'Three,' Clayton said, 'watch your gas mix. Do you still have propulsion?' A pause. 'Yeah,' the chief said, 'but I'm blind. My head-up display's been knocked out.'
'Keep pulsing,' Jeffrey said. 'I can talk you through if I know where you are…Watch out, slow your rate of ascent.'
'Three, Six, is your backup dive console working?' 'Uh, this is Three, uh, I've got magnetic compass and saltwater depth.'
'Three, Six, don't forget to adjust for the freshwater river.'
'Yeah, LT, I know the drill.'
'Six, Four,' Jeffrey said, 'these rollers are just too powerful. We have to stay back in the troughs.' 'Concur,' Clayton said. 'We might graze the bottom, but I'd much rather that than be pounded to pieces.' 'I'm ready for another go,' Three said.
'Form line abeam,' Clayton said. 'This is taking too long. We'll all chase the next twenty-footer. And watch out, people, don't get skewered by one of the sharpened-steel landing craft obstacles.'
The last SEAL accelerated hard, then leaped the semi-submerged barbed-wire entanglement that protected the river and beaches. So, Jeffrey told himself, all we have to worry about now is getting shot at.
The dolphins avoided the mud flats, following a deeper channel near the south bank of the wide Ohlanga estuary mouth. On his sonar Jeffrey could see the bank and the channel — the north bank was lost in the clutter. When he broke the surface, Jeffrey could make out through his eyeholes, by the flicker of lightning, machine-gun posts overlooking the beach promenades. The sandbagged emplacements on top of the dunes looked like igloos. The nearer one's weapon tracked him and the other SDVs from almost pointblank range, till the team moved upriver past its arc of fire. Jeffrey was sure the MGs on the far bank were trained on them too — at four hundred yards they were in easy killing range for 12.7mm tripod-mounted crew-served fire, even in such adverse weather and lighting conditions. Jeffrey saw poles on the near bank that looked like aiming stakes. He wondered if the SDVs' path had been registered for mortars and artillery. But the intel was correct. These were disciplined troops; they didn't waste ammo on wildlife. Ahead now Jeffrey's display picked up the pilings of the viaduct that carried the M4 national motorway over the Ohlanga. Two searchlights snapped on, one near each bank, catching the dolphins in enfilade. Right above them, as the column of raiders approached the bridge, Jeffrey saw soldiers lean over the rail.
'Maintain speed,' Clayton said. 'Don't hit one of the pylons.'
'Four, Three, how am I doing?'
'You're fine, Chief,' Jeffrey said. 'Just hold this bearing.' As the searchlights swept past, Jeffrey got a glimpse of SEAL Three. 'Jesus, Chief, your whole dorsal fin snapped off.'
'When that rogue wave hit, I got rolled over twice on the bar.' As Jeffrey got closer to the motorway bridge, the pilings spread farther apart on his mask display.
'Four, Six,' Clayton called, 'any pearls of wisdom for all of us combat virgins?'
'Yeah,' Jeffrey said. 'Some things you never get used to.' They were almost up to the bridge. Jeffrey's legs waved constantly inside the fake dolphin's flukes, making slow progress against the flood current which was strengthened by a venturi effect between the concrete abutments. He knew he was splashing, the SDV's equivalent of screw cavitation, but that couldn't be helped and it was sort of realistic. Real bottlenoses coming upstream to eat or play would make splashes too. Hopefully the sentries wouldn't notice or care that these dolphins were larger than any others they'd seen.
'A guard's going to throw something,' Jeffrey heard Ilse hiss.
'Easy,' Jeffrey said, 'easy. These things are lined with Kevlar, and we've got flak jackets on underneath.' 'It looks like some kind of grenade!'
'Don't panic, Ilse,' Jeffrey said. The SEAL chief was safely under the roadway now, so Jeffrey slowed down. 'I'm right here, Five, right next to you.' It occurred to Jeffrey that if razor-sharp white-hot shrapnel did penetrate the high-modulus aramid fibers and hit human flesh, these dolphins would bleed just like real ones.
Jeffrey looked up through an eyehole. A soldier looked straight down at him and tossed something.
'Fuck!' Ilse said.
Then, in the searchlights, Jeffrey saw the object flutter away.
