53
EMMA STARTED AWAKE HOURS LATER. THE LIGHTNING LIT THE interior of the helicopter, throwing eerie shadows. The thunder still boomed, but long after each flash. The storm was losing its force. The rain pattered on the helicopter’s side rather than buffeting it like before. She heard irregular footfalls outside. She listened as someone’s steps crunched toward her, making a strange lurching sound. The rhythm was step, drag, step. She felt a stab of fear.
The helicopter shook. Rodrigo hauled himself into the cabin. He clutched a bottle of whiskey in his left hand and his ever-present machete in his right. The lightning illuminated him. His right side twitched and jerked with a palsy, his right leg bounced back and forth. He tried to raise the bottle to his lips. His hand shook like an alcoholic with withdrawal symptoms. He prevailed and managed to drink a huge swallow. He began moving toward her, his lips twisted in a snarl. The helicopter lit with a huge crash of lightning, then plunged into darkness so deep that Emma couldn’t see Rodrigo. She struggled sideways, pushing herself with her legs while she scooted along the wall. Her panic rose with each second that she couldn’t see him.
The lightning flashed again. Rodrigo was on his hands and knees now, only a few feet away from her. The machete flashed as he used the hand that held it to crawl forward. His entire body convulsed as the poison took over.
“You spilled the antidote. The gringo told me,” he said. He spoke in a jerky fashion, as if he couldn’t control his vocal cords. The helicopter went dark. Emma pushed harder with her legs. Her shoulder hit the end of the cabin. There was nowhere left to go.
The lightning sparked, illuminating the helicopter’s interior like a strobe light. Rodrigo loomed over her, frothing at the mouth. He raised the machete, gasping as his throat convulsed. The helicopter went black. Emma screamed and scrabbled against the floor. She felt her foot hit Rodrigo. He fell on top of her, convulsed once, then stilled.
Emma pushed at his body with her bound hands. She was in a complete panic at just the thought of Rodrigo so close. She managed to move most of him off her. His body pinned her legs to the floor.
She sat that way for a long time. She tried to take deep breaths to slow her racing heart, but each time the helicopter interior lit up, all she saw was Rodrigo’s face, contorted in a death mask. After what felt like forever, the rain stopped and the sky took on a transparent color. Birds started twittering in the trees. She felt the helicopter lurch sideways again. The boy soldier stepped in. He shot worried looks all around, his gaze coming to rest on Rodrigo’s body lying across her legs.
His eyes widened. He pulled Rodrigo’s body the rest of the way off her. He slid his own machete out of a beaded sheath and started sawing at the plastic cuffs around her ankles. When he was finished, he indicated she should turn around to allow him to work on the handcuffs. He had those cut in seconds. He operated in complete silence.
Emma heard a man call a name, somewhere in the distance. The boy’s head shot up. He nodded once to her before leaping out the side door. She was free. Emma didn’t hesitate. She crawled out of the helicopter, which was embedded in the trees. The ground was still wet from the downpour, but the heat was already rising, even though the sun was a good hour away.
She slunk around the copter’s tail. To her right was a dirt road that sloped gently down into the water, forming a boat landing. A long sleek yacht floated in the water not fifty feet from the landing. It bobbed gently in the swells. Its windows were bright spots in the gloom. A deck light shone on the water.
The Daihatsu pickup trucks were lined up at the edge of the landing. They still carried their cargo. Emma could see the boxes labeled BANANAS arranged in neat rows in the pickup’s bed.
She craned her neck the other way. The waning moon broke through the clouds, bathing the area in light. The road opened onto a grassy field that sloped upward and was lined on one side by trees, the other side by the ugly, metallic pipeline. The pipeline sat on four-foot-high tripods, running like a large snake along the trees. In the distance, Emma saw the tip of a column of flame. The pipeline burned steadily.
She returned her attention to the yacht. They were going to offload the guns onto it for transport. She was certain. And she was just as certain that not every weapon would make it to the boat. She needed one if she was going to survive.
Time to move, she thought.
