He now moved in a zigzag pattern, as silently as ever, toward the beach.
Over half the loading was already done. Only six mules still had bare backs. Slung over the other beasts were oilskin bundles.
They worked quickly, efficiently, in teams: two uncrating, four loading the mules, and two dumping the wooden crates into a deep pit they had dug on the jungle's edge.
Staying fifty yards inside the shadowed foliage, Carter maneuvered parallel to the beach until he was on a straight line with the pit. Then he bore to his left until the toes of his boots hit sand.
The two crate bearers plodded up the beach toward him, their arms loaded. When they were at the very edge of the pit. Carter stepped from the shadows.
"That you, Carlos?"
"Si" Carter growled.
The Beretta wheezed, sending a slug dead center into the man's face. It disintegrated and joined the back of his skull as he pitched forward into the pit.
"Madre de Dios," the other one gurgled, clawing for the holstered antique at his hip.
He was rolling to the side as Carter fired again. The Beretta's first slug caught him in the right shoulder, spinning him all the way around. Carter stitched two in the back of his neck, but he was not quick enough.
The Mexican managed to get out a yelp, as much in surprise as pain, just before he died.
It was just loud enough to alert his companions thirty yards away. Carter dived into the trees just as they opened up behind him.
All hell had busted loose, maybe too soon, but Carter knew he would just have to make the best of it.
Four away, six to go.
The firing increased from the beach, all centered on where the eerie, goggled figure had been.
Now he was moving, literally crashing through the heavy undergrowth, back to his original starting point on the high ground. The concentrated firing of the carbines and the 38s covered the sound of his movement. Deftly he leathered the Beretta and rolled the Galil off his shoulder.
By the time he reached the sniper site, he had unclipped the Gain's folding stock from the military webbed belt around his middle. Ten seconds after dropping to his belly in the already trampled foliage, the stock was in place and the folding bipod was uncorked from under the barrel.
With the shoulder butt nuzzled, Carter reached forward and used his thumb to flip up the night-sight.
The Galil was ready, fifty rounds' worth, with an additional hundred rounds in the two spare magazines hanging from Carter's belt.
The Galil was fitted with a flash suppressor, so he figured he was good for a mag and a half — maybe a full two — from this spot before they made him.
If there was anybody left to do the making.
With the Galil swinging easily on the bipod, he did a fast scan.
Now it was a waiting game. They were quiet after the first shock of assault. Two had dived behind a jagged claw of rocks near the water. Nels Pomroy was precariously peering out from between two of the remaining crates. He was the one with the Beretta sub, the one Carter knew he should have gotten first. But the logistics had been wrong.
So be it.
The remaining three had charged a few feet into what they thought was the protective darkness of the trees.
Between the Galil's night-sight and the goggles, Carter made two of them at once: one partially hidden behind a tree, the other moving straight inland in a half crouch.
He lined through the rear, flip-type «L» sight, and squeezed off a burst, and then another.
Only one was needed. It stitched the guy from his navel to his neck.
There was very little sound and hardly any flash.
Just a very quiet death from out of the darkness.
The man behind the tree started firing wildly. He got off five, all harmless, before his old piece gave up the ghost and jammed.
With a shouted curse he dropped the rifle and sprinted for the beach.
Why, Carter didn't know.
But men he didn't care either.
Five feet into the open moonlight, Carter turned the back of the runner's white shirt blue.
A foot farther, it turned a dull, dark red. Cloth shredded and flesh exploded as the lifeless form tumbled into the sand and rolled.
"They got Julio and Ortega!"
"I can see, goddamnit!"
"How many are there?"
"How the hell do I know? I only saw the one!"
All this shouted from the rocks to the crates and back again.
Movement behind the rocks.
Carter sprayed them with a long burst and then another. Chips flew everywhere and all movement ceased.
The third man, who had hit the trees, had now zeroed in on Carter's position. Carter could hear him moving in, belly down, from the left flank.
Carter made the Galil jump, sending slugs into the air and sand on both sides of the crates. It wouldn't do to fire directly into them and try for the man with the sub, Pomroy.
If one crate went, they might all go, taking Carter with them.
The flank prowler was close now. Carter flipped the magazine catch and tossed the near empty slug container into the darkness.
The guy with the sub opened up immediately on the sound, far to Carter's right.
Leaving the Galil, Carter slithered backward, snakelike, out of his sniper spot. Ten feet back he halted, unsheathing the Beretta pistol, waiting.
Thirty seconds. A minute. Two minutes.
The stillness seemed to hang, straining, on a thread.
Then he came, the searcher, belly down, a.38 in his nervous right hand.
Through the goggles Carter could see the shock in his dark face when he discovered the unmanned Galil.
The guy was no commando. He holstered the.38 and went for the Galil.
Carter was on him the second he was over the gun. The butt of the Beretta came down on his skull just behind his right ear.
One grunt and he folded.
Carter checked his pulse. Even, steady. He had a deep gash where the Beretta had hit him, but he would live.
Carter had his prisoner.
He lifted the man's.38 and sent it after the spent magazine.
More random fire from the beach.
Snapping a new magazine onto the Galil, Carter moved out to his left. Forty yards later he angled toward the beach. Just short of the sand, still in heavy cover, he hunkered down.
Effortlessly he relaxed, letting all the strain of the firefight flow out of his muscles.
He would lie like that, unmoving, barely breathing, totally alert, for as long as it would take.
A half hour passed, then an hour.
"Hear anything?"
"Nothing."
Another fifteen minutes.
"There are just the three of us left?"
"Looks that way."
Total patience. Just like a stalking cat.
"Andre, go for the trees. We'll cover you."
"Jesus…"
"Do it!"
Andre leaped from the rocks like a frightened rabbit, legs churning all the way across the sand. He hit the trees with a crash and plowed inland.
Carter let him go.
Andre was no more silent than his predecessors had been. Carter could hear every move he made.
Another half hour went by.
"Dead, all of them, except Tito," came Andre's voice from fifty yards in. "He's zapped, out cold."
"Any sign of the gunner?"
"Nothing."
The remaining guy behind the rocks and Pomroy with the sub moved cautiously out from cover. With equal caution, Andre emerged from the trees.
"He must have skipped."
"Or we hit him and he's in there somewhere dead."
Carter smiled.
"C'mon, let's get the mules together!"
"Jesus, can we still make Pakolo?"
"If we hurry."
Carter waited until all the mules had been rounded up and tethered in a long line. When this was done he moved out, hugging the ground.