U.S.S. Seawolf am-4

by Patrick Robinson

  Bill was in charge of what Rusty called “blood control,” somehow dragging the two bodies into a corner while Rusty himself manned the light, keeping its pattern passing regularly across the courtyard.

  Over in the other tower, Chief McCarthy and John were in exactly the same position, trying to stay away from the blood, the chief trying to synchronize his searchlight with that of Rusty in the other tower.

  Back in the command post, Lieutenant Commander Hunter, watching through his night-sight glasses, knew the watchtowers were in American hands, which gave the all-clear for the guys to storm the wall. It was H minus 2.

  And it was still quiet.

  The two-man Chinese patrol was just passing the main gates, 15 seconds from the corner that turned onto the eastern wall, the wall the British SAS men were shortly to scale. Rick Hunter could see the patrol, but Buster and the men from Bradbury Lines could not. They had already signaled “Ready.” But they could not move forward with their grapplers and ladders until the bleeper bleeped on Buster’s radio. And right now there was silence.

  The SAS troops waited in the grass. There was more light out here, and they saw the patrol as soon as it rounded the corner, flattened themselves into the ground, and gripped their MP-5 light machine guns. They were so close they could hear the guards’ boots on the gravelly area below the wall, and watch them walk past. There was no danger to life, because if the guards had made one move of recognition the SEALs would have shot them both dead, but then they would have been in a very different kind of mission, a standup firefight they would probably have won, but at what cost?

  Syd, Fred, Charlie and Buster stayed very quiet indeed, holding their breaths while the rain beat down on their backs. They watched the guards walk on to the far corner, and as they rounded it, Buster’s “go-light” flickered on his radio. This signified two aspects of the attack: one, Rusty and the guys had taken the watchtowers, and the searchlights, which they now watched slowly sweeping the jail, were in American hands; two, this was it.

  “Move it, y’all,” snapped Buster in his deep Louisiana drawl.

  “Right-ho, y’all,” hissed Syd in his cockney dialect. “I’m just getting the old arse into gear…”

  And with that the three SAS men flew out of the grass, and charged for the wall, leaving Buster half-laughing, half-petrified. The fate of the entire mission hung in the balance for the next 10 minutes. H-hour was right now.

  It took Fred and his men 4 seconds to reach the wall, 3 more to put the ladders in place, and 10 more to climb to the top of the wall with the grapplers. The four-man Chinese patrol was still 28 seconds from the corner, and before they reached it, three more SEALs had raced out from the undergrowth and retrieved the ladders, because they could not have been left there, either knocked over on the ground or left against the wall.

  Up on the parapet, Fred, Syd and Charlie lay flat in a long line, no one moving. In the watchtowers, Rusty and Chief McCarthy made minor adjustments to the range of the lights, stopping them short of the east wall where the SAS men were flattened into the shadows.

  The trouble now was finding the patrol inside the jail, and right now no one could see anything. There was no reason to go over until they could at least see their target. Rusty and John McCarthy knew the problem: They couldn’t spot the Chinese guards at this moment, either. And they probed the inner shadows with their searchlights.

  After two minutes they spotted two of them emerging from the building opposite the guardroom, the mystery building they had never been certain of. They were regular uniformed Navy personnel and they took up positions on either side of the main gate, lit up by the lights from the open door of the guardroom.

  The SEALs knew there was a regular patrol crossing the long front of the main cell block, but it was taking its time arriving, and on top of the wall, Charlie had already muttered, “Bastards are on their tea break.”

  He may have been correct, and it was 90 seconds later when the guards emerged from the shadows. Two of them quick-marched from west to east, then swung right up the short block at the end. The other two waited until they were ready to march back, much more slowly, and then they also set off. The two patrols would pass each other exactly in the center of the main block. Sergeant Fred Jones elected to take them out in pairs.

