Death Blow sts-14

by Keith Douglass

  They ran down the forty yards to the gangplank, carrying their drag bags, their weapons out and ready, locked, and loaded.

  “Hell, we don’t come close to looking like tourists,” Jefferson said. Murdock, Ching, Bradford, and Jefferson stepped over the prostrate soldiers as they approached the gangplank. The ship rode low on the tide and the ramp up to the rail was only twenty steps. Murdock led them. Their line would be that they were new crewmen just assigned. Just as they topped the plank and stepped into the lobby-type two-story entryhall of the ship, a Chinese soldier came out of a doorway and stared at them. He saw their weapons and reached for a pistol. Bradford hit him with an EAR round and the soldier took a step backward, then collapsed like a rag doll on the soft red carpet of the ship.

  Before the four could signal the others, three Chinese in civilian dress left another door and headed for the gangplank. They were drunk and walking with just a slight stagger. They laughed at some joke, continued past Murdock and his men without paying any attention to them, and headed down the gangplank

  “Let them go,” Murdock whispered into his mike.

  A stream of Mandarin sounded directly behind them. They turned to see a Chinese soldier with officer epaulets. He shouted something in Mandarin, then he saw the SEAL’s weapons and lifted a submachine gun. Before he could fire, Murdock sent a silenced three-round burst from an MP5 subgun into his chest. He slammed backward against the wall and slowly crumpled, the weapon falling to the carpeted floor. Bradford and Jefferson caught the dead Chinese officer by the arms and dragged him through a door into a dark office and hurried out.

  “SEALs, come on up,” Murdock said on his Motorola. The four men looked around, saw no more guards, and headed for their objective, the bridge. It would be forward at the top level of the ship. Murdock saw the elevators and led his men that way. The doors on the elevators opened and a couple came out. Their arms were around each other and they had some trouble walking. The girl giggled and stared up at the man. They turned and weaved down a companionway, not even noticing the SEALs who had held their weapons behind their legs. They still carried their drag bags, looking for a good place to hide them.

  The elevator took them to the top to the Lido deck. It was open in the center with a swimming pool and deck tennis courts there and a two-story bridge area at the bow of the big ship. The SEALs headed that way. They had just passed the swimming pool and hurried around the tennis courts when a Chinese soldier jumped out from behind a wall and challenged them.

  Below on the dock, the other SEALs quickly bound the hands and ankles of the thirteen unconscious Chinese soldiers, then raced up the gangplank. All had assignments and headed into the areas where they could find their targets.

  On the Lido deck, Ching shouted something at the Chinese guard who had jumped out and confronted the four SEALs. It startled the soldier and confused him. In that fraction of a second, Bradford put him down with an EAR shot. The man shuddered, then his eyes went wide and closed as he slumped to the floor, his submachine gun clattering away from him.

  Just ahead they saw a door marked “Bridge, Authorized Personnel Only.” Murdock tried the door, it was unlocked. He and the rest of the SEALs dropped their drag bags in the corner of the deck and opened the door. Inside was a corridor with doors opening off it. Straight ahead forty feet they saw stairs. They took them to the upper level. Another door blocked their way.

  Murdock tested the handle, turned it gently and pulled the door open an inch. Inside he saw the bridge, a wide expanse with windows around the entire area. Near the front was a large console with various video monitors and a set of controls. A crewman in white uniform stood there watching everything.

  On the far side Murdock saw three Chinese playing some kind of game at a small table. Another soldier with epaulets of an officer watched the crewman at the console. Murdock pointed to Bradford, and held up three fingers pointing to the left. Bradford moved up beside Murdock, saw the targets and aimed the weapon through the door. Then Murdock shook his head and pulled Bradford back.

  “Too confined a space. Everyone inside would be out. We’ll go in and cover them. Use silent rounds if needed.

  The four SEALs burst into the room, weapons up, covering the Chinese. The officer’s eyes widened, then he scowled and slowly reached for a pistol at his waist. Murdock shot him in the shoulder and he bellowed in pain but didn’t fall. The three Chinese at the game, stood slowly. None had a weapon within reach.

