bit into the black soil and the great blade began to shove down the tall yellow grass in front, he knew it was worth it.
This land was low but only submerged when the rains caused the great river to rise over its ill-defined banks. The path from their river beachhead led across a wide clearing, with its high grass and anomalous black soil. The rich topsoil was called black Indian earth. Found throughout the Brazilian Amazon, it was supposedly a special soil artificially created by the inhabitants. The undersoil of the Amazon Basin was poor, weak and thin. He believed it had to be some kind of unexplained natural phenomenon. Who could believe ignorant savages could create something modern science was unable to duplicate, and so much of it?
The stink of diesel overpowered even the jungle reek of wet and rotting vegetation. The roar of big engines overpowered everything, enclosing Silva in a microcosm of noise and power. A heavy warm wind blew against Silva’s plump face.
Ahead and to the left, a flight of small blue birds rose from the high grass and swirled up chittering in the air, as into an inverted invisible drain. After a reflexive glance at the sudden movement, matched by a sort of interior jerk, Silva ignored them. He was a progressive, a man of the modern world. As far as he was concerned any bit of nature he couldn’t bend to the use of the state—with a bit of profit on the side for him—was just clutter.
The associate secretary assumed the white smoke that puffed into the heavy air ahead was some kind of primitive signal by the savages to alert their friends and relatives to the mechanized doom rolling toward them. Then a fierce crack stabbed his ears right through the engine’s roar.
The hatches of an armored car just four vehicles to his left flew open. An astonishing quantity of black smoke erupted from them. Men scrambled out, shrieking. They burned with flames that were almost invisible in the bright sunlight.
The associate secretary heard Bruckner curse in his earpiece.
“You said these were just Indians, Silva. Where did they get MILANs?”
Silva was still blinking in amazement at the stricken armored car. It had rolled to a stop. Orange flames jetted from the open hatches. Yellow explosions crashed and flashed through them like fireworks as ammunition belts cooked off inside. The vehicles immediately behind it had stopped, more in response to the sudden attack than any obstacle the wreck posed. The word at the end of the German’s sentence made no sense to Silva.
“I hired your men to fight,” Silva replied. “So fight!” As he gave the brusque command machine guns began to snarl from vehicles to either side of his. It made him feel on much firmer ground. He was in charge.
The German had his white-fuzzed head down and was talking into his mike on a different frequency. Over the grumble of engines and the wind-roar of the flames they heard distinct pops from the woods behind them. Having read reports of prior expeditions to this rich virgin district, they were prepared as well as possible. Their 82-mm mortars would clear out any ambushers the machine guns couldn’t deal with.
Beyond Bruckner’s command car, a yellow bulldozer rolled. It was still immense at half the size of the machine Silva rode.
The laborers riding it wore overalls with no shirts beneath, and hard hats. As Silva watched Bruckner give commands he saw a worker simply slip from the dozer and disappear into the grass. A moment later a second followed, and a third.
The bulldozer stopped. The remaining two laborers riding it jumped off and ran. One screamed horribly as the dozer immediately behind, which had swerved to avoid hitting its suddenly stalled mate, sucked a boot into its treads. His leg was twisted off at the thigh.
More pops from overhead, surprisingly flat sounding, drew Silva’s attention upward. He saw dirty gray puffs of smoke unfold against the blue sky overhead. He realized he had not heard the slamming cracks of mortar shells among the trees ahead. Could the savages have somehow exploded the shells in air?
“Impossible!” he exclaimed.
Around him he heard explosions, screams, the rippling of machine-gun fire. The bulldozers had all stopped. Even the armored cars had halted, three of them including Bruckner’s out in front of the rest of the mass. The machine cannon in Bruckner’s cupola fired, its sound like the fabric of reality tearing right across.
Silva felt his own machine slow. He pounded on the top of the air-conditioned cab with a palm. “Go! Go, you cowardly piece of shit! Or I’ll have you and your whole worthless family sent to the gold camps!” He did not have to tell the driver a steady stream of humanity flowed into the camps. And almost none returned.
Lights flickered among the trees, still over two hundred yards ahead. Silva had never been under fire before but he couldn’t help recognizing muzzle-flashes. These savages were well-armed. The evil small-arms merchants had much to answer for.
Yet despite the screams and blasts all around he felt no fear. This wasn’t real somehow. He could feel nothing, not even the Amazon heat. He was just barely aware of shock waves drumming against his cheeks. Besides, he was prepared—he was the master of the situation. So the savages had gotten guns from some traitor. He had a preponderance of force. He had Germans, damn it!
“Bruckner,” he shrieked. The German showed no reaction. Though he was barely twenty yards away he couldn’t hear the associate secretary over the head-crushing racket. Silva fumbled with the channel setting on his communicator. “Bruckner, deploy your men! Attack, damn you! They’re nothing but a handful of primitives.”
“Ja,” the German replied. Silva was outraged. He resolved to see to Bruckner when this was done. The man was incompetent, and trying to cover it with impudence in the very belly of battle!
“Soares,” Silva commanded his labor chief, “keep your machines moving forward. If they fear danger, there’s more of it here in the open.” And even more if they fail me! he thought furiously.
There was no response. Just a crackle in the headset.
“Soares!” he shouted in his microphone, as if that would help. “Answer, damn you.”
“He can’t, Excellency.” He heard the voice of Ilyich Chaves, his personal aide. It shook so badly he could barely wring sense from it.
“Why not?” Silva shrieked.
“He’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“An animal,” Ilyich said. “Some horrid beast—it leaped from the grass.”
“Get hold of yourself, imbecile! Speak sense!”
From the right he saw a sudden flicker of yellow—
It emerged from the grass and sprang from the black Indian earth. A great cat, thick bodied, spotted with black rosettes, ears pressed flat to a skull that gleamed like gold in the sunlight. It hit Bruckner in a sort of flying tackle, rocking him back in his seat.
“An onza? ” Silva breathed. “A golden onza? ” It was a jaguar—and more than a jaguar. A huge golden one. An almost mythic beast of the great Amazon woods, seldom seen but always feared.
The German’s gloved fists beat against the great cat’s shoulders as it sank huge yellow fangs into his neck and dragged him out of the hatch onto his back atop the armored vehicle. The beast pounced and raked open Bruckner’s camouflage battle dress and the Kevlar vest beneath as if they were wet tissue paper. Then
