twisted in the glare from the lights. The Brazilian hit at the thing again and again with his hand.
Piranha! The Cambodian lowered his rifle and stared at the fish flopping on the deck. He studied the mouth of the piranha. He saw bloody, needle-sharp teeth. He had never seen one alive. What a beautiful creature!
Lieutenant Silveres ignored the pain from the last piranha still clamped to his back. The predator was twisting and shaking, trying to rip away a mouthful of flesh and cloth. He saw the Asian sentry smiling at the piranha dying on the deck. Glancing fore and aft on the walkway, he did not see any other sentry.
Praying the pistol would fire, the lieutenant slipped it out of its holster and thumbed back the hammer. With no more sound than a fist against flesh, the slug punched through the Asian's skull. The dead man fell to the deck. The bullet bounced off the warped planks of the deck, clattered against the cabins.
A man laughed. Watching the single lighted cabin on the deck, Silveres gripped the pistol, then reached behind him to jerk the last piranha from his flesh. Warm and slick with his blood, the fish wriggled from his hand. It flopped on the deck. Silveres crushed it with his boot. He grabbed the sentry's corpse by one arm and dragged it from the walkway. The man's G-3 scraped on the planks.
Footsteps crossed the deck above him. Pushing the corpse under a bench, the lieutenant took the G-3, reset the safety and slung the rifle over his shoulder. He held the pistol against his leg as he hurried to the prow. He did not see a second sentry. A woman's scream came from the lighted cabin. He heard the sound of a head hammered against wood. He looked back. Could he help the woman?
The cabin door opened. Silveres pressed himself flat in a doorway. An Asian mercenary laughed as he stepped out of the cabin. He waved to other men laughing inside. A beer bottle flew out, bounced past the rail and into the river. The second sentry closed the door, laughing, and walked toward the prow.
The sentry saw the blood and the dead fish. He stooped over, touched the blood. Watching from the doorway, Silveres saw the man scan the planks. The trail of blood led to the bench concealing the dead sentry. The Asian was following the blood across the deck.
Silveres stepped from the doorway and strode directly toward the Asian. He felt the fear in his gut again, cold and writhing. Would the mercenary see that he was a stranger? Would the mercenary call out the others?
The Asian smiled to the Brazilian officer approaching him. Silveres kept his face expressionless, his stride regular despite the fear knotted in his chest. Then the cabin door opened again. He snapped up the pistol, fired point-blank into the Asian's face. The man fell back, the smile fixed, one eye a wound.
The lieutenant spun around as an Asian wearing no pants weaved out from the cabin and lurched to the railing. Holding on to the railing, he sent a stream of urine into the river.
A slug smashed through the back of his head.
Without thinking, without hesitation, the lieutenant burst into the cabin firing silent slugs. He killed two of the mercenaries before the others turned. One Asian grabbed for a rifle, took a bullet in the chest, a second in his face. Another drew back to throw a beer bottle, took two bullets in the chest. Silveres jerked the last man from the motionless, unconscious young woman on the bed. He jammed the pistol under the mercenary's chin and pulled the trigger.
A knife ripped his leg. The lieutenant pointed the pistol at the blood-frothed face of a man on the floor, sending a slug through his brain.
Dead rapists sprawled everywhere. Silveres aimed to fire another bullet through the brain of the nearest man but stopped. He did not have the ammunition to waste on dead men. He pressed the magazine release on the Beretta, counted the remaining cartridges. Three, plus one in the chamber. He slapped the magazine back. He took the knife from the last man he had killed. Silveres's own blood glistened on the blade. If any of the mercenaries still lived, he would cut their throats.
He kicked all the dead men. He jabbed them with the knife. None moved. Slipping the knife under his belt, he checked the woman. She breathed jerkily. Blood flowed from cuts on her face and the back of her head. He threw a blanket over her battered naked body, then eased out the cabin door.
Forcing his lungs to slow their gasping, the lieutenant glanced fore and aft. No one. His heart hammered in his ears. He staggered as he walked, steadying himself with a hand on the railing. He continued around the prow to where he could look down the other walkways.
Brazilian soldiers — traitors, worse than mercenaries because they betrayed their uniform and their fatherland — worked at the back of the steamer, jumping from the rear deck to the patrol boats. But no sentry paced the deck.
Starting to the stairs to the upper decks, his knees buckled. He staggered, held himself upright with the banister. He sucked down several breaths, listened for steps or voices above him. But the ringing in his ears deafened him. He looked behind him.
Blood marked his every step on the deck. He looked at his uniform. Glistening red covered the olive drab of his pants. Blood flowed from the piranha wounds on his side and back, mingled with the flows from the other bites and the knife slash on his legs.
He sat on the stairs and looked to the dark riverbank where the North Americans and Indians waited. He had cleared the sentries from only one deck. He could do no more. Slipping the plastic-protected hand radio from his pants' thigh pocket, he wiped off the blood and water and tore open the bag. He switched on the power, keyed the transmit. 'I am not a coward, but I cannot... wounds and blood. Can you see... Can...'
'Lieutenant!' A voice blared from the radio, like a shout on the silent deck. Silveres stared at the radio in his hand, found the volume dial, quieted the voice. 'Lieutenant. Are you wounded?'
'Yes. I have killed the mercenaries. The mercenaries on the lowest deck. But I cannot... I cannot go to the other decks.'
'Your deck is clear? You see no one?'
'I killed them.'
'We'll be there soonest.'
As he watched, the Chicano he knew as the Politico left the reeds, strode through the water, holding his rifle/grenade launcher and radio out of the silt-brown river. The lights on the riverboat illuminated him as if he walked on the beach in midday. He crossed the shallows quickly and climbed over the rail. He waved to the riverbank. A line of men followed, holding weapons and radios above the water. One Indian man jerked sideways, grabbed at something in the water. They ran through the water, scrambled to the deck. The Indians jerked piranha from two of their fellow tribesmen and the gringo who wore the native body-blacking and loincloth. A second line of men hurried through the shallows.
Hands touched the lieutenant's wounds. The Politico examined the bites and slashes. Men with blood streaming down their bodies passed the lieutenant, their feet silent on the creaky old stairs.
Blancanales's hand radio buzzed. 'Politician here.'
'This is the Wizard. All clear on this side. I count eight dead gooks so far.'
'How's the soldier?' Lyons said, his silenced Beretta in one hand, his radio in the other.
'No problem. He'll have a few scars.'
'Is a war like this?' Lieutenant Silveres asked the two North American commandos.
The American he knew as Ironman laughed out loud. 'What do you think this is?'
18
Their wet sandals silent on the warped, rotting decking, Lyons and three Xavante warriors slipped past the dark cabins of the first deck. Dripping river water and blood, their blackened bodies glistened in the railings' brilliant lights. Blood flowed from two piranha bites on Lyons, a deep snip from the flesh of his thigh and twin semicircles of teeth punctures on his left elbow. Other men bled also, their blood spattering the walkway.
Crouch-walking beneath louvered ports, listening for voices or movement inside without pausing, they crept toward the cargo deck. Lyons stopped at the open door to a lighted cabin, took a look inside.
Clothes, shoes, books littered bunk beds. An Asian mercenary sat on a lower bunk, tearing open cardboard boxes, searching through the possessions of a family. Lyons chanced another look into the cabin. He saw no one on the bunk bed against the opposite wall. Gripping his Beretta with both hands, he stepped into the doorway. He sighted through the bunk's steel frame to the mercenary's head. He put the bullet in the Asian's right temple. The
