"Let's go, gentlemen." Lyons gathered up his equipment. "Enough talk. Time to make distance."
Thomas issued instructions to his men. His son scattered the ashes of the fire with a stick. As the smoke dissipated, the insects returned. Flies found Lyons's bare skin. He swatted at them with his wet shirt, then slipped on the shirt and pulled the collar up to protect his neck.
Across the clearing, he saw one of the Indians touching up his black body paint. Lyons went to him and squatted down to watch. The Indian squeezed the juice of a fruit into a can, then added pinches of a powdered herb and stirred. He smeared the black mixture onto his skin.
The Indian offered the can to Lyons. Lyons smelled the juice. It had an odd greasy-bitter smell. The Indian stuck a finger in the can and drew a stripe across Lyons's face.
Lyons held the can up to the flies. None of them came near the can. Stripping off his shirt, he smeared the juice on his shoulders and neck. Insects landed on his arms, and he smeared the last of the mixture there.
Gathering up weapons and cartridge boxes, the Indian pointed to an uncrushed fruit and said, "Genipap."
"Ge-ni-pap," Lyons repeated.
Thomas and Blancanales left the clearing. Gadgets shouldered his backpack and followed. Lyons kept the can and fruit, returned to his equipment. He slipped on his shoulder holster and bandoliers, draped his wet shirt over his pack, jogged after the others.
Insects bit his unprotected skin. The fruit and soot-blackened can in one hand, the Atchisson in the other, he couldn't swat the flies away. He twisted and jerked as he walked, the flies lifting away for an instant, then returning.
He didn't suffer long. In a few minutes, they came to a stagnant stream overhung with branches. Fragments of midday light flashed on the green water. Lyons squinted against the sudden brilliance, saw on the muddy slopes several canoes camouflaged with brush.
Indians threw aside the branches and fronds. They stacked their boxes and packages in the fire-hollowed interiors of the boats. Blancanales and Gadgets passed them their packs. While the others arranged the equipment, Lyons squatted at the water's edge and squeezed genipap juice into the battered can. He dipped the can in the scummy water to thin the juice, then dabbed the mixture on his torso. Blancanales watched him.
"Go easy on that stuff," he told Lyons. "There's no way to know what it is."
"I don't care what it is, the bugs don't like it. It's definitely going to save my white skin."
Thomas saw Lyons blacking his body. "Good. On skin. Face. Hair. Make you not look like civilizado."
Lyons squeezed the last of the juice out of the fruit and massaged it into his hair and sideburns.
Jaws a foot wide snapped at him. Rising from the stagnant shallow, a ten-foot-long crocodile opened its jaws to take Lyons's legs. Scrambling backward, digging in his heels and feeling his boots slide in the ooze, Lyons looked into the mouth of the reptile. The jaws opened impossibly wide, exposing jagged rows of teeth. Lyons clawed at the bank, his fingers slipping in the slime.
The jaws ripped away a strip of his pant leg. Lyons heard himself crying out as the crocodile gained another few inches. As the jaws yawned again, Lyons tore his Python from his shoulder holster. He stuck his arm out, the muzzle of the revolver only inches from the pink flesh of the creature's upper palate.
The 158-grain jacketed hollowpoint slug punched through the soft tissues and exploded from the top of the reptile's skull, the impact snapping the crocodile's head back and killing it instantly. Brain gone, its head flopped forward and lay still in the mud. The unblinking eyes bulged from the sockets.
Even as nerve spasms twitched the tail, the Indians crowded past Lyons and dragged the reptile up from the water. They pulled it to higher ground and set about butchering it with their machetes.
Lyons sat on the water's edge, his Colt Python still in his hand. He stared at his ripped pant leg.
"Good, good, Ironman," Thomas congratulated him. "Much meat, meat for everyone."
Gadgets called out to him. "That insect repellent attracts crocodiles. I'd rather get bitten by a fly anytime!"
5
All through the afternoon, Blancanales floated in a green world. The Indians one man at each end of the narrow canoe paddled without pause for hours, leaning deep into each stroke, alternating their strokes from side to side. Blancanales sat low in the boat, reclining against his pack, only his knees and face showing above the sides. He had offered to help row, but the Indians pointed to the jungle, touched their eyes, pointed at Blancanales. Blancanales nodded his understanding, radioed Lyons and Gadgets to stay low and unseen.
They passed riverbanks tangled with roots, shallows choked with fallen trees, mud slopes crowded with crocodiles. River birds startled from the water in sheets of winged color. They passed unending walls of jungle. Often, the outspread branches of the huge trees closed over the narrow river, creating a hundred-foot-high tunnel.
Abraham rode in Lyons's boat. He played bamboo panpipes from time to time, the fluting melodies drifting over the water to Blancanales, who also heard the boy's laughter as Lyons tried the panpipes.
Lyons buzzed Blancanales on his hand radio. "Hey, Politician. You know what? This kid knows the Gettysburg Address by memory. Word for word."
Shadow claimed the river as the sun fell in the sky. Blancanales pushed back the camouflage-patterned crush hat he wore, looked up at the sky, checked his watch. Sundown would come in two hours. He keyed his hand radio and said to Gadgets, "Mr. Wizard, ask Thomas Jefferson when we'll make camp. We're losing daylight."
After a pause, Thomas's voice answered. "Soon. Maybe hour. Then we stay at village. I like this radio. Maybe we get radios. Is possible?"
"We can work out a deal."
A whistle came from the shore. The Indian boatmen stopped their rowing. The whistle rose and fell. Blancanales's radio buzzed: "This is Thomas. We go to shore now. Please, I speak with men..."
Blancanales and Lyons held up their hand radios. The boatmen had heard radios before, but never the broadcast of words in their own language. They recognized Thomas's voice, listened to his instructions. They kept looking across the water to Thomas, then looking at the radio. After his voice cut off, Blancanales and Lyons acknowledged.
"Got the message here," Lyons told him.
"These men heard it, too."
The boatmen saw the foreigners speaking, then tried to speak, also, all four chattering and shouting into the microphones. Thomas had to shout at them across the water to stop the noise. After checking their shotguns and putting the weapons at their feet, they paddled for the riverbank.
Blancanales did not see the waiting warriors until the boats touched the weeds and knotted roots of the shore. Black with body paint, the men left cover and helped pull the dugout canoes onto the bank. They carried bows and arrows, spears, old single-shot shotguns. There were no greetings, no friendly chatter. Some of the men and boys stared at the North Americans, but the others spoke quickly with Thomas, gestured to the north with their weapons.
Thomas turned to Able Team. "I am not chief. Molomano is chief. Fight soldiers many times, lose men. Much sadness with women. Children hungry. When soldiers near, Molomano no fight. Always run. But soldiers find village this day, attack. Take some men for slaves. All other people run away, hide here. This good chance for you to make many friends, make Molomano strong chief again. I tell him three civilizadoscome from United States to help fight soldiers. That good story, yes? We fight soldiers?"
"We want prisoners. Soldiers to question."
"Question, then kill, yes?"
Groups of Indians clustered along the trail. Voices greeted Thomas and his men. But when the tribespeople saw the foreigners, they went quiet. Children ran behind their mothers, young boys gripped their stick spears. Nursing mothers covered their babies.