“You mean ‘we,’ don’t you?” Barbara told him, and she felt more than heard his laughter.

“Of course. We.”

The Committee had become involved in Peru as it became apparent that an internal squabble was about to boil over into loss of life. On one side were the New Shining Path rebels, advocates who wished a return to the structure of the Incan empire and an overthrow of the official Peruvian government and the military cabal that propped it up. The rebels were led by their own aces: Lorra (or as she was more popularly known, Cocomama) and Curare, a frog-like ace-joker who exuded poison from his skin and tongue.

The official Peruvian government was headed by President Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, who was supported by the leaders of other South American countries as democratically elected, especially those presidents who worried about coups and uprisings themselves. The Peruvian government, of course, had the military complex behind them, a well-equipped force with weapons that, if not entirely modern, were more than capable of creating mass numbers of casualties, and President Fujimori’s recent speeches had made it clear that she intended to use that capability if she must.

The UN forces, with Jayewardene in command of the team, had landed two weeks ago, just as the first major battle erupted between the two forces, near this very place. The rotors of the UN helicopters had thrashed the foliage around the clearing, whipping greenery into a frenzied dance. Below, they could all see the narrowing no-man’s-land between a Peruvian army company and the rebel forces. Tinker’s armed drones were already hovering above the opposing lines, whining and threatening and drawing fire.

Babel was wielding her wild card before the first helicopter touched ground. Her ability to render speech incomprehensible had quickly sown confusion and fear into the ranks of both sides, visible in the uncoordinated reaction to the UN troops’ arrival. It was impossible for armies to fight when their commanders couldn’t make their orders understood, when officers couldn’t pass the orders down the line and sergeants couldn’t communicate to their squads, when no one knew what they were supposed to do or where they were supposed to go. Even radio communications seemed to have been spoken in some incomprehensible nonsense language. Compounding the confusion on both sides was the fact that the UN troops and the Committee aces with them didn’t have that problem and could still coordinate their actions quite effectively. The line of eight copters—two UH-1Y Venom choppers with the Committee aces inside, and six huge, double-motored MH-47G Chinook troop carriers—banked in like roaring, menacing raptors, the Venom “Super Hueys” spraying a line of warning machine-gun fire to chew up the ground between the two forces as they approached. Through the glass cockpit, Babel saw one of Tinker’s drones explode into a shower of plastic shards and baling wire from the “friendly fire” as Tinker cursed loudly behind her and the chopper performed a stomach-dropping turn and landed.