body fell sideways on the bed, as if the man slept.
Continuing, they came to stairs. Shouts and cries came from the deck above them. Feet scrambled somewhere, the woodwork of the old steamer creaking. Lyons pointed to a Xavante, pointed to a shadow. He touched his eye, then indicated the flight of stairs. The Xavante nodded, stood in the shadow. Invisible, he guarded the stairs, his black-bladed machete in his hand.
Lyons watched the Brazilian soldier on the first patrol boat. He called to the cargo deck. A voice answered. Boots crossed the deck.
A patrol boat's motor rumbled. Behind the windshield on the open bridge, a soldier cranked a steering wheel, then called out. A soldier stepped over the paddle-wheeler's rail, carefully extended one leg to the gunwale of the patrol boat, shifted his weight to step across the gap.
Whipping up the Beretta, Lyons sighted with both hands. He waited an instant. At the moment the soldier transferred his weight to his forward leg, a 9mm subsonic slug shattered the knee. The soldier fell into the river, screaming for help.
Brazilian soldiers crowded the railing. A man ran to the rail with a rope, threw one end to the man thrashing in the water. Lyons dashed to the end of the walkway. He looked around the corner, saw no other soldiers on the cargo deck, squinted past the blazing lights on the rail, saw soldiers at the helms of the second and third patrol boats.
Taking five silent strides across the deck, Lyons raised the Beretta. He jammed the titanium suppressor against the head of the first soldier, sent a slug through his skull. The men leaning against the railing turned at the sudden movement, saw a black-painted six-foot-one wild man. The Beretta snapped three-shot bursts into their chests and faces. The fourth soldier grabbed at the G-3 slung over his shoulder. A Xavante stepped past Lyons and swung his machete with both hands. The severed head fell into the river.
A three-shot burst through the head dropped the nearest helmsman. Lyons stepped over corpses, sighted on the chest of a soldier on the second patrol boat. The soldier raised an auto-rifle. Lyons slipped in blood, sent a burst through the boat's windshield.
Waving the muzzle of the G-3 at Lyons's chest, the soldier pulled the trigger. Nothing. He jerked back the cocking lever even as three 9mm steel-cored slugs tore through his heart. A dead man's auto-fire slammed into the deck and gunwale of the patrol boat as the man fell.
On the third boat, the helmsman took cover. Passing a stack of head-high wooden crates, Lyons heard the scuff of boots. A dying soldier fell at his feet, the back of his head spraying blood. He saw a Xavante dodge through the cargo, his bloody machete held high.
Auto-fire slammed into the crates. Lyons fell back, scrambling for cover. High-velocity .308 NATO slugs splintered wood, smashed through five-gallon cans of motor oil. Holstering his Beretta, Lyons slipped the Atchisson from his back and pulled back the actuator to strip the first round from the magazine.
Firing broke out on the upper decks. A Brazilian soldier flew backward over the third deck railing, crashing down on the crates, tumbling to the deck in front of Lyons. Alive, but badly wounded and disoriented, the man struggled to his feet. Lyons shoved him into the open. Auto-fire from the patrol boat spun the Brazilian.
Sighting on the muzzle-flash, Lyons fired three blasts. The 1200-feet-per-second steel balls disintegrated the fiberglass and plywood of the patrol craft's gunwale. Lyons crouch-walked to another row of stacked boxes and fifty-gallon drums and checked out the deck of the craft.
In the glare of the aft rail's electric lights, he saw a battered and impact-pocked G-3, a hand caught by a finger in the trigger guard. The rifleman thrashed ten feet away, his eyes and forehead gone, his right forearm gone, a hideous cry choking from his throat. Lyons raised the Atchisson to fire a mercy blast into the man's brain but did not.
A Xavante with a Remington 870 crouched beside Lyons. Lyons hand-signaled for the warrior to cover him, then dashed to the rail and vaulted to the patrol boat. Holding the Atchisson at his hip, he stepped over the blinded and dying soldier, stole a glance inside the craft's small cabin, whipped his head back fast. A pistol shot flashed.
