Amazon Slaughter

7

Airhorn shrieking, the patrol cruiser approached the hidden tribe. Babies cried, mothers pressed their hands over their children's mouths, carried them farther into the jungle, away from the attacking slaver craft. The men and boys left behind by the warriors gathered their weapons.

Jamming a birdshot shell into an old break-breach shotgun, a twelve-year-old held the antique ready. The long-barreled single-shot shotgun stood taller than the boy. He pressed through a screen of flowering plants with giant leaves and squinted into the morning light flashing from the river.

His father and Chief Molomano! On the boat! Slaves! The civilizadosoldiers had taken his father and the chief of their tribe. It was the end. The boy accepted his fate. He could only fight now and die with his people. Never a slave. Never.

Shotgun propped in a crotch of a branch, the boy waited for the soldiers. He saw his father waving from the boat. His father held the civilizadorifle of a thousand bullets.

Not slaves! Proud warriors returning from a raid! The boy shouted and danced and whistled. One of the older men nearby took the boy's shotgun, lowered the hammer and set it aside.

The naked boy ran to the river's edge, dancing and waving and jumping, calling out to his father.

Blancanales watched the children and women run to the beach. The men followed them down the trail, shotguns in their hands, flourishing the weapons to their victorious blood kin and friends on the cruiser. Their joy both elated and saddened the ex-Green Beret. He thought of years before, and half a world away, when Stalinist North Vietnam Army cadres had dressed in stolen Army of the Republic of Vietnam uniforms and called the people of a village out to receive free American rice. When the hungry people gathered, the NVA sentenced the village to death for collaboration and machine-gunned the crowd.

Those people then were not political. They didn't want war. They only wanted rice. But they died.

Looking at the villagers crowding on the beach here in South America, Blancanales knew they were like all the other peoples of the world. They wanted only to live, to eat, to have their children, to laugh sometimes. They wanted only peace.

But they got war. War with slave raiders. Cruel foreigners who took the young men and women to labor in a death camp, to create a metal precious beyond gold but without beauty, a metal invisibly resplendent, a metal valued for the horror of its touch, death by white light or lingering cancer. Here, the monsters killed hundreds. For the world, they plotted the murder of millions.

The people of this Amazon region had already suffered. But if he stopped the attack here — if he and his partners in Able Team destroyed the monsters and sealed their plutonium in the earth forever — then the suffering stopped here. The world would not suffer the greater horror.

Looking at the primitive, naked people laughing on the river beach in the Amazon wilderness, Blancanales was flooded with those memories and thoughts. When the patrol cruiser moored, he put his memories out of his mind and joined the people to share their joy.

Lyons cut the permapressed pant leg away from the smashed knee of the slaver officer. The Latin man's ascot now tied off his bleeding leg. Holding the leg still, Lyons poured bottled water over the wounds, washing away clots and debris. One slug had gouged the side of the leg, the next had shattered the shinbone. The third had angled through the knee, exiting in a tangle of sinews and bone. The slaver jerked and thrashed as the water streamed over his wounds.

Blancanales glanced at the bullet holes, continued his interrogation in Spanish. He held a syringe before the eyes of the prisoner, promising him an end to his pain if he cooperated. The Brazilian officer liberated earlier, Lieutenant Silveres, stood behind Blancanales in the cabin of the patrol cruiser. His wounds had been Mercurochromed and taped.

The officer listened to the promises and soft talk. After a few minutes, he lunged past Blancanales to grab the throat of the slaver. He shouted in Portuguese. Lyons recognized the word Cubano.

Easing back the Brazilian, Blancanales returned to the questioning. The prisoner stared past his interrogator at the enraged Brazilian waiting to kill him.

Words came in a rush. Making the sign of the Cross over himself repeatedly, the broken fingers of his hand purple and swollen, the prisoner gave Blancanales a long monologue. Lyons waited for a translation, got it.

"His name is Canero. He's only a mercenary. He has no political involvement whatsoever. He does what he is told. His patron is very cruel, and Canero fears him. His patron ordered him to find Indians for the work. Canero only did as ordered..."

Lieutenant Silveres listened, interrupted. "What he told you is a lie. I understand Spanish. When they thought I was unconscious, they talked in Spanish. They're Cubans from Florida. They work for a 'company.' Perhaps, like you, they work for the CIA. Nevertheless, I want this man executed."

"What are you saying?" Lyons demanded, his voice low. "You think this scum works for the U.S. government?"

Blancanales intervened. "What exactly did they say? Why do you think they're Cuban?"

"He said his girl came from Miami. She sent a message to him from Porto Velho. The 'company' would not let him go see her. He hasn't seen her since they were in France. That is what he said, then they tortured me more. Then he murdered my soldier. They must die, even if they are your..."

"Porto Velho's the city across the border, in Brazil?"

"Three hundred miles to the northeast."

Behind them, the prisoner listened. Blancanales turned to him, spoke to him quickly in Spanish again. Lyons watched Canero. He saw the man smirk as Blancanales interrogated him in Spanish.

"Hey, you!" Lyons shouted into Canero's face. "You speak English. So talk."

Canero shook his head. Lyons gripped the man's mangled leg and twisted it. Arching up off the table, he screamed, gasped, talked fast. "Yes! English! Yes, I am Cuban. I left my country many years ago. I hate Fidel. I hate the Communists. I am only mercenary. I fight because I have no job, no education. I fight only for money. Not politics."

