To Crown a Caesar (The Praetorian Series: Book II) (16 page)

“That tends to happen when you’re passing out.”

“You can let go now, Jacob.” she said as she regained control of herself.  “I can make it back on my own.”

I didn’t argue with her, and slowly released her into the river.  I shifted into a backstroke so I could keep an eye on her until I was satisfied she could manage, but, true to her word, she was now moving easily under her own power.  I spit some water that had made its way into my mouth at her playfully and turned towards where I estimated Santino was, resisting the urge to challenge her to a race.

I felt fantastic.  R
einvigorated.  Something about pulling Helena through the water to outrun the prying eyes of guards aboard a pleasure boat had riled something deep inside me.  My heart was pounding, but I wasn’t out of breath, wasn’t fatigued.  It was an exhilarating feeling, one I didn’t want to let go of.  All these years of mundane missions and solving little problems seemed so insignificant against what we were doing now, and my body reflected that.

Tomorrow couldn’t come sooner. 

Once we passed our point of entry, I scanned the opposite tree line for sign of Santino.  I almost thought we’d passed him when I saw two quick pulses of a dim red light emerge from the trees.  Angling my body, I headed towards the source.  As I crawled out of the water, Helena wearily behind me, I moved into the trees and shrubs, and found Santino lying in a shallow ditch, one of his eyes buried in a spotting monocular.

I
knelt beside him and looked over his shoulder at the enormous barge in the distance.

“An
y indication they noticed us?” I asked.

“No,” he whispered.  “Just as you two surface
d, it looked like one of them may have caught sight of something, but he didn’t seem suspicious.  One of his buddies came up to him a few seconds later and they started bitching about something.  It didn’t seem like you were the topic of interest.”

“Good,” I replied, glancing at Helena. 

She was lying on her back, her left forearm draped across her forehead, her right hand resting on her bare abdomen as her chest rose and fell heavily.  It didn’t seem like simple fatigue, and I wondered if she was recovering from another pain attack.

Santino noticed as well.

“Gee, Strauss,” he started.  “And here I thought I was out of shape.  Lay off the donuts next time, okay?”

She starred him dead in the eyes before looking up at me with a smirk.  We’d carried each other a few time
s over the years after one or the other had gotten hurt, and that had always been one of our inside jokes.

I looked down at him
and patted his shoulder.  “We’ll see how well you do tomorrow, tubby.”

Santino rolled his eyes.  “Of course you can talk, Frogman.  You’re happier in the water than you are on land.  Us surface dwellers,” he pointed to himself and Helena, “prefer sucking oxygen and walking on solid ground.”

I looked down at Helena, hoping for some support.

She shrugged.  “He is right.”

I rolled my eyes and plopped myself down on my ass.  It wasn’t the first time the two of them had taken sides against me.  Despite the relationship Helena and I were in, and the friendship Santino and I shared, I was definitely the oddball in the group, and I regularly found myself on the opposing end of many arguments and opinions.

I sighed.  I did love the water. 

“Let’s just get some sleep,” I said.  “You two ladies are going to need your rest tomorrow.”

Santino grinned at my comment
while Helena mumbled under her breath, “Who are you calling a lady?”

***

Twenty four hours later, we were preparing for our amphibious assault on Agrippina’s pleasure barge.

I glanced at
Helena as she dug a small trench to provide sniper support from, grinning at the string of expletives that flowed from her mouth as her shovel hit roots, rocks, or other impediments that slowed her down.  Turning away, I joined Santino near the water and donned a light reconnaissance rig around my chest.  Instead of my normal MOLLE rig, a bulky platform meant to carry a lot of gear comfortably, our recon rigs only had enough space to hold a few rifle magazines, a pouch for our NVGs, a radio, and a few other small items within waterproof pouches, such as the detonator for the demo we had placed last night.  We secured oxygen tanks around our left ankles and knives around our right.  Santino had his mini scimitar on his leg, while I just had a standard issue boot knife.  To round out our equipment, Santino had his grappling hook and cord while I had the air pistol, secured in a holster attached to the right side of my vest.  Our goal wasn’t to inflict casualties, some of those Praetorians may be our friends, but we still had our HK416s.

Just in case.

Flippers and goggles in place, recon rigs secure and ready to go, Santino slipped into the water and swam towards the barge.  I took a second to kneel next to Helena before I followed, and put an arm on her shoulder.  Her eyes were already buried in her scope, but she tilted her head to look at me. I moved my hand to brush the side of her cheek.

She frow
ned.  “Don’t get yourself hurt, Hunter.  I’ve just started liking you again, and I won’t be there to bandage you up this time.”

I looked at her for a few
more seconds before very tentatively leaning in to plant a soft kiss on her lips.  She didn’t recoil, and I held us there for a few seconds before finally backing away.  She seemed content with our kiss, smiling up at me, so I quickly made my getaway and slipped into the water.  I caught up with Santino effortlessly and together we made our way to the ship, gliding just below the surface of the water, our snorkels providing only the slightest disturbance in the water.

It was on
ly a few minute swim to the boat and I sent Helena a double click over the radio to let her know we arrived, and waited for her return signal to indicate it was all clear.  Santino and I waited, gently bobbing in the calm waves alongside the boat, struggling to stay in contact with the ship while minimizing our presence in the river.  We could have equipped our oxygen tanks and wait beneath the water, but we decided it was best to save them in case we were under fire during our extraction.  Our only consolation was that the water was calm and that we didn’t have to wait with five foot waves crashing over our heads.  It was something I’d done before and would rather avoid if I could.

