“Loud and clear.”
The communication gear was completely against the rules, but Quinn didn’t plan on trying to win the race. All support teams could track the whereabouts of their racer with smartphones as they made it from checkpoint to checkpoint. With Palmer’s help, Team Quinn had been able to hack into the ASO’s main tracking system for Zamora’s — and now Blessington’s — loca-tion in real time. It would be Thibodaux’s job to keep him in the loop about their respective locations if he happened to lose track.
Quinn took a deep breath and looked down the gauntlet formed by thousands of race fans, volunteers, vendors, ASO officials, security, and Argentine National Police. The sun was just coming up as he made his way to the line along with number 171, a rider from Sweden.
He gunned the KTM’s engine, feeling the power between his knees. Thibodaux’s thick Cajun drawl buzzed inside his helmet.
“You watch yourself, l’ami. There’s a gob of lonely spots out there in the desert where a body could find suddenly hisself very dead.”
CHAPTER 32
Lourdes made it abundantly clear to Marie that the focus of her wrath was baby Simon. Hardly a moment went by that the horrible woman didn’t make a threat or voice some horrific plan as to the particular harm she hoped to do to the helpless child. If Marie wasn’t standing to work the kinks out of her sore back, she kept herself glued to the lumpy mattress, guarding her little boy as he cooed or played or slept. Even when she went to the bathroom she took Simon with her, unwilling to let him out of her sight even for a moment.
By the second day she realized Jorge, the man with the injured leg, was an ally of sorts. Simon was getting restless from being cooped up without fresh stimulation and was beginning to fuss.
They were alone when Jorge limped in from the kitchen and handed Marie a cup of chocolate milk. He wore a dish towel tucked in his belt that was filthy from his dirty hands and constant kitchen duty, but Marie didn’t care.
“Don’t tell Lourdes I’m doing this,” he said. “My sister, Irene, she has a son about this age. Heaven knows they can’t keep quiet this long. It is not the little one’s fault.” He stood and watched as Simon drank the bulk of the chocolate milk, then grinned at him with a frothy brown mustache.
Jorge rubbed the little boy’s head. “Pobrecito,” he whispered, sighing. Poor thing. He leaned in to Marie as if with a secret. “I will tell you thi—”
Footfalls in the hallway made Jorge snatch up the glass and limp back to the kitchen.
Pete came slouching into the room with his hat on crooked and flopped down in the recliner with his cell phone. Lourdes followed, sliding along on the tile floor in stocking feet as if she was actually happy about something. She held an open laptop in her hand.
Marie’s heart jumped at the sight of the computer. She lived for the few moments each day that she could talk to Matt, see his face, and know that he was still alive. The cruel woman hardly let them speak for more than a few seconds, but those were the best seconds in Marie’s day. As long as Matt was alive, there was hope — she clung to that single thought more than any other, whispering it to herself as she drifted in and out of her fitful sleeps.
She pulled herself up straighter in anticipation of seeing her husband. Instead, Lourdes walked right up on the mattress beside her, shoving the baby aside with a rough nudge of her foot. Marie recoiled, pulling Simon into her lap as the awful woman flopped down beside them.
“I found a few news articles for us to read together,” Lourdes said. “I think you might find them interesting.”
Marie clutched the baby to her chest, reading over the top of his head.
RANSOM PAID. COUPLE FOUND MURDERED IN CALIFORNIA CABIN ANYWAY, the headline read.
Lourdes tapped the screen with her finger. “This couple, they have a lot in common with you,” she sneered. “Held captive for a week in the woods… ” Her voice trailed as she looked over at Marie. She smiled an overly sweet smile that had no kindness in it. “They must have held out hope, don’t you think?”
“Stop it!” Marie begged, covering Simon’s ears though there was no way he was old enough to understand.
Pete smirked behind the game on his cell phone. Jorge stood stoically at the kitchen door.
Lourdes pressed closer, her head almost on Marie’s shoulder. “Everyone has hope,” she said. “Just like you. These people sat alone in that cabin and hoped that someone would come and rescue them — as you, no doubt, hope someone will come and rescue you.”
“I said stop it!” Marie screamed. She struggled to catch her breath. “Stop talking to me.”
Lourdes pressed on. “Certainly they made absurd demands, just as you do now.” She snapped her fingers, causing Marie to jump, startling the baby and making him wail as if he’d been pinched. “Quiet the worm,” she spat, getting to her feet. “Anyway, I thought you’d like to see this. Very soon you will have much, much more in common.” She turned to glare at Jorge, who still watched from the kitchen door. “No matter who brings you chocolate milk. Now, shall we call your sniveling husband and let him know you are still alive… for the moment?”
CHAPTER 33
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.