Abdullah nodded in approval. “Follow me, Ramón.” He walked for the elevator, inserted a key for the lower floor, and stepped back. The car ground down to the restricted basement.

“You know our world will change now?”

“Yes.”

“And you are prepared for whatever changes this might bring?”

“What changes do you anticipate?” the soldier asked carefully.

“Well, for one I suspect this place will soon cease to exist. We can’t expect them to sit by idly. The world will come apart, I think.”

Ramón nodded. His one good eye blinked. “Yes, I think you are right.”

The bell clanged and Abdullah stepped from the elevator. The laboratory door was closed at the end of the hall. He eyed it without approaching.

“We must clear the surrounding jungle of any possible threat,” he said absently. “There is only one base within a hundred-mile radius of the plantation. I want it occupied immediately.”

“The Catholic mission.”

“Yes. I want it under our control. Send a team to neutralize the compound. And I want it done cleanly. You will attack the station tomorrow night.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Leave me.”

Ramón retreated into the elevator and the door closed.

APART FROM Ramón and Abdullah, only Yuri Harsanyi even knew of the lower floor’s existence. And Yuri knew it intimately, like a mouse would know its hole in the wall.

He wore a white lab coat, starkly contrasting with his jet-black hair that rested raggedly above his otherwise plump, pale face. “Stocky” was a word he’d decided appropriately described his build. Stocky and large. Six foot three, to be exact. It was why he tended to bend over the tables, and now his body seemed to have taken a liking to the posture.

The nature of his mission demanded he remain hidden in the basement at all times, wandering hunchbacked between the white laboratory and his adjoining living quarters. The floor housed several other rooms, but Yuri had been out to the perimeter rooms only twice. His own quarters provided all the comfort he could expect here. Besides, as far as he was concerned, the more time he spent in the laboratory, the sooner he would finish his task. And the sooner he finished his task, the sooner he would be off to begin his new life, wealthy this time.

The walls about him were white. Four workbenches holding two lathes and two molding devices lined the walls. To Yuri’s right, a door led to his living quarters, and next to the door, Plexiglas sealed off a ten-by-ten room. A single chrome refrigerator-sized safe stood in the room’s center, facing a single table loaded with computers.

But Yuri’s focus rested on one of two steel tables dead center on the lab’s concrete floor. Brackets on each table gripped oblong objects—one the size of a football, the other twice that size. Both sat with opened panels, staring dumbly at the ceiling. Bombs.

Nuclear bombs.