By touch, Blancanales passed a tube of face-blacking to Lieutenant Silveres. The Brazilian took a dab, then passed the blacking on to Thomas. All of the men shared it, ritually passing the blacking on to every man in the group, even those who already wore genipap. Hands checked magazines and bandoliers in the darkness.

Lyons conferred with the others. "I say we try to take the patrol boats and the helicopter first. If we can take a radio operator alive, without an alarm going out, we got a chance to cruise straight into their camp — as if we're bringing in the boatload of slaves. Thomas?"

"Maybe."

"Lieutenant Silveres?"

"Very good."

Blancanales agreed. "Sounds good to me. If everything goes perfectly..."

"Yeah, yeah. We do it, okay? Gadgets, you stay here and listen for any Mayday calls..."

"Forget that. You'll need me. I'll set up the recorder."

"Good enough. Thomas, tell your men. We take the boats and helicopter with knives and machetes. When we have the radios, we take the riverboat."

Like shadows within shadows, the warriors slipped through the last tangles of the rain forest and snaked down the embankment. Finally they saw the riverboat close up. What they saw stopped them.

17

Like party lights, strings of electric bulbs blazed along the rails of the old paddle-wheel steamer. The glaring points of incandescence blitzed the darkness, making the night day around the helicopter, the patrol boats, and the paddle-wheeler itself.

On the aft cargo deck, the uniformed soldiers of Colonel Gomez secured lines to the patrol boats as they prepared to tow the steamboat into deeper water. On the prow, Asian sentries in shapeless unmarked olive drab fatigues paced the brightly lit passenger decks.

One hundred fifty feet from the paddle-wheel steamer, Able Team watched. They sprawled in the tangled reeds of the riverbank. The lights were also illuminating the shallows, the beach, the trees of the forest.

"That kills it," Gadgets hissed.

"No, it doesn't," Lyons snapped back. "We angle in from the front. If we keep the riverboat between us and the other boats, we can use the Berettas to take out those forward sentries."

"I don't trust the Berettas to do it," Blancanales whispered to Gadgets and Lyons. The three men crowded shoulder to shoulder. Lieutenant Silveres listened from the other side of Blancanales. "Even if we hit both of them, make instant kills, they'll fall on the deck..."

"Yeah," Lyons agreed. "And anybody could be behind them, see it happen. Listen, I can do a hundred feet underwater, that'll get me within..."

"That'll get you dead, hotshot," Gadgets told him.

"Nah. Watch them," Lyons argued. "Sometimes for thirty seconds or a minute or two minutes, they've got their backs turned. Or they're off the deck. I chance it, I move fast..."

"Hey, Hardman One, wise up," insisted Gadgets. "Just 'cause you're brave don't mean you won't die. If you come up short, if they see you, they got you. We can't chance it, not even to help those farmers. Besides, you'd be down there with the crocodiles, and you're wearing your lizard-attracting lotion."

"I do it," Lieutenant Silveres told them.

Blancanales shook his head. The lieutenant continued.

"Listen to me, Yankee. If they see me, they will see this uniform. They will think I'm with that traitor, Gomez."

The warm river water closed around him. Slowly, silently, Lieutenant Silveres slipped through the reeds and the marsh grasses, his hands clawing into the slime. He pressed his belly into the mud, bending his back to keep his face above the surface. As the muddy water deepened, Silveres moved faster, digging his boots into the bottom, pushing through the shallows.

A hundred lights streaked the river. Reflected from the gently waving surface, the rusted paddle steamer became a shimmering white dream ship resplendent with electric jewels.

Silveres watched the sentries crossing and recrossing the decks. Staying in the darkness and mud of the shallows, he watched for a chance to swim to the steamer. The sentries carried their automatic rifles loose in their hands, ready to fire, ready to end his life.

A few minutes before, the talk of death had not seemed real. He had volunteered with full consideration of the risk. But he was thinking then of death in the abstract, as only a word.

Now he thought of the other night when the Cuban put the pistol to his head. But death had been an abstraction that night also. After the mercenaries had ambushed his men, killing two, capturing him and the seventeen-year-old private, the lieutenant had not felt fear. Shock numbed him. He endured the beating and torture because he did not believe the scene real. His mind did not accept the reality, therefore he escaped the very worst of the pain. When the Cuban put the pistol to the head of Guerimo, the teenager who hoped to own a long-distance truck, who wrote love letters to five girls by hand-copying one letter five times, only then had the lieutenant snapped from his trance. He tried to reason with the Cuban. The flash of the pistol seemed a crime beyond belief. Tradition and pride did not allow him to beg for his own life. He thought of nothing, waited for the nightmare to end at the end of the pistol pointed at his head.

Watching from outside the Indian camp, the gringos and the Chicanos who rescued him believed him brave, fearless. But they did not know the truth.

Now, lying in the warm slime, he felt fear. It coiled inside him, writhed in his bowels. His body waited for his mind to command action, but he did not move. He watched the Asian mercenaries pace the deck.

A woman sobbed. From one of the cabins, the cry rose and fell. She shrieked, pleaded. Then silence came abruptly. Then laughter burst out.

Lieutenant Silveres knew he had more than bullets and a quick death to fear. Perhaps they would capture him again. No, not again. He could not, he would not be captured again. He could not hide within his shock again. He would die first.

Brave words. He lay in the marshy shallows of the Mamore because of his brave words to the gringos. But he did not move. Fear whipped within him as his imagination gave him images. Death by bullets. Death by knives. Death by pliers to his genitals.

Fear stopped his breathing. He forced his lungs to suck air, forced his chest to expel the air. His body was immobilized with fear. He concentrated only on breathing.

Several Asians stepped from the paddle-wheeler to the helicopter tethered to the side. The blades spun, a whine rising as the engine warmed, the blades becoming a blur. Water sprayed in all directions.

Now! Now the sentries would not see him. He touched the flap securing the Italian pistol. Would it fire after minutes under water? He checked the flap of the thigh pocket carrying the hand radio. Would he lose it as he swam? Would the plastic protect it from the river's water? No time for more thoughts, no time for more fear. Silveres kicked against the mud, stroked desperately through the muddy water. He took a last look at the rotting ship's decks. The helicopter's rotor storm sprayed muddy water everywhere.

He sucked down a last breath and went under the water, swimming with all his strength, scissoring his legs again and again, trying to gain every possible yard before his lungs forced him to the surface.

A pain seared his leg. Another hit his ribs. So this is how bullets feel, he thought. But he didn't stop. Perhaps he could live if he reached the hull of the steamer, perhaps he could kill the mercenary before the mercenary killed him. The lieutenant feared death like never before. Fear made him strong and fast. Fear of death made the pain in his lungs nothing.