Ian Slater - Choke Point

Peter Dixon, only a few feet away on Aussie’s right, was more comfortable, because of the frequent shower of rain that peppered the surface and the surface disturbance created by the local whirlpools from the turbulence of the waterfall. He knew that all of this would make it difficult for anyone swimming on the surface to see more than several feet below them. Once he was through the thunder and caldronlike fury of the falls churning beneath the surface, Dixon indicated they go up to recon. Aussie was unable to see his swim buddy’s arm signal at first, blocked as it was by the effusion of bubbles that momentarily rendered their bubbleless Draeger units redundant. Dixon’s signal had also been hidden by a silvery gray school of Chinook salmon, their fluid beauty pocked here and there by grumpy-mouthed rockfish who refused to move out of the way of their more numerous and streamlined cousins.

By the time Aussie saw the second signal from Dixon, whose thumbs were jerking impatiently upward, Dixon was already four or five feet above him. He broke surface first, deafened by the thundering of the waterfall about ten feet directly behind him. When Aussie surfaced, he found himself amid such a profusion of bubbles and the mist they created, it took him, like Dixon, ahead of him, a while to adjust his vision. It was as if they’d moved from a dull, winter-lit room to an even dimmer one, the water behind the falls significantly darker because of the overhang of the cliff’s face, the waterfall’s effervescent mist also “blooming” out their infrared lenses. Still, in the gloomy light between the falls and the edge of the bay, Dixon saw something few men had ever seen. Seeing it too, Lewis actually gasped in surprise.

It was a midget sub, docked a hundred feet in from them by a natural rock wall that formed part of the crescent bay and was curtained by the falls. Dixon counted four guards, two at the bow and two at the sub’s stern.

In his mind’s eye, Aussie had thought of this midget sub, first reported by Dixon’s deceased swim buddy, as being like the Japanese navy’s small midget sub, three of which had slipped through Sydney Harbor’s defenses in May 1942, torpedoing the ferry Kuttabul and killing nineteen. But what he was looking at now was considerably bigger — a long cigar shape, over a hundred feet in length, its diameter about twelve feet, and the conning tower around eight feet high. But after he and Dixon swam back underneath the turbulent cover of the sea-waterfall interface to reach the rocky islet a hundred yards away, their descriptions of the midget differed. Dixon, his weathered, war-painted face grimacing with the effort of shucking off the weight of his Draeger rebreather, flippers, and other kit, thought that the bow was not so much spherical, but a tad wider than it was high.

“Maybe it is a tad wider,” riposted Aussie. “So what? Must be only a difference of a few inches, at that.”

“If it’s spherical,” said Freeman, “it could be nuclear. That’s the difference, Aussie.”

Choir raised his eyebrows, but Sal gave no indication that he’d heard the general, concentrating on checking his M-16, one cartridge in the chamber, his finger resting on the safety. If anyone so much as poked their snout around the western edge of the falls, he told Choir, “I’ll take their fuckin’ head off!” The “boy from Brooklyn,” as Aussie often called him, had no intention of ending up like the once valiant Medal of Honor winner, one arm as useless as “a spent dick,” to be left dangling by his side for the rest of his life.

For Salvini, the shock of what had purportedly happened during the ODA mission to take out terrorist chief Li Kuan troubled him nightly, like his persistent dream of not having passed his high school exams, which tormented him with the endlessly recurring scene in which he was barred from entering the final examination room — American history — because he was late, having wasted time at a crosswalk, bending down while the rest of his buddies caught the light and crossed the street. By the time he’d tied up the lace of his Nike “Just Do It” sneaker, the pedestrian signal had changed back to “Don’t Walk,” the red signal’s blink morphing into a stream of paralysis-inducing red tracer.

“So what if it’s nuclear-powered?” Aussie challenged the general in a tone that surprised Dixon, who, used to the “Yes sir, no sir” exchanges between officers and men, was taken aback by the lively sense of equality in Freeman’s team.

“Because,” Freeman answered Aussie patiently, “if it’s nuclear powered, what’s it doing needing a dock? A nuclear boat doesn’t need recharging for fifteen to twenty years.”

“Needs rearming though,” said Aussie matter-of-factly, seeing the point and adding, “Nukes can also go a long time without replenishing freeze-dried food — but not munitions, not at the rate this sucker’s been sinking our boats.”

Aussie’s comment made such an obvious yet important point that the general realized just how sleep deprived he was. With that, Freeman did something he normally tried to avoid. From his load vest he pulled out a small, watertight Ziploc bag of dark chocolate-covered roasted coffee beans, took four by way of example, and offered the rest to the team.

Without looking up, Sal said, “Two for me, sir.” Aussie also took two, Choir and Dixon declining. The frigid water had been more than sufficient to wake them up.

“How many guards?” Freeman asked Aussie and Dixon.

“Four that I saw,” said Dixon. “But I couldn’t see shit in there for a while — water fogged my IR.”

“Aussie?”

“Four. And that doesn’t make any sense. Where’s everybody else? No sign of a crew.”

“Aboard the sub,” suggested Choir.

“Fine,” acknowledged Aussie. “But where are the supply donkeys?”

Dixon mentioned that he’d seen something that looked a bit like a dark canvas awning extending back from the sub’s conning tower to the base of the cliff. “But maybe it only covered a gangway that went as far as the rock landing. It was so damned gloomy.”

“I never saw it,” answered Aussie. “Probably ’cause I broke surface at right angles to the conning tower. Could have been a stream of guys coming and going under a tarp and I wouldn’t have seen ’em.”

“Would’ve thought they’d be out in force,” Choir said. “After that bugger took a shot at us?”

“Damn!” began the general.

Had the caffeine from the chocolate-coated java beans jolted him that fast? wondered Choir.

“That’s why we didn’t see a crowd,” Freeman continued. “Bastards are frantically loading the whore so it can cast off and run riot again in the strait. We’re going in!”

Aussie Lewis had known, ever since he was a small boy, that he was brave — always ready to “stand on his dig,” as the Australian prospectors used to call it, refusing to give up their claim in the gold field. But refusing to give ground and dashing off half cocked were two different things.

“General,” countered Aussie, “the moment our RIB pokes its nose around either end of the friggin’ waterfall, those lookouts are gonna have us cold, dead in their sights from either end of the sub. And they’ll be firing from solid ground. If we do get a chance of return fire, we’ll be bobbing around like a cork. Brooklyn here couldn’t even hit ’em with his scatter gun.” Aussie took a breath and said something SpecFor warriors seldom say. “It’s too risky. They’ll take us all out, and then what? No one knows where we are. No backup. Nada. And we’re out of radio contact — no cavalry.”

“NR-1B should be on its way,” said Choir.

“So’s Christmas!” retorted Aussie. “ ’Sides, all that Jensen has is our general area.”