by Nick Thacker
So their weapons were perfect for an amphibious assault, should it come to that. They could pop up and out of the water, firing almost immediately after their barrels emptied of water. Anyone on the shore would be taken by surprise, and it would hopefully be enough.
When she’d asked why he’d said hopefully, he explained that if they didn’t eliminate their enemy with their first bursts of fire, they would be like sitting ducks — the difference being that ducks were a bit more adept on water than battle-clad humans.
She hoped it wouldn’t come to that. If the SUVs had seen them, she hoped they’d be staying back at the place where they’d entered the water.
But if the SUVs were in fact part of Garza’s crew, she knew they would be calling it in as soon as they found their stashed jeeps and gear. They would know to expect a breach, and that it would happen wherever the waterborne shaft led.
She shook off the thought and focused on the dark waters in front of her. The river here had narrowed but grown deeper, and the dark shadows of fish of all sizes danced in her vision, not allowing her to let down her guard.
She’d heard Reggie also explain what they could expect to find in this tributary rivers. She knew all too well what those beasts were, and she hoped he was right that the truly monstrous ones would stay in the warmer, murkier waters downstream.
Still… there was something unnerving about traversing a dark, cool river in the Peruvian Amazon. Creatures she probably never knew existed were watching her right now, some of them wondering how she might taste as a snack…
Ben was suddenly there, pulling her to the side. She allowed him to yank her sideways, and she narrowly missed banging her head on a sharp, protruding log that had been submerged directly in front of her. She wondered how he’d seen it, and only then realized that every other member of their crew was using their wrist-mounted dive light.
Feeling stupid, she flicked hers on, expecting to see a huge, hungry anaconda waiting directly in front of her.
But there was no waiting anaconda. Instead, the water around her exploded to life as bubbles and hissing streams of supersonic air flew through the water.
They’re shooting at us, she realized. She felt the panic rising in her throat, and she tried to choke it down. Calm down, breathe, swim.
Apparently the Ravenshadow men had seen them, and rather than working their way back to their base and preparing the rest of Garza’s army, they’d decided to take things into their own hands. Worse, Julie knew the men had likely already called in the breach and were simply trying to get a jump on eliminating the problem. They’d lost their element of surprise. If they were able to escape the attack now, they’d be met with a waiting Ravenshadow army.
She pulled herself ahead and around the sharp log, hoping that it might provide some sort of respite from the fight. Instead, she saw out of the corner of her eye the log exploding into a thousand pieces as it was nailed by rounds from the assault rifles. She considered bringing her own rifle up and trying to take out a couple of the enemy soldiers. She was a great shot, but she had to admit that coming up out of a murky river, wearing a scuba tank, mask, and regulator was not going to do her any favors.
Besides, she realized that she was the last in line, and the shots were landing just behind her. She remembered the topography of their entry point. The river buckled around and changed directions there, creating the small peninsula shape that the men were now shooting from. The area to the east and west of that peninsula, however, was completely impenetrable, the forest having grown to the edge of the river.
Unless the soldiers followed them into the river, all Julie and her group had to do was head downstream until they were sufficiently out of sight.
More shots landed in the water, one of the trails of air brushing against her arm. Too close. She swam faster, nearly bumping into the fins of whoever it was in front of her.
The team swam underwater, pumping hard, for another fifteen minutes. At that point, she saw that Reggie and Ben were treading water and had their heads out. Mrs. E and the Green Berets were all coming up as well, so Julie pulled back and allowed herself to rise to the surface. When her head broke, she ripped out her regulator and took a gasping breath of air. There was no difference between the air in their tanks and the air outside, but something about the restriction of the scuba gear while being shot at caused her to feel claustrophobic, constricted.
“You okay?” Ben asked.
She winced as his voice blasted into her ear, not realizing that her communicator was already on. She fiddled with the headset component for a second, trying to find the volume control. When she did, she pulled it down to about halfway and then looked up at her husband.
She nodded, breathing steady but large breaths of air, and she took in their surroundings. The rainforest had grown to the edge of the water here as well, and some of the trees and vegetation were even hanging out over the water. On her left, she saw that about twenty or thirty feet back a cliff rose from the treetops and shot majestically into the air. It had to be hundreds of feet tall, and Julie knew this was the side of the mountain that had been carved away by the slow, incessant flow of the massive river over the course of millennia.
“We’re here,” Beale said, calling out softly over the water from his spot twenty feet downstream.
“We are?” Reggie asked. “Seems quick.”
“We had the current working for us,” Jeffers said. “Not to mention a little kick in the ass when we got started.”
“True that,” one of the other Green Berets said. “Everyone okay?”
Nods all around, and Beale, satisfied, checked his dive computer and measured their progress. “Yeah, this should be it. We’ll all take a peek, see if we can find the shaft. Jeffers, Lang, you two will be the first to enter. Check it out and report back.”
Everyone affirmed, and Julie found herself plunging back underwater to look for the entrance to the tunnel that would hopefully lead them into the heart of a mountain, and the middle of an army ready and waiting to kill them.
