Dillon turns to Mac and asks him who hit them today. Mac is still obviously feeling the anger and bitterness of the mystifying event. He doesn't know, camouflaged . . . those eyes . . . disappeared.
Mac: I know one thing, Major, I drew down and fired straight at it. Capped off two hundred rounds in the minigun, full pack. Nothing. . . Nothing on Earth could've lived, not at that range.
Dillon ponders this for a moment, staring hard at Mac. Mac gets up and departs to the sentry position.
Dillo turns to Ramirez and tells him to ask Anna again. They talk quietly in Spanish, Dillon watching, listening carefully. Ramirez turns to Dutch and reports the same thing, it was the jungle.
Ramirez looks up at Billy who continues to stare into the jungle, cat-like, his nerves on edge, as if ready to snap. Ramirez suspects Billy knows something. Billy turns and looks at him with eyes which have seen on an instinctual level what the others have so far only begun to sense.
Billy: I'm scared Poncho.
Poncho: Bullshit. You ain't afraid of no man.
Billy: There's something out there waiting for us, and it ain't no man.
Billy turns away, moving a short distance and pauses . . . "We're all going to die." Dillon looks after him and then into the blackness of the jungle
Billy: We're all going to die.
Dillon watches him move off and declares Billy is losing his cool. Despite his words, there is an edge of doubt in his voice.
Dutch: You still don't understand, do you, Dillon. Whatever it is out there, it killed Hopper, and now it wants us.
The mist has thickened, the night alive with a million jungle sounds, a full moon lights up the night. The team members sleep uneasily, if at all. Mac is given first watch and stares hard into the night, waiting, each small sound a potential enemy. A lull spreads over the jungle, animals and insects quieting.
Mac stares into the night, talking to his fallen friend, Blain . . .
Mac: Here we are again, bro. Just you and me. Same kind of moon, same kind of jungle. Real number 10. Remember? Whole platoon, 32 men chopped into meat. We walk out, just you and me, nobody else. Right on top of them. Not a scratch. Not a fuckin' scratch. The one who got you, they'll come back again. And when he does, I'm gonna cut your name right into him. . . I'm gonna cut your name into him.
Suddenly, Mac hears a metallic click, a pop, the sound of a warning flare rocketing into the canopy. Billy awakens, peering into the night. A moment later a brilliant flash as the flare burns, illuminating the camp. An echoing eerie scream fills the night as a dark shape in the mist rockets through the undergrowth towards Mac.
Mac spins just as something crashes into his upper body, driving the huge man into a ditch. A desperate battle for life ensues. Mac's enraged shouts and roars mingled with horrific screams fill the night. Mac's razor-edged knife slashes in the light as he attacks fiercely.
Schaefer and Ramirez rush at a crouching run towards the ditch, their weapons ready. A tremendous climatic scream from the ditch and then, silence. Schaefer and Ramirez approach, cautiously. Mac stands, his face and clothes drenched in blood, his breath coming in rapid gasps.
He looks at Schaefer, whispering hoarsely he killed it. Ramirez turns on a flashlight and the men stare down into the ditch.
Poncho: Jesus, you killed a pig!
A huge, jungle boar lies mutilated in a pool of blood, still quivering in the final throes of death. The light reveals its massive hulk, its razor-edged tusks gleaming in the light. Mac, shaking from adrenalin, breathing heavily, looks down at the dying animal.
Poncho: Do you think you could have found something bigger?
Mac: Fuck you, Poncho! Fuck you!
Suddenly Schaefer remembers, Anna. They all turn and race to her, Anna, still frightened. They wonder why she didn't try to get away.
From the darkness nearby, Billy calls over Schaefer. Schaefer turns, apprehensive, something in Billy's voice. . . He walks over to Billy, standing with a flashlight pointing to the ground. Blain's body . . . it's gone. It came in through the trip wires, took it right out from under their noses.
They conclude the boar set off the trip flare, no other tracks. Schaefer stands, looking around the camp. They are puzzled how could anyone get through their traps and carry Blain out without leaving a trace. Like he knows their defenses, and they don't understand why he didn't try to kill one of them last night.
Dutch: He came to get the body. He's killing us one at a time.
Billy: Like a hunter.
