The Viper Squad (33 page)

Mike told Joe, “We won’t go down any farther than we have to. Drive across through this shit.”

“We’ve used up nearly all our reserve gas anyway,” Joe said philosophically—and swung the vehicle toward a lava stream and
tried accelerating across.

The four tires blew on contact, and the rubber was cooked off the wheel rims in seconds. It took two minutes to cross the
fifty-foot-wide lava stream less than six inches deep.

Halfway across, Joe called back, “Harvey, get out and push.”

Back on the grass on the other side of the lava stream, running on the rims was slow and laborious.

“I can see two more streams ahead at this level,” Mike said, standing up. “Then we can chuck the Jeep and head for Lake Nicaragua.”

They could now see its blue vastness in the distance.

When they saw that some of the Nicaraguan forces had stopped running before the lava, they grew wary, thinking they had turned
to fife on them. Then they saw that these men, about eight in all, had been trapped on a grass island among braided rivulets
of lava. As the Jeep slowly plowed its way through a second lava stream, sometimes spinning its wheels as if in mud and threatening
to stall in midstream, they had plenty of time to see how the Nicaraguans were faring.

Although both sides were within easy firing range of each other, all thought of hostilities had ceased. The competition of
man against nature had for the moment become stronger than that of man against man. The mercs would even have helped the marooned
soldiers, had they been able to do so without endangering themselves.

At first it seemed as if the eight soldiers had only to outwait the lava flow on their island and then escape when the flow
waned and the molten rock hardened. However, it soon became evident that a major volume of the central mass of lava was flowing
their way, and the channels of moving gray matter were visibly swelling and thickening—and their island shrinking.

The eight men changed from helping one another to crowding one another on their increasingly small patch of solid ground amid
lava streamlets too wide to leap. Then the two weakest were pushed off by the others.

As the two fell full-length into the molten rock, they seemed to die instantly—like lobsters dropped into boiling water. The
others watched horrified as their flesh was
consumed and the white knobs of their yellow bones pushed through, as the corpses were dragged over the ground by the creeping
shallow tide.

A lava stream was pinched into a strait at one point, too wide for a man to clear with a single leap. One soldier prepared
to jump, clearly hoping to save himself by sacrificing the foot he would have to place in the lava for his second leap. On
the other side lay a much larger island than their own—with higher ground where a man would almost certainly be safe from
the lava flow if he could reach it.

The soldier jumped, pushing off with his right foot and landing on his left more than ankle deep in lava, three-quarters of
the way across the channel. His left foot was no more than a second in the melted rock, and then he leaped again and made
it to safety on the far side.

All that remained of his left foot was the gleaming white bones, like those of a well-cleaned skeleton.

By the time the Jeep had negotiated the lava flow, crossed a stretch of grassy land and entered the last flow in their path,
there was only one man left on the original and still-diminishing island. He had pushed the others off. He now stood on a
little mound of stones he had built for himself and stared at the implacable smoking gray stuff creeping slowly beneath his
feet.

T
HEY
got to the eastern shore of Lake Nicaragua at sunset. The lake was so huge—forty-five miles wide and one hundred long—they
found it hard to believe this was not the Pacific Ocean. They had little time or inclination to admire the magnificent sunset
over the waters, and headed wearily south along its shore. The moon’s first quarter gave them sufficient light to continue
after dark, and Mike decided to make as much progress as they could under cover of night. He reckoned they were one-third
of the way down the lake’s eastern shore, about seventy miles from the Costa Rican border and freedom. This would be a two-day
trek at the minimum, over rough land, a period which would give the Nicaraguan authorities adequate time to ensure their capture.
He had to find a quicker and less exhausting way to travel.

When they saw a small town ahead on the lakeshore, Mike ordered a halt. Rowboats, some with outboard motors attached, were
pulled up on the land before the town. Such boats would certainly beat walking. They could travel all night on the lake and
reach the border sometime tomorrow. But offshore there was something better yet—by
moonlight they could see the white shape of a launch about thirty-five feet long, anchored, without lights.

