No one spoke a word to the captain. Even Executive Officer Slick gave him his space as he dealt with the personal sacrifice of ending the suffering sailor’s life through a violent act of mercy.
Brazo heard shovels hit dried foliage and dig into the dirt. He slowly turned and stepped out of the way so the crewmen could offer the last gift to their fallen brothers. Leaning against a tree, he rubbed his sweaty forearm across his brow, smearing dirt and grime.
This place was as deadly as any front in Europe or the Pacific. The dinosaurs were only flesh and blood, though, not manmade hulking masses designed with the only purpose to kill and destroy. Still, their predatory nature made them the most formidable foes. The men who had survived only did so by the slight advantage given by modern weapons. Weapons that were viable only until the last bullet casing spit out its crown of lead.
Lifting his shoulders, and straightening his back, Brazo boldly turned around and gazed over the scene, steeling himself to the harsh reality in an effort to strengthen his resolve as the leader and ensuring confidence in his command of the men remaining in his crew.
XO Slick caught his gaze and raised a hand in salute. Brazo returned the gesture, solidifying the bond of command, loyalty, and the heartfelt friendship.
The land permitted shallow furrows, willing to receive the dead souls who moistened its dirt with blood. Within an hour, the bodies were laid carefully to rest and covered with the blanket of foreign soil. No time was taken to mark the graves. Nothing in this land would acknowledge proper respect.
Brazo gathered his men by the rows of graves. Standing before them, he started from his left and slowly looked each individually in the eyes, sharing the window to his soul and looking through theirs. The last and eighteenth face he looked at was Jim Stone’s.
Stone’s expression weighed with sorrow but showed no sign of defeat. There was a gleam in his eyes that said he saw something in the situation beyond what he could see, touch, taste, hear, and smell. He had breached the paradigm of the three-dimensional world and saw with eyes above mortal man. Brazo had a feeling that if he were to pull Stone aside and ask him to explain, that no words in the human language could adequately convey the staunch faith that inspired such a unique man. A faith Brazo thought he would never care to have. A faith, though, that appeased his curiosity now unlike any other time in his life.
His hands behind his back, Captain Brazo said, “Our fallen brothers are gone but not forgotten. Each died protecting us, giving us the gift of life. This is a gift that must not be squandered. The burden on us is to carry on until we find a way off this place. We owe them that. They will live with us in our memories until the day we die.”
Someone sniffed loudly and several more sailors cleared their throats.
Brazo continued, his voice loud and clear, “I was that which others did not want to be. I went where others feared to go, and did what others failed to do. I have seen the face of terror, felt the stinging cold of fear. I have cried, pained and hoped. But most of all, I have lived times others would say were best forgotten. At least someday, I will be able to say that I was proud of what I was, a seaman.” Brazo raised his hand in salute, returned by the crew, and said, “We wish you Godspeed.” He lowered his hand to his side.
Jim Stone lifted his gaze to the heavens, and said, “The Lord is my Pilot, I shall not drift. He guides me across the dark waters. He steers me in deep channels. He keeps my log. He pilots me by the star of holiness for His name’s sake. Yea, though I sail ʼmid the fenders and tempests of life, I shall dread no danger for He is near me. His love and care shelter me. He prepares a harbor before me in the homeland of eternity. He anoints the waves with oil, my ship rides calmly. Surely, sunlight and starlight shall favor me on my voyages, and I will rest in the Port of our Lord forever.”
It didn’t bother Brazo in the least that Stone spoke from his heart. He momentarily considered asking the crew if anyone else would like to say a word, share a memory, to shed some of the built-up grief. But, there was no time for that. The battle with the dinosaurs had caused enough commotion that had surely been heard miles away. The smell of dead meat festering in the jungle sun would soon have the nose of the carrion eaters. It was time to leave and find a safe place before dark.
“Men, it’s time we gather what we can and head north,” Brazo said. He saw uncertainty on his crew’s faces, their minds probing the unknown. “Are you with me?” he asked.
