Choke Point

animal and human carnage they had seen in the waters of their strait disallowed the usual spirited repartee — at least for now.

“What d’you think, General?” Aussie asked.

Freeman’s attention had shifted from Marte Price to the TV screen’s sidebar weather map of Typhoon Jane. “Doesn’t make sense,” he concluded. “Starting a war on two fronts. Fundamental. Even for a superpower. Beijing attacking Taiwan and us at the same time? Anyway, if they were going to do that, why one offensive in the open, the other not?”

“Maybe,” suggested Aussie, “their planned invasion of Taiwan — which we know they’ve always had on the shelf — was triggered prematurely by the Taiwanese firing the first shot. ChiComs had to react?”

“I think so,” agreed Freeman, “and I’ll tell you why. It’s that damned typhoon. No planned offensive by Beijing would willingly battle that bitch and the Taiwanese armed forces at the same time.”

“So you think Taipei did fire first?” asked Salvini.

“Don’t know, Sal,” answered Freeman. “Sometimes we never know who fired the first shot.” He paused. “ ’Bout ourselves, war, or anything else. I don’t know if the ChiComs started it, but something — don’t ask me what — tells me they’re not the ones sinking our ships here in Juan de Fuca.” He glanced across at Choir. “I wouldn’t claim that wager with Aussie just yet.”

“Then who is it, General?” pressed Choir.

Before Freeman could answer, the phone rang with the Coast Guard’s IMU test. The Darkstar-detected anomaly was positive. Definitely isotope-tagged. There was a problem, however, in that the isotope match-up was for the oil used by a Caribbean Panama-registered cruise ship, Bermuda Star. Obviously, it had illegally jettisoned or leaked it en route to either Vancouver or Seattle, the two major Northwest cruise ship ports.

“Shit a brick!” said Aussie, crushing the plastic water bottle from which he’d been drinking and throwing it violently into the wastebasket, the mood of the other three no different. For a few seconds no one spoke. But if Choir, Salvini, and Aussie’s silence was a measure of their bitter disappointment in having failed to narrow the search for the killer sub whose sheer audacity Freeman couldn’t help but grudgingly admire for the utter chaos and humiliation such a small gutsy force had brought about — as his own team had in the past — the silence afforded the general a moment to think, uninterrupted by the others’ theories.

He switched off the TV and tossed the remote on his bed, which he’d remade after the maid service had been in — the blankets now so tightly tucked that a tossed quarter bounced off it — testimony to the fact that as much as he was an original maverick thinker in the armed forces, he also valued the small but valuable drills that reinforced respect for tradition. He knew that some of the old ideas “in the box” could still serve well in times of personal and national crisis. Going back to the box of boring procedures for a moment, he asked Salvini to go online and into Google, to do a search on the Net for cruise ships’ arrivals and departures. In a minute Salvini saw that the Bermuda Star had been scheduled to arrive in Seattle a week before, that is, before the sinkings. But the entry was flagged with a red asterisk.

“Queer,” observed the general, explaining his comment by pointing out that Seattle Port Authority showed Bermuda Star as “delayed.” Having departed Lahaina, Maui, for Seattle two weeks ago, the cruise ship had been compelled to return to Hawaii due to an outbreak of a virulent SARS-like bronchial virus, over a dozen passengers removed to the Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Honolulu. And the ship had been quarantined.

“So it didn’t get to Seattle,” said Freeman, his earlier fatigue replaced by a surge of energy.

“I don’t get it,” confessed Sal.

“The sub got hold of however many barrels it needed,” said Freeman, “from Bermuda Star. So if the sub sprang a leak, from its hydraulics, whatever—”

“And we took a sample of the leak,” cut in Aussie, “we’d think it was from this Bermuda Star. Only our terrorists,” he elaborated, “didn’t figure on the cruise ship coming down with a bug, having to stay quarantined in Hawaii.”

Freeman was on the phone to the Coast Guard station at Port Townsend, which was known to have the best supply of rigid inflatables. He wanted a twenty-four-man RIB for his team and any available Coast Guard divers.

“General,” the duty officer told him, “we’ve had to prioritize. This war’s being fought on so many fronts. The best we can do is a sixteen-footer. And we haven’t got any spare divers.”

“Prioritize! We’ve found the sub! — well, at least where it’s been. If we can trace the tail on that tadpole spill before it’s sucked out or chopped up by the tides, we may be able to backtrack it to the bastards’ operating base.”

“General, I’m following orders,” said the duty officer. “You find a sub base and I’ll request antisub aircraft from Whidbey.”

“That’s no damn good if it’s a cave. Can’t drop depth charges into a cave. I need more divers — SpecFor guys like mine. I’ve only got three,’sides myself. If you can—”

“Hold on, General.”

Freeman could hear someone interrupting in the background, then the Coast Guard DO came on again. “Young Peter wants to go with you.”

“Peter—”

“Dixon,” said the DO. “We’ll send him over with an RIB. Sixteen-footer.”

“Fine,” said Freeman, who knew the duty officer was right. Everyone was spread thin.

It was obvious to Aussie, Choir, and Sal that the general, for all his prodigious memory, didn’t recognize Dixon’s name.

“Dixon’s the swim buddy of that guy Albinski,” said Aussie. “Albinski was the one they winched up on Petrel, smothered in kelp.”

“Good,” said Freeman. “He’ll be keen to smoke those bastards out.”

“How ’bout David?” asked Aussie. “Maybe he can help.”

Choir and Sal looked uneasily at the general. They were glad it was his decision, not theirs.

He surprised them, however, by asking, “What d’you boys think?”

“Well …” Sal began awkwardly, becoming tongue-tied.

He deferred to Choir, the Welshman’s shrug, like Sal’s silence, also a diplomatic abstention.

“Aussie?” the general pressed. “You know the answer, same as these two ninnies. Don’t you?” He said “ninnies” with the rough affection born of long team membership.

“He could be a liability,” said Aussie quietly.

Freeman nodded, then looked at Salvini. “You asked from loyalty, Sal. I understand that. I admire that, but we all know that David’s gammy right arm can barely hold the Bullpup he’s been struggling with. Handling an RIB in this sea would be a hell of a lot more difficult than that.” He paused. “Brentwood would make the same decision.”

The three others agreed, but Aussie wasn’t so sure. David Brentwood was the kind of leader who, probably to a fault, would take a chance, having great faith in the power of will. He had often cited the extraordinary determination of the Vietnamese against all odds. Morale might not move mountains, as Freeman himself was often wont to say, but “it can sure as hell climb them.” Then again, the general’s responsibility was to the team, not any one individual.

“Call him, Aussie,” Freeman said. “He’ll be back at Fort Lewis by now. Tell him to sign out an antitank launcher with HE rounds — just in case we bump into the bastards. It’ll give him a sense of lending a hand — well, at least doing something.”

“I’m on to it,” said Aussie, dialing Brentwood’s cell. He hoped he wouldn’t answer. Who wanted to be a gofer?

“Might piss him off,” said Salvini.

“Oh, thanks for that, Sal. That really helps.”

“We’ll see,” said Choir, all of which left Aussie wondering why Freeman wasn’t calling his protege.

To Aussie’s relief, David didn’t answer, so Lewis left him a quick but succinct message to bring them the antitank launcher from Fort Lewis.