by Jon Land
“I cannot tell. The evidence is slight, a slip, or perhaps one of them leaning over to do just what I’m doing now.”
“What you’re telling me is that you can’t find a single track belonging to whatever doubled back on Norseman?”
“For a creature in harmony with the land, walking without any trace is quite possible.”
“How far are they behind Norseman?”
“An hour, maybe two.”
“And us?”
“At least that much behind them.”
The jungle turned harsh and brutal from there, more humid and steaming than ever. The animal and bird sounds lost their harmonious ring. The heavy green foliage became tangled and more difficult to part. The route was hilly, irregular. Sudden drops occurred without notice. Branches scratched at McCracken’s flesh, and he flailed at them in frustration. Blaine couldn’t have said if fatigue and foreboding were to blame, or if the Wakinyan, as Johnny called them, had led Norseman’s team into these treacherous parts for a reason. In any case, this direction also led to the trunk river, where Luis would be waiting with their boat.
Night’s dark fingers were starting to spread across the sky when Johnny went rigid in his tracks.
“What’s wrong, Indian?”
“I heard something, Blainey.”
“Where?”
“Ahead of us…As much as a mile.”
“Any idea what?”
“I’m…not sure.”
Wareagle’s gait changed from there; now he moved like a great predator approaching prey that had its back turned. McCracken followed—and stopped abruptly behind Johnny when the big Indian froze, his arms flexed by his sides. “Sniff the air, Blainey.”
McCracken did. “I don’t—Wait a minute…Holy shit, you’re right!”
There was an unmistakable scent of gunpowder and sulphur-based explosives sifting through the wind.
“How far, Indian?”
“A half mile, at most.”
They covered that distance with little regard for the fact that the Wakinyan might be retracing their steps directly for them. Somehow Blaine felt even if the enemy knew they were here, it was not in their plans to do anything about it. That enemy had other priorities, which it would pursue with all haste.
The gunpowder smell grew into a full-fledged assault on their nostrils in the last dozen yards before they stepped into the clearing. They stopped dead still.
“Norseman,” Blaine muttered.
Or what was left of him. The seven ravaged corpses had been arranged in a trio of yard-deep chasms in the ground. Crosses made of branches had been jammed through the center of their chests, and the bodies had been left so that the crosses flowed in one precise row, so precise that only by changing his perspective could Blaine actually tell there was more than one.
Wareagle had moved further into the clearing, and bent to pick up discharged shells and empty clips on the ground. A bit deeper in he came upon discarded grenade pins and the tripod for an M-60 that lay nearby.
“How did this happen, Johnny?”
“Norseman’s men didn’t know they were being ambushed until it was too late. They responded with fire in all directions.”
“Then whatever they killed must have been hauled away.”
“I don’t believe they killed anything, or even hit anything. Their shots were wild. It is clear they had no targets, only sounds they were supposed to hear.”
“And then our friends from the complex rushed in and opened fire when they were facing in the wrong direction?”
Wareagle shook his head. “No, Blainey. All the shells here belong to Norseman’s men. Their bodies have no bullet wounds.”
“Wait a minute! You’re telling me seven Green Berets armed to the teeth couldn’t protect themselves from an unarmed attack?”
“I said no guns. I did not say unarmed.”
“How could they let the Wakinyan get so close? How could Ben Norseman’s men let those things parade right into the middle of a firefight and not take a single one out with them?”
“I can’t say, Blainey. There are no tracks leading in or out except for Norseman’s. Everything stops here.”
“Except us, Indian. The one good thing is that the Wakinyan left all the weapons behind. Virtually confirms the fact that they still don’t know we’re in the neighborhood.”
“Or suggests they want to give us a chance. More sport.”
“No, they want out. They hit the installation because they had somewhere else they wanted to be. Norseman was in their way. We’re not.”
“Not yet.”
McCracken moved to Ben Norseman’s corpse and stripped the pack from his back. Inside was a thick, oblong metallic cylinder about eighteen inches in length. As Johnny brought the cylinder closer to him, it seemed to tremble in his hands.
“Blainey?”
“It’s a fuel air explosive, Indian. Once activated it spreads a highly volatile gas over a wide radius for a predetermined period of time and then detonates. The gas ignites, and what you end up with is a huge air blast that leaves nothing behind.”
“Perhaps Norseman was out to set a trap of his own.”
“And then he never even got the explosive out of his pack. He would have tried, you know. When what was happening to him became clear, he would have used it.”
“Which means the Wakinyan didn’t give him the time.”
“Wouldn’t have taken much, so they must not have given him any,” Blaine said, and started away.
Stepping through the clearing, Blaine’s foot bumped something solid concealed beneath a bed of leaves. He pushed them aside and grasped a black electronic device. He found the On button and the screen jumped to life, showing a square grid dominated by a circle sweeping over it and then starting again, like a miniature radar screen.
“A range finder, Blainey?” McCracken nodded. “Five-hundred-yard radius, by the look of it. Norseman wasn’t taking any chances with his pursuit. High tech all the way. Doesn’t look like it helped much.”
