by Joe Buff
Felix reached the lieutenant. The man was dead, his skull shattered. His brain sat in the mud on the trail, in almost perfect condition, as if it had been removed by a surgeon. That strange weapon to the front fired yet again, a slow but steady explosive bloop-bloop-bloop. It sounded like a cross between a heavy machine gun and a grenade launcher. The noise of it hurt Felix’s already-ringing ears.
Felix pulled out a pair of white phosphorus grenades. He fell back, then threw one toward the strange heavy weapon, and the other to his right, toward the flanking enemy riflemen. He ducked behind a tree.
Both grenades exploded. Felix charged forward, relying on the choking smoke screen for protection. He hefted the lieutenant’s body across his shoulders. The heavy enemy weapon fired another three-round burst. More shrapnel filled the air. Felix took out another smoke-incendiary grenade, his last. Over his shoulder, he tossed it at the dead man’s brain — this was as good a point of aim as any. Felix ran to the rear with his lifeless, dripping burden. The third white phosphorus grenade burst behind him. Again Felix felt the radiant heat and coughed on the fumes of searing phosphorus. Bits of it landed near him and made the puddles steam and hiss.
“Withdraw,” he shouted, still speaking Portuguese for disguise. “Follow me! Break contact!”
Felix had realized what that strange enemy weapon was. He’d heard that the U.S. Army was developing something like it.
An objective crew-served weapon. A highly portable twoman miniature cannon that fired one-inch-caliber explosive rounds on full automatic. These weapons had laser range finders, and electronically fused each round before it was fired. The fuses could be set precisely by timer so the weapon made lethal air bursts at any specific range its crew wanted to target.
Explosive rounds from such a weapon were pounding at the SEALs. One round had taken off the lieutenant’s head.
At least the smoke grenades are blocking their range finder. With that, and the trees in the way, it’ll be harder for them to zero in on us.
Felix ordered his team to retreat to the south, regrouping on the run into an all-around circle formation. The enemy, whoever they were, followed in close pursuit. More incoming explosive shells detonated, near the ground and high in the air; the eardrum-splitting concussions were fast, and bright, and hot. Birds and monkeys screamed. Dislodged seeds and heavy ripe fruit rained from far above. Entire branches crashed to the earth. Enemy bullets tore by like angry, burning bees.
The SEALs took turns firing back the way they’d just come while others ran ahead and reloaded. Then the SEALs who’d fired would rush for safety while their teammates unleashed vicious fire at the enemy. The men did this over and over again, taking turns, covering more and more distance each time. The enemy continued coming after them, returning the fire. But the noise of reports, the incoming rounds, were the only signs of the enemy — Felix couldn’t catch one glimpse of who was shooting at him.
Felix heard more bloop-bloop-bloop sounds, overlaid on more sharp concussions each time a grenade round exploded in the air or against a tree. The jungle was thick with flying shrapnel and bullets now, and kicked-up debris. There was painful pressure in Felix’s ears from the punishing noise.
A big rotting fruit bashed down on Felix’s helmet; pungent juice from it dripped into his eyes. A wounded sloth slammed into the earth and Felix almost stumbled. He shot it once in the head to end its agony.
The dead lieutenant’s body, with all its equipment, was an almost unbearable weight across Felix’s back. SEALs never leave a man behind, dead or alive. From somewhere deep inside himself, Felix found the strength to carry on. He spun and fired a long burst from his submachine gun. He turned and ran. Grenade rounds probed toward him, but the enemy gunners were guessing the range.
Then bullets pounded into the lieutenant’s body from behind. Felix staggered, more from fright than from the force of the impacts. He hurried on.
Felix did a head count on the run. The rest of the team was following, but one man had been hit in the arm. The bullet struck the side of his shoulder, next to the edge of his flak vest. He seemed okay, at least for now. The wounded man was keeping up with the others, and there didn’t seem to be much blood, but he was having trouble reloading with his injured arm. Other men had lacerations from wood splinters or steel shrapnel — they kept running.
Felix’s heart pounded hard as he splashed through the puddles and mud. His back ached terribly from the deadweight of his lieutenant, and his breath came in overrapid painful gasps. He turned and fired his weapon again.
Bullets punched hard and squarely at his chest. Only his flak vest saved his life. Felix turned again to cover more distance and lead the withdrawal. He yelled for two of his men to throw more smoke incendiaries behind them.
Felix glanced at his chest. Sticking from his flak vest were what looked like long thin nails. They had little fins at their protruding ends. Each was bent, from its own momentum after it struck the ceramic plate of his vest. Each was smoking hot.
Fléchette rounds.
Felix yelled for his men to pick up the pace.
