State of Emergency

CHAPTER 33


Rio Beni

Bolivian Jungle





Matt Pollard felt like he was in a sauna. Sweat stung his eyes and ran in rivers down his back. Someone had tacked tattered pieces of mosquito netting to the windows and makeshift screen door of the raised wooden hut, but the effort was rude at best. Wind and heat and, Pollard thought, the persistence of the insects themselves left the screens filled with dozens of ways inside. In between bouts of swatting all sorts of biting bugs, he sat on the edge of his cot, chin in his hands, and tried to decide where to start. There were layers of issues he’d have to deal with to make the thing work—if he decided that was what he would do.

Zamora seemed to think that it was all about defeating the locking mechanism, but that was just part of the story. Nuclear devices needed a high-voltage current for detonation. They got this from a series of capacitors, which were charged by a battery. In some units, these capacitors were part of a safety, if not a security mechanism. It was called “Weak Link, Strong Link.” Every other capacitor might be made of a material that melted at low temperatures, or broke under severe shock or trauma, rendering the device inoperable when subjected to unintended stress.

These safety systems, as well as electronic circuitry for signal control and detonation timing, had to be checked and possibly repaired. Wires were generally unmarked and a single color to make bypassing next to impossible for someone without a manual. On newer bombs, all this would be buried deep within the bomb beneath a tamperproof membrane. Even for someone as intelligent as Pollard, it would take a great deal of time to figure this thing out—if it was even possible—and time was a luxury Marie and Simon did not have.

The seventeen-year-old Guarani Indian girl Zamora had left in charge tapped gently at the threshold of the hut. For a guard, she was extremely polite.

“I have come for the computer,” she said.

“This is wrong, you know,” Pollard said, passing her the laptop. The server, wherever it was, only allowed incoming messages. “Zamora said I could speak to my family every day and make sure they are all right.”

The girl looked at him as if she’d been slapped. “I am sorry, señor. I thought that is what you were doing.”

Her oval face was smudged with soot from the cook fire and a chicory brown complexion set off the perfect whiteness of her teeth. Just over five feet tall, she was solidly built with a tattered green army uniform hanging from square shoulders that were accustomed to hard, load-bearing work. The military blouse looked three sizes too large, and she kept it unbuttoned to reveal a pink tank top underneath. Pollard guessed it was a reminder to herself as much as anyone else that beyond being a soldier, she was also a young woman.

“That woman hardly allows us two words.” Pollard took a deep breath, fighting the desire to smash something. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Lourdes Lopez.” The girl gave an understanding nod. “I will ask Señor Zamora if you might not have another moment or two with your wife the next time I speak to him.”

“Thank you,” Pollard said. He couldn’t bring himself to be too nice to someone who was supposed to be his guard. “But why would you care?”

“Because I know Lourdes.” The girl shivered. “And . . . other reasons.”

Her name was Yesenia and she was surprisingly pleasant for a teenage girl with crossed bandoliers of ammunition and a Kalashnikov slung over her shoulder. The smell of wood smoke and cooked fish clung to her in the muggy heat.

She traded him the computer for a cup of what looked like ropey potato water. Clutching the laptop in one hand and the sling of her rifle with the other, she stood for a moment as if she wanted to say something, but didn’t quite know how. He’d seen the look a hundred times from students who wanted to discuss their grades. At length she only smiled and nodded at the cup.

“Somo,” she said as she left. “Sweet corn drink. It will cool you and keep you healthy.”

Pollard took a drink and set the cup on the floor. It was actually pretty good—and he didn’t deserve good. Collapsing onto the stiff mattress of his cot, he slouched against the wall. The girl’s gun probably wasn’t even loaded. Zamora knew all too well he didn’t have the stomach for killing teenage girls. He stared at the oblong green case in front of him. He didn’t have the stomach for killing thousands of strangers either—but this lunatic had his family. Did the value of a hundred human lives outweigh the worth of one or two?

Pollard rubbed his face with an open hand. It sounded like something he would ask his class—stupid, worthless questions that meant little outside the theoretical world. In theory, theory should mirror reality, he often told his classes.

In reality, he knew that theory was bullshit.