To Crown a Caesar (The Praetorian Series: Book II) (15 page)

He’s bad
mojo.  Or, at least he will be.

But
whatever.

Helena and Jacob are getting ready to plant some demo on Agrippina’s barge before he and I infiltrate it tomorrow.

Agrippina.

Man.  Now there was a fine piece of ass.  Beautiful.  Big boobs.  Great body.  She threw herself all ov
er me a few years ago, and damn was it worth it.  Too bad she’s a freak, and I wouldn’t touch her with a ten foot cattle prod these days, and probably shouldn’t have then.

Whatever.  It was worth it
.

Hey
… Jacob gave me this journal to jot down some thoughts while he and Helena complete phase one of the mission.  I told him it wasn’t a good idea, but he said the journal would appeal to a broader audience if it was written from multiple perspectives.

Joke’s on you, buddy.

Wow!

Sorry.  Just peeked through my binoculars to check in on
the lovebirds, and I just caught an eyeful.  Not of Jacob (thanks every god that’s ever existed) but of Helena.  Hey, it’s my job to spot for them and Helena really shouldn’t expose herself out in the open like that.  Remember what I said about Agrippina?  Throw in an actual human being with a soul, and you got Helena.  I still can’t believe that dork got that lucky.  She’s way too good for him.

Shit.  Looks
like I went on a bit too long here.  They’ve already slipped into the water.  I blame Helena.

By the way, if
this does get made into a movie, you all know who the real star should be.

Me.

Good luck casting this thing, by the way.

Especially me.

Look me up in a few thousand years.  I should be hitting my prime right around then.

Who better to play me, than me?

I looked out over the Rhine and tried to locate where Santino had swam to.  He’d left an
hour ago, and had hopefully set himself up in a good position to cover our advance to the ship.  We weren’t too worried about phase one because the chance of detection was minimal, but it was always good to have backup.  I imagined he had to be getting pretty bored by now.  Maybe he was even writing in the journal.

Somehow, I imagined
his entry looking something like:
me Santino.  Me like boob.  Where knife?

I smiled at the thought.  I suppose I wasn’t giving him enough credit.  For all I know he may write a
beautiful ballad.

In haiku.

Yeah right.

I put Santino out of my mind and resisted the urge to look over at Helena, who was still busy changing into her swimwear.  We were going light, not even bot
hering with our wetsuits, so we’d changed on sight.  I used the time to place myself in line with her and where I thought Santino was situated.  I didn’t want him catching a peek of something that doesn’t belong to him.

I had already donned my
own swim trunks.  They were a black, two pockets affair, and were embarrassingly short.  Any less of a man might have felt insecure wearing them, but I didn’t have a problem at all.  They were standard issue at BUD/S, and were comfortable and liberating.  They were all I wore along with a diving knife strapped to my left calve.  I also had a pair of flippers, diving goggles with a snorkel, a head-mounted flashlight, and a small, single use SCUBA device, the kind used by lifeguards on the beach.  My last piece of equipment was a small rucksack that contained the demo.

Satisfied I’d given her enough time to change, I turned to find her pulling a sports bra over her head. 
Before she secured it over her chest, she turned away in an act of mock embarrassment, only to laugh it off a second later.  I returned her smile and shook my head, but my expression quickly turned south.  It always happened when I inadvertently noticed the two scars prominently featured on her body.  Both a result of my blunderings.

The first one was
on her left leg and was the more obvious of the two.  It started on the outside of her thigh, just above the knee, and traversed all the way around the outside of her leg, ending on her hamstring, just below her butt.  She’d received during our escape attempt from a terrorist controlled outpost on our first mission back in 2021.  During the escape, I had accidently flipped the commandeered truck I was driving, hurling her from the vehicle and through an open window.  She’d have the scar for the rest of her life.

The second one was
on her lower back, to the right of her spine.  It was only the height of a small wallet, but what made it worth mentioning was the mirror scar on the right side of her abdomen.  When I closed my eyes I could still see the rebel Praetorian stabbing her with his
gladius
, gutting her clean through.  It came back to me regularly in nightmares and I’ve never truly forgotten who was to blame for it.

I remembered the entire scenario
vividly like it had just happened yesterday – me rushing to her side only to reach her too late, with barely enough time to exact some measure of revenge by decapitating her would be murderer.  She’d fallen into my arms, sword and all, and I’d cradled her as I felt life fade from her mesmerizing eyes.  She’d touched my cheek and apologized, but it wasn’t her fault, it was mine.  I had promised her I wouldn’t leave her side in that battle, but I had, and she’d almost paid for it with her life.

I would
die before I let something like that happen again.

So, as she stood there wearing nothing but a sports bra, tiny athletic shorts, and a combat knife strapped to her calf, the last thing on my mind was just how perfect she looked in the dim moonlight but how I had almost gotten her killed.

Twice.

I was so wrapped
up in the memories of my near failure to preserve her life that I didn’t notice her place a hand on my shoulder.  The first few years had been pretty rough for me and I never could bring myself to forgive my lack of action, even though Helena had never needed me to.  She’d never blamed me for either injury, not once asking for an apology, but I couldn’t let myself off that easy.  Those two events bothered me more than any other in my life.

I tilted my head to look at her, and
saw nothing but a look of pure love and compassion.  She always knew when my mind wandered back to that moment and how to bring me back from the brink – even after everything that’s happened between us lately.

She smiled again.  “Feel better?”

“Yeah,” I replied.  I held out my hand and gestured out over the water.  “After you.”

