Lyons kept his face turned from the light as he walked to the gangplank of the patrol boat. His eyes scanned the craft. The soldier on the forward deck stretched, lit another cigarette.
The gangplank flexed under his bare feet. At the top, Lyons casually stepped onto the central deck. Several soldiers, their auto-rifles leaning against the benches, slept on the deck. Lyons swiveled his head, letting his vision slowly sweep the area. He heard voices in the cabin.
Each of the four men sleeping on the deck took a 9mm subsonic slug point-blank through the temple. Lyons leaned over the railing to sight on the head of the stargazing sentry on the forward deck. The slug slapped the man's head to the side. He splashed into the river.
Chairs squeaked in the cabin. Lyons pressed himself flat against the cabin. He saw a door swing open. A silhouette wearing a beret stepped out and walked past Lyons. The curly-haired Latin wearing the ascot stood in the brightly lighted doorway.
Perhaps these were the unit's officers. Lyons wanted them both. The soldier in the beret glanced at the four men who had died in their sleep, then leaned over the railing and looked for the forward sentry. The beret was only an arm's reach from Lyons.
Small splashing sounds came from the river. Both Lyons and the soldier glanced down. Flashing silver streaks darted at the dead sentry as he floated away on the current. One piece of silver attached itself to the dead man's uniform, thrashed and flipped. The tail of a fish arched above the river, splashed back.
'Piranha!' the soldier in the beret gasped, staring. He sucked in a breath, started a shout: 'PIRAN...'
A Beretta 93-R in his mouth stopped the shout. Lyons jammed the pistol deep, heard the soldier choke as a knee slammed into his groin. Lyons grabbed the revolver from the holster of the contorted soldier and shoved it in his thigh pocket. Then he pushed his prisoner backward against the soldier in the ascot. Both men fell through the cabin door.
Prone on the floor, the dandy reached for his auto-pistol. Lyons stomped on the man's hand, felt bones snap under his bare heel. Another stomp cut off the cry of pain. He went to one knee on the neck of the man, simultaneously grabbing the other by his curly hair and slamming the face into the floor. Then he stood back, his Beretta pointing at the two men.
Lyons whipped his eyes around the cabin, searching for other soldiers. He calmed his own breathing and listened. He heard no movement outside. A bright orange throw-float lay on a shelf in a tangle of nylon rope and girlie magazines. He jerked the rope down.
Magazine pages glided around Lyons as he tied the hands of his prisoners. He waved aside glossy pastel photos of breasts, thighs, bleached blond hair. Looping the thousand-pound test line around their wrists and arms, Lyons struggled with the tangles, finally losing patience. He cinched the tangles into the knots.
Turning off the cabin light, he crouch-walked out the door and scanned the craft's decks. He watched the gangplank and camp, keyed his hand radio twice, click-click, then twice again.
Blancanales answered, 'Here.'
'Where are you?'
'We're out of the camp. We got all the prisoners out. What goes on with the boat?'
'Five dead. Two prisoners. The playboy and another officer. Did you clear all the slavers out of the camp?'
'Negative. We cleared the camp of the Indians and the Brazilian officer. We counted eight or ten soldiers sleeping on the ground.'
Shouts came from the cruiser cabin. One of the prisoners leaned out a cabin window, shouting to the camp. Soldiers on the ground sat up, looked around. They reached for their auto-rifles.
Lyons rushed into the cabin. The curly-haired playboy kicked Lyons in the stomach. Grunting but not falling, Lyons collapsed back, raised the Beretta, simultaneously flicking the fire-selector to three-shot.
Curly screamed as silent slugs smashed his knee. The other man went quiet, froze. Lyons sucked down a breath, lurched across the cabin. He threw the standing man onto his face, bound both prisoners together, looping the line around their ankles several times. A six-foot length of rope and a buoy remained. Lyons lifted the feet of the men off the floor, put the buoy out the window. He slammed the window closed, left the men with their feet in the air, the wounded man screaming.
A soldier ran up the gangplank. Lyons snapped a shot into his chest. Another soldier saw the first fall. He raised his rifle, looked around for a target. A slug punched into his head. He fell, his hand jerking on the trigger of his rifle, sending a long burst into the sand.
Other soldiers fired wild, spraying the night with .308 slugs.
Twelve shotguns and rifles flashed, a storm of fire scything down the slave raiders. From Blancanales. Gadgets. Thomas's men. More Indians from the village. Several shotguns continued pumping in double-ought balls. A pellet hit one of the lantern poles, toppled it. The lantern broke, whooshed into flame.
Two soldiers sprinted away from the attack, crashing into the jungle north of the camp. A claymore's blast — from one of their own booby traps — cut the two men down. Wailing came from the shredded men, the sobbing, quavery cries rising and falling in the background as Lyons keyed his hand radio.
'Got them.'
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
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
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
