front and the lieutenant protecting their backs, and Felix was already looking forward to it. Tonight, maybe, once across the Pedreira, he might get some sleep for a change. And tomorrow, the mental and physical strain of taking point, as wearing and dangerous as it was, would be a welcome change from the constant peering and smoothing and rearranging, the endless stooping and kneeling and patting and brushing, that it took to maintain secrecy as the SEALs covered more and more distance.
Felix was jarred by another crack. He knew at once it wasn’t more thunder. He ducked as his whole body tightened instinctively; his heart was in his throat. Razor-sharp steel from a fragmentation grenade whizzed overhead. Felix heard crackling bursts from AK-47s.
Every sight and sound and smell became ten times more vivid; every trace of fatigue in Felix vanished.
Felix’s lieutenant shouted in Portuguese. The team had been ambushed by antigovernment militants — the Brazilian Army didn’t use AK-47s either. Felix crawled forward. He and the lieutenant pulled white phosphorus grenades from their rucksacks and armed them. As bullets zipped overhead or slammed into trees or kicked up muck, they lobbed the grenades well to their front and yelled for their men to withdraw. They took disciplined care with their throwing so the grenades didn’t hit a tree and bounce back.
The grenades exploded. Burning white phosphorus spewed in all directions. Thick, choking smoke covered the ground and spread through the trees. Fires began, from the heat of the incendiary grenades, even with everything soaked. The grenades would form a good antipersonnel barrier. White phosphorus burned human flesh down to the bone; it was unquenchable.
The SEAL team crawled to the rear, quickly taking turns firing their weapons back through the smoke. Felix let loose a three-round burst and heard an enemy scream.
The SEALs stood and regrouped on the run. On and on they ran, away from the ambush site.
The lieutenant cursed. “We’re compromised,” he said in Portuguese, “and we haven’t found out a single useful thing.”
Felix concurred, did a head count, and turned and fired another burst through the drifting white phosphorus smoke. “I don’t think we’re being pursued,” he said between ragged breaths. “Irregulars… Must have thought we were Brazilian Army, tired and bored after lunch.” He vaulted a protruding root as the other SEALs kept pace. One of the enlisted men fired a burst toward the ambushers, then another.
“Didn’t expect us to be so alert,” Felix panted. “Surprised we reacted so fast and violently.” He ran on, breathing heavily, reviewing the action in his mind. “They set off that Claymore a moment too late.”
The lieutenant nodded. He was shaking now from the surge of adrenaline and gasping too fast to speak.
Felix signaled the team to halt and take up a defensive position. The men quickly checked one another for wounds or equipment damage. They were okay. Felix listened; he let a few minutes go by. The bird and animal noises told him his team wasn’t being followed.
“Which way now?” he whispered to the lieutenant.
“Let me think.”
Felix didn’t like this. To accomplish their mission, they needed hard proof that Axis agents were operating in this area, if indeed they were. To come back empty-handed meant failure.
“Head north,” Felix whispered, still speaking in Portuguese. “Outflank these guerrillas, then turn west. Get behind them.”
“Concur,” the lieutenant whispered. “Move through their rear. See what we learn that way… But why not outflank them south?”
“We came from south. North, we cover new territory.”
The lieutenant nodded. He began to catch his breath.
“We change our route formation. Column, single file. I want more weapons covering west in case the hostiles come at us again.”
“I don’t know, LT. We still need good all-around defense.” Felix gestured out at the jungle. “We don’t know who else is hiding where.”
“Negative.”
“But—”
“Do it my way.”
Felix had to agree — the lieutenant was the man in charge.
An old saying ran through Felix’s mind, seeing the LT’s hardened attitude: It’s better to be sure than right.
The team re-formed into a column, well spread out. On the lieutenant’s order, the compass men — stationed near both ends of the column — began to guide everyone north. The lieutenant remained near the front of the column. Felix stayed near the rear and picked his way between the tree trunks and the roots.
The underbrush was thin, because so little sunlight reached the ground. Clumps of dense growth — the kind he had chosen for the place where the team had sheltered last night — formed only when old trees died and toppled, or when standing trees were broken or felled by lightning strikes or hurricanes. Such gaps in the trees made openings through all the canopy layers, under which more dense brush could spring up. But away from these overgrown patches caused by major deadfalls, the dangling vines and protruding roots were more annoying than anything green that grew out of the ground. Progress on foot took care, but there was no need to hack a trail with swinging machetes.
Felix was worried. His team appeared to be in the middle of a hotbed of trigger-happy bad guys. Sooner or later the Brazilian Army would send units to investigate all the shooting. This would make the SEALs’ job even harder. The rules of engagement for this mission allowed them to fire only in self-defense and required them to keep that fire to a bare minimum. Their goal was information, not body counts.
The terrain was gradually rising as the team worked north, and Felix noticed that the species all around them were subtly changing. He reached out to hold a particularly thick and thorny vine away from his face and body. The SEALs were penetrating a clump of closely spaced trees, whose trunks bulged with the round mud nests of ants and termites. No one wanted to bump into one of these nests and the SEALs’ rate of movement was slowed. Felix had a sense of foreboding. He walked practically on tiptoe now, his eyes darting everywhere. He scrutinized the terrain as he quietly placed each foot — away from any twigs that might snap. He watched the rain forest constantly for signs of some stranger watching him. His ears worked so hard he felt as if they were stretching out from his head.
The next men in his team in front and behind were barely visible. They were forced to group closer together. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to communicate by hand signals and might even become separated and lost — with disastrous results. By now, Felix was dripping with sweat instead of rainwater.
The team eventually cleared the stand of trees. Among thicker trunks with different bark, spread wider apart, they were able to increase the distance from man to man in their column. They probed on.
To their front an enemy weapon opened fire. Then everything seemed to happen at once. Felix heard shouts and screams. More fire began to pour in from the flank — from the
Felix had never heard the sound of these weapons before.
“At them!” Felix screamed. The best tactic was to charge the flanking enemy. To take cover in this situation
