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  “Tourist,” Lyons joked above the roar and rattle of the old plane.

  “Damn right! Federal fringe benefit.” Gadgets tucked the camera into a pocket of his pack, then returned to assembling his gear.

  With their breath clouding about them in the freezing cargo area, Able Team had packed and repacked the field gear. Because they would have local people guiding them to the hidden reactor complex, the three Americans had packed few rations. They carried only high-protein wafers and vitamin supplements; they would have to depend on the Indians contracted by the CIA to provide their meals.

  But they would not travel light. Lyons struggled to arrange his weapons’ magazines on his bandoliers. Some of the heavy box mags for the assault shotgun went on his chest bandolier, the other mags in the side pockets of his pack. He stripped a couple of the magazine pouches holding 9mm subsonic cartridges for his Beretta from the web belt, stashed those in other pack pockets. He attached a pouch to the web belt to carry speedloaders for the Magnum. Then he twisted his torso, flexed his chest to test the positioning of his shoulder-holstered Python. The Python’s grip tapped against a magazine. It took minutes for him to slightly shift the position of the shoulder holster.

  Blancanales glanced up from his packing and watched Lyons shoulder his pack and shotgun, then stand. Lyons lurched a few steps.

  “I know why they call you ‘Ironman,’ ” Blancanales shouted.

  “What?” Lyons shouted back.

  Blancanales pointed to the .357 Magnum revolver and Beretta auto-pistol that Lyons wore, and the assault shotgun that he held. “Because you carry so much iron.”

  Squatting down beside his friend, Lyons shouted, “Long life through superior fire power.”

  Laughing, Blancanales went back to his gear. For Able Team, life itself was a permanent condition of prebattle nerves. Blancanales too had many pounds of ammunition to carry, and it was a relief of tension to laugh about it. He had three hundred rounds of 5.56mm ammo in ten magazines to cope with, plus the heavy 40mm grenades. Konzaki had packed a box of assorted grenades: buckshot, high-explosive and phosphorous. As each grenade weighed a pound, Blancanales decided to take only thirteen, a buckshot round to carry in the M-16/M-203 as they moved, eleven high-explosive and phosphorous rounds, and an extra round of buckshot. Surveying the quantity of ammunition he would carry, he muttered, “Soft probe… bullshit.”

  As the electronics specialist, Gadgets packed only five magazines of 5.56mm cartridges for his small CAR-15. But he carried the heavy shortwave transmitter and all the accessories — the scrambler and screech unit to encode and decode their communications and the long antenna of metal tape to insure the radio link with Stony Man. He also carried two miniature microphones and a receiver. He sealed all the electronic units in 10-mil vinyl bags, then padded the radio and coding units with his other gear — the disposable plastic anticontamination suit, his poncho, protein rations, the aluminum and foam case for the micro-transmitters. The clutter of gear added a measure of protection.

  Shouldering his pack and standing, Gadgets groaned. “Oh, man! Am I the mule.”

  “What’s your problem?” Lyons shouted.

  “This shortwave set. Next time, we go where they have telephones!”

  The pilots’ compartment door opened. Horizontal through the plane’s windshields, the light of the rising sun filled the cargo area. The copilot walked back to them. He wore a fur-collared Eisenhower jacket and tight Levi’s. Able Team did not know his name. When they had changed planes at an airfield somewhere back in the Peruvian mountains, the pilots had stayed in the cockpit. He did not introduce himself now.

  He went to one knee near their gear and gazed at the weapons. Then he observed their lightweight clothing — Gadgets and Blancanales in green camouflage fatigues, Lyons in faded shadow-gray cotton fatigues.

  “Cold enough for you?”

  “Didn’t notice,” Blancanales shouted back. “Been busy.”

  “You all know where you’re going? Who you’re meeting?”

  “We thought you knew!” Lyons answered, slapping his forehead in mock surprise. “Now we’re all screwed up.”

  The copilot laughed sarcastically. “A joker. Dig this dude. Whoever sent you doesn’t like you. ‘Cause you’re going to a place called the Stone Age. Where the snake is king. Where Satan ain’t born yet — and when he is, he’s going to hightail it out.”

