Amazon Slaughter

12

Surveying a topographical map of the area, Chan Sann directed his patrol boat's pilot to steer for the riverbank. By radio, he sent the hovercraft to a position immediately below the headland. There, the hovercraft's MK-19 40mm full-auto grenade launcher commanded the curve in the river. When the Brazilians came downstream...

Chan Sann went to the cabin door. On the patrol boat's rear deck, a squad of mercenaries prepared their counterattack. Soldiers checked the belts of cartridges for the boat's M-60 machine guns, stacked ammo cans near the weapons. Other soldiers readied a third M-60, unfolding the bipod legs, closing the feed cover on a belt of cartridges. Chan Sann called out, "Hoang! Lopez! In here."

Two of the men left their work to join their commander at the map.

"You will take the machine gun and a radio to here." Chan Sann pointed to the top of the headland. "Our boat pilot will let you off now. You will watch for the Brazilians. Radio us when you see them."

Fear crossed the faces of the soldiers. Lopez, a Texan Chicano on the run for drug-gang murders, and Hoang, a Vietnamese-French Eurasian from the Marseilles crime underworld, exchanged glances. But they did not question or object to their commander's orders. Two men alone in the Amazon faced real and imaginary horrors. But to question Chan Sann meant certain death.

Nodding, they saluted Chan Sann, retreated to the deck. "Oh, Jesus," Lopez whined. "We are screwed! We got to go up there with the snakes and Indians."

Hoang looked at the moonlit hill overlooking the river. He tapped an American cigarette from a pack, lighted it. Taking one long drag, squinting against the smoke, he stared at the headland. He shook his head to Lopez, said in English learned from a thousand American movies and TV cop shows, "Who loves you, baby? Chan Sann don't."

On the bridge, the pilot spotted the riverbank and called down to Hoang in French. The two mercenaries shouldered their loads, Lopez carrying the M-60 on a shoulder sling, Hoang a radio and three hundred rounds of .308 NATO cartridges in link belts. As the patrol boat lurched to a stop in the shallows, mercenaries extended the gangplank to the mud beach. Flashlights, then the xenon spotlight swept the rain forest, revealing an unbroken wall of hardwoods and vines and ferns. The men remaining on the patrol boat stayed silent, their faces to their work as Lopez and Hoang descended to the shore.

Lopez stepped off the gangplank and sank over his boot tops into the mud. He struggled across the mud flat, the ooze and rotting slime sucking at his boots. Hoang followed a step behind, griping in TV English, "I tell you, baby, this is a bummer. A real bad scene."

Glancing through a bullet-shattered port, Chan Sann watched the two men thrash into the jungle. Then he switched on the shipboard radio and called to the radio operator stationed far away at the tiny airfield serving Wei Ho's city.

"This is Chan Sann calling for Williams."

"Complex Five. Williams speaking."

"We found the Brazilian soldiers at coordinates..." He read off a series of numbers from the map.

"The plane is ready."

"We do not know the exact position of the Brazilians. They hide upriver. We have set a trap. I want the plane to stand ready. I want you to ready a helicopter. Get ten soldiers. You will wait for my word."

The sharp circle of the Remington's muzzle cut into Lyons's gut. He felt the railing behind him, trapping him. Glancing quickly to both sides, he saw no one nearby. He tried to identify his captor, couldn't see his face in the shadows. Was the man with the shotgun the second Cuban? Or a slaver mercenary who escaped the massacre? Lyons expected no mercy.

"You will drop your weapons. First, the machine gun. Drop it."

Holding the Remington level, his captor stepped back. Light slid over his features. It was Lieutenant Silveres.

The lieutenant watched as Lyons very slowly, very carefully slipped the sling of the Atchisson from his shoulder. Grasping the barrel with his left hand, Lyons stooped to place the auto-weapon on the deck.

Lyons threw himself sideways and forward, chopping upward with the Atchisson.

The auto-shotgun's plastic stock knocked the Remington's muzzle up as the lieutenant jerked the trigger. A blast of double-ought splintered the railing. Rolling, kicking, Lyons dropped Silveres to the deck. He kicked again, the heel of his foot smashing into the lieutenant's crotch. Lyons scrambled over him to take the Remington out of his hands.

