Amazon Slaughter

3

Dawn light on the snow of the Andes flashed like sheets of pale flame. Outside the small ports of the DC-3, peaks and sheer cliff faces rose against the heavens, which were still night-violet and shot with stars. Gadgets pressed an Instamatic camera against the glass and snapped a photo.

"Tourist," Lyons joked above the roar and rattle of the old plane.

"Damn right! Federal fringe benefit." Gadgets tucked the camera into a pocket of his pack, then returned to assembling his gear.

With their breath clouding about them in the freezing cargo area, Able Team had packed and repacked the field gear. Because they would have local people guiding them to the hidden reactor complex, the three Americans had packed few rations. They carried only high-protein wafers and vitamin supplements; they would have to depend on the Indians contracted by the CIA to provide their meals.

But they would not travel light. Lyons struggled to arrange his weapons' magazines on his bandoliers. Some of the heavy box mags for the assault shotgun went on his chest bandolier, the other mags in the side pockets of his pack. He stripped a couple of the magazine pouches holding 9mm subsonic cartridges for his Beretta from the web belt, stashed those in other pack pockets. He attached a pouch to the web belt to carry speedloaders for the Magnum. Then he twisted his torso, flexed his chest to test the positioning of his shoulder-holstered Python. The Python's grip tapped against a magazine. It took minutes for him to slightly shift the position of the shoulder holster.

Blancanales glanced up from his packing and watched Lyons shoulder his pack and shotgun, then stand. Lyons lurched a few steps.

"I know why they call you 'Ironman,' " Blancanales shouted.

"What?" Lyons shouted back.

Blancanales pointed to the .357 Magnum revolver and Beretta auto-pistol that Lyons wore, and the assault shotgun that he held. "Because you carry so much iron."

Squatting down beside his friend, Lyons shouted, "Long life through superior fire power."

Laughing, Blancanales went back to his gear. For Able Team, life itself was a permanent condition of prebattle nerves. Blancanales too had many pounds of ammunition to carry, and it was a relief of tension to laugh about it. He had three hundred rounds of 5.56mm ammo in ten magazines to cope with, plus the heavy 40mm grenades. Konzaki had packed a box of assorted grenades: buckshot, high-explosive and phosphorous. As each grenade weighed a pound, Blancanales decided to take only thirteen, a buckshot round to carry in the M-16/M-203 as they moved, eleven high-explosive and phosphorous rounds, and an extra round of buckshot. Surveying the quantity of ammunition he would carry, he muttered, "Soft probe... bullshit."

As the electronics specialist, Gadgets packed only five magazines of 5.56mm cartridges for his small CAR-15. But he carried the heavy shortwave transmitter and all the accessories — the scrambler and screech unit to encode and decode their communications and the long antenna of metal tape to insure the radio link with Stony Man. He also carried two miniature microphones and a receiver. He sealed all the electronic units in 10-mil vinyl bags, then padded the radio and coding units with his other gear — the disposable plastic anticontamination suit, his poncho, protein rations, the aluminum and foam case for the micro-transmitters. The clutter of gear added a measure of protection.

Shouldering his pack and standing, Gadgets groaned. "Oh, man! Am I the mule."

"What's your problem?" Lyons shouted.

"This shortwave set. Next time, we go where they have telephones!"

The pilots' compartment door opened. Horizontal through the plane's windshields, the light of the rising sun filled the cargo area. The copilot walked back to them. He wore a fur-collared Eisenhower jacket and tight Levi's. Able Team did not know his name. When they had changed planes at an airfield somewhere back in the Peruvian mountains, the pilots had stayed in the cockpit. He did not introduce himself now.

He went to one knee near their gear and gazed at the weapons. Then he observed their lightweight clothing — Gadgets and Blancanales in green camouflage fatigues, Lyons in faded shadow-gray cotton fatigues.

"Cold enough for you?"

"Didn't notice," Blancanales shouted back. "Been busy."

"You all know where you're going? Who you're meeting?"

"We thought you knew!" Lyons answered, slapping his forehead in mock surprise. "Now we're all screwed up."

The copilot laughed sarcastically. "A joker. Dig this dude. Whoever sent you doesn't like you. 'Cause you're going to a place called the Stone Age. Where the snake is king. Where Satan ain't born yet — and when he is, he's going to hightail it out."

His eyes wide with shock and amazement, Lyons looked to Gadgets and Blancanales, then back to the copilot. "But the travel agent said it would be nice... so unspoiled... like Hawaii, but without the crowds."

Still sneering, the copilot shook his head. "Hope you keep your sense of humor down there. Now listen," he said, warming to these cavalier characters, "you're in luck. You'll have a good man waiting for you at the airstrip. He'll hold your hand, try to keep you alive. When my plane went down, he's the man who found me and brought me out. Just you all treat him like the proud son of a bitch he is, and you'll get along fine."

The plane lost altitude. They felt the atmospheric pressure pushing at their ears. The copilot gave a quick salute and started back to the cockpit.