'Five, Four, we're okay,' Jeffrey said. 'It was just an empty cigarette pack.'
'All right,' Clayton said. 'This is a good quiet spot. Hold put while the chief and I do a recon.'
Ilse let her SDV idle at four feet of depth to the keel, its dorsal fin barely submerged. Clayton came on again. It's clear, and air quality k acceptable. All shooters dismount, upend your dolphins, blow ballast, and surface for unloading. Four, Five, you two stay under while we form a perimeter.'
Again Ilse waited. Eventually she heard, 'Four, Six.. Five, Six. Mission specialists dismount, upend your dolphins, blow ballast, and surface for unloading.' Ilse undid her connections to the dolphin's electronics. By feel she opened the clips that held shut the SDV's belly. She dropped down under it, still breathing through her Draeger. She flipped the SDV over. This wasn't easy. Even submerged, hence neutrally buoyant, it massed almost three hundred pounds. She used one of its flippers for leverage. Finally she reached inside for the control grips and fully inflated the bladders. She held on and rode the thing up to the surface. She kicked with her swim fins, treading water. Driving rain pelted her head.
She felt some resistance against her fins, more than just the water. With the next lightning bolt she saw why. She was surrounded by tall reeds, the salt marsh of the Umhlanga Lagoon Nature Reserve. She waited, straining her ears against the constant noise of the wind.
Jeffrey and Clayton swam over as the sky flickered once more. Now out of their Draegers and masks, they wore battle helmets instead, with visors flipped down and switched on.
'Feeling better?' Jeffrey said.
'Yes,' Ilse said. 'Come on, we have work to do.' Silently they pulled her SDV into shallower water. Now she saw some of the other dolphins, floating inverted as if they were dead — she wondered if one of them was the cargo carrier slaved to SEAL Seven's control. There was no sign at all of the SEALs. Ilse's feet touched the soft gooey bottom, stirring up bubbles of gas. It stank. She figured this was as good a I line as any for a clandestine pee — diving had a diuretic Get on the body.
Jeffrey and Clayton helped her remove her equipment bags and change into her battle kit. She positioned the high-impact goggles that would protect her corneas from dust and smoke and worse. Then she switched on her helmet and lowered the imaging visor. Lastly she pulled off her flippers. She stowed them inside the dolphin with her other unneeded gear. Clayton and Jeffrey submerged the SDVs one by one, disappearing under he water to clip them shut, free diving, then surfacing again for air. Ilse adjusted her helmet to sit more comfortably, then tightened the padded chin strap. Using hand signals, ' layton led her onto dry land near a mangrove tree. She got down on her haunches, looking around, the visor's green monochrome low-light-level TV and false-color IR alternating every half second. The raindrops scattered infrared, but even so, she could see about three times as fur with the infrared photodetectors than she could with he multistage image intensifiers. Sight lines were broken by trees and dunes. Ilse let the saltwater run off her body, then adjusted her vest. Its front was laden with gas mask, canteens, field dressings, half a dozen ammo clips, primary and backup radiation dosimeters, and four different kinds of grenade.
Ilse shifted her hip holster slightly and opened the strap that held her big pistol in place. She checked that the weapon was loaded, and switched on the power. She practiced quick drawing three times, to loosen up and make sure her aiming reticle worked. Satisfied, she looked at Clayton and Jeffrey.
She waited while Jeffrey dabbed her with waterproof blackface, like shoe polish, from a small tin. She noticed Clayton was using some too, despite his ebony complexion.
'Keeps my sweaty skin from shining,' he said, grinning at her in the dark. Jeffrey positioned her helmet mike.
The SEAL chief handed out bottled water. 'Draeger air's very dry. Rehydrate.'
'Thanks,' Ilse whispered. Insects were starting to find them, and she put on odorless bug repellent. The air was humid and heavy, in spite of the low-pressure front of the dying hurricane.
'Comms check, status check, sound off,' Clayton whispered. Soon everybody was ready.
'Remember, watch out for bushbuck and wild boar. But think of them now as our friends, constant false alarms for enemy urea sniffers and infrared.' Clayton turned to Jeffrey as an especially strong gust punished the reeds. 'At least with this weather we don't have to worry about motion detectors.'
'Or startling the birds,' Jeffrey said.
