by Joe Buff
Argentine artillery had blasted the hotel and observation towers. Then Brazilian Army engineers had dynamited the remains as they withdrew just hours before. Everything lay in ruins. Places deep in the rubble — sheltered from the daily rain — still burned. A horrible stench told Felix there were bodies trapped deep in that rubble too.
“Let’s get our base of fire set up,” he whispered to his chief in Portuguese. The man nodded. He had the team spread out along the verge of the jungle. Felix felt everyone’s blood pressure rise. Each man drew in a few deep breaths despite the smell. On a signal from Felix they dashed all at once across the open ground, and gained cover and concealment amid the rubble of the hotel.
Felix gave more orders, and the men worked their way gingerly forward, hugging the east side of the collapsed and burned-out structure. Felix rounded a pile of shattered masonry and brick, and the view took his breath away.
Arrayed before him, in all their deadly majesty, were the vast and always plunging, smashing, boiling cataracts of the Iguazú Falls.
As before, like from the chopper, the water was an incongruous reddish brown.
That color comes from topsoil, erosion from the highlands because of years of clear-cutting forestry mismanagement. Every new rainfall washes away a little more of Brazil’s future — assuming Brazil even has a future, after today.
Across the river, atop the escarpment on the other side of the falls, lay the ruins of another hotel, of more modern and solid construction.
That hotel sits in Argentina. Militarily — with this sweeping, split-level terrain — it’s as pivotal to the kampfschwimmer as the ruined Brazilian hotel is to me and my team.
Lying in shadows under a slab of shattered flooring, careful to avoid broken glass and twisted, jagged steel and sharp-edged aluminum, Felix turned to his chief. “The range look right to you? Three thousand yards?”
The SEAL chief nodded.
Felix and the chief picked good spots to set up their.30-caliber machine gun and their.50-caliber sniper rifle, choosing voids in the rubble that gave them the widest possible arcs of fire. Everyone passed their belts of machine-gun ammo to the men who worked the gun. The sniper said he saw an even better place to hide. He and his spotter shifted their positions.
The range was extreme, but now their weapons threatened the wreckage of the Argentine hotel, plus the wreckage of the stairs and walkways that led from the Argentine side toward scenic overviews of the falls, or out onto the upper river itself for even closer views, or down the steep escarpment toward the bottom of the falls.
Felix used his binoculars to survey the opposite side of the falls for any signs of kampfschwimmer movement. As he huddled in the stinking, smoking rubble of the Brazilian hotel, he began to grow very worried.
The Germans couldn’t have picked a better secondary target, once driven from the dam. And the next move is theirs.
He hated having to wait, and desperately wanted to seize the upper hand. He considered telling his machine-gun team to rake the Argentine hotel or the jungle behind it — a reconnaissance-by-fire might provoke the kampfschwimmer into acting prematurely.
But Felix glanced at his watch, and up at the afternoon sky. The sun was already getting low, and in just a few more hours it would be dark. If he told his men to open fire now, the kampfschwimmer would need to keep their heads down only till after sunset.
Whichever way you cut it, my tactical situation sucks.
Felix’s heart almost stopped, then leaped for joy, as he saw steady muzzle flashes from inside the Argentine hotel. Shrapnel bursts the size of rifle grenades began to pelt the rubble he and his men were using as shelter.
The kampfschwimmer know we’re here. They want us to keep our heads down. Why?
Of course! They’re working to a forced schedule. They need the mushroom cloud and flash flood during daylight. Both have to be seen to do the most good, soaring high into the sky and inundating helpless Argentina from evil Brazil.
The SEAL chief crawled up to Felix. As incoming small explosive shells pounded the ruined hotel and shrapnel whizzed and zinged and little new fires broke out, the chief shouted, “That’s a German objective crew-served weapon, sir!”
“I know.” Both men cringed as a round hit very close.
“We’re outgunned! We just have a thirty-cal!”
“I know,” Felix said.
“Return fire?”
