Before dawn, Felix and his lieutenant roused the sleeping members of the team. Everybody stayed on guard, lying or crouching in their defensive circle from the night before. Dim streaks of moonlight stippled the ground. The moonlight pierced between the tree trunks and leafy branches and hanging vines, dappling the ferns and roots and fungi in an otherworldly silver-gray glow. It was extremely humid and hot. Mosquitoes, biting flies, and other insects continued their background hum and chirp. The air was thick with the musty, musky stench of jungle rot and fermentation.
Felix listened on high alert as the earliest risers among the daytime birds and animals began to stir. To his eyes, the eerie patches of moonlight carried an air of expectancy: of approaching sunrise, and of unknown dangers to come.
This was the time each day that Felix hated, because for a few unavoidable minutes now the team would be most vulnerable. An armed enemy might blunder into them before the SEALs were ready. The team might have been noticed many hours ago, and attackers might have spent all night creeping close for a dawn assault.
One by one each SEAL rushed through a silent, meticulous, well-practiced routine of cleaning himself and burying body waste. One at a time, each man quickly ate his single high-calorie meal of the day and drank one entire full two-quart canteen; each had one more full canteen for later. They replaced their floppy jungle hats with battle helmets — the folded hats went into their rucksacks, along with all the breakfast trash. The helmets were covered with raggedy patches of cloth and plastic to break up their outlines in the bush. Mosquito nets draping from the helmets protected their faces and necks. They raised the nets just long enough to touch up their camouflage makeup using small compacts from their rucks. There was no incoming fire.
Amid the all-cloaking underbrush, beneath the towering trees, the team did buddy checks of one another’s equipment, clothing, and weapons status.
Like the other men, Felix had a K-bar fighting knife in a waterproof sheath strapped to one thigh and a survival knife strapped to the other. His backup pistol was safed in its shoulder holster, beneath his left armpit. His Draeger rebreather scuba gear, and big combat swim fins and dive mask, rode under his rucksack in a special harness — their considerable weight was borne by his hips and lower back; a dirtproof cover protected and hid the diving equipment.
There was a round in the chamber of Felix’s German-made MP-5 submachine gun. He gently eased the quiet selector lever off safe to sustained fire. He nodded to his lieutenant. The lieutenant signaled the team to move out.
The silvery moonlight had faded away and was replaced by the pink diffuse glow of a short equatorial dawn. Traces of sharper yellow sunlight filtered down through the trees obliquely, backlighting a morning mist that burned off almost at once. Now the sun was higher in the sky; the few shafts of light that hit the ground were more vertical. The heat and the humidity intensified. The rancid odors wafting everywhere grew stronger. Sometimes toucans or parrots flew by, but were barely seen, their gaudy colors muted in the deep rain-forest gloom.
Felix’s team patrolled closer to the railroad for the Brazilian manganese mine — the railroad that would probably be the objective of more insurgent guerrilla sabotage raids — the guerrillas who might or might not be getting aid from Axis advisers.
The eight SEALs had split into two teams of four; each team formed half a circle. The lieutenant led the first team, which served as point and covered their left flank as they moved. Felix led the other team, covering their right flank and also covering and sanitizing their rear. The tension was unrelenting. Each man’s every motion was a risky compromise between the need for speed and the need for silent invisibility. Crouching, crawling, duckwalking, they maintained course by compass — GPS was useless because of Axis signal hacking, and there were no distant landmarks to guide on in the bowels of the Amazon rain forest.
The SEALs worked forward steadily. They cautiously peered around trees, and over bushes or fallen logs. They watched for any signs of human presence or human activity. They listened intently for clues to what was happening around them. The continual animal traffic discouraged booby traps or mines, but everyone was careful for trip wires or suspicious fist-sized bumps or dips in the ground, or freshly dug earth.
