“That is Major Kraus,” said the CIA man. “Excellent record, distinguished career. Wrote a good many important papers. Had a great career ahead of him, Stateside. But he wanted to be here, where the action was…where he could be a real soldier. Somehow he persuaded his superiors to allow him to go deep in country, where he could try out some special new theories of his own. The first reports indicated that he was achieving some measure of success. Later reports were more…ambiguous. And then the reports stopped. We haven’t heard anything from Major Kraus in over a year.
“The Army sent troops in after him. They never reported back. We sent some of our people in-good men, experienced men. We never heard from them again. And now reports have begun trickling out of that area, mostly from fleeing native villagers. They say Kraus has assembled his own private army, and turned them loose on everything that moves. They’re moving inexorably through the jungle, killing everything in their path. It isn’t enemy territory any more, but it isn’t ours, either. Major Kraus seems intent on carving out his own little kingdom in the jungle, and we can’t have that.”
“Of course not,” I said. “The Army’s never approved of individual ambition.”
“Don’t push your luck, Captain. Your mission is to go up river, all the way into the jungle to the major’s last reported position, evaluate the situation, and then put an end to his little experiment.”
I smiled. “I get to kill a major?”
The CIA man smiled back at me. “Thought you’d like that. If the major cannot be persuaded to rein himself in, and follow orders, you are empowered to execute him. If the situation can be brought back under control, do so. If not, just present us with the exact coordinates, and we’ll send the fly boys in to wipe the whole mess right off the map. Any questions?”
“Why me?”
“Because you are completely and utterly expendable, Captain. If you should fail, we’ll just find another psycho and send him up the river. It’s not like there’s a shortage, these days. We’ll just keep sending people like you, until one of you finally gets the job done. We’re not in any hurry. If nothing else, Major Kraus is at least keeping the enemy occupied.”
“If I do this, and come back,” I said. “Do I have to go home? Or could there be more sensitive missions for me?”
“Why not?” said the CIA man, smiling his crocodile smile. “We’re always looking for a few good psychos.”
The patrol boat they gave me was a broken-down piece of shit called the Suzy Q. The crew of three that came with her weren’t much better. I gave the pilot what maps I had, and then retired to the cabin, to be alone. I didn’t ask their names. I didn’t want to know. They didn’t matter to me, except to get me where I was going. They didn’t know it, but they were even more expendable than I was.
They didn’t want to talk to me. Someone had told them who I was, and what I’d done. They maintained a safe, respectful distance at all times, and their hands never moved far from their weapons. I smiled at them, now and again, just to keep them on their toes.
I watched them die, one by one, as we headed up the winding river and deep into the dark and savage jungle. It doesn’t matter how they died. The jungle just reached out and took them, in its various bloody ways. I waited for the darkness to strike me down too, but somehow its aim was always that little bit off. So when the long and twisting river finally came to its end, I was the only one left to guide the Suzie Q through the narrowing channels to its dark and awful source.
The jungle pressed in close around me, trees and vegetation crowding right up to the river’s edge, a harsh green world impenetrable to merely human gaze. Huge gnarled trees reached out over the water, tall branches thrusting forward to meet each other, and form a thick canopy that blocked out the sky. Light had to shoulder its way in, heavy golden shafts punching through the canopy like spotlights. The air was heavy with the thick green scents of growing things, interlaced with the sickly sweet smells of death and corruption. Great clouds of insects rose up from the river to break against the boat’s prow, and then reform again behind her.
The darker it got, the more at home I felt. The other three died because they were still men, while I had left that state behind long ago. In the jungle, in all the places of the world where man is never meant to live, you cannot hope to survive if you insist on remaining a man. This is a place for beasts, for nature, red in tooth and claw, for animal instincts and brutal drives. The jungle knows nothing of human limitations like honor and sentiment, compassion and sanity.
There were still some people in the jungle. I saw them, passing by. Grim gray silent ghosts, who had made their own bargain with the jungle. Black-pajama men and women, slipping along concealed trails, their supplies balanced on carts and bicycles. Peasant villagers, carrying their life’s possessions, retreating in the face of something that could not be stopped, or bargained with, or survived. I let them go. Partly because my mission was too important to risk revealing myself, but mostly because I knew that if I started shooting, started killing, I might not be able to stop. I’d made a cage inside me to hold my beast, but the door was only closed, not locked.
I kept the beast quiet, traveling up the river, by considering all the awful things I was going to do to Major Kraus, before I finally let him die.
When the maps ran out, I just pointed the Suzie Q forward and kept going. The river narrowed steadily, closing remorselessly in from both sides, the crowded vegetation creeping right up to the edges of both banks to get a good look at me. I passed the time studying the major’s CIA file. There were reports of burned out and deserted villages, and wide swathes of devastated land, radiating out from Kraus’ compound at the end of the river. Whole populations slaughtered, and the bodies…just gone. Taken? Nobody knew. Kraus’ private army ranged far and wide, butchering every living thing in its path, but not one dead body was ever seen afterwards, anywhere. Cannibalism, perhaps? The file had theories, ideas, guesses, but no one knew anything, where Kraus was concerned. Someone had written the words Psychological warfare? across the bottom of one page, but that was all.
The river finally ran out, ending in a wide natural harbor deep in the dark green heart of the jungle. The thick crumbling river banks were so close now I could reach out from the Suzie Q and trail my fingertips along the turgid vegetation and creepers as they drooped down into the dark waters. The thick canopy overhead blocked out the sun, plunging the river into an endless twilight, like the end of the world. I had left the world behind, to come to a place man should have left behind, long ago. We have no business here. We cannot be man, in a place like this.
The river banks came together, closing in like living gates, so close now I could barely squeeze the Suzie Q through, and then they opened out abruptly, revealing the wide calm waters of the natural harbor where Major Kraus had established his compound. It was very dark now, almost night, and at first all I could see were the lights up ahead. They jumped and flared, a sickly yellow, like so many will-o’-the-wisps.
The river banks rose sharply up around me, great clay and earth walls rising twenty, thirty feet above my head. Roots burst out of the wet earth here and there, curling around great open mouths, dark caves and caverns peering at me from the river banks. Huge centipedes crawled in and out of the openings, slow ripples moving up and down their unnaturally long bodies. The waters ahead of me were flat and still, disturbed only by the slow sullen waves preceding the boat’s prow. The steady chugging of the boat’s engine was disturbingly loud in the quiet, so I turned it off, allowing the boat to glide the rest of the way in. There were hundreds of lights now, blazing atop the tall river banks like so many watchful eyes.