“No. Save the ammo belts till we have targets. That hotel’s on high ground, too far back from the river. I doubt they’ll leave the bomb in there.”
“Sir?”
“The falls. They need to break cover and get to the falls. They want to set off the bomb right under the falls.”
For a moment the chief looked horrified. “Understood.”
“Tell the sniper and gunner, weapons tight till they see men in the open. Then kill them all. If they see a big package, that’s the bomb. Shoot it to pieces!”
“Sir, won’t that make it go off?”
“Not in theory!”
The chief looked very doubtful.
“It’s not like we’d feel anything,” Felix yelled.
The chief crawled off to issue orders.
No, we won’t feel anything. Our brains won’t even have time to register our own catastrophic failure.
The German machine cannon ceased firing, and Felix waited for the kampfschwimmer to make their next move. Nothing happened. He scanned the falls and the escarpment, and the river below, with his naked eyes and with his binoculars. Watching the water cascade over the edge of the cliff became hypnotic. He made himself look away.
Fixating on the view of flowing water had played nasty tricks on his brain. When he looked at the enemy hotel again, it seemed to be rising steadily upward, into the air. Felix needed to blink and shake his head, to make the optical illusion stop.
This is not a good beginning.
The German machine cannon started firing again. The flashes were coming from a different place in the rubble of concrete and I-beams.
They waited for us to react to their initial burst of fire, then shifted the gun’s position.
Then Felix caught glimpses of motion outside the hotel. Kampfschwimmer were dashing for the ruined walkway that led down to the base of the falls.
His ears ached as his men opened fire. The.30-caliber light machine gun used short and steady bursts, punctuated by the booming crack of the heavy.50-caliber sniper rifle. But it was hard to aim accurately from a mile and a half away. Updrafts of wind caused by the crashing of water under the falls made good marksmanship even more difficult.
The kampfschwimmer took cover, unhurt. Felix’s gunners adjusted their fire, and it became more effective. The kampfschwimmer began to rig climbing ropes on the edge of the escarpment. One rope unrolled and jiggled as it hung down to the far bank of the river below the falls. But now the Germans were pinned down.
Their objective crew-served weapon fired again. With its laser range finder and adjustable explosive rounds, it began to probe the rubble, searching for the SEALs with the light machine gun and the sniper rifle. Both crews were forced to pull back and seek new positions, and the Germans knew it. The kampfschwimmer broke cover, and another anchored climbing rope uncoiled down near the first.
They’re going for the bank on the other side. From there they can use old tourist catwalks to get under and behind parts of the falls…. We can’t let them do that.
Felix shouted for his men to open fire.
A German began to rappel fast down the side of the escarpment on a rope. The SEALs’ machine gunner and sniper pursued him with fire. Through binoculars, Felix could see their rounds chip rock from the brownish, grayish cliff face near the rappelling German garbed in black.
Suddenly the man was hit. He lost control of his rate of descent and plunged two hundred feet to the base of the cliff. He bounced once, then lay still. His helmet rolled away and fell in the river.
Felix heard scrambling and scraping as h
is shooters rushed to different hides within the hotel’s debris.
The German machine cannon fired again, as if in revenge. The SEAL machine gunner and sniper knew better than to return the fire — they’d reveal their newest positions and invite quick death.
We’re in a standoff. We’ve proven they can’t get down the cliff… but if they can’t, neither can we.
Felix saw another blur of movement, on the high ground near the Argentine hotel. Kampfschwimmer were heading toward the upper falls.
The SEAL gunners fired at them, but the line of fire crossed closer to the precipice face of the falls, and the powerful updraft of mist and wind threw off the trajectory of the rounds. The SEALs missed. The German objective crew-served weapon immediately retaliated. Felix heard a scream rise from the rubble of his hotel. The sniper’s spotter crawled up from behind. He said the sniper was dead, and the.50-caliber sniper rifle was smashed.
Whoever’s commanding the kampfschwimmer team is good. He timed the rhythm of those latest moves just perfectly. I’m sure he even used the wind from the falls to give his men better protection.
