CHAPTER 2
In absolute and enveloping darkness, Felix Estabo quietly went through the final stages of forming the nighttime defensive position. He lay flat in the stinking mud, embracing it, concealed under a fern bush festooned with big and very sharp leaves. His floppy-brimmed jungle hat and the insect net draped over his face and neck kept the hungry mosquitoes at bay. Arranged in a circle with him — each man facing outward so that their feet all met in the center — were the others in the eight-man team.
Silent hand-touch signals went around the group from man to man, status reports. All was well. Felix allowed himself a sense of proprietary satisfaction — times like this he felt like a mother hen, though he’d never in a million years say so out loud. Felix’s boots picked up a few of his teammates shifting an inch or two to get a little more comfortable. The four men who weren’t on watch tried to sleep.
Another bead of sweat formed on the tip of Felix’s nose as he lay there. It itched, but to move and scratch would violate noise and motion security; even if they were lucky and the slightest movement didn’t get everyone killed, Felix needed to set an example. Although the one thing they knew for sure was that no tribal Indians came near here, other humans might be hunting Felix and his men right now.
More sweat dripped and itched. The temperature was over ninety Fahrenheit — even at night — and the humidity topped 95 percent. The air was almost smotheringly thick.
Felix tried not to fight the relentless weight of his rucksack pressing down on his back. In this tactical situation, you always slept in full gear. He cradled his weapon in his arms, a specially modified Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine gun. The weapon fired nine millimeter bullets, semi-or full automatic, from detachable magazines that each held thirty rounds. Felix had a dozen magazines with him. But if he was forced to fire just one round, even with his weapon’s silencer, the entire mission would almost certainly fail. If it did fail, those dozen magazines would run out fast.
Felix was one of the men off watch, so it was his turn to sleep. He tried to cradle his head in his arms on the uneven ground, with his face cushioned next to the reassuring heft of his weapon. In the Amazon rain forest, roots from towering trees grew right along or over the uneven ground, forming bumps and ridges and tangles everywhere. The team wasn’t far above the mighty Amazon River’s maximum annual floodplain level. Usable natural cushioning was scarce — very few trees shed leaves or nettles in the tropics. The ground cover consisted mostly of huge fallen branches, or fungus and rotting organic goo, so Felix couldn’t fashion a bed as he’d have done on a camping trip. It was hard to find much comfort at all. The men didn’t carry ground cloths or sleeping bags or similar luxuries — they were overloaded with other, much more vital equipment.
But Felix was used to it. He was actually enjoying himself, despite the tension and danger and tingling of fear. The heat and humidity and mosquitoes didn’t bother him — he’d grown up in Miami. Felix always thought of himself as the archetypal happy warrior. Tonight, he couldn’t have been happier. He’d led a clean life. He had a supportive wife and two wonderful infant girls to go home to. Felix’s mind was at peace, which was good. He needed every neuron focused on doing his job right now.
Felix was a master chief in the U.S. Navy SEALs, in the field in hostile territory, on a clandestine operation during war. His lieutenant, a promising kid but young and inexperienced as SEALs go, was in nominal charge of the group — but it was Felix, with his maturity and strong grasp of tradecraft, who worked hard to keep the team undetected, safe and alive and on schedule. Every man among them was Latino, handpicked for their language skills and knowledge of local cultures.
Felix was of Brazilian descent. His parents were born in Sao Paulo, the country’s biggest city and main business center. They’d been sponsored to the U.S., given green cards that allowed them to take menial factory jobs in southern Florida. When baby Felix arrived, at a Miami hospital, he was automatically a U.S. citizen. Eventually his parents were naturalized too. Felix was pretty good in Spanish, which he spoke with a Cuban- American accent, and he was fluent in the idiomatic Portuguese that was Brazil’s national language.
So his mission was like coming home, visiting the old country. He could blend in well.
