The taxi jostled and bumped along the same poorly surfaced roads the bus had traversed earlier in the day.
By now, the Dream was out to sea, leaving Mattie landlocked and on her own. They all understood that if the holograms failed completely, Mattie was going solo.
“You all right?” Charlene asked, but no sound came out of her mouth. They’d hoped to be able to use cell phone technology for their voices. Perhaps they were out of cell range as well. Was the mission over before it began: one Fairlie against the foreign Overtaker force that had kidnapped Dillard? What chance did Mattie have without their help?
“Daa—a—ng it!” she said. Her voice! It sounded digital and supremely electronic, but it mirrored closely what she’d actually said.
The driver rattled off something in Spanish, swiveling his head toward the backseat. His eyes went so wide they appeared ready to fall out of their sockets. He had picked up three young ladies. But there was only one girl in his backseat. The taxi swerved toward the littered shoulder of the road. He gained control just in time, fishtailing the vehicle back onto the asphalt. Speaking a blue streak, which no doubt included a good deal of cursing, he aimed the rearview mirror lower. Then he crossed himself, fetched a medallion hanging on his necklace, and kissed it.
Charlene understood why: she could see her hand again. Her arm. Her legs. In all her DHI 2.0 hi-def brilliance. She had Philby to thank, but how had he…?
Her eye was drawn to a small video camera mounted on the inside of the windshield, aimed into the backseat. If someone tried to rob or harm the driver, they would be recorded. Philby had caught the number on their cab, hacked the taxi’s security system, and hijacked the camera’s bandwidth to project both her and Amanda, who now sat next to her, looking equally real.
The driver—poor man—appeared to be suffering a stroke.
Charlene spoke the first thing that came to mind. “How much longer, please?” She tried again in Spanish. What she actually said was, “Time is long, please.” But the driver got the message. He answered by pointing to the dashboard digital clock and seem to indicate twenty minutes.
Charlene smiled and leaned back. She’d have to remember to thank Philby if she ever got back to the ship.
* * *
The taxi dropped them off well short of Aventura’s gate. Charlene did not want to announce their arrival. Mattie, who carried Charlene’s iPhone, input the driver’s number, making arrangements to be picked up in this same place if and when she called. All three girls thought the same thing at the same time: With any luck, we’ll have one more passenger.
Charlene’s and Amanda’s DHIs had vanished and reappeared several more times in the back of the cab. Their images were fairly strong at the moment, thanks to the security cameras in use by the park. This was confirmed as they ducked behind a rock to discuss strategy, and the two girls went into DHI shadow. Their voices remained.
“We have two possibilities,” Charlene’s voice told Mattie. “The lodge here at the bottom of the mountain, and the cabin at the top.” Philby’s Google Earth reconnaissance had revealed only the two nearby structures for a very long distance in any direction. If Dillard had been nabbed, he should be found in one of them. If injured, or somehow left behind by the group and missed by the staff that had searched for him…well, that possibility didn’t seem too likely.
According to Philby, the various cameras in use were not monitored in real time. Instead, they were connected to a VCR that dated back to the 1980s. If anyone broke into the compound, they would be caught on videotape, in grainy black-and-white. Fortunately, the same video system was being used to record televised Costa Rican soccer games, which had given Philby a way to drill into the television’s satellite system to determine its status and hijack the cameras.
What it meant for the girls was that no security personnel were sitting at a video monitor in the middle of the Costa Rican hill country awaiting a break-in. The girls were free to approach the compound however they wanted.
Entering proved easy. Charlene’s DHI passed through the chicken-wire fence. Finding the front gate chained and padlocked, she located a side door, removed the wooden crossbar used to lock it, and let in Mattie and Amanda.
They faced three structures: two side buildings, small and dark, used for storage; the third, the main lodge where Aventura visitors ate lunch and shopped in the gift store. Big enough to hold several hundred people at picnic tables beneath a thatched roof, its open-air windows currently glowed with the bluish flickering light of a running television, a fact confirmed by the rapid-fire Spanish of a sports announcer.