Free Little Tiny Teeth by Aaron Elkins Page A

exactly what’s up,” Phil told them. “ Un problema grande.”
    Phil was something of a language prodigy. He was impressively fluent in Spanish, as indeed he was in several other languages. Gideon could generally get along in Spanish and a few other languages if the other person spoke slowly enough, but John was hopeless. His existing repertory consisted of si, no, por favor, gracias, buenos dias, and bueno, mostly gleaned from old Westerns. Currently, he was working on “ Me llamo Juan.”
    “What’s the problem?” John asked.
    “Well…” Phil shook his head, perplexed. “I didn’t exactly understand all of it.”
    “ You didn’t understand it?” Gideon echoed.
    “Well, I thought I understood it, but I must have gotten something wrong. Some kind of local slang or something. I thought he said… wait, let me go talk to the guy.”
    Two minutes later he was back. “No, I understood it, all right. Condors. Vultures. There’s a mob of them circling over the Iquitos airport. It’s too dangerous to try to land.”
    “Vultures!” John exclaimed. “Jesus, Phil, where are you taking us?”
    “The thing is,” Phil explained, “there’s a garbage dump near the airport, and when the wind is right, the smell wafts over that way and brings the vultures. There are also some chicken and pig farms around the airport, and that draws them too. Not to worry, though,” he added cheerily. “They’re going to try to scare them off with cannon fire. Shouldn’t be too long.”
    “Vultures. Cannon fire.” John rolled his eyes, appealing first to the ceiling and then to Gideon. “Can I please go home now, Doc?” Since the first day they had known each other, Gideon had been “Doc” to John, and they’d never gotten around to amending it.
    “No, you can not go home,” Gideon said severely. “You wouldn’t want Marti to find out you can perfectly well take care of yourself on your own, would you?”
    With an indefinite length of time to wait, they split up. Gideon tried unsuccessfully to call Julie in Cabo San Lucas and then went looking for an Internet cafe, John went back to the food court to do some more grazing, and Phil went back to sleep.
    There was no Internet cafe, but the bar, which had opened at five, had a few computers set up along one wall. No charge, but order something to eat or drink, and you could use one of them for as long as you could make your order last. Gideon got a good, fresh orange juice and a cup of weak but bitter coffee, and tapped out an e-mail to Julie.
    Hi Sweetheart,
    We’re all safe and sound in Lima – not too bad a trip, although we’re a little grubby by now. We’re waiting out a slight (I hope) delay on the Iquitos leg. You wouldn’t believe it if I told you the reason. It’s six A.M. here – nine in Cabo, I guess – and I just tried calling you, but you weren’t in the room. Probably at the spa getting your nodes uncrystallized. Don’t overdo it now. I really admire your nodes the way they are.
    Nothing else to say, really – I just wanted an excuse to “talk” to you. I love you and I’m already missing you, and I’ll see you next week. Have a great time, honey.
    XXX Gideon
    With a sigh he turned to his e-mail inbox.
    It took a couple of hours, but the artillery blasts did the job. The vultures flew away, the flight loaded up and left, and by ten A.M. – about the time the attendants were handing out welcome trays of warm, tasty ham-and-cheese sandwiches, orange juice, more bad coffee, and rum cake – the plane had left the coastal plain behind, had cleared the craggy, snowy peaks of the Andes, and was beginning its long descent to the Amazon Basin and Iquitos. Gideon pressed his face to the window.
    He had flown over other jungles, in Central America and the South Pacific and Africa, but he’d never seen anything like this. For minute after minute the flat, gray-green mat stretched to the horizon in every direction, broken only by meandering loops of