“Yes. Turistas.”
The limousine moved slowly through narrow streets, lined on both sides by sand-coloured or white wall s broken by cascades of steps that led to the homes that lined the cliff above. After another turn they had to slow down as they moved through a large open-air market that stretched along a modern pier. Children began to run alongside the limo, peering in through the tinted windows for a glimpse of its occupants. Henry heard one of the urchins shouting, “Presidente.” The driver rolled down his window and yelled at them, waving his pistol.
Sarah scowled. “Is that really necessary, driver?”
Enrique glanced in the mirror at her and wordlessly pulled his arm inside the car as they came to a busy intersection and stopped.
A policeman standing in the middle of the street directed them forward while stopping all other traffic with his outstretched arms. His whistle could be heard clearly inside the closed car. Horns honked at him as he waved the limo through the intersection. Soon they were moving again down a narrow street.
The driver chuckled loudly. “They are all thinking you are the Presidente,” he said.
Suddenly Henry’s face dropped. “Shit! I just realized. I don’t have any cash.”
“I’ve got travellers’ cheques,” Sarah assured him.
Henry shook his head. “Enrique, is there a bank near the hotel?”
“No need, Sir Henry,” replied the driver, flashing a broad grin. “The hotel can accommodate you.”
Enrique was beginning to scare Sarah. He seemed unable to speak to them without eye contact. The limo moved quickly down narrow streets full of people, and the driver never once seemed to let up on the gas when he looked in the mirror or even turned to gaze back at them.
Finally she could stand it no longer. “Please, Enrique, could you not look at us and drive? You’re scaring the… You’re making me nervous.”
Enrique apologized as he pulled the limousine to a stop.
Belowdecks on the Enterprise, in a small conference room, Kai Grimes met with his men. All eight of his SEALs sat at a table spread with documents, photos and maps. A.J. Jones, the Louisiana fisherman and munitions expert, was studying satellite photos of the Andes with stereoscopic glasses.
“If it was me,” he said in a slow drawl, “I’d put the transmitter up north where the mountains are highest. Up towards La Paz.”
Dan Hoy, the gunner, sitting next to him, shook his head. “That’s too far away. The signal wouldn’t get through. No fuckin’ way.”
Rob Walters, the pilot who’d made the quick getaway from the bomb site with General Hayes and Henry Gibbs, sat next to Tom Jabiel. Both of them were looking at maps of the Andes and pages of data. Opposite them, Grimes sat between Stanley O’Doule and Ricky Peete. Peete was perusing a fuel manifest as he made notes on a tablet. O’Doule was quiet, lost in thought.
Merle Fawsett sat at one end of the table, his tall frame bent forward to see the photos the other men were examining, while at the other end Wake Michaels, small, dark and wiry, smoked a cigarette and listened without comment.
“Gimme one of those smokes, Snake,” demanded O’Doule. “I’m out.”
“Don’t call me that. And buy your own, you cheap bastard,” snapped Michaels.
Grimes watched the two men squabble for a while, then raised his hand. “Mission,” he said in a strained voice.
He and his “dogs” had been through a lot together: Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Libya, Namibia. He knew when to let the men bitch and when to stop it. They’d long ago agreed on a code word that meant to shut up and get down to business. “Mission.”
Grimes was brimming with frustration, racking his brains to come up with some kind of action that might be of benefit to his country and the world. He knew the seconds were counting down to the October 1 deadline when the terrorists promised to detonate the second nuclear device if their demands weren’t met. So with each passing moment of inaction he was feeling more and more impotent.
“It’s our job to cap the fucks that did this shit, guys,” he said. “I need ideas.”
“I just want a friggin’ cigarette,” said O’Doule. “Is that so much to ask? I’m goin’ nuts like you, K.G.”
“Sometimes you have to wait,” replied Grimes after drawing a deep breath.
Hoy looked up from the stereoscopic aerial photos and took off his glasses. He picked up a sheet of data and studied it as he spoke.
“I’m looking at a list of high-climbing expeditions covering at least six months. Nobody’s been up to the top of any Andean peak, from La Paz to Tierra Del Fuego. If you go back a year, you have only three, and none of them involved anyone with any connections to the resources necessary to pul this off.”
“Point?” said Grimes.
“Well, my point is maybe we’re shitting ourselves,” was the terse response.
“That covers South America,” said Fawsett. “What about New Zealand?”
“No,” said Grimes. “The Pentagon’s already been over that area with a sieve.”
The pilots, Jabiel and Walters, had been working together for the duration of the meeting. They had been so quiet and involved for the last half-hour that the rest of the men had nearly forgotten them.
Suddenly Walters lifted his sturdy frame from his seat and looked at Grimes. Everyone seemed surprised, and watched him expectantly.
“Tom and I think we can get us up to twenty thousand feet if we can move a fuel depot to within thirty, maybe fifty, miles of our target.”
Grimes smiled faintly. “That’s something,” he said.
“But we’d have to prove it.”
Walters hung his head. “I guess you mean that it isn’t gonna happen. Right?”
“Too soon to say, Rob. Thanks.”
Wake Michaels threw an unfiltered cigarette to O’Doule. “Now you owe me one, you bastard.”
“Haven’t I always paid you back, Snake?” replied O’Doule as he lit up.
“But you never gave me the blowjob you promised me in Namibia,” whined Michaels. “Pucker up.”
As the limousine snaked slowly up the winding road that climbed the hills, Henry looked back at Valparaiso.
“You know what this place reminds me of?” He pointed at the ridge looming over the port.
“What?” said Sarah.
“A beach. A large-scale beach like in New England, or along the New Jersey coast.”
Sarah looked to the west. A redness was beginning to fill the limousine; the light of the setting sun reflected off the hills that overlooked the port, and the Andes glowed like an uneven red wall in the distance. Henry noticed how the light made Sarah’s face shine. He thought she was the loveliest woman he’d ever known.
“A beach?” she said. “I don’t see the resemblance at all.”
Her words pulled him back out of his reverie. “Oh, yes, if you think of it the right way, only on a grander scale. The water line is the harbour, and above that a slight ridge — only here it’s much huger. What — sixteen hundred feet? That’s like the ridge of sand and flotsam that usual y forms at the high-water line, a few dozen feet from the waves. Following that analogy, the Andes are like the tall dunes. I guess my point is that all this looks like it was formed by big waves.”
“I see what you mean,” answered Sarah. “They’d have to be really big waves, though.”
“There are legends in this part of the world of people on the other side of the Andes looking at the mountains and seeing waves breaking over the peaks,” Henry said soberly. “Of course, they’re only legends.”
“Really big waves,” repeated Sarah with a shiver.
With the deadline for the payment of four billion US dollars approaching, and not another word of instructions since the email, the Secretary General of the United Nations had become a regular caller to the White House. President Kerry had been getting only a few hours of sleep each night — the same went for most members of the Joint Chiefs, and for Admiral Schumacher.