Legend: An Event Group Thriller

by David L. Golemon

  “I’m waiting.”

  “Helen’s graduate students, well, one student in particular …” Niles shook his head. “She slipped her Secret Service protection and got on that boat with Helen and the others. She’s the president’s eldest daughter, Kelly.”

  CONFLUENCE OF THE BLACK WATER TRIBUTARY AND THE AMAZON RIVER

  The stern section was the last one to be lowered into place with the assistance of navy divers sent by the repair ship USS Cayuga, of the Stennis’s battle group. They detached the cable and the U.S. Marine Corps Seahawk peeled away over the thick canopy of trees and circled, awaiting the order to pick up the ten navy divers.

  In the water, Master Chief Jenks, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, placed the last of the joining bolts through the flanges that attached each section to the thick expandable rubber gaskets that gave Teacher the flexibility she would need to navigate the tributary. The rubber was so thick, a man alone couldn’t bend it, but with Teacher’s powerful water jet thrusters, the gaskets between the sections stretched as easily as pulling on a rubber band.

  The technicians from the Group’s Logistics department, who had been chosen for the first phase of the mission, were busy pumping out brackish water that had accumulated in Teacher’s bilges during her assembly. Jenks was assisted by three men from the Engineering department for the initial firing of the two huge diesel engines. The rest of the crew was busy pulling double duty in readying Teacher for her journey. Two Seahawks had scouted as far down the Black Water Tributary as they could before they had lost sight of the river as it fell under the thick canopy of trees. One of the pilots had thought he had spied something under the canopy, but upon closer inspection nothing was visible when they passed again over the Rio Madonna ten miles back. The marine choppers pushed as far forward as fifty miles before their fuel state dictated that they needed to return to the rendezvous.

  Sarah and Jack unstrapped equipment in the research labs while Carl and Danielle assisted Professors Ellenshaw and Nathan as they filled the immense tank that would hopefully hold live specimens. Mendenhall was with the rest of the security team, consisting of Corporal Henry Sanchez, Lance Corporal Shaw, Spec 5 Jackson, army specialist Walter Lebowitz, and army sergeant Larry Ito. They were carefully charging the batteries of the small two-man submersible and filling the Teacher’s fuel bunkers with diesel from two five-hundred-gallon rubber bladders a third MV-22 Osprey had settled easily upon the riverbank. The rest of the crew was made up of fifteen lab assistants whose department heads were Virginia Pollock, Dr. Heidi Rodriguez, Dr. Allison Waltrip, head surgeon of the Event Group, and Professor Keating of the Anthropology team. The assistants loaded the supplies of food, water, and other essentials for their journey.

  Jenks placed the last expandable bolt and torque-wrenched it down. Then he tossed the tool to the frogman who was standing atop the gracefully rounded stern, just above the boat’s emblem that was painted on both sides of the fantail. The beautiful woman’s eye, set in green against the white hull, stood out starkly on the green-tinted river. With everything but the firing of the engines complete, the frogman called in the last of the Seahawks to pick up the remaining men that would return to the Stennis battle group. A few villagers from Rio Feliz gathered and were quite excited to see helicopters hovering and flying about, a rare sight for many of them. But by far the item to draw the largest group of onlookers was Teacher herself. She sat anchored to the shore of the Amazon, her gleaming white hull shining in the bright sun, the tinted widows of her forward pilothouse sparkling. The villagers had never before seen a craft whose upper bow was glass enclosed as Teacher’s was. They could see figures moving inside and were amazed by the amount of people that would occupy the boat. Jack had ordered gifts of candy bars and a few medical supplies to be handed out to the village elders as a goodwill gesture for the disturbance the Americans were causing to the small outpost of families.

  Jenks watched as the last of the frogmen were lifted away. A single Sea-hawk would patrol in a circular pattern until Teacher was well underway. The master chief climbed a ladder in section five, amidships of the 120-foot craft, and observed a three-man team from the Computer Center hook up the last of the communications gear. He had been impressed by the breadth and quality of everything Toad Everett had brought in. He didn’t know who exactly these people were, but you only had to explain to them one time how to do something and after that it was assholes and elbows. He was satisfied amidships as he looked up and saw that the radar array had started its sweeps atop the forty-foot three-span main masts that swept back at a streamlined and aerodynamic angle toward the stern.