Lyons called out, "Hey! Tell us what goes on!". Laughing, the copilot shook his head no. "And spoil the surprises? Ifyou come back, we'll swap stories." Still grinning, he closed the cockpit door behind him.

"Well, what do you make of that?" Lyons asked the others.

"He's the joker," Gadgets smiled. He went to a port and looked out. He hurried back to his pack and retrieved the Instamatic. "Take a look out there. Beautiful!"

Blancanales whistled as he peered out. "A world of green."

They saw no highways, no farmlands, no towns. Behind them, the Andes had become forested foothills. Swirls of clouds fanned out over green flatlands. Here and there, rainstorms swept over the jungle. Other regions glowed with the amber light of the searing tropical morning. The plane passed over a river, the water black, flashing with sunlight. Then they saw their first sign of civilization.

"Someone's got a motorboat down there," Lyons pointed. "Maybe they're waterskiing."

Blancanales focused his binoculars on the river. "That's no boat. That's a barge."

"Barge? It's too small."

"Check it out." He handed Lyons the binoculars. "It looks small because the river's about a half mile wide."

"Wow... you're right." Panning away from the sliver of water beneath them, Lyons scanned the vast carpet of unbroken jungle extending to the far horizon. "Oh, man, oh, man. Does that add perspective to what I'm looking at."

"Wherever we're going, whatever we're doing," Gadgets said as he snapped a panorama of three photos, "I sure hope we don't have to walk home."

Seconds after the DC-3 touched down, the copilot threw open the cockpit door and paced urgently down the length of the swaying plane as it taxied. He had shed his heavy coat, now wore a bright purple T-shirt tucked into his jeans. He grabbed the handstrap at the door to steady himself as he worked the latch lever. He pushed the door open.

"Move it, passengers! In three minutes, this here aircraft is back in the sky."

The copilot jerked a rope-handled crate to the doorway, waited until the plane slowed to a stop. Then he jumped out and pulled the crate after him.

Able Team followed him, one man after another, dropping the four feet to a field of mud. The hot, wet air closed around them like steam. In seconds, sweat beaded their faces.

The airstrip paralleled a river. Bulldozers had scraped a long straight flat on the riverbank. Huge piles of tangled brush and branches rotted in the mud at each end of the strip. An improvised dock of fifty-five-gallon drums extended a hundred feet into the slow, silt-dark river; rough-sawn planks lashed to the drums served as a walkway.

The copilot dragged the crate across the field. Six black men waited for him. The men were nearly naked, wearing only loincloths and weapons. Some held old shotguns, one man an M-1 carbine, one man a bow and long arrows.

"Black Indians?" Blancanales wondered out loud.

They slogged through the mud. As the three uniformed and well-equipped soldiers from the United States neared the group, they studied the Indians. The Indians ignored them. They gathered around the copilot as he clawed at the lid of the crate.

The Indians were not Negroes. Black paint covered the mahogany-brown skin. Some wore the paint solid. Some wore the paint in patterns. One man had his body and face black except for a rectangle around his eyes. Another wore the paint in horizontal bands across his body, like a snake's markings.

All the Indians wore their hair in knife-cut black bowls on top of their heads, their temples and necks shaved bare. They had either bones or feathers through their earlobes. At their waists, thongs of leather secured their loincloths. Web belts carried ammunition pouches and sheath knives. Most of the men wore leather sandals. One man sported rotting orange-and-blue jogging shoes.

Laughter and chatter broke out as the copilot lifted away the crate top. Inside, there were pump-action shotguns, machetes, boxes of cartridges, and plastic-wrapped packages. The copilot passed the first shotgun to the Indian who carried the M-l carbine.

Stroking the Parkerized finish, the Indian turned the Remington 870 twenty-inch shotgun over in his hands. He touched the black plastic of the stock and foregrip, pumped the action, snapped the trigger at the sky. He took a shotgun cartridge from a belt pouch, held it up against the extended magazine. He counted space for six cartridges. He grinned a white, perfect smile and slapped the copilot on the back. The copilot passed out shotguns to the other five Indians.

Overwhelmed by their good fortune, the group laughed and clacked actions and snapped triggers. The copilot and the apparent Indian leader — the man with the rectangle around his eyes — stepped away from the others. They talked in English for a few seconds, the Indian shaking the copilot's hand. Then the Indian's eyes fixed on the purple of the copilot's T-shirt for a moment. In an instant, the copilot pulled off the T-shirt and gave it to the Indian.

Blancanales nudged Lyons and Gadgets and told them, "That was a routine. The pilot didn't have that shirt on until we landed. He put it on so that he could give it away."

The copilot gestured toward the three waiting North Americans. The Indian looked at them and smiled his white flash. He waved as the copilot sprinted bare chested to the DC-3 and pulled himself up through the door. In thirty seconds, the plane was roaring over the distant treetops.

Only after the sound of the DC-3's engines had faded to nothing did the Indian turn to Able Team. Slinging his new shotgun over his shoulder, he came close to them. He extended his hand and spoke in curiously soft English. "Hello. Pleased to meet you. I am Thomas Jefferson Xavante. And I will take you to the city of slavery and death."