Choke Point wi-9

by Ian Slater

  Freeman, eschewing any of the ear protectors in the stalls, plugged his ears and shouted, “Go!” upon which David unleashed three bursts, all on target, if the target had been a barn door. Certainly nowhere near a sufficiently tight group for the SpecOps qualification.

  “How about the grenade launcher?” Freeman asked casually as he lifted the rope-secured range binoculars and studied the grouping.

  David had been so intent on overcoming the problem of firing the F2000 with one arm, he’d forgotten about the grenade launcher. It was the essential clip-on module for anyone using the assault weapon, for anyone in a SpecFor group.

  “Not yet,” he told the general. “I’ll clip it on now.”

  “Good.”

  David smiled, but inwardly felt a rush of gut-knotting anxiety, a condition virtually unknown to the Medal of Honor winner in the years prior to the disaster in the Afghan cave. He had good reason to feel apprehensive. The F2000’s grenade launcher weighed another two pounds.

  It might not have seemed like much, but “ask a pregnant woman what another two-pound strain on her breast means,” as a Fort Bragg drill instructor had once said to him, Aussie Lewis, Choir, and Salvini.

  “Stop it!” Aussie had said. “You’re driving me nuts!”

  The DI had had their attention. “When you’re aiming a weapon with a launcher attached from the shoulder, it’s like saying, “Hold on a second, I’ll tie a brick to the barrel. Makes one hell of a difference.”

  Now, David’s driver came back down from the Humvee to give him moral support. In his plummeting mood, David ill-advisedly pressed the point by adding, “What other damn module does this thing have?”

  “Clip-on bayonet,” said Freeman.

  “Like me to get one for you, Captain?” offered the driver.

  “That’d be nice,” David responded. “Any other clip-ons?”

  “Ah, lessee,” said the driver, not getting David’s sardonic tone. “I’ll go back up to Stores, grab the fire control system, night vision scope — you want all of them, sir?”

  “Sure, why not? Don’t want to miss any fun.”

  The driver’s laugh trailed off when he saw the tight grimace of pain that had swallowed the captain’s smile.

  “Don’t hurry back,” said David.

  As the Humvee took off, its dusty wake shrouding him in what he elected to regard as insult upon injury, the SpecFor captain was simultaneously aware that he was giving way to a disgusting wave of self-pity. He lowered himself to the ground for a rest, pushing his back hard against the gnarled pine.

  “Hey, Smiley!” It was a distinctly Australian voice, the accent not lost despite Lewis’s twenty years as an American citizen. “What you doin’, mate? Playin’ with your dick?”

  “Thought you’d be here sooner,” David replied as Aussie gave the general an informal salute.

  “So did I. But the wife insisted we have a farewell quickie. You know me — I wanted to skedaddle to Seattle right away, but you can’t deny pussy. It’s unconstitutional.”

  David forced a grin, which was difficult for either the general or Lewis to see now that the light was fading. Aussie squatted down like an Arab, posterior well off the ground, a lesson learned long ago in the Australian Outback to avoid what Aussie used to describe to his fellow SpecFor buddies as “bloody creepy crawlies.”

  “I heard about the screw-up in ’ghan. Not your fault, Harold. Bad intel. A setup. You guys were suckered, plain and simple. You aren’t the first team to lose out to that friggin’ ghost.”

  David looked over at his old comrade in arms. “You think Li Kuan’s a ghost?”

  “I dunno,” confessed Aussie, snapping off a stalk of passpalum grass and biting on it. “Tell you what, though — I ever run across the ghost, I’ll put a long burst through the apparition — see if the fucker bleeds.”

  In the silence that followed, the three warriors could hear the rustling of the grass and pines.

  “I lost six of ’em, Aussie.”

  It was as if the breeze had abruptly ceased.

  “I heard,” Aussie said, spitting out the chewed passpalum. “Everyone but you. Right?”

  David, not known for dwelling on what could not be changed, was clearly dwelling on it.

  “I’ve got a couple of Kleenex here,” said Aussie. “Trouble is, they’re all screwed up into those unusable balls you have to throw away. But I’ll tell you what I can—” Aussie slapped a mosquito dead on his forearm. “Little bastard! Anyway, I can go get a coupla towels and we can sit here all night and have a big cry. Or we can get off our ass and go have a few beers. Hear there’s a Hooters in Tacoma. Tits bigger’n—”

  “I have to master this 2000. Apparently, it’s got a grenade launcher and bayonet module as well as—”

  “Well, use your friggin’ brains, Captain. Rig up a friggin’ sling — shoulder or neck. Could carry your mother-in-law in that.”

