"What, then?"
"You think we should all live in harmony with nature, right?"
"If you want the planet to survive, yes," John Brightling said. His wife's eyes were filled with hatred and defiance, but also curiosity now.
"Fine." Clark nodded. "Stand up and get undressed, all of you. Dump your clothes right here." He pointed at a corner joint in the runway.
"But… "
"Do it!" Clark shouted at them. "Or I will have you shot right here and right now."
And slowly they did. Some disrobed quickly, some slowly and uncomfortably, but one by one they piled their clothing up in the middle of the runway. Carol Brightling, oddly, wasn't the least bit modest about the moment.
"Now what?" she asked.
"Okay, here's the score. You want to live in harmony with nature, then go do it. If you can't hack it, the nearest city is Manaus, about ninety-eight miles that way-" He pointed, then turned. "Paddy, fire in the hole."
Without a word, Connolly started flipping switches on his box. The first thing to go was the fuel tank. The twin charges blew a pair of holes in the side of the tank. That ignited the diesel fuel, which blew out of the tank like the exhaust from a rocket, and propelled the tank straight into the power house, less than fifty meters away. There the tank stopped and ruptured, pouring burning #2 diesel fuel over the area.
They couldn't see the freezer area in the main building go, but here as well, the diesel fuel ignited, ripping out the wall of the freezer unit and then dropping part of the building on the burning wreckage. The other building." went in turn, along with the satellite dishes. The headquarters-residence building went last, its poured concrete core resisting the damage done by the cratering charges, but after a few seconds of indecision, the care snapped at the ground-floor level and collapsed, bringing the rest of the building down with it. Over a period of less than a minute, everything useful to life here had been destroyed.
"You're sending us out into the jungle without even a knife?" Hendriksen demanded."Find some flint rocks and make one," Clark suggested, as the Night Hawk landed. "We humans learned how to do that about half a million years ago. You want to be in harmony with nature. Go harmonize," he told them, as he turned to get aboard. Seconds later, he was strapped into the jump seat behind the pilots; and Colonel Malloy lifted off without circling.
You could always tell, Clark remembered from his time in 3rd SOG. There were those who got out of the Huey and ran into the bush, and there were those who lingered to watch the chopper leave. He'd always been one of the former, because he knew where the job was. Others only worried about getting back, and didn't want the chopper to leave them behind. Looking down one last time, he saw that all the eyes down there were following the Night Hawk as it headed east.
"Maybe a week, Mr. C?" Ding asked, reading his face. A graduate of the U.S. Army's Ranger School. he didn't think that he could survive very long in this place.
"If they're lucky," Rainbow Six replied.
EPILOGUE
The International Trib landed on Chavez's desk after the usual morning exercise routine, and he leaned back comfortably to read it. Life had become boring at Hereford. They still trained and practiced all their skills, but they hadn't been called away from the base since returning from South America six months earlier.
Gold Mine in the Rockies, a front-page story started. A place in Montana, the article read, owned by a Russian national, had been found to contain a sizable gold deposit. The place had been bought as a ranch by Dmitriy A. Popov, a Russian entrepreneur, as an investment and vacation site and then he'd made the accidental discovery, the story read. Mining operations would begin in the coming months. Local environmentalists had objected and tried to block the development in court, but the federal district court judge had decided in summary judgment that laws from the 1800s governing mineral exploration and exploitation were the governing legal authority, and tossed the objections out of court. "You see this?" Ding asked Clark.
"Greedy bastard," John replied, checking out the latest pictures of his grandson on Chavez's desk. "Yeah, I read it. He spent half a million to buy the place from the estate of Foster Hunnicutt. I guess the bastard told him more than just what Brightling was planning, eh?"
"I suppose." Chavez read on. In the business section he learned that Horizon Corporation stock was heading back up with the release of a new drug for heart disease, recovering from the loss in value that had resulted from the disappearance of its chairman, Dr. John Brightling, several months earlier, a mystery that remained to be solved, the business reporter added. The new drug, Kardiklear, had proven to reduce second heart attacks by fully 56 percent in FDA studies. Horizon was also working on human longevity and cancer medications, the article concluded.
"John, has anybody gone back to Brazil to-"
"Not that I know of. Satellite overheads show that nobody's cutting the grass next to their airport."
"So, you figure the jungle killed them?"
"Nature isn't real sentimental, Domingo. She doesn't distinguish between friends and enemies."
"I suppose not, Mr. C." Even terrorists could do that. Chavez thought, but not the jungle. So, who was the real enemy of mankind? Himself, mostly, Ding decided, setting the newspaper down and looking again at the photo of John Conor Chavez, who'd just learned to sit up and smile. His son would grow into the Brave New World, and his father would be one of those who tried to ensure that it would be a safe one-for him and all the other kids whose main tasks were learning to walk and talk.