Amazon Slaughter

14

Chan Sann lifted the rifle to his shoulder to scan the night with the electronics of the Starlight scope. He saw a phosphor-green river extending into the distance. No boat, no mass of branches and wood, nothing moved on the calm surface. Every few minutes as he paced the deck of the gunboat, he switched on the Starlight's power, scanned the river again from the north to the east, where the form of the airboat waited in the shallows, then returned to the north in a long, slow sweep.

For an hour he waited, pacing the deck, scanning the river. His soldiers held their weapons ready to direct the fire of auto-rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers at the boats coming downriver. Camouflage or fire power would not save the enemy. The Brazilian or Bolivian army unit that had captured the two patrol craft would die in the concentrated fire of the gunboat, the grenade launcher on the airboat, and the M-60 atop the cliff.

But the enemy did not float into the trap.

At 3:00 a.m. precisely, Chan Sann radioed his other soldiers. He spoke first with the airboat.

"No movement at all on the river," came the report.

"Now lookouts. Lopez. Hoang. Report."

Static hissed. He waited, impassive, his thick Asian features like a mask carved in stone, his hooded eyes unblinking, focused on his thoughts. His muscled neck tensed slightly, tendons and veins beginning to stand out from his dark and flawless skin. "Lopez. Hoang. Report. Immediately."

"This is Williams. I saw them before I came down the hill."

"Were they in their position?" asked Chan Sann, his voice toneless.

"Hey! We're here. This is Lopez reporting. Everything's okay here."

"Why did you not answer immediately?"

"We... we had a snake problem... this black snake. It crawled up on us."

"Did you leave your position?"

"No! No, no, we didn't. But we had to deal with the snake. Todo es bueno ahora."

"What have you seen?"

"On the river? Nada. Zero. We heard some shooting. We don't know who it was..."

"Report if you see movement. Williams, report."

In the mud and rotting vegetation of a trail on the hillside, Lopez and Lyons sprawled next to the radio. In the darkness around them, the Xavantes listened for movement around the unit. Lyons held his hand radio ready as he listened to the Cambodian question his other mercenaries. "Williams. Did you meet the enemy?"

"No. Not yet."

"There was shooting."

"We thought we made contact, but..."

"Go to the river. Find the enemy. Report when you make contact. I will radio for the plane."

"We're hitting them in the dark? In the jungle at night? No one'll know who's bloody shooting at who! It'll be total chaos! You'll gas us!"

"Go to the river, Williams. Make contact. When the plane is above you, mark the position of the enemy with flares. You will withdraw then."

"You'll gas us! We don't have masks or oxygen. If the wind's wrong, we won't..."

"You have your instructions, Williams. Obey the instructions."

After a long, static-scratched pause, Williams finally responded, "Yeah, good enough. We'll do it. But you've got to give us the time to withdraw."

"Report when you make contact."

In the darkness and stink of the slimy trail, Lopez cursed, "Jesus, Williams is gone..."

"Chan Sann would risk gassing his own soldiers?"

"It's happened before. Williams saw it."

Lyons keyed his hand radio. "Pol. Wizard. Man in Black here. Did you hear what the man said?"

"But it won't happen. Over."

The line of Xavantes and foreigners continued downhill. As they neared the river, the hunter-point man had the others halt while he and Thomas scouted the last hundred yards of trail. Lyons followed several steps behind them, finding his way by touch through the darkness.

Splotches of blue glowed in the black. Lyons peered at the blue, saw phosphorescent footprints. He pressed his fist into the slime and debris matting the jungle floor. His fist glowed blue in the dark, a circle of blue remained in the slime.

"Civilizado!" the hunter called out.

Lyons followed the phosphorescence to the river-bank. The trees thinned. Starlight illuminated the rain forest, the muddy banks, the river beyond. Lyons saw the hunter motioning to him. Thomas squatted on a dirt embankment. When he heard Lyons and the hunter, Thomas pointed to the dark expanse of the river.

"The boat. There."

Three hundred yards away, the long rectangle of a lighted window floated in the night. An amber streak shimmered on the placid, slowly flowing river.

"Can't get them there," Lyons told the other men. Thomas translated to the hunter as Lyons keyed his hand radio. "Wizard. The Man in Black again."

"What's the word?"

"Are these radios absolutely secure?"

"Positive. Unless someone has one of the three radios, the transmissions sound like noise from space."

"We got a problem. The gunboat's on the other side of the river."

"What's the distance?"

"A thousand feet, minimum. I'll have to pull a scam, get them over here."

"Wait, man. Listen, I've got the plan..."

Williams and his squad of mercenaries wandered in a lightless maze of mud and branches and vines. They could not risk flashlights or machetes. For an hour, they groped through walls of night-flowering vines and thorn trees, men clutching at the others around them, falling into slime, entangling their rifles and gear and arms in unseen masses of plants. Bugs swarmed around them. By touch and compass, they finally found the river.