  His eyes wide with shock and amazement, Lyons looked to Gadgets and Blancanales, then back to the copilot. “But the travel agent said it would be nice… so unspoiled… like Hawaii, but without the crowds.”

  Still sneering, the copilot shook his head. “Hope you keep your sense of humor down there. Now listen,” he said, warming to these cavalier characters, “you’re in luck. You’ll have a good man waiting for you at the airstrip. He’ll hold your hand, try to keep you alive. When my plane went down, he’s the man who found me and brought me out. Just you all treat him like the proud son of a bitch he is, and you’ll get along fine.”

  The plane lost altitude. They felt the atmospheric pressure pushing at their ears. The copilot gave a quick salute and started back to the cockpit.

  Lyons called out, “Hey! Tell us what goes on!”. Laughing, the copilot shook his head no. “And spoil the surprises? Ifyou come back, we’ll swap stories.” Still grinning, he closed the cockpit door behind him.

  “Well, what do you make of that?” Lyons asked the others.

  “He’s the joker,” Gadgets smiled. He went to a port and looked out. He hurried back to his pack and retrieved the Instamatic. “Take a look out there. Beautiful!”

  Blancanales whistled as he peered out. “A world of green.”

  They saw no highways, no farmlands, no towns. Behind them, the Andes had become forested foothills. Swirls of clouds fanned out over green flatlands. Here and there, rainstorms swept over the jungle. Other regions glowed with the amber light of the searing tropical morning. The plane passed over a river, the water black, flashing with sunlight. Then they saw their first sign of civilization.

  “Someone’s got a motorboat down there,” Lyons pointed. “Maybe they’re waterskiing.”

  Blancanales focused his binoculars on the river. “That’s no boat. That’s a barge.”

  “Barge? It’s too small.”

  “Check it out.” He handed Lyons the binoculars. “It looks small because the river’s about a half mile wide.”

  “Wow… you’re right.” Panning away from the sliver of water beneath them, Lyons scanned the vast carpet of unbroken jungle extending to the far horizon. “Oh, man, oh, man. Does that add perspective to what I’m looking at.”

  “Wherever we’re going, whatever we’re doing,” Gadgets said as he snapped a panorama of three photos, “I sure hope we don’t have to walk home.”

  Seconds after the DC-3 touched down, the copilot threw open the cockpit door and paced urgently down the length of the swaying plane as it taxied. He had shed his heavy coat, now wore a bright purple T-shirt tucked into his jeans. He grabbed the handstrap at the door to steady himself as he worked the latch lever. He pushed the door open.

  “Move it, passengers! In three minutes, this here aircraft is back in the sky.”

  The copilot jerked a rope-handled crate to the doorway, waited until the plane slowed to a stop. Then he jumped out and pulled the crate after him.

  Able Team followed him, one man after another, dropping the four feet to a field of mud. The hot, wet air closed around them like steam. In seconds, sweat beaded their faces.

  The airstrip paralleled a river. Bulldozers had scraped a long straight flat on the riverbank. Huge piles of tangled brush and branches rotted in the mud at each end of the strip. An improvised dock of fifty-five-gallon drums extended a hundred feet into the slow, silt-dark river; rough-sawn planks lashed to the drums served as a walkway.

  The copilot dragged the crate across the field. Six black men waited for him. The men were nearly naked, wearing only loincloths and w
eapons. Some held old shotguns, one man an M-1 carbine, one man a bow and long arrows.

  “Black Indians?” Blancanales wondered out loud.

  They slogged through the mud. As the three uniformed and well-equipped soldiers from the United States neared the group, they studied the Indians. The Indians ignored them. They gathered around the copilot as he clawed at the lid of the crate.

  The Indians were not Negroes. Black paint covered the mahogany-brown skin. Some wore the paint solid. Some wore the paint in patterns. One man had his body and face black except for a rectangle around his eyes. Another wore the paint in horizontal bands across his body, like a snake’s markings.

  All the Indians wore their hair in knife-cut black bowls on top of their heads, their temples and necks shaved bare. They had either bones or feathers through their earlobes. At their waists, thongs of leather secured their loincloths. Web belts carried ammunition pouches and sheath knives. Most of the men wore leather sandals. One man sported rotting orange-and-blue jogging shoes.