“They knew he was coming. They knew where.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m not sure. The men were killed at close range—when they should have had plenty of warning as well as time. They had neither.”
McCracken’s eyes fell to the range finder. Its sweep continued, programmed, he assumed, to the specifications of what Norseman had been told he was hunting. The circle closed and started again, nothing showing in the grid.
“Coast looks clear, Indian.”
“Like it did to the Green Coats, Blainey.”
“How far to the boat?”
“Two hours in the dark. Easy level ground.”
McCracken was strapping the M-60 to his shoulder. “No reason to travel light then.”
The moon would have made for plenty of light, if its rays had been strong enough to push themselves through the dense cover of the jungle. In some places it might as well have been a darkened cave they were walking through. Occasionally slivers of moonbeams briefly illuminated a path that seemed unchanging.
In the darkest parts, the range finder’s sweeping red grid made for a grim luminescence. McCracken had been carrying it since they’d left the clearing and the corpses of Ben Norseman’s team. The thing made a slight beeping sound with each circular pass. Blaine figured they were still thirty minutes from the river. There were no guarantees Luis would have waited the extra time with the boat. Their best chance there lay in the hope that the whiskey had lasted longer than expected. If not—
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep…
McCracken heard the range finder come alive in his hand. Suddenly its circular sweep was lined with red flashing dots clustered along a narrow sphere in the bottom left-hand grid.
Wareagle had already gone rigid.
“We’ve got company, Indian.”
“Where, Blainey?”
“Behind us to the south. Five hundred yards back, if I’m reading this right.”
; McCracken stripped the M-60 machine gun from his shoulder. Damn thing weighed a ton. He’d handled a 7.62-mm Vulcan in the streets of Tehran, but not dead tired and in darkness so profound it was sure to confound his aim.
“No, Blainey,” said Wareagle.
“What?”
“Norseman and his men would have seen the same thing. They reached the clearing and made their stand because that is what the Wakinyan wanted. The Green Coats saw only what they were supposed to see.”
On the range finder, the blips had moved into the next grid.
“What are you saying?”
“The graves, Blainey. I realize now the graves are the key. They did not dig them to bury Norseman and his men. The holes were already there when the Green Coats arrived. The Wakinyan dug them so they could hide and then lunge upon the Green Coats from within their midst. It explains everything. By the time Norseman and the others opened fire, it was too late.”
Beep, beep, beep…
“Then…”
“They’re ahead of us as well as behind. Planted somewhere, camouflaged, waiting in the very spot they know we will make our stand.”
McCracken’s eyes darted back and forth from the range finder to Wareagle. “But they knew Norseman was trailing them. We’re a different story.”
“The night has betrayed us. They must have circled back. Or…”
“Four hundred yards, Indian. Or what?”
“They knew about our presence from the start.”
“And left Norseman’s weapons out in the open?”
“Giving us what we wanted, what we needed to play their game.”
“Three hundred and fifty yards…What now?”
“They timed their move perfectly. All routes north and south are impassable.”
The range finder seemed to be getting louder. “Leaving us with only east and west. Terrific.”
“There is a third option, Blainey.”
“Three hundred yards, Indian.”
“They know even before we do where we will choose to make our stand ahead. Their greatest weapon is this very understanding. It was no different in the hellfire with the Black Hearts. Remember, Blainey?”
McCracken’s mind drifted back and wanted to stay there. “We became the Black Hearts, and that’s how we beat them. That’s how we stayed alive.”
“As we must do again, Blainey.”
Beep, beep, beep…
Chapter 9
THE DITCHES THEY DUG in the ground were just deep enough to conceal them under a layer of dirt and brush. Blaine had switched the range finder off when the blips were less than one hundred yards away. Then Johnny helped him cover himself. How the big Indian could manage the same task all by himself, Blaine would never know. But there was plenty about Johnny he couldn’t fathom and never would.
Blaine silently counted out the steps of their pursuers, trying to anticipate the second those steps would be upon their position. If Wareagle’s ploy didn’t work, death would come with no chance for resistance. But Johnny’s words had their usual ring of confidence. The best strategy makes use of something the enemy uses himself, something so personal that the idea of another using it is inconceivable.
Blaine recognized that the means by which the Wakinyan had dispatched Norseman’s team had changed Johnny’s view of them. Their use of such a brilliant stratagem revealed them to be clever tacticians as well as murderous monsters.
A faint rustling reached Blaine in his self-made crypt. Not a sound so much as a disturbance in the ground he had become a part of. It was no more than the here-and-gone ruffle a small creature would make as it went its way in the underbrush. And yet it belonged to creatures powerful enough to savagely murder seven Green Berets.
He could feel the ground stir directly above him.
One of them’s right above me…
Gone, though, before he could even complete the thought. Somehow that slowed Blaine’s heart. The test had been passed. Johnny’s plan, this part anyway, was going to work.
But a fresh fear washed over him like cold water down the back on a hot summer day. He had made the world of the enemy his own world in Vietnam, in Israel, in a dozen other countries. He had felt his heart lurching for his throat and his guts twisted into bag ties to hold in his breath. The feeling that had just passed over him now was not the black cold he remembered. It was more like a frigid void, a white noise darkening in the night, as if a vacuum were walking above.
