Chapter 24 - General Suarez

   Panic and Vlad liked walking around the town. Seeing the sights and the lay of the land, both physically and metaphorically. Panic got along famously it seemed, with the man and his family that made and sold what we called the burritos. Panic was right about the tapirs for meat animals, but my nose led me to pig shit. Literally. I grew up on a working farm and ranch, and no other fecal matter collection smells quite like pig shit in any kind of bulk.

   We stayed on the plane in the evenings. We could use the shower and sink liberally now, with ready access to fresh water for the tanks. And, with a discharge ditch. The plane has food of its own, as well as boxes of rations for the pilots. Panic remembered freeze dried rations from his military days, and actually likes the stuff. It must be nostalgia, the stuff isn't that great. I've definitely had it before. The packs are light and thin, and keep nearly forever.

   If you buy the hunters and hikers version in the stores or even online? You're spending an arm and a leg for the food that keeps. Panic found a website where you can get the military surplus stuff. He was excited to find out "his" rations, that he had known back in his youth in the military? Were now surplus. The older it is, the lower the price. As long as you don't go far enough back that its a collectors item. Panic can rattle off a list of the 8 different meal packs from his series he knew.

   He was tickled pink to find them online, and the price was now low. Not old enough to have started degrading in any serious way, but old enough its cheap. His series, is just over three bucks a meal. That's the single meal price, too. Most people get the eight pack, and the price goes just under three per pack. But, if you get the "88" deal, which is of course what he does... you get eight boxes in a larger container. Each containing all 8 styles. Sixty-four is easily a month's supply of food. More than enough for just him. With both of us in mind, though. Which is the way he thinks and plans, naturally. That's thirty-two for each of us, per month if we had to get into it.

   He bought a couple each month, and I know what the shipping box looks like. He now has the damn things stacked up in the bank building he converted into his gun store downstairs, and our open apartment upstairs. He keeps a couple boxes at the camp as well. We can grab an eight pack to go for a couple day hunting or hiking trip out into the deeper state game lands, and between that and what else he takes, well. Food isn't a problem. The only degradation for his where time took its toll at his price point? The powdered drinks are a little clumpy. You can't just rip where indicated and tap the powder into water to use it. You open the pack carefully, and dump the powder and little clumps in.

   Its weird to eat "meatloaf" for an entree, and its just what looks like those little sugar wafers in a vacuum sealed thin pouch. Gone are the Sterno flame little metal cans. That's world war two technology. Its chemical heat now. You break a little container without opening it, and you drop it immediately into the water you dump into the foil pouch you break the seal on. It chemically boils the water quick. There's little legs that fold out to hold the pack upright for this. While your hot entree boils then cools down to where you can eat it, you get to sort out all the other stuff. You just fill the package after you dump it out to the line with water. Open and dump your thin wafers in, and voila. You take out your coffee water just before the entree wafers go in, into another littler foil pouch and there's your hot steaming, if instant, coffee.

   Dessert is always some kind of little candy bar. Some of them are obviously famous name little candy bars, with military packaging. There's little side things, too. Pack of nuts, trail mix, jerky, maybe a granola bar. The more people eating the things for a meal? The more you get to trade around. The "ham" entree, has the granola bar I like. The "meatloaf" entree, has the trail mix he likes.

   Taste? Not as bad as you might think. Its more than edible. And if you close your eyes and spoon the fluffy result into your mouth without looking? Its definitely tasting like what its supposed to be. Reminds me of a salty version of hospital food. I mean, how hospitals manage to get sliced turkey and gravy that doesn't really taste like, well... turkey and gravy? Is beyond me. Bland beyond belief. Our joke for hospital cuisine, is that if they fed you properly, you wouldn't get better and want to leave. And hospital food? No sugar, no salt, no... nothing. Really bland. This tastes like that, but with extra sugar and extra salt in it. So, like that.

   Panic certainly doesn't have to eat canned beef stew, I'll cook the real thing for him. But he still does. Its that taste. Not bad, but not good. A little saltier than normal.

   The pilots have boxes of newer and higher end versions of this. They might have to wait on the plane for an extended period of time. They also have some canned goods. But, after the fresh stuff is eaten first, then onto the microwaveable and canned goods. Then, they get into the freeze dried packs. Our brimming full diesel tanks Vlad had us prepare with, run a little generator. Panic asked, the pilots said its not even touching the fuel tanks to run it as much as they want.

   In flight, the turbines turn big generators, so there's electricity out the ass. Sitting? The generator will run on full throttle, if you want everything on like in flight. But, if you're in standby mode? It idles quiet. Little courtesy lights, minimum electronics running for the pilots. They're in minimum standby mode. Then, the little courtesy lights can be shut off, and you only need one or two near you. Every once in a while, the generator fires up and idles a few minutes. Batteries topped up again. They said in the event of being trapped somewhere? You can go for quite a while like this.

