by Joe Buff
CHAPTER 8
Before dawn, Felix and his lieutenant roused the sleeping members of the team. Everybody stayed on guard, lying or crouching in their defensive circle from the night before. Dim streaks of moonlight stippled the ground. The moonlight pierced between the tree trunks and leafy branches and hanging vines, dappling the ferns and roots and fungi in an otherworldly silver-gray glow. It was extremely humid and hot. Mosquitoes, biting flies, and other insects continued their background hum and chirp. The air was thick with the musty, musky stench of jungle rot and fermentation.
Felix listened on high alert as the earliest risers among the daytime birds and animals began to stir. To his eyes, the eerie patches of moonlight carried an air of expectancy: of approaching sunrise, and of unknown dangers to come.
This was the time each day that Felix hated, because for a few unavoidable minutes now the team would be most vulnerable. An armed enemy might blunder into them before the SEALs were ready. The team might have been noticed many hours ago, and attackers might have spent all night creeping close for a dawn assault.
One by one each SEAL rushed through a silent, meticulous, well-practiced routine of cleaning himself and burying body waste. One at a time, each man quickly ate his single high-calorie meal of the day and drank one entire full two-quart canteen; each had one more full canteen for later. They replaced their floppy jungle hats with battle helmets — the folded hats went into their rucksacks, along with all the breakfast trash. The helmets were covered with raggedy patches of cloth and plastic to break up their outlines in the bush. Mosquito nets draping from the helmets protected their faces and necks. They raised the nets just long enough to touch up their camouflage makeup using small compacts from their rucks. There was no incoming fire.
Amid the all-cloaking underbrush, beneath the towering trees, the team did buddy checks of one another’s equipment, clothing, and weapons status.
Like the other men, Felix had a K-bar fighting knife in a waterproof sheath strapped to one thigh and a survival knife strapped to the other. His backup pistol was safed in its shoulder holster, beneath his left armpit. His Draeger rebreather scuba gear, and big combat swim fins and dive mask, rode under his rucksack in a special harness — their considerable weight was borne by his hips and lower back; a dirtproof cover protected and hid the diving equipment.
There was a round in the chamber of Felix’s German-made MP-5 submachine gun. He gently eased the quiet selector lever off safe to sustained fire. He nodded to his lieutenant. The lieutenant signaled the team to move out.
The silvery moonlight had faded away and was replaced by the pink diffuse glow of a short equatorial dawn. Traces of sharper yellow sunlight filtered down through the trees obliquely, backlighting a morning mist that burned off almost at once. Now the sun was higher in the sky; the few shafts of light that hit the ground were more vertical. The heat and the humidity intensified. The rancid odors wafting everywhere grew stronger. Sometimes toucans or parrots flew by, but were barely seen, their gaudy colors muted in the deep rain-forest gloom.
Felix’s team patrolled closer to the railroad for the Brazilian manganese mine — the railroad that would probably be the objective of more insurgent guerrilla sabotage raids — the guerrillas who might or might not be getting aid from Axis advisers.
The eight SEALs had split into two teams of four; each team formed half a circle. The lieutenant led the first team, which served as point and covered their left flank as they moved. Felix led the other team, covering their right flank and also covering and sanitizing their rear. The tension was unrelenting. Each man’s every motion was a risky compromise between the need for speed and the need for silent invisibility. Crouching, crawling, duckwalking, they maintained course by compass — GPS was useless because of Axis signal hacking, and there were no distant landmarks to guide on in the bowels of the Amazon rain forest.
The SEALs worked forward steadily. They cautiously peered around trees, and over bushes or fallen logs. They watched for any signs of human presence or human activity. They listened intently for clues to what was happening around them. The continual animal traffic discouraged booby traps or mines, but everyone was careful for trip wires or suspicious fist-sized bumps or dips in the ground, or freshly dug earth.
