“He was incinerated in the crash,” said Collins.
“Oh?” said Rubens. “We’ve discovered that a Russian satellite phone has been used in the area where the warhead was found over the past several months. The encryption code is several years old, one the Russian mafia likes.”
“If he had survived the crash, I would’ve seen him,” Evans insisted. “I was there myself. He died in the crash or the fire that burned up the plane.”
Rubens asked Evans, “How long did it take for you to reach the wreckage?”
“Not long.”
“Hours?”
“In that country it can take a day to go two miles,” Evans explained. “It’s all jungle straight up and down. I don’t remember how long it took. Not all day. Less than that. A few hours, maybe.”
“Was the body in the wreckage?”
“The wreckage was ashes. The plane had fuel in it and burned fiercely. By the time we got there the fire was almost out. The bodies had been consumed.”
“No corpus delicti,” the president said. “Enough. We’ve got a hell of a mess right now that needs all our attention. We’ve got a fake bomb in Peru that the Peruvians think is real. They’re sitting on it. There may be a real bomb, and we need to find it if it’s there. Our entree to Peru is to help them dispose of the one they have and search to ensure there aren’t any more. I spoke to the president of Peru on the telephone just before I came here. He promised full cooperation.”
They discussed the arrangements. A Delta Force team and a team from the State Department were en route. The entire Southern Command, headquartered at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, had been placed on alert. An emergency response unit trained to deal with disasters was heading to Lima so that it could respond immediately in a catastrophe. Two platoons of Marines and some aircraft had been dispatched to provide additional security at the embassy. Reconnaissance assets, planes and satellites, had been dedicated to the search. And finally, the USS
“The Peruvians will cooperate — are cooperating,” the secretary of state said.
“I don’t want to talk contingencies,” the president said. “The people at the Pentagon can handle that.” He turned to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “I understand you want Jack Spielmorph to head the search force?”
“Yes, sir.” Spielmorph was a two-star general.
“Fine.”
Collins weighed in. “One thing that needs to be determined is whether or not the Peruvian army manufactured this fake warhead. The generals are very much suspects.”
“So is our mysterious Mr. Sholk,” someone interjected. “Why do a fake warhead? Why not a coup?”
“Maybe the new generation is more subtle,” Collins replied. “The army found the weapon and got the political credit.”
“And the election is this coming Sunday,” the president said sourly. He glanced at Rubens, who suspected the president was wishing he had told the Peruvian president about the rigged vote-counting computers.
“Thank you, gentlemen and ladies, for sharing breakfast with me.” The president rose and left the room.
65
The helicopter stuttered to the left as it took off. Lia’s stomach floated in the wrong place for a moment, waiting for the rest of her body to catch up. She closed her eyes to regain her equilibrium; by the time she reopened them the helicopter was over a long valley, the mines and smelters behind them. The mountains stretched in all directions. The air had a dark purple hue; the ground mixed green and brown like a mottled blanket. It seemed to Lia the terrain rushed by while they stood still.
The drone of the helicopter’s engines shut her off from the others, putting her in a little cocoon where she could rest for a while. She had one more card to swap. Hopefully that would be done quickly and she could go home and rest, retreat to a beach or someplace quiet where rats didn’t run in the ceiling while you were trying not to freeze to death under blankets stiffer than cardboard and not half as warm.
The helicopter wove its way north following a series of long, deep valleys, generally staying a few hundred feet below the nearest peaks. It seemed impossible that anyone could live in these mountains, and yet the slopes were dotted with houses, new and old, as well as massive stone ruins. Some had come for gold and silver: large strip mines were scattered around as well, along with old-fashioned tunnels. But the terraces along the mountainsides, the cultivated fields a thousand feet high, showed that more than the hunt for treasure had kept them here.
After about a half hour’s flying time, Lia grew tired.
“I’m going to take a nap,” she told the others — and Rockman. She reached to her belt and clicked off the com system. Within a few moments, she felt her mind starting to drift and she was sleeping.
In her dream, she saw Charlie shaking his head at her.
Why?
She was back in the vault, looking at her hand trembling before her. But this time she stopped it, staring crossly at it.
Charlie materialized again, once more shaking his head. Why? she asked him.
Before he could answer, there was a soft pop, followed by a louder bang. Lia felt herself lurch upward. Caught between sleep and consciousness, she thought she saw the nose of the helicopter skitter upward and then back down. The tail slid to the left, then back; in an instant the helicopter was yawing back and forth as well as up and down, flying in a large, unguided corkscrew through the sky.
Fernandez grabbed Lia’s arm and shouted something. As he did, the chopper pitched hard to the right, and Lia’s mind seemed to lift up away from her body, soaring into the azure sky.
66
Not only did fresh orders meet Dean and Karr in Iquitos, but Fashona did as well, this time at the helm of a large single-engine amphibious plane. Fashona was in an appreciably better mood than he had been the night before, giving Dean a thumbs-up and even half-smiling at Karr as the two men boarded the plane.
“New airplane, huh?” Dean asked.
“Very pretty beast,” said Fashona. “Cessna Caravan. Straight-at-you, what you see is what you get. With water wings.”
“Water wings,” echoed Karr in the back.
“I hope you haven’t let him eat those jungle leaves,” Fashona told Dean. “I’d hate to see him high.”
“Probably slow him down,” said Dean. “Like taking Ritalin if you’re hyperactive.”
Fashona throttled up. The aircraft felt more like a graceful sailboat than a speedboat, gliding along the river so smoothly that Dean didn’t even realize they were airborne until they started to bank. They flew south for about five miles, then began heading to the west. Their target was a pair of buildings near a military outpost above the Rio Orona.
As the crow flew, it was only about forty miles southeast of where they had been the night before, though by ground the journey would have been close to a hundred over unimproved roads and rickety mountain trails. Once at the installation, they would use a boat and then their feet to hike another ten miles before reaching their destination in the shadow of half-forgotten Inca ruins.
The Art Room wanted to know who, if anyone, was there. Specifically, they were looking for an old Russian satellite phone somehow linked to the warhead they had checked out the night before.