  David heard the Humvee coming back. “A sling. Geez — I never thought of that!”

  “Geez,” Aussie mimicked him. “I never thought of that.” Then he segued to an old commercial, adopting the voice of its aged actress: “ ’I’ve fallen down and I can’t get up!’ Course you didn’t think of a sling, you twerp, ’cause you’re still in mea culpa mode. You believe in God — all that stuff — don’t you?”

  The general walked into the woods, smiling approvingly at Aussie’s frontal assault on his buddy’s uncharacteristically fragile psyche.

  “Yes,” David said seriously. “I do believe. So?”

  “Well, you’re still alive, mate, ’cause he’s not finished with you. Get up an’ get goin’.”

  David’s driver was walking down from the Humvee with his arms full of 2000 clip-on/add-on modules.

  “Ah, Santa Claus!” said Aussie. “Right, Davy boy, rig a sling. Give you my belt, but since my waist’s only a thirty-one, me being so fit to dive with the Draeger an’ all …”

  David began unthreading his belt.

  “Oh, that’s a good idea, Dave,” Aussie joshed. “One bum arm and now you’re gonna try shooting with your pants down. What the hell you doin’? I said rig a sling, not expose yourself!”

  It was the first real smile that had graced David’s face since before Afghanistan.

  “Salvini told me you’d been hit in the arm,” continued Aussie. “I dunno — looks like you fell on your fucking head!”

  David and the driver were laughing now. Aussie handed David a length of polyester rope normally used to attach the range binoculars to the firing stall. The rope sling worked well for support but the shooting was still bad — nowhere near SpecOp standard. In fact, nowhere near boot camp level. But Freeman and Aussie knew that anything to build back his self-confidence was important, even if it had to be made clear to David that there was no way he could be designated “operational” and endanger a team with what was essentially a bum right arm.

  Admittedly, Brentwood’s handling of the grenade launcher was a surprise, its weight all but nullified by the sling and by David hugging the F2000 hard to his left side. The lobbing of four grenades he fired was surprisingly accurate, well within the acceptable limits for the firing of 40mm projectiles. The next test, however, the bayonet, which could not be successfully thrust or parried with the sling, was a different matter altogether. The weight of its steel blade, extending far beyond the assault rifle’s barrel, created a punishing torque on David’s left arm. His forehead beaded in perspiration, he was about to try yet another one-arm thrust when he, Aussie Lewis, and the Humvee’s driver felt a violent rustling above them and were engulfed by a whirlwind of leaves, dust, and other assorted debris choking the air. This was followed by a thunderous clap.

  It had been the magazine of one of the Aegis cruisers exploding, following the detonation of a magnetic signature mine. The ultramodern, reinforced blast wall, built to protect the ship’s arsenal of ship-to-ship, sea-to-land, and sea-to-air missiles had given way, the cruiser blown apart with such unmitigate
d violence that it lit up the strait off Port Angeles with a fiery intensity that turned evening to midday. The rain of white-hot metal hissed so loudly that it startled already shaken inhabitants as far east as Port Townsend and the adjacent Kitsap peninsula. The sound raced northeast to Vancouver, south across Admiralty Inlet, and down Hood Canal, reaching Admiral Jensen at Bangor Base seconds before those across the Puget Sound in Seattle, Tacoma, and Fort Lewis heard it.

  “Holy shit!” said Brentwood’s driver.

  By the time General Freeman had exited the woods, in such haste that he’d forgotten to zip up, Washington, D.C., government switchboards, particularly those of Homeland Defense headquarters, were jammed by terrified callers. What in hell was the government doing about it, and what about the nuclear reactors on the Aegis? If the Aegis had been “blown apart,” as CNN said, didn’t that mean its reactor had disintegrated as well? And if so, wasn’t there immediate danger of fatal radiation through the entire Northwest?

