by David Poyer
* * *
WHICH he must have achieved at some point, because when he woke someone was tapping at his door. The phosphorescent numerals of his Seiko swam like bioluminescent dinoflagellates. Seven. He’d managed a couple hours. Unless it was 07, the next morning … that didn’t seem possible … no, that was evening blue leaking around the porthole cover. But a little bag time just made you want more. “Yeah!” he yelled. A fit of coughing doubled him. “Come in,” he called, when he could breathe.
The message board pulsed before his eyes. The messenger waited, hands clasped, as Dan groped for the reading glasses.
The People’s Republic of China had issued an ultimatum to the “renegade province” of Taiwan. The island could either submit to “peace through unification” or be destroyed.
General Zhang Zurong was now elevated to Party general secretary and state president. The three leading titles in the state. There were rumors of executions of more leading Party members in Beijing.
The United States and China were both going to heightened nuclear-defense conditions. The Senate was debating a resolution to support Taiwan, but the voting lineup was shifting. There was a real possibility the force-authorization resolution would fail.
USS Monocacy had reached station south of Taiwan, to defend that end of the island. CTG 779.1, the Ryukyus Maritime Defense Coalition Task Group, was directed to coordinate air and missile defenses with CTG 779.2, the Luzon Channel Task Group, with separate orders to follow.
A U.S. fast logistics ship had been sunk in the Arabian Sea, apparently by a submarine.
“Need a pen, sir?” The messenger offered a Skilcraft.
Dan initialed the messages without answering. His brain teemed and crawled with thoughts, interpolations, apprehensions, breeding like maggots in rotten meat.
The second ABM cruiser was on station. Good, they could link data, hand off targets to each other.
But he’d tipped his hand during the single-warhead strike on Taipei. He’d wondered why only one missile had arched over from the mainland. Somehow, during the night, his unconscious had figured it out.
It had been a probe. A test of the U.S. and ROC intercept cuing and ABM capabilities. Now Beijing knew exactly where and who Savo was, and how she responded to an incoming missile.
Now that they had him targeted, he could expect to head the next strike list.
His consciousness clicked to the next line of code. The sunken tanker, in the western Indian Ocean. Obviously, part of the enemy’s anti-access strategy, to slice off the Navy’s logistical tail. But how had they known where it was, to vector a sub against it? Could the Chinese still have some over-the-horizon targeting capability?
Or—an even more chilling possibility—had they penetrated U.S. codes? Was that what the repeated cautions not to trust voice messages were about?
And Congress. Could they really be wavering on defending Taiwan? What did they think would happen to South Korea and Japan, if the keystone of the island chain fell to the enemy?
The messenger. “You all right, Captain? Look a little bit under the weather.”
“Yeah. Thanks,” he mumbled. Breathed hard for a couple of seconds, then handed the clipboard back. As the door closed, he reached the J-phone off the bulkhead.
CIC answered on the first squeal. “TAO here, Captain. Lieutenant Mills.”
“Matt? How we coming on the plan to intercept an invasion? Oh, and we really need a name for that—”
“The CHENG suggested ‘Dragonglass.’”
Dan felt guilty. Danenhower had been obsessing about their dwindling fuel state, but he’d forgotten to tell the engineer he didn’t have to worry; the Taiwanese were sending a tanker. “Bart did? Okay. Dragonglass it is. Did you see these latest messages? The invasion may be starting. When can I get a brief?” Too late, he recalled they’d already set a time. But based on the news … “I, uh, know I said tomorrow. But we’re getting overtaken by events. Even if all you have’s a concept—”
Mills sounded resigned. “Yessir. Haven’t got much. But we can brief what we have. In CIC? In an hour?”
“That’ll work. Uh, ring me back when everyone’s assembled.”
He sank back and closed his eyes. But even as his mind rotated and vibrated, his lids drifted closed again.
Sprawled in his bunk, alone, the captain snored, writhing uneasily from time to time. Until, once more, the J-phone chirped.
17
The South China Sea
SIXTY feet below the surface, in darkness, rebreathing his own exhaled air, Master Chief Teddy Oberg was focused on the faint lime illumination of his instruments. A compass. A charge indicator, dropping faster than he liked. A tachometer. And a depth gauge. The grips of the underwater scooter vibrated in his fists, dragging his gear- and weapon-burdened carcass through the water. The shrouded prop drummed in his ears.