  “Who the hell are you guys?” the crewman asked.

  “Navy SEALs,” Murdock said. “Come to get your ass out of the fire. We’ll need your help. Get your captain up here, now. Tell him we’re onboard and taking you out of Hong Kong.”

  The SEALs tied the four Chinese hand and foot with riot cuffs and cinched them tight. They bound up the officer’s shoulder wound to stop the bleeding.

  The crewman held out his hand.

  “Norm Hadilston, from Chicago. I’m the second officer. Glad to see you guys. This is fantastic. I thought we were stuck here for a month or so. How can you break us out of this jail?”

  “Not sure, Hadilston. That’s why we want to talk to your captain.” Murdock’s earpiece sounded.

  “Cap. Lam. We’re at the engine room, but there are some problems here. We haven’t attacked yet, but there are six Chinese in there and all are awake and armed. No sign of any crew. We’re working on it.”

  “Roger that, Lam. Take it slow and quiet. Keep them away from the intercom. We don’t want any loud speaker jazz.”

  Hadilston watched the interchange. “I’ll call the captain at once. He isn’t a sound sleeper. Should be here in five minutes.”

  “If we get you free of the Chinese onboard, can you move the ship away from the pier and head out the channel without any tugs?”

  Hadilston scowled then slowly nodded. “Yes, I’ve seen it done. Not easy but with a little luck we can do it.”

  “Good, now we need control. My man said some problem in the engine room.”

  “The Chinese are fascinated with our engines. They have some engineers down there, I think, besides the soldiers.”

  Several decks below the bridge, Lieutenant (j.g.) DeWitt stared at the door marked “Communications.” No one had entered or left as he and two men watched. There had been no passengers in the companionway.

  He and Ostercamp and Mahanani moved up on each side of the door, then DeWitt tried the knob. It turned and he jerked the door open and jumped inside. One sleepy crewman lifted his head out of his hands and stared at them.

  “Who the hell are you guys?” he asked.

  DeWitt cleared the room with darting glances. There was no one else in the room filled with radio equipment, fax machines, readout screens, and video monitors.

  “We’re the guys who are going to get your ass out of a sling,” Ostercamp said. “Any Chicoms usually stand guard in here?”

  “Nope, no Chinks at all. Who are you guys?”

  “U.S. Navy SEALs,” DeWitt said. “Can you lock the door from the inside and keep everyone out?”

  “Sure, but—”

  “Good, we’ve got other jobs to do. You should be getting instructions from your Captain shortly. Just hang in here with us. We hope to be moving this ship before daylight.”

  All of the SEALs heard the warning in their earpieces.

  “Tran at the gangplank. We’ve got trouble. Two army trucks just pulled up with what looks like fifteen men in each one. I’ve got the EAR. Should I use it if they start to board?”

  “Yes,” Murdock said at once. “Put them down now, even if they don’t start to board. They’ll find the guards down.”

  At the gangplank, Tran “Train” Khai sighted in on the closest army truck. The fifteen men had gathered around it and he fired.

  He watched the Chinese soldiers shiver and stare in astonishment, then they fell down like dominoes, one after the other. Some shouts came from the men at the other truck.

  “Eight thousand, nine thou
sand, ten thousand,” Tran counted, then he fired at the second truck. The Chinese there had started to run for the first truck and two of them evidently were outside the effects of the EAR. The rest at the truck went down and out. Tran kept his weapon trained on the two men who stopped and looked back at their own truck. They both ran back and began to look at their unconscious buddies.

  “Nine thousand, ten thousand, eleven thousand…” Tran fired again nailing the last two men. He touched his mike. “Last of the thirty men down and out,” he said on the Motorola.

  On the bridge, Captain Omar Prestwick hurried through the door. He had on his white uniform shirt and pants, but he hadn’t taken time to tuck in his shirt. He was also barefooted.

  “Damn, real live U.S. Navy SEALs?” He held out his hand. “Prestwick here. Wonderfully glad to see you. Can you really get us out of Hong Kong?”