“Sir, yes, sir!” the men said, responding to their training, and stiffening to attention.
“Executive Officer, Slick!” Brazo called.
“Okay, men. Let’s pack up and get ready to leave.” Slick led the short hike back to the supplies.
*
The remaining crew of the USS Sutton, walking five-wide, side-by-side, slowed to a halt as they reached the camp’s perimeter. Brazo continued forward as the men parted, seeing two clumps on the ground surrounded by the small theropods and a few pterosaurs. There were two dead dinosaurs like the ones who had attacked them earlier also, not far from the clumps. Strangely, nothing fed on the dinosaurs’ carcasses.
Hampton Wallace and XO Slick joined Brazo to either side as the captain sure-stepped toward the dead bodies of his crewmen.
The flying reptiles, these the size of hawks, took to the air in fear. Something long and stringy swung like a pendulum under the beak of the last one to leave the ground.
The small theropods ate greedily, some giving occasional hisses to companions encroaching their territory. None seemed concerned with the three humans walking toward them.
Brazo’s boot met the underside of a theropod’s tail, punting the little devil over the first body stripped of most of its flesh, and sending the other feeding theropods scattering.
Wallace fast-stepped over to the other body on the ground. The closest theropod looked at him as he launched his boot toward it. It darted out of the way just in time and hissed. “I’ll get ya!” He swung his boot wildly, trying to make a connection, only to send the creature fleeing for the safety of the jungle.
“You want some of this?” Wallace said to the eight or so theropods surrounding the body, stomping the ground as he approached.
The theropods got the message and all scattered before feeling the brunt of a leather boot.
Whitish, red-stained bones basked under the soft orange of the approaching evening. Brazo had seen his share of dead men in his career, some injured in the most gruesome of ways. These two men resembled skeletons on display at a Halloween carnival. All the flesh had been eaten from the faces, and the eye sockets gazed emptily toward the heavens. Eerily, their hair still covered the tops of their heads. Seeing a smiling skull with hair sent chills up his spine.
After a shallow breath, Brazo reached down and jerked the chain and dog tag from what was left of Danny Underwood.
Wallace didn’t wait for orders and removed Joey Gridley’s ID.
Jim Stone approached and took the dog tags from each, placing them in a bag on his side filled with the IDs of others who had died earlier.
“See that dinosaur over there?” Wallace said, pointing. “I think Rodrigue managed to kill it and run away. If you look at the brush, you can kinda see a path.”
Brazo walked over toward the dinosaur, with Slick following him. He looked at the ground, and said, “I see his footprints. He made a run for it, all right.”
“Yeah, and the other footprints tell us that more of these monsters went after him,” Slick said, disappointment, but not surprise, in his voice.
“At this point, he headed north. We’ll follow the path as long as it stays in that direction. If he’s alive, we might get lucky and find him,” Brazo said, his words sounding hollow in his own ears. Luck is not what they needed. They needed intervention. At this point, he began to think the unthinkable. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. His fear of coming upon the Germans and going into an all-out war gave way to a new way of thinking. Could they form an alliance? Maybe, but only if they had b
een as decimated in this cursed place as them. If the Germans greatly outnumbered them, then all bets were probably off. Still, Brazo left his mind open. He needed to keep his men alive and get them out of here. At this point, the captain wasn’t too proud to pray to God, nor was he self-righteous enough not to make a deal with the Devil.
*
Brazo’s crew made temporary camp not long after an hour’s march from the original basecamp. The cloak of darkness shadowed everything below the treetops, so making ground during the night was far too risky. The heavens above, though, sparkled with thousands and thousands of diamonds that looked like they had been collected in a jug and spilled across the sky. The captain had seen the night sky from the middle of oceans, far away from land. He had never seen the intensity of majestic beauty as this night had brought. For the first time, he understood why the ancients had deemed the galaxy the Milky Way.
