The rape had not been violent; she had not been strong enough to actually hurt either of the men. Once they had convinced her that her life would be forfeit if she did not submit, she stopped fighting. She had been raped repeatedly until they reached Armando’s villa.
Amanda had remained untouched, but she had been forced to watch Cynthia’s horrors. When they had been brought before Conde, the man had been incensed by the stupidity of Carlos and Luis. The two men had not been seen again. A doctor had been brought in and Cynthia had been treated, Amanda had been examined and been pronounced in good health.
They were fed at Armando’s table and treated with respect after they arrived, and Armando, his innate viciousness covered with a patina of old world manners, apologized profusely for the shortcomings of his employees and for Cynthia’s treatment at their hands. He assured them both that Carlos and Luis had been punished severely for their transgressions, but he refused to say any more on the subject.
The armed guards in the room managed to keep the fear off their faces, because they knew well what had happened to Carlos and Luis.
The household guards had been gathered together and told of the treatment of their “guests” by Carlos and Luis, who were contained in a cage before the gathered guards. Stefan Mendez, Armando’s chief lieutenant, ordered the guards to watch carefully the punishment El Jefe had ordered for anyone caught mistreating either of their “guests.”
Peasant guards had entered the cage with Carlos and Luis, and the two men had been stripped naked, their genitals and midsections smeared with pig blood. Everyone present quivered with terror, they had all seen this before.
Only the impassive Indian peasants in the cages with the two men managed to avoid showing their terror…they had all seen this before. The Indians left the crying and praying kidnappers in the cage and locked the steel door behind them tightly.
The two hungry jaguars, large jungle cats weighing well over a hundred pounds each, were released into the cage. The smell of blood was maddening to the wild jungle animals.
It took a very long time for Carlos and Luis to die. These cats loved to torment their prey, batting them around and making them cry out as they dined on genitals and the soft, gooey contents of the men’s bellies.
“Do you think they can hear us?” Cynthia asked her voice flat.
“I doubt they consider us enough of a threat to wire the bedroom,” Amanda Dunn said, amazed at Cynthia’s resilience. “How are you holding up?” There was genuine concern in her voice, and Cynthia responded to it.
“I’m better now that those two aren’t around to rape me every chance they get,” Cynthia said bitterly, “If it’s the last thing I do in this life I will make them pay for what they did.” She looked at Amanda. “What do you think is going to happen now?” she asked the older woman.
“I don’t think, I know,” Amanda said calmly. “Phelps and I have talked about this possibility many times, and it’s the only reason I never go to South America. This is a common occurrence here.” She thought for a minute.
“Phelps knows people, Cynthia; people who are experts at this type of thing. I can only tell you what Phelps told me. When you hear the guns and explosions, stay right where you are, and take what cover you can. The rescuers will either know where we are or they will force someone to tell them where we are. Wandering around will just slow down their efforts to find us.”
She saw lingering doubt on Cynthia’s face. “Cynthia, believe me, they will come for us. The people Phelps knows are among the deadliest hunters on earth.”
Cynthia choked back tears of humiliation and anger. “Thanks Amanda,” she said “I just needed some reassurance.”
Chapter 3
High above the villa, at the crest of the densely wooded caldera, two men dressed in nylon rip-stop night suits began their slow descent towards the lights of the villa. They were on the opposite side of the caldera bowl from where the tarmac road had been hacked out of the jungle.
Both men carried silenced Glock .22 caliber pistols in web harnesses strapped low on their right thighs, and both men carried blue steel Bowie type knives with comfortable rubber grips. Each carried emptied claymore mine bags stuffed with thermite and fragmentation grenades.
Nick carried an old M203, an M-16 fitted with a 40mm grenade launcher…he had two bandoliers of the HE rounds across his chest. McGraw carried a Squad Automatic weapon, a vicious little fully automatic light machine gun now carried by gunners in the U.S. Army.
Neither man knew exactly where in the villa the two women were being kept, but that was not important. Barring unforeseen circumstances, they had all the time in the world to conduct their reconnaissance and enough armament to destroy every living and man-made thing in the caldera.
The sound of wild jungle panthers screaming over a kill nearby didn’t even faze them. The two of them were intimate friends with the hazards and creatures of the dark Peruvian night. The legend of the clandestine group that would come to be known as ‘Wahaya’, the ancient Cherokee name for Wolf, was about to be born.
Nick Harris and Dave McGraw nestled down in a thick growth of bijao, a broad leafed plant resembling the elephant ear plant grown in the Southern U.S. as a decorative addition to flower gardens. The plants grew in a draw nestled into the side of the huge caldera where Armando Conde’s villa was located.
At the bottom of the huge caldera was a large, crystal clear lake, and the villa fronted the lake. There was a large boathouse and several boats on the dock in front of the ornate mansion. The grounds were manicured, and dotted with bad reproductions of ancient Greek statues.
Nick was grateful for Conde’s bad taste in statuary; it would make the approach to the house much easier.
There were a surprising amount of decorative bushes scattered about the grounds. Apparently Conde had an idiot savant among the gardening staff -- the topiary included some very accurate renderings of native animals and nude females.
