Slaznik had chosen a lone survivor floundering a good thirty meters from the others on the port side of the vessel, reasoning that this one was alone and had probably been in the water longer than those who were grouped together.
Ninety seconds later, the flight mechanic lowered Kitchen down toward the surface on the hoist. The basket went down next and came up with a survivor, dazed and shaking but very much alive. Kitchen sent up five more, one after the other.
The 47 arrived but was soon busy at the wallowing stern, picking its way through floating containers and pools of fire. The Coast Guard boat crew had already pulled in two survivors and were heading toward a pocket of at least two more who appeared to be stuck behind a wall of flaming diesel.
Lieutenant Crump tapped the console. “Commander, we’re nearing bingo fuel.”
The MH-65 had a flight window of about two hours and twenty minutes — and a requirement that she come back with at least twenty minutes of reserve fuel. Pillar Point was slightly closer to Neah Bay to the west than it was to Port Angeles. Landing in Neah Bay for fuel would get the survivors on the ground for treatment sooner, extend Slaznik’s available flight time by a precious few minutes, and get him back into action.
He raised the rescue swimmer on the radio.
“We’re packed to the gills up here,” Slaznik said, looking out his window at Kitchen, who rode the frothy waves in the seventy-mile-per-hour prop wash. The swimmer worked steadily to try to keep ten survivors together around the small six-person flight-crew raft they’d kicked out of the helicopter. None of the survivors spoke English, and Slaznik was sure it was a lot like herding cats down there. “You good to hold down the fort? We have to go and offload these survivors.”
Kitchen didn’t hesitate. “Roger that. We’ll be here when you get back.”
Slaznik spoke into the radio as he added power, gaining altitude.
“Coast Guard Neah Bay, Rescue 6521 heading to you with six survivors. The flight mech will fill you in on their condition. Break. Kitchen, you hold tight. We’ll be back in a flash.”
Petty Officer Kitchen used the stiff jet fins to kick through the chop, directing the panicked seamen toward the crew raft he’d dropped out of the helicopter. The raft was meant for only six passengers, but Kitchen would stack them in like cordwood to await rescue from either the 47 boat from Neah Bay or 6521 when they returned. The bright yellow raft riding the waves should have been self-explanatory, but if Kitchen had learned anything about rescue operations, it was that cold and drowning men were unpredictable. He used hand signals and, when needed, physical force to direct the seamen. He’d already elbowed a particularly aggressive one in the solar plexus when the guy had tried to climb on top of him and use him as a human ladder to board the bobbing life raft. A couple of the men — one looked as if he was still a teenager — had the sense to hang on to the outer rings and direct their shipmates, calling out amid the wind and spray.
Behind them, the mammoth ship groaned and hissed, shooting jets of spray into the air from every crack and ruptured seam as she slid deeper into the water. Kitchen could have imagined the seven hundred feet of blackness below him, the possibility of being crushed between half-submerged shipping containers that were tossed around in the mountainous waves. He could have focused on the fact that he was alone in the middle of an unforgiving sea with ten men who were about to claw one another’s eyes out in an effort to keep from drowning. But he didn’t.
He was too busy.
5
Jack Ryan awoke at four fifty-one a.m., a full thirty-nine minutes before he got up on a normal day — but then, as President of the United States, normal was a subjective term.
Cathy was out of town with the kids, performing cataract surgeries in Nepal. School wasn’t exactly in full swing, but it had already started for the year, and Ryan wasn’t too happy about Katie and Kyle missing the first few weeks. Katie had pointed out that while she fully agreed that school was important, a deep understanding of world culture was also crucial. Travel to Nepal, she reasoned, would add to that understanding in a way no classroom could. “China canceled travel visas for people that wanted to go there, just to keep the Tibetans from sneaking into India, Dad! Don’t you want me to visit someplace the ChiComs say is off-limits?” Ryan’s wife bristled at the use of “ChiComs,” and he’d had to remind Katie it wasn’t especially diplomatic for the President’s daughter to use the word in reference to the communist Chinese — no matter what she might overhear him saying in the White House.
His daughter’s logic was sound and emotional — leaving Ryan to live in mortal fear that she would decide to be an attorney. So the kids went with Cathy to Nepal — and Jack Ryan found himself alone.
He arched his back, ticking through the myriad old injuries that stitched his body. He had more than a few, and some woke up slower than others. Sitting up against his pillow, he glanced at the bedside table and the five-by-seven photograph of his wife and him on the docks at Annapolis. They were standing with his old friend and mentor, the late Admiral James Greer. The photo customarily occupied a place of honor on top of his cherrywood dresser, but it was Ryan’s favorite picture of Cathy, so he moved it to the side table whenever she went out of town.
Ryan reached for his glasses and stood, wincing when his feet hit the carpet. He cast another glance at the photograph, getting a clearer view now. Jeez, his hair was so dark back then. “That’s just like you, Cathy,” he mumbled, “going off to restore poor people’s vision when I need you here to rub my aching foot.”
With his wife performing medical miracles and no opportunity to engage in what the Secret Service euphemistically referred to as “discussing the situation in Belgrade,” Ryan was up and seated on the rowing machine in the residence gym by 5:05. An hour later found him showered and dressed in a pair of gray wool slacks and a white French-cuffed shirt that had been laid out for him while he was in the gym. He left the blood-red power tie on the bed, preferring to wait until he finished breakfast before he consigned himself to the noose.
The Navy steward, a young petty officer named Martinez, followed Ryan’s location in the residence by watching a lighted panel that indicated POTUS’s whereabouts as he moved across the pressure-sensitive pads under the carpet of the bedroom, gym, shower, and back to the bedroom. Accustomed to the President’s schedule, the steward had breakfast ready on a side table in his study by the time he was dressed.
The First Lady had given strict instructions to the White House chef that her husband’s breakfasts should consist of oatmeal, skim milk, and raisins during her absence. Ryan quickly countermanded that order, offering a presidential pardon to whatever punishments his wife might dole out if she ever discovered he was eating a buttered croissant and two poached eggs.
Ryan spread the front page of The Wall Street Journal beside his plate on the white linen tablecloth. He’d heard it said that when it came to food, the eye ate first — but he’d always preferred to let his eyes work independently of his plate. He read and hardly looked at his food but to plot the correct aim with his fork. Twenty minutes later, he carried the unfinished pages of the Journal, along with the Post and The New York Times, to a more comfortable chair. He could have gone into the office, but when he went in, others thought they had to come in, and he saw no reason to get everyone else spun up just because his wife was in Nepal.