  Laughter and chatter broke out as the copilot lifted away the crate top. Inside, there were pump-action shotguns, machetes, boxes of cartridges, and plastic-wrapped packages. The copilot passed the first shotgun to the Indian who carried the M-l carbine.

  Stroking the Parkerized finish, the Indian turned the Remington 870 twenty-inch shotgun over in his hands. He touched the black plastic of the stock and foregrip, pumped the action, snapped the trigger at the sky. He took a shotgun cartridge from a belt pouch, held it up against the extended magazine. He counted space for six cartridges. He grinned a white, perfect smile and slapped the copilot on the back. The copilot passed out shotguns to the other five Indians.

  Overwhelmed by their good fortune, the group laughed and clacked actions and snapped triggers. The copilot and the apparent Indian leader — the man with the rectangle around his eyes — stepped away from the others. They talked in English for a few seconds, the Indian shaking the copilot’s hand. Then the Indian’s eyes fixed on the purple of the copilot’s T-shirt for a moment. In an instant, the copilot pulled off the T-shirt and gave it to the Indian.

  Blancanales nudged Lyons and Gadgets and told them, “That was a routine. The pilot didn’t have that shirt on until we landed. He put it on so that he could give it away.”

  The copilot gestured toward the three waiting North Americans. The Indian looked at them and smiled his white flash. He waved as the copilot sprinted bare chested to the DC-3 and pulled himself up through the door. In thirty seconds, the plane was roaring over the distant treetops.

  Only after the sound of the DC-3’s engines had faded to nothing did the Indian turn to Able Team. Slinging his new shotgun over his shoulder, he came close to them. He extended his hand and spoke in curiously soft English. “Hello. Pleased to meet you. I am Thomas Jefferson Xavante. And I will take you to the city of slavery and death.”

  4

  Following two Indian point men along a pathway through the stinking yet sometimes fragrant half darkness of the jungle, Lyons heard Blancanales and the Indian named Thomas Jefferson talking in English and Spanish and Portuguese. After introducing himself at the airfield, the Indian leader had said there was no time for questions, that they must move quickly, before the army came.

  The Indians had loaded and slung their new Remington shotguns, then hacked apart the wooden shipping crate with their new black-bladed machetes and burned the wood. Each man had also received black nylon bandoliers and two boxes of shotgun shells. Now, they carried both their old weapons and their new Remingtons, the cartridge boxes and the plastic-wrapped bundles. The line of Indians wove quickly through a maze of trails, shoving fronds and branches and giant elephant-ear leaves aside with their shoulders.

  The line of men moved through the shadowy darkness of triple-canopy rain forest. Above them, the tops of hundred-foot-tall trees shadowed a second layer of smaller trees. Below the lowest branches of the two levels of tree foliage, the ferns and vines and flowering plants blocked the last specks of direct sunlight.

  As the men left the river miles behind, the heat became total. No leaf or frond moved unless they touched it, no wind stirred the heavy, dank air. Lyons sweated like never before in his life. Sweat completely soaked his faded gray fatigues before he had walked the first mile. Soon, sweat ran from the cuffs of his shirt. He felt sweat flowing down his legs. Sweat trickling from his close-cut hair stung his eyes.

  Insects found his sweat. Flies wandered on his face until he wiped them away. Small beetles clung like multicolored buttons on his gray uniform. He heard a droning. He searched for the insect making the sound, looking above him, behind him. Finally he saw it: a wasp the size of a small bird. He flinched away, horrified, blundered into a fern silky with spiderwebs. An orange-and-violet-and-red spider tried to capture him. Lyons thrashed free. The Indian point men glanced back laughed.

  In the distance, they heard a cacophony of bird songs and screeches. But when the men neared, despite their stealth, the birds went quiet. Only the insect sounds continued.

  After an hour or more of walking, one of the point men came back to Lyons and motioned for him to pause. The Indian squatted. Lyons looked up the trail, couldn’t see the first man. Lyons squatted, his knees almost touching the Indian, waited. Lyons took a squeeze bottle of insect repellent out of his thigh pocket and smeared it on his face and neck.