  For the first time since the American Civil War, Americans began a massed exodus, only this time from the Pacific Northwest, something their Founding Fathers couldn’t possibly have envisaged. En route, they swallowed iodine capsules in the hope that it would either prevent or at least offset what many feared would be the beginning of a massive cancer pandemic triggered by deadly radiation. AMERICANS ON THE RUN tabloids from Damascus to Paris trumpeted, the most sympathetic foreign headlines coming from Australia, Britain, New Zealand, and Canada. Most European papers, after expressing horror at the destruction of yet another American “superwarship” and lamenting the loss of all aboard, quickly resorted to tarted-up versions of the old “root causes,” “blame the Americans” harangues of post-9/11.

  Going against the tide of frightened Americans, Freeman, having taken his leave of Aussie and Brentwood, returned to Port Angeles, the repaired Darkstar due to take off at 11:37 P.M.. Booting up his laptop, he saw a flickery blue screen. No pictures, however. “Darkstar, my ass!” he thundered so loudly his Port Townsend hotelier heard him from the lounge. “Darkcrapis more like.”

  Then the infrared feed came through.

  “All right, then,” Freeman said gruffly.

  Against the infrared’s grayish coast he could see bubbling, dime-sized, whitish hotspots and fishing boats’ exhaust heat. “You’ve got balls!” he told the screen, referring to the fishermen. “Three ships sunk and you guys are still trawling for dogfish. I’ll be—”

  Wait a minute, he thought. Fish. Naval slang for torpedoes. Were the terrorists on trawlers as well? One eye on his computer screen, Freeman turned to the phone, punching in the numbers for Coast Guard Coordination in Seattle, alerting them to the possibility of trawlers and other fishing vessels — factory ships, perhaps — having torpedo-firing and/or mine-laying capacities.

  When the Coast Guard commander got a chance to interject, which, given the general’s rapid delivery, was not for a full two minutes, he told Freeman, “General, that was the first thing our divers and boarding parties looked for—above and below waterline. We also checked all the Beaufort drums on deck to make sure they contained life rafts and not mines. We were also looking for terrorists.”

  “Oh,” responded the legend, answering, as if he was a member of the British General Staff rather than a retired American warhorse, “Good show, Commander.”

  “Yes,” said the commander. “Not all of our members are retired!”

  “What in hell does that mean?” growled Freeman.

  “Have to go, General. We’re running escort for the Navy’s pullback into Puget.” The commander hung up.

  “Hello?” thundered Freeman. “Hello? You cheeky son of a bitch!” He turned to the laptop, and above its screen caught a glimpse of himself in the motel room’s mirror. He hadn’t thought about the possibility of Beaufort life raft drums being used as mine containers. “Huh,” he said, looking at his reflection. “Not so damn smart after all, eh, General?”

  Watching Darkstar’s feed, he could see more bobbing, dime-sized white spots contrasted against the serrated-gray-wall coastline and the huge Olympic land mass beyond.

  Where the lingering warmth of the land, released from the base of Mount Olympus, met the radiant heat of the cooler ocean, fog had formed. It now began permeating the myriad nooks and crannies and wider bays all the way from Port Angeles west to the violent surf of Tatoosh Island off Cape Flattery.

  As the big Pacific swells exhausted themselves, crashing in punishing waves of foam against the black, precipitous cliffs of Tatoosh, Freeman could hear the mournful sounds of foghorns through Darkstar’s amplified sound feed. Darkstar’s bottom screen text informed him that Tatoosh was one of the most densely populated wild bird sanctuaries in the world. But right now the general couldn’t have cared less about the sanctuary or any of the others situated south of Cape Flattery down the Washington coast as far south as Cape Disappointment, off the equally dramatic Oregon coast. Instead, his attention was confined strictly to Darkstar’s present east-west feed, the UAV’s pictures coming in from its low vectored flight between Port Angeles and Tatoosh. They were speckled with more than a dozen hotspots in what were supposedly unpopulated areas. By the time Darkstar reached the end of its flight path just west of Tatoosh, its IR feed became thicker with hotspots. These were smaller than the bobbing hotspots of fishing vessels’ radar masts and the like but appeared to the general significantly more numerous.

  The phone jangled.

  “Freeman!”

  It was David Brentwood calling to ask if he had more details, via Darkstar, about the explosion. The officers’ mess at Fort Lewis, he explained, was a hive of contradictory rumors, CNN camera-equipped choppers from the news networks apparently not yet on the scene. Some were saying CNN’s crews were chickening out because of the fear of radiation.

