by Ian Slater
“No, you do me with the wounded.”
“Captain Brentwood, I’ll decide when and who—”
David looked over at the submariner. “Captain Rorke will do an interview with you. CNN exclusive. In an hour.” He turned to the cameraman then. “Let’s go down the corridor, try to keep out of the staff’s way—” He had to stop talking until the thudding of a Coast Guard chopper’s blades faded from the hospital’s parking lot. “I’ll give you an interview. I’ll give you my background on the way,” he told Marte Price.
Marte saw there was no arguing with this Brentwood. He’d come across initially as a lamb — now he was a lion. This medal thing had gone to his head. “I’ve already got your background,” she said. “You’re supposed to be the shy and retiring type. The ’Aw, shucks’ hero.”
“Do we have a deal?”
“An exclusive with you, Captain Rorke?” Marte asked. “Fox guys are everywhere.”
“Exclusive,” agreed Rorke.
Before he left the room to join the PR rep, Marte Price, and her cameraman in the blinding white light of the corridor’s heavy traffic of hospital staff, David spoke quietly to John Rorke. “You need anything, Captain?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You were last wounded in Afghanistan, right?” Marte Price asked David as they moved down the hellish corridor.
“Yes,” he told her. “That’s right.”
“At Tora Bora?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me what happened?” In the public ward, they could hear the desperate cries of the wounded not yet treated with painkillers, pending diagnosis from doctors who, despite help from the Whidbey Island Navy medics, remained overwhelmed.
“We’re out of morphine!” a harried nurse reported. They’d all begun calmly and professionally, but the sheer fatigue of overload was drowning the best intentions.
“Use Demerol.”
“It’s gone.”
A drugged young submariner was pleading with a doctor not to amputate his leg. It had in fact already been taken off, but he was feeling the phantom sensation of it, his arms and legs bandaged so heavily that he couldn’t remove the sheet or bed covers to check, and everyone else was too busy.
With Freeman asleep, Aussie Lewis had been monitoring the IR feed from Darkstar’s last leg home between Cape Flattery near Tatoosh Island eastward to Port Angeles when he noticed what appeared to be a sea-air-interface anomaly very close in to the coast, which was indented by caves, both hot and cold. The zoom didn’t help much because the number of pixels making up the picture diluted the color of the surrounding sea as well, so there now appeared a less distinct variation between the color of the suspected anomaly and the water about it. But the zoom did show him that the patch he’d zeroed in on wasn’t so much circular as a tadpole shape.
On his own recognizance, Aussie called the Coast Guard at Port Angeles, keeping his voice low, so as not to wake Freeman, whose sheepdog-like snoring reverberated through the motel room. He explained what he’d seen and on the general’s behalf requested that the Port Angeles Coast Guard station send out a fast RIB to have a look-see.
“Are you nuts?” he was told. “We’ve already lost a guy. Besides, we’ve got every Bruiser out. They’re still bringing in sur—” The man stopped abruptly. Aussie could hear voices in the background. Then someone else came on the line.
“Have you tried the oceanographic and torpedo recovery vessel Petrel II? It’s been busy picking up people too, but it’s pretty well equipped. If it’s in the area, it could probably drop over a bottle. I’m guessing you want a water sample for an isotope match? That’d tell you whether it’s oil or garbage.”
“Or both. You got it,” said Aussie. “If it’s an oil spill and there’s no match for it in the Coast Guard’s isotope register, then we’ll know it’s from an intruder. And if that’s the case, I’ll bet it’s the sub.”
“I can call Petrel if you like,” offered the Coast Guard officer.
“No sweat, I’ll do it. Frank Hall’s the skipper, right?”
“You know him?”
“Ex-SEAL buddy of mine. Taught ’im everything he knows.”
“Fine,” said the officer. “Listen — sorry about the guy who answered. He lost his wife on the Turner.”
“Poor bastard,” said Aussie. “He shouldn’t be on duty.”
“I know, but we need everyone we can get. ’Sides, he’s hell-bent about staying on. Wants to get even.”
“Don’t we all. Thanks, buddy. I’ll call the Petrel.”
“What’s going on?” asked the general, sitting on the edge of the sofa, yawning, his shock of silver-gray hair disheveled.
