Birth of the Wolf (Wahaya) (3 page)

Chapter 2

Mrs. Dunn and Miss Cohen were being held by Armando Conde, a senderista deeply involved in cocaine trafficking.  In his efforts to take his large band of senderistas mainstream, he had for the last five years been investing in legitimate businesses. 

An uneducated man, Armando sought out established companies with excellent earning prospects and purchased large amounts of their stock
. 
Not enough to control the companies, but enough to have a major say in their day to day activities.  He was not a smart man, but he was cunning as a fox.

Armando had also taken to dabbling in local politics, where he had considerably less patience than he displayed with his foreign business partners.  It was not uncommon for his political enemies to wake up to find their throats slit, or everyone in their home
except
them dead.  It was an effective method of persuading people to think the right way.

He took care of the peasants, making very small loans at low rates, passing out free food.  If a child was sick and needed the foreign doctor, Armando was always there to help.  

Have a sickly parent or in
-law having a hard time getting by? Armando was always there.  His efforts on behalf of the poor cost him little or nothing. The peasants of the Huallaga Valley were not greedy
, but they were extremely grateful, and highly loyal. 

Armando’s coca plantations and processing factories always had work for the poor and illiterate.  If the Policia didn’t particularly like it, the peasants were not too concerned.

Phelps Dunn had invested an enormous amount of capital into an electronics manufacturing company that could safely produce components with the available civilian workforce and only a minimal amount of training. The time and motion studies
and the research required to design machines that could be operated by people of limited technical understanding and capabilities alone ran into the tens of millions of dollars. The investment had paid off abundantly for Dunn, and he had purchased four more factory locations with the intention of developing them. 

While
the Government of Peru was ecstatic, Armando Conde was very unhappy. The last two places Dunn had selected for development were extremely near the coca processing plants Armando had painstakingly developed and hid near the river north of Tarapoto.  The surrounding villages would send their labor force to the American, who would not require them to work seven days a week, who would pay them much better than the coca processing plant would, and who would provide them with housing and medical benefits.

Armando tried to have the permits revoked for the factories, all of them.  He began a program of harassing Dunn’s existing plant workers
, but it was too late.  The peasants admired Armando Conde, but the American put more on their table. Armando could have provided better, but then all his businesses would have to pay better, and Armando was much too greedy for that.

Through intermediaries, Conde tried to buy the four properties away from Dunn, and Dunn was totally unaware that he had run afoul of the local Shining Path leader.

As Armando’s efforts became more overt, Dunn’s efforts at resolving new problems became more insistent
.  H
e was determined that his Peruvian plan was an effective model for other American companies.

The direct threat that brought the two into open hostilities was conducted in private, away from the prying eyes of the Policia, the Government, and the populace.  Dunn was a self-made man, one that didn’t easily bend to the demands of lesser men.  Armando had always found that killing and torture were only necessary some of the time…as long as the occasional actual examples he made were messy and spectacular.

For once, Armando was in a position that was going to require finesse more than force, because the Norte Americano bastard was highly popular both with the public and the Government. 

It was one of his most trusted henchmen who came to him with the kidnapping idea, the idea buttressed by a
newspaper from Atlanta, U.S.A. that carried a story about the famous and generous Mrs. Dunn.

The two women were delivered to Armando’s compound high in the mountains north of Tarapoto.  His splendid villa overlooked a caldera lake, and his privacy was fiercely protected by his men.  There was only one road leading into the caldera, hacked out of the jungle laboriously by his peasants and guarded by armed security personnel.

Amanda Dunn was terrified but absolutely refused to show it. Cynthia Cohen was beyond caring who knew she was terrified. Cynthia had not been covered by the order that protected Amanda from the depredations of her captors, and she had been ill used by Carlos and Luis. 

The rape had not been violent; she had not been strong enough to actually hurt either of the men.  Once they had convinced her that her life would be forfeit if she did not submit, she stopped fighting. She had been raped repeatedly until they reached Armando’s villa. 

Amanda had remained untouched, but she had been forced to watch Cynthia’s horrors.
  When they had been brought before Conde, the man had been incensed by the stupidity of Carlos and Luis.  The two men had not been seen again.  A doctor had been brought in and Cynthia had been treated, Amanda had been examined and been pronounced in good health.

They were fed at Armando’s table and treated with respect after they arrived, and Armando, his innate viciousness covered with a patina of old world manners, apologized profusely for the shortcomings of his employees and for Cynthia’s treatment at their hands.  He assured them both that Carlos and Luis had been punished severely for their transgressions, but he refused to say any more on the subject.

