Birth of the Wolf (Wahaya) (7 page)

Nick had started when the Shaman had called out “Zeev,” it was the Quechuan word for “Wolf.”  It gave him the key he would need to get assistance from these men and freedom for his friends.

With infinite care, Nick backed away from the circle and moved back down the path.  He stripped off the shirt to his night suit and stuffed in into the old fashioned butt pack, and then pulled out the tiny polished steel mirror in his camouflage kit.  Most of the camouflage he had applied the night before had sweated off, and much of what had been left had washed off in the river. 

He quickly applied the light and dark colors to his face, not in the woodland camouflage of the Army, but in the pattern of the Ghost Warriors of the Cherokee.  On his bare chest, he put the Quechuan symbol of the wolf.  He fumbled through his small pack for one final aid to his planned entrance and placed it in the right front cargo pocket of the faded gray green trousers of his night suit.

He grinned, remembering the fight he had endured with the brass at the Special Warfare School over the night suit.  Normally the Special Forces were extremely lax in enforcing uniform codes and regulations, teaching the very special soldiers to blend in with indigenous forces. 

There were, however, some inevitable PR types who filtered through any system, and one of those had worn the silver chicken of a full bull colonel who felt that he had written the “book” on night operations.  He had designed a “night suit” for use by the Special Forces troops that was intimidatingly black and covered with zippered pockets. It was skintight, and as far as Nick was concerned, worthless.

Nick had obtained, from an army surplus store oddly enough, several sets of 1967 era Vietnam issue jungle fatigues.  The OD green of the uniforms had washed out to a faded gray green that faded into the background of anything except snow. The color’s chameleon like ability to blend into varicolored backgrounds relieved the wearer of the burden of breaking up their outline with brush or vegetation. 

In the dark, the colonel’s “night suits” were a darker black than the night around them and drew the eye towards themselves.  Nick’s old fatigues simply disappeared. 

The brass had agreed with him, and there had been no more comments about his suit, but the stocks of the old jungle fatigues had disappeared rapidly from the surplus stores around Fayetteville and Fort Benning.

With his eyes blackened almost like a raccoon’s and the pale sand color on the high areas of his face, he reached into his medicine bag and removed a beaded headband and placed it on his forehead. 

Slinging the AK-47 casually across his back, Nick slipped silently to the edge of the trail leading to the ruins. His legendary ability to move undetected did not fail him as he moved to the edge of the stone walls of the ruins. 

He reached into his right cargo pocket and removed the red smoke grenade.  Holding it carefully by the fuse, he pulled the pin and allowed the lever to slip off.  Setting it carefully on the ground, he stepped back and let the huge column of smoke rise silently.

The warriors had noticed the thick cloud of red smoke, and so had Dave.  Dave had recognized it for what it was, and he tensed in the bonds the warriors had placed on him.  He was ready for his release so that he could help Nick. He might just as well have relaxed.

Nick strode nonchalantly through the thick cloud of red smoke, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to make an entrance that way. His regal bearing, his massively muscled chest and the cut edges of his abs were all enhanced by the paint and the symbols he had drawn on his chest and arms and the beaded headband he wore.  His Cherokee features were more pronounced than ever, and he looked every bit the mystical figure he was pretending to be.  Even Dave was intimidated.

Murmurs of “Zeev” raced through the drugged warriors, and the old Shaman rose to his feet to welcome the visitor.  For the Shaman, the mixture of vision and reality had long been difficult to distinguish.  His welcome of Nick was not conditional upon which Nick was.  It was obvious to the Shaman that Nick was the embodiment of the Spirit of the Wolf, which could assume whatever form it chose.

Nick spoke formally, in stilted phrases the old Shaman would expect.  “Why have you bound my brother and my women?” he asked impassively.

“
We had no way of knowing who they were Zeev,” the Shaman said, “they shall be set free immediately.”  The Shaman issued orders in the Lowland dialect of Quechuan and several warriors moved to release the prisoners.  Dave started to talk and Nick shook his head imperceptibly.  Dave shut up instantly, but pointed at Abbie’s foot.

