Felix could tell his men were nervous, frightened, scared.
So am I.
“Look,” he yelled over the steady roaring and pounding sounds of the river and the falls. He tried not to think what those sounds really meant in terms of sheer destructive energy. But the panorama spread before him and his men could leave no doubt. “It’s just as hard for the Germans. Use your submachine guns, or knives. Kill them any way you can.”
The chief and the four enlisted men with Felix nodded.
“Watch out for logs and other debris in the river,” Felix added. “The flow looks stronger since it rained.”
Again the men nodded, grimly.
Felix shared their fear, but he tried not to let it show. SEALs trained hard and realistically to work in water, under fire. But nothing, absolutely nothing, could have possibly prepared us for a situation like this.
Felix looked out across the choppy surface of the rushing, murderous river. Small islands covered with bushes and palm trees dotted the upper edge of the falls where the river suddenly disappeared into space. Rock outcroppings coated with green moss also jutted from that menacing horseshoe-shaped drop-off. All these split the water into narrower adjacent falls, the whole series of which together made up the mass of the Iguazú Falls. Some of these subcomponent falls were so large they even had names of their own, such as Floriano or Santa Maria.
Felix could see fragments of the upper tourist walkways, constructed in parched dry seasons when the river flow was weak, then damaged in previous record-breaking El Niño rainy seasons — or broken up more recently by artillery or demolition charges.
From both the Brazilian and Argentine side of the riverbanks, the islets and rocks and fragments of walkway converged on the central vortex of the falls, the Devil’s Throat. There, a gigantic vertical fracture indented the face of the escarpment, and water poured in and plunged down from three sides.
Way off on his right, Felix heard the chatter of automatic-weapon fire. To his front, he caught a glimpse of movement on the farther riverbank. Two Germans dashed behind a truck-sized boulder on the water’s edge, carrying a heavy package.
American machine-gun bullets found the range and windage, and began to chip at the boulder. Through his binoculars Felix saw white rock dust fly from the near face of the boulder; roundish light tan patches spread amid the mossy green. Too late. For now, the Germans with the bomb were behind good cover.
CHAPTER 35
Jeffrey changed from his dress uniform into dirty gray overalls. He was sneaked out of the underground command bunker near Rio in the cab of a garbage truck, which sped toward Rio proper. While it made another pickup of commercial trash at a shopping mall, he sneaked into the mall’s covered parking garage. There he climbed in the back of a windowless, unmarked van. The van headed south, into a tunnel through the hills that separated Rio from some outlying beach resorts. Once it was in the tunnel, policemen inside halted traffic. Jeffrey pulled on a black ski mask, of the sort SWAT teams might wear, grabbed his waterproof bag with his wet suit and uniform, and a satchel with some other things, and transferred to one of two other identical white vans. He noticed even their license plates were the same.
Traffic resumed, with Jeffrey going back north toward downtown Rio. His original van continued south, as if he were still in it, with a policeman in back in his place. The third van followed the one he was currently riding in, then peeled off and took the highway toward the international airport. Jeffrey’s van went into an office park, where a corporate helicopter sat on a helipad. Jeffrey left the van still wearing his overalls and mask and took the service entrance into a building, where he changed to a dark green flight suit and helmet. He pulled down the helmet’s sun visor and used a different exit. He climbed into the helicopter. It took off and went south, following the hills along the coast to Paranaguá.
The view was breathtaking, but Jeffrey couldn’t enjoy it. Instead his head was filled with nautical charts, with curves and lines and ranges and bearings. In his mind, over and over again, he pictured that Argentine flying boat landing at Mar del Plata.
Somewhere out there, way down south, out beyond Argentina’s continental shelf, Ernst Beck and von Scheer are waiting. To strictly comply with the Axis rules of engagement for handing German atomic warheads to the Argentines, so far as our naval intelligence understands them, he’ll need to stay at least two hundred miles from the coast…. Probably a bit farther, since exactly two hundred miles would be too obvious. That would put Beck out beyond the far edge of the continental slope, in water as deep as his — or Challenger ’s — crush depth.
Then there’s the whole other question, how fluid and changeable those Axis ROEs might be depending on what unfolds in the next few hours. It’s total war now. Nothing’s guaranteed.
At Paranaguá, the helicopter landed at a small civilian airport. A troubled Jeffrey went into a hangar and got into another van. During the short ride, he changed into his wet suit — which someone in the Rio bunker had kindly hung up to dry while he had met with President da Gama.
The van let Jeffrey out at a auxiliary naval installation. There, he boarded a Brazilian Navy transport helo. In the helo were open-circuit conventional scuba compressed-air tanks, secured for the flight with bungee cords and nylon strapping.
Jeffrey found this security shell game of clothes and cars and helicopters dizzying. He hoped it would be at least as confusing to the enemy, if they even realized he was in Brazil.
As he buckled in tight, he could see out a window on the starboard side of the aircraft. The helo took off, and Jeffrey continued his fast journey south, to catch up with USS Challenger.
He’d chosen the starboard side so he faced inland. From the helo he kept staring, preoccupied, at the distant horizon to the west.
The Iguazú Falls are three hundred miles away, in that direction. Will I be able to see a flash from here, when the atomic warhead goes off?
In the silt-obscured deafening water above the falls, the current tugged at Felix frighteningly. Only the first length of climbing rope, anchored to a thick treetrunk onshore, kept him and his men from being swept away. If the rappelling buckles on their weight belts failed and they couldn’t grab the neutrally buoyant rope and cling by hand, they’d go over the edge and fall hundreds of feet into the torrent to be bashed to pulp on the rocks below. Each man had a collapsible, lightweight metal river-crossing stick to help him gain some purchase against the bottom — but the sticks had not been designed for any river crossing like this.
As team leader, Felix went first and took the greatest risks. He kept below the surface as much as he could, using his Draeger. To raise his head to see what the Germans were doing always drew fire — not from the hotel, but from kampfschwimmer who’d already made it partway out into the river and had cover on a small island.
A continual hiss and rumble assaulted his ears underwater. The river made noise as it scoured the bottom and pelted past obstructions. The hard impact of the falls at the base of the cliff sent heavy vibrations back up through the rock, and this noise too came through the water from the rock.
Felix knew he was coming to the end of his rope, literally. He had to find an anchor point. The water was so thick with silt, it was impossible to see. If he wasn’t careful, the magnitude of its flow could tear the dive mask off his face into oblivion.