“Yes, sir. Do you know where the others are?”
“They are still being held in Puerto Maldonado. They nearly escaped but were recaptured outside the compound. Our sources tell us that the army is preparing right now to move them to Lima. So if you expect to breech their compound, you’ll have to move fast.”
“We have a different plan,” Jaime said. “There is a narrow highway they will have to pass through on the way to Lima. We believe it is a place where we could stop them. We just need to know when they are moving.”
“Very well. We’ll alert you when the army is moving.”
“And then what?” I asked.
“After you have rescued your friends, we will instruct you on everything we know about the Elgen fleet and the Ampere. Is there anything else you need right now?”
“I want to speak with my mother.”
“I’ll arrange for you to talk. I will give you a time during our next communication.”
“Wait, I have a question,” Tessa said, leaning forward toward the microphone. “Do you know anything about the Amacarra? Are they okay?”
There was a long pause. “The Amacarra tribe no longer exists.”
Tessa turned white. “W-what do you mean?”
“The army massacred the tribe for harboring terrorists.”
Tessa’s eyes welled up with tears. “No!”
“I’m sorry. The army has been ruthless.”
I put my hand on Tessa’s back.
Tessa grabbed her beads, and tears began falling down her face. “My mama . . .”
There was a long pause, then the voice said, “I’m sorry, but we must sign out. There is one more thing you must know. We have been compromised.”
Now Jaime turned white. “How?”
“The army learned of our existence while interrogating the others. They passed it on to the Elgen. They don’t know who or where we are, but they now know that we exist. We have called a few of our agents in the field to come in.”
“This cannot be true,” Jaime said, putting his hand over his eyes.
“I wish it weren’t. We will contact you when the army starts to move. Over.”
The radio went dead. I took the headphone and gave it back to Jaime. The dread was palpable. It was as if a bomb had just gone off in our midst.
Jaime was the first to speak. “They know of us . . . ,” he said, slowly shaking his head.
I looked at Tessa. She was sobbing.
“I’m sorry,” I said, returning my hand to her back.
“They were so innocent,” she said. She covered her eyes with her hand.
I didn’t know what to say. I just kept rubbing her back. After a few minutes her sobbing slowed, turning to a soft whimper. Then she stopped completely. She held her hands at her temples, her fingers digging into her hair. Then she looked up at me. Her eyes were red and swollen. “They’re going to pay for this. We’re going to make them pay.”
After all the bad news we’d just received, the next few days passed in misery. We were low on food, and edible fruit was not very plentiful where we were camped. Now that we were close to the road, Jaime didn’t dare go out foraging. “Too risky,” he said. He told us that the army would likely send out an advance patrol before they moved.
The second day it rained hard and for most of the day we just sat in our tent, with nothing to do but sleep to escape the malaise. Jaime acted calm, but I could tell that he was going crazy inside. Tessa was not as stoic. She broke down crying at least a dozen times. The Amacarra tribe was the closest thing to family she had.
Early in the morning of the third day the rain finally stopped, and Jaime led us down the rugged terrain of the south side of the mountain near the highway. We needed to scout the pass to make our plans.
The road was covered on both sides by thick forest, which would be advantageous to us. The biggest question we faced was how to stop an army. Actually, we didn’t need to stop all of the trucks, just the ones in front, creating a traffic jam.
The problem was, anything obvious might look like an attack and surprise was vital. If four thousand soldiers dug in for battle, we were through.
For nearly an hour we crouched down in the jungle, looking out over the highway, away from the road, in case an army patrol drove by.
“How many trucks do you think there will be?” I asked Jaime.
“Many,” he said.
“Like how many?” I asked. “Twenty? Thirty?”
“Maybe two hundred. Or more.”
“Two hundred? How will we know what truck they’re being kept in?”
Jaime shook his head. “It will not be a simple thing.”
“I can find them,” Tessa said.
I turned to her. “How?”
“I can sense electricity. That’s how I knew you were electric when I met you. It’s the same way Nichelle sensed powers.”
“Nichelle could sense powers?”
“If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be able to feed off your electricity. Hatch once had us walk through the academy blindfolded to find the electric kids. Nichelle and I are really not that different.”
“Believe me, you’re different.”
“Personality-wise,” she said. “Nichelle’s all Goth and all that. But the scientists at the academy said we were similar in physiology. Nichelle was better at finding electricity than I was, but I can still do it. I just need to get closer than she did.”
“How close?”
“Maybe thirty feet.”
I looked at the lush jungle encroaching on the road. “That will work. We stop the convoy, then we’ll move along behind the trees until you feel something.”
“Then what?” Tessa asked.
“I shock the guards, we open the trucks, and we free my friends.”
“How do we stop the trucks?”
“The question is, how do we do it without causing suspicion.”
“Look,” Jaime said. “That sign.” He pointed to a yellow, diamond-shaped precaution sign that showed stones showering down on a road.
“Falling rocks,” I said.
