U.S.S. Seawolf

by Patrick Robinson

  The SEALs were too far away for recognition of Seawolf’s officers, but there were now no lingering doubts that this was indeed the crew of the American submarine. Almost everyone was still in uniform, U.S. Navy trousers and shirts. But even from the hillside it was obvious that some of them had been badly treated. Three or four of the men were being supported by crewmates, among them the captain, who had been brutally beaten up in the interrogation center.

  Brad Stockton was still on his feet, with the assistance of Shawn Pearson and Andy Warren. Big Tony Fontana, by some miracle, had refrained from getting into more trouble and appeared uninjured.

  The SEALs were not of course to know that Lt. Commander Cy Rothstein had died in the torture chamber of a brain hemorrhage, sustained when the little guard lieutenant had hit him one time too often with the butt of a rifle. After two days of sustained, unmerciful punishment, Einstein had told them nothing.

  And the incident confirmed one obvious fact. The prisoners were never going to leave China to talk about their experiences. Not if Admiral Zhang had his way. Even he, the master of a massive but remote naval kingdom in the east, knew that world human rights courts these days had teeth, whoever you might be. The shocking specter of the massacre in Tiananmen Square still haunted China’s rulers, 17 years later. And it would almost certainly go on doing so.

  The SEALs watched from on high as a new figure emerged: Commander Li strode out in his high boots from the little house with the aerials. The gates were already opened, and he marched forward, plainly to address the prisoners. Rusty and his men could not hear what he said, but it sounded angry. A few minutes later Li turned on his heel and exited the jail.

  “You want me to shoot the little prick right now, sir?” asked Lieutenant Merloni.

  “Perfect idea, Paul,” replied Rusty. “Which do you prefer, sudden death from a Chinese fighter plane, or court-martial when we get home? If we get home.”

  “I’ll take the court-martial, sir. But not by much.”

  And now they could all see the guards moving forward. There were 30 of them now, and they were separating some men from the lines and marching them forward toward the other big house inside the jail walls, right opposite the guard room. That was the one building they really could not see from the hillside, but Rusty hoped to get a closer look sometime in the afternoon or early evening.

  By 1015, Rusty judged it time to move. “We have seen no sign they are patrolling anywhere beyond the immediate outside wall of the jail,” he said. “No guard has made one move into the forest…which is good, because we have a lot of work to do.…Dan and my team will make our way back into the trees and then head on down to the beach, check out the details of the patrol boat and its jetty. Then we’ll stay within a half mile of the jail and look for a landing site for the main group.

  “I can’t see what the undergrowth is like, but we may have to clear some kind of a path for the guys to come through…remember, it will be pitch dark when they get here, and we want to get a landmark clearly positioned, and on the computer with full GPS numbers.

  “You’ll see from this diagram I’ve made right here…Colonel Hart has given us his suggestion for a spot…really, we just gotta check out that it’s safe, and if not, locate another one…just so you guys know where we’re working.

  “Tonight we’ll go and have a look at the water, right after dark. We don’t want to guide the inflatables onto a pile of rocks. Meanwhile, Paul, I want you take Chief McCarthy and try to get some accurate measurements of the jail size, and distances between points. Try to get an accurate fix on the height of the walls, the gate and the towers. And try to find out how they lock the fucking door, since we need to blow the sonofabitch off its hinges tomorrow…I still think we’ll go with det-cord.…

  “Rattlesnake and John, stay up here and keep watching…recording all movements down below. I noticed through the glasses the Chinese have obviously been trying to clear some areas of vegetation, but they haven’t done much of a job…and luckily there’s a lot of very good cover, very close to the jail wall in several spots. Mark them on the laptop. So Dan and the chief should be able to get in close…but not too close, for Christ’s sake. We’ll meet back here and compare notes at, say, fifteen hundred.”

  “Okay, sir, we’ll get moving now.”

  The SEALs split up, six of them heading back up the hill into the trees, making a circular route to their allotted operational areas. All the routine tasks with which they were charged were achieved in silence and stealth. The area for the assault chosen by Colonel Hart was perfect. Rusty and Buster planted a rock in front of the trees where the big team would enter the forest. Behind there, in deep shadow, they cut a clearing for the boys to gather tomorrow night and sort out their positions.

  Two hundred yards away Bill lay on the bank of a stream that flowed past the jail to the north and watched for interruptions. If anyone approached either him or the beach, he would duck back into the trees and make contact with Dan Conway, who would race to alert Rusty and Buster to keep the noise level way down.

  But not one of the Chinese guards ventured anywhere beyond the jail compound, except to patrol the outside wall. It was, as Lt. Commander Bennett had said earlier, beyond their imagination that the Americans would actually attack their own jail, on their own remote island, right offshore, surrounded by thousands of miles of the South China Sea, plus half of the Chinese Navy, just a few miles from the city of Canton.