With only eighteen left in the group, Brazo had insisted on pulling guard duty along with the enlisted men. His shift began at 4 a.m., and he had surprisingly caught a few hours of sleep beforehand. He had been probably more mentally exhausted than physically tired. When he had laid his head on a thin, rolled up blanket, his eyes closed, and his mind shut down like a light switch thrown in the off position. Slick told him that he started snoring almost immediately. And, that the XO didn’t know if his snores were more likely to attract dangers or scare them away. Brazo smiled thinking about that. Alan Slick had a knack of knowing simple things to say to make him feel human and not a killing war machine the US Navy had created.
The glow of dawn eased like an eraser on the eastern horizon, fading darkness with its orange light, and slowly transforming it into day-blue. The stars dimmed, too. Wisps of thin white clouds trailed upon their morning journey across the sky.
It was a new day, and with new days should come new hope. Brazo had to instill the hope in his men if they were going to survive.
“Well, at least we had a quiet night,” Slick said, catching the captain in his thoughts.
“Yep. We all needed a break. Did you sleep well?” Brazo asked.
“Well enough. My legs are good for another day’s march.”
“Funny thing about mountains. They always look much closer than what they really are,” Brazo said, glancing north.
“Well, where I come from, that thing is not big enough to be called a mountain. How long do you think it might take us to get there?”
“Terrain is uncertain, and you know how the jungle slows you down. Discounting being attacked, I say if we keep steady at it, we can reach the base by nightfall.”
Slick rubbed the back of his neck. “Hmm, that’s pushing it, I think.”
“Well, I did say that high point looked closer than it probably is. I, at least, want the men to have an objective they will try to meet. If I’m going to lead, I’m going to lead big.”
“Yes, you’re right. That’s what we’re paid to do.” Slick chuckled.
A crewman who had been relieved from his guard post walked up to the XO and captain. “Sir, I have a report.”
“Go ahead, Sanders. Did you see something?” Brazo asked.
“About fifty yards from here, there’s a gully as far as I can see in either direction, cutting through the path north,” Bill Sanders said.
“A gully? How wide?” Slick asked.
“Dunno for sure. Ten, twenty feet. I couldn’t tell how deep it is because I didn’t go down there. Right now, we’re on high ground. The land drops off maybe a hundred feet before it flattens out by the gully.”
“Doesn’t sound like this trip is getting any easier,” Slick said.
“Well, there’s a dead tree laying across the gully about a third of a mile west. It’s a nice size tree big enough to walk on. We might be able to cross there,” Sanders said.
Brazo’s dim eyes brightened. “Okay. Good job, Sanders. If there’s a way across this thing, we’re going to find it.”
“I’ll give the orders for the men to get some chow in them before we move out,” Slick said to the captain.
“All right. I want us out of here and by the gully in less than an hour,” Brazo said.
“Yes, sir,” Slick said and set off to spin the wheels into motion.
*
After a breakfast of hard biscuits, pemmican, chocolate tablets, and black water passed off as coffee, the team of Americans hiked north and down by the gully.
Footprints told the story that one human had come this way, along with a few dinosaurs. From the looks of the animal tracks, it was of the same variety that had attacked the camp. There were some blood drops staining the ground on top of the dinosaur tracks. Hopefully, meaning it came from them and not the human.
Brazo felt sure these were Adam Rodrigue’s footprints. Yesterday, from their hike from basecamp to the new camp, they had traveled Rodrigue’s path for a short distance until the boy veered off to the east. They did come to one point later where it looked like he had headed back north for a ways, but then went west. The captain assumed the crewman kept an erratic pattern to throw off his pursuers, still maintaining a northern trek, though.
It wasn’t until the first man walked across the tree bridge and over to the other side that they knew Adam had made it that far. The ground showed only the imprints of his boots and not clawed feet of deadly dinosaurs. The boot prints basically went west from there, which was disappointing. Brazo couldn’t afford to send men after him.