Felix made very sure they left no traces. Thorny vines, snagged on equipment or clothes and tugged in the direction of the SEALs’ travel, were rearranged at random. Leaves that were disturbed and twisted in passing, with their undersides showing a different color or texture than their tops, were righted so they wouldn’t stand out. Boot prints in the puddles and mud, and scuff marks on roots and trunks, were altered artfully. This part of the work was especially tiring. Felix needed intense concentration and acute manual dexterity every minute, every hour. The weight of all his gear seemed to increase constantly. After each rest break, it was that much harder mentally to get up and resume.
His Draeger and combat fins weighed three dozen pounds. A full canteen weighed five pounds. Each prepackaged, dehydrated daily meal in his rucksack weighed more than a pound. Each concussion grenade he carried weighed one pound; each white phosphorus smoke-incendiary grenade weighed two pounds. His helmet and flak vest and weapons and ammo and first-aid supplies were also heavy.
Soon the team of eight SEALs would divide up into pairs, each pair patrolling one arc of a four-leaf-clover pattern. After going full circle, the four pairs would reunite. The team would then advance several more miles, still navigating by compass. Then they would do another cloverleaf, and on and on. This way they could scan a broader area, on their covert reconnaissance for Axis presence in the rain forest.
Felix remembered the firefight he and his team had listened to the previous night. He wondered what shape that other SEAL team was in, and who had ambushed them.
Felix heard a sharp crack, and a deep rolling rumble, very close. Everyone froze and waited for incoming fire. But this time it was thunder, not a grenade.
Soon there was a steady drumming sound overhead. The daytime gloom of the rain forest grew much darker. Driblets of rain began to fall. Felix saw an electric-blue flash of lightning through the trees. There was another blast of thunder. The driblets of rain became a crushing downpour.
The lieutenant signaled a pause in order to refill their empty canteens. The men used their upturned floppy hats to help catch the rain and funnel it into canteen mouths, through fine mesh filters. The water was very dirty. Over their heads, in each level of the multiple-canopy tree branches, dwelled entire ecosystems. Plants lived on other plants, which lived on branches of the larger trees, and died and rotted. Bugs and bacteria thrived in puddles caught on leaves or in forks in the trees, a hundred feet in the air. Different birds, rodents, and mammals populated different zones of altitude, eating and mating and defecating. Frogs, snails, ants, spiders, termites — all led their daily existences high above.
The rainwater that reached the ground was truly filthy. Felix and his team added water purification tablets to their newly filled canteens. The tablets made the water stink of chlorine and taste even worse. They used powdered tea mix, fortified with extra tannin, to cover the taste; the tannin also helped fight tropical diarrhea.
The rain continued to drum and pour. With their canteens replenished, the lieutenant signaled for the SEALs to move out. The rain was so heavy it pelted their faces with mud splashed back up from the ground. The runoff gushed in streaming rivulets and formed ever-widening pools. A wind began to rise, slashing the treetops. The team closed up amid the almost solid, streaking vertical torrent to keep in better touch now that sight lines were so reduced and the noise of the rain was deafening. They moved faster, since the rain would obliterate much of their spoor. Moving faster also gave them better forward momentum — in case they crashed into an enemy patrol that crashed into them.
Now, with two full canteens instead of one, and waterlogged from head to toe by the all-surrounding thunderstorm, Felix carried a much greater weight load. The ra
in was cold, so cold it made him shiver.
The rain had stopped, and the rain forest was steamy, stinking, baking hot. Felix’s team halted for a brief rest. The two compass men compared notes to cross-check their navigation. Felix and the lieutenant surveyed the ground ahead. It was time for the team to turn due west. Ahead in that direction, on the near side of the railroad, lay the Pedreira River, which the men would have to cross to continue their recon. The Pedreira ran south, paralleling the railroad, until the river fed the Amazon itself. Crossing the river would be a time of maximum peril, but it was necessary.
