Amazon Slaughter

11

The spotlight of the slaver boat swept over the water, found them.

Xenon white light splintered by the screen of branches cast patterns of searing brilliance and black. Shadows slid across the faces of the men as they watched transfixed as the gunboat approached.

"The mutiny over?" Blancanales asked.

Lyons took the binoculars and focused on the slavers. He squinted against the spotlight, then passed back the binoculars. "How can it be a mutiny? We aren't leading them. We're with them. Period."

Slugs punched into the cruiser. Impact threw an Indian across the deck. He groaned, sucking in breath. Someone put a hand over his mouth to prevent noise. Other men raised their weapons. Thomas hissed a command to them. They lowered their weapons.

Bullet-chopped branches and leaves settled on them. A long burst sent streaks of tracer red over Lyons's back. This was the slavers' recon-by-fire. Bullets punched holes through the cabin, breaking glass.

Silence. They heard the motor of the nearing gunboat and voices. Lyons saw the spotlight sweeping from end to end of the camouflaged boats. Not one of the black-painted Xavantes moved. The wounded man stayed quiet, only his gasping breaths betraying his pain.

On the deck of the slaver gunboat, soldiers held coiled ropes and boarding hooks. Other soldiers crowded the siderails. Two men on the bridge kept sweeping the spotlight back and forth.

"When they're up against us. Right up..." Lyons whispered to Gadgets and Blancanales, then crabbed away to Thomas. "All the men to the rail," he whispered to Thomas. "Keep them flat. Wait for me to fire."

With whispered instructions and shoves, Thomas and Lyons moved the men into line fast. Shoulder to shoulder, the warriors kept their shotguns and auto-rifles within the tangle of branches. Lyons took a position behind them and sank to one knee. He put an extra magazine of 12-gauge rounds for his Atchisson at his side and waited.

A steel grappling hook crashed through the branches. An Indian pushed it away from his leg. It hooked the railing. The cruiser's wood and fiberglass creaked as the soldiers pulled in the slack.

The cruisers bumped together. A slaver officer shouted instructions to his soldiers. Lyons put the Atchisson to his shoulder, screamed, "Now!"

Lyons swept a seven-shot burst of 12-gauge fire across the slavers, in less than a second four hundred double-ought and number two steel balls traveling at 1200 feet per second punching through the camouflage branches to shred the soldiers only ten feet away from him. At the same instant, fifteen other shotguns and auto-rifles roared from the cruiser. Lyons jerked the spent magazine from his auto-shotgun, jammed it back into his bandolier. He slapped in a second mag, snapped back the weapon's actuator. He held his fire as the continuous wave of flame from the Indians and Gadgets and Blancanales smashed into the gunboat.

Branches fell away, gaps in the camouflage screen letting in the blaze of the xenon spotlight. Lyons saw movement on the foredeck of the slaver craft. Suddenly the spotlight went black. The indistinct form of a soldier was swiveling the pedestal-mounted machine gun around. Lyons brought up the Atchisson and sighted on the man's torso. He popped a shot at him. Arms wide, the soldier fell back.

A single burst of auto-fire from the gunboat started up wild. Several Indians found the rifleman, hit him.

Weapons fire died away as warriors emptied their shotguns and G-3 rifles. Hands pulled 12-gauge shells from bandoliers, fed the tube magazines of Remingtons. Men with G-3s slapped in box magazines.

Charging from the deck, Lyons crashed through the sticks and leaves, his eyes and the muzzle of his auto-shotgun searching for movement. He hit the gunboat deck, slipped sideways and fell in the blood and shredded flesh.

A burst roared over him, muzzle flash lighting the gunboat's cabin door. Lyons pressed himself flat on the blood-slicked deck and with one hand pointed his Atchisson at a form crouching behind a flashing autorifle.

Recoil slammed the auto-shotgun's plastic stock into Lyons's forehead. He saw stars, but no form remaining in the doorway. Bracing his weapon, but staying flat, Lyons swept the cabin with a series of semiauto shots. Supersonic steel balls saturated the interior.

Fists hammered at Lyons. His Atchisson empty, he rolled away, pursued by one of the soldiers. Flat on his back, Lyons snatched the Colt Python from his shoulder holster and double-actioned a slug into the man. The muzzle flash froze the image of the crawling soldier lifting an auto-rifle from the deck, reaching for its pistol grip. His hand never closed, the .357 hollowpoint flipping him backward. He flopped on his back, his legs tangling beneath him. An Indian stooped over and put the muzzle of his Remington against the chest of the dead but still-moving man. The Indian fired once.

Walking carefully in the gore, the Indian continued past. Other Indians helped Lyons up, then spread out to search the gunboat for surviving slavers. Lyons crouched to change magazines, again carefully stashing the empty mag in his bandolier. Men called back and forth in the Xavante dialect as they searched the decks and bridge. Somewhere on the enemy boat, a man sobbed.

His CAR-15 held ready, Gadgets squatted beside Lyons. He eyed the corpse-strewn deck. In the blue moonlight, it was a slaughterhouse scene. Blast-ripped bodies, like bundles of rags, lay in contorted piles. Torn-away arms and boots, spilled entrails littered the deck. Blood pooled.

"Man, oh, man," Gadgets sighed. "Sooooo glad it wasn't me."

Blancanales stepped over the railing and came up to his teammates. "I don't think they even knew what hit them." He flashed a penlight on Lyons's face. "You're bleeding. You feel all right? Can you stand up?"

"I shot this Atchisson pistol-style, caught the butt..."