Two miles to the beach.
The sea was icy. Some bitter current, snaking beneath the warmer surface. Ominously, even down here he could feel the sucking as waves passed overhead. Heavier than Fleet Weather had predicted. The shallowing gradient had stopped Montpelier miles short of the planned launch point. Her skipper had refused to close farther. They were at the outer limit of the scooters’ ranges, with barely enough battery power to get there and back.
Lieutenant Harch’s scooter was an occasional dim green flash to his right. The flank guards were V’d to left and right, invisible in the night sea, but now and then a single flashlight-flicker signaled they were still there. They weren’t in the plan, but Teddy had argued the lieutenant into them. If word of the raid had leaked, they could be whirring into an ambush.
He drew breath after breath. Slow. Easy. Breath control was mind control. The rest of Echo trailed them, two abreast.
This was R-day. If every Team guy around him was alive at the end of it, it’d be a miracle. They were facing over a thousand troops, and seven hundred were elite marines. The 164th Brigade were armed with light tanks and heavy weapons, and the Chinese had had years to plant beach obstacles, mines, sensor networks. Echo Platoon’s best defense was stealth. Get ashore, execute, and retreat. Like Harch had said, a good mission didn’t make a ripple.
But he had a bad feeling about this one. To forestall detection via acoustic sensors, Harch wanted them to swim the last mile. This heavily burdened, towing the Packages, they’d be exhausted when they hit the beach. Then there’d be a long crawl-and-drag inland, to the vicinity of the treatment plant.
Still, it could work, he told himself. Actually, Obie, it’s your job to make it work. So turn that frown upside down. He twisted and caught a flash off to starboard. Moogie, leading Two.
Minutes later, the chuk-chuk-chuk of Harch’s scooter slowed. Teddy twisted his own throttle and the drag of the sea lessened. He sank, checking watch and depth gauge. Yeah, a mile off the coast. Something brushed the tips of his fins. He twisted the throttle grip back more, and his machine settled.
Into coarse grainy sand. Excellent; he hated mud. Coated you all over and stank. But sometimes you had to make love to it, like they probably would in the marshy areas past the dunes. Around him, like settling bats, the other scooters dropped from the dark. He groped in his pack for a pinger. Harch would be setting one too, but SEAL wisdom was “Two is one, one is none.” They wouldn’t want to be hunting around for these things once the clock was ticking on the Packages.
The Packages. One primed to look like a failure. The other, a Trojan horse burrowing into the enemy’s communications. If it worked, yeah, this was the kind of thing that could determine the course of a war.
Harch’s light, up and down; the guide-on-me signal. Though actually he’d told Teddy to swim point. Teddy’s legs felt creaky. Pain ignited in his calf as he pushed off the sand and forced his fins into motion. Shit, at BUD/S a mile swim had been nothing. But that’d been fifteen years ago.…
Maybe it was time to think about easing off. Make this the last mission. Once you were past it for di
rect action, there were still places for you on the Teams. Training. Intel. The Pool, for shore duty.
But did he really want to be the Old Man, the has-been, the ghost?
He pumped along, settling into the rhythm. Watching the fat glowing needle of the wrist compass, keeping up twenty beats a minute with his fins. Fifteen more minutes to the beach. But his ears kept popping. The turbulence sucked his whole body up and down. Which meant heavy surf topside. Good; a lot harder to see a swimmer. But he’d better slow as they came in … check the flank guards, make sure there were no surprises. Hitting the beach, that awkward transition from sea creature to land soldier, was when they were at their most vulnerable. He and Knobby would go first. Then the command element, Lieutenant Harch and his radioman, “Snake Eyes” Jamison. Once ashore, they’d signal the rest, who would emerge, dripping, to shed gear for the push inland.
Dragging the mass and weight of the Packages behind them.
* * *
HIS head broke water. Fins pumping, he spat out his mouthpiece and sucked sweet air. Then bobbed there, carbine in one hand, peering shoreward for any activity. Fires. Lights.
