“Yes,” said the commander. “Not all of our members are retired!”
“What in hell does that mean?” growled Freeman.
“Have to go, General. We’re running escort for the Navy’s pullback into Puget.” The commander hung up.
“Hello?” thundered Freeman. “Hello? You cheeky son of a bitch!” He turned to the laptop, and above its screen caught a glimpse of himself in the motel room’s mirror. He hadn’t thought about the possibility of Beaufort life raft drums being used as mine containers. “Huh,” he said, looking at his reflection. “Not so damn smart after all, eh, General?”
Watching Darkstar’s feed, he could see more bobbing, dime-sized white spots contrasted against the serrated-gray-wall coastline and the huge Olympic land mass beyond.
Where the lingering warmth of the land, released from the base of Mount Olympus, met the radiant heat of the cooler ocean, fog had formed. It now began permeating the myriad nooks and crannies and wider bays all the way from Port Angeles west to the violent surf of Tatoosh Island off Cape Flattery.
As the big Pacific swells exhausted themselves, crashing in punishing waves of foam against the black, precipitous cliffs of Tatoosh, Freeman could hear the mournful sounds of foghorns through Darkstar’s amplified sound feed. Darkstar’s bottom screen text informed him that Tatoosh was one of the most densely populated wild bird sanctuaries in the world. But right now the general couldn’t have cared less about the sanctuary or any of the others situated south of Cape Flattery down the Washington coast as far south as Cape Disappointment, off the equally dramatic Oregon coast. Instead, his attention was confined strictly to Darkstar’s present east-west feed, the UAV’s pictures coming in from its low vectored flight between Port Angeles and Tatoosh. They were speckled with more than a dozen hotspots in what were supposedly unpopulated areas. By the time Darkstar reached the end of its flight path just west of Tatoosh, its IR feed became thicker with hotspots. These were smaller than the bobbing hotspots of fishing vessels’ radar masts and the like but appeared to the general significantly more numerous.
The phone jangled.
“Freeman!”
It was David Brentwood calling to ask if he had more details, via Darkstar, about the explosion. The officers’ mess at Fort Lewis, he explained, was a hive of contradictory rumors, CNN camera-equipped choppers from the news networks apparently not yet on the scene. Some were saying CNN’s crews were chickening out because of the fear of radiation.
The general, concerned as he was by the sudden increase in the number of hotspots on the IR feed, was nevertheless encouraged by Brentwood’s tone. He knew that curiosity about the world beyond oneself was a sign of recovery from post-traumatic stress disorder. Perhaps with Aussie’s help Brentwood had finally accepted the hard truth that he was finished, not only in SpecOps but for the regular forces as well. Surely the Medal of Honor winner now realized how downright irresponsible it would be for any commander, extant or retired, to send an injured man into combat, endangering the lives of all those around him because of his handicap — or what, Freeman thought, politically correct reporters would call his “limb-challenged” ability. Even worse, in the general’s view, would be the danger posed to David’s comrades’ by their preoccupation with his safety rather than with the mission objective.
“David,” the general said, “I’d like you and Aussie to get up here to Port Angeles. Salvini and Choir are due momentarily. Tell Aussie to bring his Draeger.”
“Roger that,” said David. “I’ll bring mine too.”
There was silence on the general’s end.
“Can you hear me, General?”
“What? Ah, yes, yes. Bring your tank. Sorry — I’m glued to an IR printout of the coast,” said the general, and seeing the hotpots multiplying, added. “Could do with you boys’ advice on this. Something strange going on.”
“Metal debris from the destruction of the Aegis?” suggested Brentwood. “Lot of it would still be pretty hot even in the sea.”
“Some of that in the sea, I agree. But this is all over the place. On Tatoosh Island?”
“Where’s that?”
“Bird sanctuary. No one allowed near it but our UAV. It’s showing hundreds of hotspots. Like damned confetti.”
“Is this Toosh Island anywhere near where the Aegis blew up?”
“No. Much further west. ’Course, most of the hotspots I’m seeing could be body heat from the thousands of birds. Got every species here from little stormy petrels to giant albatross. But there’s other stuff too — bigger’n damn houses — along supposedly unpopulated stretches of the coast.”
“Close those drapes!”
Freeman was startled by the police bullhorn, but he walked over to the window and closed the curtains, stealing a glance at the dark strait. Not a single light was visible, where only shortly before it had been crowded with naval ships. The remainder of what had been the Turner’s battle group were recalled and now steaming back down through Puget Sound to its home port in Everett, the group’s remaining attack sub slinking back unheralded to the protection of Bangor Base.
In Bangor, Walter Jensen was standing outside the blacked-out Admiral’s House, waiting for the sub’s return. “What a humiliation,” he told Margaret, who stood silently by his side, her hand gently moving back and forth across his steel-tense back as he stared into the fog-clogged darkness of Hood Canal. “Battle group didn’t even get past the choke point. It — I’m finished,” he said quietly. He waited for her to cloister him as she always did. But Margaret said nothing.
Walter Jensen was telling the truth. His chances of becoming CNO, replacing the soon retiring Admiral Nunn, had been destroyed, along with the careers of a sacrificial slew of officers unable to explain why on their watch the United States Navy, with all its billions of dollars’ worth of computers and other electronic wizardry, including aircraft-borne forward-looking infrared scanners and magnetic anomaly detectors, had failed to pick up either a heat signature or magnetic disturbance from the midget sub reported by SEAL diver Rafe Albinski.
*Â Â *Â Â *
A caller into Larry King’s interview with CNO Nunn, which Freeman had on in the background as Aussie and David arrived, was graciously trying to help Walter Jensen and, by extension, the Navy and the U.S. armed forces in general, by surmising that even with all the scientific know-how available “it must be a much more difficult job to detect a midget sub than a regular one?”
“Yes,” agreed Nunn. “And if I could take your analogy further, searching for a midget sub would be like looking for a single automobile dumped on the sea bottom as opposed to, say, looking for an Amtrak train.”
The next caller quipped, “If you’re lookin’ for an Amtrak, Admiral, all you have to do is check with CNN — see where the latest derailment is. They’re goin’ off the rails ’bout one a day. And if—” King cut him off, obviously displeased with his call screener. The next caller identified himself as a former electronics warfare officer, and said the MAD — the “stingray” tail on any of the battle group’s early warning planes or ASW helos — could easily have missed the midget because MAD’s range of detection was limited to a third of a mile, “for ’bout six or seven hundred yards max either side of your track. That’s only ’bout as far as a par five.”
“That’s a bogey ten for me,” quipped Larry, trying to ease the tension, the admiral smiling.
The note of levity, however, backfired, the caller becoming irate. “I don’t see anything funny ’bout it. We’ve lost more Americans in that Juan de Fuca Strait than we did on 9/11, and we’re gonna lose more if we don’t find out what the [blip] is going on.”