Ian Slater - Choke Point

Any concern Mother’s electronics crew might have had about an unintended crisscross of two HARMs quickly evaporated as all six antiradar missiles struck their respective targets, the thousands of tiny steel cubes in their warheads swarming the radars’ sensitive antennae.

Penghu, now “electronically blind,” had no effective defense against the ensuing onslaught of sixteen SLAMs, Penghu’s runway so badly pitted by the SLAMs’ cratering sub munitions that on SATPIX it looked like a moonscape.

There was collateral damage, but as with the CIA’s post-9/11 attitude, aboard McCain there was “Before Iraq” and “After Iraq.” After the civilian shields Saddam had used to smother targets, which had cost so many American men and women their lives, the phrase “collateral damage” no longer evoked undue alarm in the administration. Similarly, there had been a hardening of hearts among the Australian, British, American, and Polish soldiers of the 2003 coalition, and deep suspicions of white flags.

Resting in Petrel ’s dry lab, lazily watching the fog clear as the ship slowly limped back toward Port Angeles, her bow and bow thrusters in critical shape, Aussie, Sal, and Choir were struck by the general’s refusal to feel relieved. Even though Marte Price, following up on the initial and incorrect CNN report, had made it abundantly clear that it was not the hydrofoils who were instrumental in the terrorist sub’s destruction but Freeman’s “brave, heroic team,” and Petrel ’s gutsy captain and crew, Freeman was still frowning as he walked about the ship, unable to relax.

“So what if some folks still believe the first news reports and haven’t heard Marte’s follow-up?” mused Sal. “The general knows what went down.”

“Yeah,” joined in Choir. “There’ll be a White House reception, medals galore, that’s what it’ll be, lads,’cept for Aussie here and his BIGS.”

“BIGS?” said Aussie, who was as familiar as his comrades with most military acronyms. “What in hell is BIGS?”

“Aussie’s big grenade screw-up!”

“You little Welsh squirt,” Aussie said. “I ought to bash your head in.”

Sal chortled.

“You too, you Brooklyn bastard!” said Aussie. “I incapacitated the damn thing. It couldn’t move.” Aussie saw Freeman passing by the lab doorway as he headed along the passageway out to the deck. Hoping to bring him out of his mood, Aussie called out, “Isn’t that right, General?”

Freeman paused, the frown creasing his forehead so severely that Aussie felt like saying, as his mother used to when he grimaced sourly over homework assignments, “If you don’t get rid of that scowl, you’ll stay that way.” Young Aussie used to frequently check himself in the mirror.

“What’s that?” asked the general, stopping, but so preoccupied that he hadn’t heard.

“I was just telling these two no-hopers here that it was me who stopped the sub long enough to—”

“Yes, yes,” Freeman said, disappearing from the doorway as he strode away.

Aussie waited several seconds, then looked at Sal and Choir. “What a friggin’ rain face! Never seen ’im so down.”

Sal put his finger to his lips and jerked his thumb toward the stern deck where, having turned sharply on reaching the deck, Freeman had bent down, pulling back the blanket from the terrorist with the badly bruised neck. Once again he irritably threw the blanket back over the man’s face, stood up and walked slowly away.

“What’s with him?” said Sal.

Aussie shrugged. “Don’t think he knows.”

“Maybe,” said Choir, laughing and quoting an old detergent jingle, “he doesn’t like ’ring around the collar’?”

“There’s definitely a bee in his bonnet,” began Choir, then stopped. Freeman was standing at the corridor doorway again, having reentered the ship’s passageway directly from the A-frame, out of view of those in the dry lab.

“It’s not a bee,” said the general. “It’s a goddamn wasp, and I don’t know where the hell it’s coming from.” With that, he moved off.

“So?” asked Choir. “Where’s his wasp coming from, my hearties?”

Neither Sal nor Aussie knew.

The question was finally answered at precisely 3:00 P.M.

a mile west of Port Angeles, when the Petrel , in thinning but still persistent fog, received the news — as did the rest of the world — that the USS Harold Ward , a fiberglass-keeled minesweeper of 895 tons, had just sunk between Cape Flattery and Vancouver Island. “A Coast Guard patrol boat was sighted in the area, but it’s doubtful if it was able to rescue any of the survivors, as the minesweeper sank so quickly that—”

“Suffering Jesus!” exclaimed Freeman.

In that serendipitous confluence of forces where unconnected links are finally connected, the general had it: Choir’s offhand joke about “ring around the collar” and the general’s obsession about the bruise ring about the collar, or neck, of the terrorist on deck came together in the shock of yet another ship going down.

Frank Hall told Freeman it would take another hour at least, at Petrel ’s present crawl of one of two knots, until they reached Port Angeles.

“Frank,” said the general, his eyes alive with urgency. “For God’s sake, let me have the Zodiac!”

“General, I had no intention of refusing it. You and the boys take it, but the news guy said that that minesweeper had sunk —nothing about an explosion. Media’s so hot to trot these days they’re automatically assuming it’s been torpedoed or something. Ships do sink for a host of other—”

“It’s been torpedoed, Frank,” said the general. “There’s another goddamn sub! Don’t you see? That’s why there were so many goddamn sinkings in a few days. It was a goddamn duo at work!”

“Then where the hell’s it come from?” asked Frank. “I mean you — Darkstar’s gone over the whole coast.”

“I don’t know, Frank. That’s why I need the Zodiac.”

Frank let Freeman have the Zodiac, Aussie meanwhile cursing the fact that there were no boots on the Petrel to replace the pair he’d lost on the sub after diving off to help the general. He ended up borrowing a pair of young Cookie’s runners.

“Move it, Aussie!” shouted Freeman, already in the Zodiac as Jimmy and the bosun lowered it from the davit.

One of the side-scan technicians gave Freeman a sonar tracking beeper he’d requested. It was used on occasion by the technicians to test their hydrophones in the lab.

“Bring combat packs!” Freeman called out.

“He’s keen,” said Jimmy, watching the general using the Zodiac’s pike to keep the inflatable from crashing into the side as the Petrel engaged a strong offshore current.

“He lives on adrenaline,” replied the bosun, his muscles stiffened from the Petrel ’s last tension-filled twenty-four hours. “I want a massage.”

“So do I,” said Aussie, lacing up the runners and pulling on his gloves. He threw over a line down then, so he, Sal and Choir could rappel into the Zodiac, its outboard already spitting, coughing, then roaring to life, the general checking the gas level. “Full?” inquired Aussie.

“We’re only going into Port Angeles,” said the general.

“Well hell — couldn’t we have waited till Petrel —”

“ No ! Now listen to me, Aussie. Go get the first mate, tell him I want him to get some syringes from the ship’s first aid kit and take a blood sample from each of those damn terrorists.”

“DNA samples?” said Aussie.

“Right,” replied the general. “We’ll take them with us. We might be able to ID them through Interpol.”