“I look forward to our reunion.”
“One more thing. My forward scouts report heavy troop movement north of the camp. It’s Top’s main force, Alex. They’re moving out.”
“Give me that position, Saladin. I’ll take care of it.”
Saladin gave Hawke a description of Top’s main body of forces and the GPS coordinates. Hawke jotted down the fresh intel in a soggy notebook and jumped back on the radio. His canoe was about to smash into a large boulder and he shouted a warning to his crew. They managed to avoid the thing, barely.
“Stiletto, heads up, fire control, this is Hawke. We have heavy enemy troop movement headed north. Approximately six miles northwest of my current location on the river.”
He gave Dylan the exact GPS coordinates.
“Roger that, Skipper, target description, sir?”
“Ground troops, Dylan, the main body is on the jungle road north. The force consists of various types of armored robotic vehicles, and hundreds of five-ton troop transports holding twenty soldiers each. We can’t stop them, but we can slow them down a bit. Acquire targets and launch LAM missiles now.”
“Affirmative, sir.”
“One more thing. This road the troops are taking. It’s limestone and I can personally vouch for the shoddy construction. Launch PAM missiles. Try and take out the highway two miles north of the troops. Destroy it, and we could halt their progress for at least a week.”
“Roger that, Skipper, Acquiring and launching as ordered.” Hawke picked up his paddle and started digging with new resolve. He could hear dull thuds to the north. He took grim satisfaction from the fact that the road he and others like him had slaved on was now being destroyed. The PAM missiles would slow the troop advance for a while. Conch could figure out what she wanted to do about that later.
Meanwhile, Stiletto’s Loitering Attack Missiles would remain airborne above the enemy troops for forty five minutes searching for moving targets. When a LAM acquired a tank or an armored troop carrier, it would automatically nose over and destroy it.
Death from above.
And from the river, if they could stay afloat.
“Watch out!” Hawke cried.
Hawke and his crew dug their paddles deep into the roiling river, paddling furiously. It was too late.
The roaring currents of vicious rapids had finally pinned their canoe hard up against two huge boulders. The power of the water was so strong, it was all Hawke and the four others could do to keep the canoe from overturning and spilling them out. Had the five men been in a wooden dugout, and not the sleek carbon fiber craft, the hull would have been shattered to splinters long ago.
He gritted his teeth and plunged his paddle again and again into the roiling water. The sudden surge of energy he felt was frightening in its intensity. He worried it might be another feverish illusion, but he’d kept the fear that the fever might be spiking again to himself. Hawke had said nothing these last days, but the first signs of returning malaria had appeared.
Of the four five-man canoes launched, only three had successfully been run through the rapids. Harry Brock, in the lead, was now navigating his own and two other canoes through the mined stretch of river guarding Top’s lair. Harry’s charts told him they were less than three miles away. Mercifully, the weather was so atrocious, that drones, either from above or along the shore, were not hounding them.
Hawke, trapped near the bank, saw only one escape. Trees bent low over the water, strangled with twisting vines as thick as cables. If he could reach one of the looping vines, called bejucas, he might be able to pull the canoe off the rocks and get the prow headed back into the channel Brock had found and successfully navigated. But he’d need to get out of the boat to do it.
He informed the crew of his plan and swung himself over the gunwale and into the river. He found his footing and saw that the water was up to his armpits. Somehow, he had to dislodge the canoe without overturning it or having it catapult downriver and smash on the jutting rocks twenty yards further ahead. He could see Brock’s channel now. It was narrow, but if he could get them properly aligned, they might make it.
Keeping a firm grip on the canoe, he started to make his way toward the thick vine hanging over the river. It was hard sledding against the current, his feet slipping over the moss-covered rocks and he stumbled twice on the sharply uneven river bed. But he managed to grab the vine with his free hand. Now that he had leverage, he started pulling the canoe toward the bank. The men saw what he was attempting and started paddling with a will.
The current that had pinned them to the rocks was now in their favor. The canoe was moving slowly but surely toward him.
“That’s it!” Hawke cried to the men. “You can do it, lads!”
Yes. Pull the canoe straight for the bank, keep the bow pointed into the current as much as possible, let the bloody river swing the stern around until the canoe was parallel to the bank and pointed in the right direction. Now! The men were holding her fast to the bank, and Hawke swung himself back aboard.
This time, they managed to stay within the narrow confines of the channel. Hawke’s watch put them at maybe twenty minutes behind Brock’s group. The fact that they’d heard no mines exploding downriver was a great comfort.
Hawke could no longer tell if the water in his eyes was rain or fever sweat. But he paddled harder and so, too, did his crew. Stoke and Froggy had to be getting close to Top’s compound now. They might have already found Congreve. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the unbidden words:
“Hang on, Ambrose,” Hawke muttered.
Hang bloody on.
82
THE BLACK JUNGLE
S toke caught Frogman’s eye and raised one hand into the air, palm flat. Then he clenched his fist. Enemy ahead. Nobody move. The two jihadistas were one hundred yards away. Smoking cigarettes, their hands cupped over the butts, talking to each other at the base of the enormous tree. Standing sentry, it looked like, in their dark green camo fatigues under ponchos. The wide black river was just to the right. Ambrose’s hut was supposed to be by the river. The tree looked good. The sentries guarding it made it look even better.
A great bridge arched over the river. A real bridge, not one of the typical wood and rope one-day wonders you saw everywhere in this jungle. Not much traffic. A platoon of guards marching double-time, couple of soldiers on bicycles, two or three of the little robot tanks Brock called Trolls. There were pickets out, and probably electronic sensors in the jungle. But nobody on the bridge seemed to be aware that not only had their perimeter been breached, some bonafide badasses were on the prowl inside the henhouse.
Probably because all the pickets were dead.
Froggy and his guys were crouching in the heavy bush fifty yards to his left. For an hour, they had moved swiftly and silently through the jungle, taking advantage of the plentiful natural ground cover, moving from tree to tree. They had left in the bloody wake behind them a large number of seriously dead individuals, scouts and pickets who’d gotten in the squad’s way as they advanced deeper inside Top’s jungle fortress. They’d used assault knives to cut the wire fences and silence the enemy. And silenced CAR-15 submachine guns, the selector set to 3-round bursts, when they couldn’t get close enough for the knives.
Stoke and Froggy still had all their guys, and all their guys still had all their fingers and toes. So far it was Good Guys 17, Top 0. He’d heard Brock’s guy Saladin talking on the squad radio. He was moving in from the west and sweeping up any bad guys who got between them and their rendezvous point just a mile north above the bridge.
Stoke looked up at the underside of the dripping canopy. Treehouses, if you could believe that. A whole damn village up in the trees. It was weird. But, Stoke had to admit, strangely beautiful. Magical, like that movie he’d seen as a kid. Swiss Family Robinson, that was it. Name a kid who ever saw that movie and didn’t want to live in a treehouse. Maybe Ambrose Congreve, but that was about it.
Stoke was ready to take the tree. He looked at his feet. He was standing in ooze that covered his boots, felt