  He hoped Rusty and Chief McCarthy were watching, and he signaled with his right arm to keep the lights away from the eastern side of the jail. Then he ordered the grappling irons in place, and he and his men climbed softly down into the jail yard, right between the single-cell block and the guardhouse, which had no windows on this side.

  The wait was 24 seconds, but it seemed like four hours. Finally the two Chinese guards began to walk up the front of the single-cell block and as they reached the end, big Fred Jones and Syd Thomas suddenly appeared, bang in front of them. Each SAS man clamped his hand over the guard’s mouth and dragged him into the dark space between buildings, permanently dark now, because the lights were not sweeping that far.

  The killing was classic SAS, a deep thrust with a big fighting knife straight into the heart, cleaving it in half. Fred and Syd kept their hands rammed tight over the guards’ mouths until the men died, a matter of a few seconds. Charlie Murphy slipped silently out of the shadows and helped drag the men to the deep darkness beneath the main wall.

  By now, the other two were on their way along the main cell block, and Fred Jones knew they would realize something was amiss when they did not pass their colleagues at the halfway point. This was a critical point in the mission. And Fred could not afford a mistake. If the guards turned and ran from the courtyard back to the guardroom, the three SAS men might find themselves surrounded and outnumbered. By now he knew there were three more SEALs on top of the eastern wall, and that they would probably survive a firefight.

  But he did not want a firefight. And suddenly he knew they would have to go after the two guards right now. And he ordered Charlie Murphy to draw his light machine gun and cover them while he and Syd raced silently along the wall and took them out. He heard three more SEALs clear the wall with the satchel bombs for the guardhouse, and then they set off.

  They made the end of the single cells and swung left along the dark front of the main cell block. Up ahead the two guards were coming right at them, but they were talking and looking at each other. That little conversation bought the SAS men three more seconds. And they would not need much more.

  “GO, SYD, GO!” hissed Fred, and now they ran flat-out, straight at the two guards, whose weapons were still shouldered. There was a 15-foot gap between them, and one suddenly saw two fearsome, blacked-up monsters right in front. He had time to say, not shout, in Chinese, “What the…?” But it was not loud enough, there was no one near, and Syd Thomas was on him, a full frontal assault. He slammed the butt of his fist hard into the man’s nose, grabbed his hair, jerked back his head and sliced his throat wide open.

  The other guard turned to look, in total amazement, and he never really saw Fred Jones clearly as the Dorset sergeant crashed into him, driving his knife right between his ribs, killing him instantly. The guard was dead before he hit the floor with Fred’s right hand rammed across his mouth.

  “Leave ’em, and get back between the buildings,” he snapped. And both men ran back along the shadows, to regroup with Charlie and the three newly arrived SEALs.

  Fred Jones now decided it looked a bit different from down here, and that it was impossible to take out the main gate guards quietly with knives. The whole area along the front of the prison was bright, light flooding out from the guardroom and from the building on the right. They’d never get across there without being seen.

  “That means we bomb the guardroom and shoot the sentries at the same time?”

  “Better yet,” said Syd, “let’s just shoot the sentries and send in Charlie here with the det-cord to blow the gates. As soon as he gets to the gates, we blow the guardroom.”

  “Don’t be a prick, Syd, we’d also blow Charl
ie. Sorry, lads, it’s guardroom, sentries, gates in that order. Right now. I’ve got H plus seven.”

  Two SEALs prepared the blasting caps on the Mk 138 satchel bombs. Then they slipped around the corner, pulled the pins and hurled one through the lower window and one through the upper, diving back with the others flat on the ground, in the shadow of the single-cell block wall.

  The detonation was savage. It blew the building to bits with deafening impact. The entire front wall caved in, and so did the roof. All that was left was a pile of smoking rubble. From the guards inside there was not a sound, since there were no survivors. As the dust and smoke cleared, the two gate guards could be seen running toward the obliterated building, but not for long. Fred Jones shot them both in their tracks. Another SEAL ran in behind Charlie Murphy and hurled a hand grenade into the lighted window in the mystery building to the right of the gates. Both SEALs flattened themselves to the ground as it exploded, killing all six of the Chinese interrogators, who were sitting drinking tea in the room to the left of the front door.

