“How far out to El Yunque Mountain?” Krysty asked, shielding her eyes and straining to see farther ahead on the road.
“From San Juan? Thirty miles or so. The road is still good in most places with the right transportation, and travel by day is relatively safe from attack,” Jorge noted.
“Attack by whom?” J.B. asked.
Jorge looked at him as if he were dim-witted. “The chupacabras, of course. No sane man can be found out in the open once the sun goes down.”
“Thirty miles is a long way to walk,” Ryan stated. “Take at least two days’ travel time on foot.”
“Makes my feet hurt just to think about it,” Dean added.
“Well, I’m sure as hell not walking all the way out to El Yunque,” Luis muttered, obviously not happy to have been taken from the El Morro fortress and assigned to Ryan’s group. The sec man was standing in a patch of shade beneath the overhang of an old two-car garage next to the ruin of a house.
“You said the road is still good with the right transportation. You got a wag?” Ryan asked the two Puerto Ricans.
“Better than that, I have two wags,” Soto said with a flourish, and the portly man was proved correct when Jorge stepped past Luis and rolled up the garage doors to reveal two well-used, but operational Jeeps. Unlike some of the armored tanklike vehicles Ryan and the others had used for transportation before, these were stripped down little runabouts, both convertibles with roll-up canvas tops in case of inclement weather.
Soto rode with Ryan, Krysty and Dean, and J.B., Jak and Luis joined Jorge. Some dull red jugs of crude gasoline provided full tanks of fuel. For a sixty-mile trip, not much gas would be needed. Progress out of Old San Juan and into the newer part of the city was slow, but soon became easier once they turned onto the open highway going northward.
The heat was heavy, drenching the group in sweat, and a long two hours passed, with stops to move debris from the roadway.
“We’re making good time,” Soto said, turning to speak to Ryan and Krysty once the odometer revealed they had gone past the twenty-five-mile mark.
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the steering wheel of the Jeep twisted out of his hands. One of the front tires of the lead transport burst in an explosion, bringing the agile little vehicle to a sliding stop, angled across the road. Luis had been driving the second wag and was able to hit the brakes, stopping quickly enough to avoid a collision.
“What’ve we got?” J.B. grunted, stepping up to the first Jeep.
“Flat,” Soto said, getting up from his knees where he’d been looking at the tire.
“Is there a spare?” Ryan asked.
“No. No spares for either vehicle.”
“How about a jack?” Dean asked.
“That we have,” Jorge replied. “In the second Jeep, bolted underneath the back axle.”
“Then we need to go ahead and take a tire off the wag with the bum leg so we have a backup for the working Jeep,” Ryan said, pointing at the back of the first vehicle. “Guess we’re going to have to ride double the rest of the way. How long to swap tires, J.B.?”
“Since we’re just taking one off and not having to put on new ones, Jak and I can probably have us a spare hi ten minutes.”
“Do it.”
THE SUN WAS PAST the height of noon in the sky, but the temperature was still as hot as could be expected in the Caribbean. Unfortunately, soon after the spare tire had been obtained, a misty rain had begun to fall. The lone Jeep buzzed along on the two lanes of elderly paved blacktop, overcrowded and uncovered to the elements.
Still, even with the rain, a few hours of daylight remained when Ryan tapped Jorge on the shoulder.
“Que?”
“We camp here,” Ryan said, using a finger to point at a clearing to the left of the cracked black highway. A frame of a former roadside attraction was at the back of the pull-off area, but whatever message or offering it promised had long vanished to the elements. El Yunque Mountain loomed ahead of the Jeep in the distance. Leaning forward to the driver’s side, Ryan added, “Stop the Jeep up there under those trees, J.B., next to where the guardrail ends.”