Tidal Rip

mess would rage down toward the Parana River, then pound its mad way south until it passed by Buenos Aires. The Germans would have all the excuse they could possibly need for the von Scheer — wherever she was lurking — to hand over Axis atomic warheads in bulk to the Argentines. The scenario that would unfold from there surpassed Felix’s worst nightmarish visions of Armageddon.

Felix signaled his men to move faster.

Navigating by compass, the team neared their first phase line. Felix could tell they were at the proper way point by using his ears and his nose.

The team was moving onto the spit of land that projected into a wide oxbow curve of the Iguazu River. Here the river turned south, went around a giant bend, then came back north, before resuming its course due west. At the narrow base of the spit, Felix could hear the rush of the river on both flanks as his men headed south. The Iguazu Falls were in the middle of this oxbow curve. The roar of the falls lay directly ahead — but so did commanding ground, where the SEALs could interdict the Germans by long-range fire.

On the Brazilian side of the highlands plateau, overlooking the falls, were an old hotel and two tourist observation towers. This much Felix knew from his map and his hasty briefing notes. The odor of smoldering wreckage and rotting flesh grew very strong.

The team’s point man reached the edge of the jungle cover. He signaled, and Felix crawled forward.

Argentine artillery had blasted the hotel and observation towers. Then Brazilian Army engineers had dynamited the remains as they withdrew just hours before. Everything lay in ruins. Places deep in the rubble — sheltered from the daily rain — still burned. A horrible stench told Felix there were bodies trapped deep in that rubble too.

“Let’s get our base of fire set up,” he whispered to his chief in Portuguese. The man nodded. He had the team spread out along the verge of the jungle. Felix felt everyone’s blood pressure rise. Each man drew in a few deep breaths despite the smell. On a signal from Felix they dashed all at once across the open ground, and gained cover and concealment amid the rubble of the hotel.

Felix gave more orders, and the men worked their way gingerly forward, hugging the east side of the collapsed and burned-out structure. Felix rounded a pile of shattered masonry and brick, and the view took his breath away.

Arrayed before him, in all their deadly majesty, were the vast and always plunging, smashing, boiling cataracts of the Iguazu Falls.

As before, like from the chopper, the water was an incongruous reddish brown.

That color comes from topsoil, erosion from the highlands because of years of clear-cutting forestry mismanagement. Every new rainfall washes away a little more of Brazil’s future — assuming Brazil even has a future, after today.

Across the river, atop the escarpment on the other side of the falls, lay the ruins of another hotel, of more modern and solid construction.

That hotel sits in Argentina. Militarily — with this sweeping, split-level terrain — it’s as pivotal to the kampfschwimmer as the ruined Brazilian hotel is to me and my team.

Lying in shadows under a slab of shattered flooring, careful to avoid broken glass and twisted, jagged steel and sharp-edged aluminum, Felix turned to his chief. “The range look right to you? Three thousand yards?”

The SEAL chief nodded.

Felix and the chief picked good spots to set up their.30-caliber machine gun and their.50-caliber sniper rifle, choosing voids in the rubble that gave them the widest possible arcs of fire. Everyone passed their belts of machine-gun ammo to the men who worked the gun. The sniper said he saw an even better place to hide. He and his spotter shifted their positions.

The range was extreme, but now their weapons threatened the wreckage of the Argentine hotel, plus the wreckage of the stairs and walkways that led from the Argentine side toward scenic overviews of the falls, or out onto the upper river itself for even closer views, or down the steep escarpment toward the bottom of the falls.

Felix used his binoculars to survey the opposite side of the falls for any signs of kampfschwimmer movement. As he huddled in the stinking, smoking rubble of the Brazilian hotel, he began to grow very worried.

The Germans couldn’t have picked a better secondary target, once driven from the dam. And the next move is theirs.

He hated having to wait, and desperately wanted to seize the upper hand. He considered telling his machine-gun team to rake the Argentine hotel or the jungle behind it — a reconnaissance-by-fire might provoke the kampfschwimmer into acting prematurely.

But Felix glanced at his watch, and up at the afternoon sky. The sun was already getting low, and in just a few more hours it would be dark. If he told his men to open fire now, the kampfschwimmer would need to keep their heads down only till after sunset.

Whichever way you cut it, my tactical situation sucks.

Felix’s heart almost stopped, then leaped for joy, as he saw steady muzzle flashes from inside the Argentine hotel. Shrapnel bursts the size of rifle grenades began to pelt the rubble he and his men were using as shelter.

The kampfschwimmer know we’re here. They want us to keep our heads down. Why?

Of course! They’re working to a forced schedule. They need the mushroom cloud and flash flood during daylight. Both have to be seen to do the most good, soaring high into the sky and inundating helpless Argentina from evil Brazil.

The SEAL chief crawled up to Felix. As incoming small explosive shells pounded the ruined hotel and shrapnel whizzed and zinged and little new fires broke out, the chief shouted, “That’s a German objective crew-served weapon, sir!”

“I know.” Both men cringed as a round hit very close.

“We’re outgunned! We just have a thirty-cal!”

“I know,” Felix said.

“Return fire?”

“No. Save the ammo belts till we have targets. That hotel’s on high ground, too far back from the river. I doubt they’ll leave the bomb in there.”

“Sir?”

“The falls. They need to break cover and get to the falls. They want to set off the bomb right under the falls.”

For a moment the chief looked horrified. “Understood.”

“Tell the sniper and gunner, weapons tight till they see men in the open. Then kill them all. If they see a big package, that’s the bomb. Shoot it to pieces!”

“Sir, won’t that make it go off?”

“Not in theory!”

The chief looked very doubtful.

“It’s not like we’d feel anything,” Felix yelled.

The chief crawled off to issue orders.

No, we won’t feel anything. Our brains won’t even have time to register our own catastrophic failure.

The German machine cannon ceased firing, and Felix waited for the kampfschwimmer to make their next move. Nothing happened. He scanned the falls and the escarpment, and the river below, with his naked eyes and with his binoculars. Watching the water cascade over the edge of the cliff became hypnotic. He made himself look away.

Fixating on the view of flowing water had played nasty tricks on his brain. When he looked at the enemy hotel again, it seemed to be rising steadily upward, into the air. Felix needed to blink and shake his head, to make the optical illusion stop.

This is not a good beginning.

The German machine cannon started firing again. The flashes were coming from a different place in the rubble of concrete and I-beams.

They waited for us to react to their initial burst of fire, then shifted the gun’s position.