Tidal Rip

them.

Felix followed the twists and turns of the rushing river down to the sea. The noise of the outboard motor was very loud, a higher tone than the roar of the rain-swollen Araguari. The stench of gasoline and kerosene and fumes helped cover the smell of rotting garbage that even Felix splashing himself with river water couldn’t remove. The engine and lamp smoke also helped repel the insects, which would only get thicker as they neared the coastal swamps.

Felix looked at the moon and gave thanks to God for being alive. He gingerly felt for the unexploded grenade round in his rucksack. He fingered the bent flechettes embedded hard into his flak vest; he was sure the surgeon on the Ohio would find another flechette in the wounded man’s chest somewhere, plus who knew what sorts of bullets and shrapnel in the lieutenant’s corpse.

Felix glanced into the boat. Some of the men continued bailing, using their helmets. Others helped steer with oars they’d found in the bottom of the boat — if the boat veered broadside to the current they were doomed instantly. The aid man cared for his patient. The boat rocked in the current, and shipped a lot of water, and Felix and his team were barely holding their own.

One man killed in action. One wounded in action, condition critical. Mission accomplished, but at a high price.

Felix estimated their rate of speed along the bank.

Maybe we’ll beat the tidal bore, and maybe we won’t. If we do we kill the lights and sneak out past the reefs and sandbars…. We aim for a spot where the surf isn’t running too high. We lower our sonar distress transponder and hope a minisub from the Ohio hears it and picks us up before broad daylight.

CHAPTER 9

To leave the Norfolk Navy Base covertly and rejoin USS Challenger, Jeffrey sneaked in disguise aboard a Virginia-class fast-attack submarine, and hitched a ride out to sea. The Virginia boat submerged as soon as she could — to begin her own deployment protecting the African relief convoy. Jeffrey was forced to watch inside the control room, a mere passenger. He felt cheated of having the captain’s important privilege: that last view of the outside world and that last breath of fresh air, up in the tiny bridge cockpit atop the sail, before the sail trunk hatches were dogged and all main ballast tanks were vented. His only glimpse of the early-morning twilight was via the photonics mast, as another captain had the conn. The view on a video display screen just wasn’t the same.

Jeffrey grabbed some sleep in the executive officer’s stateroom fold-down guest rack. He had been up all night in briefings and planning sessions in Norfolk. A messenger woke him when the Virginia boat was beyond the continental shelf, saying that the minisub from Challenger was ready to pick him up. The entire rendezvous and docking took place submerged, for stealth. Challenger herself lurked more than thirty nautical miles away, for even more stealth.

Jeffrey greeted the two-man crew of his minisub — a junior officer and a senior chief — then went into the mini’s transport compartment and took a catnap. He woke when he felt the minisub maneuvering for the docking inside Challenger’s pressure-proof in-hull hangar, behind her sail.

The mini’s crew went through final mating and lockdown procedures. The big doors of the hangar swung closed. Ambient sea pressure around the mini was relieved. The crew undogged the bottom hatch and opened the top hatch of Challenger’s mating-trunk air lock. Jeffrey quickly climbed down the steep steel ladder. Minisub maintenance technicians were ready with tool bags to climb up.

Jeffrey came out of the air lock into a narrow corridor inside his ship. His executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Jackson Jefferson Bell, was waiting for him.

“Welcome back, Captain,” Bell said.

“Good to see you again, XO.” The two men shook hands firmly and warmly.

“How’s the baby?” Bell’s wife had given birth to their first child, a son, a couple of months before.

“Great, sir.” Bell grinned. To Jeffrey he was a changed man since becoming a father, somehow more mature and mellow, and more involved with life. Jeffrey felt a bit jealous.

“Lieutenant Willey has the deck and conn,” Bell said. Willey was the ship’s engineer.

“The crew has a basic idea of our mission parameters?”

“Yes, sir. I was briefed by Commodore Wilson’s deputy and also had a private talk with commander, Sub Group Two.” He referred to the rear admiral commanding the three New London fast-attack squadrons — Wilson’s boss. “I’ve told the men about the convoy sailing for the Central African pocket, sir, and our role to seek and destroy the Admiral von Scheer.”

“Good. Let’s make the CACC our first stop.” CACC, command and control center, was the modern name for a submarine’s control room.

Jeffrey followed Bell down the corridor. The lieutenant commander was a couple of inches taller than Jeffrey was, fit but not as muscular, and a couple of years younger. Bell’s walk was confident. His posture projected pent- up positive energy. He was clearly pumped from having been in command of the ship in Jeffrey’s absence. Jeffrey smiled to himself. I’m gonna need Bell’s skills and support more than ever, on this mission.

Crewmen Jeffrey went by perked up when they saw their captain. He smiled and gave them quick hellos.

It’s good to be back. Jeffrey took in the familiar sights, sounds, and smells of his command. The flameproof linoleum tiles on the deck. The imitation-wood wainscoting that covered the bulkheads. The bright red fire extinguishers and axes. The gentle breeze of coolness through the ventilator ducts. The triangular Velcro-like pads on the deck that marked valves for the emergency air-breathing masks. The long and narrow pipes along the overheads, with clusters of fittings for those valves — and all the other exposed bundles of pipes and wires and cables flowing like purposeful rivers everywhere.

Bell had put the ship at battle stations for the rendezvous, just in case. Jeffrey squeezed past damage-control parties stationed in the corridors. Again he greeted his crew. Some wore thick and heavy firefighting gear. Most of the men were barely out of their teens.

The control room was rigged for white — normal daytime fluorescent lighting. Jeffrey stood in the aisle. Lieutenant Willey sat at the two-man desk-high command workstation in the center of the compartment. Bell sat down in the other seat, as fire-control coordinator. The overall atmosphere was one of concentration and great care: although Challenger was still in heavily patrolled home waters, an enemy threat could appear at any time — an Axis submarine, a mine, anything. Jeffrey let Willey retain the conn. He told him to go deep and head due south at the ship’s top quiet speed: twenty-six knots.

Jeffrey liked the lanky and straight-talking Willey. He had been an engineer himself, on his own department- head tour, between his stint at the Pentagon and his more recent planning assignment at the Naval War College. Like many nuclear submarine engineers, Willey had an air of intensity and overwork. Besides his turns on watch as officer of the deck and conn in the CACC, he was responsible for a million details of keeping Challenger’s entire propulsion system in good shape. Willey’s turf was the whole back half of the boat, from the reactor compartment to the hot and cramped engine room and turbogenerator spaces to the pump jet behind the stern. He had broken a leg in combat on Challenger’s first war patrol in December, but that hadn’t stopped him — leg in a cast and all — from going right back out with Jeffrey on their next emergency assignment. By now, Willey’s leg was well healed.

Jeffrey went back and forth between checking the status of the ship’s important systems with Bell on Bell’s display screens, and greeting — and sizing up — the other main members of his battle-stations team.

Challenger’s chief of the boat, whom everyone called COB — pronounced “cob” — sat in the left seat of the ship control station at the front of the control room. COB was a salty master chief of Latino background, built like a bulldog, with a leadership style to match. COB came from a clan of Jersey City