Free Little Tiny Teeth by Aaron Elkins

had perhaps been inadvertently overlooked, and similar contraband that might be aboard.
    Which was where Vargas and the Adelita came in.

FIVE
    It is an axiom among airport personnel in Iquitos that Yanquis are a cranky and irksome lot. There may or may not be something to this, but in fairness it should be pointed out that nobody arriving in Iquitos from the United States is likely to be at the top of his form when he gets there. There are no direct flights to Iquitos from anywhere in the United States. To reach it, one must fly first to Lima and then change planes for the flight to Iquitos. The problem is that while almost every incoming flight from the States to Lima arrives between eleven P.M. and midnight, nothing leaves for Iquitos or anywhere else until six-thirty in the morning. This means that already flight-weary through-passengers generally spend the night in the airport, inasmuch as the two-hour customs and immigration hassle they went through upon arriving, and the hour or so that would be consumed in getting to and from a hotel, would leave something like an hour and a half for sleeping (or trying to sleep) before being roused by a four A.M. wake-up call, amounting to something closer to torture than rest.
    And when you’ve arrived in Lima by way of a round-trip, bargain-basement $599 itinerary all the way from Seattle, Washington, there are a few additional catches. John, Phil, and Gideon had boarded an American Airlines flight to Dallas at six A.M. the previous morning, from where they’d flown to Miami, and then finally on to Lima’s Aeropuerto Jorge Chavez. By the time they cleared customs in Lima they’d been in transit for twenty hours and they looked and felt it: grungy, stubble-faced, and weary. To make things worse, the chairs at Jorge Chavez are famous for being few in number and extraordinarily uncomfortable for sleeping.
    Still, four hours later, awaiting departure for Iquitos, they were again in reasonable spirits. Phil was a world-class sleeper. Within fifteen minutes of arriving at the airport proper, he had been snoozing away in a corner of the polished floor on a $1.59 plastic air mattress purchased from a Seattle-area G.I. Joe’s for this express purpose. A fair number of other experienced old hands were already doing the same, paying no attention at all to the nighttime floor-polishers moving slowly among them.
    As for John and Gideon, they were both enthusiastic trencher-men, and there was an all-night food court at the airport at which they had spent their last couple of hours. John had been joyfully surprised to find that it included a McDonald’s, a Papa John’s, and a Dunkin’ Donuts, and he had happily indulged himself in the kind of fats-and-sugars orgy that was strictly verboten on the Lau home table. He had proclaimed the McDonald’s cuarto del libro every bit as good as what you got at home, and the donuts an acceptable facsimile. Gideon went to the nearby Manos Morenas counter to try his first Peruvian meal and also pronounced it good: marinated chicken brochettes and salsa on a bed of chewy hominy, accompanied by thick slices of boiled potato that had been fried to crisp the surfaces. Milk shakes de chocolate from McDonald’s and picarones from Manos Morenos – wonderful-smelling, deep-fried fritters that looked like onion rings but tasted like pumpkin – satisfactorily finished off the meal for both of them.
    At six o’clock the three of them proceeded to the departure lounge for their hour-and-a-half LAN Peru flight to Iquitos, refreshed and upbeat, only to find that they weren’t yet out of the woods. They were met with a burst of noise: a long, excited announcement in Spanish. Too rapid-fire for Gideon to understand, but the distressed faces and thrown-up hands of the other passengers told him that the news wasn’t good.
    “What’s up?” he asked Phil. “Please, don’t tell me there’s a delay. I need a shower fast.”
    “Unfortunately, yeah, that’s