The Right Stuff

by Merline Lovelace

  Dragging off his boonie hat, he swiped an arm across his sweat-drenched face. Only then did Cari see the vicious-looking cut on his forehead. Someone—Dr. White, she guessed—had added a few neat stitches. Before Cari could ask Mac what he'd run into, the tall, lanky missionary grabbed her hand and pumped it.

  "I'm Reverend Harry White. I can't tell you how grateful we are to you for coming after us. The fighting in the area drove off the villagers weeks ago. We had no one to help us bring the children through the jungle."

  "Yes, well..."

  "Our church has arranged adoptions for them, you see. My sister and I have been trying to get them to the States for almost two years."

  "Sister?"

  Can's glance cut to the doctor. She'd assumed— they'd all assumed—the Whites were husband and wife. Obviously the intelligence supplied for this hastily mounted operation had missed a few minor details.

  "We've paid a fortune in bribes," Janice White put in, picking up on her brother's comment. "Obviously not to the right people."

  "No matter," the reverend said with a smile. "We're on our way now."

  "Hang on a minute!"

  Cari shot a quick glance at Mac. His shrug indicated he'd already covered this ground once with the Whites. Biting her lip, she faced the minister.

  "Are you suggesting we smuggle these kids out of Caribe?"

  "Yes," the man of God replied simply.

  Cari pursed her lips. She was an officer in the United States Coast Guard. A major portion of her job was to prevent the kind of illegal emigration the missionary was suggesting. She'd lost count of the number of vessels crammed with refugees she and other coast guard crews had been forced to turn back. Small boats carrying whole families across miles of open sea. Fishing trawlers trying to slip fifty or so desperate souls past coastal patrols. Container ships with hidden compartments stuffed with starving, suffocating cargo.

  "Smuggling them out is our only recourse at this point," Reverend White said earnestly. "As Janice said, we've been working on their papers for more than two years. Finding a responsible official to deal with was difficult enough before the fighting erupted. Now, it's well nigh..."

  "Harry!"

  His sister's frantic cry jerked the missionary around.

  "Where's Paulo?"

  "Isn't he with you?"

  "No."

  "Dear Lord above!" The reverend spun back to Mac, his face contorted with panic. "He was right ahead of me. I can't imagine how... When..."

  "I'll find him," Mac said grimly. His glance cut to Cari. "You'd better get Pegasus ready to swim. I picked up some radio chatter a while back. It sounded close. So close I didn't want to risk using my own radio until I knew I could get the kids safely aboard."

  Well, that explained why he'd skipped an interim signal. Unfortunately, the explanation didn't particularly sit well with Cari. The idea that the bad guys were poking around nearby upped her pucker factor considerably. Climbing over kids and backpacks, she made her way to the cockpit.

  Scant minutes later she had Pegasus ready to plunge back into the river. He sat nosed half on, half off the bank. Cari kept the engines churning gently in reverse, with just enough power to keep her craft from being dragged along with the current. The rear hatch remained open. All the while her heart pounded out the seconds until Mac returned.

  She hated this business of being left behind. She was used to sailing her ship, her crew and herself into action, not sitting at the controls while someone else took the lead. She wanted in on the action.

  Mac had been right, she thought grimly. She wasn't the barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen type. As much as she ached for a child of her own, she knew she belonged right here, right now. No one else could have maneuvered Pegasus up this narrow, twisting river. No one else could get it back down.

  Which she hoped to do.

  Like, soon!

  They only had a few hours of daylight left. She didn't relish navigating the Rio Verde in the dark, even with all the sophisticated instrumentation crammed into Pegasus. It was time to make tracks.

  Where the heck was Mac?

  He came crashing through the ferns several heart-pounding minutes later. He had a scruffy little boy tucked under one elbow and his assault rifle tight in the crook of the other. Cari's breath wheezed out on a small sigh of relief.

  The next instant, she sucked it back in again. Right before her eyes, the fronds above Mac's head began to dance wildly. A heartbeat later, she heard the deadly splat, splat, splat of bullets tearing through the leaves.

