Page 3 of Clive Cussler's Quantum Tempest
“Just the way you trained me.”
A bead of sweat formed on the end of Cabrillo’s nose. He wiped it away with a pinch, trying not to think of the migraine crushing his skull.
“Let’s roll.”
2
Southern Colombia
Cabrillo leaped out of the Hercules and into the starry void. He plunged through the dark with the rush of a mighty wind in his ears for just over a minute before yanking the rip cord, cracking the ram-air chute open with a violent jerk of his harness. His shadowed form was backlit by a bright half-moon. Normally he would have planned a jump for a moonless night, but the clock was ticking.
There was neither the time nor the inclination to clear the mission with a Colombian government infested by FARC-friendly bureaucrats and security officials. The wrong word in the wrong ear could send Suárez flying the coop, or worse, setting up an ambush that would get Cabrillo captured or killed.
His two-hour flight from Panama gave him plenty of time to pull on a wetsuit and Altama jungle boots, slip into his parachute harness, check his weapons and altimeter. Most important of all, he fitted to his chest the special kit he needed to recover Suárez.
Overholt was right about the weather, mostly. It was clear sailing from Panama. However, the weather reports missed the low-hanging fog just a hundred feet above the landing zone. Cabrillo couldn’t see a thing down below. Beneath the fog belt were miles of thick jungle canopy. Hitting one of those trees could snap his neck like a twig.
He wished he had access to one of the new GPS devices that were rolling out into the military services, but they were too big and bulkyfor a person to carry into close-quarters combat. For now he had to trust a laminated Air Force topographical map and the math skills of the twenty-two-year-old junior navigator, who had given him the green light to jump.
Three and a half minutes later his boots punched through the last of the fog and he got his bearings beneath a gauzy sky, the half-moon now veiled behind the clouds above. He had six seconds before impact. Just enough time to catch a glimpse of his dimly lit target—a large, thatched hut, its stilts half-submerged on the banks of a rushing river. A dozen smaller Indigenous huts were located high and dry in the forest behind, connected by a rutted dirt road. The village, such as it was, had been abandoned by the local Indians after FARC attacks drove them away years before. According to Overholt’s anonymous source, Suárez was the sole occupant of the remote village and took up residence in the stilted communal river hut.
Cabrillo tugged on the steering lines of his chute, took a deep breath, and aimed for the center of the wide and coffee-colored Caquetá River.
Splash!
With nearly a hundred pounds of gear weighing him down, Cabrillo was plunged a dozen feet beneath the surface. He wrestled his way out of the tangle of cords and the ripstop nylon canopy now enveloping him thanks to the river’s current. He finally broke the surface with a sputtering breath.
The noise of his splash wasn’t loud enough to wake the dead, but was the kind of commotion that rang like a dinner bell for the hungry crocodilians dozing on the banks. His wetsuit was only a guard against the high-altitude cold and the vampiric leeches and venomous snakes that infested the river. The thin neoprene wouldn’t protect him against the 1,200 psi bite of the speckled caimans patrolling the waters.
So far, the plan to land in the river instead of the forest had proven a good one. What Cabrillo hadn’t counted on was the speed of the rain-swollen current. Thanks to the Air Force navigator’s apparently superlative math skills, Cabrillo had landed upriver as planned. Butthe swiftly moving river was proving a challenge. His parachute rig pulled him downriver like a billowing sea anchor. In the few struggling moments it took to free himself, he had already closed the downriver distance to the hut by over a hundred yards. If he didn’t act quickly, he’d speed past it with no hope of swimming back.
Cabrillo picked a river landing to avoid crashing into the trees, and Suárez’s hideaway hut was located on the bank of the jungle river, at least according to the one aerial photo they had. Unfortunately, that photo had been taken during the dry season. The roiling river now rushed past the crude pylons holding up the ancient thatched structure that was now in the river.
Finally freed from his parachute, Cabrillo threw himself into a furious windmill of swim strokes, clawing at the water with all of his strength, though the malarial effects were taking their toll. Adding to his discomfort was the large and heavy pack that he had transferred from his chest to his back. The graceful California swimmer was now a thrashing humpback gasping for air in a race to cross against the fast-moving current and reach the other side.
And he was losing.
But losing wasn’t something Juan Cabrillo had much experience with. He dug into his deepest reserves and his years of training in the water. He closed the gap just in time. As he was about to pass the hut’s first stilt, he reached out with his nearest hand and grabbed it.
But his grasping fingers slipped as he lay hold of the moss-slicked timber, and the river tore him away.
Cabrillo kicked furiously to angle himself toward the next stilt. He crashed into it and wrapped himself around it with his arms and legs like a rubberized barnacle against the relentless current. He glanced around to get his bearings.
The original plan was to hit the beach beneath the cover of trees, ditch his kit, and make his way inside. But now he was pinned against the slimy pole, and there was no chance he could swim fast enough against the current to reach the bank. Equally problematic, the stilt was too slick to climb the eight or so feet to reach the floor above him,and even if he could reach it, the only egress from beneath was the “honey hole” cut out of the boards some thirty feet away. Worse, his body began shaking from a malarial fever that suddenly reasserted itself.
He was trapped.
?
Cabrillo’s only hope was to try and reach the staircase leading up into the hut. Luckily it was farther downstream, about twenty feet away. He took a deep breath and let go of his stilt, knowing full well his heavy pack would pull him under the dark and turbulent water. He angled himself toward the staircase, but a violent eddy in the current yanked him away and it was only by the grace of God he was able to snag one of the rickety stairsteps before he was swept away for good.
Summoning the last ounces of his strength, Cabrillo reached over with his other hand and hauled himself up onto the stairs just above the rushing water. He pulled his holstered pistol and paused a moment, pointing his weapon at the unlit doorway above, listening for footsteps in the event Suárez had been alerted. But the wily FARC assassin hadn’t stirred.
A couple of gasping breaths later, Cabrillo stood on wobbly legs and inched his way forward with a two-handed grip on his pistol. He was grateful the ancient lumber didn’t creak beneath each faltering step and the roar of the river proved in his favor. His suppressed pistol was loaded with subsonic ammunition to minimize noise. He preferred a heavier-grained and larger-caliber bullet for man-stopping, but this wasn’t an assassination assignment. He always had the Uzi, now tightly strapped in a chest rig, to fall back on if it came to that.
Cabrillo reached the side of the entrance, careful to stay clear of the doorway, where his figure would be framed like a picture. He sliced the pie—a quick peek around the corner—but in the dim moonlight all he saw was a dozen empty hammocks. No sight or sound of anybody, including Suárez.
Had somebody alerted him?
