River of Death Read online

  Hamilton, Ramon and Navarro, heads propped on hands, were regarding him with a quietly speculative air.

  Hamilton said: ‘Well, did you find what you were looking for?’

  Heffner didn’t say whether he had or not.

  ‘One of the three of us is going to keep an eye on you for the remainder of the night. You try to stir from that chair and I will take the greatest pleasure in clobbering you. I don’t much care for people who meddle in my private belongings.’

  Hamilton and the twins slept soundly throughout the night. Heffner did not once leave his chair.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Just after dawn, the helicopter pilot, John Silver-generally known as Long John—was at the controls. The party of nine embarked and stowed their overnight luggage with the food and equipment that had been transferred from the DC3. Hamilton took the co-pilot’s seat. So cavernous was the interior of the giant helicopter that it seemed virtually empty. It rose effortlessly and flew more or less east, paralleling the course of the Rio da Morte. All the passengers had their heads craned, peering through what few windows there were: they were seeing for the first time the true Amazonian rainforest.

  Hamilton turned in his seat and pointed forward. ‘That’s an interesting sight.’ His voice was a shout.

  On a wide mud flat, perhaps almost a mile long, and on the left bank, scores of alligators lay motionless as if asleep.

  ‘Good God!’ It was Smith. ’Good God! Are there so many ‘gators in the world?’ He shouted to Silver: ‘Take her down, man, take her down!’ Then to Heffner: ‘Your camera! Quick!’ He paused, as if in sudden thought, then turned to Hamilton. ‘Or should I have asked the expedition commander’s permission?’

  Hamilton shrugged. ‘What’s five minutes?’

  The helicopter came down over the river in great sweeping, controlled circles. Long John was clearly a first-rate pilot.

  The alligators, hemmed in the narrow strip between forest and river, seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see. It was, depending upon one’s point of view, a fascinating, horrifying or terrifying spectacle.

  Tracy said, almost in awe: ‘My word, I wouldn’t care to crash-land amongst that lot.’

  Hamilton looked at him. ‘Believe me, that’s the least of the dangers down there.’

  ‘The least?’

  ‘This is the heart of the Chapate territory.’

  ‘That meant to mean something to me?’

  ‘You have a short memory. I’ve mentioned them before. It would mean something to you if you ended up in one of their cooking-pots.’

  Smith looked at him doubtfully, clearly not knowing whether to believe him or not, then turned to the pilot.

  ‘That’s low enough, Silver.’ He twisted in his seat and shouted at the top of his voice: ‘God’s sake, man, hurry!’

  ‘Moment, moment,’ Heffner bawled back. ‘There’s such a damned jumble of equipment here.’

  There was, in fact, no jumble whatsoever. Heffner had already found his own camera, which lay at his feet. In Hamilton’s rucksack he had found something that he had missed the previous night for the good enough reason that he hadn’t been looking for it. He held a leather-bound case in his hand, the one Colonel Diaz had given to Hamilton. He extracted the camera from the case, looked at it in some puzzlement, then pressed a switch in the side. A flap fell down, noiselessly, on oiled hinges. His face registered at first bafflement, then understanding. The interior of the camera consisted of a beautifully made transistorised radio transceiver. Even more importantly it bore some embossed words in Portuguese. Heffner could read Portuguese. He read the words and his understanding deepened. The radio was the property of the Brazilian Defence Ministry, which made Hamilton a government agent. He clicked the flap in position.

  ‘Heffner!’ Smith had twisted again in his seat. ‘Heffner, if you—Heffner!’

  Heffner, radio case in one hand and his pearl-handled pistol in the other, approached. His face was a smiling mask of vindictive triumph. He called out: ‘Hamilton!’

  Hamilton swung around, saw the wickedly smiling face, his own camera held high and the pearl-handled pistol and at once threw himself to the floor of the aisle, his gun coming clear of his bush jacket. Even so, despite the swiftness of Hamilton’s movement, Heffner should have had no trouble in disposing of Hamilton, for he had the clear drop on him and his temporarily defenceless target was feet away. But Heffner had spent a long night of agony in the Hotel de Paris. As a consequence, his hand was less than steady, his reactions were impaired, his co-ordination considerably worse.