  The Indian watched, his eyes white half coins in the black of his painted face. Lyons saw the Indian’s eyes follow the bottle. Lyons held up the bottle, motioned for the Indian to watch. Then Lyons smeared the repellent on his left hand and wrist. Putting down the bottle, Lyons held up his hands to the flies and tiny beetles buzzing around him. Mimicking him, the Indian held up his hands.

  Flies attacked both of Lyons’s hands. An iridescent black fly with gray thousand-faceted eyes landed on the back of his left hand and immediately put a sucker through the skin. Lyons slapped it away. The fly came at his face. He grabbed it out of the air, slammed it into the leaves and mud of the trail, hit it twice with his fist before it stopped moving.

  Grinning, the Indian still held up his hands. No insects landed on his blackened skin. Puzzled, Lyons rubbed the back of his right hand over the Indian’s arm. A smear of black came away. Lyons watched as insects alighted on his white skin but avoided his blackened skin. The Indian nodded. Then his eyes whipped up the trail.

  For a second, Lyons heard nothing. A young boy walked toward them. The boy was naked except for black body paint and a necklace of brilliant blue feathers. He called out to the men. When he saw Lyons, he stared, then ran back. The Indians laughed, followed the boy.

  Smoke from a fire swirled in a small clearing. Above a circle of ferns and trampled grass twenty yards across, the trees closed, creating a dome of interlaced branches. Flowering vines splashed the green walls with lurid colors.

  A cool breeze carrying the odors of river water and burning wood touched Lyons’s face. The point man sat at the fire, poked at something. Lyons and the other men joined him.

  “We eat,” Thomas Jefferson Xavante told him. “Then we take boats to the next camp.”

  “How’s it going, Ironman?” Blancanales sat beside Lyons. “Looks like you went swimming.”

  “Yeah.” Lyons slipped out of his shoulder holster and bandoliers, took off his long-sleeved shirt. He wrung it out. He draped it over his backpack and Atchisson assault shotgun to dry.

  Gadgets sat down and leaned back on his pack as if it was an easy chair. “What’s for breakfast?”

  Blancanales glanced into the fire’s ashes and stones. “Looks like turtle.”

  “Hmm, a delicacy.” Gadgets pulled a Swiss Army knife from one of his pockets and folded out a fork from it.

  “So what did you find out from the men?” Lyons asked Blancanales. “Where’s that city he talked about? Is it the place we’re looking for?”

  “We look at your maps, we talk,” Thomas told Lyons, taking a seat beside him. The boy sat with him. “
This is my son, Abraham Lincoln Xavante. What are your names, sir?”

  Lyons hesitated, glanced at Blancanales and Gadgets, then answered, “Ironman.”

  “And I’m the Politician.”

  “You can call me Gadgets.”

  Thomas frowned, offended. Then he flashed his brilliant smile again. “I forget. You are secret agents. You can no give me names. No can? Do not?” He struggled to find the correct words.

  “Can’t,” Blancanales advised. “Your English is excellent, Thomas Jefferson. You speak Spanish and Portuguese also, right?”

  “Yes. And my people’s language. And languages of other peoples, other tribes. I study in mission school, many years. Then read books, hear radio, see television. I study history of America. I take name of your President Jefferson, give my son name of President Lincoln, give other son name Simon Bolivar.”

  “What denomination was the mission?” Lyons asked. When he saw Thomas did not understand the word, he said, “What church? Catholic? Protestant? Mormon?”

  “This is my church.” Thomas gestured to the living cathedral over them. “No need Jehovah, Jesus, Mary. I only want your Constitution. Now we look at maps. Abraham! Bring food.” Thomas spoke a few quick words in his own language. The boy hurried away.

  Blancanales unfolded a plastic-coated map and located the position of the river airstrip. Thomas leaned across Lyons and traced a line with his finger from the river to a tributary.

  “We take boats now. Two hours, three hours we back on same river.”

  “Then why did we walk overland?” Lyons asked.

  Thomas pointed to the map again, to a bend in the river. “Mission school there. Army sometimes come. Priests see us, they tell army.”

  Abraham returned with a folded leaf the size of a shopping bag. The other Indians gathered around, smiling, watching the foreigners.