It was such a terrible waste, Carter thought. The natives were not really at fault. They had been incited to this by the Chinese.
Carter pushed farther inland, moving higher on the slopes of the foothills at the base of the volcano. Away from the sea, the wind blew only in the treetops. Here at the floor of me jungle it was nearly still, and it was becoming hot.
He stopped and peeled off the wet suit bottoms, tossing them aside. His stiletto was bare on his forearm, and his Luger was stuffed into the waistband of his shorts. He carried the spare ammunition clips in his left hand and the M-16 in his right. He was becoming angry. The farther inland he went, the more bodies he saw, and the angrier he got.
He came across three more of the Starfish's crew who had been cut down by arrows. Only their bodies had been mutilated afterward. All had been disemboweled, and their genitals had been cut off.
Carter shivered despite the increasing heat and humidity. The officer and three crewmen were all that was left of the shore party. All that were still unaccounted for. But Carter feared if he continued inland, he might be forced to engage some natives, which he did not want to do.
He turned around to start back to the inflatable. And stopped suddenly. He held his breath and listened. In the vague distance he thought he heard something, but it was just the sound of the waves pounding on the beaches and rocks. There was nothing else. The jungle was silent. As if it were waiting for something.
The Chinese troops would probably not be on this side of the island now. When they heard the explosion they had probably all hurried back to their base to find out what happened.
Still, there were four men unaccounted for. Carter decided he had to find out what had happened to them.
Carter checked to make sure the M-16 was ready to fire, then he stepped around the gruesome remains of the three crewmen and headed up the track through the jungle.
The land rose up sharply from this point, and the Starfish patrol had gone up into the hills toward the dish antenna. He and Gabrielle had come to the amphitheater and the dish antenna from the opposite direction, but here the land was essentially the same, the jungle valley to the east and the hills rising to the volcano to the west.
Carter climbed, stopping now and then to scan the valley below, but there was no movement, and everything was quiet.
At the crest of the hill he headed south, almost missing the spot where the dish antenna had been located. He remembered it because of the lightning-struck tree. The tree was still there, but the dish antenna was gone. There were no signs of a fight here. It was very possible that the Chinese, knowing that a patrol was coming — possibly warned by Governor Rondine — had come up here and removed the antenna. They had probably done this before when other U.S. Navy patrols had come ashore.
Carter got down on his hands and knees by the tree and began digging around in the dirt with his stiletto. Almost at once he came up with the end of a cable with a connector. The cable ran directly down the hill in the direction of the amphitheater. The Chinese had unplugged their antenna and had moved it. Probably to a hiding place not far from there.
Carter looked up the hill toward the volcano. Probably up there somewhere. No one would go there looking for it. And even if he did, there would be millions of places to hide the antenna in the natural cracks and crevices in the volcanic rock.
He sheathed his stiletto, grabbed the M-16 where he had leaned it up against the tree, and headed down the hill, the rocks hard on his bare feet.
From here the patrol would have gone directly down the hill to the amphitheater to dismantle the projection equipment. Afterward the survivors had gone back to the beach, where they had been gunned down by the Chinese. Their officer and two of the crewmen had been killed between here and there.
Near the bottom of the hill Carter slowed down, coming at length to the spot where he had pulled up the projection cable and had cut out a fifteen-foot section.
He crept the rest of the way to the edge of the cliff that led down into the meeting place and looked over.
The place had been the scene of a bloodbath. There were at least twenty bodies scattered around the amphitheater. Most of them were bare-chested natives. But among them he saw at least one body clad in dungarees.
There was no movement below. Only the wind in the treetops made any sound.
He crawled back away from the edge, then stood up and made his way around the rim of the natural depression, coming at the bottom to the path that led back into the bowl.
The officer who had led the patrol lay dead on the path, hacked to pieces by what must have been at least a half-dozen machete-wielding natives. His body was horribly mutilated. His left arm was severed from his torso, his spine was nearly chopped out of his body, and the entire back of his head had been peeled back, revealing his brain.
One of the crewmen lay beneath a pile of four natives just within the amphitheater, and the third crewman lay in the middle of the meeting area.
Blood and mangled bodies were everywhere.
Carter started to turn away when a small noise, like a wounded animal or a crying baby, startled him, and he spun around, bringing up the M-16 and flicking off the safety.
It was silent in the amphitheater for a long second. The noise had come from up front, near the altar. There was a pile of bodies on and around the stone.
Carter started forward when the whimpering came again. It was definitely human, and it came from near the altar. Someone was still alive.
He hurried forward to the altar, picking his way around the bodies. He leaned the rifle against the stone and gently pulled one of the bodies from the pile.
Bob Tieggs, his face covered with blood, looked up at him.
"Christ," Carter breathed.
"Oh… Carter…" Tieggs croaked.
Carter pulled the other bodies from the wounded pilot. He had been cut deeply on the shoulder, probably with a machete, and an arrow stuck out from his left thigh. He had lost a lot of blood.
"Hang on," Carter said. He jumped up and hurried back to the body of the crewman just in from the path. He had been carrying a small musette bag with a red cross on it.
He grabbed the first aid kit and the canteen on the crewman's hip, and went back to Tieggs. He helped him drink, which seemed to revive him somewhat.
"Am I glad to see you, Carter," Tieggs said, his voice weak.
"What the hell are you doing here, Bob?" Carter asked. He opened the first aid kit and found the bandages and disinfectant.
"I went up to the governor's place like you asked me to do… to see if I could find out what happened to Gabrielle… to his wife. They were busy as hell up there. I watched from up in the hills."
Carter took out his stiletto. "The arrow has to come out, Bob."
Tieggs swallowed hard, but he nodded. "I watched as they started taking off in their helicopters. I saw the governor and his wife leaving. I figured they were coming out here to watch the show."
"How'd you get here?" Carter asked. He pulled out a syringe of morphine and some cotton. He swabbed an area of Tieggs's hip with the disinfectant.
"I got into their compound and managed to steal one of the helicopters. When I got here I saw all the fighting, so I landed on the beach and came up."
"No sign of the governor?"
"None," Tieggs said.
Carter gave him the shot of morphine.
"I was lucky. I got up here, and it was mostly all over," Tieggs said, but then his voice began to slur, and after a moment he blinked and grinned. "God Almighty, she's beautiful…" he mumbled.
Carter poured some of the disinfectant over the blade of his stiletto, and then over and around the arrow wound.