  Heffner, his face contorted, fired twice. With the first came a cry of pain from the flight deck. With the second the helicopter gave a sudden lurch. Then Hamilton fired, just once, and a red rose bloomed in the centre of Heffner’s forehead.

  Hamilton took three quick steps up the aisle and had reached Heffner before anyone else had begun to move. He stooped over the dead man, retrieved the camera-radio case, checked that it was closed, then straightened. Smith appeared beside him, a badly shaken man, and stared down in horror at Heffner.

  ‘Between the eyes, between the eyes.’ Smith shook his head in total disbelief. ‘Between the eyes. Christ, man, did you have to do that?’

  ‘Three things,’ Hamilton said. If he was upset, he had his distress well under control. ‘I tried to wing him, and I’m a good shot, especially at four paces, but the helicopter lurched. He twice tried to kill me before I pulled the trigger. Third thing. I gave orders that no-one was to carry guns. As far as I’m concerned, he’s dead by his own hand. God’s sake, why did he pull a gun on me? Was he mad?’

  Smith, perhaps fortunately, was given no time to lend consideration to either of those things, even had he then been of a mind to, which he almost certainly was not. The helicopter had given another and even more violent lurch, and although it still carried a good deal of forward momentum, seemed to be fluttering and falling from the sky like a wounded bird. It was a singularly unpleasant sensation.

  Hamilton ran forward, clutching at whatever he could to maintain his balance. Silver, blood streaming from a cheek wound, was fighting to regain control of the uncontrollable helicopter.

  Hamilton said: ‘Quick! Can I help?’

  ‘Help? No. I can’t even help myself.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘First shot burnt my face. Nothing. Superficial. Second shot must have gone through one or more hydraulic lines. Can’t see exactly but it can’t have been anything else. What happened back there?’

  ‘Heffner. Had to shoot him. He tried to shoot me, but he got you and your controls instead.’

  ‘No loss.’ Considering the circumstances, Silver was remarkably phlegmatic. ‘Heffner, I mean. This machine is a different matter altogether.’

  Hamilton took a quick look backwards. The scene, understandably, was one of confusion and consternation although there were no signs of panic. Maria, Serrano and Tracy, all three with almost comically dazed expressions, were sitting or sprawling in the central aisle. The others clung desperately to their seats as the helicopter gyrated through the sky. Luggage, provisions and equipment were strewn everywhere.

  Hamilton turned again and pressed his face close to the windscreen. The now pendulum-like motion of the craft was making the land below swing to and fro in a crazy fashion. The river was still directly beneath: the one plus factor appeared to be that they had now left behind them the mudflats where the alligators had lain in so lifeless a manner. Hamilton became suddenly aware that an island, perhaps two hundred yards long by half as wide, lay ahead of them in the precise middle of the river, at a distance of about half a mile: it was wooded but not heavily so. Hamilton turned to Silver.

  ‘This thing float?’

  ‘Like a stone.’

  ‘See that island ahead?’

  They were now less than two hundred feet above the broad brown waters of the river: the island was about a quarter of a mile ahead.

  ‘I can see it,�
�� Silver said. ‘I can also see all those trees. Look, Hamilton, control is close to zero. I’ll never get it down in one piece.’

  Hamilton looked at him coldly. ‘Never mind the damned chopper. Can you get us down in one piece?’

  Silver glanced briefly at Hamilton, shrugged and said nothing.

  The island was now two hundred yards distant. As a landing ground it looked increasingly discouraging. Apart from scattered trees it was, but for one tiny clearing, thickly covered with dense undergrowth. Even for a helicopter in perfect health it would have made an almost impossible landing site.

  Even in that moment of emergency some instinct made Hamilton glance to the left. Directly opposite the island, at about fifty yards’ distance and on the bank of the river, was a large native village. From the expression—or lack of it—on Hamilton’s face it was clear that he didn’t care for large native villages, or, at least, this particular one.