Blaine hardened his resolve to keep from trembling. He almost retched, and his sense of time deserted him. With his other senses already stifled, the vise of panic tightened around him.
Fight it, dammit! Fight it!
Forming that resolve coherently was enough to do the job. The shallow breathing he allowed himself steadied. Blaine flexed his fingers to regain physical control.
Then a hand drove down into his hollow. McCracken kicked for freedom as it pushed for his face.
Blaine recognized the hand as Johnny’s just in time to still himself.
“We must move quickly, Blainey. They will be back before long.” Wareagle helped McCracken to his feet and watched him stretch the life back into his limbs. Then Blaine leaned back over and retrieved the range finder from his hollow.
Beep, beep, beep…
“Moving away from us, Indian.”
“Not for long.”
The red blips continued to move farther from the center of the grid.
“So, what now?”
“We use more of their medicine against them. We set a trap, Blainey. With us as bait.”
“Because Ben Norseman was kind enough to leave us with the snare we needed,” McCracken said as he pulled the fuel air explosive cylinder from his pack.
“The Wakinyan who walked upon our graves will meet up with the rest soon,” said Wareagle. “When they backtrack our way, our own personal hellfire will greet them.”
“Gonna piss off a lot of conservationists, Indian.”
“The land will understand, Blainey. Something must die if the balance of nature is to be preserved.” Wareagle gazed through the dark jungle in the same direction the range finder was aimed. “They’re coming.”
“Pretty decent breeze. What do you make for direction?”
“At our backs now; blowing west to east.”
“And say two to three minutes for the Wakinyan to cover the five hundred yards the range finder gives us.” He turned the cylinder over to work the timer. “I’ll set the timer for a minute and a half. Catch them dead in the center that way.”
“Not right here, Blainey.”
“Why?”
“The shock wave could still catch us. We’re in a valley right now, but we can make that work for us by climbing out after setting the charge near the rim.”
“I like your thinking, Indian.”
Heading west, they soon reached the point where the valley began to slope upward. Blaine’s eyes darted furiously from the trail to the range finder, which so far had shown nothing.
“Get ready, Blainey.”
McCracken handed the range finder to Johnny and pulled the explosive cylinder from his pack. It was heavier than it looked, and he lowered it to the ground to set the timing and release mechanism. The whole process was incredibly simple.
“Just tell me when.”
The sweep of the range finder’s arrow found a small splotch coming in from the east and the wind that blew toward it.
“Now, Blainey.”
McCracken had already set the timer on the 1:30 mark. He flipped a switch; a small light next to it glowed dull dusty red.
“Let’s move, Indian!”
They sped up the slope and out of the valley, never looking back. McCracken’s eyes darted constantly to his watch. Wareagle counted the seconds in his mind. At a minute twenty-five, Blaine started to shout a warning that was lost in the blast that followed.
It came like a sonic boom, a hammer blow striking the earth itself. The night was instantly alight with a blind
ing orange flash that turned white as heat poured from it. A hot gush of air caught Blaine and Johnny from behind and pitched them airborne. Branches, stones, fragments of boulders and trees rained down on them as they instinctively covered their heads. A fire that was too hot to burn very long continued to light up the night. The air crackled and popped. McCracken’s face was singed, and his breath was hot.
“The Wakinyan are burning in hell, Indian,” he said finally.
“Only if hell will have them, Blainey.”
They moved over tough terrain, up a steep grade. The flames died before long, but a whitish glow continued to emanate from the area of the blast. A huge, gaping scar would be left in the body of the jungle, but its soul was unmarred. Johnny assured Blaine of this.
The two men walked until the terrain became too treacherous and they were forced to stop until the next morning. Though both were exhausted, they maintained alternate watches all night. Neither wanted to admit their fear that the Wakinyan might have survived the massive blast, but they felt it nonetheless, and Blaine spent his watch with his eye on the range finder.
The arrow swept monotonously and found nothing.
At dawn they started out for where they had left Luis and their boat. It was a two-hour journey, much of it downhill. The last stretch was accompanied by the quiet sounds of the trunk river, which had delivered them to the jungle in the first place. At last Wareagle led the way down the first path that looked familiar. It was all McCracken could do to restrain himself from bursting out of the jungle in glee. Everything considered, it wouldn’t bother him terribly if he never saw the Amazon Basin again.
Up ahead, Wareagle had stopped on the trunk river’s bank, shoulders stiffening in familiar fashion.
“Son of a bitch,” Blaine muttered when his eyes followed Johnny’s toward the water.
The boat was missing. Luis was gone.
“Looks like I didn’t give the bastard enough whiskey.”
“No, Blainey,” said Wareagle.
And that was when McCracken realized Johnny was looking upward to the right, toward a shape swaying in the breeze. Luis, more accurately what remained of him, had been hung from a tree branch twenty feet off the ground. His eyes bulged, and his tongue protruded grotesquely. Hanging had not been the worst that had happened to him.