Amazon Slaughter at-4

by Dick Stivers

  His CAR-15 held ready, Gadgets squatted beside Lyons. He eyed the corpse-strewn deck. In the blue moonlight, it was a slaughterhouse scene. Blast-ripped bodies, like bundles of rags, lay in contorted piles. Torn-away arms and boots, spilled entrails littered the deck. Blood pooled.

  “Man, oh, man,” Gadgets sighed. “Sooooo glad it wasn’t me.”

  Blancanales stepped over the railing and came up to his teammates. “I don’t think they even knew what hit them.” He flashed a penlight on Lyons’s face. “You’re bleeding. You feel all right? Can you stand up?”

  “I shot this Atchisson pistol-style, caught the butt…”

  Blancanales turned off his light. “All you’ve got is a bump. That’s other people’s blood on you.”

  “We take one!” Thomas called out. “One soldier alive.”

  Several Indians dragged the man out of the cabin, gripping him by his uniform and web belt. Six inches of white bone waved from his right shoulder. Blood foamed from his chest and mouth. The Indians stood the dying man in front of Able Team.

  Pulling a length of nylon cord from his thigh pocket, Blancanales looped it around the stump of the prisoner’s right arm, cinched the cord tight to stop the blood spurting from the artery. He eased the man to the deck.

  The prisoner struck out with his left arm. One of the Indians leaned forward, a shotgun muzzle going to the man’s face. Blancanales shoved the weapon aside. He ripped off the prisoner’s shirt and examined the wounds.

  Blancanales looked up to the others, shaking his head. “He’ll be dead in a minute…”

  “So will you!” the dying slaver gasped in English, blood frothing from his mouth. “Die puking your lungs, die of gas, you…”

  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 hijos de putas!Wait for yours… If the gas don’t…the Chinaman will skin you alive, take a week to do it… Me tonight, you tomorrow!”

  “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 fadedsenoritaposed on a shoulder blade. On the left forearm, Lyons found words,

  Puerto Rico Libre— FALN. He pointed out the tattoo to Blancanales and Gadgets.

  “A Puerto Rican junkie mercenary working for a Chinaman in the Amazon. Veryfreaky,” Gadgets stressed. “And what about that gas he raved about? What do you think?”

  “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 w
hined. “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, baby, this is a bummer. A real bad scene.”

  Glancing through a bullet-shattered port, Chan Sann watched the two men thrash into the jungle. Then he switched on the shipboard radio and called to the radio operator stationed far away at the tiny airfield serving Wei Ho’s city.

  “This is Chan Sann calling for Williams.”

  “Complex Five. Williams speaking.”

  “We found the Brazilian soldiers at coordinates…” He read off a series of numbers from the map.

  “The plane is ready.”

  “We do not know the exact position of the Brazilians. They hide upriver. We have set a trap. I want the plane to stand ready. I want you to ready a helicopter. Get ten soldiers. You will wait for my word.”

  *

  The sharp circle of the Remington’s muzzle cut into Lyons’s gut. He felt the railing behind him, trapping him. Glancing quickly to both sides, he saw no one nearby. He tried to identify his captor, couldn’t see his face in the shadows. Was the man with the shotgun the second Cuban? Or a slaver mercenary who escaped the massacre? Lyons expected no mercy.

  “You will drop your weapons. First, the machine gun. Drop it.”

  Holding the Remington level, his captor stepped back. Light slid over his features. It was Lieutenant Silveres.

  The lieutenant watched as Lyons very slowly, very carefully slipped the sling of the Atchisson from his shoulder. Grasping the barrel with his left hand, Lyons stooped to place the auto-weapon on the deck.

  Lyons threw himself sideways and forward, chopping upward with the Atchisson.

  The auto-shotgun’s plastic stock knocked the Remington’s muzzle up as the lieutenant jerked the trigger. A blast of double-ought splintered the railing. Rolling, kicking, Lyons dropped Silveres to the deck. He kicked again, the heel of his foot smashing into the lieutenant’s crotch. Lyons scrambled over him to take the Remington out of his hands.

  Lieutenant Silveres groaned on the deck, doubled up, his hands clutching at himself in agony. Indians rushed up, saw Lyons standing over the suffering Brazilian. An Indian stepped forward and raised a machete to give the prisoner a death hack. Silveres saw the black blade of the machete above him. He screamed.

  Clutching the Indian’s hand, Lyons stopped the blade. He handed the Remington to one of the men crowding around, then helped the Brazilian to his feet. Blancanales and Gadgets pushed through the crowd.

  “What did you do, crazy man?” Gadgets asked.

  “He wanted to escape. I didn’t know he was a prisoner.”

  “He wasn’t.” Blancanales helped the lieutenant to the cruiser’s cabin and eased him into a chair. Then Blancanales pulled the groaning Brazilian’s hands behind him and tied him securely to the chair. “Well, he’s a prisoner now.”

  “Finally the gringos tell the truth!”

  “You are a prisoner now because you pointed a weapon at a member of our team. Perhaps you can explain yourself.”

  “And if I do not, you torture me?”

  “Were the Cubans tortured?” Blancanales countered.