Quietly, the team reviewed their plan and rechecked one another’s equipment. Again the lieutenant led the point element and Felix oversaw securing and sanitizing their rear. Tomorrow they would trade places, with Felix in front and the lieutenant protecting their backs, and Felix was already looking forward to it. Tonight, maybe, once across the Pedreira, he might get some sleep for a change. And tomorrow, the mental and physical strain of taking point, as wearing and dangerous as it was, would be a welcome change from the constant peering and smoothing and rearranging, the endless stooping and kneeling and patting and brushing, that it took to maintain secrecy as the SEALs covered more and more distance.
Felix was jarred by another crack. He knew at once it wasn’t more thunder. He ducked as his whole body tightened instinctively; his heart was in his throat. Razor-sharp steel from a fragmentation grenade whizzed overhead. Felix heard crackling bursts from AK-47s. None of my guys are carrying Russian weapons. Then Felix heard the puff-puff-puff of silenced MP-5s responding. He lay flat just in time. There was a tremendous blast, and hundreds of metal pellets tore through the air. Pieces of bark and shredded greenery flew and fell. Tree branches rocked and swayed from the mighty concussion.
That was a Claymore mine. And not one of ours.
Every sight and sound and smell became ten times more vivid; every trace of fatigue in Felix vanished.
Felix’s lieutenant shouted in Portuguese. The team had been ambushed by antigovernment militants — the Brazilian Army didn’t use AK-47s either. Felix crawled forward. He and the lieutenant pulled white phosphorus grenades from their rucksacks and armed them. As bullets zipped overhead or slammed into trees or kicked up muck, they lobbed the grenades well to their front and yelled for their men to withdraw. They took disciplined care with their throwing so the grenades didn’t hit a tree and bounce back.
The grenades exploded. Burning white phosphorus spewed in all directions. Thick, choking smoke covered the ground and spread through the trees. Fires began, from the heat of the incendiary grenades, even with everything soaked. The grenades would form a good antipersonnel barrier. White phosphorus burned human flesh down to the bone; it was unquenchable.
The SEAL team crawled to the rear, quickly taking turns firing their weapons back through the smoke. Felix let loose a three-round burst and heard an enemy scream.
“Let’s go,” Felix shouted.
The SEALs stood and regrouped on the run. On and on they ran, away from the ambush site.
The lieutenant cursed. “We’re compromised,” he said in Portuguese, “and we haven’t found out a single useful thing.”
Felix concurred, did a head count, and turned and fired another burst through the drifting white phosphorus smoke. “I don’t think we’re being pursued,” he said between ragged breaths. “Irregulars… Must have thought we were Brazilian Army, tired and bored after lunch.” He vaulted a protruding root as the other SEALs kept pace. One of the enlisted men fired a burst toward the ambushers, then another.
“Didn’t expect us to be so alert,” Felix panted. “Surprised we reacted so fast and violently.” He ran on, breathing heavily, reviewing the action in his mind. “They set off that Claymore a moment too late.” Pant, pant. “Most of their bullets went high.”
The lieutenant nodded. He was shaking now from the surge of adrenaline and gasping too fast to speak.
Felix signaled the team to halt and take up a defensive position. The men quickly checked one another for wounds or equipment damage. They were okay. Felix listened; he let a few minutes go by. The bird and animal noises told him his team wasn’t being followed.
“Which way now?” he whispered to the lieutenant.
“Let me think.”
Felix didn’t like this. To accomplish their mission, they needed hard proof that Axis agents were operating in this area, if indeed they were. To come back empty-handed meant failure.
We have to at least probe farther in. If Axis agents aren’t involved, we need to see much more to know it for sure.
“Head north,” Felix whispered, still speaking in Portuguese. “Outflank these guerrillas, then turn west. Get behind them.”
“Concur,” the lieutenant whispered. “Move through their rear. See what we learn that way… But why not outflank them south?”
“We came from south. North, we cover new territory.”
The lieutenant nodded. He began to catch his breath.
“We change our route formation. Column, single file. I want more weapons covering west in case the hostiles come at us again.”
“I don’t know, LT. We still need good all-around defense.” Felix gestured out at the jungle. “We don’t know who else is hiding where.”
