Choke Point wi-9

by Ian Slater

  Mao understood and nodded, his labored breathing producing a faint nasal whistle that didn’t worry Choir because of the overriding noise of the crashing sea below and the wind through the thickly vined vegetation of the cliff that Mao had assured them screened another cave. The same Mao, Choir reminded himself, who had sworn he was telling the truth earlier.

  Freeman signaled to Choir to synchronize watches, then both of them began feeding the rope through their gloves over the cliff’s edge. Mao began his rappel.

  In the tunnel below them and back from the cliff, David was still hunched, his neck and leg muscles taut with the pain that radiated up and down his back. He was trying to regain his hearing, his ears still ringing from the three shots he’d fired from his Compact. He felt a warm wash of air from the radiant heat of its barrel. It felt good in the dripping wet cold of the left-hand tunnel he’d entered through the narrow gap in the rubble of the tunnel that led to the waterfall cave. He wondered if the two terrorists were still in the tunnel or if they’d reached what he guessed must be a second lair in the cliff face. If they were still around, he hoped they didn’t have IR goggles that would pick up the Compact’s residual heat. Stupid, he told himself. If the terrorists had IRs, they would see his body heat anyway if he advanced down the tunnel. He could only hope they’d be more interested in escaping than trapping him, because they must have heard the shooting above them. It had sounded as if a sniper had gotten two shots off before the replying stutter of an HK.

  David placed his Compact into the wooden, lifeless grip of his injured hand, and felt for his 7-flashlight. He pulled its head hard against him, slid the on switch forward, saw a pinpoint of light and switched it off, returning the Compact to his good left hand. The danger, he thought, was that if the two terrorists he was following had reached the second lair, at least one of them might be waiting at the tunnel’s exit, under the lair, to finish him off, while the other busied himself with the means of escape. They could have a Zodiac, possibly one of the “big jobs,” as Aussie referred to the thirty-foot RIBs, that in a pinch could quickly ferry away twenty or more sardine-packed personnel. That would rapidly take them eastwards, back into the protective shroud of fog where they could then land, melting back into the perennially green canopy of the peninsula, to later reassemble and launch yet another attack.

  David stopped, noticing that one of the five-foot-high joists lining the tunnel had come loose from the wall, bringing down what appeared to be a candlestick holder with it. A butterfly mine underneath? The fallen joist seemed to have been pushed out over time by an inch-thick root growing horizontally along the tunnel, the root itself about three or four feet in length.

  He slid his Compact into his waistband and quickly made two cuts with his K-bar, resheathing it and extracting the root, rubbing the root hard back and forth against his trousers to remove the slippery mud coating. Then he made several small nicks on one end of the root so he would have a better grip. With the Compact, which had eight shots left, and the thick three-foot-long root in the wooden grasp of his injured hand like an officer’s swagger stick, he started moving cautiously again down the tunnel. It took a slight curving turn to the left, the wide angle of the turn obviously designed to accommodate much longer containers than the cardboard boxes of food; perhaps crated segments of torpedoes, he thought.

  He paused again, the persistent ringing in his ears now joined by a sound like wind in trees. The falls? They were possibly only two hundred yards or so to the east, and if he was that close to the coastal cliffs, he knew the tunnel would soon end. Infrared spots of residual heat, like those captured by IR cameras showing the images of parked cars that in fact were no longer there, speckled his IR glasses. Slowly, he counseled himself. Above him, outside somewhere, Freeman, Aussie, and Choir, and maybe Sal too, would be moving fast, coming down a trail on the cliff face, or some such thing. Exactly how, he couldn’t be sure, because unlike them, he’d never seen the cliffs in the area. He’d only heard about them secondhand from news reports of the sinking of the sub.

