Target Four by Jack Mars

Author:Jack Mars [Mars, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jack Mars
Published: 2023-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

The six men in camouflage stared down at the bodies of their four companions. Ants and flies crawled and buzzed all over them. In the heavy late afternoon heat, they already gave off the stench of decay.

They had returned from a tribal village a day’s march away, where they had been trading for fresh game and fruit, things they didn’t have time to hunt and gather for themselves, and had discovered their base at the old Inca ruins abandoned and ransacked. From there they followed the familiar path out toward the main path running from the river inland to the foothills.

They hadn’t had to go far before they found their companions. They had been dead for a few hours at most.

A seventh man, short and indigenous, naked but for a quiver of arrows and a belt that held a machete in a sheath, paced around the nearby jungle, bow in hand and eyes on the ground.

“A man and a woman,” he said in Spanish that carried the accent of an Amazonian tribesman. “Two of the four I tracked from the kancha.”

One of the narcos, whom everyone called El Teniente (“the Lieutenant”) because he was in charge, cursed and gripped his Ultimax light machine gun, a weapon of deadly accuracy that had a hundred-round drum magazine. It was one of the favorite weapons of the Peruvian military. He had bought it from a corrupt officer who knew it was better to do business with the cartels than try to fight them.

“They will not get away with this,” he said. “Only four? We can take four, no matter how good they are.”

“But who are they?” one of his men asked.

The Lieutenant shook his head. “I don’t know. It isn’t another cartel, not such a small group and not with women along. And they fight too well to be some gringo archaeologists. Maybe it was the people who attacked the archaeologists. Whoever they are, they’ll pay.”

The tribesman came running down the path, his bare feet hardly making a sound on the damp earth. They hadn’t even realized he had left. He moved so silently they all called him La Fantasma, “the Ghost.” None could pronounce his actual name.

“The four went to the other path and headed for the hills,” he said. “Three white people led by a Quechua woman.”

The others didn’t ask how he could know this. La Fantasma’s tracking ability was so good it was like he could see back in time to witness the people who had made the tracks. They had come to rely on him, and rewarded him well with the liquor and tools his tribe coveted. That had made La Fantasma a prominent man in his tribe, second only to the chief.

“How long ago?” El Teniente asked.

“A quarter of a sun.”

“So about three hours. Let’s go.”

La Fantasma jogged down the path and everyone fell in behind him. El Teniente smiled. That was another remarkable thing about their guide. He didn’t track like a hunter from the

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