They’d been ambushed by a very sophisticated enemy. The weapons were state-of-the-art. The air-burst shrapnel rounds were ideal to take out men in helmets and flak vests — the shrapnel would hit faces and arms and legs. Fléchettes were perfect for use against the extremities of men in body armor too. The United States had decided not to use them in combat because the wounds they caused were so cruel. Each fléchette had such kinetic energy, and yet was so thin, that hitting anywhere unprotected in a human body it would fishhook — twisting and caroming inside to mutilate organs and rip blood vessels and sever nerves. A fléchette in the knee could ricochet and lodge inside your liver. One in the elbow could end up in your spine.
I think we found what we came here for.
Physical proof of German interference. This last ambush hadn’t been led by any insurgent band, using sloppy tactics and weapons designed fifty years ago. These were German Special Forces, maybe even kampfschwimmer.
Their goal is to do whatever it takes to kill or capture U.S. Navy SEALs on Brazilian soil. Then after they do their own interrogation, they’ll have local Axis sympathizers turn us in to the government. Those earlier half-botched ambushes were a setup after all. They were waiting for us.
Another grenade round flew past Felix’s head and embedded itself in a tree. He flinched, but it failed to detonate.
Felix was taking a terrible risk, but he had his orders. He stopped and used his survival knife to dig the intact round out of the trunk of the hardwood tree. He prayed its fuse was defective, a dud, or that it was programmed to burst after covering more distance and hadn’t flown its minimum arming range.
Just in case, Felix put it in his rucksack — outside the back panel of his flak vest, and covered by the dead lieutenant’s corpse.
Now we just have to break contact and get far away from here.
Felix shouted for his men to throw every white phosphorus grenade they had. A solid wall of heat and smoke flew up.
The enemy continued pursuing. Felix was impressed by their tenacity and stamina, as much as he was by their weaponry and tactics. He began to worry they were forcing him into another ambush, with more German Special Forces blocking the SEAL team’s rear.
Felix and his team reentered the stand of closely clumped trees. He handed the dead lieutenant to one of his men. They’d brought a body bag, just in case, and they placed the corpse in it quickly. This would avoid leaving more of a blood trail for the enemy to track. There was still enough blood and gore on Felix for what he planned to do next.
He ordered his team to split up. Most of the men would head east, at right angles to the pursuing Germans. Felix and one other SEAL would continue south, and make as much noise as they could to draw on the enemy.
Felix picked the most experienced unwounded man to assist him. They took two weapons, from the wounded and dead, to supplement their own. They began firing back down th
eir escape path, toward the Germans, with one submachine gun in each hand.
Without the terrible weight of the lieutenant’s body, Felix felt a renewed surge of energy and strength. He and the other SEAL, impelled by a desperate cunning, charged ahead to lay a false trail. They emptied the magazines from all their weapons in the direction of the Germans. Then they shouldered the weapons and doubled back, literally walking backward, dashing toward the Germans as quickly but as quietly as they could.
“Here!” Felix ordered in a hoarse whisper. He used a canteen to wash the lieutenant’s blood from his gear. He and the other SEAL pulled special plastic sticks from their rucksacks. They ran west for several yards. They bent double and used the sticks and walked backward again, hurrying east, and picked up and followed the footprints of the other men in their team.
The sticks ended in fake boar hooves. Still bent over, glancing between their legs so they wouldn’t trip and ruin everything, the two men disguised their trail by pressing the stick ends into the mud and earth. Right and left hooves, front and rear hooves, over and over and over. They did this until the pain in their lower backs and knees made them feel as if they’d never walk again. Then they stood and flew east as fast as they could.
Felix’s team had reunited one hour later and was hurrying north on the run. Their shrapnel injuries wore field-expedient bandages. The men took turns carrying the dead lieutenant’s body. The man with the shoulder bullet wound had been given a transfusion of blood expander to delay shock and help him keep moving. But Felix knew he had internal bleeding — the high-velocity fléchette that entered his shoulder had lodged somewhere in his chest cavity.
Felix chose to head north because this was the direction the enemy would least expect him to take. North meant away from the Amazon, and farther away from the coast. It brought the team closer and closer to the Araguari River, a populated area and major obstacle, the last place a team of SEALs would want to be. The Araguari ran east, not toward the Amazon but to the coast and the South Atlantic Ocean.
“From now on,” Felix told his men between labored breaths, “I do the talking.”
Felix maintained a grueling pace. There was real danger the Germans had figured out his plan and were coming after him. There was danger the Germans were in contact with other hostile units near the Araguari, or in the big town ahead on the river, Ferreira Gomes. The team had many miles still to go. They splashed through puddles and dashed between trees with all their equipment.
From here, Felix could count on nothing but his and his men’s nerve and their will to survive. The sun was getting lower in the sky. Once it set, their progress would be badly slowed by poor visibility. The wounded man would die. German or Brazilian forces would close in. Time was vital. The enemy already knew the team was present; caution was thrown to the wind in a high-stakes gamble for life.
