'Report when you make contact.'
In the darkness and stink of the slimy trail, Lopez cursed, 'Jesus, Williams is gone...'
'Chan Sann would risk gassing his own soldiers?'
'It's happened before. Williams saw it.'
Lyons keyed his hand radio. 'Pol. Wizard. Man in Black here. Did you hear what the man said?'
'But it won't happen. Over.'
The line of Xavantes and foreigners continued downhill. As they neared the river, the hunter-point man had the others halt while he and Thomas scouted the last hundred yards of trail. Lyons followed several steps behind them, finding his way by touch through the darkness.
Splotches of blue glowed in the black. Lyons peered at the blue, saw phosphorescent footprints. He pressed his fist into the slime and debris matting the jungle floor. His fist glowed blue in the dark, a circle of blue remained in the slime.
'
Lyons followed the phosphorescence to the river-bank. The trees thinned. Starlight illuminated the rain forest, the muddy banks, the river beyond. Lyons saw the hunter motioning to him. Thomas squatted on a dirt embankment. When he heard Lyons and the hunter, Thomas pointed to the dark expanse of the river.
'The boat. There.'
Three hundred yards away, the long rectangle of a lighted window floated in the night. An amber streak shimmered on the placid, slowly flowing river.
'Can't get them there,' Lyons told the other men. Thomas translated to the hunter as Lyons keyed his hand radio. 'Wizard. The Man in Black again.'
'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.
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. '
'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. '
'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
