by Dick Stivers
Several hundred yards downriver, Lyons saw a rust-streaked paddle-wheel boat aground on a curve in the river, the prow jammed into a sandbar. The amber light of dusk glowed on its white cabins and railings.
His binoculars closed the distance. A Huey helicopter bobbed on pontoons. An Oriental soldier threw a line from the Huey’s side door to a Brazilian soldier on the rear deck of the steamer. The Brazilian caught the rope to secure the helicopter. Other lines held three olive drab PT boats to the aging river steamer. Stenciled unit numbers marked the sides of the patrol craft. Soldiers with unit patches and helmets swarmed over the decks of the steamer.
Panning up the length of the boat, Lyons knew why Thomas had sneered at the lieutenant. Through the binoculars, Lyons watched a scene of terror and murder. Soldiers pursued young girls on the decks of the paddle-wheel boat. Men and women struggled with the well-armed soldiers and took rifle butts in their faces. He saw a man with a shovel try to defend his wife; a soldier raised his autorifle: the muzzle flashed; an instant later, the sound of the burst drifted upriver. Soldiers dumped the body of the man into the river, tore at the clothing of the woman. Lyons watched her flail and scream, but her voice did not carry over the distance. A man and a woman jumped from the lowest deck, splashed through the waist-deep shallows. They didn’t make the beach. Soldiers fired bursts into the water ahead of the couple, forced them to return. The soldiers clubbed the man and woman to the deck, kicked them. From time to time, other auto-bursts popped.
“There’s the army of Brazil defending the people.” Lyons passed the binoculars to the lieutenant. For a minute, Lieutenant Silveres watched. His hands shook. Without a word, avoiding Lyons’s eyes, he returned the binoculars. He staggered back from the riverbank. Lyons heard him cursing.
Blancanales went to him. The older soldier stood with the lieutenant, gripped his shoulder. Lyons heard talk in Spanish and English, then a monologue of what had to be obscenities in Portuguese. The young officer was raving, gesturing wildly, gesticulating toward the distant river steamer. He clutched at the sling of his G-3. Blancanales had to restrain him, shove him back.
Lyons rushed to the side of his friend. “What’s his problem now?”
“There’s an officer there. A Colonel Gomez. Apparently Gomez was the one who sent Silveres out here. The lieutenant is out here from the capital investigating a rumor for the Bureau of Indians that all the Indians in the region are gone. So Gomez sends the lieutenant and his three men up here, and what happens? The slavers take them, torture him to find out what the army and the government told him about the problem out here. The lieutenant’s from an army family — very proud of its history and its tradition of honor, patriotism — and this is an insult to everything that he is.”
“And Gomez is the one he radioed,” Lyons despaired. “So that bastard knows the score on Able Team. Great. Just great. Your punk lieutenant’s so dumb arrogant he broadcasts the fact that there are only three Americans and a platoon of Indians out here. Great.”
The lieutenant turned to him. “I apologize. You are right, I… But I did notsend a radio message. I do not know radios. I could not find the proper frequency. I have not compromised your mission.”
“Gomez is in charge of this region?” Lyons asked, planning the next move. He glanced at the helicopter and the several boats. “Once we’re past him, there are no more Brazilian units between us and the slaver camps?”
The lieutenant nodded.
“We wipe out the colonel and his soldiers. We take the boats, make it to the slavers. If you want to help those people on that boat, Lieutenant, then we must cross the Mamore. If we run into any loyal Brazilian army units, you will have to explain the situation. Law or patriotism or whatever.”
“There will be no problems whatsoever, my friends.” The lieutenant stared across the Mamore to Brazil. “In the name of the warrior you speak of, your Colonel Phoenix, that river is only water.”
Moving silently through the last minutes of dusk, they marched to the curve of the forest that jutted into the Mamore. A few yards from the riverbank, Able Team and its Indian allies dropped their backpacks and prepared their weapons. Only a hundred yards of beach and shallow water separated them from the paddle-wheeler. They heard the cries of women.
Gadgets monitored the slaver frequencies. “Ironman, Politician. Thomas. Speed it up. They just radioed the slaver base. They’re going to pull the old boat off the sandbar and take the people to the camps.”