  He was taking fire!

  Twisting in her seat, Cari shouted a terse order. "Dr. White! Reverend! Get the children down flat on the deck! Now!"

  She waited only long enough to see Mac and the kid come diving through the rear opening. Slewing back around, she hit the switch to close the hatch, wrapped her fist around the throttles and thrust the engines to full forward.

  Pegasus sailed off the bank. His belly hit the river's surface with a smack that would have rattled Cari's teeth if she hadn't already clenched them tight. Her jaw locked, she aimed her craft for the dark, rushing channel in the middle of the river.

  She expected to hear bullets pinging off the canopy at any second. The bubble was made of some new composite that was supposed to be able to withstand a direct hit from a mortar, but she wasn't particularly anxious to test the shield's survivability.

  She made it to midstream without any bullets cracking against the canopy. As soon as the depth linder registered enough clearance, she took Pegasus under.

  The water closed around them. The view ahead became one of swirling currents, darting fish and dark, fuzzy shapes. As she had during the torturous journey upriver, Cari kept her gaze locked on the sonar screen. All she needed to do now was ram a jagged stump or slimy green bolder.

  She didn't relax her vigil until Mac slid into the seat beside her and assumed duties as navigator. Blowing out a ragged breath, Cari slanted him glance.

  "Is the kid okay?"

  "Yeah. He's a tough little runt." A rueful smile flitted across Mac's face. "He's the one who put this crease in my forehead."

  "How'd he do that?"

  "He beaned me with a rock."

  Despite the tension still stringing her as tight as an anchor cable, Cari had to laugh. "That's going to make a great story at the bar when we get back to base. So what happened? How did you lose him?"

  "My guess is he fell back and couldn't call out to us to wait for him."

  "Couldn't?"

  Mac's smile faded. "When I first collared the kid, I tried to get him to tell me his name and where he'd sprung from. He got stubborn and clammed up. Or so I thought. It wasn't until Doc White was stitching me up that I found out he can't talk. He was born without a larynx."

  "Oh, no!"

  "The most he can manage is an occasional grunt."

  Cari slumped back against her seat. Her stab of pity for the little boy battled with practical reality.

  "You know the crap is going to hit the fan big-time if we take these kids out of Caribe without authorization from their government."

  "Maybe."

  "There's no maybe about it. Remember the international furor over the Cuban kid, Elian Gonzales?"

  "There's a difference here. Elian Gonzales had a father who wanted him back. These kids are orphans. Throwaways, as Janice White described them, probably because of their disabilities. If their government had bothered with them at all, they would have been shuffled into some institution or foster home."

  A muscle ticked in the side of his jaw. For a moment his expression was remote, closed, unreadable. Then he tore his gaze away from the screen. The hard edges to his face softened and he gave Cari a quick, slashing grin.

  "I say we take them out with us."

  She fell a little in love with him at that moment. Here he was, the all-or-nothing, you're-in-or-you're out, gung ho marine, putting his military career on the line for a boatload of kids.

  O
nly belatedly did she remember she'd be putting her career on the line, too.

  Oh, well. If she'd learned nothing else during her years of service, she'd discovered it was a whole lot easier to ask for forgiveness after the fact than obtain permission beforehand.

  "Seeing as they're already on board," she replied with an answering grin,"I say we take them with us, too. But I'll let you advise Captain Westfall of our additional passengers," she tacked on hastily.

  Chapter 4

  Cari was actually starting to believe she'd get her craft and its passengers safely away from Caribe when disaster struck. Unfortunately, she didn't realize that hazy blur dead ahead represented disaster until it was too late.

  "What the heck...?"

  That was all she got out before Pegasus plowed into what looked very much like a net. It was a net, she discovered as the prow pushed hard against the barrier. Made of thin, loosely woven vines. No wonder it hadn't returned any kind of a sonar signature.

