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Blood Wood (Cont.)

AT FORT GREENPEACE, in Manaus, yesterday's newspaper is laid out on the table. On the front page is a gory photo of blood mixed with shards of broken glass, another twisted, lifeless body in the background. A couple of assassins botched a job on a street corner just 50 yards from here, trying to get a small-town mayor; his bodyguards got them instead.

After 20 minutes of argument, I convince Adario to let me see what's inside his bodyguard's paper bag. Apparently some of the staff believe it will hurt the group's support if people see Greenpeace with a piece.

The bodyguard goes into the back room, comes back, and, with metallic, practiced gestures, drops out the clip, clears the chamber, and hands me the thing. It is cold and heavy. A snubby little 9mm semiautomatic. Perfect in a close-quarters shootout.

Suddenly there's a commotion. Marcelo, a forestry engineer on staff, rushes into the lunchroom still wearing his bicycle helmet. A new threat has come in. A man has left two messages on the answering machine of Greenpeace's floatplane pilot. In the first message, the man, who sounds drunk, threatens to rape the pilot's daughter and kill his family. In the second, he sounds sober and repeats the threat. The pilot and his family are hiding in one of the safest places in Manaus—the mall.

"This is a bad moment," Marcelo says.

"They're all bad moments," Adario says.

I hand the pistol back to the bodyguard, who reloads it and heads for the truck. Adario prepares to follow.

"Somebody convinced us to save the fucking Amazon," he says, heading for the door. "Now we have to save ourselves." The last time I see him, he's a grainy, black-and-white form on a security monitor, climbing into an armored pickup.

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