Dick Stivers - Amazon Slaughter

"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.

An explosion of xenon and rotor blast descended from the night. Lopez and Hoang, shielding their eyes from the flying sand and leaves, watched the helicopter pass over them. Fitted with xenon landing lights and fiberglass pontoons, the Huey troopship hovered over the ridge. Mercenaries slid down lengths of rope to the ferns, forming a circle of outward-facing riflemen. Then the brilliance that bathed the hill switched off, returning the scene to moonlit night. The helicopter soared away.

"Think maybe there's some Indians who didn't see that?" Lopez asked Hoang. "Maybe Chan Sann should have included some skyrockets and sirens."

Their radio buzzed. "This is Williams. Where are you?"

Hoang waved a flashlight. One shadow broke away from the other forms, weaving through the rocks to the cliff edge.

Williams, a square-shouldered felon from the slums of London, wore no face blacking. They spotted the mercenary squad leader's white features from ten yards away. A black beret was tilted across his forehead. He carried an Uzi submachine gun.

"Over here," Lopez called out. "Watch where you walk, it drops off. Straight down."

"So where'd you see the soldiers?" Williams demanded.

"Didn't see nothing, man." Lopez pointed east, to the darkness and jungle below the hill. "We heard them chopping trees, digging in down there."

"I only saw one river boat when we flew over..."

"That's cause the other one got wasted."

"Blown away," Hoang added." Way gone."

"Oh, Lord," Williams sighed. "You think it's the army?"

"Who the hell knows?" Lopez flipped a glowing cigarette butt off the cliff. "That's why Chan the Man's sending you down there."

"Great, just blinking great. See you later." With a wave, Williams started back to his squad.

"Maybe, baby," Hoang said as the ten men filed away into the jungle, their weapons and equipment clanking as they hacked their way through the undergrowth with machetes. "Maybe we see you, maybe we don't."

In the shot-riddled cabin of the gunboat, Gadgets's electronics covered a table. Wires led from a cassette recorder to the circuits of a slaver radio.

While Lyons, Blancanales and Lieutenant Silveres waited, Gadgets rewound the tape, then pressed the play button.

"Calling Chan Sann. This is Lopez."

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

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

"Do you see the Brazilians?"

Advancing the tape, Gadgets skipped on to another exchange. "Do you see the boats? Lights?" the Asian-accented voice asked. The Latin voice replied, "No, nothing like that." Gadgets skipped again. The Asian voice spoke once more. "Find the Brazilians. Block their retreat." An English-accented voice pleaded, "You've got to get us out of there before the plane makes its run."

"I will radio you..."

"That's what I taped," Gadgets told them. "The one called Chan Sann is downriver somewhere. I figure he put some men on the ridge overlooking the river. And the helicopter brought in a squad."

"And then the plane," Blancanales added.

"The plane will come at daylight." Lyons touched up his body blacking with smears of genipap. "Question is, with bombs or gas?"

"Takes a whole lot of high explosive to chop up the jungle," Gadgets answered. "I'd bet it's gas. Dig a hole, get behind a tree, can't hide from gas."