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For three months after his idyllic afternoon with Selene, Joshua had worked with the e weapons, ammunition, and explosives He and Selene went over and over the plans of theValhalla until they both knew them by heart Finally, the day after his birthday, he took off with a Warao guide to see if he could get more information and supplies in Pedernales

It was his first trip out of the jungle since the night on theYucatan

They took a boat for soles to Pedernales, where he had been told he could safely gather additional inforainst theValhalla platform

The town lay at the tip of Punta Tolete, where a confluence of delta strea to a toithin reasonable distance, it was really notmore than basic survival necessities was crushed upon his arrival

The hub of civilization in the Delta A half a century ago, when oil exploitation on the adjacent Isla Cotorra had brought the petroleuh traffic and business and people ca local economy

By the mid-1970s, however, the oil fields had been played out, and the operating fir the locals to fend for themselves The town&039;s economy crashed, most of the transplanted people departed, and only es remained In recent years, speculators had reopened the operations, squeezing hard until crude oil began to flow yet again

Pedernales was reborn, but it remained a sickly child at best

Since the locals had not seen Keene in the area before, he was able to nized or asked inconvenient questions For all the villagers knew, he was another one of the yuppie ecotourists who ca by motorboat up the canos to look at the birds and the wildlife before returning to their expensive hole ordeal"

Except for a side trip to Isla Cotorra, Keene spent his ti to gain the confidence of the locals He did not co what he wanted, but he did discover that he would have to e On the South Ah-tech materials he preferred

He was not particularly perturbed

So - to rely on fancy gizht, didn&039;t work nearly as well in practice as it did in concept

After alrew anxious to get back

"Tih sure that his sarcasm was lost on the man, Keene offered to buy him a meal and a drink in a seedy seaside cantina that appeared to be the center of the town&039;s entertainreat stroke of luck, Keene found several disgruntled oil workers who had been fired fro paychecks, the rig workers were perfectly happy to talk with a man ould buy them as many cervezasmas frias as they wished to ih that he quickly put them at ease He discovered that, after theYucatan incident, Oilstar had hired one bastard of a new security chief who had overhauled all the rig procedures, cracked down on booze and drugs and cigarettes, and enforced discipline with no exceptions A veritablehis beer, Keene nodded syenuine Fro aboard theValhalla with Terris, the previous procedures had been laughably lax, but he wouldn&039;t have gotten along ith such rigid rules hi was over, the men had told Keene elled in his mind Given a few lucky breaks and a lot of determination, he was quite convinced, he could succeed in his plan to force Frik to sit up and take notice He had never trusted Frikkie Van Alman, and now he understood why The Oilstar el She was an expert manipulator with plenty of blood and blahter was just aat dawn in their inflatable boat, Keene rode back through the canos with his guide, a silent h Spanish to be understood, but chose not to speak ave up expecting a response from the Indian Painfully aware of how much he missed McKendry, he an the kind of yrations that had proven useful in the past

He had acquired so a rapped package of chocolates that the trade-post owner had sold him for an exorbitant amount of money Chocolate was coiu baffled Keene, but what did he care as long as they earned hiave him a sense of purpose, which he needed ht on the oil tanker, he had felt lost and empty without his partner and best friend Life had see of adventures when they were together

Not, he thought, that what he was doing noas dull

The whole truth was that he was the sort of oal, even if it drove him over a cliff Still, if not for the ministrations of Selene Trujold, he would have been unlikely to pick this particular obsession

He thought back to the night on theYucatanAgain, in his et shot twice and catapult backward off his bicycle onto the equipment-strewn deckbefore he hiht to find so the water, but without McKendry as his audience and straight ood huone AWOL since his recovery and tile

Around lunchtime, lulled by the boat&039;s movement and the early-June heat, Keene dozed off When he awoke, in theout at the to his Warao guide, they hauled up fishing baskets and nets and disappeared into the jungle

"Why are they so skittish?" he asked, hoping for an answer