Authors: Joe Buff
“Much better,” Colonel Stewart said. He threw Jeffrey a left-handed salute.
The stink from an exhaust leak somewhere in the M-113 got so bad that the frogman chief safed his weapon, then opened one of the vehicle’s top hatches and climbed up and manned the machine gun there. Now fresh air and sunlight came in through the roof. The frogman swiveled the heavy machine gun around.
“This protection really necessary?” Jeffrey asked.
Colonel Stewart pointed at the gashes on his own face, and at his bruised and broken right arm. “These answer your question?…Cheer up. Take a nice look outside. Enjoy the tour.” Then his face grew stern. “Wait. Use my sunglasses.”
Jeffrey put them on. They were very dark, and wrapped around to cover the sides of his face. He slid to the bulletproof viewing port vacated by the frogman who’d climbed up through the open hatch, and peered out at Rio de Janeiro.
He noticed that traffic was light, though a gaudy yellow electric trolley they passed was crowded with local people. The city had beautiful architecture, a mix of very old and very new. The ground floors of buildings that Jeffrey could see were open and airy, and bright colors were used everywhere. He knew Rio was mostly a resort city, and business was down with the war. But even so, the area had a population of about twelve million. Shops and food-vending carts were numerous and often frequented now that it was getting toward lunchtime. Most Brazilian men and boys were dressed in short-sleeve shirts and slacks or jeans. The women wore summer dresses, or blouses and skirts, and some wore jeans. Jeffrey saw billboard advertisements, many with themes and celebrities from Formula One car racing, or soccer.
He noticed that the police were everywhere, and heavily armed. But the populace seemed largely unconcerned. Pedestrians glanced at the M-113 more out of curiosity than fear. Rio had a reputation for being a relaxed and friendly place. The vehicle passed lovely gardens, pillared mansions, bustling shopping malls.
Jeffrey noticed more Japanese tourists.
“The locals don’t seem especially worried.”
Stewart shrugged as best he could. “Most of them see what’s happening with Argentina as saber rattling.”
“And bombings in Brasilia? That’s just saber rattling too?”
“Brasilia’s five hundred miles away. Guerrillas and terrorists of all ilks have been nipping at the edges of this society for decades. Remember, the whole place used to be a brutal dictatorship, within the memory of anyone much over age twenty-five you see out there. Death squads and secret police once stalked these streets with impunity. The locals learned the hard way to take things in stride, horrible things that to you and me are barely conceivable…. Besides, for them to show each other anxiety now would be taken as weak or unpatriotic. Brazilians are
very
patriotic.”
“What about the Atlantic Narrows convoy battle?”
“To the degree they even know about it? That’s
thousands
of miles away, and the prevailing winds don’t get here from there.”
Jeffrey began to wonder how much even Colonel Stewart was aware of the real situation. “Why so many Japanese?”
“With the war, travel from the U.S. and Europe has dried up completely, right? The Pacific Rim is booming, selling everything from oil to microchips to textiles to parts for battle tanks to America and our allies. And to the Axis. So the Japanese have big money again plus the leisure time to travel. And the Pacific Ocean air routes are fairly safe.”
“But during a tactical
atomic war?
”
“I think that adds to the kick, the allure, for the Japanese. Remember, they’re the ones who had two A-bombs dropped on them in World War Two. There’s a perverse attraction for them to get close to where the action is now. A ringside seat, voyeurism, getting even vicariously, whatever.”
“Weird,” Jeffrey said.
“Yeah, weird. And double weird, since Japan announced they have their own nuclear weapons.”
Jeffrey looked out the viewport more. They passed public squares with monuments or modern art, then an opulent cathedral, and for a short while rumbled over cobblestones. Moving through traffic circles, they went by delightful fountains and nice statues. Jeffrey saw people riding motorbikes, standing on street corners waiting to cross, chatting at outdoor cafés. The racial diversity was impressive. “I’m still surprised how everybody’s just going about their daily lives…. I mean, I see fewer men of military age, sure, with the mobilization, and I heard a lot of cars and trucks were grabbed by the army.”
“And you didn’t see any warships sitting in port, did you?”
“No. Nothing big.”
