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never saw the two-hundred-pound wooden crate that crashed into him, sliding along the guide rail above. The other SD man turned around just in time to see Rucker leap from where he was clinging to the cargo netting on the crate that had smashed his partner.
    As a doctor, it was hard for Deitel to watch Rucker land on top of the SD man and then punch him in the face repeatedly. As a German of good conscience, it was a guilty pleasure.
    Rucker stood up and waved to Chuy, sitting in the control cab for the cargo pulley system.
    T en minutes later the three were back on the flight deck as the Raposa was being refueled.
    â€œChamberlain is being detained by our friends,” Rucker told Deitel. “They’ll keep him on ice until we’re away.”
    â€œAnd the SD agents?”
    Chuy smirked. “Captain M’Benga makes the regular supply run to Île du Diable, the Devil’s Island prison in French Guyana. By the time those two wake up, they’ll be in the tender custody of the French authorities there, many of whom are war veterans who will be delighted to have boche guests.
    Rucker checked his watch. “Time to fly.”
    Rucker and Chuy exchanged a handshake where they grasped one another’s forearms instead of their hands.
    â€œGive Tracy a kiss for me,” Rucker said.
    â€œTake care, Fox.”
    Then they were off in different directions.
    â€œAnd your man . . . I mean, Mr. Lago? I mean Chuy,” Deitel said. He couldn’t get used to the familiarity these people insisted on. “Why isn’t he coming with us?”
    â€œHe’s on his way back to Rio. Hasn’t seen Tracy in three weeks, and it’s gettin’ on their third wedding anniversary.”
    The doctor and the pilot climbed back into the Raposa, and Rucker invited Deitel to take the co-pilot’s seat for the short leg to Austin.
    â€œYour government men take off time for such personal matters?”
    The plane secured and the signal from the tower green, the elevator carrying the Raposa rose through the external lock to the flight deck as Rucker completed his preflight checklist.
    â€œI guess. Maybe? Yeah? Don’t rightly know.”
    â€œYou and Mr. Lago—”
    â€œChuy.”
    â€œYou and Chuy—you are involved in this and you don’t work for your government?”
    Now it was Rucker’s turn to look a little confused. He goosed up the engines and the plane raced down the airstrip, dipping momentarily in the thinner air when it cleared the tarmac and then resuming its course for the capital city of the Freehold, located deep in the heart of Texas.
    â€œUs? Work for Austin? Doc, don’t be all rude.”
    An hour later
    Somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico
    D eitel was once again in the copilot’s chair and having difficulty engaging in a conversation with Rucker.
    â€œWe are told there is much poverty in the Texas Freehold,” he said.
    Rucker shrugged.
    â€œYeah. I mean, I guess. There might be. I don’t know that anyone keeps track of that,” he said. “Not polite to go nosin’ around in other people’s business.”
    Deitel was an educated man—the finest Prussian primaries and university, medical schooling at the prestigious Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, and plenty of travel through Europe and the African colonies. He considered himself well-educated. But nothing he’d read or heard about the Texas Freehold or the Propriedad de Brazil held exactly true. Not for the two countries and especially not for the people.
    Well, almost nothing.
    Deitel had arrived in Brazil expecting to find impoverishment and decadence. True, there was decadence—he’d arrived just in time for Carnival, which offended him on more levels than he could count. But Rio was as modern and prosperous a city as any in the growing Reich; its universities advanced, and its medical technologies rivaled—okay, in some ways were