The armed guards in the room managed to keep the fear off their faces, because they knew well what had happened to Carlos and Luis. 

The household guards had been gathered together and told of the treatment of their “guests” by Carlos and Luis, who were contained in a cage before the gathered guards. Stefan Mendez, Armando’s chief lieutenant, ordered the guards to watch carefully the punishment El Jefe had ordered for anyone caught mistreating either of their “guests.”

Peasant guards had entered the cage with Carlos and Luis, and the two men had been stripped naked, their genitals and midsections smeared with pig blood.  Everyone present quivered with terror, they had all seen this before.

Only the impassive Indian peasants in the cages with the two men managed to avoid showing their terror…they had all seen this before.  The Indians left the crying and praying kidnappers in the cage and locked the steel door behind them tightly.

The two hungry jaguars, large jungle cats weighing well over a hundred pounds each, were released into the cage.  The smell of blood was maddening to the wild jungle animals. 

It took a very long time for Carlos and Luis to die.
These cats loved to torment their prey, batting them around and making them cry out as they dined on genitals and the soft, gooey contents of the men’s bellies.

“
Do you think they can hear us?” Cynthia asked her voice flat.

“
I doubt they consider us enough of a threat to wire the bedroom,” Amanda Dunn said, amazed at Cynthia’s resilience.  “How are you holding up?”  There was genuine concern in her voice, and Cynthia responded to it.

“
I’m better now that those
two aren’t around to rape me every chance they get,” Cynthia said bitterly, “If it’s the last thing I do in this life I will make them pay for what they did.” She looked at Amanda.  “What do you think is going to happen now?” she asked the older woman.

“
I don’t think, I know,” Amanda said calmly.  “Phelps and I have talked about this possibility many times, and it’s the only reason I never go to South America.  This is a common occurrence here.” She thought for a minute. 

“
Phelps
knows
people, Cynthia;
people
who are experts at this type of thing. I can only tell you what Phelps told me.  When you hear the guns and explosions, stay right where you are, and take what cover you can. The rescuers will either know where we are or they will force someone to tell them where we are
. 
Wandering around will just slow down their efforts to find us.” 

She saw lingering doubt on Cynthia’s face.  “Cynthia, believe me,
they will come for us
.  The people Phelps knows are among the deadliest
hunters on earth.”

Cynthia choked back tears of humiliation and anger.  “Thanks Amanda,” she said
“I just needed some reassurance.”

Chapter 3

High above the villa, at the crest of the densely wooded caldera, two men dressed in nylon rip-stop night suits began their slow descent towards the lights of the villa.  They were on the opposite side of the caldera bowl from where the tarmac road had been hacked out of the jungle. 

Both men carried silenced Glock .22 caliber pistols in web harnesses strapped low on their right thighs, and both men carried blue steel Bowie type knives with comfortable rubber grips. Each carried emptied claymore mine bags stuffed with thermite and fragmentation grenades.

Nick carried an old M203, an M-16 fitted with a 40mm grenade launcher…he had two bandoliers of the HE rounds across his chest.  McGraw carried a Squad Automatic weapon, a vicious little fully automatic light machine gun now carried by gunners in the U.S. Army.

Neither man knew exactly where in the
villa the two women were being kept, but that was not important. Barring unforeseen circumstances, they had all the time in the world to conduct their reconnaissance
and enough armament to destroy every living and man-made thing in the caldera.

The sound of wild jungle panthers screaming over a kill nearby didn’t even faze them. The two of them were intimate friends with the hazards and creatures of the dark Peruvian night.  The legend of the clandestine group that would come to be known as ‘Wahaya’, the ancient Cherokee name for Wolf, was about to be born.

Nick Harris and Dave McGraw nestled down in a thick growth of bijao, a broad leafed plant resembling the elephant ear plant grown in the Southern U.S. as a decorative addition to flower gardens.  The plants grew in a draw nestled into the side of the huge caldera where Armando Conde’s villa was located. 

At the bottom of the huge caldera was a large, crystal clear lake, and the villa fronted the lake.  There was a large boathouse and several boats on the dock in front of the ornate mansion. The grounds were manicured, and dotted with bad reproductions of ancient Greek statues. 

Nick was grateful for Conde’s bad taste in statuary; it would make the approach to the house much easier.

There were a surprising amount of decorative bushes scattered about the grounds. Apparently Conde had an idiot savant among the gardening staff -- the topiary included some very accurate renderings of native animals and nude females.

Their path up the slopes on the outside of the caldera had been slow at first.  They were able to move much faster when they realized there was little or no security on the outside.