Felix made very sure they left no traces. Thorny vines, snagged on equipment or clothes and tugged in the direction of the SEALs’ travel, were rearranged at random. Leaves that were disturbed and twisted in passing, with their undersides showing a different color or texture than their tops, were righted so they wouldn’t stand out. Boot prints in the puddles and mud, and scuff marks on roots and trunks, were altered artfully. This part of the work was especially tiring. Felix needed intense concentration and acute manual dexterity every minute, every hour. The weight of all his gear seemed to increase constantly. After each rest break, it was that much harder mentally to get up and resume.
His Draeger and combat fins weighed three dozen pounds. A full canteen weighed five pounds. Each prepackaged, dehydrated daily meal in his rucksack weighed more than a pound. Each concussion grenade he carried weighed one pound; each white phosphorus smoke-incendiary grenade weighed two pounds. His helmet and flak vest and weapons and ammo and first-aid supplies were also heavy.
Soon the team of eight SEALs would divide up into pairs, each pair patrolling one arc of a four-leaf-clover pattern. After going full circle, the four pairs would reunite. The team would then advance several more miles, still navigating by compass. Then they would do another cloverleaf, and on and on. This way they could scan a broader area, on their covert reconnaissance for Axis presence in the rain forest.
Felix remembered the firefight he and his team had listened to the previous night. He wondered what shape that other SEAL team was in, and who had ambushed them.
Felix heard a sharp crack, and a deep rolling rumble, very close. Everyone froze and waited for incoming fire. But this time it was thunder, not a grenade.
Soon there was a steady drumming sound overhead. The daytime gloom of the rain forest grew much darker. Driblets of rain began to fall. Felix saw an electric-blue flash of lightning through the trees. There was another blast of thunder. The driblets of rain became a crushing downpour.
The lieutenant signaled a pause in order to refill their empty canteens. The men used their upturned floppy hats to help catch the rain and funnel it into canteen mouths, through fine mesh filters. The water was very dirty. Over their heads, in each level of the multiple-canopy tree branches, dwelled entire ecosystems. Plants lived on other plants, which lived on branches of the larger trees, and died and rotted. Bugs and bacteria thrived in puddles caught on leaves or in forks in the trees, a hundred feet in the air. Different birds, rodents, and mammals populated different zones of altitude, eating and mating and defecating. Frogs, snails, ants, spiders, termites — all led their daily existences high above.
The rainwater that reached the ground was truly filthy. Felix and his team added water purification tablets to their newly filled canteens. The tablets made the water stink of chlorine and taste even worse. They used powdered tea mix, fortified with extra tannin, to cover the taste; the tannin also helped fight tropical diarrhea.
The rain continued to drum and pour. With their canteens replenished, the lieutenant signaled for the SEALs to move out. The rain was so heavy it pelted their faces with mud splashed back up from the ground. The runoff gushed in streaming rivulets and formed ever-widening pools. A wind began to rise, slashing the treetops. The team closed up amid the almost solid, streaking vertical torrent to keep in better touch now that sight lines were so reduced and the noise of the rain was deafening. They moved faster, since the rain would obliterate much of their spoor. Moving faster also gave them better forward momentum — in case they crashed into an enemy patrol that crashed into them.
Now, with two full canteens instead of one, and waterlogged from head to toe by the all-surrounding thunderstorm, Felix carried a much greater weight load. The rain was cold, so cold it made him shiver.
The rain had stopped, and the rain forest was steamy, stinking, baking hot. Felix’s team halted for a brief rest. The two compass men compared notes to cross-check their navigation. Felix and the lieutenant surveyed the ground ahead. It was time for the team to turn due west. Ahead in that direction, on the near side of the railroad, lay the Pedreira River, which the men would have to cross to continue their recon. The Pedreira ran south, paralleling the railroad, until the river fed the Amazon itself. Crossing the river would be a time of maximum peril, but it was necessary.
Quietly, the team reviewed their plan and rechecked one another’s equipment. Again the lieutenant led the point element and Felix oversaw securing and sanitizing their rear. Tomorrow they would trade places, with Felix in
