Luis yelled at her. “What is wrong with you?”
The woman spoke between gasps. “Heart condition. I lost my medication in the crash. I need a hospital. I can’t continue.” Luis pointed his gun at her. She sat up as straight as she could and looked him in the eye.
“May God have mercy on your soul,” she said. She pulled a rosary out of her pocket. She clutched it in her hand while she stared Rodrigo down. He looked at the cross, then at her.
“If you can’t continue, you stay here.” Rodrigo turned to the passengers. “Now get back in line. All of you!” The passengers formed back into a line along the path, stepping carefully. All evidence of the last minute’s panic was gone. They huddled next to one another as if afraid to move.
“You.” Luis pointed to a male passenger. “My English is not so good. You understand Spanish?”
The man nodded.
“Good.” Luis switched to Spanish. “Retrieve the machete. You will be the new leader. Only this time, if you see a piece of nylon line strung across the path, you do not disturb it. You understand me?”
The man nodded again.
“And watch for a cone-shaped object. These mines are called Chinese hats and they are more powerful than the ones that were just detonated. Translate this for the passengers.”
The passengers listened to the man and nodded as a group. They waited while the new leader retrieved the machete. Tall Man braced a passenger, holding him up by his arm. They proceeded forward, leaving the dead to the mountain.
THE SOUND OF AN ENGINE crashing through the brush made Emma lift her head. The noise grew closer. She grabbed the pack with one hand and retreated deeper into the jungle. She fought through the trees, moving up the side of the mountain. She stopped one hundred yards above the airstrip, lowered herself to the ground, and peered through a break in the trees. From her new location she could see the strip but was hidden enough to be safe. Below her, the motor’s noise grew louder and louder. She watched a jeep as it burst from the tree line onto the strip.
The jeep circled the wreckage once and then stopped. Three guerrillas stepped out, each carrying cone-shaped devices. They placed the first device at one end of the wreckage. One guerrilla attached a nylon string to it. He ran the string along the ground, at a height of about six inches. Fifty feet later, the man attached another cone-shaped device to the string, and then moved fifty feet again. Soon the cone-shaped devices formed a rough triangular pattern around the main part of the wreckage.
Two of the guerrillas drove the jeep up the dirt road until it was out of Emma’s sight. She heard it stop, but couldn’t see it. The guerrillas reappeared on foot. They stopped at each metal disk and attached string to it. They unwound the string as they walked across the road, stopping only to attach the string to a bush or tree on the other side. When they were finished, several strings spanned the road at various heights. They stepped over each line and waited at the top of the hill for the last guerrilla to finish.
The last guerrilla left on the strip bent over the final cone. He reached into the bag that sat next to him and removed an old-fashioned oven timer. Emma could see the familiar white shape and the large dial on the front. The guerrilla bent forward again over the last cone, blocking Emma’s view, while he worked with the timer. After thirty seconds the man gave a yell and started running. He slowed at each line of string, taking care to step over. When he reached his two buddies they all fled up the road. Emma heard the sound of the jeep’s engine fade as it drove away.
The timer sat on the dusty earth, ticking downward.
“Oh, God, they’re going to blow it up,” Emma said.
She grabbed her pack, which felt like it was filled with lead, and tried to fling it over her shoulders as she ran straight up, into the trees.
She didn’t get very far. The heavy foliage slapped at her face, and the ground-cover vines grabbed at her ankles. The pack caught on a nearby tree branch, and no sooner had she wrenched it free than it caught on another two steps later. She’d wasted twenty seconds fighting the jungle. She’d never get far enough away unless she chose an existing trail.
Emma spun around and ran down toward the strip. She skidded and slid down the side of the mountain until she reached the bottom. She took a quick glance around before she stepped out into the sun and the heat. The glare from the light reflecting off the plane’s metal body made her squint. The wreckage lay in front of her. It looked like a disjointed piece of metal sculpture. The smell of decay, burned hair, and the still-smoldering rubber was so strong that she was forced to put a hand over her nose and breathe through her mouth.
The path the passengers had forged lay on the other side of the piled wreckage. To cross the airstrip required a run of one hundred yards over dead bodies, discarded clothing, and jagged metal pieces sheared off the jet’s body. Emma could skirt the deadly triangle, or she could cut straight across. Straight across saved time.
She took a deep breath, stepped over the nylon line and ran. She dodged the metal jet pieces and bloated bodies, disturbing the flies that fed off them. The insects rose up in a cloud, buzzing in protest.
Emma focused on the far side of the strip and the narrow path cut by the passengers. She could hear the ticking noise of the oven timer as it counted down. A bumblebee flew in front of her, diving at her face and then swooping away. Sweat poured down her face and into her eyes, making them sting. She wiped her face as she jogged, not missing a beat. She reached the second line marking the far end and stepped over it. She lunged onto the trail, running for all she was worth. The pack banged against her back in a rhythmic cadence.
At one hundred yards in, the strip behind her blew.
The blast knocked Emma flat. The ground shook. She stayed down, flinging her hands over her head. After ten seconds she struggled back to her feet to run again. She took two steps, and the second bomb blew. This blast felt even stronger than the first. Black smoke boiled into the sky. Emma ran a few more yards and the third detonated. This one sent metal shrapnel catapulting upward. The pieces rained down on the trees, each one sharp and deadly. Emma threw herself back down and once again covered her head. A huge burning chunk of metal fell onto the path behind her. A woman’s hairbrush hit her back and rolled off.
Emma heard the fire before she could see it. Panic engulfed her. She imagined the fire was shooting toward her, burning everything in its path. She pulled herself upright, took a final deep breath, and plunged down the path to follow the passengers.
10
MIGUEL STOOD IN APIAY, COLOMBIA, IN THE SMALL OFFICES THAT housed the Air Tunnel Denial program. He listened as Señor Lopez, a skinny man with a face like a hound and a personality to match, nattered on about the myriad small runways that littered the countryside.
“We cannot possibly monitor them all, can we?” he said.
Miguel decided Lopez was a whiner. “It’s your job to monitor them all.”
“With inadequate equipment and no help from the police!”
“These are your problems, sir, not mine. My problem is finding a large jet downed on one of those runways. My commander in the U.S. suggested that you could help pinpoint the location of the airstrip the hijackers may have used. Now, with all this radar equipment at your disposal, are you telling me you didn’t see this jet when it entered your airspace?”
Señor Lopez chattered on some more, and Miguel tuned out. All he caught was something about “procedure,” “trajectories,” and “mushroom clouds.” The last comment caught his attention.
“What do you mean, ‘mushroom clouds’?” he said.
Señor Lopez shrugged. “We heard that a mushroom cloud was seen somewhere around here.” He pointed to a map of Colombia that hung on a wall next to the radar equipment.