“We could roll large rocks into the road,” Jaime said. “They would think it was a rock slide and not suspect us.” He pointed to a rocky crag jutting out from the jungle. “There are rocks up there.”
We followed Jaime back up the mountain. The terrace Jaime had seen from the road was littered with boulders from an earlier slide. Using a tree branch as a lever, we helped Jaime position a dozen or more large stones on the edge of the precipice.
“When they come, we will push the mountain down in front of them,” Jaime said.
“Or on them,” Tessa said.
“Just as long as we stop them,” I said. The terrace was also high enough that we could see the highway for several miles in either direction. “This is a good lookout.”
“Sí,” Jaime said, sitting down on one of the rocks.
I pointed down to where we had first descended. “Tessa and I will wait there on the opposite side of the highway. After you stop them, we’ll work our way down from behind the trees until we find them.”
“Then how do we get away?” Tessa asked.
I looked back over the highway. “If they’re chasing us, we’ll have to head down the mountain. It’s thicker jungle on that side. We’ll have a better chance of hiding and ambushing them.”
Jaime nodded with approval. “If we are separated, we will meet in Cuzco,” he said. “There is a small hostel near the Plaza de Armas, the town square. It is owned by a friend of mine and will be safe.”
“What’s the name of the place?” I asked.
“Hostel El Triumfo,” he said.
“El Triumfo,” I repeated, committing the name to memory.
Jaime grinned. “Yes. The triumph. If we make it, then it will be well named.”
I didn’t like his “if.”
*
By noon we had hiked back to our camp. We had a lunch of what Jaime had scavenged on the way back, mostly berrie
s and some weird pod fruit that tasted like boiled Styrofoam. We also had snails, which Jaime had pulled from their shells and eaten raw. Tessa and I both tried one. I gagged and she spit hers out. We decided to stick with the fruit.
As the day waned, Tessa went back inside herself, silently fondling the red bead necklace her mother had given her when they’d said good-bye. I understood her anger. It’s how I felt when Hatch took my mother. But I wondered if what had happened to her Amacarra mother had rekindled deeper feelings about the loss of her real family. I wouldn’t have been surprised.
Around eight o’clock Tessa and I were just lying in the tent when we heard Jaime talking.
“What’s he doing?” I asked.
Tessa sat up. “It sounds like someone’s out there.”
We crawled out of the tent. Jaime was standing near the radio. In front of him were two Peruvian men. Between them were three large packs and a duffel bag. As we approached, they turned to look at us.
“Who are these guys?” I asked Jaime.
“These are my amigos,” Jaime said.
One of them started to put out his hand to me, then stopped.
“Me electrocutará?” he asked.
“Espero que no.” Jaime turned to me. “He’s afraid you might shock him.”
“I don’t shock friends.” I looked the man over, then said, “I’m assuming you’re a friend.”
He put out his hand and said with a heavy accent, “I am Xavier.”
“And this is Pablo,” Jaime said, pointing to the other man.
“I’m Michael. This is Tessa.”
“Hermosa,” Xavier said, looking at Tessa. “Beautiful girl.”
Tessa didn’t smile. She looked at Jaime. “What’s going on? Why are they here?”
“We need more help. Sit down,” he said, pointing to the ground. We all sat. Jaime said to Pablo, “Necesito su mapa.”
The man retrieved a map from his backpack and unfolded it on the ground before us. Jaime pulled a small penlight from his pocket and shined it on the map. The words on the map were in Spanish, but I guessed it was a map of where we were.
“Our camp is here,” Jaime said, touching his finger to the paper. He slid it down toward the single red line denoting the highway. “This is where we put the rocks. And this is where we will stop the army. You will be here.” He pointed to a space across from the highway. “Your friends will be somewhere along this road. As you look for them, we will be watching you with binoculars. After you have found them all, you will go south through the jungle. To keep the army from following you, we will make a distraction over here.” He touched a place about a quarter mile from where Tessa and I planned to start.
“What kind of distraction?” I asked.
“My friends have brought three gun sentries like the ones I had at the camp. We will make them fire on the army. They will think they are being attacked from down there,” he said, touching the map. “While we will go back over the mountain and escape on the river, you will go south through the jungle as fast as you can go. In a few days we will find you and bring you to Cuzco.”
“How will you find us in the jungle?” I asked.
“With this.” He reached into the same backpack and brought out a small black iPod.
“An iPod?” Tessa said.
“It is like the one we gave you before,” he said to me. “This too has a GPS signal. It will tell us where you are. I will also give you a small radio. But I will not try to contact you right away. The army will be searching these mountains and listening for transmissions.”
“What if you’re caught?” Tessa said. “Then what will we do?”
“I have friends in Puerto Maldonado that will help you. They know the signal of your device.”
I looked at Jaime’s friends. They were looking at us intently even though I doubted they understood a word of what Jaime was saying in English.
“You sure you can trust these guys?” I asked.
“With our lives,” Jaime said. “They are proven. One more thing.” He walked over and picked up a backpack, then walked back to us. “They have brought us food.” Jaime dropped the pack between us.
“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you,” Tessa said.