She couldn’t see much, even with the dive light, but it didn’t matter. Within another five minutes one of the Green Berets, a man of asian descent named Lang, found the entrance. Beale called everyone together while Lang and Jeffers examined the shaft. It took another ten minutes, but they returned and filled in the rest of the team.
“Okay, good news,” Lang said. “The tunnel’s modern. Steel-reinforced, concrete, the works. It’s definitely been put in recently.”
“Perfect,” Beale said. “Bad news?”
“It’s long,” Jeffers said. “We got about a hundred, hundred-fifty feet. It’s dark, but everything points to it being pretty solid.”
“That’s… bad news?” Another Green Beret asked.
“No,” Lang said. “The bad news is that there’s a current — a strong one — and it was getting stronger the farther we swam.”
“So?” Reggie asked.
“It means there’s something generating the current. A fan, a compressor, something. It’s pushing the water through to make sure whatever they’re tossing down it gets all the way to the river.”
“And you don’t think we can swim through it?”
“Not in one piece, no,” Jeffers said.
“But there’s only one way to find out,” Beale said. “Two by two, grab a swim buddy. Stow weapons, but have a sidearm ready. We don’t know what we’re getting ourselves into, but that hasn’t ever slowed us down before. Let’s go have a look at this thing.”
“Got it.”
“Roger that.”
Julie felt Ben’s presence in the water next to her. He was treading water casually, the BCD helping to keep him afloat. He nudged her forward, toward the entrance. “Diving buddy?” he asked.
She smiled. “I guess, if you’re the best option I’ve got.”
She was about to lean in to kiss his cheek when the forest behind them on the opposite shoreline came alive with noise of an engine.
; “Shit,” Beale said. “They found us.”
“They knew where we were heading,” Jeffers said. “Eyes up. We’re about to be under attack.”
Bullets began strafing the water even before Jeffers had finished speaking, and Julie ducked farther into the water. We’re sitting ducks out here, she realized. They’ve got us pinned between themselves and the cliff.
“No,” Beale shouted. “We can’t mount a counterattack here. The shaft is our only way out. Go!”
She noticed a few Ravenshadow men in the trees on the opposite shoreline, but she also saw movement to her right. About fifty feet upstream, breaking through the trees, was another group of soldiers, all armed and looking for something to shoot at.
She felt Ben tugging at her soaked shirt, and she allowed him to pull her underwater and into the relative safety of the shaft.
Here goes nothing, she thought as more bullets impacted the water around her, their dull pinging sound drowned out by her own rapid breathing.
31
Garza
“Sir, we’ve got an update on the intruders.”
Garza turned around and faced the soldier, though he already knew who it was. He would recognize the man’s voice anywhere. Kurt Jacobsen. One of his lieutenants; the only man he employed who was older than Garza himself. They’d served together through two tours, and he had followed Kurt’s progress after Garza had left the military to start Ravenshadow.
“Hey, Kurt,” Garza said, immediately dismissing with the formalities. He was in no mood for anything formal at the moment. Usually the system, the structure, the formalities all kept him sane, kept him secure, but right now he wanted to tear his hair out and just blow it all up and move on.
“Sir, we caught them on a forest camera and have been tracking them via satellite. Their vehicles were hidden in the woods, empty, and one of our men saw them enter the river.”
Garza frowned. “We’re sure this wasn’t just a group of tourists?”
Kurt Jacobsen shook his head. “They are not, sir. They were armed, assault rifles, and prepared for a dive. Dual tanks, regulators, the works.”
“Okay.” Garza paused, working the problem through his mind. He’d never had a problem thinking strategically — it had been why Ravenshadow was so successful, and how it had grown so quickly over the years. Most private defense contractors were focused on a single client at a time. Protect this, prevent that, or some combination of it.
Ravenshadow, on the other hand, had always been in Garza’s mind an open playing field of possibility. Sure, they could protect a bank in a third-world country from a hostile corrupt government takeover, and vice versa: they were in the perfect position to enact a hostile takeover of a bank some government no longer wanted to compete with.
But Garza had always wanted more than just “get paid to scare.” He had long been guided by the idea of creating something truly valuable in the world — something the world didn’t realize it needed. People don’t know what they want until you show them, he remembered a famous CEO once saying.
That thing Garza was certain the world needed was order. True order, the kind that ushered in not only peace and harmony and allowed the prosperous to continue prospering in their own way, but also allowed the most intelligent to seek solutions to problems, uninhibited by governmental oversight or corporate greed.
He wanted to show the world that with a bit of protection, with a certain amount of measured security, they could prosper without fear of retribution. They could produce beauty, fortune, world-changing science, without fear of it being stolen from them.
The tradeoff was simple, but necessary: Garza would be able to ensure their security, at a cost. They had to trust him. They had to know that their protection was in his hands. He’d founded Ravenshadow not as a private security company, but as the young, burgeoning police force of a brand-new nation, one that would grow to new heights of success at such a rapid pace the rest of the world would have no choice but to sit up and take notice.
