I used it as a float, pushing it ahead of me toward shore.
The riverbank was steep, a congestion of roots and overhanging limbs. At one place, I grabbed a low branch and tried to pull myself out. As I did, I felt what seemed to be a heavy sprinkling of sand on my face… but then the sand began to burn like tiny hot coals.
Fire ants. I was covered with them.
I dropped back into the water and submerged until they were gone.
Finally, I found an opening, and crawled out. The first thing I did was take the satellite phone from my pocket and try it-maybe Harrington had equipped me with some new generation of indestructible communications system.
But no. It didn’t work.
I tried taking out the battery and drying it. No luck.
Tossing the phone into the river seemed to underline how completely cut off I now was from what I considered the civilized world. I watched water-rings created by the phone expanding in darkness, then I walked toward the orange glow that I knew was the burning helicopter.
As I did, the sky above me disappeared. No more moonlight, no more stars. I was in a cavern of trees, the ceiling a hundred feet overhead. The canopy was so tangled that light could not penetrate, so nothing grew below. The ground was springy with rot, and slippery, too.
Yet I could still see. It was as if the jungle generated a very low-voltage luminescence. The blanket of forest overhead was black, but the trunks of individual trees were gray or pewter.
It allowed me to walk fairly quickly.
Within a few minutes, I was close enough to the crash site to hear the roar of burning aviation fuel and the crackle of burning wood.
But then I heard something else, and stopped, frozen where I stood.
I heard voices speaking a loud, drunken Spanish.
Of course. The guerrilla troops or drug runners, whoever had shot us down, would be converging on the crash site, too.
How was I going to get around them?
There were six of them: five men and a young Indio girl. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen.
The men were older, in their twenties, a couple probably in their late thirties to forties. They wore mismatched military fatigues and carried both M-16s and old Soviet-designed AK- 47 assault rifles.
The girl’s skin was earthen, and she had thick black hair tied in a ponytail that hung to the middle of her back. She had a rough blanket folded over one shoulder and wore a copper-colored traditional blouse I’d seen before in South America, a garment known as a huipil. Her skirt was short, sarong-like, blue, and showed her thick legs. She was barefooted and wore bracelets on her wrists and around both ankles. On her ankles were also black decorative tattoos.
One thing I didn’t doubt: The girl wasn’t with these men by choice. She had a subdued look of fear and emotional resignation. It is an expression I had seen before on the faces of captives and new prisoners.
It would not be pleasant to be in the control of men such as this, especially for a girl her age.
I moved quietly from tree to tree, ducked low and kept in the shadows. When I was close enough to hear the soldiers clearly, I knelt and opened the briefcase. I was wearing my SIG Sauer on my hip, belted into a holster I’d borrowed from Ron Iossi. I was surprised that the force of my fall hadn’t ripped it free, but the holster snap had held.
Now I took out the little submachine gun, locked the dual magazines in place, and pushed the little indicator switch until it was on full automatic.
I waited.
Not surprisingly, the guerrillas were looking for anything they could find of value among the wreckage. They’d collected a few things on the perimeter, not much: a couple of weapons and a can of ammo that had somehow been thrown clear of the fire.
I decided they sounded drunk because they were drunk. One of them had a bottle of cloudy liquor and was passing it around.
I listened as over and over they replayed what had happened, how it had happened. Among male hunters, it is a very old ceremony: elevate and institutionalize the success of a hunt. I listened to them argue among themselves about how they’d first heard the chopper, how they’d run to get into position, and how the youngest of them-a kid named Marcos-had been so damn nervous to be shooting his first Stinger at a real live target.
“You made a mess in your pants!” they chided him. “But thanks to our help, you scored blood!”
That was bad enough, but then it abruptly became worse.
Suddenly, they all stopped talking at once, heads tilting in unison as if straining to hear.
Then I heard what had given them pause: a low, moaning sound from the nearby trees, louder than the bellows wind from a burning fire. The men grew more silent, weapons at ready, as the moaning grew louder, and then they all took a step back when, into the circle of light, stumbled what had to be a human being but who looked like no human I had ever seen.
One of the commandos had survived the crash. Or maybe it was the pilot. I couldn’t tell. His clothes and his skin had been burned off him, and, but for one terrible bright and agonized eye, his face was gone.
Apparently, he’d been hiding but could no longer stand the pain, for he walked toward them, mummy-like, arms outstretched, still smoldering, calling, “I need a doctor, I’ve been injured! Please help me! Mother of God, please help me!”
When they realized what this aberration was, the rebels visibly relaxed, even seemed to find the situation funny.
One of them turned to the silent girl and yelled, “Where is your tribe of cannibals? We have a cooked meal for them!” as he stuck out his leg and tripped the injured man.
Hilarious.
I was already up and walking toward their group, moving before I realized what I was doing, the little submachine gun in my left hand, the 9mm pistol in my right. I stepped into the clearing, into the light of the fire. It was the only way I could instantly change the angle of my approach and put the girl out of the line of fire.
She was the first to see me. I saw surprise register on her face, then maybe just a flicker of hope.
Whap-whap-whap.
One of the rebels had touched his automatic weapon to the back of the burned man’s head and fired the three-shot volley.
The man’s body quivered, a muscle-reflex response to severe trauma. I found myself relieved when he finally lay still.
But there was no going back for me. I’d committed myself. So I continued walking toward them, the MP-5 at hip level, but sighting over the top of the pistol that I held outstretched toward them. I didn’t yell, because I wanted my words to communicate meaning, not emotion.
Speaking just loud enough for them to hear me clearly, I said, “Drop your weapons. Now, or you’re dead.”
I was surprised by the calmness of my own voice.
So were they. The men turned as one, the woman watching all of us, backing away, as her captors stood frozen, weapons slung over their shoulders or held low.
I fired a short burst with the machine gun, over their heads-but not by much.
They ducked reflexively as I yelled, “Drop your weapons!”
They all did-except for one.
The man carrying the liquor bottle was the same one who’d shot the burned commando.
Some people get a taste for killing. They like it.
He was a tall guy with a very black, very thick beard and baggy fatigues. He wore new Nikes-a modern touch. As the others slowly unslung, then dropped their rifles, black-beard remained motionless, staring at me, AK-47 in one hand, the bottle in the other. His expression was familiar, a mean-drunk look, defiant, dumb.
I fired another short burst, yelling, “ Do it.”
As I did, I saw his expression change, knew what was going to happen, understood the sudden decision he’d just made, and hated it. He tossed the bottle away, probably to divert my attention, as he snapped his rifle upward toward me, already firing.