  The vines snared Pegasus like a giant fish, held him for a moment, then yielded to his powerful forward momentum. The net ripped apart. The vessel's prow poked through. A long length of the hull followed. The swept-back wings and rear-tilted engines, however, snagged on the tangled remnants of the netting.

  "Hell!"

  Cari yanked the throttle back and reversed thrust, but it was too late. Dangling vines had wrapped tight around the propeller shafts. The twin engines gave a little sputter and died.

  For a moment there was only silence.

  Dead silence.

  Cari felt a bubble of panic rise in her throat. Sailors the world over had nightmares about just this kind of a situation. She was trapped underwater. With her boat experiencing total engine failure.

  As quickly as it rose, her panic evaporated. She shot a glance at the depth finder and confirmed they were less than ten feet below the river's surface. Even without engines, she could float Pegasus up enough to pop the canopy and check out the situation.

  "We'll have to surface," she told Mac.

  "Not until we figure out what the heck snared us," he returned, craning his neck to peer through the gloom at the entangling vines.

  "My guess is it's a fishing net."

  "Why didn't we hit it coming upriver?"

  "Could be the locals only string it in the afternoon, when the river's running with the tide."

  "Or it could be a trap set specifically for us."

  The same possibility had occurred to Cari. "I don't think so," she said, chewing on the inside of her lip. "We swam upriver underwater. As far as we know, no one observed us going in."

  "Someone sure as hell observed us coming out. Those weren't bees buzzing around my head back there."

  "They saw you, but I don't think they saw Pegasus. We got you aboard and went under before whoever was taking potshots at you charged through the ferns."

  Mac's eyes narrowed. "All anyone needed was a glimpse. Just a glimpse. They could have radioed to their buddies downriver, had them string a net."

  The terse exchange helped resolve some of the awful doubts gnawing at Cari. "Their buddies couldn't have chopped down vines and strung something this elaborate in an hour. My guess... my considered opinion," she amended, "is that we'll soon come face-to-face with some local fishermen who are going to be very surprised at what they've netted."

  By now the questions were coming at her from the Whites as well. "What's happened?" the reverend called anxiously from the back.

  "Why are we stopped?" his sister wanted to know.

  "We hit a net," Cari called back. "A fisherman's net I think, and fouled the engines. We'll have to surface and try to clear them."

  Slowly, foot by foot, Cari floated Pegasus up from the murky depths.

  The canopy broke the surface first. Eyes narrowed, shoulders tense, Mac twisted around and did a swift three-sixty. The only signs of life he spotted were two red-furred monkeys hanging from a branch extending over the river. The creatures ceased their antics and gaped at the monster rising from the depths before emitting high-pitched shrieks of alarm and scrambling away.

  Pegasus pawed his way up inch by inch. Still tethered by the net, the craft remained caught in midcur-rent. The swift moving river flowed past, rushing over the wings, swirling just a few inches below the canopy.

  Cari assessed the situation once again and saw only one option. "I'm going to pop the canopy and try to cut through the vines."

  Mac shot her a swift look. "You sure opening the canopy won't flood us?"

  "Pretty sure."

  The possibility she might be putting the children at grave risk generated a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She saw no other way to free her craft, however. It was either pop the canopy and cut the vines or drift at the end of this tether indefinitely.

  "Go back and tell the Whites what we're doing," she instructed Mac. "Stay with them and be prepared to pass the children up through the cockpit if we start to take on water. Worst-case scenario, we swim them to shore."

  He nodded, not questioning her decision or authority, and climbed out of his seat. When he signaled that they were ready in the rear compartment, Cari hit the button to raise the canopy.

  The hydraulic lift pushed the nose down a few inches. River water rushed in, soaking her from the waist down. After a heart-stopping second or two, the nose bobbed upward again and the flood ceased.

  "All right," she breathed. "Okay."

  She unhooked her seat harness, her fingers shaking a little. Nothing like almost sinking a ship and its passengers to take the starch out of a girl.

  "I'll crawl out onto the wings and assess the damage," she told Mac when he climbed back in the cockpit. "You'd better get on the radio and advise base we've, ah, hit a slight snag."