"There!" Lieutenant Silveres declared. "As I told you."

"He's lying," Lyons told them. He gave the prisoner's knee a slap, making him thrash with pain. "Got to tell the truth, pretty boy. Or you won't..."

Blancanales shoved Lyons back in a Mutt-and-Jeff routine. "Take a walk, will you? This is my interrogation."

"Yeah, but I took him. I'll do what I want. He deserves it."

"It doesn't matter what he deserves," countered Blancanales, playing his part in the shove-and-lecture process. "This man is now our prisoner, and if he cooperates, he'll be treated decently. We won't turn him over to those cannibals out there."

"If he doesn't talk," Lyons threatened, looking at the now panicked Cuban, "then..."

"We'll get our information. He'll cooperate." Blancanales escorted Lyons to the cabin door.

On the cruiser's troop deck, Thomas and two of his Indian shotgunners sorted through the captured weapons and equipment. A line of Heckler & Koch G-3 autorifles leaned against a side bench. Thomas checked each rifle, pulling back the cocking lever and looking into the chamber, squinting down the bore. His men examined the dead raiders' gun belts and bandoliers of ammunition. Blood caked much of the equipment. Bullets or double-ought balls had twisted a few magazines out of shape. The Indians carefully salvaged the undamaged cartridges.

Lyons saw the Western-style gun belt and empty holster of the second prisoner. He still had the revolver in his thigh pocket.

"Ironman," Thomas called out in his lilting English. "We take many rifles. Bullets. Very good war. You want food? Beer? The village now has party."

"Beer?" Lyons went to the railing. On the beach, Indians opened cans and packages from the raiders' food stores. They were sampling the exotic food, passing it around, laughing, gorging themselves. One group of children shared a pint carton of ice cream, not opening and eating it, but passing it one to another, sliding the sealed container over their never before chilled skin. They squealed and shivered, shook their numbed fingers. "All right, a party. And here's a present for you." He took the revolver out of his pocket and snatched up its holster and gun belt from the deck. "Christmas comes early."

Thomas examined the Smith & Wesson .38 four-inch barreled revolver. "But I am not Christian. Is not right to pretend only for gift."

"Pretend it's your birthday," Lyons said sincerely, moved by the Indian's openness. "What's a party without presents?" He bounced down the aluminum gangplank, the morning rays of the sun burning through his shirt. Filthy, scratched from the action of the night before, Lyons felt streams of sweat course over his genipap-smeared body. He rubbed his hand over his hair, used his own sweat to wipe away the crud on his face.

As he crossed the beach, children and women circled him, offering him a buffet of open cans: pork and beans, fruit, beer, tamales, tuna, boot blacking. He waved it all away, smiling, and searched through the boxes. Finding two cans of warm beer and several tins of sardines, he looked for an opener.

Tribesmen squatted in a group, eating and gesturing, describing their heroic deeds in the battle. They pantomimed aiming their shotguns. Seeing Lyons, they motioned him over. He picked up his unopened beer and sardines and squatted with them.

They wore new body-blacking and fierce bands of color on their faces. One man's face sported a band of red across the black, with electric-yellow feathers through his earlobes. Another had painted red circles around his brilliant white eyes.

Lyons popped the top of a beer, keyed open the sardines. He ate while the warriors acted out the shooting and killing.

A snuff pipe went around the circle. Lyons watched the ritual. A man dipped into a flat tin of what looked like Copenhagen snuff. He powdered a tiny crumb and put it in the end of the reed tube. He put that end of the tube to his nostril while another man blew into the tube, shooting the fine powder down the man's nasal passages and into his lungs.

Lyons had never seen snuff taken like that. It reminded him of cocaine freaks snorting their drug. He watched as he ate and drank and shared a can of fruit with the color-splashed Indian next to him.

They passed the snuff pipe to Lyons. He hesitated, not reaching for it. They waited. An Indian held out the reed and tin. Lyons thought of Blancanales's instructions when they had the breakfast of living larvae. He'd had snuff before. He would live through it this time, too.

Taking a big pinch, he loaded the reed and put it to his nostril. Sniffing hard while an Indian blew through the reed, Lyons felt the snuff shoot into his lungs. They urged another pinch on him. Again Lyons snorted.

A wave of light struck him. Blinking against the sudden glare of the sky, he saw every leaf of the rain forest simultaneously, each speck of green to be a unique particle of a living universe.

"Hey, Lyons!" Gadgets called out. He shuffled across the beach, a beer in each hand. "What exactly are you doing with those dudes?"

"Snuff." Lyons offered the tin and pipe to his friend, his arms moving through the air as if through water.

"Nan, I'm not into nicotine." Slurping beer, Gadgets pointed to the second of the air boats. "You know what that thing packs? That isn't any machine gun, that's a full-auto grenade launcher. And now it's ours."

Lyons stared at the mosaic of the trees. The Indians watched him, grinned to one another. Gadgets looked at Lyons, picked up the tin, sniffed it.

"Snuff? What're you talking about? This isn't tobacco. What's going on with you?"

A brilliant blue macaw flew across the sky. The sky and the wings became for Lyons one flashing moment of color, the colors and voices and pagan faces swirling around him were an overwhelming flood of sensation for him. His eyes opened as never before, he saw the life around him, savage and magnificent.

Lyons opened his mouth wide and let his spirit fly forth.