Ian Slater - Choke Point

She thanked him but said that first she wanted an interview with Rorke.

“No, you do me with the wounded.”

“Captain Brentwood, I’ll decide when and who—”

David looked over at the submariner. “Captain Rorke will do an interview with you. CNN exclusive. In an hour.” He turned to the cameraman then. “Let’s go down the corridor, try to keep out of the staff’s way—” He had to stop talking until the thudding of a Coast Guard chopper’s blades faded from the hospital’s parking lot. “I’ll give you an interview. I’ll give you my background on the way,” he told Marte Price.

Marte saw there was no arguing with this Brentwood. He’d come across initially as a lamb — now he was a lion. This medal thing had gone to his head. “I’ve already got your background,” she said. “You’re supposed to be the shy and retiring type. The ’Aw, shucks’ hero.”

“Do we have a deal?”

“An exclusive with you, Captain Rorke?” Marte asked. “Fox guys are everywhere.”

“Exclusive,” agreed Rorke.

Before he left the room to join the PR rep, Marte Price, and her cameraman in the blinding white light of the corridor’s heavy traffic of hospital staff, David spoke quietly to John Rorke. “You need anything, Captain?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You were last wounded in Afghanistan, right?” Marte Price asked David as they moved down the hellish corridor.

“Yes,” he told her. “That’s right.”

“At Tora Bora?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me what happened?” In the public ward, they could hear the desperate cries of the wounded not yet treated with painkillers, pending diagnosis from doctors who, despite help from the Whidbey Island Navy medics, remained overwhelmed.

“We’re out of morphine!” a harried nurse reported. They’d all begun calmly and professionally, but the sheer fatigue of overload was drowning the best intentions.

“Use Demerol.”

“It’s gone.”

A drugged young submariner was pleading with a doctor not to amputate his leg. It had in fact already been taken off, but he was feeling the phantom sensation of it, his arms and legs bandaged so heavily that he couldn’t remove the sheet or bed covers to check, and everyone else was too busy.

With Freeman asleep, Aussie Lewis had been monitoring the IR feed from Darkstar’s last leg home between Cape Flattery near Tatoosh Island eastward to Port Angeles when he noticed what appeared to be a sea-air-interface anomaly very close in to the coast, which was indented by caves, both hot and cold. The zoom didn’t help much because the number of pixels making up the picture diluted the color of the surrounding sea as well, so there now appeared a less distinct variation between the color of the suspected anomaly and the water about it. But the zoom did show him that the patch he’d zeroed in on wasn’t so much circular as a tadpole shape.

On his own recognizance, Aussie called the Coast Guard at Port Angeles, keeping his voice low, so as not to wake Freeman, whose sheepdog-like snoring reverberated through the motel room. He explained what he’d seen and on the general’s behalf requested that the Port Angeles Coast Guard station send out a fast RIB to have a look-see.

“Are you nuts?” he was told. “We’ve already lost a guy. Besides, we’ve got every Bruiser out. They’re still bringing in sur—” The man stopped abruptly. Aussie could hear voices in the background. Then someone else came on the line.

“Have you tried the oceanographic and torpedo recovery vessel Petrel II ? It’s been busy picking up people too, but it’s pretty well equipped. If it’s in the area, it could probably drop over a bottle. I’m guessing you want a water sample for an isotope match? That’d tell you whether it’s oil or garbage.”

“Or both. You got it,” said Aussie. “If it’s an oil spill and there’s no match for it in the Coast Guard’s isotope register, then we’ll know it’s from an intruder. And if that’s the case, I’ll bet it’s the sub.”

“I can call Petrel if you like,” offered the Coast Guard officer.

“No sweat, I’ll do it. Frank Hall’s the skipper, right?”

“You know him?”

“Ex-SEAL buddy of mine. Taught ’im everything he knows.”

“Fine,” said the officer. “Listen — sorry about the guy who answered. He lost his wife on the Turner .”

“Poor bastard,” said Aussie. “He shouldn’t be on duty.”

“I know, but we need everyone we can get. ’Sides, he’s hell-bent about staying on. Wants to get even.”

“Don’t we all. Thanks, buddy. I’ll call the Petrel .”

“What’s going on?” asked the general, sitting on the edge of the sofa, yawning, his shock of silver-gray hair disheveled.

“Possible sea-air anomaly on the Darkstar trace,” Lewis told him. “Close inshore.”

As tough as he was, oceanographer and ex-SEAL Frank Hall could not bring himself to “drive” Petrel, as he tersely put it, “straight through” the fogbound waters of Juan de Fuca Strait that he was sure still contained scores of bodies. Accordingly, he had given Petrel ’s second mate instructions to strip the stern’s A-frame of the practice torpedo retrieval tackle and replace it with a quick-snap release line with which Petrel could tow her twelve-foot-long Zodiac. With the third mate, Sandra Riley, and two men aboard the Zodiac, it could be cast off from Petrel , if need be, to pick up any survivors or bodies that Hall or his lookouts on Petrel ’s bridge might see en route, or to get a quick water sample from the Darkstar anomaly for isotope comparison.

Six and a half miles from the air/sea tadpole-shaped patch, the Petrel ’s starboard lookout did see something orange bobbing up and down in the fog-shrouded chop. Hall doubted it was a body — it looked more like a piece of debris. Nevertheless, he alerted the third mate to its position, heard the loud two-stroke-like roar of the Zodiac’s outboard, then saw it as it sped bumpily past Petrel , its bow smacking hard against the waves, which was the price of being out of sync with the frequency of the swells. As a result, the third mate and her two crew were jarred from head to foot, a splatter of spray thrown up by the Zodiac along with a whiff of its gasoline exhaust swept onto the bridge by a westerly wind coming in from the open sea through the choke point between the Olympic peninsula and Vancouver Island, the wind starting to disperse the fog.

“Couldn’t be much louder,” said the bosun, looking down at the Zodiac. “Glad we’re not on a silent mission.”

“Uh-huh,” replied Frank. “But I like it loud in our work.” He meant torpedo retrieval. “If I can’t see it, I can hear it.”

“True,” agreed the bosun, his legs wide apart, his torso leaning forward against the bridge’s brass rail as he fixed his binoculars on the orange object. “Son of a bitch, it’s a zip-up.”

“What?” asked the portside lookout.

“You know, thermal survival suit. Arctic rated. Like a waterproof sleeping bag. Zips up to your eyes. Float on your back — right, Skipper?”

“If you’re lucky,” said Frank, “and don’t get concussed facedown before you hit the water.”

“Zodiac’s just about on it. Reckon whoever—”

“Torpedo!” screamed the station lookout. “Two o’clock! Two hundred yards,” which was the limit of Petrel ’s visibility.

Frank hit the stern thruster button, felt the ship surge another three knots, and spun the wheel right, to the starboard quarter. A fast white streak, two feet wide, passed parallel to them on the left side, less than five feet from Petrel ’s hull.