  “Hell of a design you have here, Chief,” said Tommy Stiles, one of Pete Golding’s wunderkinds of the Computer Center who had joined the Group two years before, after having been a tech aboard the Aegis missile cruiser USS Yorktown. Stiles would be serving as Teacher’s radar and communications technician. Another man, Charles Ray Jackson, would serve as her sonar and underwater detection tech. He came to the Event Group via the “Silent Service,” having served his last year aboard USS Seawolf. He nodded his agreement that it was a great boat, at least in appearance.

  “Yeah? Well, it just tweaks my fucking ass and gives me goose bumps all over that I could please you two candy asses,” Jenks said as he opened the upper aluminum hatch and started down the steps. “Goddamned surface navy and pigboat swabs, what in the hell do you know about anything?” he mumbled with the cigar clamped in his teeth.

  Stiles looked over at Jackson, who was winding the excess coaxial cable into a roll for storage. Jackson shrugged. “Just like old times,” he said.

  “Do all master chiefs have to take a course on how to be the biggest prick in the navy?”

  “Nah, they’re born that way,” Jackson answered.

  Jenks stood by the pilot’s chair and stared at his lighted and totally digital control console. The joystick on the chair’s left arm was a total departure as a way of maneuvering the boat. She was operated by input signal to the main computer, which interpreted what the pilot was ordering and fired the appropriate electrical motors that operated the water jets at the stern of the boat, thus eliminating the need for cables and hydraulics. The system was known worldwide as “Fly by Wire.” Jenks glanced at Jack. They were both sweating profusely; the enclosed areas of Teacher were sweltering due to the lack of air-conditioning while the main power was offline.

  “Well, I guess we’d better see if this fuckin’ thing will even start,” said Jenks. “Or we’ll begin this little trip treating everyone for heatstroke, huh, Major?”

  “Would be nice to know if she works, Chief,” Jack said blandly.

  “Of course she’ll work, goddammit! What would an army major know about it, anyway? What the fuck was I thinking even asking a ground pounder?” Jenks slipped into the pilot’s seat. “Are you ready back there?” he asked as soon as he had his headphones in place.

  “All set,” Mendenhall answered nervously. He had been tagged as the mechanical assistant on this little safari; he and the other members of the security team were doubling as motormen, much to the master chief’s chagrin. An engine start-up warning tone sounded over the boat’s intercom system from the engineering section in the last compartment of the boat.

  “Toad, are you there?” Jenks asked.

  “Here,” Carl answered through his com system.

  “Good. If those engines don’t start, bash that big black sergeant in the head with that fire extinguisher; he’s the one that hooked up the starter.”

  “Bash head, got it, Chief,” Everett said, grinning at a scowling Mendenhall.

  “Okay.” Jenks reached over and uncapped a clear plastic cover over a red button that had a computer-generated glowing word: start. “Here we go,” he said as he pushed the button and clamped down even harder on his cigar.

  Suddenly there was a deep rumble throughout Teacher as the twin diesels fired up. The digital gauges and controls were illuminated blue and green, and the tacho
meter read that the engines were idling at an even one thousand rpms. Red gauges showed the critical areas of the boat’s function, such as engine status, fuel, temperature in each section of the boat with hatch status, and ballast. The blue and green noncritical areas, such as battery state, amperage, speed indication, water depth, and river width, flared to life, the main computer generating their ever-changing numbers and gauges. A large display in the center console allowed the pilot to see a virtual computer-generated display of the area directly to the front of the boat; with a flip of the switch, it could change to a split-screen version that showed all sides including the stern, even underwater. Sensors and a sonar device automatically and constantly relayed signals that the computer interpreted, to generate an ever adjusting image of Teacher’s surroundings.

