The Silent Sea (Oregon Files 7)

MAJOR JORGE ESPINOZA of the Ninth Brigade liked orders. He liked receiving them, he liked giving them, and he liked to see when they were carried out. The nature of the orders never bothered him. Told to march through a swamp for seven days during the training for his coveted maroon beret or burn a hamlet of indigenous farmers to the ground, it made no difference. He carried out both with utter determination and dedication. In his years of military service, he’d never once questioned if his directives were moral. That played no part in his reasoning. Orders were given. Orders were executed. There was nothing else.

His men saw him as the perfect leader, one unfettered by emotion or doubt. But in his private moments, Major Jorge Espinoza admitted to himself that there were orders he preferred over others. He’d enjoyed slaughtering villagers a lot more than spending a week chest-deep in a leech-filled swamp.

His was a military family that had served Argentina for four generations. His father had been a Colonel in Intelligence during the glory days when the Generals ran the country. He had regaled his sons with stories about what they did to enemies of the state, of helicopter flights laden with bound dissidents over the icy South Atlantic. They made a game of heaving them though the open door from a thousand feet. The object was to throw the second man onto the frothing splash of the first, and so on with the rest of the prisoners.

It was the psychopath’s version of ring toss, but Jorge never saw it that way.

He had been too young to see action when the British retook the Islas Malvinas, but had been trained by combat veterans and had been an exemplary soldier ever since. When the Ninth Brigade was formed after General Corazón led the charge against the weak former President, Jorge Espinoza had been one of the first to volunteer. His training was no easier than that of the younger enlisted men he now commanded, and for that he had forever gained their loyalty.

He was now the deputy commander of the entire brigade under General Philippe Espinoza, his father, who had come out of retirement for the position. Any rumors of nepotism were silenced by the sheer ruthlessness and efficiency with which the younger Espinoza carried out his duties.

And he was a commander who liked to lead from the front. Which was why he was here, deep in the Amazonian region of his country, talking to lumberjacks about something they had seen crash near their work site. The wreckage they had shown him certainly looked like part of the American rocket. It was made of lightweight aluminum, carefully riveted so not the slightest imperfection showed on its surface. The edges were torn as if by an explosion, and there were score marks on the white paint.

The junta saw the recovery of any piece of the rocket as potential to embarrass the United States. They didn’t know what the payload had been. NASA claimed a weather satellite, but the Generals in charge couldn’t ignore the chance that its purpose was espionage.

“We think another piece landed on the far side of the mountain,” the lumber foreman said, pointing to the half-denuded hill behind them. He was nervous around so many maroon berets but had felt it his duty to call in the military. “It is past where you see those men logging on the hill. Some of them wanted to go find it, but I pay them to cut timber, not explore. It was bad enough they wasted an hour digging this one out of the mud.”

Espinoza glanced at his aide, Lieutenant Raul Jimenez. Unlike the Major, who had light brown hair and blue eyes from his paternal grandmother, Jimenez maintained the Gypsy dark looks of his Basque ancestors. The two men had worked and trained together for nearly their entire careers. The difference in rank wasn’t because of differing abilities but because Jimenez refused to leave his friend’s side for a command of his own.

They needn’t exchange a word to know what the other was thinking.

“Round up as many men as you can in fifteen minutes,” Jimenez commanded. He had a drill instructor’s voice that demanded action. “We will form a skirmish line and make our way up the mountain until we find what the Yanquis lost in the jungle.”

The only sign that the logging company foreman was upset by the order was that he scratched under his filthy hard hat before nodding. “Anything for the Ninth Brigade.”

The civilians moved off to roust their men, leaving Espinoza alone with his adjutant. Both men lit cigarillos, sharing a single wind-resistant match. “What do you think, Jefe?” Jimenez asked, exhaling a cloud of smoke that mingled with the pall already hanging over the camp.

“We’ll find whatever these men saw,” Major Espinoza said. “The only question is if it will be worth our while.”

“Anytime we can show the world that the Americans aren’t infallible is always good for the Ministry of Propaganda.”

“World opinion is so against our government right now that I’m afraid a few bits of space junk won’t change many hearts or minds. But orders are orders, yes? And this is a good training exercise for the men. They can grow soft clearing out villages from the comfort of our gunboats.”

CABRILLO AND HIS MEN were already on the move by the time the logging camp’s foreman was ordered to gather his men. It would be a race to see who reached the prize first. Juan and the team had more ground to cover, but they would remain near the crest of the hills while the Argentine soldiers were forced to climb the mountainside. They would be further hampered by the need for a slow, deliberate approach to their search. The men from the Corporation had the gamma detector acting like a bloodhound to

help pinpoint the power cell.

Knowing the competition was close goaded them on, allowing them to push past the aches creeping into their muscles and joints. If they could reach the power cell and retreat, then the Argentines would have no idea they were ever here.

The men moved swiftly but maintained noise discipline. There was no sound louder than the rasp of vegetation on cloth and the steady whisper of their breathing. The smoke billowing up from below, where the forest was being cleared, was just a thin veil at their altitude, but down where the soldiers were starting their skirmish line it was one more impediment to their search.

Juan didn’t break stride when he heard the approaching whine of a helicopter’s jet engine, but he couldn’t help but feel his heart sink. He should have realized they would use aerial reconnaissance. A piece of space debris weighing seventy pounds and slamming into the earth at terminal velocity would leave an impact crater more than large enough to be spotted from the air. It was only a question of whether enough jungle canopy remained to hide it from above.

He had a feeling they wouldn’t be that lucky.

“Signal from the detector’s still looking good,” Mark said. They had abandoned a normal separation for the fast trot around the mountain’s top, so he was just a few paces behind the Chairman.

Forty hard minutes later, they were close to where the chopper traversed the jungle, searching for any sign of an impact. There was no way to know how the soldiers on the ground were doing with their assent. The men were forced to reduce their pace whenever the Argentine helo flew within visual range.

Juan wished their detector could give them a range to target. Without that information, he didn’t know if they were near the power cell or had another mile to go. The noise from the chopper suddenly changed. It no longer Dopplered back and forth through the haze but held a steady rhythm. It was hovering about a half mile ahead. That could mean only one thing.

They were over the power cell’s impact crater.

Cabrillo cursed. A team could fast rope down from the helo, grab the cell, and be back aboard by the time he and his men had covered half that distance.

Without being spurred, the men put on a burst of speed, cutting through the jungle as if born to it. Juan ran with single-minded determination, starting to burn into the reserves of strength that had never let him down before. He knew that even after everything they’d been through to get to this point, he was capable of a six-minute mile. Mike Trono managed to keep pace, but Mark and Jerry were beginning to lag.

The chopper inexplicably veered out of its hover and beat south, toward the logging camp. Cabrillo took this as a good omen and slowed, the turbines and rotor beat no longer masking the sound of his running. His chest heaved, but he forced his breathing under control by taking huge lungfuls of air to resaturate his tissues with oxygen. He could almost feel the lactic acid dissolving from his muscles. He and Mike dropped flat and began to crawl on their stomachs, making their final approach with serpentine stealth.