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same. He wrestled his way into his MOPP poncho, struggling against Tue to get it on without putting down his gun. The big Samoan already wore his heavy rubber chemical suit, but didn't move to put on the hood until Storch yanked on it. Steeped in the new-plastic-hospital-vomit stench of the hood, Storch couldn't imagine how gas could smell much worse.
    Something deep within the chemical lab exploded again. The shockwave was almost a visible wall in the sand, cracking like a whip underneath them, shaking them to their knees in their holes.
    Storch fought not to get trampled as Tuetagoloa scrambled out of the hole, held down the trigger of his gun and started spinning. He didn't see the advancing cloud of black-green vapor that oozed up the canyon walls until it was at his feet. The chemical plant was a cauldron of superheated toxic gases, and it was boiling over. The heavier than air fumes slid among the rocks like serpents. In seconds, they would fill in the holes, and in a few seconds more, eat through their suits. Tue's body jolted with three shots to his chest, but a shout from behind the boulders answered his sacrifice. A robed silhouette collapsed atop the rocks, and another went down trying to pull him back out of sight. A volley of rifle fire finally knocked down the burly gunner, who dropped and was immediately swallowed by the green fog.
    Stauffer climbed out of his hole next, even as the vapors poured in. The legs of his suit dripped a trail of molten plastic. The Bedouins shot him down two steps ahead of the tide. The others froze, all their training suspended for a moment as they stopped thinking how to survive and took up choosing how to die.
    "Evacuate the hide! Fall out and take that fucking rock, gentlemen!" Storch did his best imitation of the Chief, punctuated it with a grenade from the M203 launcher mounted under his rifle. The grenade skipped off the top of the rock, soared up in a lazy arc and dropped on top of the remaining Bedouins just as the fuse burnt up. The dull crump, the sharp screams awakened them to who they were.
    A bullet, or a piece of shrapnel from his own grenade ripped through his right hand. He ducked down and examined it for a full second, waiting for the pain to come. He was still watching it, could still almost feel his thumb there, when the green fog spilled into his spiderhole. Hands knotted in his plastic hood and hauled him out of the hole.
    They were climbing out of the holes, but too late, the fog closed over them, and their suits were sloughing off of them and their skins burned, and the tendrils of gas worked their way into their sinuses, and they were holding their breath…
    And the wind whipped the green gas to ribbons and scattered it away from them, scoured their wounds with pure, stinging sand. The wash of a helicopter just above their heads, voices in their ears, and sleep, and Sgt. Storch was already beginning to forget what really happened…
     

1
     
    July 4, 1999.
    It rained on the Fourth of July in Death Valley. Great black clouds tore themselves apart in the livid blue noon sky, punishing curtains of gunmetal rain that the Bad Mood Guy swore would be full of frogs and octopi.
    "Is it over?" the Bad Mood Guy woke up and wanted to know. His shrill voice vibrated the weatherbeaten porch beneath their feet. "Did it happen?"
    "No. We're still here. Go back to sleep," Storch told him.
    "Fucking gyp."
    "Moody's got a point. Nostradamus said the world's going to end today," Ely Buggs said. He quoted, "'The year 1999, seven months. From the sky will come a great King of Terror—
    —To bring back to life the great King of the Mongols, before and after Mars to reign by good Luck,'" Hiram Hansen finished. "Bullshit. He only said it would start to end. Anyway, Nostradamus was just a courtier-spy for the Merovingian dynasty—"
    "Hugenot," interrupted Bad Mood Guy.
    "All his prophecies were either coded reports on the royal family's private business, or attempts to influence