Michael Vey 3 ~ Battle of the Ampere by Richard Paul Evans Page A

how little I really knew about her yet how close I felt to her. Hard times will do that. As I looked into her beautiful face, I wondered about Taylor. I wondered if the soldiers were hurting her. The thought of it made me twitch. I pushed it out of my mind. There was nothing I could do about it now, and there would be plenty of time to worry about that later. And now, in our nylon cave, for the first time in a long while, I felt safe. I closed my eyes and fell asleep.
    *
    The sun was already up when I woke. From the look of it, it had been up for quite a while. I felt more rested than I had in days. Tessa was already awake and looking at me.
    “Hey, handsome,” she said. “You gonna sleep all day?”
    “If I can,” I said, rolling over.
    “Sorry, not an option. You can sleep after you’re dead.”
    I grinned as I sat up. “Where’s Jaime?”
    “He went to find water. He said to give this to you for breakfast if you ever woke.” She handed me a box with a sweet roll and dried bananas and papaya. “You’re gonna love that sweet roll. Jaime called it castana bread. I was tempted to eat yours and tell you that we were eating monkey brains for breakfast.”
    I raked my hair back from my face. “Yeah? What stopped you?”
    “No idea,” she said.
    We folded up the tarp and had begun taking down the tent when Jaime returned.
    “ Buen día, hermanos ,” Jaime said. “I found water.” He handed me a wet, cold canteen. I passed it on to Tessa, who drank thirstily.
    “Oh, it’s cold,” she said.
    “ Sí . I found a spring.”
    She handed the canteen back to me. The water was not only cold, it was sweet and delicious. “Good water,” I said.
    “Good water in the Amazon if you can find it,” Jaime said.
    I screwed the lid back on the canteen. “What’s on the schedule today?”
    “We are close to a mountain,” Jaime said. “This afternoon we will set up the radio.”
    The thought of this encouraged me. “And talk to the voice?”
    “That is my hope,” Jaime said.
    “Then let’s get going,” I said. “Vámonos!”
    “Vámonos!” Jaime repeated.
    “I still hate that word,” Tessa said.
    We finished breaking down the tent, repacked our gear, then set off again. Even though the hike was mostly uphill, we all felt so much better having slept that it seemed easy. We reached the mountain’s peak around three in the afternoon. From our new vantage point we could see above the forest canopy.
    “This is the place we will set up our camp,” Jaime said.
    Tessa and I put up the tent while Jaime worked on reassembling the radio. When we had finished, Tessa went inside to rest and I went to see if Jaime needed any help. He looked up at me as I approached.
    “Anything I can do?” I asked.
    “ Sí. I need you to climb a tree as high as you can with this,” he said, holding out a coil of wire.
    I took the wire. “What is it for?”
    “It is the antenna for our radio. I would do it myself, but I weigh too much to reach the treetop.”
    “No problem,” I said. I surveyed the trees around us until Idecided on the one that looked most scalable, then I tied the end of the wire around a belt loop of my pants. “Wish me luck.”
    “Be careful,” Jaime said. “The branches may be wet. Do not fall.”
    “Not planning on it,” I said.
    The tree’s trunk was about four feet wide, and its bark was smooth and gray. I climbed up about fifty feet before the branches were too thin to support me.
    “How’s this?” I shouted down to Jaime, who was now standing with Tessa at the base of the tree looking up.
    He put his finger over his lips, then gave me a thumbs-up. I tied the wire as high above me as I could, then I climbed back down the tree. It was much darker below as the sun was beginning to set.
    “You’re practically a monkey,” Tessa said. “I’m impressed.”
    “I was always climbing the trees around my apartment,” I said. I turned to Jaime. “Sorry I shouted. I just forgot.”
    “We must be