Stepping back three paces, Lyons put two blasts through the bulkhead, darted in as a wound-riddled Brazilian lurched toward him, a pistol rising. The Atchisson roared. The suddenly headless soldier bounced off a radio console, his one remaining shoulder and arm whipping about.
Lyons looked out the impromptu window in the craft's cabin. Through the shredded plywood and hanging wires, he scanned the second patrol boat. A Xavante searched the boat. On the prow, concealed behind a canvas- covered, pedestal-mounted M-60, an Asian waited in ambush with a pistol. Lyons sighted on the mercenary's head and blew it away. The Indian saw the headless corpse splash into the river. He looked up, his eyes searching the patrol boat for whoever had saved him.
'Xavante!' Lyons called out as he changed mags on the auto-shotgun. The Indian waved.
Feet thudded on the deck of the patrol boat. The wounded Brazilian's hideous crying was cut off with the sound of a machete chopping meat. A warrior peered cautiously into the cabin, smiled to Lyons, motioned him out.
'Shadowman!' Gadgets called out from the rail of the third deck. 'Did we make it?'
Lyons glanced back to the craft's console. Steel double-ought and number two shot had smashed the metal and plastic and torn away a panel to expose circuitry. He stepped closer to check the power switch. Off. Lyons called back to his friend.
'No messages out.'
'Yeeeaah! Victory party time!'
Coarse featured, their hands gnarled by decades of working in the fields, the grandfathers spoke for family clans. Their wide-shouldered sons and grandsons stood behind 'them. A barrel-bellied merchant spoke for another group of families. They argued and shouted, interrupting each other, some men leaning to within inches of Gadgets's face to make their statements, all shouting Portuguese. Gadgets understood nothing.
'They want to avenge themselves on Gomez and the soldiers who are alive,' Lieutenant Silveres translated. A nurse, wife to one of the settlers, stitched the slashes in the young officer's legs. The lieutenant spoke to the group of elders. They turned their shouting to him.
Blancanales cleaned Lyons's piranha bites. He pulled back a flap of skin on Lyons's upper leg to spray the wound with alcohol. Lyons went rigid with pain. The alcohol dissolved the genipap, leaving a splotch of Southern California tan surrounding the gaping tear.
'Looks like the fish liked that lizard lotion, too,' Gadgets joked to Lyons. Lyons ignored him, his eyes closed, his face set against the pain of the disinfectant. 'But it could have been worse, you walking around in that water with only a jockstrap on...'
'Any of our men get hit?' Lyons gritted through clamped jaws.
'Hit by fish. But we took these slavers cold. No firefight here. We came in the side doors fast, caught them in across fire...'
Gadgets pointed to the wide doors on each side of the passenger lounge. 'They had the passengers jammed in here, everyone down on the floor. Only the Gomez-men and the gooks standing up. Gomez saw his men dropping, saw us, went down on his knees begging. Mucho macho bad man.'
Now the lounge served as a hospital. Wounded men lay on the floor, tended by their families. Women comforted women assaulted by the slavers. A knot of grim-faced men stared at a door guarded by Indian warriors. Inside, ropes lashed Gomez and two soldiers to chairs. Of all the slavers, only Gomez, one of his Brazilians and a Cambodian mercenary survived.
Pale with blood loss, the lieutenant slumped. The nurse braced him, kept him from falling to the floor. Blancanales finished with Lyons, then eased the lieutenant down. Blancanales and the nurses eased the crowd of shouting elders back.
'Civilians! They talk without end, I cannot argue more with them,' the lieutenant sighed. 'They want the traitors... They will not listen to the law.'
'First we interrogate the three of them,' Lyons said, 'then the settlers can have them.'
'No!' The lieutenant bolted upright. 'Gomez betrayed his country and his uniform. He will be judged and executed by the armed forces.'
'He take our women!' A young man shouted in broken English. 'He kill my cousin. His wife alone now. With
