Choke Point

bastard! Anyway, I can go get a coupla towels and we can sit here all night and have a big cry. Or we can get off our ass and go have a few beers. Hear there’s a Hooters in Tacoma. Tits bigger’n—”

“I have to master this 2000. Apparently, it’s got a grenade launcher and bayonet module as well as—”

“Well, use your friggin’ brains, Captain. Rig up a friggin’ sling — shoulder or neck. Could carry your mother-in-law in that.”

David heard the Humvee coming back. “A sling. Geez — I never thought of that!”

“Geez,” Aussie mimicked him. “I never thought of that.” Then he segued to an old commercial, adopting the voice of its aged actress: “ ’I’ve fallen down and I can’t get up!’ Course you didn’t think of a sling, you twerp, ’cause you’re still in mea culpa mode. You believe in God — all that stuff — don’t you?”

The general walked into the woods, smiling approvingly at Aussie’s frontal assault on his buddy’s uncharacteristically fragile psyche.

“Yes,” David said seriously. “I do believe. So?”

“Well, you’re still alive, mate, ’cause he’s not finished with you. Get up an’ get goin’.”

David’s driver was walking down from the Humvee with his arms full of 2000 clip-on/add-on modules.

“Ah, Santa Claus!” said Aussie. “Right, Davy boy, rig a sling. Give you my belt, but since my waist’s only a thirty-one, me being so fit to dive with the Draeger an’ all …”

David began unthreading his belt.

“Oh, that’s a good idea, Dave,” Aussie joshed. “One bum arm and now you’re gonna try shooting with your pants down. What the hell you doin’? I said rig a sling, not expose yourself!”

It was the first real smile that had graced David’s face since before Afghanistan.

“Salvini told me you’d been hit in the arm,” continued Aussie. “I dunno — looks like you fell on your fucking head!”

David and the driver were laughing now. Aussie handed David a length of polyester rope normally used to attach the range binoculars to the firing stall. The rope sling worked well for support but the shooting was still bad — nowhere near SpecOp standard. In fact, nowhere near boot camp level. But Freeman and Aussie knew that anything to build back his self-confidence was important, even if it had to be made clear to David that there was no way he could be designated “operational” and endanger a team with what was essentially a bum right arm.

Admittedly, Brentwood’s handling of the grenade launcher was a surprise, its weight all but nullified by the sling and by David hugging the F2000 hard to his left side. The lobbing of four grenades he fired was surprisingly accurate, well within the acceptable limits for the firing of 40mm projectiles. The next test, however, the bayonet, which could not be successfully thrust or parried with the sling, was a different matter altogether. The weight of its steel blade, extending far beyond the assault rifle’s barrel, created a punishing torque on David’s left arm. His forehead beaded in perspiration, he was about to try yet another one-arm thrust when he, Aussie Lewis, and the Humvee’s driver felt a violent rustling above them and were engulfed by a whirlwind of leaves, dust, and other assorted debris choking the air. This was followed by a thunderous clap.

It had been the magazine of one of the Aegis cruisers exploding, following the detonation of a magnetic signature mine. The ultramodern, reinforced blast wall, built to protect the ship’s arsenal of ship-to-ship, sea-to- land, and sea-to-air missiles had given way, the cruiser blown apart with such unmitigated violence that it lit up the strait off Port Angeles with a fiery intensity that turned evening to midday. The rain of white-hot metal hissed so loudly that it startled already shaken inhabitants as far east as Port Townsend and the adjacent Kitsap peninsula. The sound raced northeast to Vancouver, south across Admiralty Inlet, and down Hood Canal, reaching Admiral Jensen at Bangor Base seconds before those across the Puget Sound in Seattle, Tacoma, and Fort Lewis heard it.

“Holy shit!” said Brentwood’s driver.

By the time General Freeman had exited the woods, in such haste that he’d forgotten to zip up, Washington, D.C., government switchboards, particularly those of Homeland Defense headquarters, were jammed by terrified callers. What in hell was the government doing about it, and what about the nuclear reactors on the Aegis? If the Aegis had been “blown apart,” as CNN said, didn’t that mean its reactor had disintegrated as well? And if so, wasn’t there immediate danger of fatal radiation through the entire Northwest?