By touch, Blancanales passed a tube of face-blacking to Lieutenant Silveres. The Brazilian took a dab, then passed the blacking on to Thomas. All of the men shared it, ritually passing the blacking on to every man in the group, even those who already wore genipap. Hands checked magazines and bandoliers in the darkness.
Lyons conferred with the others. “I say we try to take the patrol boats and the helicopter first. If we can take a radio operator alive, without an alarm going out, we got a chance to cruise straight into their camp — as if we’re bringing in the boatload of slaves. Thomas?”
“Maybe.”
“Lieutenant Silveres?”
“Very good.”
Blancanales agreed. “Sounds good to me. If everything goes perfectly…”
“Yeah, yeah. We do it, okay? Gadgets, you stay here and listen for any Mayday calls…”
“Forget that. You’ll need me. I’ll set up the recorder.”
“Good enough. Thomas, tell your men. We take the boats and helicopter with knives and machetes. When we have the radios, we take the riverboat.”
Like shadows within shadows, the warriors slipped through the last tangles of the rain forest and snaked down the embankment. Finally they saw the riverboat close up. What they saw stopped them.
17
Like party lights, strings of electric bulbs blazed along the rails of the old paddle-wheel steamer. The glaring points of incandescence blitzed the darkness, making the night day around the helicopter, the patrol boats, and the paddle-wheeler itself.
On the aft cargo deck, the uniformed soldiers of Colonel Gomez secured lines to the patrol boats as they prepared to tow the steamboat into deeper water. On the prow, Asian sentries in shapeless unmarked olive drab fatigues paced the brightly lit passenger decks.
One hundred fifty feet from the paddle-wheel steamer, Able Team watched. They sprawled in the tangled reeds of the riverbank. The lights were also illuminating the shallows, the beach, the trees of the forest.
“That kills it,” Gadgets hissed.
“No, it doesn’t,” Lyons snapped back. “We angle in from the front. If we keep the riverboat between us and the other boats, we can use the Berettas to take out those forward sentries.”
“I don’t trust the Berettas to do it,” Blancanales whispered to Gadgets and Lyons. The three men crowded shoulder to shoulder. Lieutenant Silveres listened from the other side of Blancanales. “Even if we hit both of them, make instant kills, they’ll fall on the deck…”
“Yeah,” Lyons agreed. “And anybody could be behind them, see it happen. Listen, I can do a hundred feet underwater, that’ll get me within…”
“That’ll get you dead, hotshot,” Gadgets told him.
“Nah. Watch them,” Lyons argued. “Sometimes for thirty seconds or a minute or two minutes, they’ve got their backs turned. Or they’re off the deck. I chance it, I move fast…”
“Hey, Hardman One, wise up,” insisted Gadgets. “Just ‘cause you’re brave don’t mean you won’t die. If you come up short, if they see you, they got you. We can’t chance it, not even to help those farmers. Besides, you’d be down there with the crocodiles, and you’re wearing your lizard-attracting lotion.”
“I do it,” Lieutenant Silveres told them.
Blancanales shook his head. The lieutenant continued.
“Listen to me, Yankee. If they see me, they will see this uniform. They will think I’m with that traitor, Gomez.”
*
The warm river water closed around him. S
lowly, silently, Lieutenant Silveres slipped through the reeds and the marsh grasses, his hands clawing into the slime. He pressed his belly into the mud, bending his back to keep his face above the surface. As the muddy water deepened, Silveres moved faster, digging his boots into the bottom, pushing through the shallows.
A hundred lights streaked the river. Reflected from the gently waving surface, the rusted paddle steamer became a shimmering white dream ship resplendent with electric jewels.
Silveres watched the sentries crossing and recrossing the decks. Staying in the darkness and mud of the shallows, he watched for a chance to swim to the steamer. The sentries carried their automatic rifles loose in their hands, ready to fire, ready to end his life.
A few minutes before, the talk of death had not seemed real. He had volunteered with full consideration of the risk. But he was thinking then of death in the abstract, as only a word.
