Tidal Rip

up at the sky. It was growing dark very quickly. “But I’m not sure they land at night.”

“No,” Felix bluffed. “Thank you, but we have our own arrangements.”

“I think your man needs a hospital.”

“Yes. Leave that to us.”

“I think I should tell my lieutenant.”

Felix hesitated. “Please be quick. We have a schedule.”

“Yes, yes. Quick.”

This is where it gets dicey.

The lieutenant approached. He seemed capable and battle-hardened, not someone easily fooled. He wrinkled his nose at his first whiff of Felix.

Good. The more I stink, the less he’ll really look at me, and the less he’ll think to ask me awkward questions.

Felix knew the best way to lie was to use as much of the truth as he could.

“Special Forces, sir. We met some opposition. Our officer was killed. We have our own plan of egress. Classified mission orders.”

The lieutenant called the sergeant over. “Give me the map.”

As they wasted precious minutes and the sky became increasingly dark, Felix showed the lieutenant the vague area of where he’d made contact with the enemy — it had poured rain again that afternoon, and the brushfires from the fighting had surely been snuffed. Felix was certain the Germans would be hiding or gone long before the Brazilians could get anywhere near them on foot.

A villager lit straw torches. They gave off dancing yellow light.

The lieutenant went to brief his squad leaders by red flashlight. Felix led his men in the other direction, toward the river. The Araguari was high and running fast, and Felix could hear it even before the torchlight outlined the near edge of the riverbank against the wet blackness beyond. To his great relief, there were a handful of boats tied up at a rickety pier, at an indentation in the bank sheltered from the main flood current.

To steal a boat at this point, they’d have to wait some time for all the villagers to be asleep, and even then they might be caught — some shacks with light in their windows were close to the pier. Time was one thing the team’s wounded man did not have. Getting caught would surely start a noisy, attention-getting argument with the natives, or an even more compromising waterborne chase. No, outright theft, discovered quickly or at first light, is definitely not advisable with genuine Brazilian forces right here.

Felix found an old man who owned one of the boats and said he needed to requisition it. He told the man to speak to the authorities in Ferreira Gomes, and he’d be reimbursed. That ought to create enough bureaucratic confusion to cover the SEAL team’s tracks. Felix wasn’t happy about needing to tell this sort of lie to an innocent villager.

The man wasn’t going for it. He threw up his hands. “How am I supposed to get upriver to Ferreira Gomes without my motorboat?”

Felix forced himself to hide his real annoyance. “How much?”

“Huh?”

“How much for the boat?”

“It’s not just a boat. It’s my livelihood.” The boat smelled of dead fish, and the inside looked greasy and slimy.

“How much?”

Felix and the man began to bargain. They settled on a price in local currency.

“How far are you going?”

Felix refused to say.

“You’ll need petrol.”

Felix sighed. “How much?”

Again they haggled.

“You’ll need lanterns. It’s dark.”

“All right. Lanterns. What kind?”

“Kerosene.”

“Full?”

“Yes, I’ll fill them.”

“How much?”

The man named a figure.

Felix sighed again, as if he regretted having to part with hard cash. The total price agreed to was high but not unreasonable.

Felix nodded to one of his men, who’d been leaning exhausted against the wall of the fisherman’s shack — the walls were made of old plywood, with no glass in the windows, and the roof was rusty corrugated tin. The SEAL pulled a roll of worn Brazilian bills from a pocket of his rucksack. Felix counted out the proper payment and handed it to the fisherman.

Felix gestured for his men to get in the motorboat. With all their equipment and the lieutenant’s body, it almost sank right there.

Felix turned to the fisherman. “Order and progress!” The Brazilian national motto.

“Huh?”

“I said, ‘Order and progress!’”

“Whatever. Hurry up. If you’re going east you’ll hit the pororoca.” The old man turned and went into his shack. The pororoca was a huge wave — a tidal bore — that rushed in at the mouth of the Araguari every twelve hours.

Another time bomb ticking on our heads.

Felix started the motorboat’s engine and left the pier. It ran surprisingly well. As skilled as he was in small- boat handling, the current was just too strong for the overloaded boat. The men had to bail for their lives and balance carefully, and even so they were in danger of capsizing any second.

When they were out of sight of the village, Felix turned down the kerosene lamps. He told the men to jettison their unneeded equipment in a deep part of the channel. This improved the freeboard just enough to keep the boat from swamping. They kept their weapons and ammo — they didn’t have much ammo left. They also kept their diving gear. Felix relit the lanterns, and put one at the bow and one at the stern.

This way no one will think we’re trying to hide.

By lantern light the racing water was silt-laden mocha brown. Felix revved the engine to maximum power. Dirty smoke poured out of the exhaust, and the motorboat went faster. The vibrations were so strong he was half afraid the boat would shake apart. But there was no compromising now. If an enemy was setting up to shoot at him from the bank, speed was everything. If they were too slow getting downstream and out to sea, they’d nose under the boiling forward face of the next inbound pororoca — and they’d never come up. Water around the fast-moving boat splashed higher; the men continued bailing for their lives.

The moon began to rise. First Felix saw its silver aura from below the horizon, and then the moon itself emerged. It reflected off the river sometimes, between the galleries of trees that lined both banks. The stars Felix could see overhead were very sharp and steady. He prayed it didn’t start to rain — without the moon and stars he couldn’t see far enough ahead to steer, and a downpour like the last one would drown them all. One of his team, an expert in first aid, was doing what he could for their injured man.

The injured man, his equipment and flak vest removed now, lay motionless. He didn’t moan or writhe. He just breathed slowly, and his respiration was more and more labored.

“There’s too much fluid in his chest,” Felix said. “It’s occluding his lungs.” As a former hospital corpsman, he knew about such things.

“I can try to rig a tube,” the first-aid man said. He meant insert a drain so the built-up fluid wouldn’t press against the lungs and heart.

Conditions here were hardly ideal, but Felix nodded.

“I’ll start,” the aid man said. One of the other SEALs brought a lantern closer. Bugs swarmed around the lantern light. Flies were drawn to the blood. Other flies and mosquitoes bothered Felix. He tried to ignore