For the first time since the American Civil War, Americans began a massed exodus, only this time from the Pacific Northwest, something their Founding Fathers couldn’t possibly have envisaged. En route, they swallowed iodine capsules in the hope that it would either prevent or at least offset what many feared would be the beginning of a massive cancer pandemic triggered by deadly radiation. AMERICANS ON THE RUN tabloids from Damascus to Paris trumpeted, the most sympathetic foreign headlines coming from Australia, Britain, New Zealand, and Canada. Most European papers, after expressing horror at the destruction of yet another American “superwarship” and lamenting the loss of all aboard, quickly resorted to tarted-up versions of the old “root causes,” “blame the Americans” harangues of post-9/11.

Going against the tide of frightened Americans, Freeman, having taken his leave of Aussie and Brentwood, returned to Port Angeles, the repaired Darkstar due to take off at 11:37 P.M.. Booting up his laptop, he saw a flickery blue screen. No pictures, however. “Darkstar, my ass!” he thundered so loudly his Port Townsend hotelier heard him from the lounge. “Darkcrapis more like.”

Then the infrared feed came through.

“All right, then,” Freeman said gruffly.

Against the infrared’s grayish coast he could see bubbling, dime-sized, whitish hotspots and fishing boats’ exhaust heat. “You’ve got balls!” he told the screen, referring to the fishermen. “Three ships sunk and you guys are still trawling for dogfish. I’ll be—”

Wait a minute, he thought. Fish. Naval slang for torpedoes. Were the terrorists on trawlers as well? One eye on his computer screen, Freeman turned to the phone, punching in the numbers for Coast Guard Coordination in Seattle, alerting them to the possibility of trawlers and other fishing vessels — factory ships, perhaps — having torpedo-firing and/or mine-laying capacities.

When the Coast Guard commander got a chance to interject, which, given the general’s rapid delivery, was not for a full two minutes, he told Freeman, “General, that was the first thing our divers and boarding parties looked for—above and below waterline. We also checked all the Beaufort drums on deck to make sure they contained life rafts and not mines. We were also looking for terrorists.”

“Oh,” responded the legend, answering, as if he was a member of the British General Staff rather than a retired American warhorse, “Good show, Commander.”

“Yes,” said the commander. “Not all of our members are retired!”

“What in hell does that mean?” growled Freeman.

“Have to go, General. We’re running escort for the Navy’s pullback into Puget.” The commander hung up.

“Hello?” thundered Freeman. “Hello? You cheeky son of a bitch!” He turned to the laptop, and above its screen caught a glimpse of himself in the motel room’s mirror. He hadn’t thought about the possibility of Beaufort life raft drums being used as mine containers. “Huh,” he said, looking at his reflection. “Not so damn smart after all, eh, General?”

Watching Darkstar’s feed, he could see more bobbing, dime-sized white spots contrasted against the serrated-gray-wall coastline and the huge Olympic land mass beyond.

Where the lingering warmth of the land, released from the base of Mount Olympus, met the radiant heat of the cooler ocean, fog had formed. It now began permeating the myriad nooks and crannies and wider bays all the way from Port Angeles west to the violent surf of Tatoosh Island off Cape Flattery.

As the big Pacific swells exhausted themselves, crashing in punishing waves of foam against the black, precipitous cliffs of Tatoosh, Freeman could hear the mournful sounds of foghorns through Darkstar’s amplified sound feed. Darkstar’s bottom screen text informed him that Tatoosh was one of the most densely populated wild bird sanctuaries in the world. But right now the general couldn’t have cared less about the sanctuary or any of the others situated south of Cape Flattery down the Washington coast as far south as Cape Disappointment, off the equally dramatic Oregon coast. Instead, his attention was confined strictly to Darkstar’s present east-west feed, the UAV’s pictures coming in from its low vectored flight between Port Angeles and Tatoosh. They were speckled with more than a dozen hotspots in what were supposedly unpopulated areas. By the time Darkstar reached the