Choke Point

“No, only war paint. Camouflage.”

“Caucasian, Hispanic, what?” pressed Hall, knowing the moment he said it that it was a silly question. Canada and the United States were full of minorities, particularly in the Northwest. Racial features wouldn’t prove a damn thing. But they sure as hell weren’t SEALs. All that bandolier crap looked good for the media and in the movies, but was scorned by all Special Forces. Bandoliers in a firefight, as Hall’s old buddy Aussie Lewis used to put it, were about as useless as “tits on a bull.” By the time you unraveled the macho crisscross bandoliers to reload, you’d be meat.

“If they’re ours,” said the first mate, “why haven’t they tried to radio us on sixteen? They’re moving slowly.”

“I’m coming up,” Frank told the mate. He took the short route, straight up the ladder from Petrel’s stern deck to its Little Bird hangar deck, then up the four steps to the chart room immediately aft of the bridge.

“Doesn’t add up,” Frank told the mate, taking up the binoculars. “If they’re terrorists and they don’t know sixteen’s the open channel in these waters, they haven’t done their homework. But they’ve caused more damage to us since Pearl Harbor and 9/11, so they sure as hell must have done their homework.”

“Well, who the hell—”

“They’re within hailing distance now,” cut in Frank. Snatching the megaphone’s mike, he moved quickly to the bridge’s starboard wing, the first flare now fizzling out in the fog. “Stop your vessel! Identify yourself!”

“Wanna bet they speak Arabic?” said the helmsman.

The megaphone response startled everyone on Petrel. “We’re Coast Guard from the USS Skate. Stand by for boarding!”

“Screw you!” came the voice of one of Petrel’s crew, audible to Hall but probably not to the inflatable carrying what looked to be six or seven men.

“What are we going to do?” asked the first mate, then answered his own question with a nervous laugh. “Let ’em board, I suppose.”

“Not yet,” said Hall, whose great-grandfather had regaled him with tales of the awful Pacific war after Pearl, when American-educated Japanese who spoke American English had on more than one occasion duped gullible young GIs into coming out into the open. The Nazis had done the same thing even more effectively, since they were Caucasians, dressed up in American uniforms, penetrating the American perimeter in the fierce counterattack through the Ardennes in 1944.

All right, so Hall knew it would sound corny, but better safe than—

“Prepare to be boarded!” came the insistent voice from what was now 150 yards away, the RIB a black shadow in the fibrous fog.

“Screw you!” yelled one of Petrel’s crew.

Hall strode back to the stern edge of the hangar deck. “Shut up!” he warned his crew. “Get ready to fire those LOSHOKS when I give the word.”

“Stand by to be—”

Hall raised his megaphone. “You come any further and we’ll ram you!” To make the point, he ordered the chief to bring engines to full power, but as yet did not engage the prop, hoping the sudden rumble of the engines would produce the desired effect.

“Looks like they’ve stopped!” the mate said, unsure and wondering aloud what sort of trouble Petrel would be in afterward if it was a Coast Guard officer who’d hailed them, and not an English-speaking terrorist.

Frank brushed the mate’s concern aside. “Navy trumps the Coast Guard!”

Frank pressed the megaphone’s button and asked, “Who won the last World Series?”

There was silence from the stopped boat, and Frank uncharacteristically turned to the mate with a self- indulgent smile of victory, but the mate’s puzzled expression killed his smile, Hall seeing that the mate didn’t know the answer. Confounding his corny tactic further, Hall could hear what sounded like an argument on the stern deck, someone yelling, “It was the Yankees, goddammit!”

“Was it?” asked the mate. “I mean, the Yankees?”

“Yes,” said Frank, his cocky assurance of a few minutes ago quickly evaporating. Apart from the improvised LOSHOK packs, the Petrel was unarmed. Yes, it was much bigger than the other vessel, but it had no armor whatsoever. Plus, despite his threat to ram them, Frank and everyone else aboard, including the cook’s helper, knew an RIB could easily outmaneuver the bigger Petrel.

“Dry lab to bridge.”

“Come in, Lab,” said the mate.

“We’re picking up some funny spots on the side-scan since we changed the paper!”

Frank spoke into the intercom, an edge to his voice. “What do you mean, funny?”

“Echoes — not many, but some sort of square-ish.”

“Aft of that slab we saw?”

“Yes, sir, like I said — after we changed the paper roll.”

Frank noticed that the inflatable off the starboard quarter had stopped, for the moment, gyrating slowly in the offshore currents.

“Keep an eye on them!” Frank told the mate as he quickly left the bridge and went through the helo hangar. He slid down the aft ladder to the stern deck without his feet touching a single step, the metal rails giving his hands a friction burn, his senses so alert that in addition to the salty tang of the sea and the peculiarly distinctive smell of fog-saturated air, he could detect the faint odor of the sonar recorder’s paper before he stepped over the lab’s doorsill.

Frank saw that the spots on the trace, when they were magnified, did look square-ish, but that was all.

It was a fifty-fifty situation. Neither of the technicians had said anything yet, unwilling to commit themselves one way or the other. “Suggestions?” he asked the two men. “Any at all?”

“I–I dunno,” said one. The other, teeth clenched, giving his jaw an unappealing, undershot look, shook his head. Frank had left the lab-bridge intercom open for immediate communication.

“What are they doing?” he asked the mate.

“Just circling.”

“Circling us?” Frank asked in alarm.

“No, I mean just — you know, going around.”

“No, I don’t know — that’s why I asked you, you idiot. Be specific, dammit!”

There was an awkward silence.

“Bridge?” Frank said.

“Yes, sir?”

“I apologize. I was way out of line.”

“That’s all right, sir. I’ve tried to identify any name on the inflatable but can’t see anything.”

“Good man. Keep looking.”

“Yes, sir.”

“LOSHOK packs all ready to go,” the bosun announced from the lab door.

“Very well.” Frank’s arms were back in Horatio Nelson mode.

“What’d he say?” Tiny asked the bosun as he returned to the deck.

“He said, ’Very well.’ “

“ ’Very well?’ “

“Yeah, like he was Captain Queeg.”

“Who’s that?” asked the cook’s helper.

Tiny, tightening the rope length he’d used to replace his belt, grunted, “Queeg was an old man on a cruiser —”

“Destroyer,” the bosun corrected him.

“Whatever,” said Tiny.