Ian Slater - Choke Point

“Yes, sir!”

“Not ASAP,” the admiral added and, in his buoyant mood, added his favorite Churchillian phrase: “Action this day!”

“Yes, sir.”

Churchill had been very popular since 9/11, the President and his speechmakers having borrowed freely from the great Englishman’s World War II speeches.

By the time the shot-up Pave Low, heading south, taking sporadic small arms fire along the way, approached the sun-drenched airfield at Tora Bora, its engines sounded more like a harvester shucking wheat. Hydraulic fluid was bleeding from its belly against the blue Afghan sky and the snowcapped peaks of the Hindu Kush.

Like all such snatch and grab missions, Brentwood’s had been a secret operation, but not now that fire trucks, ambulances, and padre were on Code Red, and with rumors flying about the Medal of Honor winner having screwed it up. The stories bandied about the camp temporarily put to flight the stagnant air of insufferable boredom that forms the interregnum between battles.

“Poor bastard,” said a tank gunner as he watched Brentwood being stretchered through the blazing heat into the MASH unit, where the soft whirring of the air-conditioning unit delivered a different planet to the Afghan desert. It was a cool place where Brentwood fought the trauma team “heavies” who tried to strap him down in pre-op, the morphine now losing its battle with the invading horror of consciousness — a time-distorted frenetic attack on his conscience in which he wanted to rush back into the cave and save his buddies. And then the shot of sodium pentathol took over, the cave closing in, smaller by the millisecond, until all light was gone. The monitors’ whirring and the periodic alarms of intravenous pumps were heard only by the trauma team in their fight to first save his life and then, if possible, preserve the use of his right arm.

They saved him and the shot-up arm, but the main brachial artery had been severed, and though sewn up with over thirty stitches, it was remarked by Surgeon Major Ainsleigh that this Captain Brentwood’s career in the military was now over.

“Lucky bastard!” It was an OR orderly incognito behind his surgical mask, possibly a reservist who had signed up for the adventure of weekend bivouacs and the few extra bucks, not for full-time service in what the “ ’Ghanistan” troops called “Boring Boring.” Their hope was, now that the war on terrorism was winding down, at least in Afghanistan, they’d soon get news they were going home. Back home where a six-pack wasn’t against the will of Allah, where a girl was free to go out with whoever might ask her and let a man take off more than her veil.

General Chang was as good as his word, calling back by three-fifteen. “Mr. Riser, I have some information about your daughter,” he said. “As you probably are aware, my niece, Wu Ling, is — was, excuse me, please — a good friend of your daughter.”

“Yes,” Riser said, though he had never personally met the general’s “niece.” “Has she any information?”

The general wasn’t used to such directness. In China, one took longer to get to the point, and it was considered impolite to rush. But then again, the general told himself, if someone had murdered his daughter, he would be just as impatient for information as was the American. “Wu Ling said she was with your daughter at the Museum of Opera and Theater when she called you.”

“Does she remember what my daughter said?”

“A little, I think. That is why I’m calling. She told me it was very noisy. Tourists.” He added a lighthearted self-criticism of his fellow countrymen. “Chinese tourists. Very loud.” Riser had the will but lacked the energy to laugh openly. “Ah,” continued the general, “it may be helpful if you spoke to my niece.”

“Is she with you?”

“Yes.”

“May I speak to her now?”

“Of course.” There was a pause as the general summoned her.

Wu Ling tried to be helpful, but it was hopeless; her English was poor, and she spoke a dialect of Cantonese, not Mandarin, the official language of government and of cultural attachés. And with Riser unable to see her body language, any attempt to splice Mandy’s segmented message into something cohesive was impossible. Could he meet her? he asked the general.

“Unfortunately, we are in Suzhou for the next week. Perhaps when we return to Beijing we could arrange—”

“No. Now,” said Riser. “I can fly down to Hangzhou then catch the train to Suzhou.” Riser heard a rapid, loud exchange between Chang and his “niece.” He had never gotten used to the din of Chinese conversation; at times it felt like being assaulted by a human ghetto blaster.

“Wu Ling,” Chang apologized, “is very saddened by Miss Riser’s death. She does not want to dwell upon it.”

“I understand,” said Riser, “believe me—” Charles paused to regain his composure. “—but I wouldn’t take much of her time. I would be grateful for even a half hour. I’ll catch the early morning flight.” Riser heard Wu Ling agree, albeit reluctantly.

“Perhaps,” added Chang, clearly sensitive to Riser’s mood, “we could meet somewhere quiet. The Garden of the Master of the Nets. You know it?”

“Yes,” said Riser. “Tell Wu Ling I appreciate it. This is very kind of you, General. I won’t forget it. Neither will my government.”

The truth was, his government didn’t know about him going to Hangzhou because Riser knew there was no way his boss and the American ambassador would sanction a trip to Hangzhou tomorrow. It was the day of the Moon Festival, an important all-China, mid-autumn celebration during which cultural attachés posted in Beijing should have remained in the capital, not traveled six hundred miles away to the south, no matter what personal reasons they might have. Besides, China and the U.S. were not on good terms. As usual, there was the perennial tension over the human rights issue in Chinese-occupied Tibet, the ever potentially explosive issue of Taiwan, and now Beijing struggled with the problem of the “Stans”—the countries of central Asia that bordered China. They included Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Pakistan, with their huge Muslim populations. In particular, there was the problem of Muslim terrorists in China’s far northeast region of Xinjiang. In that vast province, almost four times the size of Texas, many of the terrorists were believed to have been financed by al Qaeda.

Charlie Riser, forgetting that he was still on the phone with the general, was surprised to hear Chang speaking. It was a kind of absentmindedness that had frequently overtaken him since Mandy’s death.

“Wu Ling,” said the general, “tells me that your daughter desired it very much — the garden.”

Desired? thought Charlie. It was such a beautiful, albeit unusual, way of putting it.

“Yes,” Riser said. “I look forward to it.” The thought that he would be walking in a place where his daughter had so recently been was strangely comforting and saddening at the same time.

As usual, China Air was running late. En route to Hangzhou, Riser, irritated by the surliness of a flight attendant, recalled how the nascent airline used to test applications for the job. “Honest to God,” the embassy military attaché, Bill Heinz, had told him, “four turns in a swivel chair. If you didn’t get dizzy you were in.” It was the only airline Charlie knew — from a flight he’d once made to Xian to see the famed buried Stone Warriors — that had landed the aircraft with food trays still down and not cleared. On one flight, both pilot and copilot managed to lock themselves out of the cockpit and, drawing the curtain separating flight deck from passengers, proceeded to bash their way back in by means of a fire axe.