“Bob, you’re our boat expert,” Mike said. “Think you can start her?”

Bob nodded.

Mike pointed to Lance, and all three of them stripped to their shorts and buckled on belts holding a sheathed Marine Corps
combat knife.

“If you see any triangular fins,” Mike told them with a smile, “they’re for real. I’ve heard this lake is crawling with freshwater
sharks. The lake was once an inlet of the sea and got cut off by a volcano or an earthquake, so the sharks became landlocked.”

“I promise not to feed them,” Bob said.

The others stayed where they were. Andre would signal by flashlight when they got the launch under way, and they would bring
it inshore to pick them up. Mike entered the water where they were, in spite of it being a half-mile swim, because he felt
they could not risk being seen by townspeople. One person seeing them could spoil the whole thing, since the townspeople could
move faster in their small boats than the mercs could swim.

The water was calm, there were no currents, and it was pleasantly warm, so they made good time out to the anchored launch.
All three hung on to one of its two anchor ropes. The ropes were thin and made of nylon. They would not be easy to climb.
It would be simpler to go up over the side of the launch.

They swam to its side, which loomed about three feet over their heads, and listened. They heard no sound but that of wavelets
slapping against the timbers of the boat. The cabin windows and navigation lights were dark.

Mike treaded water, fists forward and elbows held in at his sides. Lance and Bob grabbed an elbow each and heaved upward simultaneously,
lifting Mike out of the water as they sank beneath him, displacing his weight. Mike clutched the gunwale with both hands and
hauled
himself up so that he balanced on his belly with his legs still over the side.

A soldier with a Kalashnikov across his legs sat huddled against the opposite gunwale fast asleep. If Mike had come up on
the opposite side of the boat, he would have been right on top of him! Mike balanced where he was for a moment, ready to push
back into the water at a second’s notice, while he scanned the foredeck and peered into the darkness beyond the open cabin
door.

Then he wiped the wet hair out of his eyes, eased himself over the gunwale, drew the knife from the sheath on his belt and
tiptoed, dripping, across the afterdeck toward the sleeping soldier. He clamped his left hand over the man’s mouth and drew
the blade of his combat knife across his throat.

The soldier drummed his heels on the deck as he struggled in Mike’s grip and as his lifeblood gushed down over his uniform.
Mike released the limp body, put down his knife on the deck and grabbed the Kalashnikov. He cocked it and stood by the door
of the dark cabin. He barged in suddenly, ready to spray anything that moved or made a sound in the darkness. The cabin was
empty, so he came back out and helped Bob and Lance aboard. He and Lance dumped the body in the water while Bob started the
marine diesel engine.

Like many diesels, this one was a bitch to start and noisy as hell when Bob did get it going; but the diesel was easy on fuel,
and Bob was of the opinion they had plenty in the tanks to last them their voyage. Some lights in the town started to come
on as the engine stuttered and failed over and over again. By the time it roared to life, they could see the flashlights of
men climbing into small boats to come out to the launch.

“They probably think the soldier is drunk or loco,” Mike said.

Lance cut the two anchor ropes and Bob swung the launch northward and parallel to the shore. The men in
the small boats were shouting to them. Andre flicked on and off his beam, and the team waded out waist-deep to be helped
aboard at the prow by Mike and Lance, while Bob kept the engine running and the screw turning out in the deeper water.

When they passed the town again, heading southward, the whole place was lighted up and the men in the small boats opened up
on them with automatic rifles.

Mike sighed. “Not as quiet a start as I had hoped for, Bob. Better sail her without running lights.”

When they were well under way, Harvey took the wheel, and Sally, who had been insisting that she be assigned duties like the
others, took first watch. She noticed Mike’s bloody combat knife where he had left it on the afterdeck and fetched a plastic
basin of water from the galley so she could clean it for him as she kept watch on the foredeck.

“Next thing, you’ll be washing his socks,” Harvey sneered at her from the wheel.

Sally was stung. “What is it with you, Harvey? I get the feeling you don’t much like women.”

