On target

TWO

Court Gentry pulled on his umbilical line for a bit more slack, then turned back to the wreckage in front of him. He reached out with a gloved hand and felt his way forward to the hulking iron wheelhouse of the sunken steamboat. Visibility in the murky river was right at twelve inches at this time of late morning, and it was the best he could hope for thirty feet below the ochre surface of the warm water. Finding his place, he adjusted the angle of the flashlight on his helmet, lifted his cutting torch back up, and narrowed the flame to little more than a glowing spike. Then he slowly applied the white-hot fire to the iron to begin a new cut.

A series of three strong tugs to his line pulled him off his mark.

"Dammit," he said aloud, his voice reverberated in his brass helmet. Three tugs meant "surface immediately," which meant it would take him, at a minimum, ten minutes to get back down here through the algae and oily film to find his spot again.

But he did not wait. "Surface immediately" wasn't a message to ignore. It could be nothing, but it also could mean there was a problem with the equipment, which could be dangerous, or it could also mean snakes or crocs or a school of piranha had been spotted close to his dive site, which could be downright deadly.

He broke the surface four minutes later, his gear and his weights made it impossible to tread water so he pulled himself along his line towards the shore. When he made it waist-deep he wiped green goo off the acrylic faceplate of his helmet, but only when he unfastened the latches and lifted off the heavy headgear could he see his way forward through the thick reeds and tall grasses on the riverside. Above him stood his two coworkers, Thiago and Davi; both men were experienced salvage divers, but neither was fitted to go down today. Only one compressor line was operational, so they'd split the time between the three of them. One man on the bottom, and two men on crocodile/anaconda/piranha watch.

"What is it?" Court called out to them. His Portuguese was not half as good as his Spanish, but it was functional. One jerked a thumb to the other side of a tiny lagoon that pushed off of the river like a tumor, and Court saw young Mauro standing there on the trail that led towards the dock. The boy wore a red and black Barcelona soccer jersey emblazoned with the name of a Bulgarian player who had not taken the pitch since the mid-nineties, and he was barefoot. Court had never once seen the dark-skinned kid in shoes.

Gentry was surprised that he'd been called to the surface to talk to the boy-still he waved and smiled. But his smile dropped in an instant. The kid's eyes were wide and his body was tight.

Something was wrong.

Court trudged along the marshy bank that rimmed the lagoon, his feet sucked down by mud. He climbed up to the young Brazilian, led him down a trail a few yards before asking, "What's up?"

"You told me to come if I ever saw a white man."

"Yes, I did." Court's own body stiffened.

"An old man. Alone. At the dock."

"Did he talk to any-"

"Yes, he asked Amado a question. Showed him a sheet of paper. Gave him some money. Then he talked into his radio."

"His radio?" Gentry's eyes were off the kid, on the trail back to the dock, a kilometer away through dense rain forest. His hands had already begun removing his old tattered wetsuit, stripping himself down to his underwear.

Thiago called out to him from behind, probably telling him it wasn't time for lunch, but Gentry ignored him.

"Where is he now?"

"He left. Got back in a launch and headed upriver."

Court nodded. Spoke in English to himself. "The man hunter."

"Qual?" What?

"Good. You did real good, Mauro. Thank you."

"Sure, Jim."

Seconds later Court was on his knees by his gear on the other side of the lagoon. The boy stood above him and watched him open his large duffel bag. From it he retrieved a black sawed-off twelve-gauge shotgun with a wooden pistol grip. He grabbed his wallet from the bag-it was fat with Brazilian Reals-and he held it out to the boy. "This is for you. Take some of it, give the rest to your mom."

Mauro took it, his eyes wide with surprise and confusion. "You are leaving?"

"Yeah, kid. Time for me to go." Gentry's hands moved quickly as he yanked on dirty brown pants and a filthy longsleeved cream-colored shirt.

"What about your dog?"

"He wasn't my dog, he just hung around my camp. He's a good boy. Take care of him and he'll take care of you, okay?"

Court began lacing old tennis shoes onto his wet feet.

Mauro nodded, but in truth he did not understand any of this. He'd never seen anyone move so fast in his life. People in his village did not leave, did not make decisions in an instant. Did not hand their wallets over to kids. Did not change their life because some dumb old man showed up in a canoe.

His uncle was right. Gringos are crazy.

"Where will you go?" he asked the strange American.

"I don't know. I'll figure something-"

Court stopped in mid sentence. Cocked his head to the side as he lifted a small loaded backpack out of the big duffel and secured it onto his back.

Mauro heard it, too. Said, "Helicopter."

Court shook his head. Took the pistol-grip pump shotgun and stood up. Velcroed it tight to the right side of his backpack, grip down and within reach. A machete was already fastened similarly on the left. "No. Two helicopters. Run home, kid. Get your brothers and sisters inside and stay there. It's gonna get good and loud around here."

And then the gringo surprised young Mauro one last time. He smiled. He smiled wide and rubbed the boy's tufted black hair, waved to his two coworkers without a word, and then sprinted off into the jungle.

Two helicopters shot low out of the sun and over the treetops, their chugging rotor wash beating the flora below as they raced in formation. They were Bell 212s, a civilian version of the Twin Huey, the venerable but capable Canadian helicopter ubiquitous amongst American forces in the Vietnam War.

In the history of manned flight, no machine was more at home streaking over a jungle canopy than the Huey.

The choppers were owned by the Colombian police but had been loaned, along with their crews, to the AUC, a semi-right-wing, semi-disbanded defense force that fought from time to time against the FARC and the ELN, Colombia's left-wing rebel groups. The Colombian police had thought the loan was to send this team of twenty commandos to a mountain region to combat the FARC, but in fact the AUC was working for hire over the border in the Amazon jungle.

The pilots would not report the misappropriation of resources; they were being well paid.

Each man in the unit wore green jungle fatigues and a bush hat. Each man had a big HK G3 battle rifle cradled in his arms, and each man had extra magazines for the rifles, grenades, a radio, and a machete strapped to his chest and belted to his waist.

The commander of the unit sat in the lead helicopter, screamed over the Pratt and Whitney turbo shaft engine to the nine soldiers seated with him. "One minute! If you see him, shoot him! If you shoot him, kill him! They don't need him alive!" and then he amended himself. "They don't want him alive!"

A chorus of "Si, comandante!" roared louder than the engine. He delivered the same order into his radio to the men in the second helicopter.

A moment later the helicopters split, the comandante's craft banked hard to the left, dipped its nose toward a small winding river that snaked to the south.

Court shot through the dappled morning light flickering through the canopy above him, certain in his stride. He continued on the jungle trail, his ears tuned to the sound of the rotors behind him. Soon the single beat of the choppers changed to two as the aircraft separated. One landed behind him, probably in the swampy clearing a hundred yards from the dive site. Gentry knew the men would sink knee-deep in the muck, and this would buy him a little time to get away. The other flew on past his position, off to his left, lower than the treetops; certainly it was skimming the river. It would be dropping off dismounts in a blocking maneuver along his path.

So much for the extra time…