off the dirt banks, eroding clots of mud that fell into the water and dissolved.
They started upstream, keeping the speed down because, in less than five minutes, they came across an expected towboat hauling logs down from the highlands. The boat was a wooden-hulled, bow-heavy scow with black smoke belching from its exhaust and more smoke coiling from the engine housing at the stern. The tree trunks were left floating in the water with the perimeter logs chained together to keep the whole mass intact. Cabrillo estimated there were at least two hundred twenty-foot lengths of what looked to him to be mahogany. He figured a larger load would be too cumbersome in such a narrow river.
No radio mast, Mark Murphy said.
Probably has a sat phone, Juan replied. But I'm not worried about them reporting us. He can tell we're Ninth Brigade, and he won't want any trouble from us.
They stayed far to the right side of the channel as they passed the lumber boat. Neither crew made any gesture of greeting. In fact, the tug's three-man crew kept their eyes pointed decidedly downstream the entire time.
Once clear, Juan opened the throttles further, but had to slow again just moments later. Another nearly identical boat appeared ahead. This one was making its way around a tight bend and was well into Cabrillo's side of the river. Tradition would be for Juan to idle his boat until the floating logjam made its turn and straightened out. But arrogant soldiers of an elite paramilitary group wouldn't care one bit about riverine customs.
In Spanish, Juan shouted, Stop where you are and let us pass.
I cannot, the boat's captain yelled back.
He hadn't bothered to look to see who was addressing him. He was watching the shifting mass of logs edging closer and closer to the inside bank. If they rammed into the shore, it was possible that his boat wouldn't have the power to pull them free. It wasn't an uncommon occurrence, and it could take hours for the crew to unchain some of the logs from the bundle in order to free themselves and hours more to set the load right again.
I'm not asking, I'm telling, Juan said, letting anger drop his voice to a snarled hiss.
One of the deckhands tapped the boat's captain on the shoulder. The man finally looked over at the RHIB, with its crew of armed soldiers in maroon berets. He went a little pale under his two days' growth of beard.
Okay, okay, he said with the resignation of the powerless in the face of oppression. He throttled back, and the current immediately slammed his load into the riverbank. A dozen logs as thick around as oil barrels were thrown onto shore. The impact snapped a section of chain, hurling bits of its rusted links through the air. The oily workboat slowly came across the current, pressing its load deeper into the bank while at the same time opening the channel for Cabrillo and the RHIB. Logs that had broken free were already drifting downstream.
Keeping in character, Juan threw the hapless men a mocking salute and firewalled the throttles.
Murph said, It's going to take the better part of the day to clean that up.
Had we waited for him to clear the corner, he would have been suspicious, Mike Trono countered. Better them inconvenienced than us questioned. Juan speaks Spanish like a native, but I get lost with the menu at a Mexican restaurant.
They continued upstream, passing one more boat towing a mass of timber, before the handheld GPS said they were as close to the crash site as the river would take them. After cruising for another quarter mile, they found a small feeder stream, and Juan backed the boat into it. There was barely enough room for the RHIB's hull, and the jungle scraped against the vessel's rubber sides.
Jerry Pulaski tied a line around a moldering stump, and Juan cut the engines. After so many hours of their throaty roar, it took several seconds for Cabrillo to hear jungle sounds through the ringing in his ears. Without being told, the men set about camouflaging the boat, hacking fronds and leaves from different trees and bushes and creating an intricate screen over the RHIB's bow. When they were done, the craft was all but invisible from five feet away.
Well, boys, Juan said as they gathered their communications equipment and other gear together, including a specially made harness for Jerry to carry the plutonium power cell, our leisurely cruise downriver is over. Now the real slog begins. I'll take point. Mike, you've got the drag slot. Keep low and quiet. We have to assume the Argies have their own teams out here looking for the debris, or at least investigating. Stay sharp.
The men, their faces smeared with camouflage greasepaint, looking as fearsome as any native warrior, nodded silently as they stepped from the boat onto the spongy shore. They started inland, following a game trail that ran roughly parallel to the small stream. The temperature was a solid eighty degrees, with the humidity a few notches higher. In just a few minutes, their pores were running like faucets.
For the first mile, Cabrillo felt every muscle cramp and ache from their time in the river, but as they forged on the countless laps he'd swum over the course of his life began to show. He moved more lithely, his boots merely brushing the loamy soil. Even his stump was feeling good. He'd always been more accustomed to wide-open spaces the sea or the desert but his other senses were making up for what his eyes could not see. There was a faint trace of woodsmoke in the air from the logging operation, he knew and when a bird's startled cry carried down from the jungle canopy, he paused and waited to learn what had disturbed it. Was it startled by a predator or by something it saw walking the same path as Juan's team?
The mental acuity required for jungle stalking was as physically taxing as the effort to slide through the dense foliage.
Something off to his left caught Juan's eye. He immediately dropped to a knee, hand-signaling the men strung out behind him to do likewise. Cabrillo studied the spot that had attracted his attention through his machine pistol's iron sights. The quick squirt of adrenaline into his veins seemed to heighten his vision. He perceived no movement, not even a breeze rustling the leaves. This far below the canopy, air movement was a rarity. He cautiously swayed back, changing his angle of view in minute increments.
There.
A dull flash of metal. Not the slick black sheen of a modern weapon trained on him but the pewter shimmer of old aluminum left out in the elements. According to the GPS, they were still several miles from where the power cell was projected to have landed, and he wondered for a moment if this was other debris from the doomed satellite.
Still in a crouch, and with the MP-5 tucked hard against his shoulder, he moved off the trail, confident that what he was taking away from his own peripheral vision would be covered by his men. He approached with the patience of one of the jungle cats. Five feet away, he saw the outline of something large through the undergrowth. Whatever this was, it wasn't part of the doomed orbiter.
He used his weapon's barrel to move aside a clump of vines hanging from a tree and grunted in surprise. They had discovered what looked like the cockpit of a downed plane. The windshield was long gone, and creepers had infiltrated, snaking around seats and bulkheads like a cancerous growth. But what really held his attention was what lay in the copilot's seat. There was little left of the body, just a brown-green skeleton that would soon dissolve into its chair. Its clothing had long since rotted away, but lying in the pelvic girdle and shining brightly in the diffused sunlight was a brass strip that Juan knew had been the guy's zipper.
He whistled softly, and seconds later Mark Murphy and Jerry Pulaski approached. Mike would remain near the trail, watching their six.
What do you think? Juan asked quietly.
Looks like this plane's been here awhile, Jerry said, swatting at a mouse-sized bug that had landed on his neck.
Mark's expression was thoughtful for a moment, and then his eyes widened. This isn't a plane, he said with awe in his voice. This is the Flying Dutchman.
Forgive my ignorance, but wasn't the Dutchman a ghost ship? Pulaski replied.
The Flying Dutchman was a blimp, Mark told him, and pointed. Look between the seats. See that big wheel. That's for controlling a blimp's pitch. Rotate it forward, it engages the elevator on the fin assembly, and she goes nose down. Move it back, and the nose rises.
What makes you think this is the Flying Dutchman and not some lost Navy patrol from World War Two?
Because we're a thousand miles inland from both the Atlantic and the Pacific, and the Flying Dutchman went missing while looking for a lost city in the jungle.
Okay, Juan said. Go back and tell it from the beginning.
Mark couldn't tear his eyes off the airship's shattered gondola. When I was a kid, I kind of had a thing for blimps and zeppelins. It was just a fad, you know, a hobby. Before that, it was locomotives from the Steam Age.
