04 Tidal Rip

by Joe Buff

  The lieutenant called the sergeant over. “Give me the map.”

  As they wasted precious minutes and the sky became increasingly dark, Felix showed the lieutenant the vague area of where he’d made contact with the enemy—it had poured rain again that afternoon, and the brushfires from the fighting had surely been snuffed. Felix was certain the Germans would be hiding or gone long before the Brazilians could get anywhere near them on foot.

  A villager lit straw torches. They gave off dancing yellow light.

  The lieutenant went to brief his squad leaders by red flashlight. Felix led his men in the other direction, toward the river. The Araguari was high and running fast, and Felix could hear it even before the torchlight outlined the near edge of the riverbank against the wet blackness beyond. To his great relief, there were a handful of boats tied up at a rickety pier, at an indentation in the bank sheltered from the main flood current.

  To steal a boat at this point, they’d have to wait some time for all the villagers to be asleep, and even then they might be caught—some shacks with light in their windows were close to the pier. Time was one thing the team’s wounded man did not have. Getting caught would surely start a noisy, attention-getting argument with the natives, or an even more compromising waterborne chase. No, outright theft, discovered quickly or at first light, is definitely not advisable with genuine Brazilian forces right here.

  Felix found an old man who owned one of the boats and said he needed to requisition it. He told the man to speak to the authorities in Ferreira Gomes, and he’d be reimbursed. That ought to create enough bureaucratic confusion to cover the SEAL team’s tracks. Felix wasn’t happy about needing to tell this sort of lie to an innocent villager.

  The man wasn’t going for it. He threw up his hands. “How am I supposed to get upriver to Ferreira Gomes without my motorboat?”

  Felix forced himself to hide his real annoyance. “How much?”

  “Huh?”

  “How much for the boat?”

  “It’s not just a boat. It’s my livelihood.” The boat smelled of dead fish, and the inside looked greasy and slimy.

  “How much?”

  Felix and the man began to bargain. They settled on a price in local currency.

  “How far are you going?”

  Felix refused to say.

  “You’ll need petrol.”

  Felix sighed. “How much?”

  Again they haggled.

  “You’ll need lanterns. It’s dark.”

  “All right. Lanterns. What kind?”

  “Kerosene.”

  “Full?”

  “Yes, I’ll fill them.”

  “How much?”

  The man named a figure.

  Felix sighed again, as if he regretted having to part with hard cash. The total price agreed to was high but not unreasonable.

  Felix nodded to one of his men, who’d been leaning exhausted against the wall of the fisherman’s shack—the walls were made of old plywood, with no glass in the windows, and the roof was rusty corrugated tin. The SEAL pulled a roll of worn Brazilian bills from a pocket of his rucksack. Felix counted out the proper payment and handed it to the fisherman.

  Felix gestured for his men to get in the motorboat. With all their equipment and the lieutenant’s body, it almost sank right there.

  Felix turned to the fisherman. “Order and progress!” The Brazilian national motto.

  “Huh?”

  “I said, ‘Order and progress!’”

  “Whatever. Hurry up. If you’re going east you’ll hit the pororoca.” The old man turned and went into his shack. The pororoca was a huge wave—a tidal bore—that rushed in at the mouth of the Araguari every twelve hours.

  Another time bomb ticking on our heads.

  Felix started the motorboat’s engine and left the pier. It ran surprisingly well. As skilled as he was in small-boat handling, the current was just too strong for the overloaded boat. The men had to bail for their lives and balance carefully, and even so they were in danger of capsizing any second.

  When they were out of sight of the village, Felix turned down the kerosene lamps. He told the men to jettison their unneeded equipment in a deep part of the channel. This improved the freeboard just enough to keep the boat from swamping. They kept their weapons and ammo—they didn’t have much ammo left. They also kept their diving gear. Felix relit the lanterns, and put one at the bow and one at the stern.

  This way no one will think we’re trying to hide.

