He found a spot near the bottom of the ridgeline Nick had selected with what appeared to be ancient Incan ruins, an almost intact wall of stone about four feet high and assorted rubble inside that they would use as seats and props to rest against. It was a better place than he had expected to find.
“Sit rep,” the general ordered as soon as the connection went through. A ‘sit rep’ is a brief situation report as you understand it, and when issued as a command from a superior to a subordinate in the military it means the commander wants all available knowledge you have of your situation from beginning to end, your location, status of all personnel, and your best estimate of what you are expected to do. In other words, he wants you to condense everything you know into a few manageable sentences so that he can base his decisions on what is happening on the ground.
Dave had expected this and he had worked out his response in his head before he called. He was a little surprised that the General was suddenly not using names any longer, and he sensed that the General was no longer alone. Even though the phone was encrypted; someone, somewhere that the General did not wish to reveal Dave’s name to was listening.
When it came time to report Nick’s actions, he used the code name Wahaya to refer to his leader -- the General would understand. The General had been the Colonel from the story about the sniper school he had told the ladies earlier. His report to the General was terse and concise. His instructions had been as terse and concise.
“Proceed to cache point and wait for Wahaya,” the General said. “Inbound support is an "A" team from the company and will not arrive in your area of operation until twenty two hundred hours. Submit sit rep eighteen hundred hours to include locations for possible LZ within five klicks your position. Copy?”
“Copy!” Dave responded. The General shut down the satellite phone and Dave wrote down the GPS coordinates of his own location to check against the map.
He kept his mouth shut as he used everything he had left in his butt pack to make some semblance of a meal for the women. He gathered such fruits and nuts as were available in the jungle around him and divided them up among the women. It was important to keep their strength up as much as possible, all three were flagging.
He turned to Abbie last and encouraged her to eat. The hundred mile an hour tape had held up amazingly well, but the skin above it was reddened and swollen. As much as he hated to, Dave opened the foot binding. Abbie’s foot was swollen and the beginnings of infection were visible. He used the last of the tiny can of spray local anesthetic in his first aid kit, and then as gently as he could, he opened the cut on her foot with his last sealed surgical razor blade.
He gently debrided the reddened flesh and flushed it with the last of his hydrogen peroxide. The triple antibiotic ointment tube was nearly empty as well, but he applied the last of it and tied a field compress around it. There was plenty of time before they would have to move, so he elevated her foot and advised the ladies to take a rest in place.
The top of the draw was only about four hundred meters uphill, and Dave figured to make his recon for possible LZs (landing zone, a reasonably flat area clear for a fifty meter circle with a less than seven degree slope) later in the day.
He never should have allowed himself to sit down after taking care of Abbie. He was not a bad enough soldier to let himself fall asleep but he was in enough of a daze that when the Indians approached, he didn’t notice them until they were on him.
Dave never saw the warrior who hit him from behind with the thick wooden club, he only saw the lights go out.
Chapter 7
The Aguaruna (they call themselves Awajun, or, “the people”) Indians of Peru are a proud race. The Incas, the Spanish, and all the ruling classes since had tried to subdue them and had failed miserably.
It was a tradition among the young warriors upon coming of age to visit the ruins at the foot of the draw and take aja'waska, a pychotropic drug manufactured from the caapi vine. The purpose of the drug use was to give them visions which would help them to determine their path in life.
It was an event of great importance. They were very uncertain what type of omen it might be to have found four whites at their sacred site. Their first urge was to kill the whites and drag their bodies into the forest, but the Shaman, whose name was Zeev, insisted that they simply be taken outside the ruins and guarded until he could consult the spirits.
The young men obeyed their shaman, and the ones not actively engaged in guarding the prisoners set about purifying the site for the ceremonies, which they would have had to do in any case.
