Ian Slater - Choke Point

“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 unmitigated 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.