David Golemon - Legend

The stern section was the last one to be lowered into place with the assistance of navy divers sent by the repair ship USS Cayuga , of the Stennis 's battle group. They detached the cable and the U.S. Marine Corps Seahawk peeled away over the thick canopy of trees and circled, awaiting the order to pick up the ten navy divers.

In the water, Master Chief Jenks, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, placed the last of the joining bolts through the flanges that attached each section to the thick expandable rubber gaskets that gave Teacher the flexibility she would need to navigate the tributary. The rubber was so thick, a man alone couldn't bend it, but with Teacher 's powerful water jet thrusters, the gaskets between the sections stretched as easily as pulling on a rubber band.

The technicians from the Group's Logistics department, who had been chosen for the first phase of the mission, were busy pumping out brackish water that had accumulated in Teacher 's bilges during her assembly. Jenks was assisted by three men from the Engineering department for the initial firing of the two huge diesel engines. The rest of the crew was busy pulling double duty in readying Teacher for her journey. Two Seahawks had scouted as far down the Black Water Tributary as they could before they had lost sight of the river as it fell under the thick canopy of trees. One of the pilots had thought he had spied something under the canopy, but upon closer inspection nothing was visible when they passed again over the Rio Madonna ten miles back. The marine choppers pushed as far forward as fifty miles before their fuel state dictated that they needed to return to the rendezvous.

Sarah and Jack unstrapped equipment in the research labs while Carl and Danielle assisted Professors Ellenshaw and Nathan as they filled the immense tank that would hopefully hold live specimens. Mendenhall was with the rest of the security team, consisting of Corporal Henry Sanchez, Lance Corporal Shaw, Spec 5 Jackson, army specialist Walter Lebowitz, and army sergeant Larry Ito. They were carefully charging the batteries of the small two-man submersible and filling the Teacher 's fuel bunkers with diesel from two five-hundred-gallon rubber bladders a third MV-22 Osprey had settled easily upon the riverbank. The rest of the crew was made up of fifteen lab assistants whose department heads were Virginia Pollock, Dr. Heidi Rodriguez, Dr. Allison Waltrip, head surgeon of the Event Group, and Professor Keating of the Anthropology team. The assistants loaded the supplies of food, water, and other essentials for their journey.

Jenks placed the last expandable bolt and torque-wrenched it down. Then he tossed the tool to the frogman who was standing atop the gracefully rounded stern, just above the boat's emblem that was painted on both sides of the fantail. The beautiful woman's eye, set in green against the white hull, stood out starkly on the green-tinted river. With everything but the firing of the engines complete, the frogman called in the last of the Seahawks to pick up the remaining men that would return to the Stennis battle group. A few villagers from Rio Feliz gathered and were quite excited to see helicopters hovering and flying about, a rare sight for many of them. But by far the item to draw the largest group of onlookers was Teacher herself. She sat anchored to the shore of the Amazon, her gleaming white hull shining in the bright sun, the tinted widows of her forward pilothouse sparkling. The villagers had never before seen a craft whose upper bow was glass enclosed as Teacher 's was. They could see figures moving inside and were amazed by the amount of people that would occupy the boat. Jack had ordered gifts of candy bars and a few medical supplies to be handed out to the village elders as a goodwill gesture for the disturbance the Americans were causing to the small outpost of families.

Jenks watched as the last of the frogmen were lifted away. A single Sea-hawk would patrol in a circular pattern until Teacher was well underway. The master chief climbed a ladder in section five, amidships of the 120-foot craft, and observed a three-man team from the Computer Center hook up the last of the communications gear. He had been impressed by the breadth and quality of everything Toad Everett had brought in. He didn't know who exactly these people were, but you only had to explain to them one time how to do something and after that it was assholes and elbows. He was satisfied amidships as he looked up and saw that the radar array had started its sweeps atop the forty-foot three-span main masts that swept back at a streamlined and aerodynamic angle toward the stern.

"Hell of a design you have here, Chief," said Tommy Stiles, one of Pete Golding's wunderkinds of the Computer Center who had joined the Group two years before, after having been a tech aboard the Aegis missile cruiser USS Yorktown . Stiles would be serving as Teacher 's radar and communications technician. Another man, Charles Ray Jackson, would serve as her sonar and underwater detection tech. He came to the Event Group via the "Silent Service," having served his last year aboard USS Seawolf. He nodded his agreement that it was a great boat, at least in appearance.

"Yeah? Well, it just tweaks my fucking ass and gives me goose bumps all over that I could please you two candy asses," Jenks said as he opened the upper aluminum hatch and started down the steps. "Goddamned surface navy and pigboat swabs, what in the hell do you know about anything?" he mumbled with the cigar clamped in his teeth.

Stiles looked over at Jackson, who was winding the excess coaxial cable into a roll for storage. Jackson shrugged. "Just like old times," he said.

"Do all master chiefs have to take a course on how to be the biggest prick in the navy?"

"Nah, they're born that way," Jackson answered.

Jenks stood by the pilot's chair and stared at his lighted and totally digital control console. The joystick on the chair's left arm was a total departure as a way of maneuvering the boat. She was operated by input signal to the main computer, which interpreted what the pilot was ordering and fired the appropriate electrical motors that operated the water jets at the stern of the boat, thus eliminating the need for cables and hydraulics. The system was known worldwide as "Fly by Wire." Jenks glanced at Jack. They were both sweating profusely; the enclosed areas of Teacher were sweltering due to the lack of air-conditioning while the main power was offline.

"Well, I guess we'd better see if this fuckin' thing will even start," said Jenks. "Or we'll begin this little trip treating everyone for heatstroke, huh, Major?"

"Would be nice to know if she works, Chief," Jack said blandly.

"Of course she'll work, goddammit! What would an army major know about it, anyway? What the fuck was I thinking even asking a ground pounder?" Jenks slipped into the pilot's seat. "Are you ready back there?" he asked as soon as he had his headphones in place.

"All set," Mendenhall answered nervously. He had been tagged as the mechanical assistant on this little safari; he and the other members of the security team were doubling as motormen, much to the master chief's chagrin. An engine start-up warning tone sounded over the boat's intercom system from the engineering section in the last compartment of the boat.

"Toad, are you there?" Jenks asked.

"Here," Carl answered through his com system.

"Good. If those engines don't start, bash that big black sergeant in the head with that fire extinguisher; he's the one that hooked up the starter."

"Bash head, got it, Chief," Everett said, grinning at a scowling Mendenhall.