  “I’ll be damned,” the master chief said as he slapped the major on the ass. “How ’bout that, the bitch is breathing!” His laughter was infectious; Jack could hear the cheers of dozens of men and women throughout the boat as they all heard and felt the powerful engines come to life.

  “See, they love her, too,” Jenks exclaimed as he removed his cigar and smiled widely.

  Jack winked. “Either that or they’re just happy the air-conditioning’s on,” he said as he pulled the semitransparent sliding door aside and left the cockpit.

  Jenks, his smile fading, watched as Jack left. “Eh, what does he know,” he mumbled as he flipped a toggle switch on the thick right arm of his command chair. “Stand by in the stern and bow to bring up the anchors,” his voice rumbled more forcefully throughout the boat on the speakers embedded in every section.

  Carl pushed a button mounted on the wall of the engine room. He could hear the winch engage, which controlled both the bow and stern anchors. Then there was a satisfying click as the winch stopped. He gave Mendenhall and Sanchez a thumbs-up.

  Carl met Sarah and Doctors Nathan and Ellenshaw at the base of the large spiral staircase in the section four lounge that led to the upper and outermost deck of Teacher. They went up and Carl opened the large acrylic glass bubble. They climbed out into the heat. A ten-by-ten-foot section in the center of the boat just aft of the radio and radar tower allowed them a view of the river. Three sections to their front, they saw Jack and Virginia climb out on deck and then sit in one of the many weatherproof chairs lining the gunwales.

  They felt Teacher shudder as Jenks applied power and she slowly backed away from the crumbling riverbank. She backed up until her large stern was well out into the main channel of the Amazon, and then they heard her transmission shift into forward gear and Teacher almost leaped out of the water. Her tri-hull rode gracefully, cutting through the greenish water with ease as the large boat started her maiden voyage down the most famous river in the world on her way to a tributary that to the modern world existed only in legend.

  Two hours later Collins, Everett, and Mendenhall were outside the glass-enclosed cockpit while Sarah sat with Jenks in the copilot’s chair, talking about, what else, the chief’s boat.

  Corporal Sanchez had volunteered to be the expedition’s cook, much to Mendenhall’s dismay, and he brought them a tray of coffee. He handed two cups through the door to Jenks and Sarah, then left the tray on the centerline table in the navigation department.

  “I don’t think the master chief likes me,” he said, wiping his hands on a towel.

  “That man doesn’t like anyone except this woman,” Carl said as he patted the composite side of the boat.

  “Ain’t normal,” Sanchez called as he walked back through the hatch and back to his cooking.

  Jack returned to the large glass table. Padilla’s map had been scanned and placed in the main navigational computer. Laid before them in detail were items that had been added to the map by placing known terrain colors and features from U.S. Geological Survey RORSAT photos. The display was “current position” capable, meaning they could see their position the entire way on the computer-generated map. In the next few hours they hoped to have telemetry set up with Jet Propulsion Labs in Pasadena to allow them access to live images from Boris and Natasha.

  Carl spun a steel ball embedded in the side frame of the map table and slid forward along the image of the river from their current position. While he sipped his coffee, he studied the area that worried them the most. The Padilla map showed only the winding river; on the more scientific survey maps that had been superimposed over the Spaniard’s, there were only trees and jungle. From above, there was no river to speak of, as it had disappeared from view under the rain forest canopy. A computer line marked where the tributary should be according to the Padilla map beneath it.

  “There are so many variables—width, depth, and other factors—that could stop us right in our tracks,” Carl said.

  “Well, I guess that’s when we’ll see if Teacher is as magical as the master chief seems to think she is,” Jack said.

  “I think she’ll be,” Mendenhall offered. “He’s right; she’s something, isn’t she?”

  Both Carl and Jack looked over at the sergeant but didn’t comment.

  “That doesn’t mean that I like him or anything, just that he built a great-lookin’ boat,” Mendenhall said defensively. “I think I’ll go check on the arms locker and scuba gear,” he said, feeling like a traitor for praising their pilot. He picked up his coffee and excused himself.