Now he thought of the other night when the Cuban put the pistol to his head. But death had been an abstraction that night also. After the mercenaries had ambushed his men, killing two, capturing him and the seventeen-year-old private, the lieutenant had not felt fear. Shock numbed him. He endured the beating and torture because he did not believe the scene real. His mind did not accept the reality, therefore he escaped the very worst of the pain. When the Cuban put the pistol to the head of Guerimo, the teenager who hoped to own a long-distance truck, who wrote love letters to five girls by hand-copying one letter five times, only then had the lieutenant snapped from his trance. He tried to reason with the Cuban. The flash of the pistol seemed a crime beyond belief. Tradition and pride did not allow him to beg for his own life. He thought of nothing, waited for the nightmare to end at the end of the pistol pointed at his head.
Watching from outside the Indian camp, the gringos and the Chicanos who rescued him believed him brave, fearless. But they did not know the truth.
Now, lying in the warm slime, he felt fear. It coiled inside him, writhed in his bowels. His body waited for his mind to command action, but he did not move. He watched the Asian mercenaries pace the deck.
A woman sobbed. From one of the cabins, the cry rose and fell. She shrieked, pleaded. Then silence came abruptly. Then laughter burst out.
Lieutenant Silveres knew he had more than bullets and a quick death to fear. Perhaps they would capture him again. No, not again. He could not, he would not be captured again. He could not hide within his shock again. He would die first.
Brave words. He lay in the marshy shallows of the Mamore because of his brave words to the gringos. But he did not move. Fear whipped within him as his imagination gave him images. Death by bullets. Death by knives. Death by pliers to his genitals.
Fear stopped his breathing. He forced his lungs to suck air, forced his chest to expel the air. His body was immobilized with fear. He concentrated only on breathing.
Several Asians stepped from the paddle-wheeler to the helicopter tethered to the side. The blades spun, a whine rising as the engine warmed, the blades becoming a blur. Water sprayed in all directions.
Now! Now the sentries would not see him. He touched the flap securing the Italian pistol. Would it fire after minutes under water? He checked the flap of the thigh pocket carrying the hand radio. Would he lose it as he swam? Would the plastic protect it from the river’s water? No time for more thoughts, no time for more fear. Silveres kicked against the mud, stroked desperately through the muddy water. He took a last look at the rotting ship’s decks. The helicopter’s rotor storm sprayed muddy water everywhere.
He sucked down a last breath and went under the water, swimming with all his strength, scissoring his legs again and again, trying to gain every possible yard before his lungs forced him to the surface.
A pain seared his leg. Another hit his ribs. So this is how bullets feel, he thought. But he didn’t stop. Perhaps he could live if he reached the hull of the steamer, perhaps he could kill the mercenary before the mercenary killed him. The lieutenant feared death like never before. Fear made him strong and fast. Fear of death made the pain in his lungs nothing.
*
The Cambodian watched the helicopter of Commander Chan Sann soar away. Spray drifted in the air for seconds, misting around the bulbs on the upper rails. Water covered everything. The Cambodian resumed his circuit of the lowest deck, wiping the river water from his automatic rifle.
He did not like the rifle. A Heckler & Koch, it weighed more than a Kalashnikov. The recoil jarred his slight body. The incomprehensible mechanics of the bolt confused him. He wished he could carry a Kalashnikov.
The woman his friends had in the cabin screamed again. He stopped at the port of the cabin and peered in through the louvers.
Some of his friends held her while each in turn took her. Soon his turn would come. He thought of the years after the Victory of the Proletariat in his province. He’d had all the village girls. It had been good to be a soldier then. Chan Sann said the Chinese Wei Ho talked of a World Victory of the Proletariat. The Cambodian smiled. Then he would have all the girls of the world.
A hand grasped the railing. The Cambodian started away from the louvers to gaze at the hand. It was wet with water and blood. He heard gasping. Something fluttered against the hull. He snapped off the safety of his G-3. He advanced as one of the Brazilians dragged himself up and over the railing.
Water and blood flowing from his uniform, the Brazilian slapped at his body. A silver thing flashed and 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 ag
ain. 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.