  “Going to try, Captain. I’m Lieutenant Commander Murdock. We have control of the communications room. We’re working on the engine room, engineering, and security. What else do we need to control to get the ship under way?”

  “Move it, tonight, without tugs?”

  “Doubt if we could call up a tug or two without Chinese permission. I understand you can move away from the pier without tugs.”

  “Yes, but damn hard. Hell, worth a try. If we can control the ship. You have commo. We need engineering and engine. Takes some time to get us ready to move. Not like kick-staring a Harley.”

  He stared at Murdock and the other men’s weapons.

  “You have real bullets in those guns, I’d guess. Be careful so you don’t shoot up a batch of my passengers.”

  “We’re taking all precautions, Captain.”

  Murdock held up his hand as his earpiece spoke.

  “Skipper, Fernandez at engineering. We’re inside. We have half of it. There’s another big room two Chicom soldiers ran into and we’re not sure how to get them out.”

  “Hold, we’ll send you some help. DeWitt can you move to engineering and assist.”

  “That’s a roger, skipper. We’re on our way.”

  “Captain, my man says two Chinese are in a second room at engineering. Is that the vital one?”

  “Yes, we need both rooms to move the ship. They have to get in there without damaging anything. Let me get our chief engineer down there to help them.” The captain moved to the phone and dialed.

  Two decks below at the security office, Hans Kok, checked the security monitors that covered twenty-four main sections of the passenger areas of the big ship. Earlier he had seen what looked like some young men with weapons, but he figured it must be some kind of program the entertainers were working on. But it was late for that.

  Then he spotted another one, this time there was no doubt, it was a man with a submachine gun moving cautiously down a hall. What the hell was going on? He was about to call his supervisor when he saw the time: almost 2:00 A.M. The Chinese soldier guard who had been stationed with him snored softly to one side where he sat in a soft chair. His automatic rifle lay across his chest, the butt on the floor.

  Kok checked the other monitors. Twice more he saw young men with weapons moving around the ship. They were in civilian clothes, but acted like soldiers. What should he do? Notify the Chinese? Now that would be dumb. Call the captain? At 2:00 A.M. that would be bold. Just wait and see what happened?

  He looked up as the door to the room burst open and three men with weapons surged into the room. He looked at the ugly snouts of the three submachine guns pointed at him and slowly raised his hands. He pointed to the Chinese soldier. Without a sound, one of the men eased up to the Chinese and hit him on the head with the side of his machine gun. Then the man grabbed the rifle as the Chinese slumped unconscious.

  “Do you speak English?” Jefferson asked.

  * * *

  On the bridge, Murdock heard a message in his earpiece.

  “Cap, we’ve got real troubles down here in the engine room. We’re in the first section, but the next section seems to be the important one. The Chicoms must have seen us coming. They have the door locked down and five or six of them have firing positions inside all aimed at the door. You better get down here and see what the fuck we can do.”

  18

  Captain Prestwick found his shoes and led Murdock and Bradford down to the engine room. They met no Chinese on the walk.

  “How many Chinese onboard?” Murdock asked.

  “About thirty. Most of them are sleeping in vacant rooms. I don’t even know which ones. The purser should know. I’ll call him and he will give me the room numbers.”

  At the engine compartment Murdock was surprised at the size of the place. In the far end was a closed off space where the controls and instruments were situated. Lam materialized from behind some huge pipes.

  “Skipper, not sure how to dig these guys out. The door is locked but we could go through it. Trouble is, I don’t know what a fire fight with live rounds might do to these tubes and pipes.”

  “Good thinking,” Captain Prestwick said. “I have a key to open the door, but what then?”

  “An EAR round,” Bradford said.

  “What if we get a bounce back here and it puts all of us down as well for four hours?” Murdock asked.

  “Yeah, the quarters are a bit close.”

  “Flash bang?” Lam asked.

  “Could do it,” Murdock said. “Three of them. I have one.”

  They found three, the captain took out a master key and three men pulled flash-bang grenade pins and held down the arming handles.

