Power and Empire

by Marc Cameron

  Eighteen minutes from the JDO’s call, the two pilots walked through a steady rain and climbed into their orange bird—sometimes called “Tupperwolf” or “Plastic Fantastic” by other, less discerning pilots—and began their instrument checks. Slaznik preferred to sit in the left seat and run the radios while he flew, but Crumb was new and not yet hoist-qualified, so Slaznik took the right side. The flight mech and rescue swimmer got themselves situated in the back. Eight minutes after that, Slaznik flipped down his ANVIZ 9 night-vision goggles and called Whidbey Island Approach to request clearance to take off to the west, advising them he had Information Bravo.

  With flight clearance given, he added throttle and pulled up the collective to bring the Dolphin into a hover. The seventy-mile-per-hour rotor wash drove the rain into the ever-present goose crap on the runway, throwing it into the upwash and spattering green slime across the windscreen.

  “That is so nasty,” Lieutenant Crumb muttered, before depressing the microphone and transmitting to the JHOC.

  “Rescue 6521 departing Air Station Port Angeles with four souls on board. ETA Pillar Point fourteen minutes . . .”

  Lieutenant Commander Slaznik checked with the rest of his crew, who each gave him a thumbs-up. 6521’s tail came up slightly and she shuddered, like a racehorse in the gates. “Gauges in the green,” Slaznik said, performing one final scan of his instruments an instant before he eased the cyclic forward to scoot down the runway. “This looks, smells, and feels like a helicopter. We’re on the go.”

  • • •

  In the rearmost seat of Rescue 6521, mounted almost flush to the deck, Rescue Swimmer Lance Kitchen checked his gear for the second time since boarding the aircraft. He was five-feet-ten, 172 pounds. At twenty-four, and a recent graduate of the monumentally strenuous thirteen-week Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer School in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, he was in the best shape of his life. The darkness was nothing to him now. Dangling on a spinning cable above an angry sea was second nature. Black water and big waves called his name. What he feared was failure—more specifically, any failure brought about because of something he missed.

  Unlike the other members of the SAR crew, Petty Officer 2nd Class Kitchen’s gear reflected the fact that he planned to get in the water. A scuba mask and snorkel were affixed to the top of his windsurfing helmet, along with a strobe that would allow the pilots to keep him in sight in heavy seas. His black Triton swimmer vest harness contained, among other things, a regulator and small pony bottle of air, a Benchmade automatic knife, a 405 personal locator beacon, and a waterproof Icom radio with an earpiece. An EMT paramedic, he’d leave the bulk of his trauma gear on the chopper to utilize once he got the guy in the basket and hoisted him up. Heavy rubber jet fins hung from a clip on his high-visibility orange DUI dry suit. He’d slip them on when they got to the scene, just before he attached himself to the hoist.

  With the gear and mind-set checks complete, Kitchen sat back in his seat and looked at the Seiko dive watch on his wrist. Eleven minutes out. One man in the water. Simple. He could do this.

  • • •

  Tilda Pederson, the captain of Ocean Treasure, was on the bridge when she heard Orion’s initial mayday broadcast on 22 Alpha, the communications channel with Seattle VTS. The luxury cruise ship was returning from a twenty-five-day round-trip cruise to Hawaii. She was making twenty-four knots in order to pick up her pilot near Port Angeles and make her berthing time of 0700.

  She put a pair of blue marine binoculars to her eyes and looked at the orange glow on the water ahead. “Man overboard,” she repeated, half to herself.

  “Captain,” Alberto said. “The radar shows what appear to be multiple small craft suddenly in the water.”

  Pederson lowered the binoculars. “Small craft? How many?”

  “At least thirty by my count. They completely surround the Orion. I would guess she’s losing containers overboard.”

  “A fair assessment.” Pederson studied the multiple blips on the radar. They looked like a swarm of silver dots around the much larger vessel. An orange glow now filled the horizon ahead. Pederson’s binoculars went back up to her eyes. “Alberto,” she said, “keep a weather eye for floating containers, but bring us up to best speed. That ship is on fire.”

  • • •

  Fourteen miles to the east of Ocean Treasure, Slaznik and Crumb flipped up their NVGs at the sudden brightness in front of their helicopter.

  “Holy shit!” Kitchen said, surveying the conflagration in the water ahead.

  “Man overboard my ass,” the flight mech said, nose pressed to the helicopter’s window as they made a tight circle over the carnage. The bulbous bow of the container ship pointed upward while the stern was completely submerged, like an enormous whale slipping backward into the water. The ship itself was on fire, but if that weren’t bad enough, floating oil and diesel surrounded the rear portion in a wall of flames.