  The general, concerned as he was by the sudden increase in the number of hotspots on the IR feed, was nevertheless encouraged by Brentwood’s tone. He knew that curiosity about the world beyond oneself was a sign of recovery from post-traumatic stress disorder. Perhaps with Aussie’s help Brentwood had finally accepted the hard truth that he was finished, not only in SpecOps but for the regular forces as well. Surely the Medal of Honor winner now realized how downright irresponsible it would be for any commander, extant or retired, to send an injured man into combat, endangering the lives of all those around him because of his handicap — or what, Freeman thought, politically correct reporters would call his “limb-challenged” ability. Even worse, in the general’s view, would be the danger posed to David’s comrades’ by their preoccupation with his safety rather than with the mission objective.

  “David,” the general said, “I’d like you and Aussie to get up here to Port Angeles. Salvini and Choir are due momentarily. Tell Aussie to bring his Draeger.”

  “Roger that,” said David. “I’ll bring mine too.”

  There was silence on the general’s end.

  “Can you hear me, General?”

  “What? Ah, yes, yes. Bring your tank. Sorry — I’m glued to an IR printout of the coast,” said the general, and seeing the hotpots multiplying, added. “Could do with you boys’ advice on this. Something strange going on.”

  “Metal debris from the destruction of the Aegis?” suggested Brentwood. “Lot of it would still be pretty hot even in the sea.”

  “Some of that in the sea, I agree. But this is all over the place. On Tatoosh Island?”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Bird sanctuary. No one allowed near it but our UAV. It’s showing hundreds of hotspots. Like damned confetti.”

  “Is this Toosh Island anywhere near where the Aegis blew up?”

  “No. Much further west. ’Course, most of the hotspots I’m seeing could be body heat from the thousands of birds. Got every species here from little stormy petrels to giant albatross. But there’s other stuff too — bigger’n damn houses — along supposedly unpopulated stretches of the coast.”

  “Close those dr
apes!”

  Freeman was startled by the police bullhorn, but he walked over to the window and closed the curtains, stealing a glance at the dark strait. Not a single light was visible, where only shortly before it had been crowded with naval ships. The remainder of what had been the Turner’s battle group were recalled and now steaming back down through Puget Sound to its home port in Everett, the group’s remaining attack sub slinking back unheralded to the protection of Bangor Base.

  In Bangor, Walter Jensen was standing outside the blacked-out Admiral’s House, waiting for the sub’s return. “What a humiliation,” he told Margaret, who stood silently by his side, her hand gently moving back and forth across his steel-tense back as he stared into the fog-clogged darkness of Hood Canal. “Battle group didn’t even get past the choke point. It — I’m finished,” he said quietly. He waited for her to cloister him as she always did. But Margaret said nothing.

  Walter Jensen was telling the truth. His chances of becoming CNO, replacing the soon retiring Admiral Nunn, had been destroyed, along with the careers of a sacrificial slew of officers unable to explain why on their watch the United States Navy, with all its billions of dollars’ worth of computers and other electronic wizardry, including aircraft-borne forward-looking infrared scanners and magnetic anomaly detectors, had failed to pick up either a heat signature or magnetic disturbance from the midget sub reported by SEAL diver Rafe Albinski.

  * * *

  A caller into Larry King’s interview with CNO Nunn, which Freeman had on in the background as Aussie and David arrived, was graciously trying to help Walter Jensen and, by extension, the Navy and the U.S. armed forces in general, by surmising that even with all the scientific know-how available “it must be a much more difficult job to detect a midget sub than a regular one?”

  “Yes,” agreed Nunn. “And if I could take your analogy further, searching for a midget sub would be like looking for a single automobile dumped on the sea bottom as opposed to, say, looking for an Amtrak train.”

  The next caller quipped, “If you’re lookin’ for an Amtrak, Admiral, all you have to do is check with CNN — see where the latest derailment is. They’re goin’ off the rails ’bout one a day. And if—” King cut him off, obviously displeased with his call screener. The next caller identified himself as a former electronics warfare officer, and said the MAD — the “stingray” tail on any of the battle group’s early warning planes or ASW helos — could easily have missed the midget because MAD’s range of detection was limited to a third of a mile, “for ’bout six or seven hundred yards max either side of your track. That’s only ’bout as far as a par five.”