The young men, shirtless, barefoot, and dressed only in the long legged Bermuda type shorts that they wore for daily work, carried heavy traditional spears hand fashioned by themselves to the ceremony. They followed an ancient purification ceremony, even older than the ruins themselves, and they revered the shaman.
The Shaman said his prayers in a loud and confident voice for such an ancient appearing man. None of the young men knew how old the Shaman was, and even Dave would have been shocked to know that this Shaman had conducted this rite at this site more than one hundred times as an adult. He himself did not remember how many times he had attended as a young man and as an apprentice to the Shaman of his youth.
The Shaman’s prayers stopped, and Dave came back to full consciousness as the Shaman drank from a dipper which had been filled in a cauldron sized gourd set down on a large semi squared stone they were using as an altar.
The Shaman took powders from various pouches on the belt he was wearing, taking his time measuring and pinching the powders and casting them into the small fire that was burning in front of him. Some of the powders flared or sparked, and some released small clouds of fragrance.
After several minutes, the Shaman nodded to a young man, younger than the rest and who carried no spear, and the dipper was refilled and brought to him. The Shaman ceremoniously sipped from the dipper until it was empty. The old man held his arms to his side and began to chant. He seemed to lose his chain of thought, and he began to bobble and weave, as if he was drunk. His arms rose straight up and he whispered “Zeev!” hoarsely and keeled over.
Whatever the word meant, the young men became very wary, facing outward from the group, spearheads lowered. They closed in until they were nearly side by side…and they stayed that way.
* * * * *
Nick cleared the mangrove swamp at just about the time Dave was talking to the General on the satphone, and he picked up his pace. Something troubled his spirit, and he was aware as he had been many times over his career, that something had gone wrong.
The feeling was ahead of him rather than behind him, and he began to run in earnest. He estimated that he was by now a good fifteen kilometers from the ridge, but he was not running on a road or a track. He estimated that at his present speed, it would take him about two hours to reach the ridge where Dave and the women were waiting.
He hoped they were still there or had left good directions to the LZ for the chopper…but his spirit was still troubled.
Nick smelled the fragrant smoke from the fire long before he reached the base of the ridge, and he stopped. A grove of Lucuma trees provided him with the concealment he needed while he slowed his breathing and the blood pounding in his veins. With the vigorous activity stopped, his endorphins couldn’t quite suppress the pain of the deep cuts he had gotten from the piranha. He didn’t have to look to see the red streaks coming from the deep cuts to know that they were infected. He could feel the thickness in his legs.
He had to keep moving to keep from stiffening up, and he willed himself to do so. Nick crawled through the darkened brush, the late afternoon sum casting shadows that he used as naturally as he breathed to conceal his movements. He didn’t stop until he was close enough that he could have reached out and touched one of the quivering handmade spears of the young men.
Nick’s eyes took in the old shaman and saw the opened pouches on his belt. It seemed the rituals of the Awajun wer
e very similar to the rituals of the Cherokee.
Working in the San Martin Province of Peru over a period of years, Nick had not only learned to speak fluent Quechua, he had spent much time with the Awajun. Nothing was happening, and the young warriors were edgy.
Nick thought it best that he remain still and in hiding -- sooner or later these men would give him all he needed to dominate them and bend them to his will. These people had been treated badly by every organized government Peru had ever had, and Nick would not compound that error unnecessarily. He waited.
* * * * *
Within an hour the old man awakened from his drug induced stupor, and the first word to come from his parched mouth was “Yumi (Water.)” The youngest warrior, his assistant, brought water with the same dipper the drug had been delivered with and the old man drank thirstily.
He looked up a called the circle of warriors, telling the men to face him. He spoke one word. “Zeev!” he said, and gestured to the large gourd. Each of the young men in turn came to kneel in front of the makeshift altar, and drank their cupful of aja'waska.
They took turns, making repeated trips to the altar until the large cauldron sized gourd was empty. When the gourd was almost empty, the Shaman lifted it and drank the dregs in the bottom, perhaps the most powerful draft of all. The warriors faced the faint flames of the small fire, and the youngest among them, who had not been permitted the drink, heavy branches and logs into the fire a little at a time.
