"This is it," said Williams. "Chan Sann wants us to hit whoever's got those boats Brazilians, rubber workers, who the hell. We bang away at them until the plane gets here. Then we mark them with flares, pull back, the plane does the gasser on them."
"With the chlorine gas? We'll be down here!" O'Neill lurched to one knee and grabbed Williams's uniform. "Radio him, beg him stop the plane..."
Guttierez slapped down the man's hands. "Can we mark them with grenades?" asked the Puerto Rican.
"My thoughts exactly. Open up your kits. Let's have a look at exactly what you've got."
Shrugging off his pack, Guttierez pulled back the top flap. He felt through the carefully packaged contents and found five fiberboard tubes. Each contained a rifle grenade. Guttierez used his body as a shield while Williams waved a penlight over the printing on the tubes.
"Yellow flare... two-second duration... parachute pops at 100 meters. No good. Red flare... same thing. High explosive, range 350 meters, now that's more like it. What about you, O'Neill? I put five flares in your load."
The florid boozer spilled out his backpack. Plastic sheeting, tangled cords, spare magazines for his G-3 littered the grass. "Flares? I don't know if... don't think that..."
Williams and Guttierez tore through the clutter. Guttierez backhanded O'Neill, the slap like a pistol shot in the silence. "Chinga! Maricon!"
"You rummy bastard!" spat Williams. "Where are they? I gave you ten grenades and flares to carry. It was your bloody duty!"
"We never used any before..." O'Neill whined as fists hammered his face. He scrambled away. Not content with beating the alcoholic, Guttierez jerked out his auto-pistol. O'Neill shrieked, ran away. Williams pushed the pistol to the sky.
"You want to broadcast our position?"
Guttierez lowered the pistol's hammer and returned the weapon to his holster. "Eso gusano es muerto. "
"Kill him in the daylight. Right now, go to every man, get any rifle flares he has..."
Without a word, Guttierez slunk away and moved unseen through the low grass. He went to every man in the defensive circle. He visited O'Neill, punching him several more times.
Williams examined the flares. Made for NATO, the projectiles had tails and fins that slipped over the muzzles of G-3 rifles. Firing a bullet from the rifle propelled the flare or grenade. A grenade had a range of about 350 yards. A flare flew a little more than 100 yards before its mini-parachute popped out. The flare then burned two seconds as it floated down.
Returning stealthily, Guttierez laid down four more packing tubes in front of Williams. "What will you do?" "Watch." Williams jammed the point of his bayonet through the aluminum nose of a flare and pried the end away. Pulling a tiny white parachute from the flare housing, he cut the lines.
In the cabin of the captured gunboat, Gadgets adjusted the antenna of a slaver radio. The voices of Williams and Chan Sann spoke from the radio.
"We think we've spotted them. There are lights and voices coming from a riverbank. We'll close the distance, report back before we open fire."
"Good. I will radio the plane."
The voices cut off as the Cambodian changed radios. Gadgets keyed his hand radio. "Pol. They saw the flashlights. The squad's coming in."
"Ready to move," Blancanales answered.
Voices blared from the monitor again. "This is Chan Sann on the river, calling Complex Five. Complex Five."
"This is the airstrip. The plane is ready. The pilot is here, waiting."
"There can be no delays. Have the pilot check the bombs, then start the engine. It must be here five minutes after I radio."
"Yes, sir. I will relay the instructions."
"Have the pilot report to me on this frequency when he is ready."
Gadgets laughed as he keyed his hand radio. "Man in Black, the plan's in motion. Politician, make your motions!"
"Ready and able."
Flat in the mud, Williams inched forward. Guttierez crawled beside him in the riverbank slime. They pushed through clumps of riverweeds, eased through shallows.
Two hundred fifty yards of beach and low brush separated them from the lights and voices. Fifty yards more, then he would radio Chan Sann...
Panic no longer clutched Williams. He had a good chance of surviving the bombing of the Brazilians. There was no wind to fan the chlorine gas. And modifying the rifle flares gave him another hundred yards of safety margin. And if the nine men behind them held their fire until he and Guttierez launched the first flares... And if...
Disregarding the psychotic Cambodian's instructions for his squad to attack the intruders, then mark the target with flares for the plane overhead, Williams would wait to hear the plane before launching the first flare. His squad would then cover the retreat of himself and Guttierez. The Englishman hoped to have 300 yards of open ground between him and the Brazilians before the canisters of liquid chlorine and high explosive found their targets.
"A soldier's first duty is to live through it," his old dad always told him. Williams intended to survive this night.
Ahead of them, a very slight rise blacked the lights. Williams scurried up the hard-packed mud and raised his head. In the distance, a light waved over a stand of trees. The sound of machetes came to him. Guttierez snaked over the rise. Williams followed him.
Hands took him. He felt a knife at his throat, a pistol against his skull. To his side, Guttierez thrashed.
"Don't move and you live. We're enemies of Chan Sann. Not you. We don't want to kill you."
A man fell across them. Guttierez tried to bring up his G-3. The slash of a machete took away the Puerto Rican's right arm, his head snapping back simultaneously as three subsonic 9mm slugs slammed into his right eye and forehead. He fell backward.
The hot pistol returned to Williams's head. "He's dead. You can live. Help us kill Chan Sann, and you get out of the Amazon alive."
Williams went slack in their grip and surrendered.
The drone of a piston engine approached from the east. Mercenaries crowded the rails of the gunboat to watch the Cessna cross the night sky above them, its silhouette a black X on the stars. Chan Sann peered at the plane 1000 feet above the river. He returned to the gunboat's cabin and radioed Williams.
"Prepare to mark the enemy's position. Acknowledge."
The reports of auto-rifles blasted from the walkie-talkie's tiny speaker. "Immediately. We'll hit..."
Electronic roar overwhelmed the frequency. Chan Sann clicked the walkie-talkie's transmit key again and again. But the static roared from the monitor of the shipboard radio also. He hit the console of the radio with the flat of his hand. The monitor crackled, but the noise continued. The disturbance had cut his communications with both Williams and the pilot of the plane.
Rectangles of white light traveled around the interior of the cabin. Chan Sann squinted against the sudden glare. Light more brilliant than the noonday sun arced across the night.
"Commander Chan!" the pilot called down to him. "Flares from the shore!"
"What?"
Rushing across the deck, Chan Sann pushed through the mercenaries at the rails. He heard and saw red tracers streak from the far bank of the river and rake the location of the airboat. The sounds of a firefight ripped the night. Then the searing white light of a magnesium flare streaked toward them.
Panic took the group of soldiers. A squad leader clicked his hand radio and shouted into the microphone. Other soldiers ran into the cabin, hands flipped the onboard radio's transmit key. When they heard only the roaring static, the men slammed the radio with their fists.
"The gas plane's coming in!" a mercenary screamed.
A canister tumbled down, end over end from the belly of the Cessna. The men stood transfixed at the sight, watching their death drop toward them. The canister hit the water twenty yards from the gunboat and popped as the small explosive charge burst the tank of liquid chlorine. A ball of yellow gas churned over the river.