Tidal Rip by Joe Buff Read Free Book Online Page A

area—between the railroad and the coast. But the dense greenery of the canopy cover, and the frequent overcast skies and violent thunderstorms of the rainy season, tended to make surveillance by human beings on foot much better than airborne surveillance. Visual, infrared, radar—all were blocked or distorted, and hopelessly spoofed by false alarms. Ground-based remote-controlled sensors—like seismometers to feel people walking, or urea sniffers to pick up their sweat or body waste—were equally stymied by environmental noise and signal clutter—from the constant wandering of man-sized animals under all the trees. Besides, as Felix well appreciated, the whole Amazon River basin was much too large to cover effectively from the ground by any affordable sensor grid: it was more than half the size of the entire continental United States.
    It was really the presence of the railroad that tagged the area as a probable guerrilla target. And therein lay America’s problem, and the reason why Felix was here.
    There were only two practical ways to reach the area, unless you were lowered by helicopter or inserted from the sea, because the railroad itself—freight trains only, no passengers—was patrolled by Brazilian security troops. One route, from the scattered urban parts of Brazil far south across the Amazon, was by boat and then on foot through the swamps and the jungle. The other way was on foot down from the north, through the French Guyana highlands. Since France was occupied by Germany, French Guyana—a French possession—had seceded and made itself neutral. Like much of neutral soil during war since time immemorial, French Guyana was now a hotbed of intrigue containing all sides. The Pentagon’s intelligence assessment was that Germans were helping the leftist guerrillas by coming south through French Guyana. That was a long and difficult trek, since there were no roads whatsoever—this part of the Amazon basin was truly the middle of nowhere.
    Felix heard a quick pattering from above and then a loud plop. The quality of the noise told him it was an overripe fruit, falling through the intervening branches to the ground. He watched something the size of his fist scurry along the ground in his field of view. It reared up at him on hind legs for a moment, then scurried away. A spider . Tarantula, probably. Their bites were painful but not deadly. Felix wondered if a tarantula’s fangs could penetrate his gloves.
    In the shadows between the protruding tree roots and creeping vines, he saw something else move. It moved deliberately, with practiced stealth. Slowly, silently, it came for him, closer and closer.
    Felix cursed to himself. It was a vampire bat, doing what vampire bats do—stalking a sleeping large mammal. The bat’s fangs were razor sharp, so sharp they could slit the hide of a cow or tapir without the victim even waking. Then the bats drank the sweet fresh blood till their stomachs were so bloated they could barely move. The vampire bat would stumble away like a drunken sailor, to digest its tasty meal.
    This particular vampire bat had its eyes on Felix’s hand. He flicked it in the nose with his thumb and index finger. It jumped back, then tried for him again. He bopped it in the nose, harder. The ugly bat gave up, and went into the underbrush.
    Felix sighed. He felt drained from his exertions of the past few days but knew he’d be lucky to get much rest tonight. The constant stress and need for alertness were wearing. By the end of the mission, in another ten days or so if he was lucky, he’d be ready for a nice long break back aboard the Ohio . The Ohio was an old boomer sub, and the ample space of her missile compartment had been specially converted for SEALs. Compared to the claustrophobic confines of a typical fast-attack sub, where SEALs squeezed into improvised sleeping racks in the torpedo room, the Ohio was like an undersea resort hotel.
    Felix heard distant thunder. Another rainstorm