Emma jogged to the pickups, keeping low, watching for the soldiers to return. When she got to the first pickup, she reached into an open box and pulled out one of the rifles. It was close to the same design as the AK-47, but even Emma, with her lack of experience with weapons, could see that it was a technological leap forward. It was sleek and felt powerful in a way the AK-47 wasn’t. The high-tech scope on the top looked like the weapon had been designed for a marksman or a sniper. Someone who would hide in cover and had the expertise to shoot the enemy at a distance and with skill. Someone like Sumner. No one like Rodrigo and his band of losers. She thought of the damage that even one shooter with such a weapon could do from a hidden position in a high-rise building. She fiddled with the rifle a moment, checking to see if it was loaded. It wasn’t. Emma wanted to spit, she was so disappointed. She climbed into the truck to rummage through the boxes. The open box contained some spare ammunition. She grabbed it, jumped off the truck, and retreated a hundred feet into the trees. She squatted down next to one to analyze her new weapon.
Despite its advanced design, or perhaps because of it, the gun was easy to load. There was no denying that it was a step up from her other weapon. She peered through the scope. It gave her an excellent view of any target, but adjusting to it felt awkward. Up to this point she’d shot at someone only in the heat of the moment, and failed miserably when she’d had the time to think. This gun required the calm of a professional.
She jogged up the hill, toward the leaping flame, away from the boat landing. She wanted to get her bearings, to see what she was up against. She ran through the soft darkness. Her feet made very little sound. Her shin flared with each step, but she ignored it. She was just thankful that it didn’t spasm anymore. She’d felt much worse at the end of a hundred-mile run. She knew she could handle the pain. She reached the point where the pipeline had been exploded open. Its twisted metal dripped oil into a large oil drum that was filling rapidly. Her feet slipped in the oily grass.
Light shone from a small hut that sat one hundred yards away. Emma could hear the soft murmur of voices. She inched along in the darkness toward the hut. There were no windows, but the door hung open. A triangle of light poured out from it. Emma stepped into position opposite the door. She used the scope to see into the hut. She gasped.
Sumner and a soldier sat on the floor against the far wall. Blood covered the soldier’s shirt, and he slumped sideways onto Sumner’s shoulder. The soldier’s face was contorted in pain. He kept his eyes closed.
Sumner looked unhurt, but grim. His eyes were red-rimmed and his beard more pronounced. He leaned against the leg of a desk or table while he supported the soldier and stared at something, or someone, just out of Emma’s vision. Both men had their hands tied and resting on their laps.
Smoking Man came into view. He yelled something in Spanish at Sumner, who answered in one short sentence.
So, one at least to eliminate, Emma thought. But where Smoking Man was, so were his bodyguards. Two more somewhere very close by, perhaps in the hut itself, and one was an excellent shot. She remembered that from the way he’d targeted the capybara at the airstrip.
A black Range Rover came barreling up. White slammed out of it and headed to the hut. One of Smoking Man’s bodyguards followed at a slower pace. Emma lowered her weapon. The odds had just changed for the worse. It was eight against two: Smoking Man, two bodyguards, four soldiers, and White. This impressive array of might against Emma, Sumner, and an injured soldier who looked as though shooting a gun was well beyond his capabilities just then.
Ridiculous odds, Emma thought. There was no way they’d survive in a shoot-out. She’d have to come up with something else.
She needed to find the four soldiers in order to determine their location. She jogged back along the stinking pipeline toward the beach, keeping low and in the shadows. When she reached the Daihatsu trucks, what she saw made her spirits plunge. The soldiers were busy stacking the boxes of rifles onto a small dinghy floating at the edge of the boat landing. When the dinghy was full, three of the soldiers hopped in and fired up the engine. They motored out to the cruiser, where Emma could just make out the features of the boy soldier. He stood on the deck, waiting.
One truck was empty, and the second nearly empty. Emma ran toward the last truck and clambered onto it. She needed at least two more rifles. She clawed at one of the remaining boxes. The lid came loose with a tearing noise that nearly stopped her heart. She crouched next to the pickup’s sidewall. The only sound that greeted her was the soft lapping of the waves against the shore. She hauled the rifles over her shoulder before running her hand around the box’s bottom to search for ammunition. She found two belts, a carton of cartridges, and a small rectangular box that contained long sticks of dynamite. She gathered it all up and shot off the truck just as she heard the dinghy’s engine fire up again.
