been sunk. No one in COMSUBPAC-9 seemed to know anything other than what oceanographer Frank Hall had informed them: that SEAL diver Rafe Albinski had apparently spotted a mini — or could it be a midget? — sub before his suspicious death, and that Admiral Jensen had therefore requested an airlift of the Navy’s small NR-1B research sub from the Atlantic coast to Whidbey Island, where it could be launched to help in the investigation.
Freeman explained to Eleanor Prenty where he thought the sub was by referring to what he called the reverse-seven shape of the Olympic peninsula’s coastline, which appeared in the Cape Flattery quadrant of the 1:110,000 maritime chart of the Juan de Fuca Strait where he’d spotted the simple four-word entry “Hole in the Wall.” It referred to a sea cave in the extraordinarily rock-pitted coastline.
“A cave!” Eleanor said, struck by the general’s perspicacity. But she immediately pointed out to him the difficulty of getting enough divers to search almost one hundred miles of some of the wildest coastline in North America. All available divers were already needed to scout every port and dock—
“I’ve already made calls,” Freeman cut in, “to three or four of the best SEAL SpecOp guys in the country.”
“
“You’re right,” Freeman replied.
Eleanor was taken aback by his agreeing with her and his friendly tone. “So,” she said, “I suppose you have an alternate plan.”
“Yes ma’am.” This was the problem he’d solved in the bath. “COMSUBPAC Group 9’s UAV.”
She thought for a moment — military types were always throwing around their acronyms for equipment, and it gave her pleasure to surprise him. “Unmanned aerial vehicle?”
“Right.”
The National Security Advisor felt elated.
“I want to have Darkstar do an infrared run west from Pillar Point to Cape Flattery, then south to a place called Father and Son. Fifty-seven miles in all.”
Eleanor was trying to locate the place names on her wall map. No luck, but she’d already grasped Freeman’s idea. “Hot spots,” she said. “The UAV photographs the fifty-seven miles of coast, and any hot spots indicating human habitation can be investigated by our divers. Right?”
“You’ve got it. Darkstar’s pix are digital disc so we can get real-time feed.”
“I’ll have the CNO contacted right now to order—”
“Ah,” cut in the general, “maybe you could have your Admiral Jensen call the CNO.”
Eleanor hesitated. It’d make more sense for her to—“You want Admiral Jensen to get the credit.”
“Well, hell,” Freeman said, “poor bastard could use some. Media, everyone, wants someone to blame. Someone to crucify. Maybe he was derelict. I don’t know. None of us’ll know till we have time to investigate. Time for that later. Right now we need to go after the sub and its hideaway.”
She was beginning to like the gruff, bluff legend they sometimes called George C. Scott because of his uncanny resemblance to the Oscar-winning actor who had made such an indelible impression with his acclaimed portrayal of Patton, one of Freeman’s boyhood heroes. “That’s very generous of you, General.”
He mumbled something about “there but for the grace of God go I,” and asked her to let him know when Darkstar was airborne and to give him a password for his laptop’s entry to the UAV’s real-time IR transmits of its surveillance flight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
At the firing range at Fort Lewis outside Tacoma, the setting sun had thrown pine and spruce trees into stark relief. Over Puget Sound, the strait, and the symphony of mountains, cumulus, and seacoast, there was a pink- lavender beauty so redolent with the smell of forests and pure air from the perennially snowcapped Olympics that it would have seemed the wild imaginings of some fantastical painter but for the fact that it was real.
America remained traumatized, its Navy humiliated, its self-esteem bombarded by the unrelenting anti- American foreign press scoffing at the Navy’s continuing embarrassment about what to do in the strait. With two capital vessels gone, the
But on the firing range at Fort Lewis, David Brentwood’s only concern at the moment wasn’t what the editorialists were saying but that his lame right hand was refusing to play its part, its fingers bunched in an immovable, stubborn fist. The Humvee’s driver, who had brought the Medal of Honor winner to the range, opened the back door to grab the only new ambidextrous F2000 assault rifle at Fort Lewis.
“I’ll get it,” said David, subdued, his tone devoid of any trace of sullenness or ill-temper, but characteristically quiet, showing as much concern for the other man’s embarrassment as for his own.
“Oh, sure,” said the driver, stepping back.
First problem: The assault rifle had no mag. Rules of the range: no weapon to be loaded until shooters were in the stalls or on the mound.
But even the simplest job — snapping in the mag — proved harder than David had anticipated. As his sister, an Army nurse, had so often said, “The things you take for granted!” her work with the wounded having relentlessly driven home the point.
The F2000, constructed of molded polymer and modern in appearance, wasn’t a pretty weapon. It was thoroughly ugly, in fact. Though ergonomically correct, its modular design looked more like a child’s stubby gray Lego construction. Despite its aesthetic shortcomings, however, it had been the Bullpup’s carrying handle, allowing the well-balanced Bullpup to be carried with equal facility by left and right handlers, that gave David hope. He should be able to grip the weapon tightly enough, by jamming it between his left arm and side, to control its three- round bursts. After considerable sweat and remonstrations against his dangling, uncooperative right arm, he was able to cradle the weapon for burst fire. Then, in an act of sheer will, using his good left hand to literally drag the dead lump of fingers that had been his right hand across to the front underside and through the loop formed by a half-inch-wide rubber band suspended from the gun’s barrel, he managed to lift the relatively light eight-pound weapon high enough to assume a shoulder firing position, should he be tested for single-shot accuracy.
He fired four three-round bursts from the waist position, the driver watching the man-size target through the range binoculars. While the group of three 5.56mm bullets all hit the target, they were too widespread. Still …
David readied for the shoulder shot, trying gamely to camouflage his pain beneath a forced grin. “Good to be shooting again!” he told the driver.
“Uh-huh.” The driver’s attention had shifted from the line of targets to the arrival of another Humvee. “Son of a — it’s George Patton!”
Freeman, as usual, was well turned out, khaki shirt and trousers immaculately pressed. Together with the snappy peak of his khaki Afrika Korps cap, his gear made him look ten years younger. But the general was not a happy camper, and his driver, loaned by Fort Lewis’s CO, wisely remained in his Humvee. David’s driver came to attention, giving the retired general a smart salute. Freeman returned in kind without breaking stride, as if arriving to inspect the 2nd Army. “A word with Captain Brentwood.”
“Yes, sir,” David’s driver replied, quickly absenting himself, heading toward the other Humvee.
“General?” said David, slipping on the safety.
“We’ve got bad news. You’re a diver, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Need your advice.”
That was something David liked about Freeman. He never hesitated to seek the counsel of others — those below him in rank, particularly those who, like him, had been in the field.
“What’s the problem?” David asked, grateful for the chance to lower the 2000, resting it against the gnarled trunk of a ponderosa pine.
“Told National Security Advisor Prenty that maybe the sub had its lair in a cave or some other indentation in
