“Tommy, wait—”
“No, it’s all right. My mistake; I’ll fix it.”
Dean turned himself around and sat, still trying to gather his senses. He reached into his pockets and began inventorying what he had, but his mind seemed to be working in a different dimension and he handled the objects two or three times before their identities registered. He found his small flashlight and turned it on just as Karr lumbered up the shoreline to his left.
“Boat’s tangled in some branches downstream, in one piece. Motor snapped off,” said Karr. He dropped a pack at Dean’s feet. “Stinking A2s are gone. They’re supposed to be waterproof. I’d really like to see if that’s true. But I can’t find them.”
Dean, still in something of a daze, reached to make sure his pistols were strapped in his holsters.
“Your communications system working?” Karr asked.
Dean reached to the back of his belt and felt for the switch. It had turned off in the tumult.
“Charlie?” asked Rockman.
“I’m here.”
“You guys OK?”
“We just went for a swim,” said Karr, joining in. “We were getting bored.”
Dean’s legs had been battered by the rocks, and they ached as if he’d just run two marathons back-to-back. But otherwise he seemed intact.
“You all right?” Dean asked Karr.
“Yeah. I keep telling you: I’m still numb from all those painkillers they gave me in France. I figure I won’t feel anything for another year yet. You feel like walking?”
“No,” said Dean, opening the pack. “But it beats standing here.”
“Or swimming.”
Dean traded his sodden boots for a pair of dry walking shoes. After two miles through the rough terrain his ankles began to ache so badly he took some aspirin from the small first-aid kit in the pack.
Following directions from the Art Room, they headed toward a nearby village used by an ecotourist company as a jumping-off point for tours through the local jungle. They arrived about an hour before dawn and waited on a bench near the water for something to open. Small, modem wood buildings dotted the main area of the settlement, muscling out huts that seemed to have been left standing for atmosphere. There were signs in English as well as Spanish advertising everything from “native” handcrafts to AAA batteries and shaving gear. Karr joked that the handcrafts probably came from China; since they included coffee mugs and T-shirts, he might not have been far off.
Dean sat on a bench, resting his legs while Karr went to explore. Barely five minutes later, Karr returned with a ceramic mug filled with coffee.
“No Styrofoam,” said Karr, handing the cup to him gingerly. “Watch this stuff — it’ll burn holes in your throat going down.”
The smell alone was enough to wake the dead. Dean took a small sip and felt his sinuses loosening up.
“We can catch a ride in a half hour over to Iquitos,” said Karr. “Have the Art Room arrange a room for us there. We can use a generic cover as adventurers.”
“That’ll fool them,” said Dean sarcastically.
“No one there we have to fool,” said Karr. “And we won’t be there long anyway.”
“I’d like to get some sleep,” admitted Dean. “About twenty-four hours’ worth.”
“Yeah.”
Dean could tell from Karr’s answer that sleep was unlikely anytime soon. There were alternatives stronger than the coffee — the Deep Black ops had specially formulated “go” pills, supposedly high-tech stimulants that were non-addictive and had no adverse side effects. Dean didn’t trust them; he’d heard the same sort of bull in Vietnam and later in the first Gulf War. Anything artificial always came back to bite you somehow. At least the coffee was predictable.
“There’s a place we can wash up a bit,” Karr told him. “They even have these vending machines with little shaving kits in them. When we’re done we have to head over to what they call the south dock. It’s about a quarter mile from here.”
“Where are we meeting Lia?” asked Dean.
“In Nevas,” said Karr. “She should be there this afternoon. We’ll have to get an airplane or at least a boat — it’s pretty far from Iquitos.”
“She shouldn’t do the switch without backup.”
“I’m not saying she should, Charlie. Let’s go get a shave, all right? My chin gets cranky if I don’t shave off the peach fuzz every forty-eight hours or so.”
63
Considering that her bed was under a rats’ nest, Lia slept comparatively well, waking only when Fernandez knocked on her door. She dressed quickly — all she needed were her shoes — and got an update from Farlekas in the Art Room, which told her that the nuke was a phony and that the Peruvians did not yet seem to realize that.
“What’s this mean for me?” she asked.
“That you continue as assigned. Fly up to Nevas and do the swap.”
“Fine. What about Charlie?”
“Dean and Tommy are on their way to Iquitos,” said the Art Room supervisor. “They may meet you there.”
“May?”
“Things are still up in the air right now, Lia. I’ll let you know what’s going on the second I know. I promise.”
Fernandez was waiting downstairs in the small breakfast room. There were two other tables of guests, and they were listening intently as a radio at the side of the room proclaimed the latest on the plot by the “notorious and desperate enemies of the Peruvian people” to destroy the country’s capital. The hero of the moment was a general named Atahualpa Tucume, who had fought valiantly against the Ecuadorian bandits and was now engaged in a battle to the end against the guerrillas. A small snippet was presented from an interview with the general. He declared that “luck and the grace of our ancestors” had allowed the army to foil the terrible plot to destroy the nation and Lima.
A commentator followed, giving some biographical information about Tucume. “He is not well known in the coastal areas of our country, but should be,” said the man. “He believes he is descended from the Inca aristocracy….”
Fernandez hunched over the table, his face pale and his eyes bloodshot from all the alcohol he had consumed the evening before. Clearly, he had had his last taste of
“Can you deal with the helicopter?” Lia asked him.
“I’ll survive. Let’s get going.”
64
Rubens’ helicopter was about five minutes from the White House when Johnny Bib buzzed him on the secure line. One of the computer experts — Johnny Bib hated the term “hacker”—had broken into Chinese intercepts of a Russian satellite phone system and obtained several conversations that had taken place not far from where the warhead had been found. The transmissions used an encryption popular among some members of the Russian
