Tidal Rip

Felix sighed. He felt drained from his exertions of the past few days but knew he’d be lucky to get much rest tonight. The constant stress and need for alertness were wearing. By the end of the mission, in another ten days or so if he was lucky, he’d be ready for a nice long break back aboard the Ohio. The Ohio was an old boomer sub, and the ample space of her missile compartment had been specially converted for SEALs. Compared to the claustrophobic confines of a typical fast-attack sub, where SEALs squeezed into improvised sleeping racks in the torpedo room, the Ohio was like an undersea resort hotel.

Felix heard distant thunder. Another rainstorm coming. This would cool things off for a little while, though trying to sleep outdoors in a tropical downpour was a losing proposition.

No. Not thunder. Grenades. Now there were pops and stutters and tearing sounds, like rifles and machine guns. They were coming from northeast, farther up the Brazilian coast. Everybody was wide awake now. There was a larger boom, like a Claymore mine, from the same direction, far away and muffled but distinct. Felix was alarmed. He no longer noticed his sweating and itching. He forced himself to stop breathing so hard.

The shooting in the distance died off quickly.

The left hand of the man clockwise of Felix reached for Felix’s right hand. Felix felt a rapid series of taps and strokes and squeezes on different parts of his fingers and palm. The lieutenant was signaling Felix again: “Assessment?”

Felix responded, “Somebody triggered an ambush.”

“Who versus whom?” the lieutenant asked, still passing hand signals. Felix was glad the LT wasn’t breaking silence discipline, even surprised as he must have been by the outof-nowhere eruption of that violently one-sided firefight. The ambush proved how precarious the SEALs’ position truly was.

Felix thought through the LT’s question very hard. The noise had been too far away for him to identify it as specific types of weapons. It might have been a Brazilian Army patrol taking out a guerrilla band. Or it could have been guerrillas getting the jump on a poorly trained army squad…. Or it could involve the other team of Navy SEALs — who’d deployed from the Ohio at the same time Felix did — sent to cover a different area nearer the Guyana Shield highlands. This worried Felix, because the SEALs would never have started an ambush themselves. None of them were even supposed to be here.

Brazil was formally neutral. American armed forces operating on Brazilian soil was an outright violation of international law. It could be taken as an act of war.

Which is why we didn’t just drop in by helicopter, and why the other team can’t call for helo extraction or air support.

Yet U.S. national command authorities had deemed the mission important enough to risk it anyway. The SEALs’ vital role was to provide military indications and warnings. The U.S. simply had to know how far the Axis was willing to go to stir up trouble in South America. If the Axis in fact was active in this part of Brazil, then Felix and the others were tasked to bring back concrete proof — all without being detected. Exactly how this physical proof was supposed to be obtained, Felix and his lieutenant were told they’d best improvise on the spot.

So who hit whom in that ambush? Tensions were already riding too high, with Brazil and Argentina mobilizing along the stretch of border they shared in the middle of the continent. The two countries were on the brink of war, over imagined slights or real provocations. It reminded Felix of India and Pakistan — both of whom were neutral and keeping their heads well down right now — except that the CIA didn’t know if Brazil or Argentina had atom bombs. Felix reminded himself that following deadly attacks and near atrocities by the Boers in the South Pacific, Tokyo had announced just weeks ago that Japan was a nuclear power. Japan, neutral up till then, declined to say if she intended to choose sides. After that, the whole world seemed to go crazy — the parts that hadn’t already gone mad.

With paranoia and warmongering running rampant everywhere, an illegal U.S. incursion into a neutral Latin American nation, if found out, unmasked, could prove disastrous. There was surely much more to the story, or Felix’s team would never have been sent. Felix, a master chief, wasn’t fed the big strategic picture by the higher- ups. But he could use his head, and he guessed that the German presence here — if any — was intended to create an annoying diversion, to draw Brazilian troops away from the faroff Argentine front. That, Felix figured, seemed to imply the Germans intended to back the Argentines in any outright fighting. And that, my man, means one way-serious problemo.

Felix still had to answer his lieutenant. “Ambush adversaries unknown. Possible other SEAL team involved.”

“Should we help them?”

Felix was torn. SEALs trusted one another with their lives and never left a man behind. If the other team was in trouble, Felix and the lieutenant should do everything to assist. But there was nothing they could possibly do. The scene of the ambush was much too far away. Felix judged it would take till noontime tomorrow to get there, at the earliest.

Felix was pissed off. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. But he refused to just give up. He signaled his lieutenant: “Fire into the air? Create a diversion to relieve the pressure.”

It seemed to take forever for the lieutenant to respond. “Negative. Would disclose own position against standing orders. Doubtful slightest real assistance to compromised team would result.”

Felix agreed reluctantly.

All at once he heard more shooting from the same area. His heart began to pound with anxiety and excitement.

That particular rhythm of the firing, the bursts all on full auto and the brief but purposeful pauses, told a definite story to Felix’s trained ear. It wasn’t a bumbling army squad or a rabble of leftist guerrillas. The vicious noises of well-controlled shooting, the perfectly timed crack of grenades, could only be a SEAL team using Special Warfare tactics to break contact with an enemy.

On pins and needles, Felix and his men heard this new act of the drama unfold. Wordlessly they cheered on their friends, praying they’d make their escape. They’d practiced this break-contact drill countless times themselves, with live ammo. For Felix it was like listening to the seventh game of a World Series, from right outside the ballpark, and trying to guess what was happening just from the noise.

Abruptly, the sound of combat halted again. A prolonged and eerie silence took its place. The silence gradually lifted, as if the jungle itself had been holding its breath, and the frightened birds and animals cautiously went back to normal.

“I think they made it,” the lieutenant signaled.

Felix concurred. He was almost overcome with waves of relief. He beseeched his God that none of the men were killed or badly wounded. It would be just like our guys to play dead, then launch a brutal counterambush and make their fighting getaway.

Felix had a sobering thought. He sent to the lieutenant, “All hostiles in area alerted. Danger to own team high.”

“Abort the mission?”

“Negative,” Felix responded without hesitation. He reminded himself the LT was young and untried. “Continue, regain surprise.”

There was a pause, and the lieutenant answered. “Concur. Maintain fifty percent on-watch status. Break camp at first light and continue recon as planned.”

Felix tried to get some sleep, but he wondered. Was his team walking into an elaborate, clever trap? Had German advisers sent a ragtag guerrilla platoon after the other SEAL team to serve as patsies? Was a devious German gambit in play, intended to goad Felix and his team on, and lull them right into another ambush… one laid by kampfschwimmer, from whom the SEALs would not escape?

CHAPTER 3

Jeffrey was still at the reception at the hotel. As he approached the commander, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, for a