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."
"We are."
"But we haven't given him any reason to doubt our sincerity. He's in a very awkward situation, but he's reacting all wrong to us. Like he was still a prisoner of the slavers. Like he's in delayed shock from last night, the shooting of that soldier. Today, I thought he was all right. Belligerent and pretty pompous, but I expect that from a twenty-two-year-old college student who thinks he's a career officer. I thought of sending him out on the plane, but now, with us expecting the Brazilians, we need him to talk to them."
"This morning he cooperated. When we questioned the Cubans."
"Then he demanded a weapon. That's when he got belligerent. Got worse all day, then he finally tried to take us."
They stood in silence for a moment. Around them, Indians struggled with can openers, gulped captured food. Others slept on the bare deck, their auto-rifles and shotguns in their hands. Lyons glanced into the cabin. He saw Lieutenant Silveres sitting upright in a chair, his hands and feet tied to the chair. The young officer was staring into space.
"Can't drag a prisoner all over the Amazon," Lyons told Blancanales.
"No, Lyons! He's a good kid. We can't..."
Crossing the troop deck, Lyons took one of the G-3s collected from the dead mercenaries on the gunboat. Blancanales blocked the cabin door.
"You think you'll make it look like one of the slavers shot him?" Blancanales demanded, putting one hand on the butt of his Beretta. "I won't let you. I don't know what that Indian drug did to your head, but..."
"Pol, the boy's a soldier. Watch."
"What are you going to do?"
"Watch."
Blancanales followed Lyons into the cabin, staying close behind him, ready to grab him in an instant. But Lyons's moves caught him unaware.
Whipping his knife from his gun belt, Lyons slashed the ropes binding the young lieutenant. He put the loaded G-3 in his freed hands. "Okay, Lieutenant Silveres. We need soldiers. Will you help us?"
"Is this a trick?"
Lyons snapped back the rifle's cocking lever, once, twice. A cartridge flew from the receiver. "There you are. I'm asking you, are you with us?" Lyons extended his hand.
The Brazilian grinned, shook hands with Lyons, then Blancanales. "We fight the foreigners together."
Suddenly, all three men looked to the west. Rotor throb tore the quiet Amazon night.
"Lieutenant! Are those your people? Do they have helicopters?" Blancanales demanded.
He shook his head.
13
An explosion of xenon and rotor blast descended from the night. Lopez and Hoang, shielding their eyes from the flying sand and leaves, watched the helicopter pass over them. Fitted with xenon landing lights and fiberglass pontoons, the Huey troopship hovered over the ridge. Mercenaries slid down lengths of rope to the ferns, forming a circle of outward-facing riflemen. Then the brilliance that bathed the hill switched off, returning the scene to moonlit night. The helicopter soared away.
"Think maybe there's some Indians who didn't see that?" Lopez asked Hoang. "Maybe Chan Sann should have included some skyrockets and sirens."
Their radio buzzed. "This is Williams. Where are you?"
Hoang waved a flashlight. One shadow broke away from the other forms, weaving through the rocks to the cliff edge.
Williams, a square-shouldered felon from the slums of London, wore no face blacking. They spotted the mercenary squad leader's white features from ten yards away. A black beret was tilted across his forehead. He carried an Uzi submachine gun.
"Over here," Lopez called out. "Watch where you walk, it drops off. Straight down."
"So where'd you see the soldiers?" Williams demanded.
"Didn't see nothing, man." Lopez pointed east, to the darkness and jungle below the hill. "We heard them chopping trees, digging in down there."
"I only saw one river boat when we flew over..."
"That's cause the other one got wasted."
"Blown away," Hoang added." Way gone."
"Oh, Lord," Williams sighed. "You think it's the army?"
"Who the hell knows?" Lopez flipped a glowing cigarette butt off the cliff. "That's why Chan the Man's sending you down there."
"Great, just blinking great. See you later." With a wave, Williams started back to his squad.
"Maybe, baby," Hoang said as the ten men filed away into the jungle, their weapons and equipment clanking as they hacked their way through the undergrowth with machetes. "Maybe we see you, maybe we don't."
In the shot-riddled cabin of the gunboat, Gadgets's electronics covered a table. Wires led from a cassette recorder to the circuits of a slaver radio.
While Lyons, Blancanales and Lieutenant Silveres waited, Gadgets rewound the tape, then pressed the play button.
"Calling Chan Sann. This is Lopez."
"This is Chan Sann. You reached the position?"
"We're here. Looking down on the river."
"Do you see the Brazilians?"
Advancing the tape, Gadgets skipped on to another exchange. "Do you see the boats? Lights?" the Asian-accented voice asked. The Latin voice replied, "No, nothing like that." Gadgets skipped again. The Asian voice spoke once more. "Find the Brazilians. Block their retreat." An English-accented voice pleaded, "You've got to get us out of there before the plane makes its run."
"I will radio you..."
"That's what I taped," Gadgets told them. "The one called Chan Sann is downriver somewhere. I figure he put some men on the ridge overlooking the river. And the helicopter brought in a squad."
"And then the plane," Blancanales added.
"The plane will come at daylight." Lyons touched up his body blacking with smears of genipap. "Question is, with bombs or gas?"
"Takes a whole lot of high explosive to chop up the jungle," Gadgets answered. "I'd bet it's gas. Dig a hole, get behind a tree, can't hide from gas."
"Thomas told me about entire villages dying," Lyons said. "People dying with yellow blood coming out of their mouths."
Lieutenant Silveres listened to the exchange without comment. He cleaned and oiled the G-3 auto-rifle, watching Blancanales sketch a map by the glow of a rag-shaded flashlight. Blancanales drew the curve of the river around the headland and pinpointed their position. An X marked the cliff overlooking the bend in the river. He put a question mark on the west side of the hills intersecting the river.
Setting down the auto-rifle, Lieutenant Silveres took the pencil and indicated two more snaking curves in the course of the river to the northwest. At the edge of the paper, he drew a zigzagging line.
"This is the border of my country, the Mamore. The first town is 108 kilometers from there."
"Is that where your unit is stationed?" Blancanales asked.
"There is a garrison in Guajara."
"Is that your unit?" Blancanales persisted. "Will they have the soldiers to assist us when we attack the..."
The lieutenant interrupted him. "It would be better for you to discuss that with my superiors. I will help you while we are in Bolivia. But I cannot talk of what the army will or will not do when we enter Brazil."
"Then a Brazilian force will intercept us here?" Blancanales pointed to where the river from Bolivia met the Mamore River.
The young officer only shrugged.
"Forget the Brazilian army!" Lyons stopped the questioning. "That's tomorrow. The slavers will annihilate us..." he grabbed Gadgets's wrist, looked at his watch "...in three and a half hours."
"If we stick around," Gadgets said.
"If we cut loose and try to continue north..." Blancanales pointed to the next bend in the river "...we get gassed. And we have another problem. Our plane will be coming in at dawn." He looked at Lieutenant Silveres. "And maybe the Brazilians, too. We can't offload that plane in the middle of a three-way firefight."