  By lantern light the racing water was silt-laden mocha brown. Felix revved the engine to maximum power. Dirty smoke poured out of the exhaust, and the motorboat went faster. The vibrations were so strong he was half afraid the boat would shake apart. But there was no compromising now. If an enemy was setting up to shoot at him from the bank, speed was everything. If they were too slow getting downstream and out to sea, they’d nose under the boiling forward face of the next inbound pororoca—and they’d never come up. Water around the fast-moving boat splashed higher; the men continued bailing for their lives.

  The moon began to rise. First Felix saw its silver aura from below the horizon, and then the moon itself emerged. It reflected off the river sometimes, between the galleries of trees that lined both banks. The stars Felix could see overhead were very sharp and steady. He prayed it didn’t start to rain—without the moon and stars he couldn’t see far enough ahead to steer, and a downpour like the last one would drown them all. One of his team, an expert in first aid, was doing what he could for their injured man.

  The injured man, his equipment and flak vest removed now, lay motionless. He didn’t moan or writhe. He just breathed slowly, and his respiration was more and more labored.

  “There’s too much fluid in his chest,” Felix said. “It’s occluding his lungs.” As a former hospital corpsman, he knew about such things.

  “I can try to rig a tube,” the first-aid man said. He meant insert a drain so the built-up fluid wouldn’t press against the lungs and heart.

  Conditions here were hardly ideal, but Felix nodded.

  “I’ll start,” the aid man said. One of the other SEALs brought a lantern closer. Bugs swarmed around the lantern light. Flies were drawn to the blood. Other flies and mosquitoes bothered Felix. He tried to ignore them.

  Felix followed the twists and turns of the rushing river down to the sea. The noise of the outboard motor was very loud, a higher tone than the roar of the rain-swollen Araguari. The stench of gasoline and kerosene and fumes helped cover the smell of rotting garbage that even Felix splashing himself with river water couldn’t remove. The engine and lamp smoke also helped repel the insects, which would only get thicker as they neared the coastal swamps.

  Felix looked at the moon and gave thanks to God for being alive. He gingerly felt for the unexploded grenade round in his rucksack. He fingered the bent fléchettes embedded hard into his flak vest; he was sure the surgeon on the Ohio would find another fléchette in the wounded man’s chest somewhere, plus who knew what sorts of bullets and shrapnel in the lieutenant’s corpse.

  Felix glanced into the boat. Some of the men continued bailing, using their helmets. Others helped steer with oars they’d found in the bottom of the boat—if the boat veered broadside to the current they were doomed instantly. The aid man cared for his patient. The boat rocked in the current, and shipped a lot of water, and Felix and his team were barely holding their own.

  One man killed in action. One wounded in action, condition critical. Mission accomplished, but at a high price.

  Felix estimated their rate of speed along the bank.

  Maybe we’ll beat the tidal bore, and maybe we won’t. If we do we kill the lights and sneak out past the reefs and sandbars…. We aim for a spot where the surf isn’t runningtoo high. We lower our sonar distress transponder and hope a minisub from the Ohio hears it and picks us up before broad daylight.

  CHAPTER 9

  To leave the Norfolk Navy Base covertly and rejoin USS Ch
allenger, Jeffrey sneaked in disguise aboard a Virginia-class fast-attack submarine, and hitched a ride out to sea. The Virginia boat submerged as soon as she could—to begin her own deployment protecting the African relief convoy. Jeffrey was forced to watch inside the control room, a mere passenger. He felt cheated of having the captain’s important privilege: that last view of the outside world and that last breath of fresh air, up in the tiny bridge cockpit atop the sail, before the sail trunk hatches were dogged and all main ballast tanks were vented. His only glimpse of the early-morning twilight was via the photonics mast, as another captain had the conn. The view on a video display screen just wasn’t the same.

  Jeffrey grabbed some sleep in the executive officer’s stateroom fold-down guest rack. He had been up all night in briefings and planning sessions in Norfolk. A messenger woke him when the Virginia boat was beyond the continental shelf, saying that the minisub from Challenger was ready to pick him up. The entire rendezvous and docking took place submerged, for stealth. Challenger herself lurked more than thirty nautical miles away, for even more stealth.