Nothing yet … Next, he considered the way the seas were battering him around. A lot bigger than Weather had predicted. You could sort of bodysurf, but they were eight, nine feet out here, and judging by the glimmer of foam at the surf line, they were gonna get knocked around no matter how they went in. He ducked his head again and got right down on the sand, made about fifty yards in, until his knees hit, and resurfaced. Tucking his fins under him, he reached down and shucked them.
Not soon enough. The wave knocked him off his feet. He rolled over and over, facemask grinding into the coarse sand. His rebreather whacked him in the back of the head. His M4 got away. He was a black blob in somebody’s gunsights, rolling over and over in the white of the breaking surf … He fought vertical, got his booties rooted in the wet, giving sand this time. Hauled in on the tether line, and got his weapon back. With the butt to his shoulder, he took another five crouched wading strides up the beach, till the retreating waves splashed ankle-deep. Then dropped to a knee, to minimize his silhouette. Swept the muzzle right, then left.
No moon. But the stars shed enough light to see. The beach stretched east and west, with a peninsula off to his left. He flipped down the NVGs and powered them up, making sure the Illumination button was off. In their green, distorted radiance, the shore was still empty. If the wind had been more easterly, that peninsula might have given them some shelter. As it was, they’d just have to suck it up.
A pop and hiss beside him, almost lost in the crash of the surf. Swager. They didn’t speak; Team One just pointed. Teddy nodded and bent into the water’s resistance, slogging forward. Another wave knocked him to his knees again, shooting agony through the bad leg, but he got up once more and slogged on, sweeping the shoreline with the muzzle of his Colt. If anybody was here, he wanted them to fire now, not when the rest of the Team was coming out of the surf.
But no one did. His booties crunched on dry sand at last and he sank to a knee, wheezing and panting. Fighting surf took a lot out of you. He checked his watch again. Pretty much on time so far, though. In fact, shit, right on time. 0135.
Cue the fireworks … and when he lifted his head there was the first white flash of high explosive. A couple miles away, on the far side of the island, so he didn’t hear anything yet, though a second or two later orange flame pushed up, laced with black. Ack-ack started flying up, tracers probing the dark like incandescent catheters.
Beside him Swager dropped, sucking air. Good, it wasn’t just Teddy. The crack-BOOM reached them then, quaking the air like a lightning bolt, and built to a rumbling series of thunderclaps. The Tomahawks would land first, hitting radars and missile batteries. Following them would come the standoff munitions, from the carrier air, and Stealths out of Diego Garcia. A huge fireball climbed like the rising sun. The shock wave rippled through the scrub and slapped their faces, even this far away. Birds pierced the night air with startled cries, rising, flapping away out to sea. Teddy drooled out grit, and spat. “Must of whacked the fuel piers with that one,” Swager muttered. “Got some bad news.”
“Hit me.”
“Lost one of the weapons cases. We’re down one pig.”
The “pig” was the M240. They’d gone in gun-heavy, with three heavy machine guns for Echo One, on the causeway, and two with Two. They still had their personal weapons, but nothing equaled the pig for keeping an enemy many yards from your ass. “Christ. What happened?”
“Tether broke. We searched, but it’s fuckin’ gone.”
“Fuck. What else we lose?”
“Masks, sidearms, couple primary weapons … Some of the guys got beat up coming in.”
“Anybody hurt bad? Where’s Doc?”
“Right here,” said a form tumbling into the pit with them. Anderson. “Scrapes and bruises.”
He hadn’t expected to lose an MG. Not yet in contact, and their suppressive fire was down. Well, they’d just have to stay covert. Which was the idea, after all. Teddy spat more grit, lifted an arm, and signaled the advance.
He and Swager, opening to five yards in case of mines, jogged heavily up the beach. He kept looking for wire, obstacles, some sign of observation, but made out only some kind of vertical posts, a good distance away. Hard to tell, but they might just be fish weirs. He couldn’t believe the Chinese would leave the beach undefended. Not with a major signals intelligence station here. The imagery had shown a curving line where the scrub started. Intel had interpreted this as a seawall—
Four troops, in dark clothing, in a scalloped concrete trench about two meters deep, with a fire step facing the beach and netting over them. Which was why the overhead hadn’t shown it. Fortunately, they were looking toward the fading fireballs, not in his direction, and a shape that bulked like a heavy machine gun had a tarp over it. He and Swager double-tapped them, putting two in their backs before they realized they were being shot. The last one standing tried to draw a sidearm, but Harch, behind Teddy, nailed him, the silenced report only a pop, lost in the din from the south. Teddy jumped heavily down, cursing as he stumbled, and went through the trench looking for comms. Found a radio, and put a bullet through it.
