Choke Point

“I mean — ah, you know — one of you drive, the other one navigate sort of thing. Very deserted out there. I’d lend you a deputy, but with all the townsfolk returning—”

“Look, Wally, there might be other media people arriving here, now the Petrel’s in port.”

“Uh-huh,” said Wally, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “I’m not sure where General Freeman is. Could’ve gone east back to the 104, down to Hood Canal. Bangor Base. Imagine Admiral Jensen’ll have a few questions to answer. Bit late with those hydrofoils. ’Sides, I think most reporters’ll want to get first dibs at interviewing the Petrel’s crew. Helluva thing they did.”

Marte was careful not to crack a smile as she began writing her check, her pen slowing, however, when she realized the sheriff might be right. The Petrel’s crew would be a huge story. And if all Freeman wound up with was simply a bunch of leftover terrorists in the bush? Still, she’d learned that Freeman had a kind of sixth sense about things military.

“Whoa!” said the sheriff. “I can’t take a check, ma’am.” He was astounded by her naivete. “I mean, ah, cash’d probably be better.”

“Oh, yes, of course. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Where’s the nearest ATM?”

“Man, there’s been a run on them. I don’t think—”

“I’ve only got four hundred in cash. I’ll need that for a cab. Can you trust me?”

“Hell, sure I can trust you.”

“Soon as I get back.” She gave him a smile.

Lordy, he could have sworn she licked her lips. Walter gave her a wave.

“We on?” asked the cameraman, his tone utterly devoid of enthusiasm.

“There’s no second sub,” he added wearily. “I’ll bet you there’s no second sub.”

Marte Price told the cab driver to go faster, worried that the car a half mile in front was Fox or possibly England’s Independent Television Network. “Those Brits have been all over us like measles since Iraq,” she told her cameraman. “I swear they got the nod into our market because they went in after Saddam Insane with us and the Aussies.”

The cameraman shrugged disinterestedly.

Marte wanted the cabbie to catch up and overtake the vehicle ahead, her fold-up binoculars out of her bag. “It’s another cab!” she blurted, a realization that convinced the CNN veteran that it was media up ahead. Rental cars were seldom used by the media because the paperwork and Homeland Defense “Purpose of Rental” security form took too much time to fill out.

Salvini had spotted the car way back, and saw it closing fast now. Terrorists? he wondered. He called Aussie Lewis.

Aussie wasn’t surprised to feel the sudden vibration in his tunic pocket, the morphine Freeman had administered having temporarily banished the pain, putting his brain in reverie. “Where the fuck are you, Brooklyn?”

“In this cab with Grandma,” Sal replied. “Listen, I’ve got a bogey up my ass. Looks like another cab. No one else is supposed to be out here. The boss told Sheriff—”

“Yeah, well,” cut in Aussie lethargically, his laid-back tone annoying Sal.

“Could be a hostile,” said Sal urgently.

“Okay,” Aussie answered pleasantly. “Pull a left — block the road. Show ’em your weapon.”

There was a pause.

“Well, that’s what I was gonna do. You okay, Aussie? You sound weird.”

“Took one in the rib cage. Not deep, though. Other guys takin’ care o’ business.”

Aussie definitely sounded high. “Got a GPS loc for me?” asked Salvini. “I must have gone past the mile post you gave me.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Aussie accommodatingly. “Sure. Hang on, mate.”

“You on morph?”

“Oh, yeah,” Aussie’s voice said lazily. “On the morph.”

“Jesus! Call me back with your GPS.” Sal dropped the phone onto the cab’s passenger seat and braked hard, Mao’s mother yelling something at him in Vietnamese as he blocked the road and stepped out with the shotgun.

Marte’s cab slowed. “Keep going,” she told the driver. “There’s another hundred in it.”

“Lady, I don’t care if there’s another million in it, I’m stopping right now. That guy’s holdin’ a shotgun — all I got is my dick, an’ I plan on keepin’ it.”

“Stan,” Marte told her cameraman. “You drive.” She turned back to the cabbie. “You stay here.” She handed him two hundred, adding, “We shouldn’t be long. I’ll pay for any damages.”

The cabbie counted the money. It was more than he’d expected.

“Go, Stan!” Marte instructed her cameraman.

“Slowly,” he said.

“Fine, but go.”

“Take off your panties,” the cameraman told her.

“What?”

“You’re wearing white panties. I think we’d better start waving them.”

“Pervert. Don’t turn around.”

He didn’t, but did look into the rearview mirror.

When the cab pulled up to him, Sal told Marte she’d have to turn back. No media. Too dangerous. As they spoke, he could hear firing, which he was sure must be echoing up from the sides of the cliffs. In fact, he was hearing the distant linoleum-ripping sound of Aussie’s HK.

With the morphine now wearing off, his pain returning, Lewis had been in no mood for the four terrorists he saw popping up out of the ground a hundred yards away from what was supposed to be a patch of skunk cabbage. All four were armed and in a clump, running for their lives through the brush toward him, heading for the road. Aussie flicked off the safety.

“Aw shit!” he murmured after his first burst, seeing that the four, though having been in a bunch, now had the sense to disperse.

Like every SpecFor warrior, Aussie Lewis knew “Stop!” in at least eight languages. “Zhan zhu,” he called out now. “Claymore!” Every enemy of the United States knew what “claymore” meant. Aussie thought of it as the terror that had pulverized so many of Uncle Ho’s Viet Minh into “ground Minh.”

Three of the four were suddenly standing dead still. The fourth, in what Aussie called “obvious Freeman shock”—maybe he’d heard what had happened in the Port Angeles cafe—was walking around in circles, calling for someone.

Aussie cut them down without the slightest compunction. They had attacked his adopted country, his home, and besides, they were in civilian garb, and thus, he told himself, armed spies under the Geneva Convention.

“You should go back to Port Angeles,” Sal told Marte and her cameraman. “Put your panties back on and interview those people.”

“Don’t be a smartass!” Marte snapped. “What people?”

“People who got kicked out of the restaurant. They can give you a story.” He’d taken care not to mention the woman being shot, and he felt badly about having to steer the reporter in that direction. The shooting story was sure to come out, but it was the only way he could send her and the cameraman away from the firing. Anyway, seeing that some media type was going to get the story, it might as well be Price, whom he’d heard had once been buddy-buddy with the general.

“Who’s the old lady?” asked Marte, looking into Sal’s cab.

“Informant,” Sal said, before he had time to think. His job was fighting, not arguing.

The old lady was shaking her finger at the three of them.

“What’s she saying?” Marte asked. “Do you know?”

“Says you should go away. Big trouble up ahead.”

Marte looked disgusted. “Do one thing for me — what’s your name?”

“Mickey.”