Lieutenant Silveres groaned on the deck, doubled up, his hands clutching at himself in agony. Indians rushed up, saw Lyons standing over the suffering Brazilian. An Indian stepped forward and raised a machete to give the prisoner a death hack. Silveres saw the black blade of the machete above him. He screamed.

Clutching the Indian's hand, Lyons stopped the blade. He handed the Remington to one of the men crowding around, then helped the Brazilian to his feet. Blancanales and Gadgets pushed through the crowd.

"What did you do, crazy man?" Gadgets asked.

"He wanted to escape. I didn't know he was a prisoner."

"He wasn't." Blancanales helped the lieutenant to the cruiser's cabin and eased him into a chair. Then Blancanales pulled the groaning Brazilian's hands behind him and tied him securely to the chair. "Well, he's a prisoner now."

"Finally the gringos tell the truth!"

"You are a prisoner now because you pointed a weapon at a member of our team. Perhaps you can explain yourself."

"And if I do not, you torture me?"

"Were the Cubans tortured?" Blancanales countered.

The young Brazilian officer looked up at Lyons. "By him..."

"I should have pulled the power fuse!" Gadgets blurted out, moving fast across the cabin. He checked the dial setting of the shipboard radio. "He made a radio transmission. Who'd you radio? Your unit? Your base?"

"Lieutenant," Blancanales asked the Brazilian. "Where is your base? And when will your soldiers get here?"

The Brazilian looked around at the three North Americans, Gadgets and Blancanales in camo uniforms, Lyons in the loincloth and body paint of a savage with his hands and body covered in crusted blood. Lieutenant Silveres clamped his jaw tight and waited for the torture to begin.

Blancanales sat in front of the young officer. He put his hand on the man's shoulder. He spoke in a soft, fatherly voice, "Lieutenant, I saw you when the Cuban brought you from their interrogation. I saw the blood. I saw him shoot your soldier, then put the pistol to your head. You told him nothing. I know I cannot make you betray your country or the other men in your command. But that is not what I want.

"Understand our situation. There is an insane terrorist operation on the border of your country. We believe its purpose is to attack the cities of the world. We do not believe this is the work of your government. But we cannot be sure there is no one in your government involved. Maybe one politician who has been bribed, one colonel or general who is in on the plot. We are not operating against your country or your nation's people. We are only operating in secrecy until we know the whole story.

"You may have compromised our mission, perhaps not. But we need to know what you told your unit. And when will they get here? Perhaps together we can annihilate the slavers. If your unit attacks us, then we all die, and the slavers continue murdering and enslaving Brazilians and Bolivians. If you cooperate, we can fight them together. What do you say?"

The lieutenant shook his head. "I... will... tell... you... nothing!"

Using a machete and the heavy barrel of the M-60, Lopez and Hoang thrashed through the vines and small trees choking the forest floor. Both men used flashlights, the brilliant beams illuminating the claustrophobic tangle of green enclosing them. Every few minutes, they paused in their hacking. They switched off the lights and listened to the jungle around them, black as the vision of a blind man.

They followed the gentle slopes upward and found the rocky spine of the hill. Low ferns and grasses covered uptilted slabs. No trees grew on the crest. Hardwoods and rubber trees walled the moonlit corridor of ferns and stone.

Soon they looked down on the river. The stone ridge dropped one hundred vertical feet to the water. The snaking channel curved around the cliff face, flowing from the southeast, winding around the series of hills, then curving again to continue north to the Brazilian border. Lopez and Hoang viewed an arc of the river curve from directly north to almost due west.

"This is Lopez calling Chan Sann. This is Lopez... "

"This is Chan Sann. You have reached the position?"

"We're here. Looking down on the river."

"Do you see the Brazilians?"

"There's nothing on the river. Nothing at all."

"Report every hour."

Turning down the handset volume to a whisper, Lopez repacked the radio. Hoang crawled to the dropoff and looked straight down. He scurried back to Lopez.

"Oh, man! Baaaad scene. Indians come, we are screwed!"

