Ian Slater - Choke Point

Choir knew that the slightest variation in the their course would give the enemy RIB a broadside target. His quick action confounded the war-painted crew, now only fifty yards off. Their coxswain, instead of calling Choir’s bluff and going full speed at the approaching boat, intuitively but imprudently steered hard astarboard, trying to avoid Freeman’s shots. But the general’s tracered 9mm hit the front two men, their collapse abruptly shifting the weight in the inflatable so its left gunwale was momentarily submerged, the other four men trying frantically to regain balance. One got off a skyward burst before Freeman’s continuing enfilade punched him out of the boat, which heeled farther to port, the remaining three attackers trying to right themselves. It was only two seconds before the three were on their feet, or rather their knees, and stable enough to return Freeman’s fire.

But it was too late, for in those two breath-seizing seconds — an eternity in a firefight or car crash — Freeman had ample time to change mags, the steam rising from his HK barrel seen by Frank Hall, who had been banging away with the bosun’s gift of the Saturday Night Special. Reopening fire at twenty yards, Freeman pierced the trio’s chests with such rapidity it was like a madman frenetically stabbing his victim with an ice pick, the jets of bright arterial blood macabre and, Freeman thought, beautiful against the green of the men’s uniforms and beneath the cerulean-blue sky.

Petrel ’s first mate rang Petrel ’s telegraph for “Full Ahead” to assist Frank and the men firing from the aluminum boat at the interlopers. Now, as Petrel ’s bow wave creased the otherwise calm sea, the first mate and his crew braced for what they thought might be a storm of fire from the Skate . If, in a terrible blue on blue, Petrel ’s skipper and the aluminum boat men had mistakenly opened fire on a genuine landing party from the Skate , the guns on the Coast Guard vessel would open up.

“Well, shit!” opined Cookie. “What were those guys with the tin boat supposed to do? Those guys in the RIB started shootin’ first. It was self-defense, man! If it was me—”

“Shut up!” the bosun said, but Tommy knew the kid had a point.

“Jesus,” Jimmy told Malcolm, indicating the floating bodies from the RIB as well as the oncoming Coast Guard vessel. “Maybe they were from the Coast Guard patrol boat — I mean, the guys who opened up first. Old man on that Coast Guard probably didn’t fire back ’cause it’d be killing Americans for killing Americans, if you know what I mean.”

“You mean two wrongs don’t make a right?” Malcolm answered.

“Yeah,” said Jim, appreciative of the phrase. “That’s exactly what I mean. Geez,” he added, not wanting to watch the floaters but unable to look away, “ you think they were from the Skate ?”

Malcolm shrugged. “We’ll soon find out.”

Frank wasn’t going to second guess his first mate. After all, the officer had good intentions in bringing the Petrel forward. But he knew the underwater ruckus made by Petrel ’s props would destroy any hope of a clear side-scan trace for a while. And so the only comments he made, climbing up to Petrel ’s deck following the short, fierce firefight on the water, were directed at the bosun.

“Thanks for the weapon, Tom,” he said, handing the white bundle up to him.

The bosun gave the bundle to Tiny to hold. A second later a full-bodied oath greeted Frank Hall, Tiny dropping the .38 he’d noisily retrieved from the cloth. “Jesus — it’s hotter’n a two-dollar shotgun.”

“How’d it go?” the bosun asked solemnly. “The gun?”

“Oh,” lied Frank, “went great. Sure as hell glad I had it, I can tell you. One of those bastards holed our Zodiac. Couldn’t pick up anyone.” Frank was on the deck phone now, the mate telling him he was arranging a deck party to help Freeman’s team with the floaters. The Skate was back on channel 16, the jamming by the unknown craft having ceased the moment Freeman had finished off the six attacking his tin boat.

The bosun was beaming. Hell, he hadn’t been able to do much to help out in the firefight and was glad his .38 had been of some use, confiding proudly to Tiny and Malcolm, “It was probably our skipper who dropped a couple of those bastards.”

Tiny watched the bosun walk into the dry lab to join Frank, anxiously standing by the side-scan recorder.

“What’s he worried about?” asked Cookie, smoking beneath the A-frame. He sounded nonchalant, but Malcolm noticed that his legs were trembling so much that his stained white apron was shaking as well. Cookie saw that Malcolm had noticed.

“Cold?” Malcolm asked.

“Huh, what? Oh, yeah. Freezing.”

“What you expect, Cookie? You haven’t got enough on, for chrissake. Put on a windbreaker.”

“Cook doesn’t like me wearing ’em around the mix.”

“Fuck the cook! Put on a windbreaker.”

“Yeah …” He’d obviously forgotten about what was worrying the captain.

Malcolm put his arm on the young man’s shoulder. “We’re all cold, Cookie. You’ll be all right.”

Cookie nodded sharply, tossing the cigarette overboard, which was just as well, Malcolm told Jimmy, who was standing over by portside rail. At the moment, Hall was preoccupied in the dry lab by the fact that the Petrel had lost over three hundred yards of trace due to the first mate’s “Full Ahead” order. But if he came out on deck and found Cookie smoking anywhere near the LOSHOK, he’d likely shoot him with the bosun’s .38.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” began Malcolm, he and Jimmy trying to keep out of the way of the guys who were putting over the rope ladder for the approaching SpecFor team, the ropes and wooden steps whacking the side of the ship.

“What’s amazing?” asked Jimmy.

“Tommy. First rate bosun. Knew just what to do. He wanted to use the slingshot LOSHOK to try to help the old man, but he knew one slip and he’d kill the old man or these SpecFor guys we’re gonna take aboard. But the same guy thinks that dinky .38 he’s been haulin’ around is accurate.”

“It’s a piece of crap,” agreed Jimmy. “Couldn’t hit a barn door at two feet.”

“Maybe it saved his life one time,” Malcolm mused, out of a sense of fair play.

“Maybe,” conceded Jimmy, watching the urgent preparations on the increasingly crowded stern deck while safeguarding the pallet of LOSHOK charges by the A-frame. “Maybe he used it as an oven. Fire three shots out of that thing and you could cook a three-course meal.”

Malcolm grinned broadly. It was hardly the time or place for a joke — even a weak one — but sometimes it just happened like that. “I’m gonna tell ’im you said that,” he kidded Jimmy. “Put you in the shit!”

“Thanks!” Jimmy kicked the half-dozen small packs of LOSHOK. “Think we’ll ever get to—”

“Hey!” said Malcolm, stepping away. “Don’t do that!”

“What?” inquired Jimmy, feigning doltlike innocence. “Oh, you mean don’t do this?” whereupon he again kicked the seventy-pound mother of all depth charges.

“Jesus, Jimmy, knock it off!”

“Relax, mah boy. Friggin’ midget’s skedaddled by now under cover of all our prop wash and that Coast Guard tub steaming toward us.”

The Skate was now only two hundred yards to the east but slowing, its own prop wash slopping forward to overtake and mix with its decelerated bow wave. Along with the Petrel , it created a localized chop in which Freeman, Sal, and Aussie found it difficult to haul the dead aboard their commandeered aluminum boat, their outrage at what had happened to Dixon having cooled somewhat by the possibility that they’d perhaps been involved in an unavoidable “friendly fire” incident. It had been unavoidable to them, the men on the spot, but they knew it never appeared as unavoidable to the media or the armchair critics who always knew what you should have done in the millisecond you had to decide.