Ian Slater - Choke Point

“I didn’t say that. What I am saying is that with all our carrier groups already spoken for on so many different terrorist fronts — Middle East, East Africa, West Africa, the Philippines, et cetera — we’d only have the McCain ’s battle group to referee the Taiwan Strait, because we’re boxed in here. The most powerful nation in the world can’t move its warships out of the Northwest through this choke point because we don’t know what the hell’s going on.”

“What would you suggest we do?” asked the older of the two agents.

“Tell the government to give me access to Darkstar. I’ll use my own team.”

“Your team?”

“SpecFor boys. You just get me the authority — tell this Admiral Jensen to let me use Darkstar. I’ve got a few ideas.”

Once he’d heard this, all David could think of was getting back to Fort Lewis to see whether the endless exercising he had done since Afghanistan would prove the doctors wrong — whether through sheer will he could make his hitherto dead right arm, specifically its recalcitrant elbow, bend enough to support the front weight of the new F2000 bullpup rifle.

It didn’t matter who had started the war in the Taiwan Strait, the PRC — People’s Republic of China — or the ROC — Taiwan. If Taiwan fell, the quake through the world’s financial markets, especially that of the U.S., was certain to plunge the West into its worst recession since the collapse of ’87.

“Admiral,” the President appraised McCain ’s Crowley, “you’re the only flat top we’ve got in this ball game. I’ll do what I can to bleed off elements from the Gulf and elsewhere, but if you wait for them to join you I suspect it’d be too late.”

“I understand, Mr. President. We’ll give a good account of ourselves.”

“I know you will. Your boy excited?”

It took Crowley aback that a President, in the midst of such a clear and present danger to the nation, was nevertheless so alert to the fact — the non — politically correct fact — that young men and women from West Point to Annapolis would see in the terrible act of war in the Strait of Juan de Fuca against their country the opportunity of a lifetime. Military men understood youth’s eagerness for combat. But for a civilian like the President, with no military experience, to be equally aware — though obligated, as the nation’s Chief Executive, to do all he could to stop the war — at once pleased and alarmed Crowley. However eager the uninitiated soldier might be, Crowley knew that the more a soldier saw of his grizzly trade up close, the less he wanted to see. Except for those like Douglas Freeman, who, in the darkness of his inner journeys, had recorded illegally in his combat diaries, that, “God forgive me, but, like old Georgie Patton, I do so love it.” The sting of battle beckoned to him, the ever-present call of Thermopylae, of being one of those who, on some great and terrible day, would save the nation in its hour of peril.

And here in Port Townsend, in his hotel bathtub, Douglas Freeman contemplated America’s present peril, the greatest, it seemed to him, since the nation teetered on the verge of destruction — the White House in flames, the British columns advancing, the Continental Army in bitter retreat. The call reverberated in him as deeply as it had in Churchill, another great aficionado of bathtub contemplation.

Wet facecloth over his “George C. Scott” face, the only noise that of his breathing and occasional ripple, he tried to put the pieces together like a chess player surveying the board, the clock ticking as he attempted to solve the deadly puzzle, to forestall the enemy’s next move. He tried to recollect everything, like every pawn on the table, which alone might contribute little or nothing to the puzzle but which once all assembled, brought willfully together in the mind’s eye, might reveal the who, what, and why of it all.

The shrill ring of the bathroom phone evoked a curse worthy of Aussie Lewis, who’d been the most profane of Freeman’s SpecOps boys. Whipping the facecloth off, he barked, “Freeman!”

It was Eleanor Prenty. He softened his tone, though still irritable at the interruption to his train of thought. “I’ve been informed of your request for Darkstar access. Admiral Jensen has been told to assist in any way possible.” She paused.

He refused to fill the silence. Let her wait — about damn time she returned his call.

“We’ve received a communication from the Chinese,” she continued. “Their intelligence reveals that Li Kuan, the—”

“Yes, I know who he is,” cut in Freeman, trying to maintain his train of concentration and struck by the irony that when he’d been practically begging the White House to talk to him, he couldn’t get past Operator Eight , and now, precisely when he didn’t want to be disturbed, they were—

“Beijing has information that suggests Li Kuan is behind the attack on Utah and Turner . If so, he could have a dirty bomb.”

“Then he would have used it.”

“Not if he’s here .”

Jesus .

“Your thoughts, General?” Which told him that, as before 9/11, no one in Washington had any more idea of precisely what was going on than he did. They were even seeking the opinion of retired generals. “I’m going to need some help. I’ll call a few of my boys. I’ll get back to you.”

“Thank you, General.”

Well, that was more like it.

The dense white smoke rising from the hilly spine of Kinmen Island was the result of artillery smoke rounds fired by both Communist and Nationalist forces as the battle was joined. Most of the fighting was taking place on the green high ground overlooking the strands of beaches on the less verdant western shore of the island, whose pinched half-mile-wide waist accorded the island a shape that navigators throughout the McCain battle group referred to as the “bow tie.”

Its highest point, the eight-thousand-foot Mount Taiwu, rose in the middle of the bow tie’s eastern segment. Here, Chinese paratroops, their transports having skirted Kinmen’s two southside airfields, were engaged in bitter, often hand-to-hand combat to capture the high ground to quickly establish and secure observation posts and fire bases from which they could lob 100mm mortar and 105mm howitzer rounds down upon the Nationalist forces dug in along the island’s northern and eastern defensive perimeters. The bulk of Sky Bow II missiles for Kinmen’s defense had been situated on its northern and western shores, where the ChiCom invasion was anticipated. But now ChiCom paratroops, who began falling like confetti on the ridges about the base of Mounts Taiwu and Shuhao, had attained complete surprise.

Sky Bow missiles fired from the Nationalist island’s more heavily defended northern and western shores did bring down a clutch of six high-flying ChiCom J-5 Fresco Interceptors. But the missile flight arc of the Sky Bows fired up at the heights of Shuhao and Taiwu mountains and the hilly spine in between could not execute the abrupt C turn it would need to hit the lower flying ChiCom interceptors and ground attack aircraft. They came in low over the South China Sea, bombing and strafing the southern shore’s two vital airstrips.

While the ChiCom paratroop transports continued to unload their men, mortars, and multichute, quick-assembly howitzers at precariously low altitudes, their low-drop zones pushed safety margins. Carrying at least 130 pounds of weapons and equipment, in addition to their own body weight, the paratroopers were jumping from the scores of transport planes at six hundred feet, in order to use the bulk of Taiwu and Shuhao mountains as protection from Nationalist ground fire.