"And who set up the factory?" Lyons pressed. "The Brazilians? I didn't know they had the..."

"Gentlemen," Brognola smiled. "If we knew the answers to these questions, you three men would not be en route to the Amazon. Allow me to return to the briefing. A spy satellite has given us a few photos, but not much..."

Indicating roads and clearings and structures with the pointer, Brognola flashed a series of grainy blowups on the video screen. "They seem to have gone through the jungle in such a way as to maximize their overhead cover. If we hadn't spotted the sodium hydroxide and the heat, we couldn't have found the installation.

"When Schwarz described the setup as a bomb factory, he was not entirely correct, I think. What we believe they're manufacturing is plutonium."

"But they could take the plutonium to make a bomb," Gadgets added. "Every terrorist, every fanatic in the world has got the how-to books, but none of them has the plutonium. Yet."

"It could be that this group..." Brognola nodded, tapping the satellite photo on the screen "...has the technology and financing to take the next logical step... or insane step... and fabricate nuclear weapons."

"But how do we know they can make plutonium?" Blancanales countered. "All we've got are those satellite photos."

"It's the sodium hydroxide, Rosario," muttered Gadgets. "It means a whole lot of sodium hit the environment. And the only reason to have that much metallic sodium in one place is a plutonium breeder reactor. A plutonium breeder uses liquid metallic sodium as a coolant. Most reactors use water as a coolant. The water flows around the core, draws off the heat and becomes steam. The steam runs the turbines to make electrical power. But a breeder needs sodium coolant, both to cool it and to moderate the plutonium fission process. Keeps it from going 'boom.' The sodium surrounds and cools the core. It keeps the rate of reaction down. Then it goes through a heat exchanger to heat up the water. The steam makes electrical power. And as a by-product, instead of a pile of used-up uranium 235, you've got more plutonium than you started with."