  Jeffrey greeted the two-man crew of his minisub—a junior officer and a senior chief—then went into the mini’s transport compartment and took a catnap. He woke when he felt the minisub maneuvering for the docking inside Challenger’s pressure-proof in-hull hangar, behind her sail.

  The mini’s crew went through final mating and lockdown procedures. The big doors of the hangar swung closed. Ambient sea pressure around the mini was relieved. The crew undogged the bottom hatch and opened the top hatch of Challenger’s mating-trunk air lock. Jeffrey quickly climbed down the steep steel ladder. Minisub maintenance technicians were ready with tool bags to climb up.

  Jeffrey came out of the air lock into a narrow corridor inside his ship. His executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Jackson Jefferson Bell, was waiting for him.

  “Welcome back, Captain,” Bell said.

  “Good to see you again, XO.” The two men shook hands firmly and warmly.

  “How’s the baby?” Bell’s wife had given birth to their first child, a son, a couple of months before.

  “Great, sir.” Bell grinned. To Jeffrey he was a changed man since becoming a father, somehow more mature and mellow, and more involved with life. Jeffrey felt a bit jealous.

  “Lieutenant Willey has the deck and conn,” Bell said. Willey was the ship’s engineer.

  “The crew has a basic idea of our mission parameters?”

  “Yes, sir. I was briefed by Commodore Wilson’s deputy and also had a private talk with commander, Sub Group Two.” He referred to the rear admiral commanding the three New London fast-attack squadrons—Wilson’s boss. “I’ve told the men about the convoy sailing for the Central African pocket, sir, and our role to seek and destroy the Admiral von Scheer.”

  “Good. Let’s make the CACC our first stop.” CACC, command and control center, was the modern name for a submarine’s control room.

  Jeffrey followed Bell down the corridor. The lieutenant commander was a couple of inches taller than Jeffrey was, fit but not as muscular, and a couple of years younger. Bell’s walk was confident. His posture projected pent-up positive energy. He was clearly pumped from having been in command of the ship in Jeffrey’s absence. Jeffrey smiled to himself. I’m gonna need Bell’s skills and support more than ever, on this mission.

  Crewmen Jeffrey went by perked up when they saw their captain. He smiled and gave them quick hellos.

  It’s good to be back. Jeffrey took in the familiar sights, sounds, and smells of his command. The flameproof linoleum tiles on the deck. The imitation-wood wainscoting that covered the bulkheads. The bright red fire extinguishers and axes. The gentle breeze of coolness through the ventilator ducts. The triangular Velcro-like pads on the deck that marked valves for the emergency air-breathing masks. The long and narrow pipes along the overheads, with clusters of fittings for those valves—and all the other exposed bundles of pipes and wires and cables flowing like purposeful rivers everywhere.

  Bell had put the ship at battle stations for the rendezvous, just in case. Jeffrey squeezed past damage-control parties stationed in the corridors. Again he greeted his crew. Some wore thick and heavy firefighting gear. Most of the men were barely out of their teens.

  The control room was rigged for white—normal daytime fluorescent lighting. Jeffrey stood in the aisle. Lieutenant Willey sat at the two-man desk-high command workstation in the center of the compartment. Bell sat down in the other seat, as fire-control coordinator. The overall atmosphere was one of concentration and great care: although Challenger was still in heavily patrolled home waters, an enemy threat could appear at any time—an Axis submarine, a mine, anything. Jeffrey let Willey retain the conn. He told him to go deep and head due south at the ship’s top quiet speed: twenty-six knots.

  Jeffrey liked the lanky and straight-talking Willey. He had been an engineer himself, on his own department-head tour, between his stint at the Pentagon and his more recent planning assignment at the Naval War College. Like many nuclear submarine engineers, Willey had an air of intensity and overwork. Besides his turns on watch as officer of the deck and conn in the CACC, he was responsible for a million details of keeping Challenger’s entire propulsion system in good shape. Willey’s turf was the whole back half of the boat, from the reactor compartment to the hot and cramped engine room and turbogenerator spaces to the pump jet behind the stern. He had broken a leg in combat on Challenger’s first war patrol in December, but that hadn’t stopped him—leg in a cast and all—from going right back out with Jeffrey on their next emergency assignment. By now, Willey’s leg was well healed.