Nick walked to Abbie, lifted her, carried her to the altar, and placed her upon it.  Unwrapping the compress, he looked at the swollen and infected cut.  Turning to the Shaman, he asked for Pau D’Arco, cat’s claw, and nasturtiums. 

Seemingly proud of Nick’s knowledge of Awajun medicine, the old man opened the proper pouches on his medicine belt and removed packets of the requested substances.

In truth, a large part of U.S. investments in Peru are due to the incredible knowledge base of the Awajun Indians regarding the medicinal qualities of plants.  With Peru’s amazing biodiversity and the proliferation of species, Peru is a veritable cornucopia of supplies of both basic pharmaceuticals and research potential.

The old Shaman watched with great pride as Nick prepared the bark strips of the Pau D’Arco by steeping them in the metal canteen cup and then crushing the nastrutiums before mixing them in as well. Nick added the root of the cat’s claw plant to the mixture, covered the top and allowed the mixture to steep. 

As he let it steep, Nick chanted the words that his grandfather had taught him, basically a prayer to the Great Spirit acknowledging that it was the Great Spirit doing the healing, not Nick or the plants. 

“
Pride is a good thing for a warrior Nicholas,” the old man had said, “but for a warrior to take credit for deeds that he himself has not performed is shameful before other men and before the Great Spirit.  Always remember to give credit where credit is due.  If you try to take credit for the work of the Great Spirit, he will punish your patient.”

Amanda Dunn had managed to maintain her sanity throughout the whole ordeal, but this was so surreal that she was having trouble believing what she was seeing.  The young man, so calm and so confident since the moment she had first seen him, looked perfectly at ease among these savages, as if he was one of them. 

In the outlandish getup he was dressed in, he actually
looked
like one of them.  When Nick had walked through the cloud of red smoke with that makeup on, she had not been entirely sure it had
been
Nick. He had spoken to the men and to the old medicine man in their own language and now he had asked for specific plants to help heal Abbie’s infection. 

“
Where do we get such men?” she asked herself, “and for god’s sake, where can we find more of them?”

Cynthia Cohen, sitting freely now next to Amanda, was having many of the same thoughts.  She had never been a fan of the military, her background and education supporting her low opinion of the U.S. military, but these two men, especially Nick, were nothing like the knuckle dragging Neanderthals she had been taught to despise.

On these two men the mantle of ‘Warrior’ took on a more than honorable cast.  The Ivy League attitude of this young Main Line Jewess was being put to the test by this whole experience, and her fierce contemporaries in Israel would have been drooling over this warrior.  As she eyed Nick’s incredible physique and felt his charismatic presence, she began a little mental drooling of her own.

Nick removed the stone from the top of his canteen cup and asked Cynthia to spread the cut on Abbie’s foot once more.  Abbie was still shaking with fear of the warriors surrounding her, but Nick’s calmness seemed to help her. 

Cynthia’s hands were gentle, but the infection was still painful, and she bit back a cry as Cynthia opened the cut.  The decoction that Nick poured over the infected wound was soothing, and the anti-inflammatory power of the fresh cat’s claw was astounding.  The swelling in her foot didn’t just disappear, but it diminished visibly in seconds. 

Nick flushed the cut repeatedly until the decoction was used up, and then he made a mash of the ingredients, working them into a fine paste.  When he had a smooth mixture, Nick applied it to the length of the cut and the wrapped a field compress back around the whole thing. 

Nick wanted very much to talk with the young girl and reassure her, but he knew that doing so would diminish him in the eyes of these warriors.  As much as it went against his grain to submit to their values in this case, he knew he still needed them for a while.  He felt no need to judge them, but he knew that in some ways he could never be a part of their brotherhood.

Nick sat with the ancient Shaman as the old man nodded approvingly.  “You know much of our ways Zeev,” the Shaman said.