  David Brentwood, who was determined to redeem himself for what had happened in Afghanistan, his bootlaces tied so tightly his feet were throbbing, knew that any temptation to rush, to get it over with, had to be restrained by common sense. The terrorists, if they hadn’t already fled, would be waiting for him. In that case, perhaps he should wait in turn, until Freeman and company made their move and he heard them. He could smell paper smoke, which, together with the fetid air of the tunnel, was partially depriving his brain of oxygen. But should he make a dash for the exit, which couldn’t be far away? The terrorists would be watching the seaward side of the lair as well, not just the tunnel exit. He had assumed that the roar he was now hearing was that of the falls the team had spoken of where they had attacked the sub, but, disorientated in the tunnel as to precisely what direction he was heading, he couldn’t be sure. And everything was becoming fuzzy with the lack of oxygen. He thought he heard movement ahead, or was it behind him? He stopped again and knelt down, almost tipping off balance because of the oxygen depletion and the lack of sensation in his right arm. He reached out with his left hand and duct-taped the 7-flashlight to the end of the thick, three-foot-long root.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Where in hell was Douglas Freeman? More to the point, Marte wondered, what was he looking for? She’d heard by now of his mythical second sub, but it might be simply rumor. “There’s a thousand bucks in it, Sheriff,” she told the well-fed lawman.

  Wally got up from his desk and hitched his pants. Lord, she was a looker. No spring chicken, but experienced, like you could get right to it. “CNN tryin’ to bribe me, Ms. Price? That’s serious.”

  “Oh heavens, no,” said Marte, smiling, touching his arm, tossing her head back, the sheen of her hair caught in the sheriff’s green desk lamp. “It’s Walter, isn’t it?”

  “Most folks call me Wally.”

  “Wally?” she said, as if right there and then nothing else was important to her. “Wally — yes, I like that. Most nicknames — well, to be frank, I don’t like them. But Wally. It’s friendly sounding, isn’t it?”

  He knew what she was doing. Did she think that coming from New York, she could pull a fast one? Think he was some kind of rain-forest hillbilly?

  “I just think,” continued Marte, “that you folks in law enforcement have done a marvelous job up here — the rescue work, people leaving in droves, and all that. I’d simply like to make a contribution to your benevolent fund. As one grateful American to another. I’m sure there are police officers’ families in need?”

  Wally nodded. “I knew some of those deputies on duty at Birch Bay.”

  She remembered the attack against the oil refinery. “General Freeman knows me,” she said suddenly.

  “They’ve headed out on 112—road to Callam Bay.” He showed her where it was on the station’s wall map of the Olympic Peninsula. “Cameraman going with you?”

  “You rather he wouldn’t?”

  “No, no, I mean I think you need a man along.”

  “Really?” A feminist edge there, he saw.

  “I mean — ah, you know — one of you drive, the other one navigate sort of thing. Very deserted out there. I’d lend you a deputy, but with all the townsfolk returning—”

  “Look, Wally, there might be other media people arriving here, now the Petrel’s in port.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Wally, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “I’m not sure where General Freeman is. Could’ve gone east back to the 104, down to Hood Canal. Bangor Base. Imagine Admiral Jensen’ll have a few questions to answer. Bit late with those hydrofoils. ’Sides, I think most reporters’ll want to get first dibs at interviewing the Petrel’s crew. Helluva thing they did.”

  Marte was careful not to crack a smile as she began writing her check, her pen slowing, however, when she realized the sheriff might be right. The Petrel’s crew would be a huge story. And if all Freeman wound up with was simply a bunch of leftover
terrorists in the bush? Still, she’d learned that Freeman had a kind of sixth sense about things military.

  “Whoa!” said the sheriff. “I can’t take a check, ma’am.” He was astounded by her naiveté. “I mean, ah, cash’d probably be better.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Where’s the nearest ATM?”

  “Man, there’s been a run on them. I don’t think—”

  “I’ve only got four hundred in cash. I’ll need that for a cab. Can you trust me?”

  “Hell, sure I can trust you.”

  “Soon as I get back.” She gave him a smile.

  Lordy, he could have sworn she licked her lips. Walter gave her a wave.

  “We on?” asked the cameraman, his tone utterly devoid of enthusiasm.

  “There’s no second sub,” he added wearily. “I’ll bet you there’s no second sub.”

  Marte Price told the cab driver to go faster, worried that the car a half mile in front was Fox or possibly England’s Independent Television Network. “Those Brits have been all over us like measles since Iraq,” she told her cameraman. “I swear they got the nod into our market because they went in after Saddam Insane with us and the Aussies.”