Blancanales turned off his light. "All you've got is a bump. That's other people's blood on you."

"We take one!" Thomas called out. "One soldier alive."

Several Indians dragged the man out of the cabin, gripping him by his uniform and web belt. Six inches of white bone waved from his right shoulder. Blood foamed from his chest and mouth. The Indians stood the dying man in front of Able Team.

Pulling a length of nylon cord from his thigh pocket, Blancanales looped it around the stump of the prisoner's right arm, cinched the cord tight to stop the blood spurting from the artery. He eased the man to the deck.

The prisoner struck out with his left arm. One of the Indians leaned forward, a shotgun muzzle going to the man's face. Blancanales shoved the weapon aside. He ripped off the prisoner's shirt and examined the wounds.

Blancanales looked up to the others, shaking his head. "He'll be dead in a minute..."

"So will you!" the dying slaver gasped in English, blood frothing from his mouth. "Die puking your lungs, die of gas, you..."

Coughing and choking broke his words. Blancanales put his penlight beam on the man's face. He was middle-aged, with a long-ago-broken nose. The beam flashing over his body, Lyons's light revealed the sucking chest wounds, a knot of hanging intestines; on his left arm, web lines of scars.

Lyons leaned over the man and slapped him back to consciousness. "Junkie! Who do you work for?"

"Yankee hijos de putas!Wait for yours... If the gas don't...the Chinaman will skin you alive, take a week to do it... Me tonight, you tomorrow!"

"Who's the Chinaman?" Lyons shouted.

"Go to hell..." A gurgle of blood stopped the addict's suffering.

"He's gone," Blancanales told Lyons.

"To hell," Lyons said.

"A junkie mercenary working for a Chinaman," Gadgets mused. "Freaky."

Lyons aimed the penlight and closely examined the dead man. Jailhouse tattoos in blue ink spotted his shoulders and back. A fadedsenoritaposed on a shoulder blade. On the left forearm, Lyons found words,

Puerto Rico Libre— FALN. He pointed out the tattoo to Blancanales and Gadgets.

"A Puerto Rican junkie mercenary working for a Chinaman in the Amazon. Veryfreaky," Gadgets stressed. "And what about that gas he raved about? What do you think?"

"Another boat!" Thomas called out, pointing downriver.

Blancanales lifted his binoculars and focused on two tiny running lights. At a headland where the river curved, a spotlight switched on. The xenon beam searched the night, found the cluster of river craft. Two lines of tracers arced toward them.

Lyons ran for the gunboat's pedestal-mounted M-60 machine gun. He slipped in blood, had to scramble to the weapon. Finding a belt in place and the barrel still warm from firing, Lyons estimated the distance and spun the backsight's ranging wheel with his thumb. He fired a long burst, saw no obvious hits. He called out, "Thomas! Here!"

Passing the M-60's pistol grip to the Indian leader, Lyons crossed the gunboat again and jumped the railings. He went to the M-60 mounted at the back of the Indian boat, kicked aside branches lashed to the rail and sighted on the spotlight. He jerked back the cocking rod and squeezed off a burst. Again, because of the night and the extreme distance, he saw no hits.

Thomas blazed away, arcing burst after burst at the distant slavers. Tracers crisscrossed, slugs splashing in the river, a few slugs punching the boat. Blancanales and Gadgets circulated among the Indians with G-3 rifles, showing them how to twist the rotary sight out to the extreme range, 400 yards. The riflemen fired aimed single shots.

The spotlight went out. The slaver boat's tiny running lights moved back for the shelter of the headland. The machine-gun fire continued. Muzzle flashes from rifles sparked from the dark form of the retreating boat. Then the lights disappeared behind the headland.

Firing died out. Thomas sent a last futile burst after the escaping slavers. Blancanales and Gadgets returned to the patrol cruiser. Blancanales paused to check the dressing on the Indians wounded when the enemy gunboat had reconned the "sandbar" with its machine guns.

"Anyone else hurt?" Lyons called out.

"Only this man. Through-and-through thigh wound, shattered the bone. He has to go out on the plane tomorrow morning..."

"Thomas," Lyons called to the Indian, leaning through the screen of branches. "We get off the river now. We can't risk going farther."

"Yes, understand." Thomas shouted his answer, pointing to the headland. "Much danger there. They wait, maybe. Maybe many boats."

The engine rumbled to life, belching diesel smoke. Gadgets called out from the bridge of the cruiser, "In gear!"

Slowly, ponderously, the cluster of boats — the patrol cruiser, the slaver gunboat, the two trailing airboats — crossed the slow current. As they neared the riverbank, Lyons peered into the darkness, searching for a cove or inlet or island — somewhere to conceal the boats.

"Nowhere to hide, but I got a plan," Gadgets told him, as if reading his mind. Spinning the wheel, Gadgets steered the cruiser directly into the riverbank. The bow plowed into the soft mud. The gentle current slowly pushed the cruiser's aft around, reversing the cruiser's direction and pushing the gunboat aground. Now the camouflaged cruiser and airboats screened the gunboat from the river.

Lyons laughed, slapped Gadgets on the back. "The Wizard does it!"

"Not yet. We need a work party to cut more brush and tree branches. With that talk about gas, I don't want any plane spotting us."

Lyons nodded. He left the bridge, taking the steps two at a time to the deck. He paused at the rail to scan the open river for a moment, saw nothing but a long, shimmering streak of reflected moon. As he turned away, a shotgun muzzle jammed into his gut.

"Now, Mr. CIA Gringo, I am no longer your prisoner."