Tidal Rip

him and then streamed past with terrifying speed. The noise of it was louder, both above and below. It echoed between the walls inside the narrow chasm too, building even more intensity.

Felix felt like the water was flogging his back, like it would strip off his wet suit and then strip his skin. His head was ringing, his ears hurt from the incredible volume of sound.

He knew it would only get worse. To go downward, along with the flow of the water, was one thing. To reach the base of the cliffs — where that water punched into rock and changed direction to horizontal with unspeakable violence — was beyond the human body’s ability to endure.

Felix struggled to think.

To avoid being crushed by the weight of falling water, he had to find a place where the river under the vortex was least shallow — a hidden pool between the house-sized boulders — so the fluid mass of the river itself would help cushion the constant impact from above. There had to be such places: eons of blasting by water laced with abrasive silt would have carved out pockets in the riverbed at the foot of the escarpment.

With his eyes gritty and stinging, even though he’d scrunched his lids tightly closed for many minutes, Felix did his desperate search by feel in the wet and the dark. He prayed for the guidance of Providence.

Felix hit deep bottom on slippery stones. Water punished him from every direction. It poured down from above and rebounded from below and he was caught in a maelstrom of total chaos. It hurt badly each time he breathed through his Draeger mouthpiece, and he was sure he’d broken some ribs.

Even so, he was still alive, and still had a job to do.

He reached the end of the rope, underwater in the deep pool, but couldn’t find the bomb. Felix struggled through more-sheltered portions of the vortex, tightly hugging the cliff face, searching for quieter spots where the bomb in its hardened casing might have come to rest. Nothing.

He crawled over and between rocks while submerged, relying only on feel. Some of the stones were polished smooth, while others were newly fallen and jagged. He banged his head and smacked his elbows and knees. He searched systematically with arms whose muscles were worked to their very limits. Nothing.

Felix had no choice. He had to let go of the rope, and let the water take him.

I’ve followed pretty much the same path as the bomb. Here I’d let myself loose at about the same point where the Germans let the bomb casing loose from above. My last chance is to hope the water carries us both in the same direction.

Felix was surprised his brain still worked enough to form rational thoughts.

He tried to position his body in the torrent feet first, with his legs held tightly together and slightly bent. This way he might guide himself, and soften any collision. He released the rope and used his rubbery arms to protect his unhel-meted head.

The Devil’s Throat was aptly named. Felix felt himself propelled through Satan’s own water slide. He bumped and scraped along, totally blind. He tried to stay deep, where he knew that water resistance with the bottom would slightly slow its velocity. But this only increased the risk of hitting a waterlogged dead tree, or a boulder, or the wreckage of some boat that had gone over the falls.

Felix’s legs smashed hard into something solid. The force of the river kept his body moving forward, and he did a somersault over the obstruction, underwater. His right foot caught on something; he was jerked to a stop and his hip joint almost dislocated. He was stuck, trapped. He began to panic.

He’d lost his crossing stick sometime before — he had no lever. He almost lost his mouthpiece, and without it he’d surely drown. He managed to open the valve for the Draeger’s emergency oxygen bottle, because the carbon- dioxide absorber was totally useless by now.

Instantly, Felix’s air supply became deliciously fresh and his mind cleared, but he was still held firmly by his left foot, by something heavy on the bottom.

Felix had to do a whole-body crunch against the force of the water to reach his foot to try to free it. He grunted from the effort, and gritted his jaw so hard he feared he’d crush his Draeger mouthpiece or crack his teeth. The muscular pain in his abdomen and chest were excruciating. He slowly bent himself double against the flow. His aching hands touched something.

He’d guessed right all along. His ankle was caught in a carrying handle of the casing for the bomb.

Felix got a firm grip on another carrying handle and worked hard to give his foot some slack. He freed his foot and grabbed the handle with his other hand.

Felix used the bomb now as a moving anchor. Again, so close to the infernal object, he wondered how much time was left until it blew. In spurts, as his dwindling reserves of strength allowed, he lifted and shoved the bomb along the bottom of the river. Slowly he worked his way toward the shore. He began to drag the bomb up the slope of the bank, underwater. Here the force of the river was less strong.

Felix raised his head. He could see above the surface. The shore was very near. This gave him new hope. He dragged the bomb out of the water, onto a narrow gravel beach, strewn with shattered driftwood, that fronted a solid wall of jungle growth.

He was just below the falls. The view was stunning, sublime, but Felix was so numb it barely registered. He bent double, hands on knees, drawing in natural air raggedly, at long last not needing his Draeger, catching his breath.

Then he looked up at the sky. He saw two drones above him. One was the Global Hawk, from before. It was maneuvering oddly, swooping and then turning, as if its controller pilot was trying to tell Felix something.

The other drone was an older type, a Predator. Felix thought it must be Brazilian: he knew they owned a couple.

But the stealthy Predator seemed to be sneaking around behind the Global Hawk. He realized it was the enemy.

The German plotters must have brought one into Argentina — maybe broken down and disguised as different parts before the war.

Beneath the wings of the Predator were two missiles.

Felix panicked again, fearing the Predator would kill him before he could disarm the bomb.

But the missiles were long and thin, meant for air-to-air combat only. As Felix tried to wave a warning, the Predator fired one and then the other missile. The first streaked at the Global Hawk and detonated in a loud and sharp hot-orange flash. Fragments of the drone and burning fuel rained from the sky. The second missile flew through the cloud of debris formed by the first, and kept going into the distance, leaving a trail of dirty yellow-brown exhaust smoke.

Felix ducked as metal bits fell. Liquid fire hit the river, then the flames were washed away.

The Predator came closer, and watched Felix on the ground.

Someone in a black wet suit rushed toward him. Felix thought it was his chief.

He must have somehow made it down the vortex, just like I did.

But the figure wore no American flags on his sleeves. Then Felix recognized the man. They’d been face-to- face before, on the St. Peter and St. Paul Rocks; that time both had worn protective suits. It was the leader of the kampfschwimmer team.

Either he followed me down the vortex, or his automatic-cannon team silenced my light- machine-gun crew — and the German came down the easier way, using ropes and parts of the stairs along the dry parts of the escarpment face. One way or the other, he lost his MP-5.

But the German was armed with a knife. Felix reached for his K-bar fighting knife. It was gone, lost in the falls. He felt for his survival knife; it too was gone, ripped off by the vortex. He went for his titanium dive knife, his final hope, and felt its reassuring haft fit into his hand.

The German obviously recognized Felix; he drew his lips back in an animal sneer. A rematch.

The German held every advantage. Felix was burdened by his Draeger — which out of the water weighed three dozen pounds. He was far beyond exhaustion, into a realm of grim exertion for which he knew no name.

But Felix Estabo would be damned if he lost the contest now.

He crouched to use his Draeger as a shield and forced the German to come at him. Memories flooded back, of another knife fight twenty years before. Felix fingered the old, ugly scar along his cheek, caressing it, and flaunted it at the German, to tease him, egging him on.

The German was taller, so Felix stayed low. The German wore a flak vest, so Felix planned to aim low.

The German lunged and Felix leaned away. The German’s knife struck him on the collarbone. The blade