Hell's Gate(7)

“I’m talking about that stuff you mentioned about injured or trapped animals . . . you know . . . being the most dangerous kind.”

“Oh, that one. And?”

“And, I don’t like it. In fact, I don’t like it a lot.”

“Well, I wouldn’t take it personally, Pat, but you know as well as I do. Those guys are all on the road to extinction. Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito.”

“What’s so bad about that?” Hendry asked. And even though he agreed with MacCready, right now that didn’t matter. What did matter was the carefully baited hook he’d just cast.

“Of course it’s not bad,” MacCready replied. “But the point was—is—that the world’s a burning house now. And this one’s filled with carnivores. They’re wounded, pissed-off, and dangerous. And if we forget that—even for an instant—if we get complacent . . . we’re dead.”

“So, complacency is the enemy?”

“You got it. And now you’re a believer, right?”

“Sure I am,” Hendry said. Then he set the hook. “That’s why you’re here.”

MacCready realized at once what the major had done, and now there was nothing to do but wait for the real story.

“Mac, we’ve suspected for a while now that the Jerries were up to something in the Brazilian interior. At first it was only a hint here and there. Never anything solid . . . until four weeks ago. That’s when a fisherman came across an I-400-class sub that had run aground. And that’s when we all started to believe.”

“I read about it,” MacCready lied, tapping the manila envelope he’d withdrawn from his field vest. “But I don’t understand what the fuss is about. There are U-boats all over the Atlantic right now.”

Hendry’s face suddenly brightened, but MacCready, who’d found his orator’s rhythm, didn’t notice. “Heck, you can practically walk across the Caribbean without getting your feet wet. Why, last year on Aruba, four Dutch guys on a beach got blown up by a—”

The major snatched the envelope out of MacCready’s hands, withdrew a cutaway drawing of the I-400, and grunted. Had the scale bar at the bottom of the drawing not been covered by grease and what appeared to be blood, MacCready would have seen immediately that the sub was more than three hundred feet long. It wasn’t like him to miss such an important detail.

Hendry handed the drawing back with the same awful expression of a mentor disappointed by his prize student. “You’re slipping, Mac, and this is no time for complacency or slipups.”

MacCready looked at the paper—more closely this time.

The major continued, “The I-400 is no U-boat. It’s a new Jap design. And while it’s no news that they’ve been using subs to exchange supplies and technology with the Krauts, this vessel is a different kettle of fish. It’s got a huge cargo hold and a sixty-five-foot hangar right below the conning tower. We think it was built to carry up to three Seirans—single-engine, floatplane bombers.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, shit. And here’s the kicker—they found this thing on the upper Rio Xingu.

“But that’s—”

“Seven hundred and fifty miles inland.”

“They ran a three-hundred-foot sub seven hundred and fifty miles upriver and nobody saw anything? How the—”

Mission or not, the major took a measure of pride in surprising MacCready—which wasn’t very often. There were few living Westerners who knew the South American tropics better than the zoologist. Coupled with his fearless daring and his ability to do almost anything—fly a plane, embed himself in a hostile tribe, help remove the spear point they’d embedded in him—if there was anyone capable of untangling the current cluster-f*ck, it was, Hendry knew, Mac—even in his present, darker state.

“We don’t know how they did it,” Hendry conceded. “The region had a serious rainy season last year. That much we do know. Anyway, the boat was half-sunk.”

“Pat, that’s a big boat. How much rain are we talking about here?”

“Not quite enough I guess. The sub is hung up tighter than General Montgomery at an intel briefing. Our divers said the cargo hold was clean as a whistle. No nothing. Just some strapping and padding.”

“So . . . let me get this straight,” MacCready said. “You think somebody hauled some heavy equipment out of this sub.”

“A shitload. The cargo crane on this thing would be right at home on a Jersey City dock. No sweat gettin’ their planes back on board with that thing.”

“And what, they just . . . left?”

“Like I said, the sub wasn’t going anywhere, so yeah, they covered the whole thing in brush and abandoned it.”

“How long’s it been there?”

“Tough to say. Two, three months. We can’t tell for sure.”

“Nobody could figure out when that brush had been cut?”

“Um . . .” The major shifted uncomfortably. More than he liked besting MacCready, he loathed when the adventurer pointed out his own mistakes. “Not that I know of.”

“Right,” MacCready said, with a mirthless laugh before turning his attention to the map.

The dismissive laugh troubled Hendry, but not nearly so much as his friend’s sudden focus on the map. The Old MacCready would have spent fifteen minutes explaining exactly how small changes in slashed wood could be traced over days, weeks, and months—until he had to be grabbed by the shoulders and forced to study the map.