Squinting, Major Fordell spotted a cluster of trucks. They looked like toys. Bunched together, they sat cold and alone on the pipeline access road. A fat hose ran from the back of the last truck, vanishing over the hill that ran parallel to the road.

"Vacuum truck," Fordell said. "Those are the guys who radioed in." He pointed to the hill. "Let's see where they went."

Nodding, the pilot swept across the abandoned trucks and up the face of the hill. The instant they'd crested the top, the pilot felt his fingers tense on the stick.

"Sir," he whispered, his voice low with sudden shock.

Beside him, Major Race Fordell's mouth thinned. His unblinking eyes showed not a flicker of emotion. In the valley below them the pipeline stretched like a metallic serpent. Underneath its massive support members, dozens of bodies lay scattered like abandoned dolls.

Hovering over the hill, the pilot cast a frightened eye at the Major. In the back of the Huey the men had taken sudden sick interest in the gruesome scene below.

"What happened, Major?" the young pilot asked. Race Fordell's expression never wavered.

"That's what we're here to find out," he said flatly. "Take us down."

Nodding numbly, the pilot aimed the chopper for the valley floor. At Fordell's orders, he touched down just long enough for the eleven men in the back to spill out. Skids had barely pressed to frozen ground before the Huey was once more airborne. Buzzing like an angry insect, it soared off down the valley in the direction opposite the one from which it had come.

The hum of the rotor blades faded to silence. Alone on the ground, the eleven ASDF men picked their careful way around the dead.

Stepping cautiously through the pool of crude oil, Major Fordell squatted near a pair of bodies.

Joe Abady was flat on his stomach, his chin resting on the black ground. Almost as black as crude oil, blood had frozen to the hole in his forehead. Near the APSC foreman, Brian Turski lay on his side, his head gaping wide from a single, point-blank gunshot. Wordlessly, Major Fordell stood.