   So for a couple days milling around, we brought back things for the pilots. Like fresh fruit, fruit juice, fresh food and jerky and coffee. He hired a guy with a little wooden home made horse cart, to pack stuff he wanted to take home to the plane. For eating out? What passes for a restaurant, is a tin shack with home made picnic tables. The drive through establishments are the street cart vendors, or they've built a little shack about the size of something you wait for a bus under.

   Panic speaks Spanish fairly well, so he knows everything. I learned the drill quick. If he won't tell us what it is, and just says try it after diving in himself? I just try it. In such a manner, we had snake and fish and reptile dishes. Great. I'm eating snake and lizard. God help me, it tasted good. Their potatoes are more variable and different from what I'm used to, but its just a novelty. I can't identify most of the fruits and vegetables, but what the hell.

   Panic was excited to find a guy hawking freeze dried military packs of food. He bought one, and was amazed. Two entrees for the meal, each bigger than his at home. A huge number of add water to the powder little packs. Lots of little add on packs. It was like what I was used to hunting and hiking? But, a couple meals all put into one pack. These things are so thin and light, but reconstitute into so much, its ridiculous. Vlad identified the cryptic lettering. He said they were his version of what Panic described. Surplus Russian military. But? This was the special issue cold weather rations. Extra calories for being above the arctic circle.

   So, there's boxes of these things going home with us, so he can show Little Robbie and Skykid what man sized rations look like. Vlad said he can get these online for not much more than his own. Which has Panic as excited as a little kid on Christmas eve. And I have to admit it. Taking these hiking or hunting into the deeper boonies where we live on the edge of the biggest patch of Pennsylvania state game lands our state has to offer? Bigger meals, less size to pack.

   We were initially not worried or even concerned, but... it was our preference to bum around for a couple days before our meeting. We were happy we got to do that. But as a couple days have passed, and no word has reached us? No summons to our meeting. Vlad and Panic had a little pow wow on just that issue.

   Vlad said it.

   "A day or two, is fine. But now, I am beginning to think they are, taking time."

   Panic nodded along to his supposed plot line.

   "Waiting. Buying time."

   "I think. Is guess, but is what I think. And you?"

   "Same here, Vlad. Same here."

   We were at the plane, and had our own courtesy shed. Which, is really just the most ramshackle corrugated metal thing any little farmer ever once threw together to house some extra chickens in.

   Vlad had found his own clothing bonanza going around to the street vendors and little shed sales. On television and in movies? You can always instantly identify any Russian mafia character, before they speak with that patented Hollywood Russian accent. Which is actually the Georgian accent. Georgia Russia, not Georgia United States. Because, Hollywood has decided that you can pick Russian mafia out of any crowd. They're the guys in expensive looking matching track suits, that they favor for leisure wear.

   Well? Vlad's accent actually sounds so television its uncanny. And his idea of quality casual wear? Yeah. He found imitation Chinese rip off versions of the Brazilian national soccer team's outfits. The villagers and vendors think they're really high stepping it, to show them off and wear them around town. Its their status symbol here, to show they're successful in their little society.

   Vlad bought a thick stack of them.

   "At these price? I can almost throw them away, like napkin."

   He looked like Panic, finding something he thought was the deal of the century that he really wanted in such bulk so cheap. And when we saw him wearing it? We couldn't help but laugh. We had to explain. Between his accent sounding so Hollywood, and now it turns out that Russian mafia actually wear these things. Well, its just too much. Once he got it explained to him, he laughed with us and easily.

   "I will simply, go and ask."

   So Vlad put his nice suit back on, and went to visit the sweaty, dirty, toothless and oily short fat man in the uniform that looked like a homeless guy found something to wear in a garbage can, in the airport's main building. Panic went with him, minus the nice suit for him.

   They came back, and had been told that General Suarez was a very important and busy man that had many things to do. He had been notified they were here and he would send for them, when he was ready.

   Panic and Vlad decided there were two possibilities. One, was that he just jumped at the chance to score a nice payday, for information. Where he might be trying to track down the actual information, in order to collect. He would be savvy enough to offer a fraction of our actual cost, to get it. American dollars? Provided more motivation here, much more than they did at home.

   The obvious risk? He might be buying incomplete or incorrect information. Or, he might make it up. Just to get his hands on a stack of American green.

   But possibility number two? Was that we were being deliberately delayed. And that had its own two possibilities built into it. He might just be trying to check us out. Which was actually fine. Vlad traced back to, well? Russian mafia. Me, I trace back to me and Panic traveling as husband and wife. Mr. and Mrs. Testavino. No, that part was actually on the up and up.

   It was the possibility he was shopping around for somewhere to sell the fact that we were looking for this particular information. That, was where things divided, once again? Into two possibilities. One, not a big deal, he just runs into the blind alley on me and Panic. But, naturally the scary version. Unable to accurately finger us reliably enough? They might try to hold us, and deliver us to... whoever might not like this idea.

   We play it by ear.

   And wait.