Lopez looked at the cliff edge and the ridge line of slab rock and low ferns behind them. He jerked out the M-60's bipod legs and slammed the weapon down. "We were screwed the day we got here. Loco Chinese, out of their heads..."

"Shut up! Hear that?"

"What?"

Hoang dragged on his cigarette and pointed to the river and the jungle east of them. "Hear it?"

Faint chopping sounds drifted to them.

"Yeah, like..." Lopez took the radio's handset, buzzed their commander again.

"They are coming?" Chan Sann asked.

"No, but we're hearing them down there. Machetes and axes and things. Chopping wood."

"Do you see the boats? Lights?"

"No, nothing like that."

"Report again if there is a change."

Lopez switched off the handset. "No bang-bang tonight. Those army dudes are digging in."

"If it's the army."

"It's got to be the army. Some strak officer who ain't paid off," Lopez told his friend. He took a belt of cartridges from Hoang and loaded the M-60. He pulled back the cocking lever to chamber a round. "It's either the Brazilian or Bolivian army out chasing guerrillas. Indians don't blow away river boats. One or two guys out wandering around, but not..."

"You got it, baby. One or two guys. That's us."

Lopez glanced behind him, eyeing the shadows and darkness, the impenetrable night of the tree line below the ridge. He intoned his words like a prayer. "There are no Indians out here. None. Not one. No Indians."

Working in the moonlight, the Xavantes chopped branches and saplings to complete the camouflage of the cruisers. Lyons carried bundles from the cutters to the men lashing the branches to the rails and decks. In an hour, the cruiser, gunboat and airboats aground on the muddy beach appeared to be only one more riverbank tangled with brush and small trees.

Thomas sent several men into the jungle to form a security perimeter. The other men returned to the boats. Only four hours remained before dawn.

Lyons went to the patrol cruiser's cabin and called Blancanales outside. "What has he told you?"

"Nothing. And I don't think he will. Lieutenant Silveres is waiting to get tortured. He thinks we're very crafty operators."

"We are."

"But we haven't given him any reason to doubt our sincerity. He's in a very awkward situation, but he's reacting all wrong to us. Like he was still a prisoner of the slavers. Like he's in delayed shock from last night, the shooting of that soldier. Today, I thought he was all right. Belligerent and pretty pompous, but I expect that from a twenty-two-year-old college student who thinks he's a career officer. I thought of sending him out on the plane, but now, with us expecting the Brazilians, we need him to talk to them."

"This morning he cooperated. When we questioned the Cubans."

"Then he demanded a weapon. That's when he got belligerent. Got worse all day, then he finally tried to take us."

They stood in silence for a moment. Around them, Indians struggled with can openers, gulped captured food. Others slept on the bare deck, their auto-rifles and shotguns in their hands. Lyons glanced into the cabin. He saw Lieutenant Silveres sitting upright in a chair, his hands and feet tied to the chair. The young officer was staring into space.

"Can't drag a prisoner all over the Amazon," Lyons told Blancanales.

"No, Lyons! He's a good kid. We can't..."

Crossing the troop deck, Lyons took one of the G-3s collected from the dead mercenaries on the gunboat. Blancanales blocked the cabin door.

"You think you'll make it look like one of the slavers shot him?" Blancanales demanded, putting one hand on the butt of his Beretta. "I won't let you. I don't know what that Indian drug did to your head, but..."

"Pol, the boy's a soldier. Watch."

"What are you going to do?"

"Watch."

Blancanales followed Lyons into the cabin, staying close behind him, ready to grab him in an instant. But Lyons's moves caught him unaware.

Whipping his knife from his gun belt, Lyons slashed the ropes binding the young lieutenant. He put the loaded G-3 in his freed hands. "Okay, Lieutenant Silveres. We need soldiers. Will you help us?"

"Is this a trick?"

Lyons snapped back the rifle's cocking lever, once, twice. A cartridge flew from the receiver. "There you are. I'm asking you, are you with us?" Lyons extended his hand.

The Brazilian grinned, shook hands with Lyons, then Blancanales. "We fight the foreigners together."

Suddenly, all three men looked to the west. Rotor throb tore the quiet Amazon night.

"Lieutenant! Are those your people? Do they have helicopters?" Blancanales demanded.

He shook his head.