against the wall.
Liquida smiled to himself as he nibbled through the four strands of thread. Once he had severed them he pulled the continuous loop from the back of the chair and reeled it in until all of the thread was in his hands. He balled it up and stuck it down the neck of his shirt as the forced air from the conditioning system whistled past his ears.
He reached down and lifted the vented register cover closed. He took the chewing gum from his mouth and stuck it to the metal edge of the frame around the louvered vent, then pulled it tightly closed. The gum sealed the cover in place. Anyone looking in the room now would think Liquida had simply vanished.
At a point roughly a hundred miles north of Havana, the flight engineer on Adin’s C-130 radioed to the base in Israel. He asked to have an uncoded message sent to Joselyn Cole at her e-mail address, making an urgent request for information using Herman’s name. He needed to know Madriani’s location as well as the precise location of the antenna array and the facility in the jungle. It was now two hours later and they had heard nothing.
Forty miles out, the pilot turned off the plane’s transponder. He dropped down to wave-top height and hugged the water, trying to stay below ground radar.
Twenty minutes later the C-130 crossed over the white-foamed breakers and sugar-sand beaches of the Mexican Riviera. The pilot nosed the plane up to clear some low-lying cliffs and the buildings on top of them. They were just south of the island of Cozumel on the Yucatan Peninsula.
Herman sat up front behind the pilot looking out the windows for any landmarks that seemed familiar. “You’re too far north,” he told them.
The pilot dipped the left wing and took a heading due south.
Herman could see the coast highway out in front of them through the plane’s windshield. The white sand beaches and resorts along the water’s edge raced by beneath the belly of the plane. “Just follow the highway,” said Herman.
Every once in a while the pilot would have to pull the nose of the plane up to avoid a building or the fronds of an occasional tall palm tree. The shadow of the large four-engine plane rippled along on the beaches and bluffs beneath them as they flew.
Eight minutes later the reflection of the sun on the white coral facade of the ruins at Tulum appeared just above the nose of the plane.
“There!” Herman pointed over the pilot’s shoulder. “See those ruins up ahead?”
The pilot nodded.
“Off to the right there should be a paved road, two lanes as I recall, into the jungle. It connects with the main highway between Cancun and Merida. It’s the road to Coba. After that I don’t know,” said Herman. “I’m afraid you’re on your own.”
“Nothing more specific?” Adin was in the chair next to him.
“The area around Coba is all Paul told me,” said Herman. “Whether he had more information I don’t know. Nothing back on the e-mail yet?”
Adin looked at the navigator who doubled as the radio operator. The man shook his head.
“We’ll just have to look,” said the pilot. He dropped the starboard wing and edged the plane toward the right. Moments later they picked up the narrow thread of light-colored asphalt leading into the jungle, the two-lane highway to Coba.
“What have we got for a landing strip?” asked the pilot. “Anything in the area?” He was talking to the navigator seated to the right of Herman and Adin at a kind of desk. The man was scanning a computer screen looking at charts and global positioning satellite (GPS) maps.
“Looks like one unimproved short strip, but it’s quite a ways out,” said the navigator. He did some quick calculations using the computer’s keyboard. “It’s halfway to Merida,” said the navigator. “Off a federal highway. Mexico one-eighty, it looks like. It’s a long way from Coba.”
“Great,” said the pilot. “Somebody better tell Uncle Ben we’ve got a logistics problem. Tell him to get up here.”
“I got it.” Adin unbuckled and headed back toward the cargo area.
“What’s the problem?” said Herman.
“Nowhere to put down,” said the pilot. “We can’t run the jeep and the trailer loaded with troops and munitions on a public highway. Not that far. We’ll end up in a firefight with the Mexican army.”
Herman nodded.
“We’ll have to look for something else,” said the pilot. “There’s bound to be other strips, but they’re not always marked on the charts.”
“Places prepared by the cartels,” said Herman.
The pilot nodded. “We may have to shoot our way in and out. I’m going to pull up to seventy-five hundred feet and level off in just a couple of minutes, as soon as we get some more eyes up front here to help us look. Tell some of the guys in the back to strap themselves on the ramp and lower it a little so they can see what’s behind us, in case we missed anything.”
Herman got up and followed Adin out of the flight cabin and down the ladder.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Liquida began the painful shimmy like a snake through the ducting, pushing with the rubber toes of his running shoes, pulling with his hands as best he could. He tried to make as little noise as possible, though the constant roar of the air conditioner sucking air through the return would have swallowed almost any sound coming from the vents.
He was moving away from the control room and the space next to it with the banks of computers. As he approached the next register, Liquida pulled the stiletto from the sheath in his coat. He used the sharp point to part several openings in the glass fibers of the filter so he could peek through the slatted metal vents down into the room below.
There was a long counter that separated the room into two sections. The door to the main corridor outside was closed and, if Liquida had to guess, it was locked. It wasn’t a solid-core wooden door like the one to Liquida’s room. This one was steel with a sensor on the wall so it could be opened with an electronic key card.
A man was seated at a desk against the wall on the left side of the room behind the counter. Liquida could see the back of his head as the guy worked over what looked like a set of books.
Against the opposite wall behind him was a large industrial safe, double doors, thick tempered steel that looked to be at least eight inches with two large cylindrical stainless-steel bolts protruding from each of the two open doors. Inside were stacks of cash, what looked like greenbacks, U.S. currency, enough of it to fill a small van.
Liquida wondered how many people worked here. Whoever they were, they weren’t taking their salary by check or in pesos. And neither was he.
With the ramp on the belly of the Hercules C-130 partway down, the noise from the four roaring Allison turboprop engines was deafening. Sarah had to cover both ears with her hands as wind swirled through the cargo hold. Herman held on to Bugsy’s leash as the three of them huddled against the side of the plane in front of the smaller cargo container.
Every once in a while Sarah would crawl to the corner of the container and look toward the back of the plane to see what they were looking at. All she could see from where she knelt was an endless green carpet of jungle. She felt the plane gaining altitude. She crawled back to Herman, petting Bugsy with one hand on the way.
“Good luck finding a place to land,” shouted Herman.
She nodded. “What if they can’t find one?”
Herman shrugged a shoulder and gave her a face like he had no clue.
“You think they’ll try to parachute?” she asked.
Herman shook his head. “Not into that.” What he meant was the jungle canopy. Anybody jumping into an
