Power and Empire

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 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.