The men flopped in a grassy clearing surrounded on three sides by forest. On the fourth side, the grassland fell away to the river. Bleeding from cuts and bites, soaked in sweat and slime, Williams stared up at the shadowy forms of trees and through them at the stars. After the darkness and claustrophobia of the jungle, the infinite depth of the night's star-shot dome intoxicated Williams. He sprawled on his back, cool water rising from the mushy grass beneath him. He sucked in breath after breath, thinking, scheming. How do I live through this night?

Fighting panic, he considered his problem. He swatted at droning insects, called out to the circle of soldiers, "Guttierez!"

A man slipped through the grass, silent, only a shadow in the night. Guttierez, a bulky Puerto Rican con who had worked in Europe, Beirut and Pakistan, crouched beside Williams, his rifle ready, his eyes scanning the dark tree lines.

"And O'Neill!"

A second rifleman struggled from the muck to stand up.

"Stay low!" Williams hissed.

"Stow it. No one's out there." O'Neill plodded across the marsh to them, his boots sinking with every step. The overweight alcoholic fugitive from Europe flopped down without a pretense of military posture.

"This is it," said Williams. "Chan Sann wants us to hit whoever's got those boats — Brazilians, rubber workers, who the hell. We bang away at them until the plane gets here. Then we mark them with flares, pull back, the plane does the gasser on them."

"With the chlorine gas? We'll be down here!" O'Neill lurched to one knee and grabbed Williams's uniform. "Radio him, beg him — stop the plane..."

Guttierez slapped down the man's hands. "Can we mark them with grenades?" asked the Puerto Rican.

"My thoughts exactly. Open up your kits. Let's have a look at exactly what you've got."

Shrugging off his pack, Guttierez pulled back the top flap. He felt through the carefully packaged contents and found five fiberboard tubes. Each contained a rifle grenade. Guttierez used his body as a shield while Williams waved a penlight over the printing on the tubes.

"Yellow flare... two-second duration... parachute pops at 100 meters. No good. Red flare... same thing. High explosive, range 350 meters, now that's more like it. What about you, O'Neill? I put five flares in your load."

The florid boozer spilled out his backpack. Plastic sheeting, tangled cords, spare magazines for his G-3 littered the grass. "Flares? I don't know if... don't think that..."

Williams and Guttierez tore through the clutter. Guttierez backhanded O'Neill, the slap like a pistol shot in the silence. "Chinga! Maricon!"

"You rummy bastard!" spat Williams. "Where are they? I gave you ten grenades and flares to carry. It was your bloody duty!"

"We never used any before..." O'Neill whined as fists hammered his face. He scrambled away. Not content with beating the alcoholic, Guttierez jerked out his auto-pistol. O'Neill shrieked, ran away. Williams pushed the pistol to the sky.

"You want to broadcast our position?"

Guttierez lowered the pistol's hammer and returned the weapon to his holster. "Eso gusano es muerto. "

"Kill him in the daylight. Right now, go to every man, get any rifle flares he has..."

Without a word, Guttierez slunk away and moved unseen through the low grass. He went to every man in the defensive circle. He visited O'Neill, punching him several more times.

Williams examined the flares. Made for NATO, the projectiles had tails and fins that slipped over the muzzles of G-3 rifles. Firing a bullet from the rifle propelled the flare or grenade. A grenade had a range of about 350 yards. A flare flew a little more than 100 yards before its mini-parachute popped out. The flare then burned two seconds as it floated down.

Returning stealthily, Guttierez laid down four more packing tubes in front of Williams. "What will you do?" "Watch." Williams jammed the point of his bayonet through the aluminum nose of a flare and pried the end away. Pulling a tiny white parachute from the flare housing, he cut the lines.

In the cabin of the captured gunboat, Gadgets adjusted the antenna of a slaver radio. The voices of Williams and Chan Sann spoke from the radio.

"We think we've spotted them. There are lights and voices coming from a riverbank. We'll close the distance, report back before we open fire."

"Good. I will radio the plane."

The voices cut off as the Cambodian changed radios. Gadgets keyed his hand radio. "Pol. They saw the flashlights. The squad's coming in."

"Ready to move," Blancanales answered.

Voices blared from the monitor again. "This is Chan Sann on the river, calling Complex Five. Complex Five."

"This is the airstrip. The plane is ready. The pilot is here, waiting."

"There can be no delays. Have the pilot check the bombs, then start the engine. It must be here five minutes after I radio."

"Yes, sir. I will relay the instructions."

"Have the pilot report to me on this frequency when he is ready."

Gadgets laughed as he keyed his hand radio. "Man in Black, the plan's in motion. Politician, make your motions!"