We waited
for another five minutes before Helena finally sent confirmation that the guards had moved their patrol to the opposite side of the deck, opening up a ten minute insertion window before they completed their patrol and returned.  Wasting no time, grappling hook already in hand, Santino prepared to throw it over the railing.  Neither one of us had ever thrown the thing while chest deep in water before, so we had developed a technique yesterday that we hoped would work.  We had no way to practically test our method, so his first try was going to be dry run number one – pun intended.

The first step was for me to secure myself to the ship as firmly as possibly.  I pulled my boot knife from my ankle and raised it over my head, clutching the handle with both hands.  I brought it down in a stabbing motion with as much force as I could muster, and managed to drive the entirety of the eight inch blade through the soft wood of the ship, all the way to the knife’s hilt.

Satisfied the knife wouldn’t budge, I held onto it while placing the rubber soles of my wetsuit against the hull, securing myself to the ship.  I was now the perfect platform for Santino to toss the hook from.  I sent him a nod, sputtering water from my mouth as I did so, and he quickly moved to my back and climbed onto my shoulders, securing his crotch uncomfortably against the back of my head, his thighs squeezing against my skull.

I immediately regretted not bringing Helena.

Thankfully, before I had to endure the discomfort much longer, Santino sent the grappling hook flying over the railing of the ship, about twenty meters above the surface of the water.  He stood and climbed.  I followed, the weight of my soaked gear threatening to pull me down, but I barely felt it as adrenaline coursed its way through my body.  I stubbornly pulled myself upwards, one hand after another.  I reached the railing, and with one last exertion, threw myself up and over it, landing quietly in a crouch.  Santino already had his rifle at the ready, automatically waiting for me to secure the hook and rope to his back.

I
gently squeezed his right shoulder, the signal for him to lead the way.  As I followed him, I also sent Helena the all clear signal.  She returned it.  Only two minutes had passed.  So far, so good.  We followed the Romans’ patrol route around the starboard side of the ship, their return leg keeping them on the port side.

The deck of Agrippina’s pleasure barge looked like any random high class district back in Rome.  At the aft end of the deck stood a building that looked like a smaller version of the Parthenon.  It was rectangular in design and had columns holding up the roof all around the exterior of the structure.  It had to be a temple.  Romans were a very superstitious lot, and never went anywhere or did anything before paying tribute to any number of t
heir gods, going well out of their way to ensure they didn’t piss them off. 

The second of the two structures sat at the bow of the ship, the one we were just passing along the starboard side of
.  We paused at its corner and looked out over the plaza that dominated the area between the two buildings.  The deck was lined with marble in an intricate design of shapes and colors, intertwined in a rather impressive artistic motif.  Columns stretched along the port and starboard sides of the plaza, connecting the two structures, and benches dotted the edge as well.

Since the ship’s arrival, we had observed
day time parties where scantily clad men and women cavorted about, dancing and eating on the deck.  Word had it, Agrippina’s court in Rome acted in a similar fashion, harkening back to the debaucheries of Tiberius’ time as Caesar not too long ago.  Agrippina made the rare appearances, but most of the time she was in the camp.  Not once had we seen a small boy.

The parties
were irksome affairs.  Any military commander worth his pay grade would never taunt an army with such shows of frivolity.  Flaunting wealth and privilege in front of excessively underprivileged foot soldiers, paid in many instances with little more than salt, was an idea born from a mind steeped in madness.  It was only because of their discipline and the threat of a centurion’s olive branch that the legionnaires hadn’t rebelled outright.

I shook my head as I remembered the gluttonous, drunken attendants of those parties.  They were amongst the foremost reasons for Rome’s eventual fall.  Corruption and apathy had spelled Rome’s downfall equally as much as the
inefficiency of their military or the invading barbarian hordes, and certainly more than Christianity, despite what Edward Gibbon said.  It was because of those ineffective leaders, leaders who spent more time drinking and finding new ways to stab their peers in the back, that the barbarian invaders had been able to extinguish the flame that was the glory and civilization of Rome, driving Europe into a time of darkness that regressed society hundreds of years.

I tried to push those thoughts to the back of my
mind when Santino held up a clenched fist, signaling me to stop.  The night was dark, and despite torches secured to the pillars, we were hidden deep in shadow.  We had confirmed only one patrolling pair atop the deck, so we figured getting inside the ship would be the easy part, but we had no idea what we would encounter once inside and Galba’s description of its honeycombed interior didn’t inspire much confidence.

Santino kept his hand up for a few seconds before flicking his wrist, indicating it was clear to move out.  We rounded the corner of the second building, which
resembled the
curia
in Rome: plain and unremarkable.  There was nothing left between us and the interior of the ship, so we slipped through a door and quietly descended a small flight of stairs.

We were greeted by complete darkness, forcing us to utilize
our NVGs.  Securing mine in front of my eyes, the world instantaneously brightened in a sea of green.  A random memory surged into my mind, about a cheap night vision scope I had when I was a kid.  Cheap was a relative term, because I saved my allowance for what seemed like forever to buy the thing.  I vividly remember my mom reluctantly placing the order when I was thirteen, and every last penny of my hard earned four hundred dollars disappeared that day.

Needless to say, the NVGs
had been garbage.

Its picture quality had been poor, manual focusing was required, bright flashes
would wash out images, and it projected a small red beam that always gave away my position when my friends and I would shoot at cars with our BB guns.  It probably hadn’t been the smartest thing to do, but it was fun, and boys will forever be boys. 

But the goggles I had now would have made my thirteen year old counterpart piss his pants. 
These NVGs cost close to four
thousand
dollars, focused automatically, compensated for bright flashes, projected crystal clear images, and gave off no ambient light.  There were the two, small, green circles around my eyes, a result of the green backlight displayed within the goggles, but they were hard to notice unless you were really looking for them.