“Sorry, but this is as far as I go. As it stands, I need the ship to come east to meet me if I’m going to make it back.”
“Roger that.” Cabrillo twisted in his makeshift seat so he could look at the trio in the cargo area. “Did you hear that? We need to do this quick. Linda, you’ve got point, then MacD and you, John. I’ll be right behind. Linda, make sure you wait to unhook the boat.”
“You got it,” she replied, and kicked a rappelling rope out the hole where a door had once been.
Adams maneuvered the big chopper into a hover directly over the fifty-foot-wide river. The tops of the trees danced and swayed in the rotor wash as he threaded the RHIB through them on its way to the water below. Such was his skill that the boat barely made a splash as it hit. And no sooner was it in place than Linda Ross threw herself down the rope. She dangled precariously for a moment, then arced her body over the RHIB’s inflatable skirt and landed on her feet on the deck. MacD Lawless was halfway down and dropping fast. Linda positioned herself to release the winch hook and waved up at Adams, who was watching the procedure through the Plexiglas windows at his feet.
“See you later,” Juan said to the pilot as he unstrapped himself for his turn down the line.
Before following the others, Juan clipped a D ring from the bundled packs to the line and looked down at the three people in the boat. All were looking up at him. Linda made a gesture to indicate they were ready, so Juan pushed the packs out. They hit the deck hard, but there was nothing in them that could break. Juan slung his carbine over his shoulder and threw himself down the rope, his hands protected by special gloves with leather palms and fingers. He arrested his fall an inch from the boat before letting go. No sooner had his boots hit than Linda released the winch, and Gomez Adams torqued the chopper up and away, heading back to the ship, and flying even closer to the ground now that he didn’t have to worry about the RHIB.
After so much time in the helicopter, it took several minutes for the ringing in their ears to subside.
They were on a deserted stretch of the river, which at this point flowed at a snail’s pace. The banks were about a foot above the water, composed of reddish soil that crumbled in places. Immediately behind the banks exploded a riot of vegetation that was so dense it appeared impenetrable. Cabrillo stared at a spot as hard as he could and estimated he could only penetrate maybe five feet before his view was completely blocked. For all he knew, a division of Myanmar’s Special Forces was lurking six feet in.
The temperature hovered around ninety degrees, but the lack of wind and the thickness of the moisture in the air made it feel like they were breathing in a sauna. In moments, perspiration stains bloomed under Cabrillo’s arms, and sweat trickled down his face. The coming rainstorm would be a welcome relief that couldn’t get there fast enough.
“Okay, we’ve got about sixty miles to cover. I want MacD and John on the bows as lookouts. Linda, you’re with me, but keep an eye on our six. The guys back on the ship beefed up the outboard’s exhaust, but anyone upstream will still hear us coming, so stay sharp.”
With that, Juan took his place at the control console slightly aft of amidships. Other than the ring of rubber fenders that encircled the boat, it was the only thing that stuck up above the deck of the spartan assault boat.
“Gear all secured?” he asked.
“Yup,” Linda said, straightening from where she’d bungeed the packs to a flip-up pad eye.
Cabrillo pressed the starter, and the engine immediately rumbled to life, as he knew it would. He let the single outboard warm for a moment and then bumped the throttle. The boat fought the river’s current until they were holding still relative to the banks. He pressed the accelerator harder. Water boiled behind the transom as the prop bit into the black tannin-laced river. In seconds he had them up to about fifteen miles per hour, far below the boat’s capability even with one of its engines removed, but a speed he judged would allow them plenty of reaction time if someone was coming downstream.
The wind created by their forward progress was a blessed relief.
When they neared a sharp bend in the river, Cabrillo would throttle the boat down so it was barely making headway and peek it around the corner to make sure there was nothing lurking in their blind spot.
After a half hour, two things happened almost simultaneously. The nature of the river changed. The banks drew in closer, which sped up the current, and boulders appeared, creating eddies and pools that Cabrillo had to steer around. These weren’t exactly rapids, but they quickly could become so. The second thing was that, after a brutal spike in humidity that seemed to soak their lungs with each breath, the rain clouds, which had arrived overhead and washed all color from the jungle, opened. It was a constant drumming rain that hit like fists. It came down in sheets, it came down in buckets, it came down as if they were being blasted by fire hoses.
Juan fumbled a pair of clear goggles from the tiny compartment under the wheel and slipped them over his eyes. Without them, he couldn’t see the bow of the boat. With them, his vision wasn’t extended too much farther, but enough for them to keep going.
He gave thanks that tropical downpours, while brutal onslaughts to the senses, were blessedly brief. Or so he kept telling himself as ten minutes turned into twenty, and their speed barely made headway against the still-strengthening current.
The three others hunched miserably at their stations, looking like drowned rats. When he glanced down at Linda, who had her back against the rubber fender, she was hugging herself, and her lips were quivering. MacD was making a halfhearted attempt to bail out the RHIB using his boonie hat. A solid inch of water sloshed back and forth whenever Cabrillo steered them around an obstacle.
The riverbanks rose higher still, hemming them in, oftentimes looming over the boat. Loose soil had given way to gravel and rock. The once-tranquil river was becoming a torrent, and as much as Cabrillo thought it might be a good idea to pull over and wait out the storm, there were no sheltered coves, no places to tie off a line. They had no choice but to forge ahead.
Visibility was measured in inches, while overhead thunder cracked an instant after the lightning snaked across the heavens.
But he kept them driving onward. Every time the boat hit an obstruction, or the stern sank deep as they powered over a cataract, he was grateful that the single propeller had a shroud to protect the blades. Otherwise the prop would have chewed itself apart on the rocks.
It took a keen eye to notice when the water suddenly turned muddy brown, and an even sharper mind to understand what it meant.
Cabrillo reacted instantly. He turned the boat sharp right to get out of the center of the raging river just as the rubble of a collapsed bank farther upstream choked the waterway with debris. Whole trees arrowed down the river, their branches reaching out for the RHIB, each easily capable of capsizing the craft or at the least tearing away the rubber fenders that acted as the boat’s gunwales. Had Juan not twisted the wheel, they would have been sunk for sure.
Trunks as big around as telephone poles hurtled past, their rootballs exposed. Erosion was eating away at the soil that had been ripped from the ground when the trees tumbled into the river. At one point Juan had to slew the boat around the drowned body of a water buffalo, its horns coming close enough to brush the boat’s flank before the current carried the pitiable creature away.
Some objects were too low in the water for Cabrillo to see, so he maneuvered the boat by listening to MacD’s shouted warnings. They were forced to cut left and right as the river continued to throw flotsam at them. Juan had reduced power as much as he dared, but still trees and shrubs flew past at dizzying speeds, while the sky continued to rage overhead.