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.“Come with me.”Guzman put his empty cup on the floor and stood, still carrying the brandy bottle.He grabbed a battered and stained red beret from the desk, jammed it on his head at a rakish angle, and went outside again.Arkady followed him.They went down the steps to the jungle buggy, and Guzman dismissed the driver with a flick of his hand and a grunted order.“I’ll drive,” he said to the Cuban.Cruz climbed into the passenger seat once again.Guzman fired up the Jeep, jammed it into four-wheel drive and roared off through the camp, leaving it through the far gate.He slewed onto an almost invisible track and battered his way into the jungle.“In 1962 I was a young boy living in a village near here called Nohcacab.It was a small place of no account in the middle of the jungle.Once, in the nineteenth century, some Dutch and German settlers tried to farm the land.Most were slaughtered in the Caste Wars in 1848, but there was some small amount of intermarrying of which my family was the result.”“You seem to know a lot about it.”“It is my heritage, my legacy.I did a great deal of research, Capitaine.” He took a sharp turn onto an even narrower track, underbrush pressing in on either side of the Jeep as it bullied its way through the jungle.“In 1962, you were a young boy,” Cruz reminded the man.“In 1962, on Christmas Eve there was a terrible storm in the skies above our village.The elders thought it was a bad omen.We were Catholics, but in the jungle the old ways survived under the surface.Somehow Chac, the god of thunder and lightning, had been offended.To confirm this there was a sudden blaze directly above the village, clearly visible.An explosion.I saw it myself.I remember it clearly.We all thought it was the end of the world.”“What happened?”“The burning man,” said Guzman.“A figure hurtling from the sky wreathed in fire, like a comet coming to earth.He struck one of the houses, igniting the roof thatch even though it was soaked with rain.For a moment the people of the village did nothing, but eventually an elder stepped forward and went into the hut where the burning man had struck.I remember that everyone was very frightened but no one looked away.”A burning man, thought Arkady; he really is out of his mind.The Jeep came out into a clearing in the jungle.It seemed like it was a natural formation, a sloping meadow leading down to a narrow crease in the forest floor.Just at the head of the crease was a mound, fifty or sixty feet high, and a long cigar-shaped uplift of foliage behind it like a vine- and earth-covered trail left by some enormous digging animal.After Guzman’s little speech Arkady had imagined they were going to the remains of Guzman’s old village, but there was no sign of that here.The mound was regularly shaped, four-sided, and impossibly abrupt: the classic pattern of a small buried Aztec pyramid, obviously untouched by the curious hands of modern archaeologists.The mound was a blaze of golden blossoms and large leathery leaves, almost obscenely glossy, that grew on long trailing vines, thousands of them twisted together to form a woody, impenetrable barrier.“They are called yellow allamanda,” said Guzman as he pulled the Jeep to a stop.“Allamanda cathartica is the Latin name.”“Cathartica, as in laxative?” Arkady guessed.“The whole plant is poisonous.You’d swell up like a balloon if you were stupid enough to eat it.Then you’d foul your trousers for a day or two.Not fatal, though.”“You didn’t bring me out here to look at flowers,” said Arkady.“No,” said Guzman.He walked down through the grasses of the sloping meadow to the cigar-shaped hump of risen earth at the base of the pyramid.He extended a hand dramatically.“I brought you here to show you this.”Arkady joined him.He looked.“It looks like the grave of the giant in the beanstalk story,” said the Cuban skeptically.“Funny, yes, but partially true.” Guzman stepped forward and pulled back a section of camouflage netting.Beneath the netting was a jagged opening.The edges of the opening were shining silver.Aluminum.Guzman eased himself through the opening and disappeared.Hesitantly, Arkady followed.Guzman switched on a hissing Coleman gas lantern.It was like being inside the belly of a metal monster, steel ribs curving left and right.Wires, heavy with mold, hung everywhere.Guzman crept forward, his back hunched in the cramped space.“There,” he said, lifting the lamp so Arkady could see clearly.The object was almost fifteen feet long, tubular with stubby wings, held in some kind of heavy metal cradle at either end.“What is this?” asked Arkady, his voice low, fearing that he already knew the answer.“This is the midsection of the fuselage of a B-47 bomber, the one they used to call the Stratofortress.The item in front of you is one of Saddam Hussein’s hidden weapons of mass destruction.It was here all the time! Imagine that! Your president Bush was right all along!” Guzman bellowed with laughter, the sound tinny in the enclosed space.“It’s a bomb,” Arkady murmured.“It is more than that, Capitaine Cruz,” said Guzman.“It is a lever big enough to move the world.It is the future of your country, if you wish it.” The lunatic paused for effect.“It is a Mark 28 free-fall B28RN model 5, 1.45-megaton thermonuclear device.A hydrogen bomb.”“Pizda na palochke,” whispered Arkady.“We’re in trouble now
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