Van Lewen came out onto solid ground first, skidded to a halt on the muddy riverbank. 'Holy shit,' he said.
'What is it?' Race asked as he came alongside him and looked out at the river.
The first thing he saw was Heinrich Anistaze's little Zodiac speedboat, cutting a ribbon of wash as it sped away from them into the wider waters of the river proper.
'What are you talking about?' he asked.
And then he saw the other boats.
'Holy shit.'
It looked like a veritable armada.
There must have been at least twenty boats out there on the wide brown river at the base of the waterfall. Boats of all shapes and sizes.
Five long-bodied shallow-draught assault boats sped around the perimeter of the fleet. They were Rigid Raiders— sleek, open-topped aluminium-hulled attack craft commonly used by the SAS for high-speed raiding.
Four Vietnam-era military patrol boats known as 'Pibbers' cruised casually alongside some of the larger boats near the centre of the armada. Pibbers were superfast 35-foot gunboats fitted with armour plating, turret-mounted 20mm machine-guns and side-mounted torpedo pods. Their name was a serviceman's abbreviation of their official designation PBR (Patrol Boat River), and although the Pibber was already well known for its exploits in Vietnam, it had been immortalised in the Hollywood movie Apocalypse Now.
Three massive helicopter landing barges surged along the river inside the circle of attack boats. On the helipads of two of the barges sat Mosquito light-attack helicopters. The chopper that had been up on the tower top earlier was in the process of landing on the third barge's helipad right now.
Trailing behind the middle helipad barge, however—and looking remarkably out of place alongside the three ultra° high-tech Mosquitos—was a rather battered-looking little seaplane.
It was a Grumman JRF-5 'Goose', a compact twin propellered riverplane that dated back to the Second World War.
The Grumman Goose was a very distinctive little plane, classic in its design. From the side, its bow was roughly the same shape as a labrador's snout—short and fiat-topped but rounded at the waterline. It sat in the water on its belly with two stabilising pontoons hanging down from its outstretched wings. Notably, the Goose had two methods of entry, a side door and a pop-up hatch in the nose.
This Goose, however, also packed a punch—a lightweight twin-barrelled 20mm Gaffing gun had been affixed to its left-hand flank.
In the centre of the Nazi fleet sat the armada's focal point—and the destination of Anistaze's Zodiac—an enormous white catamaran.
The command boat.
It looked magnificent, sleek in the extreme, at least 150 feet long. Its two massive hulls were painted pristine white while its sharply slanting windows were tinted jet black.
Sonar arrays rotated atop its roof. A dazzling white Bell Jet Ranger helicopter sat on the helipad that made up the stern of the giant craft.
In addition to the helicopter, rocking in the water alongside the big catamaran, tied to it, was the meanest- looking speedboat Race had ever seen. It, too, was painted white, the same colour as the command boat and the helicopter—a matching set. It sat low in the water and it had an ultra-long hull that tapered sharply to a point at the bow. A backward-slanting spoiler arched over the driver's seat—an aerodynamic precaution designed to prevent the high-powered speedboat from being lifted off the river's surface while it flew across the water at top speed. Race saw the word 'SCARAB' painted across its side.
Scooting around the whole motley fleet-cutting thin ribbons of white wash behind them—were about six Jet Raiders: small one-man assault vehicles not unlike regular jet-skis.
But they were longer than normal jet-skis—maybe nine feet from tip to tail. And they were sleeker, meaner, faster.
They had saddle-like seats and bullet-shaped noses, and they all sat high in the water as they moved, with only the back half of their hulls touching the water's surface as they skimmed lightly across it, whipping around the larger boats.
Race and the others watched as Anistaze's Zodiac reached the command boat and the notorious Nazi field commander climbed aboard. Immediately, the big white catamaran began to power up. As it did so, the rest of the fleet began to move out.
'They're leaving!' Doogie shouted.
“There!” Van Lewen said, spotting three abandoned Jet Raiders lying on the riverbank not far from the waterfall— left there, no doubt, by the members of the Nazi demolition team.
'Come on,' Van Lewen said.
The six of them raced for the three Jet Raiders.
The river's surface raced by beneath them.
The three stolen Jet Raiders kicked up spectacular sprays of white behind them as they raced side by side across the water in pursuit of the Nazi armada.
Race rode double with Van Lewen. He drove while the Green Beret sat behind him like a pillion passenger on a motorcycle, with one hand wrapped around Race's waist, the other holding his M-16 ready to fire.
Doogie Kennedy skimmed across the water to their right, riding double with the German paratrooper Molke, while Renee and Schroeder shot along the river's surface to their left—Renee driving, Schroeder riding shotgun.
