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One by one, each person said they were okay, just scrapes and bruises, and Juan breathed easier.
“Will you get off me!” Bradley yelled, and Juan saw Linc rising to his feet. Since the lieutenant was his responsibility, Linc had thrown himself on Bradley to protect him from the blast.
“Just doing my job,” Linc said, pulling Bradley up.
“I’d rather take my chances getting pummeled by an explosion.”
“You’re the one who wanted to come along. My boss is right here, and it would look very bad on my next evaluation if you got killed on my watch.”
“I hate to break up your sparkling repartee,” Juan said, “but that helicopter is coming back.”
It had to be Tate tying up loose ends.
“They want to blow up the U-boat again?” Murph asked. “It’s already a slag heap.”
“Did they see us?” Raven as
ked.
“With all those trees up there?” MacD said. “Doesn’t seem likely. Ah could barely see it when it was right above us.”
“Then how did they find the Bremen?” Eddie wondered. “They could have flown over a hundred times without seeing it. We literally had to trip over it, and we had a map.”
Juan realized that Eddie was right. Apparently, Tate had sensors in the chopper that could see into the jungle. Infrared wouldn’t work in this heat, so he guessed it was a LiDAR system like the one they had on the Oregon.
“We may have been spotted!” Juan shouted. “Double-time back to the Zodiacs!”
Murph led the way using his GPS locator. Because they hadn’t followed a trail, there was no other way to retrace their steps.
The helicopter came to a standstill and hovered over the spot where they’d been standing just moments before. As they ran, Juan looked back over his shoulder and saw another brick of C-4 fall from the sky.
“Get down!”
They all hit the dirt just as the explosive went off. Dirt rained down on them, but they were too far from the blast for anyone to be injured.
“Move!”
They jumped to their feet and made their way through the lush undergrowth as fast as they could. Juan was bringing up the rear, and Eddie was right in front of him.
“I don’t think they can see us in real time,” Eddie said over his shoulder as he ran. “They keep hitting at us where we were.”
“I thought the same thing,” Juan called back. “The software may need some processing. That’s why we need to keep going.”
The helicopter came toward them again. Juan considered just having his team run until the copter’s fuel ran out, but it was beginning to get dark. If the chopper had infrared sensors, they’d be sitting ducks. They had to get back to the safety of the Oregon.
This time, the helicopter flew ahead of them and dropped another brick in their path, anticipating that they were heading to the closest tributary. They all dove to the ground again, and the C-4 took out a swath of trees. Juan fired his submachine gun at the helicopter, and the others joined in, but the tree cover was nearly impenetrable, and he couldn’t tell if any bullets were hitting the mark.
“Cease fire!” Juan yelled. “How far out are we, Murph?”
“Two hundred yards.”
“Let’s go. We’ll have a better shot at the chopper from the river.”
“We’ll also be more exposed,” Eddie added.
“It’s worth the risk,” Linc said.
They avoided one more blast on the way there. As Juan shook the dirt from his hair, he could imagine Tate’s delight in tormenting them.
