shoulder and the blur was out a window, a full two stories down. The man hunter rushed behind him, watched his target land and roll onto another rooftop, float across an alleyway to another building like a flying squirrel, and then another leap and roll down to ground level.
The man hunter called down to his gunners, but they had seen nothing.
The target was gone, the bunk he’d vacated left no clues but the warmth on his tattered blanket.
That was ten weeks ago.
Last Sunday a call came from Fonte Boa, hundreds of miles north on the Amazon River. The man hunter had made lists of possible professions in which the target might find work. There were hundreds, from sheet metal worker to Legionnaire. Somewhere down the list marine salvage had been noted, due to his experience in diving and his raw courage. A small operation along a remote Amazonian tributary had employed a walk-up foreign white man, a queer occurrence in the Brazilian jungle to be sure. So the man hunter had flown to Fonte Boa and showed a photo to the boatman who delivered dry goods downriver to the settlements.
And now the man hunter was here.
He fingered the radio between his knees. One call and two fat helicopters full of gunmen would descend and fan out; they’d planned their attack with satellite photos and a grease board in the watcher’s hotel room in Fonte Boa. One call would turn the pristine jungle to fire, and end the target the Dutch man hunter had been after for these seven long months.
But first the man hunter had to make certain.
A howler monkey on the bank splashed from a tree into the water, scampered back onto the bank and disappeared into the thick growth.
Seconds later, the launch slowed and bumped against the rubber tires tied at dockside. The canoe’s owner made to turn off the outboard.
“No,” said the man hunter. “Leave it running. I will only be a moment.”
“Wastes gas, sir,” said the local. Some sort of Indian savage. “I can start it again in five seconds.”
“I said leave it running.” The white man climbed ashore, started up the dirt hill towards a man idling by a shack raised on narrow stilts. He’d get some verification that this was the place, and then the Dutchman would not wait around for the fireworks. He carried an ancient Webley top-break revolver in a shoulder holster, but that was really just for show out here amongst the savages of the jungle. Killing was not his job. He’d use his radio, and then his job would be done; he’d head back upriver to Fonte Boa to wait at the hotel.
Mauro sat in the shade, waiting for his father to return with the morning’s catch. At ten years old Mauro normally went out with his father to collect the nets, but today he’d stayed behind to help his uncle with some chores, and had only just arrived at the dock when the canoe with the white man appeared. He watched the old man make his way up the hill, stop in front of the drunkard, and engage the man in conversation. He pulled a white paper from his breast pocket and showed it to the man, then handed him some cash.
Mauro stood slowly. Hesitated.
The white man nodded, headed back to the canoe, and pulled a radio up to his mouth.
Young Mauro walked towards a narrow trail that led away from the docks, away from his village. Once inside the dark protection of the jungle canopy, the boy began to run as fast as his calloused bare feet would take him.
TWO
Court Gentry pulled on his umbilical line for a bit more slack, then turned back to the wreckage in front of him. He reached out with a gloved hand and felt his way forward to the hulking iron wheelhouse of the sunken steamboat. Visibility in the murky river was right at twelve inches at this time of late morning, and it was the best he could hope for thirty feet below the ochre surface of the warm water. Finding his place, he adjusted the angle of the flashlight on his helmet, lifted his cutting torch back up, and narrowed the flame to little more than a glowing spike. Then he slowly applied the white-hot fire to the iron to begin a new cut.
A series of three strong tugs to his line pulled him off his mark.
“Dammit,” he said aloud, his voice reverberated in his brass helmet. Three tugs meant