Nick had started when the Shaman had called out “Zeev,” it was the Quechuan word for “Wolf.” It gave him the key he would need to get assistance from these men and freedom for his friends.
With infinite care, Nick backed away from the circle and moved back down the path. He stripped off the shirt to his night suit and stuffed in into the old fashioned butt pack, and then pulled out the tiny polished steel mirror in his camouflage kit. Most of the camouflage he had applied the night before had sweated off, and much of what had been left had washed off in the river.
He quickly applied the light and dark colors to his face, not in the woodland camouflage of the Army, but in the pattern of the Ghost Warriors of the Cherokee. On his bare chest, he put the Quechuan symbol of the wolf. He fumbled through his small pack for one final aid to his planned entrance and placed it in the right front cargo pocket of the faded gray green trousers of his night suit.
He grinned, remembering the fight he had endured with the brass at the Special Warfare School over the night suit. Normally the Special Forces were extremely lax in enforcing uniform codes and regulations, teaching the very special soldiers to blend in with indigenous forces.
There were, however, some inevitable PR types who filtered through any system, and one of those had worn the silver chicken of a full bull colonel who felt that he had written the “book” on night operations. He had designed a “night suit” for use by the Special Forces troops that was intimidatingly black and covered with zippered pockets. It was skintight, and as far as Nick was concerned, worthless.
Nick had obtained, from an army surplus store oddly enough, several sets of 1967 era Vietnam issue jungle fatigues. The OD green of the uniforms had washed out to a faded gray green that faded into the background of anything except snow. The color’s chameleon like ability to blend into varicolored backgrounds relieved the wearer of the burden of breaking up their outline with brush or vegetation.
In the dark, the colonel’s “night suits” were a darker black than the night around them and drew the eye towards themselves. Nick’s old fatigues simply disappeared.
The brass had agreed with him, and there had been no more comments about his suit, but the stocks of the old jungle fatigues had disappeared rapidly from the surplus stores around Fayetteville and Fort Benning.
With his eyes blackened almost like a raccoon’s and the pale sand color on the high areas of his face, he reached into his medicine bag and removed a beaded headband and placed it on his forehead.
Slinging the AK-47 casually across his back, Nick slipped silently to the edge of the trail leading to the ruins. His legendary ability to move undetected did not fail him as he moved to the edge of the stone walls of the ruins.
He reached into his right cargo pocket and removed the red smoke grenade. Holding it carefully by the fuse, he pulled the pin and allowed the lever to slip off. Setting it carefully on the ground, he stepped back and let the huge column of smoke rise silently.
The warriors had noticed the thick cloud of red smoke, and so had Dave. Dave had recognized it for what it was, and he tensed in the bonds the warriors had placed on him. He was ready for his release so that he could help Nick. He might just as well have relaxed.
Nick strode nonchalantly through the thick cloud of red smoke, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to make an entrance that way. His regal bearing, his massively muscled chest and the cut edges of his abs were all enhanced by the paint and the symbols he had drawn on his chest and arms and the beaded headband he wore. His Cherokee features were more pronounced than ever, and he looked every bit the mystical figure he was pretending to be. Even Dave was intimidated.
Murmurs of “Zeev” raced through the drugged warriors, and the old Shaman rose to his feet to welcome the visitor. For the Shaman, the mixture of vision and reality had long been difficult to distinguish. His welcome of Nick was not conditional upon which Nick was. It was obvious to the Shaman that Nick was the embodiment of the Spirit of the Wolf, which could assume whatever form it chose.
Nick spoke formally, in stilted phrases the old Shaman would expect. “Why have you bound my brother and my women?” he asked impassively.
