Desecration

3 The Garden of Eden

3 The Garden of EdenThe military Chinook hovered high above the rainforest as if strung from an invisible thread to the heavens. Charlie Kitson, its USAF pilot, casually controlled the unwieldy beast while furtively eyeing the suits in the back. He was unfamiliar with the practice of the military chartering out its services to civilian organisations but apparently that was exactly the task he had been set for the next two weeks. Up front with him was the suits’ preferred hired pilot. No matter who you were, you did not get to fly military hardware without being ‘on the team’ in a manner of speaking. So, Kitson flew under this ageing pilot’s direction, much to his disgust, and wondered when he would return to his safe posting on the North American mainland.

‘Keep your f*****g eyes up front. We don’t want an early exit on this trip!’ Ralph Turner, the superannuated aviator, ordered.

‘Boy we’ve really hit it off now haven’t we,’ Kitson replied provocatively. He was wearing full USAF regalia just to annoy the would-be Top Gun and smiled without removing his standard issue USAF mirrored sunglasses.

‘Listen up sonny. I was flying combat sorties against the Japanese and for that matter the Vietnamese before you were spilled from your daddy’s pants and somehow found your momma’s wet pouch. So don’t give me no s**t boy or I’ll have you off this assignment before your arse hits hard ground!’

Turner was just the wrong side of fifty and had lied dramatically about his combat experience. Sadly, at the tender age of twenty-seven, Kitson was in no position to shoot down Turner’s tall tales. All that modern military history was lost to him in a swirl of playing hooky from school and Laura Johnson’s pink thigh flesh, revealed between her knee-length socks that ever so nearly met with the matching hem of her plain grey skirt.

‘Okay Pops. You de boss. Where we gonna go now Massa?’ Kitson mocked as a surfeit of adrenaline coursed through his veins and piqued his frustration.

‘Quadrant 330.’

‘No chance, Pops. No Mil ‘copter goes down that way. It ain’t done. You see it’s marked with this big black cross…’ Kitson began to explain, grasping the oversized map with both hands and beginning to point out the detail.

‘We do.’ Turner replied, ignoring the fact that Kitson had pointedly left the reins unattended.

Immediately, Turner grasped the controls unconcernedly and slammed the craft into free fall. The all-encompassing green monster below rose alarmingly towards the windshield, rearing upwards gleefully to devour the lives on board. Kitson’s bladder betrayed his stiff upper lip and wet his pants from crotch to toe. Turner expertly pulled the nose up to avoid the tree canopy’s deadly embrace, just as the undercarriage began to clatter and tangle with hard wooden branches that clutched like tentacles until the slowly ascending Chinook finally broke free and soared, breezing easily along a hundred feet clear of the tree tops.

Turner rotated the mike on his headset, so that it met perfectly with his flush lips and began to lie like a professional,

‘Sorry, gentlemen. We just had to take evasive manoeuvres to avoid a flock of migrating birds there. Normal flying procedures will be resumed as quickly as possible.’

The grin that followed was wasted on Kitson. The suits in the Chinook’s payload remained silent as Turner headed for Quadrant 330.

‘There she blows, on the horizon there!’ Turner exclaimed and pointed ahead through the windshield without ever really gaining Kitson’s attention.

‘Jeeessuss! Look at that! What a f*****g mess,’ Turner said shaking his head in disbelief at the massive brown scab that scarred the previously unblemished green skin ahead.

Ten minutes later they arrived at the epicentre of the devastation and now the dead zone stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions.

‘Look at my trousers Pops. That’s your bloody coffee that is! You could’ve warned me, or for that matter drunk it before you pulled that crazy stunt,’ Kitson moaned as he regained his composure after an extended bout of silence.

Turner was almost sure that the blossoming stain on Kitson’s trousers was more than just the dregs of his coffee but decided to let it pass to avoid any further embarrassment to the young man. Before he could contemplate the accident still further, Turner was distracted by the voice on his headset originating from the rear of the Chinook.

‘Ralph, put her down on the ground. Some of the guys back here wanna go walkabout and empty a few tight bladders. Good job we had ‘em all strapped in place; we might’ve lost a few otherwise. By the way, what exactly was the species of bird that caused all the aerobatics?’ Michael White, the PEC Director of Security asked nonchalantly. He’d known Turner fifteen years - in fact ever since Turner had started working for the Pharmaceutical Ecology Corporation after his honourable discharge from the navy.

‘Just birds of the feathered variety, you know the type, Sir,’ Turner replied cheekily.

‘Well that seems clear enough. Thought they might have been of the flying pig variety. Anyway, just put us down on the ground gently, my stomach won’t take any more acrobatics.’

‘Yes Sir. Reading you loud and clear. Gently it is, Sir.’

The Chinook tenderly lowered itself through the air while Kitson resumed his sulking. Turner in due course gestured to him to take over the controls again and Kitson did not need asking twice. After descending for what seemed an eternity, dust from the ground began to cloud the air, obscuring the pilot’s previously crystal clear view. The undercarriage settled upon the dark brown soil and now Kitson could see that the earth was devoid of any shrub, seedling or even the residual weeds that usually infest any unattended piece of fertile land.

‘Could be the moon for all the life on it,’ Kitson commented, forgetting his earlier embarrassment, and fascinated by the moonscape outside.