  Jeffrey went back and forth between checking the status of the ship’s important systems with Bell on Bell’s display screens, and greeting—and sizing up—the other main members of his battle-stations team.

  Challenger’s chief of the boat, whom everyone called COB—pronounced “cob”—sat in the left seat of the ship control station at the front of the control room. COB was a salty master chief of Latino background, built like a bulldog, with a leadership style to match. COB came from a clan of Jersey City truckers, but he liked to brag that as the black sheep of the family, he instead had gone to sea. COB was—among many other things—effectively head foreman and shop steward for all of Challenger’s enlisted people. He was in charge of their training, morale, and discipline. The oldest man aboard, in his early forties, COB’s many years of navy service gave him potent credibility. Now, at the ship-control station, he managed the ship’s ballast and trim tanks, compressed air banks, pumps of all types including the powerful bilge pumps, and the hydraulic systems. COB constantly scanned his dials and readings and indicator lights. Flow diagrams and schematics danced on his screens. He worked switches to fine-tune things, as slight differences in temperature and salinity in the surrounding water altered the water’s density, and with it Challenger’s buoyancy—her tendency to rise or sink.

  Next to COB sat the battle-stations helmsman, Lieutenant(j.g.) David Meltzer. Meltzer was a tough kid from the Bronx who always walked with his chest puffed out, as if he were asking the world to give him something even more interesting and hard to do. Meltzer spoke with a heavy Bronx accent he made no effort to disguise and wore a class ring as a Naval Academy graduate. Jeffrey thought very highly of him. Meltzer sometimes acted as the pilot of Challenger’s minisub; in the past few months, he had driven Jeffrey, Ilse Reebeck, and a team of Navy SEALs to and from land combat more than once. Meltzer was cool under fire. As helmsman, he controlled Challenger’s depth, course, and speed, based on helm orders from whoever had the conn—the job was not an easy one, when combat called for fast and tight maneuvers of the nine-thousand-ton vessel in close proximity to bottom terrain.

  On the control room’s port side was a row of seven sonar consoles, each with two large screens, one above the other, a computer keyboard, track marbles, and sets of special headphones. At the front of the row sat Royal Navy Lieutenant Kathy Mi
lgrom, an exchange officer, and also part of a controversial experiment. Before the war broke out, the Royal Navy began placing women in fast-attack sub crews. This was partly an outgrowth of European Union court rulings about equal rights in all military combat units. It was, to some, a natural extension of the Royal Australian Navy’s success with coed crews on their Collins-class diesel subs, going back more than a decade. And maybe most important, to its proponents, and especially now with this war, using women on the UK’s nuclear submarines doubled the available supply of talented people.

  Kathy Milgrom was especially valuable to Challenger because she’d served as HMS Dreadnought’s sonar officer. The ceramic-hulled Dreadnought had been operational months before Challenger completed post-shakedown maintenance and workup training. Milgrom was in the thick of the fighting in the North Atlantic, starting in the summer of the previous year, whereas Captain Wilson took Challenger into battle—with Jeffrey as his XO—for the first time last December. With the brain trust Lieutenant Milgrom represented, from her working directly with Ilse Reebeck on sound propagation and oceanographic nap-of-seafloor tactics in very deep water, she’d be a vital resource to Challenger in their hunt and showdown with the von Scheer. Jeffrey gave silent thanks to the British commodore who’d recommended her temporary transfer, and to the U.S. Navy brass who, with some note of caution, had approved it.

  The sonar chiefs and enlisted technicians had no trouble accepting Milgrom’s leadership as sonar officer and did everything possible to meet her very high standards of job performance. Right now every sonar console was manned. Keyboards clicked, and sonarmen listened intently on their headphones, as waterfall displays cascaded slowly down different screens. Other screens showed jagged graphs that squiggled constantly, or confettilike charts of scalloped arcs and sine curves. All this told Jeffrey that Challenger’s hydrophone arrays were working hard to pull in even the subtlest noises from outside. Advanced signal processing software gave meaning to the incoming jumbles of multitudinous sound waves that wafted past the ship from everywhere.