“Possible sea-air anomaly on the Darkstar trace,” Lewis told him. “Close inshore.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
As tough as he was, oceanographer and ex-SEAL Frank Hall could not bring himself to “drive” Petrel, as he tersely put it, “straight through” the fogbound waters of Juan de Fuca Strait that he was sure still contained scores of bodies. Accordingly, he had given Petrel’s second mate instructions to strip the stern’s A-frame of the practice torpedo retrieval tackle and replace it with a quick-snap release line with which Petrel could tow her twelve-foot-long Zodiac. With the third mate, Sandra Riley, and two men aboard the Zodiac, it could be cast off from Petrel, if need be, to pick up any survivors or bodies that Hall or his lookouts on Petrel’s bridge might see en route, or to get a quick water sample from the Darkstar anomaly for isotope comparison.
Six and a half miles from the air/sea tadpole-shaped patch, the Petrel’s starboard lookout did see something orange bobbing up and down in the fog-shrouded chop. Hall doubted it was a body — it looked more like a piece of debris. Nevertheless, he alerted the third mate to its position, heard the loud two-stroke-like roar of the Zodiac’s outboard, then saw it as it sped bumpily past Petrel, its bow smacking hard against the waves, which was the price of being out of sync with the frequency of the swells. As a result, the third mate and her two crew were jarred from head to foot, a splatter of spray thrown up by the Zodiac along with a whiff of its gasoline exhaust swept onto the bridge by a westerly wind coming in from the open sea through the choke point between the Olympic peninsula and Vancouver Island, the wind starting to disperse the fog.
“Couldn’t be much louder,” said the bosun, looking down at the Zodiac. “Glad we’re not on a silent mission.”
“Uh-huh,” replied Frank. “But I like it loud in our work.” He meant torpedo retrieval. “If I can’t see it, I can hear it.”
“True,” agreed the bosun, his legs wide apart, his torso leaning forward against the bridge’s brass rail as he fixed his binoculars on the orange object. “Son of a bitch, it’s a zip-up.”
“What?” asked the portside lookout.
“You know, thermal survival suit. Arctic rated. Like a waterproof sleeping bag. Zips up to your eyes. Float on your back — right, Skipper?”
“If you’re lucky,” said Frank, “and don’t get concussed facedown before you hit the water.”
“Zodiac’s just about on it. Reckon whoever—”
“Torpedo!” screamed the station lookout. “Two o’clock! Two hundred yards,” which was the limit of Petrel’s visibility.
Frank hit the stern thruster button, felt the ship surge another three knots, and spun the wheel right, to the starboard quarter. A fast white streak, two feet wide, passed parallel to them on the left side, less than five feet from Petrel’s hull.
“Holy shit! Holy—”
“Be quiet!” Hall told the lookout. “Keep a sharp watch. There could be a pair.”
“Jesus!” said the lookout, despite Hall’s admonition. He was whey-faced, as was the portside lookout, the latter’s eyes big as saucers, staring down at the sea.
“Hey!” It was the cook on the intercom. “That fucker was a dummy, right, Captain?”
“Don’t know,” said Frank. “Weren’t notified. Could be a communication sc
rew-up.”
Down aft on the stern deck, several off-watch crew who’d been observing the Zodiac fading away in the distance as Petrel closed on the anomaly two miles away were also arguing vociferously about the torpedo.
“It wasn’t live, for chrissake,” asserted the winch man who’d hauled up Albinski’s grisly remains. “It was one of ours.”
“How do you know?” an oiler buddy challenged, throwing a wipe rag at him. “You were asleep, you fat fart!” Laughter erupted from the group; a little too hysterical, the bosun thought. It was the kind of response he’d heard while serving aboard a fleet replenishment ship during Desert Storm, the sort of laughter that was more a release of tension after a close miss than because of anything funny.
Hall appeared on the bridge’s starboard wing, immediately recognizable by his Navy toque, yellow wet-weather jacket, and hailer. “Everybody back to work! I want six additional lookouts, two for’ard, two midships, two aft. It’s possible there might be more survivors.”
“Yes, sir. Any news from the Zodiac about the zip-up?”
“No, not yet.”
“Was that a live torpedo, sir?” asked an oiler emerging from the galley.
“I don’t know,” replied Frank. I’ll find out.” With that, he returned to the bridge.
