only his Kevlar vest to keep him warm, his load vest as well as his helmet having been given to Mao.
“Maybe we should wait for them, General?” said Choir.
“Hell, no! By that time these bastards’ll have burned all their codes and vanished. Then,” he indicated Mao, “all we’ll have is this bag of shit. The cav can mop up.”
Choir was tugged by conflicting emotions. Freeman, whatever else you might think of him, was “guts personified,” and in SpecOps command that was the ultimate accolade. But the point-blank shooting of the young woman in the cafe, who might have already succumbed to her massive chest wound, was clear evidence that Freeman would have no hesitation killing Mao’s aged mother as well. There was a line, even for Special Forces, that Choir knew you didn’t cross. He recalled the SAS Brit who gave up his and his team’s position rather than shoot a little Iraqi shepherd boy who’d wandered into their hide. Freeman had surely crossed the line with his behavior in the restaurant, and, as Choir readied the nylon line for his and Mao’s rappel from the cliff’s top to the ledge that led across the face of the vine-curtained cave, the Welsh American found himself adopting a fatherly, almost friendly, tone with the terrorist as he gagged him with the duct tape.
“Now just calm down,” he said. “Breathe through your nose. Don’t panic. But I’m telling you, laddie, you make any noise, you do
Mao understood and nodded, his labored breathing producing a faint nasal whistle that didn’t worry Choir because of the overriding noise of the crashing sea below and the wind through the thickly vined vegetation of the cliff that Mao had assured them screened another cave. The same Mao, Choir reminded himself, who had sworn he was telling the truth earlier.
Freeman signaled to Choir to synchronize watches, then both of them began feeding the rope through their gloves over the cliff’s edge. Mao began his rappel.
In the tunnel below them and back from the cliff, David was still hunched, his neck and leg muscles taut with the pain that radiated up and down his back. He was trying to regain his hearing, his ears still ringing from the three shots he’d fired from his Compact. He felt a warm wash of air from the radiant heat of its barrel. It felt good in the dripping wet cold of the left-hand tunnel he’d entered through the narrow gap in the rubble of the tunnel that led to the waterfall cave. He wondered if the two terrorists were still in the tunnel or if they’d reached what he guessed must be a second lair in the cliff face. If they were still around, he hoped they didn’t have IR goggles that would pick up the Compact’s residual heat.
David placed his Compact into the wooden, lifeless grip of his injured hand, and felt for his 7-flashlight. He pulled its head hard against him, slid the on switch forward, saw a pinpoint of light and switched it off, returning the Compact to his good left hand. The danger, he thought, was that if the two terrorists he was following had reached the second lair, at least one of them might be waiting at the tunnel’s exit, under the lair, to finish him off, while the other busied himself with the means of escape. They could have a Zodiac, possibly one of the “big jobs,” as Aussie referred to the thirty-foot RIBs, that in a pinch could quickly ferry away twenty or more sardine-packed personnel. That would rapidly take them eastwards, back into the protective shroud of fog where they could then land, melting back into the perennially green canopy of the peninsula, to later reassemble and launch yet another attack.
David stopped, noticing that one of the five-foot-high joists lining the tunnel had come loose from the wall, bringing down what appeared to be a candlestick holder with it. A butterfly mine underneath? The fallen joist seemed to have been pushed out over time by an inch-thick root growing horizontally along the tunnel, the root itself about three or four feet in length.
He slid his Compact into his waistband and quickly made two cuts with his K-bar, resheathing it and extracting the root, rubbing the root hard back and forth against his trousers to remove the slippery mud coating. Then he made several small nicks on one end of the root so he would have a better grip. With the Compact, which had eight shots left, and the thick three-foot-long root in the wooden grasp of his injured hand like an officer’s swagger stick, he started moving cautiously again down the tunnel. It took a slight curving turn to the left, the wide angle of the turn obviously designed to accommodate much longer containers than the cardboard boxes of food; perhaps crated segments of torpedoes, he thought.
He paused again, the persistent ringing in his ears now joined by a sound like wind in trees. The falls? They were possibly only two hundred yards or so to the east, and if he was that close to the coastal cliffs, he knew the tunnel would soon end. Infrared spots of residual heat, like those captured by IR cameras showing the images of parked cars that in fact were no longer there, speckled his IR glasses.
David Brentwood, who was determined to redeem himself for what had happened in Afghanistan, his bootlaces tied so tightly his feet were throbbing, knew that any temptation to rush, to get it over with, had to be restrained by common sense. The terrorists, if they hadn’t already fled, would be waiting for him. In that case, perhaps he should wait in turn, until Freeman and company made their move and he heard them. He could smell paper smoke, which, together with the fetid air of the tunnel, was partially depriving his brain of oxygen. But should he make a dash for the exit, which couldn’t be far away? The terrorists would be watching the seaward side of the lair as well, not just the tunnel exit. He had assumed that the roar he was now hearing was that of the falls the team had spoken of where they had attacked the sub, but, disorientated in the tunnel as to precisely what direction he was heading, he couldn’t be sure. And everything was becoming fuzzy with the lack of oxygen. He thought he heard movement ahead, or was it behind him? He stopped again and knelt down, almost tipping off balance because of the oxygen depletion and the lack of sensation in his right arm. He reached out with his left hand and duct-taped the 7-flashlight to the end of the thick, three-foot-long root.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Where in hell was Douglas Freeman? More to the point, Marte wondered, what was he looking for? She’d heard by now of his mythical second sub, but it might be simply rumor. “There’s a thousand bucks in it, Sheriff,” she told the well-fed lawman.
Wally got up from his desk and hitched his pants. Lord, she was a looker. No spring chicken, but experienced, like you could get right to it. “CNN tryin’ to bribe me, Ms. Price? That’s serious.”
“Oh heavens, no,” said Marte, smiling, touching his arm, tossing her head back, the sheen of her hair caught in the sheriff’s green desk lamp. “It’s Walter, isn’t it?”
“Most folks call me Wally.”
“Wally?” she said, as if right there and then nothing else was important to her. “Wally — yes, I like that. Most nicknames — well, to be frank, I don’t like them. But
He knew what she was doing. Did she think that coming from New York, she could pull a fast one? Think he was some kind of rain-forest hillbilly?
“I just think,” continued Marte, “that you folks in law enforcement have done a marvelous job up here — the rescue work, people leaving in droves, and all that. I’d simply like to make a contribution to your benevolent fund. As one grateful American to another. I’m sure there are police officers’ families in need?”
Wally nodded. “I knew some of those deputies on duty at Birch Bay.”
She remembered the attack against the oil refinery. “General Freeman knows me,” she said suddenly.
“They’ve headed out on 112—road to Callam Bay.” He showed her where it was on the station’s wall map of the Olympic Peninsula. “Cameraman going with you?”
“You rather he wouldn’t?”
“No, no, I mean I think you need a man along.”
“Really?” A feminist edge there, he saw.
