Who better to play me, than me?
I looked out over the Rhine and tried to locate where Santino had swam to. He’d left an hour ago, and had hopefully set himself up in a good position to cover our advance to the ship. We weren’t too worried about phase one because the chance of detection was minimal, but it was always good to have backup. I imagined he had to be getting pretty bored by now. Maybe he was even writing in the journal.
Somehow, I imagined his entry looking something like: me Santino. Me like boob. Where knife?
I smiled at the thought. I suppose I wasn’t giving him enough credit. For all I know he may write a beautiful ballad.
In haiku.
Yeah right.
I put Santino out of my mind and resisted the urge to look over at Helena, who was still busy changing into her swimwear. We were going light, not even bothering with our wetsuits, so we’d changed on sight. I used the time to place myself in line with her and where I thought Santino was situated. I didn’t want him catching a peek of something that doesn’t belong to him.
I had already donned my own swim trunks. They were a black, two pockets affair, and were embarrassingly short. Any less of a man might have felt insecure wearing them, but I didn’t have a problem at all. They were standard issue at BUD/S, and were comfortable and liberating. They were all I wore along with a diving knife strapped to my left calve. I also had a pair of flippers, diving goggles with a snorkel, a head-mounted flashlight, and a small, single use SCUBA device, the kind used by lifeguards on the beach. My last piece of equipment was a small rucksack that contained the demo.
Satisfied I’d given her enough time to change, I turned to find her pulling a sports bra over her head. Before she secured it over her chest, she turned away in an act of mock embarrassment, only to laugh it off a second later. I returned her smile and shook my head, but my expression quickly turned south. It always happened when I inadvertently noticed the two scars prominently featured on her body. Both a result of my blunderings.
The first one was on her left leg and was the more obvious of the two. It started on the outside of her thigh, just above the knee, and traversed all the way around the outside of her leg, ending on her hamstring, just below her butt. She’d received during our escape attempt from a terrorist controlled outpost on our first mission back in 2021. During the escape, I had accidently flipped the commandeered truck I was driving, hurling her from the vehicle and through an open window. She’d have the scar for the rest of her life.
The second one was on her lower back, to the right of her spine. It was only the height of a small wallet, but what made it worth mentioning was the mirror scar on the right side of her abdomen. When I closed my eyes I could still see the rebel Praetorian stabbing her with his gladius, gutting her clean through. It came back to me regularly in nightmares and I’ve never truly forgotten who was to blame for it.
I remembered the entire scenario vividly like it had just happened yesterday — me rushing to her side only to reach her too late, with barely enough time to exact some measure of revenge by decapitating her would be murderer. She’d fallen into my arms, sword and all, and I’d cradled her as I felt life fade from her mesmerizing eyes. She’d touched my cheek and apologized, but it wasn’t her fault, it was mine. I had promised her I wouldn’t leave her side in that battle, but I had, and she’d almost paid for it with her life.
I would die before I let something like that happen again.
So, as she stood there wearing nothing but a sports bra, tiny athletic shorts, and a combat knife strapped to her calf, the last thing on my mind was just how perfect she looked in the dim moonlight but how I had almost gotten her killed.
Twice.
I was so wrapped up in the memories of my near failure to preserve her life that I didn’t notice her place a hand on my shoulder. The first few years had been pretty rough for me and I never could bring myself to forgive my lack of action, even though Helena had never needed me to. She’d never blamed me for either injury, not once asking for an apology, but I couldn’t let myself off that easy. Those two events bothered me more than any other in my life.
I tilted my head to look at her, and saw nothing but a look of pure love and compassion. She always knew when my mind wandered back to that moment and how to bring me back from the brink — even after everything that’s happened between us lately.
She smiled again. “Feel better?”
“Yeah,” I replied. I held out my hand and gestured out over the water. “After you.”
Her answer was to put on her flippers, pull down her mask, fix her snorkel to her mouth, and quietly slip into the water. I followed her in.
The water was chilly. Even though it was only April, it had been a warm winter and it had been quite warm since our arrival here a few days ago. I couldn’t complain. The water at Coronado during BUD/S had been just above freezing, and cases of hypothermia and frost bite had not been unusual. Comparably, tonight’s water temperature was practically boiling.
Besides, the slight chill helped keep me focused.
Nearly fifty meters from the ship, I pulled ahead of Helena as we swam just below the surface of the water, the ripples left from our snorkels acting as the only indicator of our presence. About twenty meters out, I angled myself downward, and with only a slight splash on the surface, began my descent into the murky depths. I spat out my snorkel and pulled the small oxygen tank from my belt. With a quick breath I shoved it between my lips and was able to breath normally again. We only had about twenty minutes of air in the things so we’d have to be quick and efficient.
A few seconds later, I was quick to notice the lumbering behemoth that was the bottom of the pleasure barge loom into view. I switched on my headlamp and directed my attention towards the hull, Helena’s light providing additional coverage. Maneuvering my body so that I was lying parallel with the ship, I felt along its surface with my bare hands. The wood seemed smooth and clean, no effects of mold, decay, or shoddy workmanship visible. I gave the hull a knock with my fist, and determined it was solid and thick.
I glanced over at Helena as she floated next to me, her body perpendicular to the ship and her head a few feet away from my own. She pointed at the ship and flipped her hand in a questioning gesture. I shook my own head to ward off her unspoken question and hooked a thumb towards my bag, floating behind me.
BUD/S wasn’t called Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL for nothing. I learned everything I know about swimming, the open water, demolitions, and how to combine all three effectively there, and what I didn’t learn there was drilled into my head as I attended countless other schools for the next two years before I was able to join the Teams. Once we could do all that, and so much more, we became Frogmen.
Prior to the Vietnam War, there were no SEALs, instead, there was the Underwater Demolition Team, or UDT. Their legacy dated back to World War II when they were known simply as Frogmen. When SEAL teams were developed during the Vietnam War, the two teams worked side by side until the UDT was finally decommissioned in the 1980’s. Since then, in respect to its roots, SEALs were known as Frogmen as well.
I took an unnecessarily deep breath as I floated, confused as to why Helena hadn’t understood what I was doing. We had gone over these procedures a dozen times before. She should already know that I was using rudimentary methods to determine the ship’s structural integrity. I had a few devices back home could determine the hull’s thickness and density, but our supplies had unfortunately forgotten those toys.
It wasn’t a problem. The ship was obviously constructed out of wood, and considering the kinds of explosives I was using, it didn’t matter what kind. I held out my hand and extended three fingers before gripping an object Helena held out in front of her, one of the smallest demo pieces I’d brought. The object was cylindrical in design, and had a dial and two buttons. One button activated a timed countdown, while the dial determined the amount of time before it blew. The second button activated that device’s remote detonation function. It allowed us to blow the charges on command if desired. Safe and simple, perfect for this kind of work.