Her answer was to put on her flippers, pull down her mask, fix her snorkel to her mouth, and quietly slip into the water.  I followed her in.

The water was chilly.  Even though it was only April, it had been a warm winter and it had been quite warm since our arrival here a few days ago.  I couldn’t complain.  The water at Coronado during BUD/S had been just above freezing, and cases of hypothermia and frost bite had not been unusual.  Comparably, tonight’s water temperature was practically boiling.

Besides, the slight chill helped keep me focused.

Nearly fifty meters from the ship, I pulled ahead of Helena as we swam just below the surface of the water, the ripples left from our snorkels acting as the only indicator of our presence.  About twenty meters out, I angled myself downward, and with only a slight splash on the surface, began my descent into the murky depths.  I spat out my snorkel and pulled the small oxygen tank from my belt.  With a quick breath I shoved it between my lips and was able to breath normally again.  We only had about twenty minutes of air in the things so we’d have to be quick and efficient.

A
few seconds later, I was quick to notice the lumbering behemoth that was the bottom of the pleasure barge loom into view.  I switched on my headlamp and directed my attention towards the hull, Helena’s light providing additional coverage.  Maneuvering my body so that I was lying parallel with the ship, I felt along its surface with my bare hands.  The wood seemed smooth and clean, no effects of mold, decay, or shoddy workmanship visible.  I gave the hull a knock with my fist, and determined it was solid and thick.

I glanced over at Helena as she floated next to me, her body perpendicular to the ship and her head a few feet away from m
y own.  She pointed at the ship and flipped her hand in a questioning gesture.  I shook my own head to ward off her unspoken question and hooked a thumb towards my bag, floating behind me.

BUD/S wasn’t called Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL for nothing.  I learned everything I know about swimming, the open water, demolitions, and how to combine all three effectively there, and what I didn’t learn there was drilled into my head as I attended countless other schools for the next two years before I was able to
join the Teams. Once we could do all that, and so much more, we became Frogmen.

Prior to the Vietnam War, there were no SEALs, instead, there was the Underwater Demolition Team, or UDT.  Their legacy dated back to World War II when they were known
simply as Frogmen.  When SEAL teams were developed during the Vietnam War, the two teams worked side by side until the UDT was finally decommissioned in the 1980’s.  Since then, in respect to its roots, SEALs were known as Frogmen as well.

I took an unnecessarily deep breath as I floated, confused as to why Helena hadn’t understood what I was doing.
  We had gone over these procedures a dozen times before.  She should already know that I was using rudimentary methods to determine the ship’s structural integrity.  I had a few devices back home could determine the hull’s thickness and density, but our supplies had unfortunately forgotten those toys.

It wasn’t a problem.  The ship was obviously constructed out of wood, and considering the kinds of explosives I was using, it didn’t matter what kind.  I held out my hand and extended three fingers before gripping an object Helena
held out in front of her, one of the smallest demo pieces I’d brought.  The object was cylindrical in design, and had a dial and two buttons.  One button activated a timed countdown, while the dial determined the amount of time before it blew.  The second button activated that device’s remote detonation function.  It allowed us to blow the charges on command if desired.  Safe and simple, perfect for this kind of work.

After placing the first demo charge on the hull, utilizing an underwater adhesive Helena had applied
to it before handing it to me, I gave it a quick tug to make sure it was secure.  Satisfied that it was, I used my hands to guide my body across the hull and my flippers to propel me forward.  I glanced at my watch.  We still had about twelve minutes of air left to secure four more charges.

We had only traveled along the very tip of the bow, a fraction of the boat itself, by the time we finished planting four of
the five planned bombs in a square pattern.  I glanced at my watch.  Four minutes left.  We made our way to the center of the grid, and I held up two fingers indicating I wanted our middle sized charge, the biggest one I’d asked for yet.  I placed the bomb against the hull on instinct alone, securing it as quickly as I could.  I made a final adjustment to its placement, a feeling of lightheadedness growing inside me.

I must have used up my air supply quicker than I thought.

Taking as deep a breath as I could manage, I pulled the canister out of my mouth, and pushed off from the bottom of the ship, torpedoing myself away from it.  I saw Helena was already a few meters out ahead of me, her air having apparently run out just before mine had.  I put my snorkel back in my mouth and secured the oxygen tank to my belt as I kicked with all my might.

Just as I cleared the boat, my more experienced swimming legs allowed me to overtake Helena easily.  I grabbed her hand as I swam past and pulled her forward behind me, making sure we stayed submerged as long as possible.  I felt her start to surface after a few
seconds, but I held her down.

Usually
, people instinctually tried to find air as soon as they think they’ve run out.  However, as a general rule, most of the time they actually have a few more seconds than they think before their heart stops pumping.  Learning how to avoid panic and utilize those extra seconds could save your life, but the only problem now was that I wasn’t sure if Helena knew that, and another five seconds later I felt her slow down behind me.

She was blacking out,
and I had to surface now before she finally ran out of air.  When we finally broke the surface she sputtered and coughed water from her lungs and fell beneath the surface again.  I wrapped an arm around her chest and secured her above the water.

She sputtered out another lungful of water.

“What the hell are you doing, Jacob!?”

“Sorry,” I said.  “Bu t
ake a look at the ship before you
really
get mad at me.”

I was facing away, but her head was looking directly at it.  I knew she
would see what I already knew would be there, small shapes that were really two men standing along the railing, looking out over the water.  We’d noted them during our reconnaissance, and they may have spotted us had we surfaced earlier.

She coughed up a little more water.  “Oh.  The guards.  I forgot.”