  “What’s going on in navigation? Any change in course? We still trying for that phantom cutoff onto that Black Water Trib?”

  Jack hit the com button and selected Cockpit. “No change in course; according to Padilla, the tributary is hidden, looks like a normal bend. So stay to the right of the center current,” Jack said as he released the switch.

  As the two men looked at the screen they saw the cutoff. It was marked by a rendering of trees that had grown so thick even in the Spaniard’s time that Padilla had made a black X through the drawing of the sun. Carl mumbled something.

  “What was that?” Jack asked.

  “I guess that’s where we fall off the edge of the world.”

  Jack didn’t respond; he just nodded.

  Three hours later, with Carl at the helm, Jenks and half the team were at dinner in the crowded lounge in section four. At only twenty-three and a half feet wide, Teacher lacked what would be properly known as elbow room. Sarah, Virginia, and Jack sat as far away from the master chief as they could to avoid any unnecessary charm he might add to their conversation. They were all enjoying their view of the passing river in a most unique way: the bottom port windows were actually underwater, and the green flowing river eased by like a huge aquarium before them.

  “Are we prepared in case we run into our French friend?” Virginia asked, forsaking her chance at Sanchez’s ham and cheese casserole, instead opting for a cup of coffee and salad.

  “It all depends on circumstances, I guess. He’s no fool; he’ll wait until he feels he has the advantage in numbers, or surprise. I figure he’ll wait until we’ve done most of the work; that’s his pattern, from what I’ve learned.”

  Sarah listened but didn’t comment, so Jack knew there was something on her mind.

  “What are you thinking, short stuff?” he asked.

  She laid her fork in her plate and sighed. “It’s Danielle, her showing up at the dig in Okinawa. If she was so intent on tracking her ex-husband down, why use us? I mean, surely she has other resources at her disposal, so much so that we should have been irrelevant.”

  “Well, you heard her explanation. She didn’t really want to bring in her own people for personal reasons,” Virginia said.

  “I’m not buying it,” Sarah insisted.

  Jack gave her a look she knew all too well.

  “Knock it off, it’s not just that I don’t like her, or because her former name was Farbeaux. It’s the way her agency has so conveniently become cooperative right now. Besides, so soon after Lisa’s death, I think she’s a bad influence on Carl.”

  “Oh, that’s it—you don’t think Carl’
s man enough to avoid an entanglement. Or is it that you’re jealous for Lisa?” Jack asked.

  “Listen, Jack,” she said, then caught her mistake a split second after it was out of her mouth. “I mean Major, leave that crap out of it … it’s just that maybe Lieutenant Ryan would have been better off working with her, instead of Carl,” she said, picking up her fork to indicate she was ending her part in this awkward conversation.

  “Where is Jason, anyway? He’s usually attached to you and Carl like a pet,” Virginia commented.

  “I assigned him another project,” Jack quickly replied. “And Ryan is the last man you want around a Frenchwoman anyway,” he joked, hoping to steer the conversation away from the lieutenant’s whereabouts.

  “Chief Jenks, Major, come to the bridge please,” Carl said over the intercom. “We’re coming up on the area where our Spaniard said the Black River starts.”

  Jenks and Jack passed Danielle in the companion way that joined the navigation area with the cockpit. She smiled and nodded a greeting. The master chief stopped and tilted his head to admire her from behind, then entered the cockpit to relieve Carl at the controls.

  “Had Frenchie keepin’ you company, Toad?” Jenks asked as he squeezed into the command chair.

  “Nah, all by my lonesome up here,” Carl answered.

  Jack caught an inflection in his answer and, instead of going into the cockpit, turned and looked around the navigation compartment. He went to the map table. The computer rendering of Padilla’s map was up. Jack remembered shutting it down earlier, and surmised that Carl must have turned it on when he took over for Jenks. He ducked his head into the cockpit and saw that the map was also up on the monitor between the two seats. Everett must have used the map table first and then routed the program to the cockpit.

  “We have a branch coming up. We have about fifteen feet of water under our keel, so no problem there, yet,” Jenks said.