Ian Slater - Choke Point

“Foxhole convert,” David quipped, a little too flippantly, given his sardonic smile, for any of the three surgeons to believe him.

“Religion sometimes helps patients to adjust,” the surgeon said.

David resented his tone. He saw it as an atheistic condescension toward someone the doctor considered simpleminded. “I don’t believe in miracles,” he responded, and immediately regretted giving ground.

“Well, I think you’ll enjoy your R and R at Fort Lewis.” An awkward silence ensued until the doctor added, “The Pacific Northwest is big timber country. Lots of logging — one of the most accident-prone jobs in the world. A lot of good surgeons and rehab right at Fort Lewis’s doorstep.”

“Ah, I think he wanted his rehab in Hawaii!” joshed one of the other doctors. “Somewhere a little warmer.”

David gave them the smile they expected.

“You ever been in the Pacific Northwest, Brentwood?”

David wondered where he should begin. Obviously they hadn’t read his military record. “Yes,” he said simply.

Approaching Washington State, the military transport was escorted in from a hundred miles out by two F-18s out of McCord, the Northwest under the highest alert since the Cuban Missile and 9/11 crises.

After landing at SeaTac, David walked past the Fort Lewis driver who was holding the BRENTWOOD sign, consulted “Surgeons” in Seattle’s yellow pages directory, and caught a cab downtown.

Dr. Paul Gonzales, a surgeon from the famed Brazilian clinic used by many Hollywood celebrities, was more suave than the three doctors at Tora Bora and disagreed with their diagnosis. Surgery, he told David, could not be expected to restore more than a maximum of thirty percent use in his right arm—“in the fingers, no more than twenty-five percent.”

“Shit!” said David, in an uncharacteristic outburst. “How about physiotherapy — you know, rehab and—”

Gonzales shrugged. “You’ll have to do that just to maintain the minimum range of movement you have. If you don’t, you’ll lose it.”

Brentwood knew the doctor meant his arm, but he already felt as if he’d lost everything. A one-armed soldier.

“Of course,” Dr. Gonzales continued, “your left arm will take over some of the functions of your right. A squeeze ball will help somewhat. Keep exercising the stiff hand as much as possible to retain what motion remains.”

“A squeeze ball?”

A stunning print of Cot’s Storm hung on the doctor’s pastel-gray wall, the glances of apprehension on the faces of the two lovers fleeing through the foreboding and beautiful forest arresting David’s attention. Despite the danger all around them, there was hope in their eyes. And he needed hope now, the kind Melissa had given him through the long months of separation. He needed her now, but the nightmare of the cave, the death of his six comrades, was too heavy upon him to go to her yet.

Gonzales’s second examination was merely an act of courtesy. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Douglas Freeman, true to his e-mail, turned up in Port Townsend’s East-West Café for lunch. It was the only place open since the scare. But David Brentwood wasn’t in the mood to eat, and neither was the general, beset by what seemed an endless MTV video blaring from the TV in the corner of the restaurant. Agitated, but trying not to show it, the general was convinced that Washington, D.C., was merely spinning its wheels while the West Coast burned, and that more attacks could be in the offing. “They think,” he told David, “that this damn minisub, or whatever the hell it is, has shot its bolt.”

“Well,” said David, “they might be right, General. A carrier and a nuclear sub isn’t too bad.”

Both men picked unenthusiastically at their appetizers, brought to them by a young, sullen Vietnamese woman who was complaining bitterly and loudly to a customer who looked like a regular, “… is because we Asian. FBI, Home Defense, come here. They think we terrorists. Blow up ships. We good citizens, Mr. Norman. We good citizens of United States.”

“I know, Sally. They’re just checking everyone out.”

“They check you out?” she asked, furiously wiping off a table at the back of the restaurant.

“Well, I don’t—” began Mr. Norman.

“See?” the woman said, using her white cloth as a pointer. “They no ask you . They think we terrorists. Not good for customers.”

“Neither,” Freeman told David, “is yelling,” the general pleased to see that his and David’s main dishes were being happily delivered by one of the two Vietnamese waiters whose smiling dispositions were a welcome respite from “Sullen Sally.”

The general, however, always a stickler for personal hygiene, scowled in disgust. “Did you see his fingernails?” he asked Brentwood, who, as unobtrusively as possible, pulled his right hand from the table, resting it in his lap, not sure of the state of his own fingernails. “Goddammit,” continued Freeman, “those two guys look as if they’ve been in a brawl.”

“Maybe over Sally,” joked David, trying to find as many cashews as he could in the mixed vegetable, chicken, and rice dish.

“Well, she roughed them up pretty good,” said Freeman. “Look at their wrists. And the one who served us — looks like she tried to strangle him. Either that or cut his throat. Great bloody welt around his neck.”

“I wouldn’t like to tangle with her,” said David.

Freeman hadn’t realized that Sally had overheard some of their comments, and she opened up on him. “I no beat anyone, mister. They,” she said, indicating the two waiters, “go down, help pull sailors from the sea. That how they get burn.”

David was embarrassed. Hadn’t Freeman heard about the local Dunkirk effort? Hundreds of people coming from all points on the sparsely populated coast to help in the rescue of the survivors, often at great personal risk, many of the rescuers having to wade out into burning oil slicks to reach the victims.

“Dey have burn all over body, helping sailors.”

“I’m sorry,” Freeman said. “I didn’t realize. You’ve done a great job. Thank you.”

Sally pointed back at the restaurant kitchen. “We give hot food to saved people. Many hours.”

“Yes,” said an abashed Freeman. “I’m sorry, miss. I was way out of line.”

David nodded, about to give his heartfelt thanks, but before he could respond further, they had visitors. Two morose-looking men in shades had entered the East-West Café and were walking toward their table.

“FBI or Homeland Defense,” Freeman told David, who was taking a sip of his green tea.

The agents identified themselves, and without any apology for interrupting the two men’s meal, explained that a NSA computer phone scan had picked up Freeman’s e-mail to Captain Brentwood, and would the general be good enough to explain his comment, of which they had a copy, that “I don’t think the towelheads are behind this at all.”

“By ’towelheads,’ gentlemen, I meant Arabs,” Freeman told them. “Yes, I know that their 9/11 attack was brilliantly coordinated and executed. But they used our planes, our technology. But do you know how many people this strait thing up here would require — what kind of operation you would need for military targets? Not Trade Towers, gentlemen, but two capital ships. Scores of the bastards — that’s what it would take to pull it off.”

“Who then, General?” asked one of the agents.

“Don’t know, son,” Freeman replied. “But I’ve been reconnoitering the area on my own. Not enough towelheads around. Haven’t seen one damn A-rab on this coast. Not one.”

“So you don’t think it’s Muslims?”