Their path up the slopes on the outside of the caldera had been slow at first. They were able to move much faster when they realized there was little or no security on the outside.
From the inside lip of the caldera, infra-red goggles revealed light sensors far below, close to the villa. A quick glance at his watch told Nick it was only 22:00. The night was still young and both Nick and Dave were experienced night fighters.
The time to strike would be in the hours just before dawn. The human body naturally shuts itself down at that time. The guards would be struggling to stay awake, waiting for their replacements.
Nick and Dave ate hot food and drank the hot coffee available to them thanks to developments in U.S. combat rations that provided smokeless and lightless heat for meals. There were some things the U.S. Army did better than anyone else in the world, and the thing it did best was provide for the comforts of its troops.
They were very careful to leave no wrappers or scraps of paper from the packaging to give away their nationality.
Conde's security forces patrolled inside the caldera itself, but like private soldiers everywhere, natural laziness made them follow the same paths repeatedly until the patrols worn broad trails through the jungle that they seldom ventured far from. The patrol leader carried a flashlight. Nick followed the patrol easily without the aid of binoculars, even though the open caldera was more than a mile across at its base.
Dave leaned back against the base of an ancient Lucuma tree. With the black, razor-edged blade of his Gerber combat knife, he carefully peeled the thin skin off the fruit of a Lucuma, exposing the dry starchy looking meat of the fruit.
Nick held his hand put for a slice, knowing the odd looking fruit to be delicious, and that it would immediately melt in his mouth. Nick and Dave were no strangers to the jungles of Peru.
“You know,” Dave drawled in a low voice, “you can buy these at the grocery store in Fayetteville now.” He took a slice for himself and chewed it slowly, enjoying the odd texture.
“I love it because
it doesn’t draw the creepy crawlies,” Nick said, remembering some unpleasant, early days in the jungle with canned peaches from home.
He especially hated the chirping “kissing bugs” that lived in and around the palms of Peru. The odd chirping noise and the sour odor of the bugs was a warning to those who did not wish to catch “Chagas” disease, a deadly and decidedly unpleasant death for the unwary and the careless.
“It’s time to go to work Dave,” Nick said as he got to his feet. He could see the flashlight about a hundred meters below them. He wanted to try to get some information on the location of the two women firsthand.
“I don’t know how many men they have on this patrol, but if it’s no more than two or three I want to do a quick interrogation,” he said.
“Yeah, it would be better if we knew exactly where they are before we start to blow everything up,” Dave chuckled.
The two men prepared for combat in vastly different ways, Nick was focused. He was a perfectionist who rehearsed every possible action over and over until his actions were planned and every possible situation was accounted for. He then executed his plans exactly the way he had imagined them.
Dave was a doer. He did his best to relax before an action; chuckling and making jokes. He relied on his combat instincts and his superb conditioning and skills to accomplish his missions.
Although their techniques were vastly different, they were two of the best in the business.
* * * * *
Nick’s mind flashed back to an ambush in Afghanistan that the two had stumbled into on the way back from a reconnaissance mission in the mountains. The automatic weapons fire had seemed to come from every direction at once and they scampered for a stone farmhouse, barely making it inside with their hides mostly intact. Dave had caught two rounds in his right thigh. He had chuckled as he tied the field compress tightly to stanch the bleeding.
“What the hell are you laughing at?” Nick had asked crossly. He was busy checking his ammunition and grenades (Reconnaissance teams are not heavily armed since they are not supposed to engage the enemy.)
Dave, quoting some goofball movie or book he had read, said, “We got ‘em now Nick, they’re surrounded!”
Nick stared at his friend incredulously, “Surrounded? There must be a dozen of them all around us and they’re surrounded?”
“Yep,” said Dave with a chuckle as he began to return fire out of an uncovered hole of a window, “They’re all around us and no matter which way we turn they can’t get away from us.”
Nick had nearly collapsed with laughter and the stress. They were finally able to get rid of the ambushers by calling in a request for fire support from a nearby helicopter. When it was over, they had counted nine of their attackers dead -- most from small arms fire.
Dave was a little melodramatic. His calling card was a single bullet right between the eyes, “The way the Duke used to do to it!” Dave often said. Five of the attackers bore his mark.
When Nick had first seen this in Dave, he had been inclined to talk to him about it. He wanted to advise Dave to top showboating and get serious.
An old hand at Seventh Group had forestalled the conversation. "Everybody needs an edge -- an outlet. If he takes an extra tenth of a second to aim between their eyes, so be it. I’ve known Dave a long time -- when it comes time for business, Dave won’t waste time.”
Nick never said a word to Dave about his "calling card." The old soldier was right after all. Dave always got the job done, with or without that extra tenth of a second.
Chapter 4
Jerking himself back to the present, Nick began to make his way slowly and carefully down the slope to the beaten path below them. The patrol was still quite a distance below them as he slipped behind a Cherimoya tree, its many branches obscuring his body in the darkness. Dave took up a position across the path about a meter in front of him.
They did not have to wait long. The patrol was soon making its way to their hiding place.