Now what the hell are they doing on the upper end of the Falls?
Felix’s chief crawled up. “Sir, I think they plan to drop the bomb down the falls!”
Felix stared through his binoculars and thought hard. “No, Chief! Not drop it! Lower it!”
“You mean—”
“Yeah. Underwater they’re protected from our machine-gun fire. Right?”
“Uh-oh.”
“Tell the thirty-cal crew to duel with that cannon, just enough to keep it occupied and distracted. Everyone else into Draegers.”
“Sir?”
“Take all the climbing ropes we’ve got. We’re going into the water after the Germans.”
At the edge of the river on the upper escarpment, just above the falls, Felix briefed his men. He had to shout constantly to be heard over all the noise. Felix pictured working in the falls.
“It’s just like a beach recon under enemy fire! It’s just that the beach is incredibly steep, and there’s an ungodly tidal rip!” A riptide, an undertow.
Felix could tell his men were nervous, frightened, scared.
So am I.
“Look,” he yelled over the steady roaring and pounding sounds of the river and the falls. He tried not to think what those sounds really meant in terms of sheer destructive energy. But the panorama spread before him and his men could leave no doubt. “It’s just as hard for the Germans. Use your submachine guns, or knives. Kill them any way you can.”
The chief and the four enlisted men with Felix nodded.
“Watch out for logs and other debris in the river,” Felix added. “The flow looks stronger since it rained.”
Again the men nodded, grimly.
Felix shared their fear, but he tried not to let it show. SEALs trained hard and realistically to work in water, under fire. But nothing, absolutely nothing, could have possibly prepared us for a situation like this.
Felix looked out across the choppy surface of the rushing, murderous river. Small islands covered with bushes and palm trees dotted the upper edge of the falls where the river suddenly disappeared into space. Rock outcroppings coated with green moss also jutted from that menacing horseshoe-shaped drop-off. All these split the water into narrower adjacent falls, the whole series of which together made up the mass of the Iguazú Falls. Some of these subcomponent falls were so large they even had names of their own, such as Floriano or Santa Maria.
Felix could see fragments of the upper tourist walkways, constructed in parched dry seasons when the river flow was weak, then damaged in previous record-breaking El Niño rainy seasons — or broken up more recently by artillery or demolition charges.
From both the Brazilian and Argentine side of the riverbanks, the islets and rocks and fragments of walkway converged on the central vortex of the falls, the Devil’s Throat. There, a gigantic vertical fracture indented the face of the escarpment, and water poured in and plunged down from three sides.
Way off on his right, Felix heard the chatter of automatic-weapon fire. To his front, he caught a glimpse of movement on the farther riverbank. Two Germans dashed behind a truck-sized boulder on the water’s edge, carrying a heavy package.
American machine-gun bullets found the range and windage, and began to chip at the boulder. Through his binoculars Felix saw white rock dust fly from the near face of the boulder; roundish light tan patches spread amid the mossy green. Too late. For now, the Germans with the bomb were behind good cover.
CHAPTER 35
Jeffrey changed from his dress uniform into dirty gray overalls. He was sneaked out of the underground command bunker near Rio in the cab of a garbage truck, which sped toward Rio proper. While it made another pickup of commercial trash at a shopping mall, he sneaked into the mall’s covered parking garage. There he climbed in the back of a windowless, unmarked van. The van headed south, into a tunnel through the hills that separated Rio from some outlying beach resorts. Once it was in the tunnel, policemen inside halted traffic. Jeffrey pulled on a black ski mask, of the sort SWAT teams might wear, grabbed his waterproof bag with his wet suit and uniform, and a satchel with some other things, and transferred to one of two other identical white vans. He noticed even their license plates were the same.
Traffic resumed, with Jeffrey going back north toward downtown Rio. His original van continued south, as if he were still in it, with a policeman in back in his place. The third van followed the one he was currently riding in, then peeled off and took the highway toward the international airport. Jeffrey’s van went into an office park, where a corporate helicopter sat on a helipad. Jeffrey left the van still wearing his overalls and mask and took the service entrance into a building, where he changed to a dark green flight suit and helmet. He pulled down the helmet’s sun visor and used a different exit. He climbed into the helicopter. It took off and went south, following the hills along the coast to Paranaguá.