Felix wasn’t tall, five-foot-six, but he had a blocky, muscular build. When not on an operation, he liked to comb his jet-black hair straight up, forming half-inch spiked bristles with styling gel. His head was very big — his hat size was a whopping seven and seven-eighths — and his neck was broad and strong. In moments of vanity mixed with self-mockery he liked to think he resembled a bullet atop a tree stump — except with a higher IQ. In bars he’d joke with his buddies that either his brain was large or his skull was too thick, he wasn’t sure which. And when people saw the old, old scar of a knife wound down his cheek, a jagged line from below his left eye socket to his jaw… He smiled to himself at the thought. Nobody in a bar ever messed with Felix.
Again Felix tried to sleep. He listened to the unending sounds of the Amazon rain forest at night. Nocturnal monkeys chattered, high up in the triple canopy formed by the spreading limbs of different species of tropical trees. Some of these trees, Felix knew, were fifteen stories tall or more; their lower trunks could reach a thickness of six or even ten feet. The mosquitoes continued to whine near his ears, but he ignored them. His team had come prepared for such pests. Too overtired to be able to give in to drowsiness and doze off, Felix double-checked by feel that the elastic ends of his sleeves were fastened snug around his flame-retardant jungle warfare gloves. He and the other men swallowed special tablets daily so that the pores of their skin secreted an odorless insect repellent. His one-piece camouflage fatigues were made of layered synthetics to draw away moisture and let it evaporate, to help keep the multitudes of biting or stinging insects at bay, and to double as a diving wet suit when the men had to go in the water. The bottom of the wet suit’s legs were tucked tightly into his boots to keep out scorpions and fire ants, which were also nocturnal; ticks and lice and chiggers stayed active all day. Every morning before breaking camp, Felix made sure each man took medications with the team’s one daily meal to prevent malaria and intestinal worms and suppress any symptoms of dysentery. Before deploying for the mission, they’d had booster vaccinations for a dozen other diseases, from cholera to yellow fever to smallpox, not to mention anthrax and some bad coronaviruses.
In the inky dark, Felix sensed more than heard bats swooping between the trees and through the brush, feeding on the copious insect life. There were many sorts of bats in the Amazon rain forest. There were also poisonous snakes and big ugly spiders… not to mention pumas and jaguars and ocelots, South America’s big cats. The countless river tributaries harbored schools of sharp-toothed piranhas, plus several varieties of mean and hungry alligators and crocodiles.
But the most dangerous life form here in the forest was man. This was why Felix’s team avoided moving by the rivers — which were lines of travel and commerce for the native population — and they avoided moving altogether at night. Horizontal sight lines were short, from all the foliage and tree trunks. A surprise encounter after dark could happen much too suddenly, literally at arm’s length, spelling disaster. Visibility under the all-concealing triple canopy of leaves and vines was bad enough in the perpetual gloom during daytime. It was because of the short sight lines, tactically, that sounds and smells were so important. That was why, for two weeks before their present mission began, Felix and his team had eaten a special diet to make their body odor blend in with their surroundings. That was also why, during the approach to the coast on the nuclear sub USS
Finally, that was why the team didn’t bother bringing thermal or night-vision gear. The devices and their batteries added weight, and they tended not to hold up well under rugged use in such wet and dirty climatic conditions. Instead, at night, the men hid and watched for trouble with the naked eye.
Felix suddenly heard parrots squawking somewhere in the distance. He immediately grew more alert. He was supposed to be off watch now, but as the team’s master chief, he was never truly off watch. He’d be lucky to get by on brief catnaps throughout this whole covert reconnaissance patrol. A split second after Felix zoned in on the noise of the parrots, he felt it through his feet as other members of his team grew tense. Two of them, the most experienced enlisted men, continued to sleep. Their unconscious combat minds knew their on-watch teammates would wake them in case of real danger; in the meantime, they were fully determined to get all the shut-eye they could.
The parrot squawking continued, and now howler monkeys hooted and screeched. Felix heard the pounding of hooves as other creatures hurried along through the forest floor’s thick red muck. Sheep-sized rodents, the
