The Silent Sea (2010) - Cussler Clive - Страница 4

Nick rushed across the pit to his brother's side. His frantic motion must have shifted the whole pile further because Don suddenly screamed. The wood pushing into his chest slipped even more, and in the light of his miner's lamp Nick could see a dark stain forming on his brother's coat.

Water continued to hammer them from above, a torrent as bad as any summer rainstorm.

Hold on, little brother, Nick said, grasping the tree branch. He felt an odd vibration coming from the wood, an almost mechanical sensation, as though the end hidden underwater was attached to some device.

No matter how he tried to pull it out, the branch was firmly lodged against something hidden below the water. It remorselessly continued to drive into Don's chest in a slow, steady thrust.

Don screamed at the pain. Nick screamed, too, out of fear and frustration. He didn't know what to do, and he looked around for some way to lever the bough out of his brother's body.

Just hold on, Don, Nick said, tears mingling with the salt water sluicing off his face.

Don called his name again, weakly, for there was three inches of wood impaled into his flesh. Nick took his hand, which Don gripped, but quickly the strength afforded him by fear and pain began to ebb. His fingers slackened.

Donny! Nick cried.

Don opened his mouth. Nick would never know what his brother's final words were meant to be. A clot of blood erupted from Don Ronish's pale lips. The first eruption turned into a steady stream that turned pink in the spray as it ran down his neck and across his chest.

Nick threw his head back and roared, a primeval call that echoed off the pit walls, and he would have remained at his brother's side forever had the second of his oakum plugs not burst, doubling the flow of water pouring into the pit.

He fumbled with the rope in the deluge, clipping his harness into the loop. He hated what he was about to do, but he had no choice. He tugged on the plumb line. His other brothers had to know something was wrong because they started hauling him from the pit instantly. Nick kept his light trained on Don until the lifeless body was just a pale outline in the stygian realm. And then it was gone.

DON RONISH'S MEMORIAL SERVICE was held the following Wednesday. The world had changed dramatically during the hours the five brothers were playing at being explorers. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, and the United States was now at war. Only the Navy had the kind of dive equipment necessary to recover Don's body, and their parents' request had fallen on deaf ears. His casket remained empty.

Their mother hadn't spoken since hearing the news and had to sit through the service leaning against their father to keep from fainting. When it was done, he told the three eldest to stay where they were, and he lead their mother and Jimmy to their car, a secondhand Hudson. He returned to the graveside, a decade older than he'd been Sunday morning. He said nothing, looking from one son to the next, his eyes red-rimmed. He then reached into the jacket pocket of the only suit he owned, the one he'd been married in and the one he'd worn to his own parents' funerals. He had three slips of paper. He handed one to each, pausing with the one he gave to Kevin. He kissed it before thrusting it into his son's hand.

They were birth certificates. The one he'd given Kevin had been Don's, who had been eighteen years old and thus eligible for military service.

It's 'cause of your Ma. She never understood. Do our family proud and maybe you'll be forgiven.

He turned on his heel and walked away, his rangy shoulders hanging as though they supported a weight far heavier than his body could ever carry.

And so the three boys went to the nearest recruiters, all thoughts of boyhood adventure banished forever by the memory of their brother's unoccupied coffin, and then by the hellfires of war.

The Silent Sea

Chapter ONE

NEAR THE PARAGUAY-ARGENTINE BORDER

PRESENT DAY

JUAN CABRILLO HAD NEVER THOUGHT HE WOULD MEET A challenge he would rather walk away from than face. He felt like running from this one.

Not that it showed.

He had an unreadable game face his blue eyes remained calm and his expression neutral but he was glad his best friend and second-in-command, Max Hanley, wasn't with him. Max would have picked up on Cabrillo's concern in a second.

Forty miles down the tea-black river from where he stood was one of the most tightly controlled borders in the world second only to the DMZ separating the two Koreas. It was just rotten luck that the object that had brought him and his handpicked team to the remote jungle had landed on the other side. Had it come down in Paraguay, a phone call between diplomats and a little hush money in the form of economic aid would have ended the affair then and there.

But that was not the case. What they sought had landed in Argentina. And had the incident occurred eighteen months earlier it could have been handled effortlessly. Yet a year and a half ago, following the second collapse of the Argentine peso, a junta of Generals, led by Generalissimo Ernesto Coraz+|n, had seized power in a violent coup that intelligence analysts believed had been in the works for some time. The monetary crisis was simply an excuse for them to wrest control from the legitimate government.

The heads of the civilian leadership were tried in kangaroo courts for crimes against the state involving economic mismanagement. The fortunate were executed; the rest, more than three thousand by some estimates, were sent to forced-labor camps in the Andes Mountains or deep into the Amazon. Any attempt to learn more of their fate was met with arrests. The press was nationalized, and journalists not toeing the party line were jailed. Unions were banned and street protests were met with gunfire.

Those who got out in the early chaotic days of the coup, mostly some wealthy families willing to leave everything behind, said what was happening in their country made the horrors of 1960s and '70s military dictatorships seem tame.

Argentina had gone from a thriving democracy to a virtual police state inside of six weeks. The United Nations had rattled its vocal swords, threatening sanctions but ultimately sending out a watered-down resolution condemning human rights abuses that the ruling junta duly ignored.

Since then, the military government had tightened their control even further. Lately, they had started massing troops on the borders of Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Brazil, as well as along the mountain passes near Chile. A draft had been implemented, giving them an army as large as the combined forces of all other South American countries. Brazil, a traditional rival for regional power, had likewise fortified their border, and it wasn't uncommon for the two sides to lob artillery shells at each other.

It was into this authoritarian nightmare that Cabrillo was to lead his people in order to recover what was essentially a NASA blunder.

THE CORPORATION was in the area monitoring the situation when the call came through. They had actually been unloading a shipment of stolen cars from Europe in Santos, Brazil, South America's busiest seaport, as part of the cover they maintained. Their ship, the Oregon, had a reputation as a tramp freighter with no set route and a crew that asked few questions. It would just be coincidental that over the next several months Brazil's police forces would receive tips concerning the cars' locations. During transit, Cabrillo had his technical team hide GPS trackers on the gray-market automobiles. It wasn't likely that the cars would be returned to their owners, but the smuggling ring would surely collapse.

Pretending to be larcenous was part of the Corporation's job, actually abetting in a criminal enterprise was not.