“Huh?”
“How much for the boat?”
“It’s not just a boat. It’s my livelihood.” The boat smelled of dead fish, and the inside looked greasy and slimy.
“How much?”
Felix and the man began to bargain. They settled on a price in local currency.
“How far are you going?”
Felix refused to say.
“You’ll need petrol.”
Felix sighed. “How much?”
Again they haggled.
“You’ll need lanterns. It’s dark.”
“All right. Lanterns. What kind?”
“Kerosene.”
“Full?”
“Yes, I’ll fill them.”
“How much?”
The man named a figure.
Felix sighed again, as if he regretted having to part with hard cash. The total price agreed to was high but not unreasonable.
Felix nodded to one of his men, who’d been leaning exhausted against the wall of the fisherman’s shack — the walls were made of old plywood, with no glass in the windows, and the roof was rusty corrugated tin. The SEAL pulled a roll of worn Brazilian bills from a pocket of his rucksack. Felix counted out the proper payment and handed it to the fisherman.
Felix gestured for his men to get in the motorboat. With all their equipment and the lieutenant’s body, it almost sank right there.
Felix turned to the fisherman. “Order and progress!” The Brazilian national motto.
“Huh?”
“I said, ‘Order and progress!’”
“Whatever. Hurry up. If you’re going east you’ll hit the pororoca.” The old man turned and went into his shack. The pororoca was a huge wave — a tidal bore — that rushed in at the mouth of the Araguari every twelve hours.
Another time bomb ticking on our heads.
Felix started the motorboat’s engine and left the pier. It ran surprisingly well. As skilled as he was in small-boat handling, the current was just too strong for the overloaded boat. The men had to bail for their lives and balance carefully, and even so they were in danger of capsizing any second.
When they were out of sight of the village, Felix turned down the kerosene lamps. He told the men to jettison their unneeded equipment in a deep part of the channel. This improved the freeboard just enough to keep the boat from swamping. They kept their weapons and ammo — they didn’t have much ammo left. They also kept their diving gear. Felix relit the lanterns, and put one at the bow and one at the stern.
This way no one will think we’re trying to hide.
By lantern light the racing water was silt-laden mocha brown. Felix revved the engine to maximum power. Dirty smoke poured out of the exhaust, and the motorboat went faster. The vibrations were so strong he was half afraid the boat would shake apart. But there was no compromising now. If an enemy was setting up to shoot at him from the bank, speed was everything. If they were too slow getting downstream and out to sea, they’d nose under the boiling forward face of the next inbound pororoca — and they’d never come up. Water around the fast-moving boat splashed higher; the men continued bailing for their lives.
The moon began to rise. First Felix saw its silver aura from below the horizon, and then the moon itself emerged. It reflected off the river sometimes, between the galleries of trees that lined both banks. The stars Felix could see overhead were very sharp and steady. He prayed it didn’t start to rain — without the moon and stars he couldn’t see far enough ahead to steer, and a downpour like the last one would drown them all. One of his team, an expert in first aid, was doing what he could for their injured man.
The injured man, his equipment and flak vest removed now, lay motionless. He didn’t moan or writhe. He just breathed slowly, and his respiration was more and more labored.
“There’s too much fluid in his chest,” Felix said. “It’s occluding his lungs.” As a former hospital corpsman, he knew about such things.
“I can try to rig a tube,” the first-aid man said. He meant insert a drain so the built-up fluid wouldn’t press against the lungs and heart.
Conditions here were hardly ideal, but Felix nodded.
“I’ll start,” the aid man said. One of the other SEALs brought a lantern closer. Bugs swarmed around the lantern light. Flies were drawn to the blood. Other flies and mosquitoes bothered Felix. He tried to ignore them.
Felix followed the twists and turns of the rushing river down to the sea. The noise of the outboard motor was very loud, a higher tone than the roar of the rain-swollen Araguari. The stench of gasoline and kerosene and fumes helped cover the smell of rotting garbage that even Felix splashing himself with river water couldn’t remove. The engine and lamp smoke also helped repel the insects, which would only get thicker as they neared the coastal swamps.
Felix looked at the moon and gave thanks to God for being alive. He gingerly felt for the unexploded grenade round in his rucksack. He fingered the bent fléchettes embedded hard into his flak vest; he was sure the surgeon on the Ohio would find another fléchette in the wounded man’s chest somewhere, plus who knew what sorts of bullets and shrapnel in the lieutenant’s corpse.
Felix glanced into the boat. Some of the men continued bailing, using their helmets. Others helped steer with oars they’d found in the bottom of the boat — if the boat veered broadside to the current they were doomed instantly. The aid man cared for his patient. The boat rocked in the current, and shipped a lot of water, and Felix and his team were barely holding their own.
One man killed in action. One wounded in action, condition critical. Mission accomplished, but at a high price.
Felix estimated their rate of speed along the bank.
Maybe we’ll beat the tidal bore, and maybe we won’t. If we do we kill the lights and sneak out past the reefs and sandbars…. We aim for a spot where the surf isn’t running too high. We lower our sonar distress transponder and hope a minisub from the Ohio hears it and picks us up before broad daylight.
CHAPTER 9
To leave the Norfolk Navy Base covertly and rejoin USS Challenger, Jeffrey sneaked in disguise aboard a Virginia-class fast-attack submarine, and hitched a ride out to sea. The Virginia boat submerged as soon as she could — to begin her own deployment protecting the African relief convoy. Jeffrey was forced to watch inside the control room, a mere passenger. He felt cheated of having the captain’s important privilege: that last view of the outside world and that last breath of fresh air, up in the tiny bridge cockpit atop the sail, before the sail trunk hatches were dogged and all main ballast tanks were vented. His only glimpse of the early-morning twilight was via the photonics mast, as another captain had the conn. The view on a video display screen just wasn’t the same.
Jeffrey grabbed some sleep in the executive officer’s stateroom fold-down guest rack. He had been up all night in briefings and planning sessions in Norfolk. A messenger woke him when the Virginia boat was beyond the continental shelf, saying that the minisub from Challenger was ready to pick him up. The entire rendezvous and docking took place submerged, for stealth. Challenger herself lurked more than thirty nautical miles away, for even more stealth.
Jeffrey greeted the two-man crew of his minisub — a junior officer and a senior chief — then went into the mini’s transport compartment and took a catnap. He woke when he felt the minisub maneuvering for the docking inside Challenger’s pressure-proof in-hull hangar, behind her sail.