“Muchas gracias,” I said to the men.
“Para servirle,” the older of the men said.
“Eat much,” Jaime said. “You will need your strength.”
I reached into the pack and brought out two Inca Kolas, a round of cheese, hard-boiled eggs, mini loafs of bread, some shish kebabs wrapped in foil, and some dip in plastic containers. We hadn’t had protein in days, so after drinking some of our colas we unwrapped the kebabs. The meat was dark and cold but tasty.
“This is good,” I said, stripping the meat off the skewer. “What is it?”
“Anticuchos de corazón,” Jaime answered.
“Anti-what?”
“Cow heart.”
Tessa grimaced. “We’re eating heart?”
“It’s meat,” I said. “What’s in here?” I lifted one of the plastic containers.
“Causa,” Jaime said. “It is famous in Peru. It has potatoes and avocados and tuna fish.”
“Jungle casserole,” I said. “Are you going to eat with us?”
“We have food here. Cuy.”
“What’s cuy?” I asked.
“Roasted guinea pig.”
“Knock yourself out,” Tessa said.
Tessa and I both ate until we were full. I had two eggs, half the container of causa, which I ate with my bread, two kebabs, and a banana, all of which I downed with a warm but delicious Inca Kola.
After we were full, we wrapped up everything we hadn’t eaten and thanked the men again. They were sitting in their own circle eating and talking quietly in Spanish.
“We’re going to sleep,” I said. “Buenas noches.”
“Good night,” Jaime said.
Tessa and I went back to the tent.
“That was good,” she said. “I wonder how long before the food runs out and we’re living off snails.”
“I’m afraid we’ll be eating snails very soon,” I said. “Let’s just hope we have my friends with us when we do.”
“Mr. Michael, Mr. Michael.”
I opened my eyes to see Jaime leaning over me. It was still dark. “What?” I asked groggily.
“The voice has signaled us.”
I sat up. “The voice?”
He nodded. “Come.”
I looked over at Tessa, who was still asleep, then climbed out of the tent and followed Jaime to the radio. Our camp was lit by nothing but the moon, and Jaime had even covered the radio dials with leaves. I didn’t see them at first, but in the shadows the other two Peruvian men were dressed and ready to go, standing next to their packs.
“How do they signal you?” I asked.
Jaime showed me a small blinking device that looked like a simple pager. “With this.” He turned on the radio and a voice immediately came over the speaker.
“Southern Cross,” a female voice said. “Do you read me? Southern Cross, do you . . .”
Jaime lifted the microphone close to his mouth and said in a soft voice, “This is Southern Cross.”
“Please confirm,” the voice said.
“Diez, uno, uno, uno, nueve, seis, dos.”
“Confirmed. Please receive this message. The army is on the move east on the PE-30C highway. I repeat: The army is on the move east on the PE-30C highway. Do you copy?”
“I copy,” Jaime said.
“Transmission complete,” the woman said. “Good luck.” The radio went dead.
He looked at me. “It is time to go.”
“I’ll wake Tessa,” I said. I went back to the tent. “Tessa.” She didn’t move so I lightly shook her.
She woke with a start. “What?”
“It’s time,” I said. “They’re coming.”
“Who’s coming?”
“The army.”
Tessa pushed her hair
back from her eyes, then sat up. “Let’s go.”
She pulled on her shoes then followed me out. Jaime and the other men were standing near the outside of the tent waiting for us. “Vámonos,” he said.
We followed Jaime down the mountain, moving quickly through the dark jungle. Jaime’s friends were fascinated by Tessa’s and my glow, and Jaime reminded us to pull our sleeves down as far as possible.
It took us nearly forty minutes to reach the stony outcrop—twice as long as it had taken in daylight. Except for a few black stratus clouds, the sky was clear and the stars shone like punctured holes in a black curtain. The tension around us was as thick as the darkness. Or maybe it was just fear. Something told me it might be the last night of my life. I shivered at the thought.
From the edge of the outcrop we saw them. The lights of the army’s caravan stretched on for miles, a long, dark snake, slithering steadily toward us, two abreast. It was the first time I fully realized how improbable our task was. I reminded myself that my friends were somewhere in that snake’s belly and we were their only chance of escape.
“Look at all those trucks,” Tessa said softly. “There’s got to be a hundred of them.”
“At least,” I said. I took a deep breath of the crisp night air. “How long until they reach us?”
“Maybe twenty minutes,” Jaime said.
“Then we better go.”
He slipped the pack from his shoulder and propped it up against a stone. As he dug through it, he asked, “Do you have your GPS?”
I took the iPod out of my pocket and showed him.
“Good. And here is your radio. The frequency is 1717. Can you remember that?”
“Seventeen, seventeen. The number of electric children,” I said. “Twice.”
“Sí.” His voice fell. “If you are captured, you must pulse and destroy the radio before it is found. Understand?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“When you have found all your friends, raise your hand to signal us. We will activate the sentries.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I will see you in Cuzco where?”
“Hostel Triumph near the town square.”