“All right, Mickey. Will you at least tell the general — if he’s still alive — that I was here first and I’d appreciate it if he gave me first crack at his story.”
“I’ll do that.”
As their cab headed back, the cameraman told Marte, “His name’s not Mickey.”
“Gee,” said Marte, her voice cold with sarcasm. “I thought it
“There might be a good story in town,” he said in a conciliatory tone.
She didn’t answer.
“You know,” Stan continued, “up at the hospital? That sub commander’s crush — what was her name,
“Alicia,” said a somewhat mollified Marte. “Alicia Mayne.”
“Yeah, the one with the burns. You know, I heard that deeper burns aren’t as painful as first degree burns because third degree burns destroy all the nerve endings — you don’t feel the pain.”
“Still needs skin grafts by the dozen, that one.”
“Yeah, but they can work wonders now. Friend of mine told me they have this kind of synthetic skin that’s revolutionized burn recovery.”
“Well, she couldn’t look worse than some of those Hollywood bimbos,” said Marte. “Pay ten grand for a facelift and they look like they’re from a waxworks.”
“Boobs look real.”
“Just drive, Stan.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
If Murphy’s law had run amok through the Strait of Juan de Fuca during this disastrous week for America, Freeman thought, Murphy now seemed absent as he, Choir, and Mao, having successfully rappeled down the cliff face without incident, now reached the footpath-width ledge that ran across the base of the cliff. High tide was in, waves broaching the ledge here and there, disappearing behind the ragged bottom of the thick tangled-vine curtain.
Freeman was about fifty feet across from Choir and Mao, and both could see the entrance. There was a smaller curtain about fifteen feet wide and thirty feet high within the much larger curtain of vegetation, like a smaller door set within a hangar door.
Another outfit might have used Mao at barrel point to go ahead, to be first man inside, to take the first fire if surprise wasn’t achieved, but Freeman didn’t want to do it that way. Surprise was not gained by creeping approaches in his school, which taught that slow approaches bred defensive attitudes in what was supposed to be an offensive force. Freeman signaled to Choir to make a walk speed approach along the slippery ledge, then a fast entry. It suited his preference for audacity:
Choir gently pulled Mao back, cuffed him with a nylon strip, and turned his face into the cliff. Mao’s breathing was still labored but, Choir could tell, easing now. “Wait here,” Choir whispered.
He glanced down, checking his grenade array, Freeman already having done so. Then both of them began making their way along the ledge, Choir from the east side of the heavy vine door, Freeman from the west.
Freeman’s biggest worry, given the bright sunlight, was whether any part of their shadows would pierce the screen of vegetation, like that of someone passing by an ivy-covered trellis. Momentarily, he glanced up at the rim of the cliff, its overhang of fresh-smelling vegetation a vivid green fringe against the blue sky, and he saw why he and Choir hadn’t spotted any sentries, other than the tree-hidden sniper. A human form against such a wild, natural setting would at once arouse curiosity in anyone at sea. Anyway, he hoped he and the rest of the team had decimated the core of the supply unit in the firefight at the falls cave and against the six-man Zodiac near
He saw a cloud about to swallow the sun. Choir, seeing the general looking up, got the same message. They’d pause a second or two longer, the door still ten feet away, and then make their move in the shadow of the passing cloud.
They heard pulley chains then, and the two halves of the vegetation-screened door began opening like a stage curtain. No voices. The sun, hidden in cloud now, had not cast shadows, but neither did it illuminate anything more than a few yards of a semidark cave whose back wall neither Choir nor Freeman could distinguish. Some kind of gantry was faintly visible, and the first thing coming to Freeman’s mind as he and Choir dropped down on damp, ice-cold rock, was stage scaffolding. He couldn’t see anyone, but if the terrorists had escaped, then who was running the chain and pulley? Admittedly, it would require only one man, but where was he? Or she? Terrorists these days were equal opportunity employers.
Then Choir glimpsed a faint wink of light.
It was David’s 7-flashlight sweeping from about twenty feet inside the tunnel as he approached the tunnel’s exit that led directly into the cave. And it immediately drew fire, the last twenty feet of the tunnel suddenly exploding with tracer pouring from the back wall of the cave into the tunnel at the flashlight.
The shooters had assumed the enemy tunnel rat was right behind it, holding it, but David was now at least five feet away, left of the flashlight. The long root handle, to which he’d taped it for just such an eventuality, was in the wooden grasp of his “useless” right hand. David’s left arm came up from his prone position, Compact in hand. His first shot imploded one of the two terrorists’ heads, and the second was just as accurate, born of constant practice on the Fort Lewis range, also killing its victim instantly. Choir and Freeman held their fire at the remaining terrorist, lest an errant round strike David, the bang of his Compact’s 9mm as distinct to Freeman as the sound of his own weapon.
“David?” Freeman shouted.
“General!” The exultation David felt, combined with the smell of the sea air that was now flushing out the stink of gunpowder, sent his adrenaline racing.
The cave lit up then, and Freeman swung his HK up, its burst taking out the light, a hot glass rain showering down on him and Choir. But in that instant of light turned on by the terrorists, Freeman had glimpsed enough to know now that what he’d assumed was scaffolding was in fact a dry dock, and in it was a long, black-tented vessel, only its prop and prop guard visible.
Choir had time only to glimpse it too, but he’d noticed something Freeman hadn’t — the prop had exactly the same number of blades and prop guard as the sub they’d sunk. For an instant Choir felt as if someone had walked over his grave, that the sub had been resurrected, but he told himself that was not possible. No way.
Choir and Freeman, at the front of the cave, crawled quickly to the bottom beam of the dry dock. The two were about fifteen feet apart, with David just inside the tunnel exit at the cave’s rear forming the third point in an ad hoc triangle of fire. But to stay there, to wait, was to die. They had to get up.
A shaft of light pierced the cave on Freeman’s right, and three men came out, firing wildly, their intent obviously to flush out the Americans. But having already glimpsed the layout, Freeman, Choir, and David, because of their training for instant memorization of hostile layouts, had no fear of blue on blue, and cut the terrorists down within seconds. What they weren’t prepared for was the utter surprise of seeing the black tent moving toward the front of the cave, two hydraulic launch rails sliding out ahead of the dry dock through the now open, vine-covered door into the high tide’s water, which was almost flush with the cave’s lip that was the ledge.
The black tent moved slowly at first, its conical top plucked up by an overhead “fingers” claw that had been screwed into the cave roof. Freeman saw that on his right side of the cave there was a thick side spar, a short, canvas-covered walkway projecting out from the cave’s westerly wall, presumably coming out from either a natural or manmade antechamber in the rock wall adjacent to the black tent. Several terrorists — probably four, certainly no more than six, by the sound of their footfalls — had just entered the conical tent via this covered walkway as the tent was being raised higher and the vessel started to move. Freeman could see that once the as yet unrevealed bow hit the water and the camouflage tent was completely drawn off, the vessel would be into the water and away, like rescue boats that could be launched in seconds from rocky shorelines, sliding straight from dry dock to sea. Choir and David paired to maintain suppressing fire, but David’s ammunition was getting low.