From the inside lip of the caldera, infra-red goggles revealed light sensors far below, close to the villa.  A quick glance at his watch told Nick it was only 22:00.  The night was still young and both Nick and Dave were experienced night fighters. 

The time to strike would be in the hours just before dawn.  The human body naturally shuts itself down at that time.  The guards would be struggling to stay awake, waiting for their replacements.

Nick and Dave ate hot food and drank the hot coffee available to them thanks to developments in U.S. combat rations that provided smokeless and lightless heat for meals. There were some things the U.S. Army did better than anyone else in the world, and the thing it did best was provide for the comforts of its troops.

They were very careful to leave no wrappers or scraps of paper from the packaging to give away their nationality.

Conde's security forces patrolled inside the caldera itself, but like private soldiers everywhere, natural laziness made them follow the same paths repeatedly until the patrols worn broad trails through the jungle that they seldom ventured far from.  The patrol leader carried a flashlight.  Nick followed the patrol easily without the aid of binoculars, even though the open caldera was more than a mile across at its base.

Dave leaned back against the base of an ancient Lucuma tree.  With the black, razor-edged blade of his Gerber combat knife, he carefully peeled the thin skin off the fruit of a Lucuma, exposing the dry starchy looking meat of the fruit. 

Nick held his hand put for a slice, knowing the odd looking fruit to be delicious, and that it would immediately melt in his mouth.  Nick and Dave were no strangers to the jungles of Peru.

“You know,” Dave drawled in a low voice, “you can buy these at the grocery store in Fayetteville now.”  He took a slice for himself and chewed it slowly, enjoying the odd texture.

“I love it because it doesn’t draw the creepy crawlies,” Nick said, remembering some unpleasant, early days in the jungle with canned peaches from home. 

He especially hated the chirping “kissing bugs” that lived in and around the palms of Peru.  The odd chirping noise and the sour odor of the bugs was a warning to those who did not wish to catch “Chagas” disease, a deadly and decidedly unpleasant death for the unwary and the careless.

“It’s time to go to work Dave,” Nick said as he got to his feet.  He could see the flashlight about a hundred meters below them.  He wanted to try to get some information on the location of the two women firsthand.

“I don’t know how many men they have on this patrol, but if it’s no more than two or three I want to do a quick interrogation,” he said.

“Yeah, it would be better if we knew exactly where they are before we start to blow everything up,” Dave chuckled. 

The two men prepared for combat in vastly different ways, Nick was focused.  He was a perfectionist who rehearsed every possible action over and over until his actions were planned and every possible situation was accounted for.  He then executed his plans exactly the way he had imagined them. 

Dave was a doer.  He did his best to relax before an action; chuckling and making jokes.  He relied on his combat instincts and his superb conditioning and skills to accomplish his missions.

Although their techniques were vastly different, they were two of the best in the business.

* * * * *

Nick’s mind flashed back to an ambush in Afghanistan that the two had stumbled into on the way back from a reconnaissance mission in the mountains.  The automatic weapons fire had seemed to come from every direction at once and they scampered for a stone farmhouse, barely making it inside with their hides mostly intact.  Dave had caught two rounds in his right thigh.  He had chuckled as he tied the field compress tightly to stanch the bleeding.

“What the hell are you laughing at?” Nick had asked crossly.  He was busy checking his ammunition and grenades (Reconnaissance teams are not heavily armed since they are not supposed to engage the enemy.)

Dave, quoting some goofball movie or book he had read, said, “We got ‘em now Nick, they’re surrounded!”

Nick stared at his friend incredulously, “Surrounded?  There must be a dozen of them all around us and
they’re
surrounded?”

“Yep,” said Dave with a chuckle as he began to return fire out of an uncovered hole of a window, “They’re all around us and no matter which way we turn they can’t get away from us.”

Nick had nearly collapsed with laughter and the stress.  They were finally able to get rid of the ambushers by calling in a request for fire support from a nearby helicopter.  When it was over, they had counted nine of their attackers dead -- most from small arms fire.

Dave was a little melodramatic. His calling card was a single bullet right between the eyes, “The way the Duke used to do to it!” Dave often said.  Five of the attackers bore his mark. 

When Nick had first seen this in Dave, he had been inclined to talk to him about it.  He wanted to advise Dave to top showboating and get serious. 

An old hand at Seventh Group had forestalled the conversation.  "Everybody needs an edge -- an outlet.  If he takes an extra tenth of a second to aim between their eyes, so be it.  I’ve known Dave a long time -- when it comes time for business, Dave won’t waste time.” 

Nick never said a word to Dave about his "calling card."  The old soldier was right after all.  Dave always got the job done, with or without that extra tenth of a second.