The depth of the gully was hard to determine because of the uneven edges and darkness. The angle of the sun needed to be directly overhead for them to get a better idea, although a rock tossed down into the middle of the abyss in places took a good ten seconds to return a sound.
The gulley was not an issue. Everyone had made it safely across the tree bridge, and the journey northward continued.
Chapter 18
Wilhelm Lange had insisted on leading the survivors of U-616 to the commander’s new destination. The nine other remaining crewmen offered no protest. Artur Phelps appeared to be relieved that the responsibility would not rest upon his shoulders.
Lange boasted that the hatred in his heart for these nasty creatures invoked the spirit of Hermóðr, an ancient Norse God, the war-spirit and messenger of the Gods. The energy churning within him would act as a repellant for any of the dinosaurs who might lurk along the way.
Lieutenant Bach watched the crewmen’s gazes lock on Lange as he went on his rant. The man offered something that gave them hope and inspiration. At a time like this, faith in leadership was the most important component to survival.
The entire time Lange lobbied for leadership, Commander Christoph stared blankly toward the air in front of his face. Bach had no way of knowing if he was listening. The fate of his son was most certainly pushing all other thoughts from his mind.
Eichmann and Stangl had acted like the notion of one of them being first in line was well beneath their honorary stature. Both would turn and gauge Christoph’s reactions at times as Lange’s address rivaled the Führer’s speeches himself. Disdain steadily crept across their expressions as Lange rambled on.
When Lange finally cooled down, spittle had frothed to one corner of his lips.
All eyes then turned to Christoph, who acted no more present than before.
“The commander has talents I was not aware of,” Eichmann said. “He sleeps with his eyes open.”
Christoph turned his attention to Eichmann, narrowing his gaze sharp enough to cut steel.
Before any sparks flew, Bach said, “The commander indicated to me to put Lange in front. He is a warrior at heart and will alert us to dangers we are certain to encounter.”
Though Christoph never uttered a word, the energy emanating from him was such that defused any berating Eichmann and Stangl might have offered.
All of that had occurred a few hours ago. The trek through the jungle had gone surprisingly without incident since then. Bach wondered if all the gunfire and explosions earlier had scared some
of the threats away. He didn’t have faith in Lange’s claim to God-gifted blessings. Deep inside, he kept waiting for their luck to fail and the pits of Hell to unleash the demons of this accursed land.
The lieutenant followed two steps behind the commander, keeping a wary eye for obstacles which might offer danger as Christoph robotically followed the loose line. Bach noticed the commander looked pale. Sweat continually rolled down his face and glistened under the hot sun. His cheeks sagged, and his face looked like it had aged twenty years. Christoph sighed deeply every few minutes, which apparently annoyed Eichmann. The elite SS officer would glance back at each sigh, his mouth and nose drew in as if he smelled something disgusting.
The jungle thinned a bit, and the terrain rose. The path north led to a high point in the area that, in reality, should have been thought of as a high hill. Climbing to the top would not be an issue. Getting there alive was the challenge.
Christoph sighed loudly, air rushing from his lungs like a bellows stoking a fire.
Eichmann, who was in front of Stangl, who was in front of the commander, stopped cold in his tracks. The officer spun on his heels, raised a finger toward Christoph, and said, “Enough! You sad excuse for a Kriegsmarine commander. You mope like a child, whereas, you should steel your resolve and be the man you were trained to be. Death is part of life. Those that live bury the dead and move on. You are not fit to command!”
The whole group had come to an abrupt halt. The two crewmen behind Bach stepped to his side. The rest of the group in front of the commander remained where they were. The time had come. For most of the trip, the SS officers had itched to take command. Christoph not only looked like he had lost his will to fight, but the will to live, also.
Bach knew better than to intervene. Stepping in for Christoph would do the commander no favors. Part of Bach worried this standoff would do more to lessen the group’s chance of survival than facing another attack from a dinosaur.
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