  Instantly, Charlie Murphy reached the gates and wrapped three lengths of det-cord around the big jutting hinges and the central locking system. Then he retreated fast, playing out the det-cord behind him. He lit it at a range of 40 yards and blew the huge gates 10 feet into the air. At this point the SEALs had control of the interior of the prison. It was outside where the action now was.

  As soon as the guardhouse was blown, Rick Hunter hit the GO button on Dan Conway’s wavelength. The young lieutenant from Connecticut snapped, “GO!” and Petty Officers Catfish Jones and Steve Whipple charged around the corner and hurled two 40-pound satchel bombs straight into the upper and lower windows of the commandant’s HQ and the main communications room above it. As with the guardroom, the impact was staggering; all four walls of the building were blown out and the roof just collapsed. Debris was flung everywhere, and it rained in through the trees, some of it close to where the SEALs were standing.

  Rick Hunter put his head up into the dust cloud and tried to see something, but the dust was choking and the smoke made vision impossible. However, Rocky Lamb, Hank and Al were racing through it, Rocky’s gun firing round after round through the doorway of the accommodation block, driving back the guards who were fighting to get out, pulling on coats, grabbing their rifles.

  Lieutenant Conway came in right behind them, and he hurled three hand grenades one after another into the hallway. The one thing the ex-catcher could do was throw, real hard and dead straight. And the entrance hall was now a mass of fire, dust and bodies. Around the back of the building Hank and Al were priming their smoke bombs, which contained poisonous but not lethal gas that would knock out anyone for 24 hours and leave him very sick, with a shocking headache, but not dead.

  They flung in two each, on both levels. The idea not to kill civilians had been Frank Hart’s. But no matter what, no one was walking out of the dormitory right now, and those guards who had tried were no longer alive.

  Simultaneously, the lights were flickering on the radios of Ray Schaeffer and Olaf Davidson. And it was Ray who moved first. In the last half minute he had heard the succession of explosions, and now he whispered to Garrett Atkins, “Okay, buddy. Right now…”

  And both men squeezed the triggers of their antitank launchers, and the two armor-piercing canisters came rocketing down the tubes, past their ears, and straight out into the night, straight at the Chinese patrol boat.

  Garrett’s slammed in and exploded bang in the middle of the superstructure, blasting the radio room to pieces. Ray’s shell hit the guided missile launchers at the stern, which blew the ship apart with a thunderous explosion. Down by the gangway, the armed SEALs waited for any Chinese crew to show themselves. But there was nothing. Rusty Bennett had estimated there would only be three men, four at the most, and they probably had not survived. If one of them had, he would not be making radio contact with anyone.

  Up on the hill overlooking the helicopters, Olaf ordered his men to fire. And they too unleashed the antitank weapons, demolishing both aircraft in massive fireballs that caused the nearby SEALs to move back, away from the heat. A half minute later the fuel dump went up, sending a rolling ball of flame 100 feet into the air.

  Rick Hunter looked up at the massive cloud of black smoke and muttered, “Jesus Christ! We might have overcooked this…you could see this fire in Shanghai.”

  So far, no prisoners had been either located or released. But the SEALs had done that which they were best at: brutal demolition of any installation they wanted removed, and any guards who might get in the way. The jail on Xiachuan was well and truly in American hands. At least, for the moment it was. The Navy guards in the cell blocks were unlikely to be a match for the SEALs and their SAS colleagues.

  0214. Monday morning, July 17.

  Office of the Southern Fleet Commander.

  Zhanjiang.

  Unsurprisingly, Admiral Zhang and Admiral Zu had not gone to bed, as the crisis in Canton continued to unfold. Already there were reports of badly burned men, of colossal levels of radioactivity. And now there was a further problem.