The view was breathtaking, but Jeffrey couldn’t enjoy it. Instead his head was filled with nautical charts, with curves and lines and ranges and bearings. In his mind, over and over again, he pictured that Argentine flying boat landing at Mar del Plata.
Somewhere out there, way down south, out beyond Argentina’s continental shelf, Ernst Beck and von Scheer are waiting. To strictly comply with the Axis rules of engagement for handing German atomic warheads to the Argentines, so far as our naval intelligence understands them, he’ll need to stay at least two hundred miles from the coast…. Probably a bit farther, since exactly two hundred miles would be too obvious. That would put Beck out beyond the far edge of the continental slope, in water as deep as his — or Challenger ’s — crush depth.
Then there’s the whole other question, how fluid and changeable those Axis ROEs might be depending on what unfolds in the next few hours. It’s total war now. Nothing’s guaranteed.
At Paranaguá, the helicopter landed at a small civilian airport. A troubled Jeffrey went into a hangar and got into another van. During the short ride, he changed into his wet suit — which someone in the Rio bunker had kindly hung up to dry while he had met with President da Gama.
The van let Jeffrey out at a auxiliary naval installation. There, he boarded a Brazilian Navy transport helo. In the helo were open-circuit conventional scuba compressed-air tanks, secured for the flight with bungee cords and nylon strapping.
Jeffrey found this security shell game of clothes and cars and helicopters dizzying. He hoped it would be at least as confusing to the enemy, if they even realized he was in Brazil.
As he buckled in tight, he could see out a window on the starboard side of the aircraft. The helo took off, and Jeffrey continued his fast journey south, to catch up with USS Challenger.
He’d chosen the starboard side so he faced inland. From the helo he kept staring, preoccupied, at the distant horizon to the west.
The Iguazú Falls are three hundred miles away, in that direc
tion. Will I be able to see a flash from here, when the atomic warhead goes off?
In the silt-obscured deafening water above the falls, the current tugged at Felix frighteningly. Only the first length of climbing rope, anchored to a thick treetrunk onshore, kept him and his men from being swept away. If the rappelling buckles on their weight belts failed and they couldn’t grab the neutrally buoyant rope and cling by hand, they’d go over the edge and fall hundreds of feet into the torrent to be bashed to pulp on the rocks below. Each man had a collapsible, lightweight metal river-crossing stick to help him gain some purchase against the bottom — but the sticks had not been designed for any river crossing like this.
As team leader, Felix went first and took the greatest risks. He kept below the surface as much as he could, using his Draeger. To raise his head to see what the Germans were doing always drew fire — not from the hotel, but from kampfschwimmer who’d already made it partway out into the river and had cover on a small island.
A continual hiss and rumble assaulted his ears underwater. The river made noise as it scoured the bottom and pelted past obstructions. The hard impact of the falls at the base of the cliff sent heavy vibrations back up through the rock, and this noise too came through the water from the rock.
Felix knew he was coming to the end of his rope, literally. He had to find an anchor point. The water was so thick with silt, it was impossible to see. If he wasn’t careful, the magnitude of its flow could tear the dive mask off his face into oblivion.
All things considered, it wouldn’t make much difference. I might just as well work with my eyes closed anyway.
Felix dived a few feet deeper. He tried to find the bottom again as the submerged riverbank sloped down. The farther out he moved the more insistent the surging current force became. Any moment, an uprooted tree weighing tons could wash down the river and smash right into him. As he whipped around in the turbulent flow near the end of the anchoring rope, he might be impaled on a steel rebar projecting from a broken concrete abutment of the now-damaged upper tourist walkway. There were hidden reefs and rocks, which might knock him unconscious to drown. Felix decided he’d better let some gas out of his buoyancy compensator to make himself heavy and gain more traction.