  The young Brazilian officer looked up at Lyons. “By him…”

  “I should have pulled the power fuse!” Gadgets blurted out, moving fast across the cabin. He checked the dial setting of the shipboard radio. “He made a radio transmission. Who’d you radio? Your unit? Your base?”

  “Lieutenant,” Blancanales asked the Brazilian. “Where is your base? And when will your soldiers get here?”

  The Brazilian looked around at the three North Americans, Gadgets and Blancanales in camo uniforms, Lyons in the loincloth and body paint of a savage with his hands and body covered in crusted blood. Lieutenant Silveres clamped his jaw tight and waited for the torture to begin.

  Blancanales sat in front of the young officer. He put his hand on the man’s shoulder. He spoke in a soft, fatherly voice, “Lieutenant, I saw you when the Cuban brought you from their interrogation. I saw the blood. I saw him shoot your soldier, then put the pistol to your head. You told him nothing. I know I cannot make you betray your country or the other men in your command. But that is not what I want.

  “Understand our situation. There is an insane terrorist operation on the border of your country. We believe its purpose is to attack the cities of the world. We do not believe this is the work of your government. But we cannot be sure there is no one in your government involved. Maybe one politician who has been bribed, one colonel or general who is in on the plot. We are not operating against your country or your nation’s people. We are only operating in secrecy until we know the whole story.

  “You may have compromised our mission, perhaps not. But we need to know what you told your unit. And when will they get here? Perhaps together we can annihilate the slavers. If your unit attacks us, then we all die, and the slavers continue murdering and enslaving Brazilians and Bolivians. If you cooperate, we can fight them together. What do you say?”

  The lieutenant shook his head. “I… will… tell… you… nothing!”

  *

  Using a machete and the heavy barrel of the M-60, Lopez and Hoang thrashed through the vines and small trees choking the forest floor. Both men used flashlights, the brilliant beams illuminating the claustrophobic tangle of green enclosing them. Every few minutes, they paused in their hacking. They switched off the lights and listened to the jungle around them, black as the vision of a blind man.

  They followed the gentle slopes upward and found the rocky spine of the hill. Low ferns and grasses covered uptilted slabs. No trees grew on the crest. Hardwoods and rubber trees walled the moonlit corridor of ferns and stone.

  Soon they looked down on the river. The stone ridge dropped one hundred vertical feet to the water. The snaking channel curved around the cliff face, flowing from the southeast, winding around the series of hills, then curving again to continue north to the Brazilian border. Lopez and Hoang viewed an arc of the river curve from directly north to almost due west.

  “This is Lopez calling Chan Sann. This is Lopez… “

  “This is Chan Sann. You have reached the position?”

  “We’re here. Looking down on the river.”

  “Do you see the Brazilians?”

  “There’s nothing on the river. Nothing at all.”

  “Report every hour.”

  Turning down the handset volume to a whisper, Lopez repacked the radio. Hoang crawled to the dropoff and looked straight down. He scurried back to Lopez.

  “Oh, man! Baaaad scene. Indians come, we are screwed!”

  Lopez looked at the cliff edge and the ridge line of slab rock and low ferns behind them. He jerked out the M-60’s bipod legs and slammed the weapon down. “We were screwed the day we got here. Loco Chinese, out of their heads…”

  “Shut up! Hear that?”

  “What?”

  Hoang dragged on his cigarette an
d pointed to the river and the jungle east of them. “Hear it?”

  Faint chopping sounds drifted to them.

  “Yeah, like…” Lopez took the radio’s handset, buzzed their commander again.

  “They are coming?” Chan Sann asked.

  “No, but we’re hearing them down there. Machetes and axes and things. Chopping wood.”

  “Do you see the boats? Lights?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Report again if there is a change.”

  Lopez switched off the handset. “No bang-bang tonight. Those army dudes are digging in.”

  “If it’s the army.”

  “It’s got to be the army. Some strak officer who ain’t paid off,” Lopez told his friend. He took a belt of cartridges from Hoang and loaded the M-60. He pulled back the cocking lever to chamber a round. “It’s either the Brazilian or Bolivian army out chasing guerrillas. Indians don’t blow away river boats. One or two guys out wandering around, but not…”

  “You got it, baby. One or two guys. That’s us.”

  Lopez glanced behind him, eyeing the shadows and darkness, the impenetrable night of the tree line below the ridge. He intoned his words like a prayer. “There are no Indians out here. None. Not one. No Indians.”

  *

  Working in the moonlight, the Xavantes chopped branches and saplings to complete the camouflage of the cruisers. Lyons carried bundles from the cutters to the men lashing the branches to the rails and decks. In an hour, the cruiser, gunboat and airboats aground on the muddy beach appeared to be only one more riverbank tangled with brush and small trees.

  Thomas sent several men into the jungle to form a security perimeter. The other men returned to the boats. Only four hours remained before dawn.

  Lyons went to the patrol cruiser’s cabin and called Blancanales outside. “What has he told you?”

  “Nothing. And I don’t think he will. Lieutenant Silveres is waiting to get tortured. He thinks we’re very crafty operators.”