Thomas examined the Smith & Wesson .38 four-inch barreled revolver. "But I am not Christian. Is not right to pretend only for gift."
"Pretend it's your birthday," Lyons said sincerely, moved by the Indian's openness. "What's a party without presents?" He bounced down the aluminum gangplank, the morning rays of the sun burning through his shirt. Filthy, scratched from the action of the night before, Lyons felt streams of sweat course over his genipap-smeared body. He rubbed his hand over his hair, used his own sweat to wipe away the crud on his face.
As he crossed the beach, children and women circled him, offering him a buffet of open cans: pork and beans, fruit, beer, tamales, tuna, boot blacking. He waved it all away, smiling, and searched through the boxes. Finding two cans of warm beer and several tins of sardines, he looked for an opener.
Tribesmen squatted in a group, eating and gesturing, describing their heroic deeds in the battle. They pantomimed aiming their shotguns. Seeing Lyons, they motioned him over. He picked up his unopened beer and sardines and squatted with them.
They wore new body-blacking and fierce bands of color on their faces. One man's face sported a band of red across the black, with electric-yellow feathers through his earlobes. Another had painted red circles around his brilliant white eyes.
Lyons popped the top of a beer, keyed open the sardines. He ate while the warriors acted out the shooting and killing.
A snuff pipe went around the circle. Lyons watched the ritual. A man dipped into a flat tin of what looked like Copenhagen snuff. He powdered a tiny crumb and put it in the end of the reed tube. He put that end of the tube to his nostril while another man blew into the tube, shooting the fine powder down the man's nasal passages and into his lungs.
Lyons had never seen snuff taken like that. It reminded him of cocaine freaks snorting their drug. He watched as he ate and drank and shared a can of fruit with the color-splashed Indian next to him.
They passed the snuff pipe to Lyons. He hesitated, not reaching for it. They waited. An Indian held out the reed and tin. Lyons thought of Blancanales's instructions when they had the breakfast of living larvae. He'd had snuff before. He would live through it this time, too.
Taking a big pinch, he loaded the reed and put it to his nostril. Sniffing hard while an Indian blew through the reed, Lyons felt the snuff shoot into his lungs. They urged another pinch on him. Again Lyons snorted.
A wave of light struck him. Blinking against the sudden glare of the sky, he saw every leaf of the rain forest simultaneously, each speck of green to be a unique particle of a living universe.
"Hey, Lyons!" Gadgets called out. He shuffled across the beach, a beer in each hand. "What exactly are you doing with those dudes?"
"Snuff." Lyons offered the tin and pipe to his friend, his arms moving through the air as if through water.
"Nan, I'm not into nicotine." Slurping beer, Gadgets pointed to the second of the air boats. "You know what that thing packs? That isn't any machine gun, that's a full-auto grenade launcher. And now it's ours."
Lyons stared at the mosaic of the trees. The Indians watched him, grinned to one another. Gadgets looked at Lyons, picked up the tin, sniffed it.
"Snuff? What're you talking about? This isn't tobacco. What's going on with you?"
A brilliant blue macaw flew across the sky. The sky and the wings became for Lyons one flashing moment of color, the colors and voices and pagan faces swirling around him were an overwhelming flood of sensation for him. His eyes opened as never before, he saw the life around him, savage and magnificent.
Lyons opened his mouth wide and let his spirit fly forth.
8
"Lyons is zonked. Put that in the report."
In the shade of the patrol cruiser's canvas awning, Blancanales disassembled and cleaned his Beretta auto-pistol. He shared the top of a shipping crate with a tape recorder. Gadgets paused in the report he dictated to reply, "He didn't know what it was. Said something about 'indigenous operations.'"
Blancanales laughed. "I don't know about that guy sometimes. For an ex-cop, he is strange."
"He's beautiful. But being a cop makes a man strange. It's the people he meets. The public."
"Put some Thorazine on the list. Isn't that what they use when PCP crazies hallucinate?"
"Don't worry about him. I asked Thomas about it. He told me Lyons'll be all right tonight or tomorrow."
"Sane or not, Lyons travels tonight. We leave here at dusk. We shouldn't be here now. The slavers lost a patrol and three boats. Today or tomorrow, they'll send another patrol."
"Gringos!" Lieutenant Silveres called from the cabin door. "Am I your prisoner, also?"
"No, sir," Blancanales told him. "You are not. In fact, we need your help as liaison with the officials of your country."
The lieutenant sat on the bench with them. "Why do you make a recording?"
"A report to our superiors," Blancanales replied.
"In the Central Intelligence Agency?"
"Why did you assume those Cubans were CIA?" Blancanales asked.
As the other men continued talking, Gadgets packed up his recorder and took it back to his electronics kit. He prepared the radio and tape unit for a transmission.
"Does not the CIA use Cubans?"
"There are many Cubans in the world. Millions."
"And many Americans, also," the lieutenant countered. "In countries where they do not belong. Where are my pistol and rifle, gringo? If I am not a prisoner, I want my weapons returned."
"Certainly," Blancanales answered, his voice smooth, smile lines crinkling the corners of his eyes. "We will return your weapons when we cross the border. Right now, however, you are in Bolivia. And it's not proper that you carry a weapon in a country where you don't belong, isn't that correct?"
"What? And by what authorization do you operate here?"
Giving his Beretta a last wipe with an oil rag, Blancanales snapped in the magazine, reholstered the auto-pistol. "This is Bolivia. We operate by the authorization of the government of Bolivia."
"Pol! Over here," Gadgets called out. "You got to help me run up this antenna. It has to go up this boat's radio mast."
"Show me the authorization!" the lieutenant demanded.
Blancanales went to the railing and pointed south. "You have to ask the man who issued the directive. You go upriver about five hundred miles, hop over the Andes, make a right turn at La Paz and go straight to the Minister of the Interior. He'll tell you all about it."
Over four thousand miles away, in the corn-room of the Stony Man complex in Virginia, the identification signal from Gadgets's radio squawked from the wall-mounted monitor:
"Good morning! This is Mr. Wizard, calling from far, far away. Stand by for transmission."
As the machines automatically recorded the message, Aaron Kurtzman returned to his makeshift desk with coffee and lunch. Unwilling to wait in his own office for the overdue transmission from Able Team, Kurtzman had brought his briefcase to the corn-room. Now he heard the voice of Gadgets Schwarz. Dropping his lunch on the table, spilling half his coffee, Kurtzman hit the interoffice button on his telephone.
"April! Able Team reporting!"
"There in a second," the young woman called.