There were three of them. The man in front had the flashlight and the two fellow guards followed him with AK-47s slung over their shoulders. They made plenty of noise -- this was, after all, a routine security patrol. The noise they were making generally kept the larger jungle animals away. The last man was smoking a cheap local cigarette.
Without taking time to think about it, Nick and Dave quietly unholstered their silenced .22 caliber Glocks. They could not risk any unnecessary noise. A shout from this high would no doubt alert the compound.
Dave threw a large stone down on the path when the third man passed him. The man whipped around, scrambling to get the AK off his shoulder. The last thing he saw was the grinning camouflaged face of Dave McGraw. The tiny hole between his eyes looked as if someone had taken measurements to center it exactly.
Dave caught the body before it could fall to the ground and lowered it quietly. A quick glance around showed him Nick was doing the same with the second man. By the time Nick lowered his man to the ground Dave had cupped a hand around the patrol leader’s mouth and manhandled him to the ground.
“Keep silent or die,” Nick said in Spanish, "the choice is yours."
The man’s eyes widened in horror when he looked at Nick’s camouflaged face. Nick looked like some avenging alien god to him.
The man had enough presence of mind to pretend he did not understand Spanish, and Nick quickly switched to the local dialect of Quechua (Lamista), and gave his instructions again. The man nodded his head.
His fear was plain -- ordinary gringos, even the ones who spoke perfect Spanish, didn’t even know Lamista existed, and this demon of the night spoke it as if he had been born to it.
The man’s eyes widened again as Nick’s features began to take shape beneath the camouflage paint. Even when he was old and gray, he would tell the tale of the night the Inca rose from the past and warned him to work for Conde no more.
Nick and Dave lifted the man bodily from the trail and carried him well into the trees above the path. Nick used dark green hundred mile an hour tape (a green fabric tape similar to duct tape in its uses, stickiness, and versatility and used to secure equipment to soldiers and vehicles during airborne operations) to truss the man to a conveniently shaped Cherimoya tree.
Dave slipped back down to the path to conceal the two dead men. When he was through, he carefully brushed away all signs of their struggle or even normal activity on the beaten path spiraling down the inside of the caldera.
It only took a few moments to determine where the two women were and what their condition was like. Their queries about troop strength, locations, armament, schedules and the layout of the villa took a good deal longer.
The injection of Rohypnol did not change affect the prisoner’s ability to answer the questions, but when he awakened later he would have spotty memories of the two men at best. Nick had a small sketch pad in his hands. He occasionally showed the sketch to his prisoner and made small corrections when necessary.
When they were through with him, Dave gave him shot of liquid Valium to send him to sleep. There was some concern for what this might do to his respiratory system, but it was considerably less hazardous than a .22 round into the frontal lobe of his brain, which was the alternative.
“This is going to take longer than we thought,” Nick said. "We’re going to have to take out more personnel than I expected. A regular P.O.W. snatch isn’t going to work here.”
“No sense cryin’ about it. We don’t have time to go back and get more troops, even if we had some. We’ll just have to hit ‘em as hard as we can and make a run for it when we have the women.”
Dave seemed alright with the idea, but Nick had more experience in Peru, and he was not so sure. He made a mental note that civilian ops were going to have to be planned and carried out like military ops if he was going to stay alive to cash the paychecks. At the moment, he wasn’t sure at all that he was going to be alive to cash the first one.
In spite of his reluctance, he knew Dave was
right. In an hour or two this patrol would be missed -- and when the bodies were found, the whole inside of the caldera would be crawling with Conde’s peasants.
They gagged the prisoner and left him taped to the tree. They made their way further down inside the wooded inner slope of the caldera. Nick eased out his binoculars as did Dave, and they conducted a long, thorough, and exacting visual reconnaissance.
If it had not been for the babbling cooperation of their captive, they might well have missed the barracks. It was marked only by a small building no larger than an outhouse. It did not look like much, but it was covering a large cavern in the wall of the caldera.
Their captive had indicated there were thirty men inside the cave barracks at any given time, while there always were fifteen more on guard duty outside. The women were not locked up inside the house as they had expected, and this was going to cause them the most difficulty.
The barracks was actually going to be the easiest problem to solve. The narrow doorway was the only way out. One of them could toss several grenades through the opened door and empty a couple of magazines from the old M16-M203 combination inside and the barracks would be effectively compromised.
The other fifteen men (less the three they had taken out on patrol) would be scattered about the house and grounds. Nick and Dave both knew that their only solution was to get closer, and find out where the roving guards were located. Just before their all-out assault they would take out as many as they could with the silenced .22s. The fly in the ointment was that they still had no knowledge of the building the women were housed in…their primary mission.
* * * * *
Nick hated the situation, but as Dave had pointed out, time was something they were all out of. With the decision made for him, he set out to make the most of it.
When Nick felt he was about three hundred meters from their objective, he pointed out a large and distinctively shaped tree that was much taller than the surrounding trees, and drew an imaginary circle in the air above his head. The hand signal was the one normally used by soldiers to designate a rally point, a place to come back to if things fouled up, or in this case, to come back to after the final reconnaissance.
Birth of the Wolf (Wahaya) Page 3