Zigzagging up a ridge of hills, they reached the crest as the day's temperature became intolerable. A heat-scorched ridge line viewed the snaking river to the south and west. To the north and east, another river shimmered in the blazing sunlight: the Mamore River, the natural boundary of Rondonia, one of the western states of Brazil. The Mamore coursed northwest and joined the Madeira, the waters of the Andes finally draining into the Atlantic Ocean.
"Take a break!" Gadgets gasped, stooped under the weight of his radios and electronics. He ignored the panorama, collapsing in a tangle of leaves and grasses.
"By the map," Blancanales told them, "if we push all day, we'll make the Mamore with one or two hours of daylight left."
Gadgets jumped up shrieking. A mass of thousand-footed worms covered his pack and clothes. Flailing at the millipedes, he hopped about in distress. Lyons pulled off Gadgets's backpack and swept the crawling insects from his collar, brushing them out of his hair.
Whipping off his sweat-soaked cameo shirt, Gadgets finally shook off the last of the millipedes. The Indians around them laughed at the North Americans' antics.
With a glance at the map, Lyons pulled his poncho out of his pack. "Forget it. I haven't slept in three nights."
Lyons sat and closed his eyes.
He opened them as someone shook him. He blinked at the afternoon shadows around him. In only an instant, the sun had dropped in the sky, the air cooled. Lyons stared around him in disbelief.
"Ironman, we go," Thomas told him.
Gathering his equipment and weapons, following Thomas down the Indian trails, Lyons moved in a dream state, his mind not yet awake. Fragments of afternoon light blazed in deep shadows, polishing leaves with sharp brightness. Exotic butterflies fluttered in the rain forest's tangled growth, their wings in shadow, then suddenly flashing like neon, then lost again in the triple-canopy darkness. Lyons walked through the per fume of flowers and the stink of jungle slime. Ahead of them, he saw the line of warriors.
Another smell drifted to him, the foul stench of decomposition. In a few more steps, he saw the terrible source.
The Indian men pulled bodies of men and women and children from the dead brush. Around the clearing, every plant and tree had withered, yellowed. Yellow leaves carpeted the earth. The sunlight came unfiltered through the stick-bare branches of dead trees.
"Chlorine gas," Gadgets told him. "Point man found them a minute ago. We've counted fifteen people so far. We found a cookfire, a few pots and pans, one old shotgun. I guess the slavers spotted them."
Steeling his gut, Lyons glanced at the bodies. Chlorine had seared the eyes and mouths of the Indians, had attacked their lungs. They had died screaming, their faces contorted, their mouths wide, caked with horrible wastes. Death — agony twisted their limbs. Now, after days of heat and humidity, the gases of decomposition ballooned their bodies, stretching taut the chlorine-seared skin.
"What are your men doing?" Lyons asked Thomas.
"We bury families."
Lyons shook his head. "No time."
"Then we burn..."
"Can't risk the smoke. The slavers are looking for us now, no doubt about it."
"Evil to leave the people for animals and birds.
"The longer the slavers live, the more people they gas, the more Indians they take for slaves. If we stay to bury these dead, more people die. That, surely, is the greater evil. I'm sorry. Please explain to the men. We must continue."
Thomas went to the men and told them what Lyons had said. To a man they protested, waving fists toward Lyons. But after another minute of talking, Thomas persuaded the men to leave the dead. One of the Xavantes pulled a feathered amulet from his neck and dropped it on the bodies. The line of men left the scene of mass murder.
Jogging forward, Lyons paused beside Lieutenant Silveres. "You saw that back there? We're after the scum who gassed those people. And we're going to waste them. I don't care if they're in Bolivia, or Brazil, or France. So if we have to cross your sacred national boundary, don't give me any crap."
"The defense of Brazil is the responsibility of the Brazilian army. We don't need meddling foreigners to protect our people."
"Don't need our help? Then why didn't youprotect those people?"
Without giving the proud young officer time to reply, Lyons ran forward and took his place behind the point man.
16
As punishment for gas-bombing the gunboat, Chan Sann crucified the pilot. He did not listen to the French pilot's explanations about Williams's reported coordinates. He did not allow the pilot the mercy of suicide.
The French mercenary hung on a cross of planks, spikes driven through his forearms and feet. Flies and carrion beetles feasted on the raw flesh of his wounds. From time to time, the man returned to consciousness as the insects attacked his eyes. Incoherent with shock and agony and sunstroke, the dying pilot thrashed his head to shake away the insects, crying out in French and English. Sometimes he raved in Latin, intoning Catholic prayers, snatches of old hymns. As the sun sank, his motions slowed. They became spasmodic as blood and strength drained from him. Before he died, the beetles would eat his eyes.
Chan Sann sat in the shade of a rubber tree and watched the pilot suffer. Other Cambodians crowded around him, taking cold bottles of Brazilian beer from an ice chest. They chattered in their language, talking of the war against the bourgeoisie during the rule of their Communist master, Pol Pot. They had killed — with torture, Kalashnikov slugs, shovels, or starvation — all opposition to their regime. The opposition included doctors, lawyers, teachers, civil clerks, businessmen, shop owners, farmers, mechanics, laborers, Catholics, Buddhists, soldiers, officers. All educated Cambodians had died. All Cambodians who could read had died. All Cambodians who would not murder their neighbors, parents or children had died. Any failure to demonstrate unquestioning joy in the creation of the perfect Marxist state meant death.
During the three-year rule of Pol Pot, three and a half million of the counterrevolutionaries died, one-half of the population of Cambodia.
Now the Communist exiles joked of the extermination, describing tortures and mutilations that had amused them. They placed bets on when the pilot would die. Chan Sann did not participate in their game. He watched the French pilot with calm disdain.
"Tay!" Chan Sann spoke suddenly.
"Yes, Commander!" One of the Cambodians sprang to attention.
"He is a weakling. He will die soon. We will make him suffer more. Your knife, here..." Chan Sann made a motion.
"Yes, Commander!"
Running across the clearing, the soldier unsheathed his knife and slipped the blade into the abdomen of the naked Frenchman. With the skill of practice and experience, he dragged the tip of the knife across. The pain brought consciousness to the prisoner. The gash yawned, spilling out intestines. Flies descended in a cloud. The Frenchman looked down at the horror inflicted on him. He shrieked and he wailed.
Chan Sann smiled.
A walkie-talkie interrupted their game. Stopping his soldiers' giggles and chatter with a wave, Chan Sann pressed the radio's transmit key. "This is Chan Sann. Why do you disturb me?"