“
The Spirits of our forefathers are intermingled,” Nick said, “in ancient times all Indians were of the same spirit.”  Nick caught Dave’s eye and mimicked taking a drag off of a cigarette, and Dave threw him an open pack of the Marlboros that he hated himself for still smoking. 

Nick caught the pack in midair and palmed it, his fingers extracting one from the pack and concealing the pack itself as if he had magically changed the pack into a single cigarette.  He bent to the fire and lit the tip, taking a deep, ritual drag on the thing.  With both hands, he offered the cigarette to the Shaman politely.

The Shaman took a deep ritual puff from the cigarette, the smoke flowing smoothly and spreading through his lungs.  A gentle smile spread across his face as the tobacco rush that only a non-smoker gets from a deep puff gets hit him, a feeling akin to the high initially felt by a marijuana user.  There was peace established between them as they shared the ritual smoke. 

When they had finished and ritually burned the butt in the fire, Nick produced two more from the pack without revealing the pack itself, not wishing to diminish the value of the gift, and presented them to the old Shaman, who promptly thanked him for his gift and secreted the two cigarettes in his medicine belt.

Nick knew it was time to tell the old man what it was that he needed, and he did so with a minimum of words so as not to inflate the value of the gift the Shaman would be giving to him.

The Shaman barked orders and the young men quickly stood up and did as they were told.  Four of them took their spears and set off at a run to act as lookouts in the event that Conde’s men had backtracked and found their true trail.

Two more brought long saplings, around which they wove thick woody vines to form a litter for Abbie. In a very short time they were walking up the ridge to the top.  At the very top of the ridge, the warriors set Abbie’s litter down and immediately dug a small pit and started a small smokeless fire for her comfort. 

Nick explained the last assistance he needed to the assembled warriors, and in the dying light of the day, the warriors spread out and went off at a run to locate and LZ for the chopper.

In an hour , Nick had two sites and had verified their functionality and their GPS coordinates.  As Dave contacted the General on the sat phone and gave him the grid coordinates, Nick made his manners to the old Shaman and thanked the warriors in his own Cherokee name, Wahaya. 

Still somewhat in awe of him, the warriors silently walked back down to the ruins to finish their ceremony and talk among themselves about the ‘Wolf Spirit’ and his astonishing visit.  The tale would grow as it was retold around the village fires at night until none of the participants would recognize it.

Just before twenty two hundred hours Nick heard the distinctive flucketa flucketa of the Blackhawk’s four rotor blades as it slowed on its approach and Dave got on the sat phone.  They were on the edge of the first LZ, having seen no sign of Conde’s men.

Two men ran from the chopper as it set down and grabbed the litter, racing back to the bird with their heads down.  Both wore the white armbands of medics.  Cynthia, Amanda, and Dave followed close behind.  Nick watched until all were loaded on board, and then safed the AK-47 and boarded the chopper himself.

Epilogue

Swain was not a man to waste words on congratulations on a job well done. He was the kind of man who sent competent people to do a job and trusted them to do it.  His first words were, “Conde didn’t get the message.” 

Nick cocked an eye at the old General, but kept his mouth shut.

“
Intel says he’s sent another team north.  The President doesn’t want this in the public eye at all.  He needs Congressional approval for further favorable adjustments to the Trade Agreement, and he can’t get it if it gets out that Conde felt comfortable kidnapping the daughter of a U.S. Representative, even if he didn’t know what he had done. 

"There’s no way to stop him Nick.  We don’t know who he’s going after.  Conde
will
strike again.  What we have to decide is simple. Are we going to answer this proactively or reactively?  It’s a decision only the President can make Nick, but the solution is going to be the same either way.

“
What I need you to do Nick, is to go back and add two or three operators to your team and get them ready.  You’re coming back to Peru, Nick, and Armando Conde is going to depart this vale of tears, in as spectacular way as possible without involving U.S. troops.”

“
What I need you to do Nick, is to go back and add two or three operators to your team and get them ready.  You’re coming back to Peru, Nick, and Armando Conde is going to depart this vale of tears, in as spectacular way as possible without involving U.S. troops.”

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