  “Open the door only six inches,” Murdock said. “We pitch the flash bangs in to the middle of the area.” He nodded at the captain.

  “Unlock it and pull it open.”

  He did. The men threw in the grenades, felt one rifle round hit the metal door, then the captain pushed the door shut and latched it as the strobes went off inside and the six loud explosive sounds came though the walls.

  The moment the sounds died, Murdock jerked open the door and the SEALs charged into the room. There were no shots fired. The six Chinese were all on the floor moaning and holding their ears. All had their eyes shut. The SEALs bound them with riot cuffs and found the two crewmen in a locked side room. They came out, and the captain told them that they might get under way in a few hours. The men began to check controls and instruments.

  “Commander, you said there were some problems at engineering?” Captain Prestwick asked.

  “Yes, can you take us there?”

  Five minutes later they came to the engineering section where Fernandez watched a door.

  “In there, Skipper. Two of them, they saw me and holed up. That room important?”

  “If we want to run the ship,” Murdock said. “Captain, any ideas? A back door, flood the thing with teargas?”

  “No back door, no tear gas. It’s a small room. One of those flash bangs should do it.”

  Fernandez had one. The captain unlocked the door, Fernandez threw in the non-lethal grenade and two minutes later engineering was back in friendly hands.

  The captain smiled. “I think I own my ship again. No, those other Chinese with their submachine guns could still kill some of my passengers. Let’s wake up the purser and find out which rooms the Chinese are using.

  “The thirty men you mentioned, did that include the guards out front?”

  The captain shook his head. “No, thirty onboard. You’ve accounted for some already, four on the bridge, six in engineering, maybe three or four more. That should leave twelve or fourteen sleeping. We need to surprise them before they can get to their guns.”

  The purser was not pleased to be rousted out of bed at 0245, but when he saw the SEALs he became absolutely chipper and ecstatic.

  “Damn right I know where they are, the fourteen rooms they demanded. All in the crew quarters. I put them in the four to a room area. I call it our dormitory rooms. They have four of them side by side. I’ll show you exactly where they are.”

&nb
sp; Murdock called in reserves on the Motorola. He had eight men marching down the corridors to the crew deck. The purser opened the first door and four SEALs charged in, binding hands and feet on two Chinese before they knew what happened. One soldier put up a fight but was promptly knocked out with a slash of an MP5. They went to the end of the four rooms and opened that one.

  In the last of the four rooms there were only three men, and one was awake and got off a shot with a pistol. The round missed and Howie Anderson charged him and broke his arm taking the weapon away from him.

  “Little shit, I should break your neck,” Howie brayed. He was the closest to the fired round.

  Captain Prestwick couldn’t keep a delighted smile off his face. It was 0323 when the last Chinese was bound. All were walked to the Promenade deck and their ankles retied. They would be put off the ship as soon as it was ready to pull away. The ship’s engines fired up, and the crew alerted, bailing out of warm beds ready for action.

  The captain said it would take at least an hour to get the ship ready to move. There were no other large ships docked near the Queen of the Seas. The SEALs counted twenty-eight Chinese ready to be kicked off the ship.

  “The other two were the ones at the gangplank,” Lam said. “That makes the thirty we need. No stowaways.”

  By 0430, Captain Prestwick said they were ready. The SEALs cut the plastic cuffs on the Chinese men’s feet and led them down the gangplank. Once on the dock their feet were bound with another riot cuff and they were added to the tethered Chinese on the dock.

  Murdock was the last SEAL up the gangplank before it was released by the ship. It would be stowed on the dock later.

  Murdock hurried to the bridge. He wanted to see the captain maneuver the big ship out into the channel. At the same time, he called on Howie Anderson to bring up the SATCOM. Time to alert the fly boys that they might be needed. It wouldn’t take them long to get to Hong Kong, and if they were in the area it would be even better.

  “Queen here, CAG,” Murdock said on the SATCOM. “We’ve cast off our lines and are starting to maneuver into the bay. So far no Chinese other than those unconscious or tied up, know what’s going on. There could be an alarm sounded at any time. Quicker here the better.”