“Negative.”
“But—”
“Do it my way.”
Felix had to agree — the lieutenant was the man in charge.
An old saying ran through Felix’s mind, seeing the LT’s hardened attitude: It’s better to be sure than right.
The only thing is, in Special Warfare clandestine ops, being sure but wrong gets people killed.
The team re-formed into a column, well spread out. On the lieutenant’s order, the compass men — stationed near both ends of the column — began to guide everyone north. The lieutenant remained near the front of the column. Felix stayed near the rear and picked his way between the tree trunks and the roots.
The underbrush was thin, because so little sunlight reached the ground. Clumps of dense growth — the kind he had chosen for the place where the team had sheltered last night — formed only when old trees died and toppled, or when standing trees were broken or felled by lightning strikes or hurricanes. Such gaps in the trees made openings through all the canopy layers, under which more dense brush could spring up. But away from these overgrown patches caused by major deadfalls, the dangling vines and protruding roots were more annoying than anything green that grew out of the ground. Progress on foot took care, but there was no need to hack a trail with swinging machetes.
Felix was worried. His team appeared to be in the middle of a hotbed of trigger-happy bad guys. Sooner or later the Brazilian Army would send units to investigate all the shooting. This would make the SEALs’ job even harder. The rules of engagement for this mission allowed them to fire only in self-defense and required them to keep that fire to a bare minimum. Their goal was information, not body counts. Any body counts, while they were violating neutral territory, could have extremely negative repercussions. Guerrilla murderers and terrorists were one thing. Killing a Brazilian Army recruit or officer by mistake was something Felix didn’t even want to think about.
The terrain was gradually rising as the team worked north, and Felix noticed that the species all around them were subtly changing. He reached out to hold a particularly thick and thorny vine away from his face and body. The SEALs were penetrating a clump of closely spaced trees, whose trunks bulged with the round mud nests of ants and termites. No one wanted to bump into one of these nests and the SEALs’ rate of movement was slowed. Felix had a sense of foreboding. He walked practically on tiptoe now, his eyes darting everywhere. He scrutinized the terrain as he quietly placed each foot — away from any twigs that might snap. He watched the rain forest constantly for signs of some stranger watching him. His ears worked so hard he felt as if they were stretching out from his head.
The next men in his team in front and behind were barely visib
le. They were forced to group closer together. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to communicate by hand signals and might even become separated and lost — with disastrous results. By now, Felix was dripping with sweat instead of rainwater.
The team eventually cleared the stand of trees. Among thicker trunks with different bark, spread wider apart, they were able to increase the distance from man to man in their column. They probed on.
To their front an enemy weapon opened fire. Then everything seemed to happen at once. Felix heard shouts and screams. More fire began to pour in from the flank — from the right flank, from east.
Felix had never heard the sound of these weapons before.
We’ve been suckered. The ambush, this time, is perfect.
“At them!” Felix screamed. The best tactic was to charge the flanking enemy. To take cover in this situation amounted to suicide — that weapon to their front, firing straight down along the SEALs’ column, would pick off every man fast.
Felix led his men to the right. Everyone fired on full auto. The enemy fire increased. The men began to be driven back.
“The LT’s hit!” someone screamed. Felix recognized the voice — his point man. Still, strange weapons poured in fire. Again, clumps of bark flew everywhere as bullets pounded into trees. Vines danced and fell as they were riddled. The mud insect nests that bulged from trees exploded.
Felix belly-crawled toward the front of the column. As he passed each enlisted man, he steadied him and urged him to return the enemy fire and charge the enemy ambush again. They tried, but the fire was just too heavy. It came at them knee-high or lower, well aimed and effective. The men were forced to huddle in folds in the ground or hide behind trees. They fired their weapons half-blindly into the distance. Their muzzles flashed and spent brass bounced and clinked. Moving parts in the silenced weapons clattered. The men changed magazines steadily. Burned bullet propellant went up Felix’s nose.