Catalyst (Breakthrough Book 3)(49)

23





Russo was just approaching the Guyanese border when the man who both he and Brazil’s ABIN agents were searching for stepped off a plane in Puerto Rico.

For the second time in a week, Steve Caesare hailed a cab from outside the small airport. This time, however, his team remained to supervise the transfer of their equipment aboard a Beechcraft C-12 Huron. Based on two older Beechcraft variants, the C-12 was a thirteen seat, multi-use aircraft with primary duties of general transport and small-scale medical evacuations in other countries. It was the aircraft’s latter reputation that Caesare was counting on to help avoid undue attention while flying over a few unfriendly countries in South America.

Now resting on a private corner of the Mercedita Airport’s tarmac, the C-12 was quickly being refueled and prepared for its nonstop flight to Iquitos, Peru. The fifth largest city in the country by size, Iquitos was the largest city inside Peru’s tropical and seemingly endless rainforest.

Caesare knew their options still hadn’t gotten any better as he watched the palm trees zip past him from inside the taxi. He was deliberating the best time to break things to DeeAnn and decided it was too soon, knowing they still had another seven hours before reaching Iquitos. There was still a chance another scenario could present itself, but he was no longer holding his breath. Especially when the problem was neither DeeAnn nor Juan. It was Dulce.

He reached the research center in less than fifteen minutes and found DeeAnn exactly where he expected her to be. In Dulce’s man-made tropical habitat.

She was sitting with her back against the glass wall, playing a simplified game of tic-tac-toe with the gorilla.

In her hand, Dulce held a stick of bright green chalk and studied a large blackboard on the ground between them. The grid lines were preprinted on the board with X’s and O’s drawn inside. Not surprisingly, Dulce’s X’s looked like anything but X’s, when compared to DeeAnn’s. Her O’s were drawn as perfectly as possible as an aid for Dulce, who was practicing her manual dexterity.

Dulce heard Caesare’s footsteps first and tilted her small furry head, peering curiously down the concrete walkway. When she saw Caesare appear from under the shadowed overhang, the small gorilla immediately leaped to her feet and ran excitedly to the clear door.

Steve here! Steve here!

When he reached the door, Caesare smiled down at her and turned to punch the entry code into the keypad behind him. After a loud click, he pushed the heavy glass door open just in time to catch Dulce in his arms.

“There’s my sweetheart.” Caesare suppressed a muffled groan from the strain in his side and gingerly raised his left arm to rub her head.

The word sweetheart no longer produced the familiar rejection tone after Lee Kenwood had manually programmed the unknown word into IMIS’s vocabulary. The giant computer now translated the literal definition of Dulce’s own name as the word, but Dulce still managed to pick up on the affection in Caesare’s voice.

Under his dark black hair, he glanced down at DeeAnn, who was still seated on a patch of grass. “Everything okay?”

She stood up and forced a grin. “As okay as we’ll ever be.”

We go find friend. Dulce announced.

Caesare tilted his head back from Dulce’s wide smile. “You need a breath mint. How much celery have you eaten?”

Dulce looked at him curiously when IMIS failed to translate.

Caesare laughed and gave her a squeeze. “I’m joking.” He then winked at DeeAnn. “Kind of.”

DeeAnn’s grin seemed to grow more sincere. “She’s been practically jumping up and down since I told her.”

“I bet.”

She checked her watch. “Juan should be down in a few minutes. He’s bringing some equipment.”

“I figured as much.” Caesare glanced down at Dulce, who fell silent once again comparing the hair on her lanky forearm with his. “You look more Italian than I do,” he said to her.

DeeAnn watched with amusement and then answered his next question before he could ask it. “I’m not sure how she’s going to do, but so far so good.”

“Listen, Dee. I really appreciate you coming. I know it’s not easy. Considering your last trip, I-”

“I told you I hate it when you call me Dee.”

“What can I say? I have bad manners. My father seems to think I was born in a barn.”

DeeAnn reached down and depressed a button on the front of her vest, muting the microphone. “I suppose it just took a little time for me to come around. But I get it. This isn’t about us. Ali told me about what you guys found, and she’s right, there has to be a link to Dexter.”