Torchwood: Exodus Code

private charters, especially one with the day’s mark on board. The two youngest passengers were asleep, their bodies draped across each other – a man and woman in their mid-twenties , probably university students, their backpacks stuffed into the overhead bins.
    A handsome middle-aged man who looked like an ex-rugby player sat alone at the rear of the bus with headphones on and his computer open on his lap. Of all the passengers, he looked the least like a tourist in his tan summer suit and blue shirt open at the collar. But his manner was relaxed, and Juan was sure he would not be a threat when the time came.
    Juan guessed this was a man who’d been on this trip before because he was paying no heed to the spectacular sea views as the minibus climbed up the mountain to the mesa. Perhaps, Juan figured, the man was a tour planner, checking out arrangements for a future group.
    Too bad the tour wasn’t going to end the way his travel books predicted.
    A man and woman in their early thirties were each reading guides to the Inca trails that Juan’s brother-in-law had sold them at the terminal before they boarded the bus. They seemed like an odd match. The man, who looked like he’d never left the beaten path a day in his life, was dressed from head to toe in hiking gear from an upscale outdoor catalogue; everything matched and fitted perfectly. The woman had long dark hair, a face of freckles and the palest white skin Juan had ever seen. She’d been sleeping on and off since they boarded. They had different accents, although one was as thick as the other’s. Juan thought the man might have been from Louisiana. He’d been to the casino once in New Orleans. The woman, he thought she might be Irish or Scottish. He wasn’t sure. Those accents sounded the same to him.
    Sitting directly in front of the couple was the morning’s mark, the one at the centre of today’s events, a middle-aged Brazilian male, trim and fit, the CEO of an international liquor distribution company and a man with close ties to power of all kinds. He was travelling with his third wife, also Brazilian, athletic, bronzed and beautifully enhanced, and she, Juan knew, was fronting the morning’s enterprise.
    She caught Juan’s gaze; he averted his eyes.
    The last passenger Juan considered was the one sitting directly behind him, a good-looking man, hard to peg his age, military grooming, dressed in desert combat fatigues, the insignia of a United Nations security force stitched on his shirt. Gazing out of the window, he was lost in his thoughts. He’d spoken to Juan in Spanish when he’d boarded the minibus at the last minute, squeezing through the closing doors as Juan was pulling away, making it impossible for Juan to insist he wait for the next one, which he should have.
    A soldier in the mix was not something Juan was comfortable factoring in to the carefully crafted plan. The soldier’s grey eyes had a lot going on behind them, Juan decided. He’d have to watch him closely when the time came.
    Two hours south of Lima, the van turned off the Pan-American highway and onto the narrower canyon road that began the climb to the Hacienda del Castenado. The dramatic change in the landscape perked up the sleeping passengers and the odd couple. The man in the back closed his laptop, popping out his external drive and slipping it into his pocket.
    Juan had only ever seen la Madre Montâna once from a plane, and when he had he’d thought it looked like an upside down bowler hat that the gods had carved out of the ground – the coastal road circumnavigating the narrow brim of the mountain. Driving to the hacienda, cut into the rock halfway up the mountain, was like driving in a trench. There was no space for error on either side, which meant that once the minibus reached this part of the journey there was no going back, no getting on or off until Juan came out the other side onto the terraced landscape of the Gran Tablazo de Ica and the hacienda.
    Once the van reached the canyon road, the surface evened out, widening a little to accommodate the rows of terraced olive and grape vines on one side and to provide a safe distance from the sea crashing beneath them on the other. On this first leg of the climb, every Pacific wave sprayed water over the van. The students laughed as if they were on a ride at Disneyland. The soldier had closed his eyes, the businessman was reading and the Brazilian couple was arguing. Let the poor sucker win this one,