Calm. Jes+|s said, and tapped the vehicle into gear.

Not a good sign.

The track up to the manor house was a dirt road but one so meticulously maintained that the ride was as smooth as the autobahn, and the heavy SUV kicked up just a trace of dust. Overhead a hawk spotted some prey on the ground, tucked its wings, and plummeted earthward.

Maxine Espinoza greeted Jorge at the top of the steps leading to the front door. His stepmother was from Paris, and had once been an employee of their embassy in the Cerrito section of Buenos Aires. His real mother had died three weeks after being violently tossed from a horse when Espinoza was eleven. His father had waited until he was out of military college before considering remarrying, though there had been a string of beautiful women over the years.

She was only a couple of years older than Jorge, and had the old man not met her first he would have dated her in a heartbeat. He didn't begrudge his father a young wife. He had honored Jorge's mother by waiting so long, and by the time Maxine came into their lives it was good to have a woman to blunt some of the General's rough edges, which had grown sharper over the years.

She wore riding clothes that showed bearing two more sons for the General had done no permanent damage to her figure.

You are not hurt? she asked, her Spanish laced with a French accent. He suspected the French women made their second language sexy no matter what it was. Maxine could make Urdu sound like poetry.

No, Maxie, I'm fine.

Raul approached, and she noticed his bandages. She blanched. Mon Dieu, what did those pigs do to you?

They blew up a helicopter I was in, se+|ora. Jimenez spoke to his shoes as if he wasn't comfortable around such wealth or the attention of his commander's wife.

The General is very upset, Maxine said, linking her arms though those of the young officers. The inside of the house was airy and cool, with a painting of Philippe Espinoza wearing the colonel uniform he had sported two decades earlier dominating one wall. He is like a stallion denied the mare. You will find him in the gun room.

Jorge saw three men conversing in one corner of the entry hall. One turned when they entered. He was Asian. In his fifties. He was a man Espinoza didn't recognize. Lieutenant Jimenez made to follow his Major, but Maxine would not relinquish his arm. The General wishes to see him alone.

The gun room was at the back of the house, its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the yard, with its stream and waterfall. Hunting trophies hung from the walls. The head of a giant boar had the place of honor above the fieldstone fireplace. There were three separate glass-fronted gun cabinets and one locked safe where the General kept his automatic weapons. The floor was Mexican tile covered with Andean rugs.

This was the room where punishment had been meted out when Jorge was growing up, and over the smell of leather furniture and gun oil he detected the scent of his own fear that had lingered over the decades.

General Philippe Espinoza stood just under six feet, with a shaved head and shoulders as broad as a hangman's gallows. His nose had been broken when he was a cadet and never fixed, giving his face a masculine asymmetry that made it difficult to focus on his eyes. Being able to stare down others was just one of the tools he had used to thrive during the dictatorships of the 1970s and '80s.

General Espinoza, Jorge said, coming to attention. Major Jorge Espinoza reporting as ordered.

His father was standing behind his desk, leaning over, as he studied a map. It looked like the Antarctic Peninsula, but Jorge couldn't be sure.

Do you have anything to add to the report I've read? the General asked without looking up. His voice was clipped, abrupt.

The Americans have yet to cross the border, at least not in their RHIB. Patrols have turned up no sign of it on either bank of the river. We suspect they sank it and extracted overland.

Continue.

The helicopter pilot they kidnapped says the team leader was named Juan, another called Miguel. The leader spoke Spanish with a BA accent.

But you are certain they are American?

I saw the man myself. He might speak Spanish like us, but he Espinoza paused, trying to find the right words had that American look.

The senior Espinoza finally looked up. I attended their special School of the Americas, same as Galtieri, only years later. The instructors at Fort Benning all had that look. Go on.

There was one thing I left out of my report. We discovered the wreckage of an old blimp. The Americans found it first, and it looks as though they spent time examining it.

A faraway look crossed the General's face. A blimp. You are sure?

Yes, sir. It was the pilot who recognized the type of aircraft.

I recall when I was a young boy a group of Americans flying across the jungle in a blimp. They were treasure hunters, I believe. They went missing back in the late 1940s. Your grandfather met them at a reception in Lima.

They're found now. When the thieves stole our helicopter, they landed near the crash site as if they knew of it. I think they discovered it on their way to the logging camp.

And you say they examined the wreckage?

Judging by the footprints, yes, sir.

Not something disciplined commandos would do?

No, sir. Not at all.

Jorge took it as a good sign that his father sat. The calm exterior which masked his anger was slowly giving way to something else. Your performance in this matter is beyond reprehensible. I would almost say it borders on criminal negligence.

Uh-oh.

However, there are things you aren't privy to at the moment that mitigate the situation somewhat. Plans that are known only at the highest levels of the government. Soon your unit will be sent south, and it wouldn't do to have its most popular officer in custody. And what I put the official report of the incident will depend on how well you perform in an upcoming mission.

General, may I ask where we are to be deployed?

Not yet. A week or so and you will understand.

Jorge straightened. Yes, sir.

Now, go fetch your Captain Jimenez. I think I have something for you to do in the meantime.

The Silent Sea

Chapter TWELVE

WHILE THE OREGON HEADED SOUTH UNDER THE command of Linda Ross, Cabrillo and Hanley flew north on a commercial flight to Houston, where the Corporation kept one of a dozen safe houses in port cities all over the globe. Each was loaded with just about anything a team could need. They considered this one a fairly central place for their search of the airship's crew.

By the time they reached the town-house condominium in a generic development twenty miles from the city center, Eric Stone and Mark Murphy had done the necessary legwork, or finger work, as the case may be, since the two were virtuosos when it came to Internet research.

As Murph liked to boast, I've never met a firewall I couldn't douse.

Unlike some of the other Corporation properties the penthouse in a Dubai high-rise was as opulent as any five-star hotel the Houston safe house was spartan. The furniture looked like it came from catalogs, which it had, and the d+!cor was mostly cheaply framed prints of nature scenes. The only thing that set it apart from the four hundred identical units in the neighborhood was that the walls, floor, and ceiling of one of the bedrooms were lined in inch-thick steel. The door, though it looked normal, was as impenetrable as a bank vault's.

Upon entering, Max made certain that the room hadn't been breached in the three months since it had last been checked. He added batteries to an anti-eavesdropping device kept in storage and swept the entire condo while Juan opened a bottle of tequila and added ice from the bag of sundries they'd picked up at a convenience store on the drive in from the airport. Only when they were assured the place was clean did he connect his laptop to the Internet and place it on the coffee table in the living room.