, and bulbous head. “I shall call him… Leonard. Or is it more of a Zachariah?”

“Is it dangerous?” Zach asked.

“It can’t be,” Avalon said. “The world’s ten million most poisonous insects are all found in Australia. This isn’t Australia, is it? No, it’s Europe, and there are no poisonous insects in Europe.”

“Fine, this is Europe, but that was the Amazon River we sailed past this morning, wasn’t it?” Zach said. “Aren’t there frogs there so poisonous that one lick and you’ll cark it?”

“Are you confusing dart frogs and river toads?” Avalon said. “You shouldn’t lick them. I wouldn’t advocate licking any animal. I’m sure Dr Dodson has a rule to that effect.”

“Not even the weirdest of anthropologists need to be given that warning,” Tess said. “What kind of insect is it?”

“A form of treehopper, a relative of the cicada. It isn’t toxic when in the mating stage of its lifecycle, which it is now. Which specific form of treehopper, I’d need a little longer to ascertain.”

“Is this really part of the European Union?” Zach asked.

“Yep,” Clyde said.

“How many people lived here?” Zach said.

“About a quarter of a million, in a country the size of Tasmania,” Clyde said.

“Oh. Wow. Um… how many people live in Tasmania?” Zach asked.

“Half a million,” Clyde said. “Before the outbreak.”

“Oh.”

“There are lakes in Canada bigger than Tasmania,” Avalon said.

“There can’t be,” Zach said.

“I’ve been nominated for the Nobel Prize twice,” Avalon said. “Which of us is more likely to be correct?”

“Didn’t know there was a Nobel for geography,” Zach said.

To which, Tess couldn’t help but laugh.

On being told by Captain Adams that Dégrad des Cannes was a French Navy refuel and resupply base for the Southern Atlantic, she’d pictured a large port with cranes and a dry dock, a shore-battery, and anchorage for a fleet. The reality was an aquatic diesel-stop built on a concrete pier, a hundred metres from shore.

“No movement,” Clyde said, as she followed him up the ladder and onto the pier. “I’m going to check the storage buildings. Hold this position.”

Tess lingered by the top of the ladder, gun half raised. The refuelling platform was thirty metres long, ten deep, and linked to the shore by a hundred-metre-long pier wide enough for a tank. She doubted any were ever brought ashore here, not somewhere the rainforest grew so dense it had already begun a creeping reclamation. Ringing the platform was a head-height wire fence, except around the ladder, next to which was a steel box, fronting onto the river, with a water-tight conduit linking it to one of the three single-storey huts.

Clyde moved from one hut to the next, throwing open the door, sweeping inside while she watched the corners outside.

“All clear,” Clyde called. “Blue door is the pump room.”

“Doc, Zach, you check the fuel,” Tess said. She turned back to the boat, in which Petty Officer Glenn Mackay waited by the controls. “Call the captain. All good so far.”

Oakes and Hawker were aboard the helicopter, heading for the civilian city and harbour a kilometre up-river. Their secondary destination was the airport in the city of Cayenne, ten kilometres north and on the other shore of this bulbous peninsula.

She joined Clyde by the gate sealing the refuelling platform from the shore.

“The gate’s been blown,” Clyde said, untying the loop of rope currently holding the gate closed. The newly exposed steel on the jagged-edged lock plate was already rusting in the humid air. “Shape charge. Someone knew what they were doing, but they were in a hurry.”

“Probably had food or medical supplies as their priority,” Tess said. “Looks to be a mechanical lock, originally. Not digital. Because of the humidity, I suppose. Plenty of security cameras here.”

“Sat-uplink back to a base in France is cheaper than soldiers,” Clyde said. “But not nearly as useful in a crisis. The garrison left the keys in the pump-room controls. That small hut is a tool room. The other’s a sentry post. They’ve been searched and looted. We’re not the first people to come here looking for fuel. But I’d say the garrison left with the first lot of ships.”

“Returned to France?” Tess asked.

“Could be,” Clyde said, looping the now loose rope over the lock. “About two hundred personnel were stationed here. On shore, the other end of the pier, that’d be their base. Terrorism was a risk. Theft, not so much.”

“What I know about French Guiana comes from having read Papillon just after I learned Australia used to be a penal colony,” she said.

“Devil’s Island,” he said. “That’s further up the coast.”

“You’ve been?” Tess asked.

“Not even close,” he said. “Jace stuck this place on our