River Dogs

Interior Protection Agent Paolo Herez is charged with tracking down the vilest killers in South America. Remembering how her husband had almost died at these killers’ hands some years earlier, Paolo’s young wife pleads with him not to accept the assignment. But there are too many lives at stake for him to refuse.
He flies from Rio to Manaus, Central Amazonia, and then takes a boat upriver, deep into the rainforests, where he has to fight to be accepted as a fugitive in a lawless, backwater town.
His boss’s suspicions prove correct when eventually the killers arrive in the town to hire pistoleiros.
Paolo learns vital information before he has to save a vulnerable new friend from the killers, and is wounded during their escape.
Retreating to a Catholic Aid Station, he recovers from his injury, and then continues to locate one of his Department’s outstations where he receives orders to return to Rio.
Back at headquarters he learns that his boss has been assassinated and that his wife is comatose in hospital after a failed kidnap attempt.
Now it’s hardball, regardless of consequences.
He extracts information from suspect Government officials and discovers more about the plot to annihilate several indigenous tribes so as to acquire their land for mining development. He doesn’t know it, but he will be too late to save them all.
The killers’ base is a remote logging station. Unknown to Paolo, the station’s English manager is a reluctant conspirator in the unfolding plot. The manager, Ben, had initially become involved thinking his reward would finance a new life with his slave house-girl, Danhilla. Ben cannot see his love for Danhilla is unrequited. When, upon his return from an attack upon an upriver village, he finds Danhilla has been raped and beaten, his rage is volcanic and merciless.
Meanwhile, following a helicopter battle over a Munducuras village, Paolo is captured by the killers. Only the intervention of Ben, begged by Danhilla, brings an end to Paolo’s torture.
Imprisoned, Paolo is freed by Danhilla when she learns he is going to be killed, and in the black of night together they flee through the rainforest on horseback, pursued by the killers.
The tables are turned when Paolo and Danhilla ride straight into a contingency of Interior Protection Department agents waiting to swoop on the logging station at dawn.
A climatic battle ensues, the end of which sees Paolo defeat his torturer and watch the man being washed away, minus a leg, by a river clouded purple with his blood, and finally out into a floodplain where the piranhas are circling.
Paolo finds a huge stash of US dollars and rewards Danhilla for saving his life, promises to return her to her family. As he leads her away to safety, he tells himself that this has been his last mission.
End