Schaefer looks up, reconstructing in his mind the possible events of last night, his eyes following the tree line, tracing the path of the intruder as he might have traveled through the trees and down to the ground.
Dutch determines that their unseen enemy is not only killing them one by one but also methodically hunting them and it's using the trees.
Schaefer turns, moving to where Dillon is guarding Anna, sitting on the ground. Reaching down, Schaefer pulls her firmly to her feet, looking at her intensely.
Dutch: Yesterday, what did you see?
Dillon: You're wasting your time.
Dutch: No more games!
Anna: I don't know what it was. It . . .
A surprised look on Dillon's face, realizing she speaks English.
Dutch: Go on.
Anna: It changed colors, like the chameleon, it uses the jungle.
Dillon: You saying that Blain and Hawkins were killed by a fucking lizard? That's a bullshit psyche job. There is two to three men out there at the most. Fucking lizard.
Ignoring him, Schaefer takes her hands, drawing his commando knife, looking squarely into her eyes.
Dutch: What's your name?
Anna: Anna.
Dutch: Anna, this thing is hunting us. *All* of us. You know that?
Anna nods, and Dutch cuts her bonds, setting her free despite Dillon's protests.
Schaefer turns to face him and explains they must make a stand or there won't be anyone left to go to the chopper. Anna also tells Schaefer when the big man was killed, they must have wounded it. Its blood was on the leaves.
Dutch: If it bleeds, we can kill it.
The team constructs a trap from jungle vines which form a net and an elaborate system of tripwires. Mac, uncoiling a trip wire linking up four Claymore mines hidden at various points with leaves and foliage. Wires attached to grenades and Claymore mines lead off through the underbrush and trees leaving a long, unmined corridor leading from the camp and into the jungle.
At the corridor's end, where the rocks merge with the jungle, Schaefer and Billy haul down on a heavy vine, straining with every ounce of strength, their muscles bulging. The vine is attached to a forty foot Sapling, arcing closer to the ground in a gigantic bow with every pull, creaking and groaning with tension.
Ramirez is in a tree hacking away at vines to be used as rope, with his large commando knife. Ramirez tosses an uncoiling roll of wire to Billy who attaches it to a grenade, wedged it the crouch of a tree. Schaefer rapidly drags into position a net crudely woven of differing sizes of vines, their leaves still attached. He carefully begins to cover the net with leaves and debris.
Dillon voices his sarcastic outlook on this plan. Schaefer tells him instead of complaining, he should help. Schaefer moves quickly, picking up a framework of stick he has tied together, a treadle-spring trigger. He holds up the framework, hurriedly examining his work before placing it on the ground. With a last mighty heave, Schaefer draws the tree almost within reach, gesturing to Dillon to tie it off, who does.
Morning passes. Fog lifts as the sun creeps into the jungle. At the other end of the corridor, several meters above the jungle floor, Schaefer and his team, heavily camouflaged, nearly invisible, lie hidden, waiting. The team members, as if hypnotized by the buzzing din, stare into the jungle, fixated, alert.
Anna: When I was little, we found a man. He looked like - like, butchered. The old women in the village crossed themselves . . . and whispered crazy things, strange things. "El Diablo cazador de hombres." Only in the hottest years this happens. And this year, it grows hot. We begin finding our men. We found them sometimes without their skin, and sometimes much, much worse. "El cazador trofeo de los hombres" means the demon who makes trophies of men.
Slow rack to Schaefer's face. Ashen. An eerie silence moves over the jungle: He whips his face forward. The silence is shattered by a bird flapping from the brush. Schaefer sits back, frustrated and a little chagrined.
Dillon: So, what are you gonna try next? Cheese?
Schaefer glares at him. He stands and begins to move low to the ground toward the waiting snare. Behind him, sighting down their well-hidden gun barrels, the others scan the jungle, alert for the slightest sound or movement, covering him. Schaefer reaches the trap, carefully skirting the trigger hidden beneath the leaves. He reaches the end of the corridor, moving out into the jungle.
He moves further away from the others, the silence crushing down on him. He stops and waits, sweat pouring down his face, his finger tightening on the trigger of his M-203, eyes scanning the jungle. He turns his back on the jungle, waiting. Nothing. He moves back towards the corridor, reaching the net, again waiting, listening, sensing. Nothing. He turns to head back.
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