  Silver’s face, streaked with rivulets of sweat and blood, reflected a mixture of determination and desperation, with the former predominating. The passengers, tense, immobile, gripped fiercely at any available support and stared mutely ahead. They, too, could see what was about to happen.

  The helicopter, swinging and side-slipping, weaved its unpredictable way towards the island. Silver was unable to bring the helicopter to the hover. As they approached this one much too small clearing, the helicopter was still going far too fast. Its ground-level clearance was by then no more than ten feet. The trees and undergrowth rushed at them with accelerating speed.

  Silver said: ‘No fire?’

  ‘No fire.’

  ‘No ignition.’ Silver switched off.

  One second later the helicopter dipped sharply, crashed into the undergrowth, slid about twenty feet and came to a jarring stop against the bole of a large tree.

  For a few moments the silence was complete. The engine roar had vanished. It was a silence compounded of the dazed shock caused by the violence of their landing and the relief of finding themselves still alive. No-one appeared to have sustained any injury.

  Hamilton reached out and touched Silver’s arm. ‘I’ll bet you couldn’t do that again.’

  Silver dabbed at his wounded cheek. ‘I wouldn’t ever care to try.’ If he was in any way proud of his magnificent airmanship it didn’t show.

  ‘Out! All out!’ Smith’s voice was a stentorian shout, he seemed unaware that normal conversational tones were again in order. ‘We can go up any moment.’

  ‘Don’t be so silly.’ Hamilton sounded weary. ‘Ignition’s off. Stay put.’

  ‘If I want to go out—’

  ‘Then that’s your business. Nobody’s going to stop you. Later on, we’ll bury your boots.’

  ‘What the hell is that meant to mean?’

  ‘A civilised interment of the remains. Maybe even those won’t be left.’

  ‘If you’d be—’

  ‘Look out your window.’

  Smith looked at Hamilton then turned to the window, standing so as to achieve a ground view. His eyes widened, his lips parted and his complexion changed for the worse. Two very large alligators were only feet from the helicopter, fearsome jaws agape, their huge tails swinging ominously from side to side. Wordlessly, Smith sat down.

  Hamilton said: ‘I warned you before you left, the Mato Grosso is no place for mindless little children. Our two friends out there are just waiting for such children. And not only those two. There’ll be more around, lots of them. Also snakes, tarantulas and suchlike. Not to mention—’ He broke off and pointed to the port windscreen. ‘I’d rather you didn’t have to but take a look anyway.’

  They did as he asked. Among the trees on the left bank could be seen a number of huts, perhaps twenty in all, with an especially large circular one in the centre. Several columns of smoke shimmered up into the morning air. Canoes, and what looked like a pinnace, fronted the village. A large number of natives, nearly naked, stood on the bank, talking and gesticulating.

  ‘But this is luck,’ Smith said.

  ‘You should have stayed in Brasilia.’ Hamilton sounded unwontedly sour. ‘Sure it’s luck—the most fiendishly bad luck. I see the chiefs are getting ready.’

  There was a fairly long silence then Maria said almost in a whisper: ‘The Chapate?’

  ‘None else. Complete, as you can now see, with olive branches and calling cards.’

  Every native ashore was now armed or was in the process of getting armed. They carried spears, bows and arrows, blowpipes and machetes. The angry expressions on their faces went well with the menacing gesticulations in the direction of the island.

  ‘They’ll be calling soon,’ Hamilton said, ‘and not for tea. Maria, would you give Mr Silver a hand to fix up his face?’

  Tracy said: ‘But we’re safe here, surely? We have guns, plenty. They’re carrying nothing that could penetrate our screens, far less the fuselage.’

  ‘True. Ramon, Navarro, get your rifles and come with me.’

  Smith said: ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Discourage them. From crossing. Shame, really. They may not even know what a gun is.’

  ‘Tracy made sense,’ Smith said. ‘We’re safe here. You have to be a hero?’

