Coughing and choking broke his words. Blancanales put his penlight beam on the man's face. He was middle-aged, with a long-ago-broken nose. The beam flashing over his body, Lyons's light revealed the sucking chest wounds, a knot of hanging intestines; on his left arm, web lines of scars.
Lyons leaned over the man and slapped him back to consciousness. 'Junkie! Who do you work for?'
'Yankee
'Who's the Chinaman?' Lyons shouted.
'Go to hell...' A gurgle of blood stopped the addict's suffering.
'He's gone,' Blancanales told Lyons.
'To hell,' Lyons said.
'A junkie mercenary working for a Chinaman,' Gadgets mused. 'Freaky.'
Lyons aimed the penlight and closely examined the dead man. Jailhouse tattoos in blue ink spotted his shoulders and back. A faded
'A Puerto Rican junkie mercenary working for a Chinaman in the Amazon.
'Another boat!' Thomas called out, pointing downriver.
Blancanales lifted his binoculars and focused on two tiny running lights. At a headland where the river curved, a spotlight switched on. The xenon beam searched the night, found the cluster of river craft. Two lines of tracers arced toward them.
Lyons ran for the gunboat's pedestal-mounted M-60 machine gun. He slipped in blood, had to scramble to the weapon. Finding a belt in place and the barrel still warm from firing, Lyons estimated the distance and spun the backsight's ranging wheel with his thumb. He fired a long burst, saw no obvious hits. He called out, 'Thomas! Here!'
Passing the M-60's pistol grip to the Indian leader, Lyons crossed the gunboat again and jumped the railings. He went to the M-60 mounted at the back of the Indian boat, kicked aside branches lashed to the rail and sighted on the spotlight. He jerked back the cocking rod and squeezed off a burst. Again, because of the night and the extreme distance, he saw no hits.
Thomas blazed away, arcing burst after burst at the distant slavers. Tracers crisscrossed, slugs splashing in the river, a few slugs punching the boat. Blancanales and Gadgets circulated among the Indians with G-3 rifles, showing them how to twist the rotary sight out to the extreme range, 400 yards. The riflemen fired aimed single shots.
The spotlight went out. The slaver boat's tiny running lights moved back for the shelter of the headland. The machine-gun fire continued. Muzzle flashes from rifles sparked from the dark form of the retreating boat. Then the lights disappeared behind the headland.
Firing died out. Thomas sent a last futile burst after the escaping slavers. Blancanales and Gadgets returned to the patrol cruiser. Blancanales paused to check the dressing on the Indians wounded when the enemy gunboat had reconned the 'sandbar' with its machine guns.
'Anyone else hurt?' Lyons called out.
'Only this man. Through-and-through thigh wound, shattered the bone. He has to go out on the plane tomorrow morning...'
'Thomas,' Lyons called to the Indian, leaning through the screen of branches. 'We get off the river now. We can't risk going farther.'
'Yes, understand.' Thomas shouted his answer, pointing to the headland. 'Much danger there. They wait, maybe. Maybe many boats.'
The engine rumbled to life, belching diesel smoke. Gadgets called out from the bridge of the cruiser, 'In gear!'
Slowly, ponderously, the cluster of boats — the patrol cruiser, the slaver gunboat, the two trailing airboats — crossed the slow current. As they neared the riverbank, Lyons peered into the darkness, searching for a cove or inlet or island — somewhere to conceal the boats.
'Nowhere to hide, but I got a plan,' Gadgets told him, as if reading his mind. Spinning the wheel, Gadgets steered the cruiser directly into the riverbank. The bow plowed into the soft mud. The gentle current slowly pushed the cruiser's aft around, reversing the cruiser's direction and pushing the gunboat aground. Now the camouflaged cruiser and airboats screened the gunboat from the river.
Lyons laughed, slapped Gadgets on the back. 'The Wizard does it!'
'Not yet. We need a work party to cut more brush and tree branches. With that talk about gas, I don't want any plane spotting us.'
Lyons nodded. He left the bridge, taking the steps two at a time to the deck. He paused at the rail to scan the open river for a moment, saw nothing but a long, shimmering streak of reflected moon. As he turned away, a shotgun muzzle jammed into his gut.
'Now, Mr. CIA Gringo, I am no longer your prisoner.'
12
Surveying a topographical map of the area, Chan Sann directed his patrol boat's pilot to steer for the riverbank. By radio, he sent the hovercraft to a position immediately below the headland. There, the hovercraft's MK-19 40mm full-auto grenade launcher commanded the curve in the river. When the Brazilians came downstream...
Chan Sann went to the cabin door. On the patrol boat's rear deck, a squad of mercenaries prepared their counterattack. Soldiers checked the belts of cartridges for the boat's M-60 machine guns, stacked ammo cans near the weapons. Other soldiers readied a third M-60, unfolding the bipod legs, closing the feed cover on a belt of cartridges. Chan Sann called out, 'Hoang! Lopez! In here.'
Two of the men left their work to join their commander at the map.
'You will take the machine gun and a radio to here.' Chan Sann pointed to the top of the headland. 'Our boat pilot will let you off now. You will watch for the Brazilians. Radio us when you see them.'
Fear crossed the faces of the soldiers. Lopez, a Texan Chicano on the run for drug-gang murders, and Hoang, a Vietnamese-French Eurasian from the Marseilles crime underworld, exchanged glances. But they did not question or object to their commander's orders. Two men alone in the Amazon faced real and imaginary horrors. But to question Chan Sann meant certain death.
Nodding, they saluted Chan Sann, retreated to the deck. 'Oh, Jesus,' Lopez whined. 'We are screwed! We got to go up there with the snakes and Indians.'
Hoang looked at the moonlit hill overlooking the river. He tapped an American cigarette from a pack, lighted it. Taking one long drag, squinting against the smoke, he stared at the headland. He shook his head to Lopez, said in English learned from a thousand American movies and TV cop shows, 'Who loves you, baby? Chan Sann don't.'
On the bridge, the pilot spotted the riverbank and called down to Hoang in French. The two mercenaries shouldered their loads, Lopez carrying the M-60 on a shoulder sling, Hoang a radio and three hundred rounds of .308 NATO cartridges in link belts. As the patrol boat lurched to a stop in the shallows, mercenaries extended the gangplank to the mud beach. Flashlights, then the xenon spotlight swept the rain forest, revealing an unbroken wall of hardwoods and vines and ferns. The men remaining on the patrol boat stayed silent, their faces to their work as Lopez and Hoang descended to the shore.
Lopez stepped off the gangplank and sank over his boot tops into the mud. He struggled across the mud flat, the ooze and rotting slime sucking at his boots. Hoang followed a step behind, griping in TV English, 'I tell you,