“Faster,” Felix urged as they ran. Each breath was sheer agony. The strain in his legs and back muscles was painful beyond description. His eyes teared from the effort, but his tears were masked by sweat. His insect head net was lost somewhere, torn off as he ran, but his speed through the rain forest kept most bugs from homing in.
Felix eyed his men. They were all grouped together now to boost one another’s morale through simple companionship. On and on they hurried. Arms and legs pumped endlessly; chests heaved. Heads in helmets bobbed. Fourteen different feet rose and fell, pounding the earth relentlessly, jaggedly out of rhythm for mile after mile. The combined huffing and puffing sounded like an overtaxed steam locomotive struggling up a hill. Rucksacks and dive-gear sacks bounced heavily with each stride.
Each face was a mask of utter exhaustion. Felix forced himself to smile. He looked at his men with pride. To talk he drew a breath so deep his stomach pushed out at his flak vest. “And you thought Hell Week was bad.”
The man who was carrying the dead lieutenant looked at Felix blankly. There was grief in his eyes, for the loss.
“Don’t think of death until later. Just put out for me, for the team.” Felix threw his head back to pull in more air.
The wounded man tripped. Felix reached and caught him. The man lost consciousness and wouldn’t revive. Even with other guys lugging his gear, Felix was amazed he’d managed this far. He quickly inserted another transfusion of blood expander and lifted the SEAL in a fireman’s carry; SEALs took turns running beside him, to hold the plasma bag high.
With this new burden over his shoulders, Felix gave his men another forced smile. They still had so far to go. “Faster. Quit slacking off. The only easy day was yesterday.”
At dusk, Felix hid in the stinking trash dump, making observations. His team rested in the jungle growth behind him.
The small village beyond the outskirts of Ferreira Gomes was crawling with Brazilian Army troops. From things they said to one another, Felix knew the troops were preparing to make a sweep to the south. He wasn’t surprised — he’d heard the noise of helicopters during the late afternoon.
The wounded SEAL was in very poor condition now. Felix was sure that if he didn’t get into surgery before dawn, he would die.
Felix didn’t like the options. He couldn’t afford to wait for the Brazilian troops to leave. They might take hours yet, assembling for a night reconnaissance — he saw some men with night-vision goggles. Even if they did depart soon, to scour the country Felix and his team just covered, they’d surely leave behind a rear element for communications and logistic support.
We’ll just have to brazen it out.
Felix crawled backward out of sight of the village. Dogs barked, chickens cackled, pigs oinked, but they’d been doing that already because of the army troops. Felix pulled rotting fruit rinds and maggot-ridden animal bones, and even more unspeakable waste, off his clothing and equipment. But the garbage pile had been high ground of a sort — and he was unlikely to be disturbed by playing children, or villagers dumping trash, without enough warning to slip away.
Felix rejoined his worn-out men. He led them forward, along a well-beaten trail running from some cultivated fields into the village. Felix already knew that most of the villagers had gone indoors because it was getting dark — and also to avoid interfering with the well-disciplined, orderly troops. He saw and smelled wood smoke coming from village shacks on stilts grouped around a main clearing. He also smelled delicious cooking smells, even above his own stench.
“Hey!” Felix yelled. “Hey! Patrol coming in!”
“Password!” a young and scared private shouted from behind a straw-thatched storage shed.
If he thinks that shed is good cover, I’d hate to see what his marksmanship’s like…. Still, I’d rather not find out.
“Password?” Felix shouted. “How should I know? Special Forces! We’ve been wild-westing it for two weeks!”
The private came forward, shrugged, and let Felix and his men go by. The private stared wide-eyed at the wounded man — carried now on a stretcher improvised from saplings and uniform shirts — and at the dead man in the body bag — carried now by two men using the handles on the bag’s sides.
“Be careful out there,” Felix said to the private. “You could be next!” As expected, he saw that the soldier held an M-16.
In the village, a Brazilian Army sergeant spotted Felix and walked over. He sniffed when he got closer, then tried not to breathe too deeply. “Do you need an evacuation? We can call back a helicopter.” The sergeant looked up at the sky. It was growing dark very quickly. “But I’m not sure they land at night.”
“No,” Felix bluffed. “Thank you, but we have our own arrangements.”
“I think your man needs a hospital.”
“Yes. Leave that to us.”
“I think I should tell my lieutenant.”
Felix hesitated. “Please be quick. We have a schedule.”
“Yes, yes. Quick.”
This is where it gets dicey.
The lieutenant approached. He seemed capable and battle-hardened, not someone easily fooled.
He wrinkled his nose at his first whiff of Felix.
Good. The more I stink, the less he’ll really look at me, and the less he’ll think to ask me awkward questions.
Felix knew the best way to lie was to use as much of the truth as he could.
“Special Forces, sir. We met some opposition. Our officer was killed. We have our own plan of egress. Classified mission orders.”
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.