“ ’Course it was live,” said one of the deck crew as they began to disperse. “That’s why he wants more lookouts, right?”
“Don’t sweat it. He told us he’s on to it. He’ll tell us as soon as he knows. He’s a straight shooter.”
“Yeah,” mumbled the departing oiler. “Like the guy who fired that damn torpedo.”
“Can barely see our Zodiac now,” commented the first mate, his binoculars back on the Zodiac. “But it looks as if they’re hauling someone aboard.”
“Anomaly one thousand yards,” reported the first mate.
“Prepare for station,” Frank announced on the ship’s PA while punching in SLOW AHEAD on the computer console.
Petrel’s third mate’s voice crackled into the chart room aft of the bridge, her voice of exhaustion and depression giving way to an oxymoronic report to Hall: “Survivor — dead!”
“Bring ’im in,” said Frank, who now made a GPS check. It showed that due to winds and tidal shift, Petrel was a quarter mile west of the oil spill — if that’s what the anomaly was. He corrected course, watching the sweep arm on his amber radar screen picking up the tiny blip that was the despondent third mate and the two crewmen returning to Petrel with the bright Day-Glo survival suit. The corpse was of a dark-complexioned man, late forties or perhaps younger, looking older because of the bluish pallor of his skin. A man whom no one on the Petrel recognized, like so many of the dead they and the Coast Guard had fished out from the strait in the last forty-two hours.
For a moment, as he thought about all those who had died in the frigid waters, Frank remembered his granddad’s favorite hymn: “Oh hear us when we cry to Thee/for those in peril on the sea.”
His thoughts were suddenly put to flight by a voice invading Petrel on the radio’s shipping channel for ferries, the voice screaming for help. It was the first officer aboard the Georgia Queen, one of the five-deck-high, five-hundred-vehicle, two-thousand-passenger ferries that daily plied the waters of Georgia Strait on the thirty-mile run between Vancouver Island and Vancouver on the Canadian mainland.
Perhaps the Canadians, whose west coast ferry fleet was bigger than the entire Canadian navy, had believed that all the attacks so far had taken place in American waters, he thought, and believed they would not fall victim to whoever was wreaking havoc with their neighbor. Theoretically, their assumption might have been well-founded. After all, though some Canadians were killed in the 9/11 assault on America, Canada itself had remained untouched.
But no longer, for as the torpedo fired at Petrel missed the oceanographic ship, it continued on at fifty-plus knots, by Frank Hall’s guesstimate, and in apparent free running, rather than active or passive acoustic mode, for another fourteen miles, crossing the U.S.-Canada line, passing through a pod of Orcas that fifty or so passengers on the ferry had braved the foul weather to see.
Among the whale watchers, a retired British naval petty officer who’d seen action in the Falklands war of 1982, witnessing the sinking of the Argentine battleship Belgrano by torpedo, raced along the ferry’s upper deck to the bridge, yelling, “Torpedo, starboard beam!” The mate, on the bridge of Georgia Queen, against all intention and training with the ferry corporation, became so rattled by the radio officer’s hysterical Mayday that he failed to turn the vessel in time. The torpedo struck the ferry starboard aft, the force of the explosion lifting her stern clear of the water, over a hundred cars, SUVs, and eighteen-wheeled freight trucks sliding en masse, smashing into a hill of cars.
Trailways buses and motorcycles piled up against the huge curving doors and ramp, a flood of gasoline and diesel fuel from ruptured tanks suddenly reversing course, rushing aft as the ferry’s stern fell back into the sea. This in turn lifted the bow at a precipitous angle moments before the vessel broke in half, the two sections drifting apart, hundreds of passengers on each of the three decks spilling into the sea from the violence of the separation.
It was as if a buzz saw had neatly cut through the model of a ship, only here the avalanche of toy-size figures and vehicles dropping into the ocean were not toys. The sickening thuds the Coast Guard and 911 operators were hearing in the background of frantic cell phone calls for help were the sound of men, women, and children, some of whom had jumped, striking the hard metal of either sinking vehicles or the metal of the lower decks.