"Ready and able."

Flat in the mud, Williams inched forward. Guttierez crawled beside him in the riverbank slime. They pushed through clumps of riverweeds, eased through shallows.

Two hundred fifty yards of beach and low brush separated them from the lights and voices. Fifty yards more, then he would radio Chan Sann...

Panic no longer clutched Williams. He had a good chance of surviving the bombing of the Brazilians. There was no wind to fan the chlorine gas. And modifying the rifle flares gave him another hundred yards of safety margin. And if the nine men behind them held their fire until he and Guttierez launched the first flares... And if...

Disregarding the psychotic Cambodian's instructions for his squad to attack the intruders, then mark the target with flares for the plane overhead, Williams would wait to hear the plane before launching the first flare. His squad would then cover the retreat of himself and Guttierez. The Englishman hoped to have 300 yards of open ground between him and the Brazilians before the canisters of liquid chlorine and high explosive found their targets.

"A soldier's first duty is to live through it," his old dad always told him. Williams intended to survive this night.

Ahead of them, a very slight rise blacked the lights. Williams scurried up the hard-packed mud and raised his head. In the distance, a light waved over a stand of trees. The sound of machetes came to him. Guttierez snaked over the rise. Williams followed him.

Hands took him. He felt a knife at his throat, a pistol against his skull. To his side, Guttierez thrashed.

"Don't move and you live. We're enemies of Chan Sann. Not you. We don't want to kill you."

A man fell across them. Guttierez tried to bring up his G-3. The slash of a machete took away the Puerto Rican's right arm, his head snapping back simultaneously as three subsonic 9mm slugs slammed into his right eye and forehead. He fell backward.

The hot pistol returned to Williams's head. "He's dead. You can live. Help us kill Chan Sann, and you get out of the Amazon alive."

Williams went slack in their grip and surrendered.

The drone of a piston engine approached from the east. Mercenaries crowded the rails of the gunboat to watch the Cessna cross the night sky above them, its silhouette a black X on the stars. Chan Sann peered at the plane 1000 feet above the river. He returned to the gunboat's cabin and radioed Williams.

"Prepare to mark the enemy's position. Acknowledge."

The reports of auto-rifles blasted from the walkie-talkie's tiny speaker. "Immediately. We'll hit..."

Electronic roar overwhelmed the frequency. Chan Sann clicked the walkie-talkie's transmit key again and again. But the static roared from the monitor of the shipboard radio also. He hit the console of the radio with the flat of his hand. The monitor crackled, but the noise continued. The disturbance had cut his communications with both Williams and the pilot of the plane.

Rectangles of white light traveled around the interior of the cabin. Chan Sann squinted against the sudden glare. Light more brilliant than the noonday sun arced across the night.

"Commander Chan!" the pilot called down to him. "Flares from the shore!"

"What?"

Rushing across the deck, Chan Sann pushed through the mercenaries at the rails. He heard and saw red tracers streak from the far bank of the river and rake the location of the airboat. The sounds of a firefight ripped the night. Then the searing white light of a magnesium flare streaked toward them.

Panic took the group of soldiers. A squad leader clicked his hand radio and shouted into the microphone. Other soldiers ran into the cabin, hands flipped the onboard radio's transmit key. When they heard only the roaring static, the men slammed the radio with their fists.

"The gas plane's coming in!" a mercenary screamed.

A canister tumbled down, end over end from the belly of the Cessna. The men stood transfixed at the sight, watching their death drop toward them. The canister hit the water twenty yards from the gunboat and popped as the small explosive charge burst the tank of liquid chlorine. A ball of yellow gas churned over the river.

Chan Sann returned to the cabin. "Out! All of you, out!" he ordered the men crowding around the radio console.

The boat's diesel engine chugged. The pilot started the engine, revving it.

"It's making another run!" a voice shouted from the deck as the gunboat moved, and the drone of the plane returned.

Jerking ports closed, Chan Sann raced the gas. Outside, a man choked. A man rushed into the cabin, gasping, his eyes streaming fluid as chlorine attacked the delicate tissues of his corneas and mucous membranes. Chan Sann shoved him outside. There wouldn't be space or oxygen for all the men in the cabin. And Chan Sann had only one gas mask.

Another man struggled through the small doorway. Chan Sann pulled his Browning 9mm automatic and fired point-blank into the soldier's face. He fired four more unaimed slugs into the men behind the dead soldier, then slammed the door closed. He threw the bolt and dragged a steel chest across the doorway.

Screams came from the deck. Chan Sann slipped on his mask as he heard the plane pass low. A second canister exploded less than twenty feet away, a wave of water and metal fragments hitting the gunboat.

Crowded with dying men, the gunboat began to drift aimlessly downstream.