Dick Stivers - Amazon Slaughter

"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.