  Her feeble attempt at a pun fell flat. Mac didn't crack so much as a shadow of a smile. Shrugging, Cari unbuckled her harness and hooked a leg over the side of the cockpit. Once on the swept-back wing, she dropped to all fours.

  The swirling river water turned the wing slick and the going tricky, but she made it to the half-submerged engine without too much difficulty. A single glance at the vines wrapped tight around the propeller shaft had her muttering a smothered curse.

  The vines were as thick as her wrist. She'd need a chain saw to hack through them. Unfortunately, the emergency equipment aboard Pegasus didn't include a chain saw. A fire axe, yes. An acetylene torch. An assortment of other tools, hoses and spare electronic parts. But no chain saw.

  Balancing carefully on all fours, Cari traced the path of the twisted vine cable that formed the spine of the net. It was anchored to trees on either side of the river. Maybe she could use the axe to chop through one end. The other end would then act as an anchor chain and swing Pegasus in a wide arc toward the opposite bank. Once in shallow water, she could try to unfoul the engines.

  It might work. It had to work. She wasn't going to abandon a multimillion-dollar prototype vehicle to the river gods unless she had no other choice.

  Before she tried to salvage her craft, though, she wanted the Whites and the children ashore.

  Mac went first to reconnoiter.

  Using the vine cable to pull himself through the water, he swam to the left bank and clambered up. Once again, he disappeared into the thick greenery lining the river's edge. The seconds crawled by. Stretched into minutes. Cari was sweating profusely from the oppressive jungle heat and stomach-twisting tension when he reappeared.

  Gulping, she saw he prodded three wide-eyed, disbelieving fishermen ahead of him at gunpoint. Mouths agape, they stared at the monster they'd snared in their net.

  "Their village is about fifty yards in from the river," Mac shouted to Cari. "Get Reverend White up to the cockpit so we can communicate with these guys and determine whether they're friend or foe."

  Harry White soonascertained they were friends. Or at least they claimed no recent contact with either government forces or the rebels waging vicious guerilla warfare in the area. The reverend al
so extracted an offer of food and shelter for the night that would soon drop over the island like a blanket. Still wary but trusting to instincts that said the villagers represented no immediate threat, Mac holstered his side-arm and organized the process of ferrying the children to shore.

  Cari was the last to leave her craft. Plunging into the river, she used the net to pull herself hand over hand to dry land. Once there, she stayed to keep a watchful eye on the vehicle while Mac, Harry and Janice White shepherded the children to the village.

  Mac returned with what had to be most, if not all, of the local population. Agog, they gaped at the long, sleek craft trapped in what remained of the net. Several villagers jumped into the river and paddled out for a closer look.

  Using Harry White as an interpreter, Cari explained her idea of hacking through the far side of the thick vine cable and swinging Pegasus toward the near bank.

  "I want to anchor it here," she said, jabbing a finger at the river's edge, "out of the current, so I can get to the vines fouling the engines."

  The plan elicited a lively discussion among the men. Like most natives of this part of the Caribbean, they were a handsome people. Their rapid speech rose and fell in a musical rhythm that bespoke their mixture of island and Spanish heritage. After some debate, they agreed Can's plan would work.

  Before any work was done, however, Mac requested two men head back upriver to act as sentries. Just in case someone should come looking for an unidentified river craft. The headman agreed and dispatched two sturdy young villagers in a dugout canoe.

  Then it was a matter of waiting while another crew paddled across the river to hack at the far end of the cable. While they paddled, Cari swam back to Pegasus and crawled into the cockpit. Mac stayed on shore with a troop of men armed with poles to keep the craft from plowing too hard and too fast into the bank.

  Despite her swim, Cari was once again drenched in nervous sweat by the time Pegasus was tethered to the shore. She was also squinting to see through the fast-gathering shadows.

  "Night drops like a stone this deep in the interior," Harry White warned. "Unless you rig some lights, you'll be working blind in a few minutes."