It was a tall order, but Garza was up to the task. He ran Ravenshadow not as a top-down company, but as a democratic dictatorship — a sample size of the larger dream.
Kurt cleared his throat. “We believe, actually sir, that it is an American team.”
Garza’s head snapped around to his security feeds in the control room and observatory. He was standing behind a bank of monitors, each manned by a Ravenshadow crewmember.
“And why do you think that?” he asked.
“Well, sir, we looked up the registration of the jeeps. They’re Peruvian through and through, but the trace on the credit card ends up at an IRS office in Salt Lake City, Utah.”
“IRS?”
“Yes, sir,” Kurt said. “And I know for a fact that the IRS is hardly efficient enough to rent jeeps in a foreign country.”
Garza was waiting for the second half of the clause. …Rent jeeps in a foreign country on such short notice, or rent jeeps in a foreign country without a mile of bureaucratic paper trail.
It didn’t come, and Kurt continued. “I was working with intelligence officers for a while before my retirement,” he said. “One the of the cleanest — and fastest — ways to ‘disappear’ a credit card purchase like this one is to make it a real purchase, just on the bill of another US organization’s line.”
“You think this is a US military entity?” Garza asked.
“I do, sir. It reeks of Army, possibly SpecOps. If I had to guess, it’s Sturdivant.”
Sturdivant’s name caused Garza to recoil. He licked his lips and stared at Kurt. He had shared his plans with no one else but his closest team of recruits and Kurt, so for Kurt to say the man’s name in a closed room with other Ravenshadow employees was a serious offense.
“You’d better be right.”
“I don’t need to be, sir,” Kurt said. “We’ll be able to ID them soon enough, but the issue will be resolved long before that.”
“Explain.”
“Well, sir, if we’re dealing with a US force that wants to infiltrate, they’ll have done their homework. My guess is they have, and my guess is they’ve decided the only plausible entrance point is through the drainage system.”
“The tunnel?” Garza asked. “We put in a massive fan pump; how would they get through? It’s as wide as the tunnel.”
When Garza had purchased the land and moved in, they had surprisingly little work to do to convert the place into a headquarters for his base of operations. They had widened a few tunnels and bracketed up power and water lines, and they had converted the old mine’s spring-fed water shaft into a waste and drainage tunnel that could supply the entire base with running water and then dump the waste into the nearby river.
“True, but again, if that’s not their plan, we’ve got nothing to worry about. If it is, disabling the fan in any way will throw an alert in the control station.”
“And you said this would be taken care of long before we need to worry about it?”
“I did, and I mean it. I’ve already dispatched a unit to head downstream and intercept them. They may not reach it before this new team enters the tunnel, but we’ll be there blocking off their exit point after they run into trouble at the pump.”
“Good,” Garza said. “But I want a backup. Send a few teams down through the original tunnels, and do your best to get them into the demonstration floor. No noise — this isn’t permission to engage, understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
Garza breathed. “Thanks Kurt.” He reached out a hand and waited for Kurt to shake it. If they had become anything over the years, Garza had to admit it looked a lot like a friendship.
Kurt released his grip and turned, then left the room.
If he’s on it, it will be taken care of, Garza thought. Without a doubt.
Whoever was infiltrating his base would meet up with Garza on the demonstration floor.
32
Ben
The tunnel was, indeed, dark. Their dive lights did little to il
luminate their path, but thankfully there was nothing in the way to impede their forward progress.
Ben swam confidently, keeping the distance between Lang and the other Green Beret in front of him and Julie consistent. So far they’d held their own with the soldiers, but Ben knew they hadn’t truly been tested yet. At the end of the day, they were still civilians.
But civilians who’ve been through more than most soldiers.
These guys were tough, but Ben knew his own crew had been pushed to the limit numerous times and come out the victors. The Ravenshadow attacks against them today had been spontaneous, but also unplanned and uncoordinated, so they’d been able to get away both times without fuss. Ben knew Garza, and he’d been up against the Ravenshadow men more than once.
They’d gotten lucky, twice. The geography of the river and forest around them had saved them once, and the existence of an underwater waste shaft had saved them the second time.
Ben knew that luck would run out.
Even now, he knew that Garza would be waiting. He might even have instructed his men to follow them into the tunnel — they could be entering the shaft downstream at this very moment, and Ben had no interest in finding out how an underwater close-quarters fight with professional mercenaries would go down.
So they swam upstream. He felt the pressure of the current growing, pushing against his face and body, but he pulled himself forward. It wasn’t too much to swim against, but he feared Jeffers and Lang were right: whatever it was pushing this much water was bound to be massive.
Another few minutes passed, and the current grew to a rate that began to feel oppressive. He wondered if they were still making forward progress, but it was impossible to tell. The distance between his arms and the man’s fins in front of him had stayed constant, and the current’s pressure made it seem like they were moving.