Among the two square miles of oily flotsam and debris, the bodies of a baby Orca and several sea otters could be seen along with dozens of drowned cats and dogs that, by regulation, had been required to be kept below in their owners’ vehicles during transit. Dead guide dogs were also among the animals hauled aboard by the crews of rescuing Coast Guard cutters. Only one guide dog, a black lab, survived, swimming for all its might, vainly trying to drag its owner, an elderly woman, to safety aboard an upturned Beaufort raft. The exhausted dog, unable to get purchase on the oil-slicked rubber surface, kept falling back into the water, the earlier lustrous sheen of her coat now looking like an oil-matted pelt as she drifted further away.
It was CNN’s shot of this dog, taken by Marte Price’s cameraman after they’d left the hospital, that arrested Charles Riser’s attention, along with that of millions of other viewers. For Charlie Riser, the dog’s black, matted coat bore an uncanny resemblance to the photographs showing Mandy’s hair after she’d been pulled from the Suzhou canal. It galvanized his determination to press Bill Heinz to find out where Chang was imprisoned.
Aboard Petrel, now within a hundred yards of the tadpole-shaped oil slick picked up earlier by Darkstar, the third officer, Sandra Riley, whose discovery of the dead man in the Day-Glo survival suit had badly shaken her, nevertheless felt duty bound to ask Hall, “Shouldn’t we turn about, sir? Go help the Coast Guard pick up survivors from the ferry?”
“No,” said Frank. “Not till we get that water sample for Freeman. That could be crucial.”
“To whom?” the mate snapped. “Freeman. That guy’s just like Patton an’ all those other glory hounds. They only care about—”
“Calm down!” Hall said, just as sharply. “The water sample could save a lot more lives than those lost on that ferry. If we don’t find an international isotope fingerprint in this slick, it means that the oil’s an outside batch and belongs to some vessel that doesn’t want to be identified. Like a midget sub. Got it?”
“Sorry, Captain.”
“No need. You’re tired. We all are. Go down to the galley, grab a cup of java, take a breather and—”
Frank stopped talking and cut the Petrel’s engines. She was in the slick, and from the starboard fold-out platform just big enough for a man to stand on, he saw his bosun hook up the safety chain rail and raise his right hand, moving it in a cl
ockwise circular movement, the signal for the winch man to start lowering the fifty-pound, quarter-inch cable through the block above the platform. Frank heard the whine of the winch, saw the lead weight penetrate the sea’s choppy surface and the bosun give the stop signal as he reached out from the platform and affixed the Neilsen reversing sample “bottle” to the wire. Satisfied that the bottom wing nut clamp was secure on the cable, the bosun next attached the grenade-sized brass messenger, a sleeve weight that, once struck by another messenger sent down the wire, would trigger the sudden upside down flip of the sampling bottle, breaking the mercury column on its side-mounted thermometer and thus preserving the exact temperature reading at that depth. Albinski had had such a thermometer on his attack board.
The bosun gave the “Take her down slowly” signal, and the Neilsen bottle was lowered under the oil slick. There was a heavy thud, felt by Cookie in the kitchen, as the winch man braked. The bosun fixed the trigger messenger to the wire, let it fall down the cable, heard the clack of the impact and saw oily black bubbles fizzing to the surface only seconds after the bottle had tripped. “Bring her up!” he shouted to the winch man, who couldn’t hear him but followed the “Up! Up! Up!” motion of the bosun’s hand. As the bosun unclipped the bottle, he almost lost his grip on the bottle’s oil-slicked casing.
Only then did Frank Hall turn Petrel about and head at full speed northward to assist in yet another forlorn rescue task, this time around the sunken ferry. One of the Coast Guard ships would be able to do a preliminary isotope “presence” test. If there was no isotope match-up, it was almost certain that they’d zoned in on the sub’s area, and the Juan de Fuca tide flow charts would allow Freeman’s SpecFor team to backtrack to where the spill had started.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Moving briskly down the carrier’s six steep, grated aluminum ladder wells that led from the CNN McCain’s island to the gallery deck, immediately below the carrier’s flight deck, Admiral Crowley walked quickly forward through the quarter-mile-long cream-colored corridor. The six thousand crew members referred to it as the “steeple chase,” due to the scores of oval-shaped and watertight doors that had to be passed through at some risk to knees — if you were short, like Crowley — or your head — if, like Petty Officer Sarah Dugan, you were among the taller crew members.