“Welcome to South America. The people here don’t exactly think like you and me. So remember, in this meeting coming up? We’re on
their
turf.
They
make the rules here, not us.”
T
he armored personnel carrier left downtown and got on a highway, picking up speed. The tall hills on both sides of the road were covered from top to bottom with shacks, clinging to the slopes, piled one above another, some sporting TV antennas or laundry drying on lines.
“They call them
favelas,
” Colonel Stewart said. “Vertical shantytowns. Low-end service workers for all the restaurants and condos and hotels.”
“I thought President da Gama was
good
for the economy.”
“You should have seen these places five years back. Then very few people had full-time jobs, or even living quarters with running water and electric power.”
Jeffrey stared up at the teeming hillsides. The shantytown districts seemed to go on and on, forever.
“The single best measure is infant mortality,” Stewart said. “It’s a tenth of what it was when da Gama took office.”
The M-113 drove north and then east. It turned into a security area, heading down a concrete ramp toward the base of a mountain. The vehicle halted, then moved forward again. It grew dark, and Jeffrey could see a low-ceiling overhead above the open top hatch now. Thick doors swung closed behind the M-113, and it grew even darker outside and in. Other thick doors in front swung open, and the vehicle advanced again. It stopped under harsh fluorescent lights hanging from springs. As the second set of doors swung closed, the frogmen lowered the troop compartment’s rear exit and the driver shut the engine off.
“This is where we get out,” Colonel Stewart said. “You can leave your wet-suit stuff here.”
Jeffrey helped the injured Stewart from the vehicle. He noticed the colonel favored one leg as he walked. The man also looked very pale now, probably drained by the effort of talking during the ride, and by discomfort from his wounds as the pain drugs wore off. But even so, Stewart’s bearing was dignified, soldierly.
A Brazilian Army officer came up to Stewart and Jeffrey and saluted. He said something in Portuguese and Stewart replied. The three of them went to another door inside the heavily guarded cavernous space. This door led to an elevator. They took the elevator down.
“This is a hardened command post,” Stewart told Jeffrey. “The geology here is ideal. They built it four or five years ago, after that war scare in Asia. Aboveground they have laser sparklers and dazzler strobes to throw off homing smart bombs.”
Jeffrey nodded—since Axis hackers distorted the Global Positioning System signals too, underground bunkers regained some real protection against nonnuclear ground penetrator rounds.
Waiting at the bottom when the elevator door slid open was a man in a purple sport jacket, orange suede slacks, and scuffed leather loafers. His shirt was lime green, and his polyester tie had red and yellow polka dots. Jeffrey figured nobody in their right mind would dress that way except on purpose—as some sort of distraction from his face, or as a disguise by its very conspicuousness. It was working, too: the man’s clothing clashed so badly it was almost painful to look at him.
He nodded to Jeffrey and Stewart. “You can call me Mr. Jones. They’re ready for us.” He was obviously American.
Things were moving a little too fast. “Who are you, or should I say
what
are you, Mr. Jones?”
“I work for Langley.” Langley, Virginia—CIA headquarters. “Come. We can’t keep these people waiting.”
“Mr. Jones” led Jeffrey and Colonel Stewart into a conference room. The furnishings were bare and functional, except for the video and communications equipment, which were state-of-the-art.
Two Brazilian generals and an admiral jumped to attention when Jeffrey entered the room. The generals snapped him salutes.
Jeffrey braced to attention, in acknowledgment. This was standard courtesy. Even senior officers saluted someone junior who wore the Medal of Honor. And the U.S. Navy never saluted indoors. The proper etiquette for Jeffrey was to brace to attention instead of saluting someone from a different branch of the services—American or foreign.
I don’t need a protocol officer to tell me that much.
The Brazilian top officers welcomed Jeffrey. They all spoke English fluently. Colonel Stewart murmured to one side with Mr. Jones, who nodded. Stewart told Jeffrey the room was secure.
“Come,” the most senior of the Brazilians, an army general, said. He guided Jeffrey to a chair at one end of the table. Stewart and Jones sat on Jeffrey’s left and right. The Brazilians also took seats. The chair at the other end of the table was empty.
