Page 90 of Clive Cussler's Quantum Tempest
Cabrillo stood in the midst of the cheering audience still clapping and shouting. To blend in, he dressed in a traditional linen huipil shirt and slacks. He also wore a red bandana to hide his short-cut blond hair and a comms earpiece.
“Quite a stem-winder, from what I could tell,” MacD whispered in Cabrillo’s comms. “He’s got the magic.”
“Magic doesn’t make him bulletproof. We still clear?”
“Clear,” Linda Ross reported. A half dozen other operators reported clear as well.
“Wepps?”
Murph was at his weapons station on theOregonrunning the surveillance drone. “A couple of parrots and a toucan—just like on the cereal box.”
Juan glanced around the compound. His operators were well hidden and out of sight, as per Olmedo’s wishes. A half dozen of his crew and operators with Murph remotely operating a surveillance drone was hardly adequate for the president’s security detail, but the president was insistent on a very low profile.
Cabrillo and his team arrived on-site early and conducted a sweep of the grounds and facilities for explosive devices and other weapons of mass destruction but found nothing. Cabrillo reluctantly gave the president the go-ahead to begin the celebration.
With Olmedo’s speech ended and the applause still ringing, a signal was given and the musicians began to play a combination of traditional and local instruments, beginning with the deeply resonant beat of great wooden drums. Marimbas, guitars, and rattles followed suit.
The drumbeat signaled the sixty costumed dancers to form a circle. TheDanza de la Unidad, the Dance of Unity, was a riot of color and texture. The men and women both wore huipils and long, flowing skirts calledfaldas. The men’s shirts bore bold geometric patterns in deep reds, blues, and greens, while the women’s blouses were vibrant florals in bright yellows, reds, and blues. All were adorned with various bracelets, mirrors, feathers, and metal ornaments. Most important, the dancers all wore carved wooden masks symbolizing deities, animals, and mythological creatures.
The dancers turned rhythmically in synchronized steps, twisting their bodies and raising their hands and arms in ancient, symbolic gestures. After the first turn, the circle separated and re-formed into three concentric circles moving in unison, the second circle turning inthe opposite direction of the inner and outer ones, like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope.
Olmedo smiled and clapped along with the audience as the dance progressed.
A small girl in native garb approached him on the dais and held out her tiny hand. Utterly charmed, Olmedo took it and was led down the few steps and into the center of the dancing circles.
The audience cheered and clapped as Olmedo entered the innermost center. An old woman, a tribal elder, hobbled up to the president, took one of his hands, and began showing him a few simple dance steps. Her bright, toothless smile and twisting skirt encouraged the president to mimic her movements. He raised his hands, swayed his hips, and imitated the simple box step his guide provided. The audience cheered and laughed.
At that moment, the old Lenca chief approached the president. He carried an unusually heavy ceremonial mask exquisitely carved from black mahogany. Cabrillo wasn’t overly concerned. His team had closely examined the oval mask before the festivities began. But Juan suddenly wondered if they could have possibly missed something. He needed to get closer to the president.
A translator had explained to Juan that the mask’s exaggerated, almond-shaped blue eyes represented vigilance, and the soft red, slightly open mouth symbolized peace and honesty. Most striking was the prominent golden sun in the center of the mask representing the president’s ability to safeguard the Lenca community and guarantee a prosperous future.
Olmedo could not have been more pleased and promised that the deeply symbolic mask would hang in a place of honor in his presidential office.
The chief held up the mask and Olmedo accepted it with humble gratitude. The chief gestured for him to put it on. The audience went wild again—they were nearly frenzied.
Cabrillo began to wonder if some of them were high on something other than enthusiasm. President Olmedo was definitely scoring a home run with these folks, Cabrillo told himself, and rightly so. Thepresident seemed to genuinely enjoy being with his people, and they obviously relished his presence.
Once his mask was secured, Olmedo resumed his dance steps inside the turning circles.
?
Vargas stood on the hilltop above the hospital, hidden beneath a canopy of trees, his eyes fixed on Olmedo and the mask just attached to the president’s face.
Without looking away from his binoculars, Vargas growled at the technician by his feet, a remote-control unit firmly in the man’s grasp.
“Arm the unit.”
“Yes, sir.”
The tech’s left thumb clicked off the safety as his other thumb hovered over the red firing switch.
?
Juan scanned the audience now also shuffling and dancing to the native music. They were pressing in close like sardines in a crowded tin.
Cabrillo turned his eyes back toward the president. One by one, the Unity dancers came forward from the inner circle and approached Olmedo, and improvised a smaller dance with him in the ever tightening Unity circle. Each dancer spun a few moves, then placed a thin beaded Unity necklace around his neck, then returned to the larger, moving circle.
Juan felt the pressure of shuffling bodies surge forward behind and in front of him as the Unity circle pressed in closer and closer. He wasn’t surprised because the point of the dance was to demonstrate the closeness and unity of the people to its leader. But the press of bodies only added to Cabrillo’s growing sense of urgency to get closer to Olmedo, and he began inching his way forward against a wall of resistance.