“Women are okay till they start picking up after me, dusting and washing things.”

If any of the others had said what Harvey had said to her, she would have laughed. But Harvey’s tone of voice caused a surge
of anger in her, so she ignored him, kept watch and washed the knife in the basin.

The diesel began to develop a stutter, and after a while Harvey tied the wheel in place and went aft to tinker with the engine.
Sally, sitting on the foredeck, which was also the cabin roof, saw a figure come out on the afterdeck behind Harvey. Bored
with Waller’s uncouth company, she looked curiously to see which of the team it was, hoping that it might be Mike.

Whoever it was, he stood just outside the cabin door, facing aft, a few paces from where Harvey was bent over the throbbing
engine; all she could see from where she sat
was the top of his head. As a joke, she reached down and grabbed him by the hair.

He yelled with fright and twisted his head out of her grasp. He looked up at her, and she saw he was a stranger. A Nicaraguan
soldier. With a machete in his right hand. He raised the blade to slash at her, then stiffened suddenly; his eyes popped and
his mouth opened.

Harvey stood behind him, supporting him with a knife buried in his right kidney. The machete dropped from the soldier’s hand,
and Harvey walked him across the after—deck like a drunk being escorted by a bouncer out of a tavern, and let him fall over
the side.

After Harvey had rushed into the cabin to make sure the sleepers were all right, he returned to the wheel and said to Sally,
“Not bad. You’re really getting the hang of things.”

“Wh-where did he come from?” Sally stammered with fright.

“Good point,” Harvey acknowledged approvingly. “We’re getting careless. That bastard probably heard Mike and the others come
on board and hid in a sail locker or inside a bulkhead somewhere. Wake Mike and have him search this tub.”

The norteamericanos had taken a battered old launch with a big diesel engine loud as a bus. Esteban smiled to himself and
sat back in the captain’s chair on the bridge of the naval cutter, smoking, a cigar and watching the technicians monitor their
night-navigation equipment. This time he had Mad Mike outmaneuvered.

If Paulo had known in the first place he was up against Mad Mike Campbell, he would have done things differently. For one,
he would never have delegated so much responsibility to Manuel. In hindsight, it was laughable to have sent in Manuel with
those airborne assault troops to stop someone like Campbell. They mentioned that they had sent for Manuel’s dental records
to see if he could be identified
from the bones in the lava. Paulo was sorry to lose a loyal servant, but he could see now that the result had been a foregone
conclusion. In sending Manuel, Paulo had sent a boy on a man’s errand.

But from now on, it was going to be a different ball game. Paulo knew now whom he was contending with. The intelligence data
had been radioed from Havana and decoded. Paulo was even amused by his instructions to take Mad Mike alive if possible, along
with Senorita Sally, while the others were “disposable.” Paulo thought he detected in this Fidel’s curiosity to meet Mike.

To declaw the tiger and deliver him harmless in a cage to Havana to amuse Fidel… now that was something Paulo could enjoy
anticipating. He was a big man and had a hearty appetite.

At dawn the mercs found themselves trapped by the naval cutter in a cove near San Carlos and the San Juan river. The San Juan
drained the lake into the Caribbean, and about thirty miles down its length, the river became the border between Nicaragua
to the north and Costa Rica to the south. Eden Pastora’s “good guy” contras were said to control the river with their speedboats
armed with machine guns and explosive charges known as “piranhas.” But the mercs had no chance of slipping into the river
now, trapped a few hundred yards offshore by a naval vessel that had three times their speed, plus four-inch guns and radar.

Paulo Esteban addressed them once again over the ship’s speaker. Not only would he guarantee a safe-conduct down the San Juan
for the launch and its crew in exchange for Sally Poynings and Mike Campbell, he now promised that Sally and Mike would be
handed over to American authorities in Holland—after they had been presented as living evidence of United States aggression
in Nicaragua at the World Court in The Hague.

“What more could you ask for under the circumstances?” Esteban wanted to know. “Senorita Sally goes home, and
all of you survive to fight again, although you do not deserve to.”