The tabletop was spotless and bare: no writing tablets, no pitcher of water, no coffee service, nothing. Jeffrey wondered what this might signal in the language of diplomacy.
“We want to show you something,” the general said.
The Brazilian admiral turned on a digital video player, and a flat-screen TV monitor on the wall came alive. Jeffrey shifted his chair for a more comfortable view; he was stiff and achy from the pounding ride in the speedboat and the rough ride in the M-113.
“This is infrared,” the general said, “from one of our reconnaissance drones.”
At first Jeffrey saw nothing.
“The altitude is three thousand meters. The location is about fifty miles outside the Rio de la Plata estuary.” The la Plata estuary, Jeffrey knew, was a wide bay and tidal basin, a sharp indentation of the South American coast, between southern Uruguay and northern Argentina. Outside its mouth, on one side, stood Mar del Plata, an Argentine beach resort and Argentina’s primary naval base. At the inner end of the estuary, where major rivers met the sea, stood Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital….
Jeffrey saw an aircraft enter the picture. It looked like an old transport plane, a DC-9 or something.
“The aircraft is Argentine.”
“When was this taken?” Jeffrey asked.
“Last night,” Mr. Jones said.
“With respect, how do we know this is genuine?”
“Good question, Captain,” Jones said. “President da Gama gave permission for an AWACS to make overflights of Brazil. For purely humanitarian reasons, of course. To supervise the evacuation of Americans into Peru…None of us want to see a planeful of women and children fly into a mountain in the Andes in the clouds.”
“The AWACS held radar contact on this?” Jeffrey pointed at the plane on the TV.
Jones nodded. “From takeoff to landing, at an airfield near Buenos Aires. Just watch.”
A door in the side of the Argentine plane popped open. Objects began to drop out, over the ocean from high altitude in the dark.
The recon-drone camera zoomed in.
The objects were
people,
and they were being
thrown
out.
Jeffrey watched in horror, his heart pounding. One by one twenty victims cartwheeled and flailed in the air as they fell from the transport plane. It seemed to take forever before each made a gigantic splash in the sea.
Jeffrey was grateful when the recording stopped.
“This has been going on almost every night for most of a month,” the Brazilian general said.
Jeffrey took a deep breath. He made eye contact with Stewart and then Jones. “Okay. Who were they killing?”
“Mostly journalists and teachers,” Jones said. “Clergy too, priests, nuns, rabbis, ministers, anyone who is speaking out for peace in Argentina, against fascism and the Axis.”
“So it’s another Dirty War.”
Everyone in the room nodded.
Jeffrey turned and stared at the now-blank TV screen. “Why are you showing me this?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” a new voice said.
Jeffrey glanced over his shoulder, startled. A stout, bearded, dark-skinned man had just entered the room. Jeffrey recognized President Getulio da Gama—older than last time they’d met, but then Jeffrey must seem older to da Gama too. The Brazilian president wore a gray pinstripe business suit.
Everybody jumped to attention again. Jeffrey joined them.
Da Gama came up to Jeffrey and shook his hand very hard. “It’s good to see you again, Captain. Thank you for coming.”
“Yes, sir,” was all Jeffrey could think to say.
“Sit, everyone, please.” Da Gama took the seat at the other end of the table, facing Jeffrey. Everyone else sat only after the president did.
“This is why you insisted on me coming here, isn’t it, Mr. President?” Jeffrey said. He gestured at the video player.
“I wanted you to judge for yourself who the true aggressors are.” Da Gama’s English was impeccable.
“I thought it was you who wished to be convinced of certain things.”
“That too, Captain. Your presence already has me largely convinced of your sincerity. But I had another selfish agenda. Do you see it?”
“Sir?” Jeffrey noticed Stewart and Jones were keeping quiet, as were the Brazilian brass. This exchange was strictly between Jeffrey and da Gama.
An exchange, or a face-off?
“What did you think of Rio, Captain?”
“A beautiful city, Mr. President.”
“A city is nothing but buildings and roads. I speak of the
people,
the citizens. They are the true heart of Rio.”
“Friendly, happy, thriving, from what I could tell.”
“That described most of my country, until a short while ago.”