“We had no way of knowing who they were Zeev,” the Shaman said, “they shall be set free immediately.” The Shaman issued orders in the Lowland dialect of Quechuan and several warriors moved to release the prisoners. Dave started to talk and Nick shook his head imperceptibly. Dave shut up instantly, but pointed at Abbie’s foot.
Nick walked to Abbie, lifted her, carried her to the altar, and placed her upon it. Unwrapping the compress, he looked at the swollen and infected cut. Turning to the Shaman, he asked for Pau D’Arco, cat’s claw, and nasturtiums.
Seemingly proud of Nick’s knowledge of Awajun medicine, the old man opened the proper pouches on his medicine belt and removed packets of the requested substances.
In truth, a large part of U.S. investments in Peru are due to the incredible knowledge base of the Awajun Indians regarding the medicinal qualities of plants. With Peru’s amazing biodiversity and the proliferation of species, Peru is a veritable cornucopia of supplies of both basic pharmaceuticals and research potential.
The old Shaman watched with great pride as Nick prepared the bark strips of the Pau D’Arco by steeping them in the metal canteen cup and then crushing the nastrutiums before mixing them in as well. Nick added the root of the cat’s claw plant to the mixture, covered the top and allowed the mixture to steep.
As he let it steep, Nick chanted the words that his grandfather had taught him, basically a prayer to the Great Spirit acknowledging that it was the Great Spirit doing the healing, not Nick or the plants.
“Pride is a good thing for a warrior Nicholas,” the old man had said, “but for a warrior to take credit for deeds that he himself has not performed is shameful before other men and before the Great Spirit. Always remember to give credit where credit is due. If you try to take credit for the work of the Great Spirit, he will punish your patient.”
Amanda Dunn had managed to maintain her sanity throughout the whole ordeal, but this was so surreal that she was having trouble believing what she was seeing. The young man, so calm and so confident since the moment she had first seen him, looked perfectly at ease among these savages, as if he was one of them.
In the outlandish getup he was dressed in, he actually looked like one of them. When Nick had walked through the cloud of red smoke with that makeup on, she had not been entirely sure it had been Nick. He had spoken to the men and t
o the old medicine man in their own language and now he had asked for specific plants to help heal Abbie’s infection.
“Where do we get such men?” she asked herself, “and for god’s sake, where can we find more of them?”
Cynthia Cohen, sitting freely now next to Amanda, was having many of the same thoughts. She had never been a fan of the military, her background and education supporting her low opinion of the U.S. military, but these two men, especially Nick, were nothing like the knuckle dragging Neanderthals she had been taught to despise.
On these two men the mantle of ‘Warrior’ took on a more than honorable cast. The Ivy League attitude of this young Main Line Jewess was being put to the test by this whole experience, and her fierce contemporaries in Israel would have been drooling over this warrior. As she eyed Nick’s incredible physique and felt his charismatic presence, she began a little mental drooling of her own.
Nick removed the stone from the top of his canteen cup and asked Cynthia to spread the cut on Abbie’s foot once more. Abbie was still shaking with fear of the warriors surrounding her, but Nick’s calmness seemed to help her.
Cynthia’s hands were gentle, but the infection was still painful, and she bit back a cry as Cynthia opened the cut. The decoction that Nick poured over the infected wound was soothing, and the anti-inflammatory power of the fresh cat’s claw was astounding. The swelling in her foot didn’t just disappear, but it diminished visibly in seconds.
Nick flushed the cut repeatedly until the decoction was used up, and then he made a mash of the ingredients, working them into a fine paste. When he had a smooth mixture, Nick applied it to the length of the cut and the wrapped a field compress back around the whole thing.
Nick wanted very much to talk with the young girl and reassure her, but he knew that doing so would diminish him in the eyes of these warriors. As much as it went against his grain to submit to their values in this case, he knew he still needed them for a while. He felt no need to judge them, but he knew that in some ways he could never be a part of their brotherhood.
Birth of the Wolf (Wahaya) Page 6