  Hamilton stared at him until Smith looked uncomfortable. Hamilton said: ‘Heroism doesn’t enter into it, just survival. I wonder whether you would be half-way brave enough to fight for your own survival. I suggest you leave this to someone who knows how the Chapate wage war. Or do you want to be ready for immediate consumption when they get you?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Smith tried to sound blustery but his heart wasn’t in it, his ego had been too severely dented.

  ‘Just this. If they get as much as a foothold on this island the first thing they’ll do is to set fire to the undergrowth and roast you alive in this metal coffin.’

  There was a silence that lasted until Hamilton, Ramon and Navarro had left the helicopter.

  Ramon, the first to touch the ground, had his rifle on the nearest alligator immediately but the precaution proved needless: both alligators immediately turned and scuttled away into the undergrowth.

  Hamilton said: ‘Just keep an eye on our backs, Ramon.’ Ramon nodded. Hamilton and Navarro moved towards the rear, took shelter behind the tail of the helicopter and looked cautiously ashore.

  A squat, powerfully built Indian dressed in a pink feather headdress, teeth necklace, a series of arm bracelets and little else—definitely the chief—was ordering warriors into half-a-dozen canoes. He himself was standing on the bank.

  Navarro looked at Hamilton, his reluctance plain. He said: ‘No choice?’

  With equal regret Hamilton agreed, shaking his head. Navarro lifted his rifle, aimed and fired in one swift motion. The report of the rifle momentarily paralysed all activity on the bank. Only the chief moved: he cried out in pain and clutched his upper right arm. A second later, while the warriors were still immobilised in shock, another report was heard and another warrior struck in precisely the same place. Navarro was clearly a marksman of the most extraordinary accuracy.

  Navarro said: ‘Not nice, Senor Hamilton.’

  ‘Not nice. As the old saying goes, it’s people like us who have made people like them what they are. But this is hardly the time and place to explain that to them.’

  Ashore the warriors rapidly abandoned their canoes and ran for the shelter of their huts and the forest, taking the two wounded men with them. From those shelters they could be seen almost immediately drawing bows and lifting blowpipes to their mouths. Hamilton and Navarro prudently dropped behind cover as arrows and darts rattled and rebounded harmlessly off the fuselage. Navarro shook his head in sorrow and wonderment. ‘I’ll bet they’ve never even heard a rifle report before. It is something less than a fair contest, Senor Hamilton.’

  Hamilton nodded, but made no comment for comment would have been superfluous. He said: ‘That’s all for now. I don’t think they’ll try anything again b
efore dark. But I’ll keep watch—or arrange for others to do it. Meantime, you and Ramon get rid of our four-legged friends and the creepy-crawlies. Try to chase them away, shoo them away. If you have to shoot, for goodness’ sake don’t do it by the water’s edge or in the water. Bath-time tonight and I don’t want to attract every piranha for miles around.’

  Hamilton reboarded the helicopter. Tracy said: ‘That was quite a hailstorm out there. Arrows and darts, I assume?’

  ‘Didn’t you see?’

  ‘I wasn’t too keen on looking. I’m sure those windows are made of toughened glass but I wasn’t going to be the one to put them to the test. Poisoned?’

  ‘Certainly. But, almost equally certainly, no curare, nothing lethal. They have a less final but equally effective poison that merely stuns. Too much curare affects the flavour of the stew.’

  Smith said sourly: ‘You certainly have a summary way of dealing with the opposition.’

  ‘I should have parleyed with them? The brightly coloured beads approach? Why don’t you go and try it?’ Smith said nothing. ‘If you have any futile suggestions to offer, I suggest you either translate them into action or shut up. There’s a limit to the number of niggling remarks a man can take.’

  Silver, his face bandaged, intervened pacifically. ‘And now?’

  ‘A lovely long siesta until dusk. For me, that is. I shall have to ask you to take turns in keeping watch. Not only the village, but as far upstream and downstream as you can see—the Chapate might contemplate launching a canoe attack at some distance from their village although I consider it highly unlikely. If anything happens, let me know. Ramon and Navarro should be back in twenty minutes; don’t bother letting me know.’