Emma dragged her own weapon by its strap as she moved farther into cover. She dumped it onto the ground while she focused her attention on loading the new rifles. When she was finished she grabbed all of them and returned to her position outside the hut’s entrance. Soon one of Smoking Man’s bodyguards stepped into view. He held an assault weapon at his side while he took a long drag off a cigarette, blew the smoke out, and scanned around the hut.
Emma left the extra rifles in a pile behind a tree and proceeded to canvass the area, moving in a wide semicircle. Halfway around, she found a well-worn trail. She took it, moving as quietly as she could.
After four hundred yards, the path ended at a clearing. A long, low gazebo with a thatch roof but no walls ran the length of it. Long wooden tables with trestle benches sat under the roof. Plastic five-gallon cans and heaps of rubber tubing were piled all around, along with a huge mound of coca leaves. Glass beakers rested on the table. A wooden pallet at the end of the table was stacked high with plastic-wrapped bricks of white powder cocaine.
Emma wandered around the table, checking the items with a scientist’s eye. Several cans with pour spouts were lined up against one side of the gazebo. The first had the word ACETONE written on it in crude black marker. The second said PEROXIDE and the third PETROL. Emma knew that gasoline and acetone were often used to distill coca leaves into cocaine paste, but the peroxide threw her. She couldn’t figure out how it would be used in refining coca. She bounced the three components around in her mind, trying to find a link among them. Then it came to her. The peroxide could have a very lethal use.
Emma walked the length of the gazebo a second time, reading the labels on all the cans and glass beakers, looking for a specific ingredient. Sure enough, there it was, sitting at the farthest end of the table: sulfuric acid.
They were making bombs.
The synthesis of acetone peroxide carried with it so much risk that Emma was surprised the guerrillas would attempt it. The substance was volatile and unstable. When the two liquids were mixed, they could create enough force to blow off fingers. Add a blasting cap, and one could create a decent-size bomb.
Problem was, there was no telling when the mixture would explode. The only way to be safe was to cool the liquid to low temperatures. Acetone peroxide achieved a level of stability when cold. Emma couldn’t imagine where they’d cool the mixture. They would need a refrigerator or freezer, because the jungle environment would warm it far too fast.
She once again walked the length of the gazebo, this time looking for anything that could contain ice or dry ice. Nothing.
Perhaps they’re storing it farther away for safety in case it blows, Emma thought. She widened her search area. She found two coolers twenty-five yards into the trees. She knelt down and very gently removed the lid. There, nestled in a glass container labeled AP, sat the dried granules of acetone peroxide. Ice filled the remaining space. She opened the second cooler. This one was stacked with silver metal plates just like the ones she’d watched the guerrillas use to mine the road back at the airstrip. They, too, were covered with ice. Several rolls of duct tape lay all about.
An idea bloomed in Emma’s mind: AP explodes when jarred or pressed. She could use the AP to create her own pressure-sensitive mine. If she could bury it outside the hut’s entrance, the first person who stepped on it would be blown up. Her biggest challenge would be to add only the amount of AP needed to affect the individual stepping on the mine. She didn’t want it to destroy the hut, and Sumner and the soldier, with it. The other question was, How would she ensure that Sumner or the wounded soldier didn’t step on the mine first?
Emma shook off her indecision. It was the only idea she’d had so far. She’d solve these problems when she came to them. She got to work creating her mine. She took the AP out of the cooler, being careful not to jar the glass. She sprinkled it over a flat metal disk. Then, very slowly, she lowered a second disk over the first. She was impressed that the guerrillas thought to cool the metal disks as well. When held together with the tape, they would help keep the AP stable for a bit longer. She bound the ends of the disks together.
She made a second mine as quickly as possible. The outside temperature was rising steadily. When the disks warmed to above ten degrees Celsius, the AP would once again become unstable.
Emma carried her two mines back down the path. She moved with as much grace as she could muster so as not to jar them. She reached the spot outside the hut where she’d hidden the rifles and lowered the mines to the ground.