  A young lieutenant was standing in the room informing the C-in-C that they were having trouble making phone contact with Xiachuan.

  “How long have you been trying?” he asked.

  “About ten minutes, sir. Since you asked us to inform Commander Li you wanted to see him in the morning.”

  “What kind of response?”

  “That’s the trouble, sir. No response. We can’t even get the phone to ring.”

  “You mean the usual one in the main comms room?”

  “Well, that one, and the private line to Commander Li, sir. It’s not that they won’t answer. It just won’t ring out.”

  “Try the patrol boat. We’ve done that before.”

  “We’ve tried it, sir. Same result.”

  “How about the radio?”

  “Nothing, sir. We have three technicians on it now, but they’re not having any luck.”

  “So the problem is not just electronic, the phone wires. It’s also affecting the airwaves.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Have you left satellite comms in place?”

  “Yessir. And the replies usually come back very quickly from Xiachuan. But we’re getting nothing.”

  “No phones. No radio response. Nothing on the satellite,” the C-in-C murmured, a chill feeling of sheer dread pervading his entire body and mind. “And the American submarine blows up a few hours before.”

  He stood up, and said, “Thank you, Lieutenant.” To his friend Zu Jicai, he said, “Jicai, we are under attack. The coincidences are too great.”

  Admiral Zu looked slightly helpless. He stood up and said, “You mean the Americans?”

  “Who do you think I mean,” he snapped, “the Tibetans?” All semblance of self-control was receding with the onset of the admiral’s mounting anger.

  “You mean they are on the island?”

  “I don’t know. But I think it’s possible.”

  “Well, how did they get there? Is this an invasion?”

  “I underestimated them,” he muttered. “Jicai, I underestimated them. And I have done it before. No one knows how ruthless the Americans are when they have their backs to the wall. I just wonder, is there anything left for me…what can I do…how can I save face?”

  0217. H plus 15. Monday, July 17.

  Xiachuan Island.

  Lt. Commander Rick Hunter could now hear only sporadic fire as Lieutenant Merloni and his men tried to wipe out the six guards on the outer rim. The first four had been simple, gunned down as they raced back clockwise from the north wall at the first sound of the guardroom blowing up.

  The last two had come around the other way, very quickly, seen the direction of the SEAL machine gunfire, and opened up in the correct direction. They had not hit anyone, and one of them had gone down. But he regained his feet and ran back around the wall with his colleague, and they had escaped in th
e confusion.

  Rick Hunter and his men had loosed off ultrabright flares to illuminate the area, and Lieutenant Merloni had pursued. But it was not successful, and they all believed both the Chinese to be still alive in the woods, which was bad news, but unavoidable. And it was both pointless and dangerous to continue pursuit in the darkness of the jungle, where anyone could be hit and killed.

  Rick Hunter decided that now was the time and, signaling for Bobby Allensworth to bring the big machine gun, he and two other SEALs began to work their way down the hill and across the still dust-blown area in front of the buildings. For the first time, he noticed the rain had stopped.

  And now the massive SEAL commander walked down by the light of the burning fuel dump. All around him were the men who had caused such havoc in the Chinese jail, falling in with him, walking tall, their submachine guns held out in front of them, many of them with their bandanas scorched black from the smoke, especially those who had been close to the burning fuel and the explosions inside the jail.

  Rusty Bennett appeared from nowhere, covered in blood, and announced that he was on his way to the pickup point of the beach.

  “You hurt, Rusty?” asked Rick, somewhat alarmed at the sight of his 2 I/C, who looked as if he had just gone three rounds with Mike Tyson.

  “No, not me. I’m fine.”

  “Guess someone must have got hurt right next to you, huh?”

  “Guess so. See you later, Chief.”

  The searchlights were still on, but Chief McCarthy and his men were coming out of the main gates now, and all three of them were variously splattered with blood.

  Rick just shook his head at the unending courage of the men he fought with. “Great job, guys,” he said. “Just a great job.”