  The cameraman shrugged disinterestedly.

  Marte wanted the cabbie to catch up and overtake the vehicle ahead, her fold-up binoculars out of her bag. “It’s another cab!” she blurted, a realization that convinced the CNN veteran that it was media up ahead. Rental cars were seldom used by the media because the paperwork and Homeland Defense “Purpose of Rental” security form took too much time to fill out.

  Salvini had spotted the car way back, and saw it closing fast now. Terrorists? he wondered. He called Aussie Lewis.

  Aussie wasn’t surprised to feel the sudden vibration in his tunic pocket, the morphine Freeman had administered having temporarily banished the pain, putting his brain in reverie. “Where the fuck are you, Brooklyn?”

  “In this cab with Grandma,” Sal replied. “Listen, I’ve got a bogey up my ass. Looks like another cab. No one else is supposed to be out here. The boss told Sheriff—”

  “Yeah, well,” cut in Aussie lethargically, his laid-back tone annoying Sal.

  “Could be a hostile,” said Sal urgently.

  “Okay,” Aussie answered pleasantly. “Pull a left — block the road. Show ’em your weapon.”

  There was a pause.

  “Well, that’s what I was gonna do. You okay, Aussie? You sound weird.”

  “Took one in the rib cage. Not deep, though. Other guys takin’ care o’ business.”

  Aussie definitely sounded high. “Got a GPS loc for me?” asked Salvini. “I must have gone past the mile post you gave me.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Aussie accommodatingly. “Sure. Hang on, mate.”

  “You on morph?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Aussie’s voice said lazily. “On the morph.”

  “Jesus! Call me back with your GPS.” Sal dropped the phone onto the cab’s passenger seat and braked hard, Mao’s mother yelling something at him in Vietnamese as he blocked the road and stepped out with the shotgun.

  Marte’s cab slowed. “Keep going,” she told the driver. “There’s another hundred in it.”

  “Lady, I don’t care if there’s another million in it, I’m stopping right now. That guy’s holdin’ a shotgun — all I got is my dick, an’ I plan on keepin’ it.”

  “Stan,” Marte told her cameraman. “You drive.” She turned back to the cabbie. “You stay here.” She handed him two hundred, adding, “We shouldn’t be long. I’ll pay for any damages.”

  The cabbie counted the money. It was more than he’d expected.

  “Go, Stan!” Marte instructed her cameraman.

  “Slowly,” he said.

  “Fine, but go.”

  “Take off your panties,” the cameraman told her.

  “What?”

  “You’re wearing white panties. I think we’d better start waving them.”

  “Pervert. Don’t turn around.”

  He didn’t, but did look into the rearview mirror.

  When the cab pulled up to him, Sal told Marte she’d have to turn back. No media. Too dangerous. As they spoke, he could hear firing, which he was sure must be echoing up from the sides of the cliffs. In fact, he was hearing the distant linoleum-ripping sound of Aussie’s HK.

  With the morphine now wearing off, his pain returning, Lewis had been in no mood for the four terrorists he saw popping up out of the ground a hundred yards away from what was supposed to be a patch of skunk cabbage. All four were armed and in a clump, running for their lives through the brush toward him, heading for the road. Aussie flicked off the safety.

  “Aw shit!” he murmured after his first burst, seeing that the four, though having been in a bunch, now had the sense to disperse.

  Like every SpecFor warrior, Aussie Lewis knew “Stop!” in at least eight languages. “Zhàn zhù,” he called out now. “Claymore!” Every enemy of the United States knew what “claymore” meant. Aussie thought of it as the terror that had pulverized so many of Uncle Ho’s Viet Minh into “ground Minh.”

  Three of the four were suddenly standing dead still. The fourth, in what Aussie called “obvious Freeman shock”—maybe he’d heard what had happened in the Port Angeles café—was walking around in circles, calling for someone.

  Aussie cut them down without the slightest compunction. They had attacked his adopted country, his home, and besides, they were in civilian garb, and thus, he told himself, armed spies under the Geneva Convention.

  “You should go back to Port Angeles,” Sal told Marte and her cameraman. “Put your panties back on and interview those people.”