He scrambled up out of the reverse slope and oriented inland. Harch was crouched, pointing an infrared beam out to sea for the rest of the team to guide in on. With a clear path inland, no point risking mines along the rest of the beach. “Cache the gear here. Make this the first rally point,” the lieutenant muttered. “Get your war paint on, we’re in Indian country now.” Teddy passed it on, reminding Knobby to post guys to guard their rebreathers and other wet gear. If they hit resistance, had to split up, they’d circle back and meet again here. As he smeared on camo paint, Jamison was muttering into the squirt radio in muted tones. Teddy laid a hand on his shoulder. “Keep it short, Snake Eyes,” he breathed into his ear.
“Wasn’t actually transmitting, Master Chief.”
“Don’t. Remember, this whole fucking island is a listening site. They could catch a sidelobe, or something.”
All right, orient. The map in his head: A coast road somewhere to their right. Probably just over that dune. Yeah, a prickle against the sky in his goggles: poles, a power line. Stay clear of that. Another road to the left, crossing the smaller island, heading for the causeway south. Steer away from that, too, though they might have to close it, farther on, to get to the island’s high point. The wavy line that was probably the seawall: to their left.
“Obie? Mast’ Chief?”
It was his radioman-grenadier. “Loopy” Wasiakowsky carried a PRC-117 manpack intersquad radio. It could back up the heavier radio Jamison carried, but he reminded Wasiakowsky, too, not to transmit if he could help it. Teddy started to whisper, Stay with me and the lieutenant, then didn’t. Loopy knew what to do.
A dune hillocked behind the trench. Usually you wanted to lay up awhile after insertion, make sure everything was qu
iet, but now that they’d had to take down the OP, they couldn’t waste time. A relief could be on its way. He passed that to his squad leaders and scrambled up the hill, booties sliding in the sand. At the top he dropped to his belly, staying beneath the salt scrub. Trees loomed dark ahead. Cover, but a couple hundred yards to get to it. He slid down into a hollow. Then up again. The rumble of ordnance ahead was fading. Tracers were still arching, fired blind, but the next troops they ran into might not be ogling them.
Fifty yards on he took a knee again atop another sand hill, wheezing and sweating, screened by prickly, brittle brush, and waited for the guys hauling the first Package to catch up. He’d picked the huskiest, Moonie and Butt Plug, but even they were puffing as they sledged the burden up and braked it down the hills, which grew steeper as they pushed inland. A little overhead cover now, a little tree action. Which was good, though it would also screen them from the drone. The crackling and snapping as they yanked their load through the bushes seemed to be getting louder as the detonations died down, though.
He shot a line with the compass, then realized they could steer by the Dipper. It glittered above them. He muttered as the racket approached. “A little to the left. And fucking keep it down! I can hear you twenty yards away.”
No answer. He checked his watch. Ten minutes to get to the target hill. Basically, he could leave the first Package, the dud bomb or whatever it was, atop any of the dunes. But the O-10 had to be buried, carefully camouflaged, on the west slope of the highest dune he could find. Only there, Harch had said, would it be able to pick up signals from the west, where the major listening post was.
He was scrambling up the next dune when somebody stumbled behind him and slammed into his back. He started to resist, then went down with him as he caught it too.
The whack-whack of blades. Did the Chinese have gunships? No one had briefed gunships.
The helo burst up with all its lights on, blinding beams backlighting every bush with shafts of probing glare that haloed every branch and leaf. He tucked his rifle under him and buried his face. Froze as all around scrub, hills, the glittery quartz facets of the sand in front of his eyes, lit with the brilliance of a noonday sun. The chopper hurtled over so low the rotorwash whipped the bushes back and forth, kicking up a tornado of loose leaves and sand. For a second he thought it was going to land. But it passed over, very low, and the lights receded. He couldn’t make out the type, or whether it was a gunship or just a recon bird.