  JHOC comms center squawked over the radio. “Rescue 6521, we’re getting reports of a vessel fire off Pillar Point . . .”

  Slaznik swung wide, flying slowly around the burning ship, assessing the situation.

  Crumb craned her neck as they went around. “I count eleven souls up on the forepeak,” she said.

  “At least three in the water,” the flight mech said. “Thirty yards off the bow. I don’t think they’re in Gumby suits.”

  Slaznik brought the Dolphin around for another pass, burning a few more pounds of fuel to give him more hover time, while he briefed JHOC and requested more assets.

  Slaznik keyed the intercom. “The 47 is still twenty-two minutes out. Lots of fire down there, Kitchen. How do you feel about going down in flames?”

  The swimmer strained at his harness, wanting to get out of the helicopter. “Looks good around the bow, boss,” he said. “I say we kick out our crew raft to give the survivors something to hang on to while I get started.”

  Lieutenant Crumb’s voice came over the intercom. “That ship’s going down fast. Two more just did a Peter Pan off the bow.”

  The helicopter was finally light enough to hover within regs, so Slaznik reduced power, utilizing the wind as he descended toward the waves. Rain pelted the windscreen. The gale roared in as the flight mechanic slid open the side door. The RAT OUT—radar altimeter alarm—sounded at forty feet above the water. Twelve-to-sixteen-foot waves and unpredictable winds kept him hovering there. The radios were blowing up with chatter from JHOC, Whidbey Island, and an assortment of responding surface vessels.

  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 wa
ves 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.

  Ahead of schedule, he allowed himself to linger a little over the papers and sip his coffee while he enjoyed some thinking time in the quiet of morning. In no time, things would speed up to their usual breakneck pace and he would have to start making decisions, “wielding his cosmic power for good,” his chief of staff would say. Ryan laughed at the thought. As a boy, growing up in the house with his policeman father, power had smelled like Hoppes No. 9 gun oil and strong coffee. Here in the White House it smelled like freshly pressed linen . . . and strong coffee.

  Ryan glanced at his watch, then rationalized away six more minutes to limber his analytical mind on half the Wall Street Journal’s crossword before digging into the Presidential Daily Brief.

  The PDB was a collection of highly classified executive summaries that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence deemed worthy of his review. It contained everything from hard intelligence to rumors that, while patently false, were likely to incite unrest or instability in parts of the world where the United States had strategic or humanitarian interests. Charged with the deconfliction and information sharing between the seventeen U.S. intelligence agencies, it was the responsibility of the ODNI to have a finger on the pulse of important world events—and to boil them down into the PDB.

  Ryan preferred a BLUF report—Bottom Line Up Front. He wanted a simple executive summary of straight facts—even when those facts were about rumors—and would drill down on the specifics in face-to-face national security briefings. He’d cut his teeth in the intelligence community as an analyst, playing what-if games with world events, and could spend hours delving into the nuances of a single issue—and enjoying the hell out of it. But he wasn’t in the rank and file of the IC anymore. The problems facing the office of President came at near lightning speed from all points of the compass and at all hours of the day. Ryan was forced into the role of a generalist, relying on subject-matter experts to work through the in-depth analys
is and strategy.

  Theoretically, the PDB allowed him to stay a move or two ahead and decide where to put his pieces on the board. This morning’s brief was straightforward, with the same parts of the world devolving into their continued spiral toward chaos, while other parts—admittedly fewer than he wished for—continued to emerge into newer, more robust economies. According to the briefing folder in front of him, the world was just as safe—or every bit as dangerous—as it had been the day before.

  At seven-forty a.m., Ryan snugged his red tie into a semiuniform single Windsor and stuffed the PDB into the same leather briefcase he’d been carrying for years. He downed the last of his delicious Navy coffee—a phrase that did not come easily to the mind of a former Marine—and walked out of the West Sitting Hall to meet an earnest young Secret Service agent who was posted there.

  “Good morning, Tina,” he said.

  Special Agent Tina Jordan gave him an exuberant smile, though she was coming to the end of her shift just as he was beginning his.

  “Good morning, Mr. President.” Then, quietly, she raised her sleeve to her lips and whispered, “SWORDSMAN is on the elevator.”

  She stepped into a small alcove and pushed the button on the elevator that would take them down to the ground floor, where they hung a right to begin on Ryan’s three-minute walking commute to the office.

  Ryan entered the Oval from the Rose Garden, the door opened by the agent who knew how to overcome the security device in the handle. He found his daily calendar printed on a single sheet of paper that was centered perfectly on the middle of his desk where his lead secretary had placed it shortly after she’d arrived at seven-thirty.