  “Don’t be a smartass!” Marte snapped. “What people?”

  “People who got kicked out of the restaurant. They can give you a story.” He’d taken care not to mention the woman being shot, and he felt badly about having to steer the reporter in that direction. The shooting story was sure to come out, but it was the only way he could send her and the cameraman away from the firing. Anyway, seeing that some media type was going to get the story, it might as well be Price, whom he’d heard had once been buddy-buddy with the general.

  “Who’s the old lady?” asked Marte, looking into Sal’s cab.

  “Informant,” Sal said, before he had time to think. His job was fighting, not arguing.

  The old lady was shaking her finger at the three of them.

  “What’s she saying?” Marte asked. “Do you know?”

  “Says you should go away. Big trouble up ahead.”

  Marte looked disgusted. “Do one thing for me — what’s your name?”

  “Mickey.”

  “All right, Mickey. Will you at least tell the general — if he’s still alive — that I was here first and I’d appreciate it if he gave me first crack at his story.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  As their cab headed back, the cameraman told Marte, “His name’s not Mickey.”

  “Gee,” said Marte, her voice cold with sarcasm. “I thought it was.” She asked him to toss back her panties. “And I’d appreciate it, Stan, if you didn’t perve at me in the rearview.”

  “There might be a good story in town,” he said in a conciliatory tone.

  She didn’t answer.

  “You know,” Stan continued, “up at the hospital? That sub commander’s crush — what was her name, Elisha?”

  “Alicia,” said a somewhat mollified Marte. “Alicia Mayne.”

  “Yeah, the one with the burns. You know, I heard that deeper burns aren’t as painful as first degree burns because third degree burns destroy all the nerve endings — you don’t feel the pain.”

  “Still needs skin grafts by the dozen, that one.”

  “Yeah, but they can work wonders now. Friend of mine told me they have this kind of synthetic skin that’s revolutionized burn recovery.”

  “Well, she couldn’t look worse than some of those Hollywo
od bimbos,” said Marte. “Pay ten grand for a facelift and they look like they’re from a waxworks.”

  “Boobs look real.”

  “Just drive, Stan.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  If Murphy’s law had run amok through the Strait of Juan de Fuca during this disastrous week for America, Freeman thought, Murphy now seemed absent as he, Choir, and Mao, having successfully rappeled down the cliff face without incident, now reached the footpath-width ledge that ran across the base of the cliff. High tide was in, waves broaching the ledge here and there, disappearing behind the ragged bottom of the thick tangled-vine curtain.

  Freeman was about fifty feet across from Choir and Mao, and both could see the entrance. There was a smaller curtain about fifteen feet wide and thirty feet high within the much larger curtain of vegetation, like a smaller door set within a hangar door.

  Another outfit might have used Mao at barrel point to go ahead, to be first man inside, to take the first fire if surprise wasn’t achieved, but Freeman didn’t want to do it that way. Surprise was not gained by creeping approaches in his school, which taught that slow approaches bred defensive attitudes in what was supposed to be an offensive force. Freeman signaled to Choir to make a walk speed approach along the slippery ledge, then a fast entry. It suited his preference for audacity: L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace!

  Choir gently pulled Mao back, cuffed him with a nylon strip, and turned his face into the cliff. Mao’s breathing was still labored but, Choir could tell, easing now. “Wait here,” Choir whispered.

  He glanced down, checking his grenade array, Freeman already having done so. Then both of them began making their way along the ledge, Choir from the east side of the heavy vine door, Freeman from the west.

  Freeman’s biggest worry, given the bright sunlight, was whether any part of their shadows would pierce the screen of vegetation, like that of someone passing by an ivy-covered trellis. Momentarily, he glanced up at the rim of the cliff, its overhang of fresh-smelling vegetation a vivid green fringe against the blue sky, and he saw why he and Choir hadn’t spotted any sentries, other than the tree-hidden sniper. A human form against such a wild, natural setting would at once arouse curiosity in anyone at sea. Anyway, he hoped he and the rest of the team had decimated the core of the supply unit in the firefight at the falls cave and against the six-man Zodiac near Petrel, along with everyone on the submarine they’d sunk.