‘You ain’t kidding. Nothing for miles and miles. Don’t seem right somehow. This ain’t just deforestation of the comprehensive type,’ Turner said, aghast at the brown and blue horizon that shimmered in the distance.

‘Not a bean to be seen! Your guys in the back - they got anything to do with this?’

The two rotor blades finally ground to a halt and a deathly silence invaded the Chinook’s interior. Somehow it seemed to cool the temperature in the cockpit.

‘Quiet ain’t it?’ Kitson continued, all the dramatics now forgotten.

‘No animals you see. Nowhere to shelter, no food, no water, no nothing. And in answer to your question – I’d have thought it likely that the suits in the back are here to look at ways of fixing this mess. They own lots of replenishable forests around the world. Maybe they’re gonna turn this place around,’ Turner hypothesised.

‘They getting out or what?’ Kitson asked.

‘Yep, they said they were. I’ll go take a look. You just wait here and do nothing.’

Turner unclipped his belts and slung them to one side. He made his way to the back of the AH-64 Chinook and was surprised to see the occupants dressing in contamination suits. The ten men, including Michael White, were all busy sliding into white plastic overalls: the kind that have the boots moulded into the trousers, Turner noticed. Unaware of his presence, the men continued with their dressing until White heard Turner’s gentle suggestive cough.

‘Yes Ralph?’ White said sternly.

‘I take it you’re all going outside?’

‘Yes,’ White replied, nodding his head.

‘How long are we gonna be here for? I wanna start filling in the flight log.’

White looked directly at the senior biologist.

‘Tim. Any thoughts on how long we’re going to be outside?’ he asked.

‘Maybe an hour or so - can’t really tell. Dr Maier… Any thoughts on time scales?’ Professor Tim Hanson asked.

‘No, as long as it takes I suppose. We need soil samples from a one-mile radius, fifty in all should do it, but how long that’ll take is anybody’s guess. An hour should be enough maybe – I’m not quite sure,’ Dr Maier rambled confusingly in his clinical Germanic accent.

Maier was in his early forties but could easily have passed for sixty and he always dressed in grey. His deep sunken eyes were framed by the thick black rims of his spectacles and his long greying hair ran riot all the way down to his shoulders. Turner smiled inwardly at the eccentric character and wished he had never asked the question in the first place.

‘An hour it is then!’ Professor Hanson summarised simply.

Hanson was the complete opposite of Dr Maier: an African American, youngish at thirty-one, well groomed, six-foot tall and extraordinarily focused. This was exactly why he was heading up project ‘Alchemy’.

Turner was about to return to the cockpit when White spoke again, ‘Ralph! You and the pilot are not to leave the aircraft in any circumstances. These suits are just precautionary but I don’t want to be responsible for any adverse side effects if you did go outside. Just sit tight and we’ll be back as soon as we can.’

It was all beginning to make sense now. The Chinook was specially modified to cope with battlefield contamination. A bit over the top, Turner had thought initially. But now he saw why they had demanded this particular chopper. As the white rubber-suited men put their hoods on and began to waddle out of the aircraft one by one, he scuttled back to the safety of the cockpit.

‘About an hour, Mr White said,’ Turner said uneasily, isolated beads of sweat percolating from his forehead despite the climate control’s constant maintenance of a comfortably cool air temperature.

‘About an hour what?’ Kitson asked, confused.

‘We should be down for about an hour... Did you see the gear they’re wearing?’

Just as Turner finished his statement, the first group of scientists came into view through the dusty windshield. Kitson’s eyebrows immediately assumed the query position and suffused his face with bemusement.

‘Yeah I know. Caught me by surprise as well.’

‘What they so scared of?’

‘Beats me. I only fly them around. I never get to hear what it is exactly that they’re doing.’

‘You seen ’em geared up like this before? Contamination suits and all?’

‘No, can’t say I have. It’s normally tedious business trips, Meetings here, there and everywhere. First field trip I’ve made with them is today. Not sure I wanna make any more to be honest. I don’t need this s**t at my age. What about you? You must’ve seen your fair share of this sort of shit.’

‘Nope! Bit like yourself now. I only fly the top brass around. Never flown a combat mission in my life and I never want to,’ admitted Kitson.

‘Don’t blame you. Gets a bit messy, shooting at real people with real bullets if truth be told. I can’t say I miss it.’

‘Who are this lot anyway?’ Kitson asked, trying to move the conversation on after seeing the old guy swell with emotion.

‘Not sure exactly, but they get about. I think it’s some sort of Brazilian ministry force working with my company. You know, these days it pays to stay ecologically astute if you wanna stay in government. This ozone s**t’s put the wind up them all. From London to Washington and on to Beijing. They all wanna know how best to market themselves and get the very most from the media coverage when it comes to the end of the world.’

‘Yeah, like it’s gonna matter. We’re all f****d when this one goes pear shaped!’

The gaggle of men outside continued to slowly wend their way from the Chinook, collecting their critical samples as they went. Two groups of three were in clear view and both Turner and Kitson wondered how the remaining four suits had split up. Silence again drifted around them as they independently observed the good work being carried out against the brown lunar landscape’s backdrop and Turner closed his eyes in automatic obeisance to his customary afternoon siesta.