THE LAGOON
Delta Sergeant Melendez unscrewed the cylindrical silencer mounted on the barrel of his nine-millimeter. He patted Ryan’s shoulder and winked at him. Then he raised the weapon and took aim on the lead Zodiac that was already twenty feet from shore. The black rubber glimmered with wetness just as the first brightness of morning turned the blackness of the night into an almost even blacker sunrise as it filtered through the canopy at the center of the lagoon.
Just as the sergeant started to squeeze the trigger, screams and shouts filled the night air from the direction of the falls. The lead boat opened up with the heavy thump of its fifty-caliber machine gun, momentarily blinding the men taking aim on shore. Melendez took a deep breath and fired five times in quick succession. The first four bullets found the hard rubber of the first Zodiac, and the fifth struck the man operating the heavy weapon, dropping him into the murky water. Because of the people in the water, Melendez had disobeyed his own orders about boats first, bad guys second.
“Oops, last one missed the fucking boat,” the sergeant said as the other teams opened fire.
Ryan wanted to smile at the remark but didn’t as bullets flew out of the jungle and caught the assault teams in the boats off guard. Several men, more than likely Delta, let fly and hit several of the other machine gunners, dropping them also. One of the heavy-caliber weapons managed to swing around and open fire. It was like hell opened up around the men onshore. They dove to take cover as the large rounds struck trees and plants around them, forcing them down. One airmen and one of the Delta men cried out as large pieces of tree trunk and bark struck them. It wasn’t long before another of the attackers’ fifties found them and started laying waste to their hiding places. Ryan figured it would only be a matter of moments before their protective cover was down to nothing.
The men, each in turn, would stand and fire quickly and then duck. Ryan heard the M-14 sniper weapon open fire with six quick and sure shots, dropping four of the men that were arrogantly standing inside the rear craft. Then another loud burst of two more fifty-calibers strafed the area immediately to their right, and this time there were accompanying screams of pain as some of the deadly projectiles found their mark.
Ryan was following Melendez when he suddenly reached out and grabbed the soldier’s boot.
“Listen,” he said loudly.
As the sergeant stopped and tried to hear over the continuous gun battle, he thought he heard a long blow of a ship’s whistle.
“It’s an engine,” Ryan yelled over the din. He quickly ventured a look up and over some elephant ear plants. “Goddamn, look at that!”
As both men looked on, an ancient-looking river tug came careering down the rapids and then entered the calmer lagoon as if its pilot had done it a hundred times before.
“I think the bad guys just got reinforced,” the sergeant said, as he placed his last clip of nine-millimeter rounds into his automatic.
As Ryan grimaced, looking down at his own handgun with the slide all the way back, indicating it was empty, a bright red flare fired from the boat. His momentary hopes had been dashed by the sergeant. He had hoped it was some navy fellas coming to their rescue.
As the flare hit its apex, over a hundred arrows suddenly arched into the sky with a sound none of the Americans had ever heard before. Then they heard the thumping of large sticks as they pounded against hollow logs, a deep drumming that was absolutely frightening. Then the attackers in the Zodiacs started screaming as the volley of arrows hit them. As Jason Ryan started to stand up, he felt the sharpened end of a stick press against his back as the screams of the dying filled the darkened air around the killing field.
The Sincaro had arrived to take back their Garden of Eden.