Blancanales went to him. The older soldier stood with the lieutenant, gripped his shoulder. Lyons heard talk in Spanish and English, then a monologue of what had to be obscenities in Portuguese. The young officer was raving, gesturing wildly, gesticulating toward the distant river steamer. He clutched at the sling of his G-3. Blancanales had to restrain him, shove him back.
Lyons rushed to the side of his friend. "What's his problem now?"
"There's an officer there. A Colonel Gomez. Apparently Gomez was the one who sent Silveres out here. The lieutenant is out here from the capital investigating a rumor for the Bureau of Indians that all the Indians in the region are gone. So Gomez sends the lieutenant and his three men up here, and what happens? The slavers take them, torture him to find out what the army and the government told him about the problem out here. The lieutenant's from an army family very proud of its history and its tradition of honor, patriotism and this is an insult to everything that he is."
"And Gomez is the one he radioed," Lyons despaired. "So that bastard knows the score on Able Team. Great. Just great. Your punk lieutenant's so dumb arrogant he broadcasts the fact that there are only three Americans and a platoon of Indians out here. Great."
The lieutenant turned to him. "I apologize. You are right, I... But I did notsend a radio message. I do not know radios. I could not find the proper frequency. I have not compromised your mission."
"Gomez is in charge of this region?" Lyons asked, planning the next move. He glanced at the helicopter and the several boats. "Once we're past him, there are no more Brazilian units between us and the slaver camps?"
The lieutenant nodded.
"We wipe out the colonel and his soldiers. We take the boats, make it to the slavers. If you want to help those people on that boat, Lieutenant, then we must cross the Mamore. If we run into any loyal Brazilian army units, you will have to explain the situation. Law or patriotism or whatever."
"There will be no problems whatsoever, my friends." The lieutenant stared across the Mamore to Brazil. "In the name of the warrior you speak of, your Colonel Phoenix, that river is only water."
Moving silently through the last minutes of dusk, they marched to the curve of the forest that jutted into the Mamore. A few yards from the riverbank, Able Team and its Indian allies dropped their backpacks and prepared their weapons. Only a hundred yards of beach and shallow water separated them from the paddle-wheeler. They heard the cries of women.
Gadgets monitored the slaver frequencies. "Ironman, Politician. Thomas. Speed it up. They just radioed the slaver base. They're going to pull the old boat off the sandbar and take the people to the camps."
By touch, Blancanales passed a tube of face-blacking to Lieutenant Silveres. The Brazilian took a dab, then passed the blacking on to Thomas. All of the men shared it, ritually passing the blacking on to every man in the group, even those who already wore genipap. Hands checked magazines and bandoliers in the darkness.
Lyons conferred with the others. "I say we try to take the patrol boats and the helicopter first. If we can take a radio operator alive, without an alarm going out, we got a chance to cruise straight into their camp as if we're bringing in the boatload of slaves. Thomas?"
"Maybe."
"Lieutenant Silveres?"
"Very good."
Blancanales agreed. "Sounds good to me. If everything goes perfectly..."
"Yeah, yeah. We do it, okay? Gadgets, you stay here and listen for any Mayday calls..."
"Forget that. You'll need me. I'll set up the recorder."
"Good enough. Thomas, tell your men. We take the boats and helicopter with knives and machetes. When we have the radios, we take the riverboat."
Like shadows within shadows, the warriors slipped through the last tangles of the rain forest and snaked down the embankment. Finally they saw the riverboat close up. What they saw stopped them.
17
Like party lights, strings of electric bulbs blazed along the rails of the old paddle-wheel steamer. The glaring points of incandescence blitzed the darkness, making the night day around the helicopter, the patrol boats, and the paddle-wheeler itself.
On the aft cargo deck, the uniformed soldiers of Colonel Gomez secured lines to the patrol boats as they prepared to tow the steamboat into deeper water. On the prow, Asian sentries in shapeless unmarked olive drab fatigues paced the brightly lit passenger decks.
One hundred fifty feet from the paddle-wheel steamer, Able Team watched. They sprawled in the tangled reeds of the riverbank. The lights were also illuminating the shallows, the beach, the trees of the forest.
"That kills it," Gadgets hissed.
"No, it doesn't," Lyons snapped back. "We angle in from the front. If we keep the riverboat between us and the other boats, we can use the Berettas to take out those forward sentries."
"I don't trust the Berettas to do it," Blancanales whispered to Gadgets and Lyons. The three men crowded shoulder to shoulder. Lieutenant Silveres listened from the other side of Blancanales. "Even if we hit both of them, make instant kills, they'll fall on the deck..."
"Yeah," Lyons agreed. "And anybody could be behind them, see it happen. Listen, I can do a hundred feet underwater, that'll get me within..."
"That'll get you dead, hotshot," Gadgets told him.
"Nah. Watch them," Lyons argued. "Sometimes for thirty seconds or a minute or two minutes, they've got their backs turned. Or they're off the deck. I chance it, I move fast..."
"Hey, Hardman One, wise up," insisted Gadgets. "Just 'cause you're brave don't mean you won't die. If you come up short, if they see you, they got you. We can't chance it, not even to help those farmers. Besides, you'd be down there with the crocodiles, and you're wearing your lizard-attracting lotion."
"I do it," Lieutenant Silveres told them.
Blancanales shook his head. The lieutenant continued.
"Listen to me, Yankee. If they see me, they will see this uniform. They will think I'm with that traitor, Gomez."
The warm river water closed around him. Slowly, silently, Lieutenant Silveres slipped through the reeds and the marsh grasses, his hands clawing into the slime. He pressed his belly into the mud, bending his back to keep his face above the surface. As the muddy water deepened, Silveres moved faster, digging his boots into the bottom, pushing through the shallows.
A hundred lights streaked the river. Reflected from the gently waving surface, the rusted paddle steamer became a shimmering white dream ship resplendent with electric jewels.
Silveres watched the sentries crossing and recrossing the decks. Staying in the darkness and mud of the shallows, he watched for a chance to swim to the steamer. The sentries carried their automatic rifles loose in their hands, ready to fire, ready to end his life.
A few minutes before, the talk of death had not seemed real. He had volunteered with full consideration of the risk. But he was thinking then of death in the abstract, as only a word.
Now he thought of the other night when the Cuban put the pistol to his head. But death had been an abstraction that night also. After the mercenaries had ambushed his men, killing two, capturing him and the seventeen-year-old private, the lieutenant had not felt fear. Shock numbed him. He endured the beating and torture because he did not believe the scene real. His mind did not accept the reality, therefore he escaped the very worst of the pain. When the Cuban put the pistol to the head of Guerimo, the teenager who hoped to own a long-distance truck, who wrote love letters to five girls by hand-copying one letter five times, only then had the lieutenant snapped from his trance. He tried to reason with the Cuban. The flash of the pistol seemed a crime beyond belief. Tradition and pride did not allow him to beg for his own life. He thought of nothing, waited for the nightmare to end at the end of the pistol pointed at his head.