Tidal Rip

amounted to suicide — that weapon to their front, firing straight down along the SEALs’ column, would pick off every man fast.

Felix led his men to the right. Everyone fired on full auto. The enemy fire increased. The men began to be driven back.

“The LT’s hit!” someone screamed. Felix recognized the voice — his point man. Still, strange weapons poured in fire. Again, clumps of bark flew everywhere as bullets pounded into trees. Vines danced and fell as they were riddled. The mud insect nests that bulged from trees exploded.

Felix belly-crawled toward the front of the column. As he passed each enlisted man, he steadied him and urged him to return the enemy fire and charge the enemy ambush again. They tried, but the fire was just too heavy. It came at them knee-high or lower, well aimed and effective. The men were forced to huddle in folds in the ground or hide behind trees. They fired their weapons half-blindly into the distance. Their muzzles flashed and spent brass bounced and clinked. Moving parts in the silenced weapons clattered. The men changed magazines steadily. Burned bullet propellant went up Felix’s nose.

Felix reached the lieutenant. The man was dead, his skull shattered. His brain sat in the mud on the trail, in almost perfect condition, as if it had been removed by a surgeon. That strange weapon to the front fired yet again, a slow but steady explosive bloop-bloop-bloop. It sounded like a cross between a heavy machine gun and a grenade launcher. The noise of it hurt Felix’s already-ringing ears.

Felix pulled out a pair of white phosphorus grenades. He fell back, then threw one toward the strange heavy weapon, and the other to his right, toward the flanking enemy riflemen. He ducked behind a tree.

Both grenades exploded. Felix charged forward, relying on the choking smoke screen for protection. He hefted the lieutenant’s body across his shoulders. The heavy enemy weapon fired another three-round burst. More shrapnel filled the air. Felix took out another smoke-incendiary grenade, his last. Over his shoulder, he tossed it at the dead man’s brain — this was as good a point of aim as any. Felix ran to the rear with his lifeless, dripping burden. The third white phosphorus grenade burst behind him. Again Felix felt the radiant heat and coughed on the fumes of searing phosphorus. Bits of it landed near him and made the puddles steam and hiss.

“Withdraw,” he shouted, still speaking Portuguese for disguise. “Follow me! Break contact!”

Felix had realized what that strange enemy weapon was. He’d heard that the U.S. Army was developing something like it.

An objective crew-served weapon. A highly portable twoman miniature cannon that fired one-inch-caliber explosive rounds on full automatic. These weapons had laser range finders, and electronically fused each round before it was fired. The fuses could be set precisely by timer so the weapon made lethal air bursts at any specific range its crew wanted to target.

Explosive rounds from such a weapon were pounding at the SEALs. One round had taken off the lieutenant’s head.

At least the smoke grenades are blocking their range finder. With that, and the trees in the way, it’ll be harder for them to zero in on us.

Felix ordered his team to retreat to the south, regrouping on the run into an all-around circle formation. The enemy, whoever they were, followed in close pursuit. More incoming explosive shells detonated, near the ground and high in the air; the eardrum-splitting concussions were fast, and bright, and hot. Birds and monkeys screamed. Dislodged seeds and heavy ripe fruit rained from far above. Entire branches crashed to the earth. Enemy bullets tore by like angry, burning bees.

The SEALs took turns firing back the way they’d just come while others ran ahead and reloaded. Then the SEALs who’d fired would rush for safety while their teammates unleashed vicious fire at the enemy. The men did this over and over again, taking turns, covering more and more distance each time. The enemy continued coming after them, returning the fire. But the noise of reports, the incoming rounds, were the only signs of the enemy — Felix couldn’t catch one glimpse of who was shooting at him.

Felix heard more bloop-bloop-bloop sounds, overlaid on more sharp concussions each time a grenade round exploded in the air or against a tree. The jungle was thick with flying shrapnel and bullets now, and kicked-up debris. There was painful pressure in Felix’s ears from the punishing noise.

A big rotting fruit bashed down on Felix’s helmet; pungent juice from it dripped into his eyes. A wounded sloth slammed into the earth and Felix almost stumbled. He shot it once in the head to end its agony.

The dead lieutenant’s body, with all its equipment, was an almost unbearable weight across Felix’s back. SEALs never leave a man behind, dead or alive. From somewhere deep inside himself, Felix found the strength to carry on. He spun and fired a long burst from his submachine gun. He turned and ran. Grenade rounds probed toward him, but the enemy gunners were guessing the range.

Then bullets pounded into the lieutenant’s body from behind. Felix staggered, more from fright than from the force of the impacts. He hurried on.

Felix did a head count on the run. The rest of the team was following, but one man had been hit in the arm. The bullet struck the side of his shoulder, next to the edge of his flak vest. He seemed okay, at least for now. The wounded man was keeping up with the others, and there didn’t seem to be much blood, but he was having trouble reloading with his injured arm. Other men had lacerations from wood splinters or steel shrapnel — they kept running.

Felix’s heart pounded hard as he splashed through the puddles and mud. His back ached terribly from the deadweight of his lieutenant, and his breath came in overrapid painful gasps. He turned and fired his weapon again.

Bullets punched hard and squarely at his chest. Only his flak vest saved his life. Felix turned again to cover more distance and lead the withdrawal. He yelled for two of his men to throw more smoke incendiaries behind them.

Felix glanced at his chest. Sticking from his flak vest were what looked like long thin nails. They had little fins at their protruding ends. Each was bent, from its own momentum after it struck the ceramic plate of his vest. Each was smoking hot.

Flechette rounds.

Felix yelled for his men to pick up the pace.

They’d been ambushed by a very sophisticated enemy. The weapons were state-of-the-art. The air-burst shrapnel rounds were ideal to take out men in helmets and flak vests — the shrapnel would hit faces and arms and legs. Flechettes were perfect for use against the extremities of men in body armor too. The United States had decided not to use them in combat because the wounds they caused were so cruel. Each flechette had such kinetic energy, and yet was so thin, that hitting anywhere unprotected in a human body it would fishhook — twisting and caroming inside to mutilate organs and rip blood vessels and sever nerves. A flechette in the knee could ricochet and lodge inside your liver. One in the elbow could end up in your spine.

I think we found what we came here for.

Physical proof of German interference. This last ambush hadn’t been led by any insurgent band, using sloppy tactics and weapons designed fifty years ago. These were German Special Forces, maybe even kampfschwimmer.

Their goal is to do whatever it takes to kill or capture U.S. Navy SEALs on Brazilian soil. Then after they do their own interrogation, they’ll have local Axis sympathizers turn us in to the government. Those earlier half-botched ambushes were a setup after all. They were waiting for us.

Another grenade round flew past Felix’s head and embedded itself in a tree. He flinched, but it failed to detonate.

Felix was taking a terrible risk, but he had his orders. He stopped and used his survival knife to dig the intact round out of the trunk of the hardwood tree. He prayed its fuse was defective, a dud, or that it was programmed to burst after covering more distance and hadn’t flown its minimum arming range.

Just in case, Felix put it in his rucksack — outside the back panel of his flak vest, and covered by the dead lieutenant’s corpse.

Now we just have to break contact and get far away from here.

Felix shouted for his men to throw every white phosphorus grenade they had. A solid wall of heat and smoke flew up.