  By the time they regrouped in the hide they had a ton of information. The patrol boat had gone out shortly after 1000 and stayed out until 1400. There was a long stone jetty where it moored alongside, 600 yards precisely from the assault point. They’d send a couple of SEALs over the side of the incoming Zodiacs and have them stick a couple of limpet mines on the hull, timed to detonate precisely when the choppers went up and the comms room did an imitation of Hiroshima.

  By then, thought Rusty, we’ll hopefully be up and in the compound, and the outside patrol should be dead. The rest, he decided, might be a bit more problematical. And he did not like Chief McCarthy’s report on the watchtower situation. Not one bit.

  John McCarthy was a very experienced mountaineer and he could throw a long grappling iron like Peyton Manning going for the end zone. But he was plainly worried about this attack.

  “The walls are fifteen feet high, made mostly of smooth concrete, but with a flat wooden frame right to the top, like beams in an old house. I can hit the top beam with a grappling iron and climb up the knotted rope inside one minute. But we do not have long. I think we’ll have to take out the outside guards first, which is not good. I would have preferred to have four climbers on top of the wall, unseen, and then climb the ladder to the tower top.

  “Quite frankly, I cannot imagine our four men all getting to the top without being seen by the tower watchmen. Then we’d have to shoot them, and that would make noise, ten minutes before we want anyone to know we’re there. In my view, we desperately need those ten minutes, and the only way I can see to nail the tower guards in silence is if it rains. And I’m recommending we wait until it does.”

  Rusty did not like it, but he understood. “The noise?” he asked, knowing the answer.

  “Yessir. When we had that very hard rain shower around thirteen hundred today, I was lying in the undergrowth right below the northwest tower. I was about thirty feet away, across the path watching the guards. As soon as it rained, they both pulled on a kind of plastic cape, hooded. The rain was blowing right in, and it must have affected their hearing.

  “Sir, if we attack in heavy rain, I believe we could all get up there and take the guards out, then we could operate the lights for a few minutes, just enough time for the guys to swarm up the walls, take out the four duty foot guards from the top, while another couple of our guys eliminate the guard room. At that moment we blow all forms of Chinese communication.

  “But if we are caught on the way up the watchtowers we’ve had it, we’ll have to open fire…and t
here’s comms in the watchtower, I could see the electrics. As soon as we pull a trigger, all hell will break out, and they’ll have time to regroup, get going with a couple of machine guns and mow our guys down on top of the wall. Plus they’ll have that few minutes to alert Canton they’re being attacked…then it’s over. We’ll never get out.”

  Lt. Commander Bennett was thoughtful. “I guess this entire operation depends on taking those watchtowers quietly.”

  “Correct. And we can’t use grapplers to get up the last bit, we’d probably hit one of the guards in the back of the head.”

  “Do you have a recommendation, Chief?”

  “Yessir. I think we should get four guys up there early. And I think we should use ladders. They’re quieter, and faster. The wall’s a consistent fifteen feet high, so we want four fifteen-footers, nothing bigger so it doesn’t jut above the parapet. There’s a four-foot strip right along the rear of the cell block flat roof. It’s in perpetual pitch dark, literally under the towers. The guards can’t see anything there. The boys can pull the ladders to the roof and then make a synchronized attack, straight up the sides of the towers, exactly where no one would dream of looking.”

  “Aluminum ladders rattle a bit,” said Rusty, somewhat wryly.

  “Not if they’re ultralight and bound in thick black cloth. Those guards aren’t sharp. They’re just up there, bored to death, trying to stay dry. Wouldn’t be surprised if one of ’em was asleep while the other guy worked the light. If we can wait for rain, sir, I have a high level of confidence in this. We’ll make it.”

  “I’m not sure we have much choice…and I agree with what you say. We have to take the watchtowers, and we have to take ’em quietly.”

  “The thing is, sir, if we can get those towers without anyone knowing, the guys can take out the patrol in the courtyard and then hit the guard room. The moment that explosion is heard, we slam the boat, the choppers and the comm room. With any luck, they may never get a signal away.”

  “Now that would be fantastic, because it would give us another hour to evacuate the place in peace.”

  “Not sure I’d go that far,” said the chief. “This thing’s likely to resemble a major war, at least for fifteen minutes.”

  “Right. And now we have just two priorities left—the big building opposite the choppers…we don’t know much about that, and we have to find out whether the patrol boat goes out in the evening…we know it goes in the early hours…meanwhile we have to keep watching that big building, and we should get down there when it’s dark. Luckily it is the farthest point from the main Chinese patrol.”

  And so, as darkness fell over the prison, the SEALs once more moved into the trees and made a circuitous route to both the complex and the jetty. It was raining again, which made their tasks less hazardous but no pleasure. Rusty, Rattlesnake and Buster found a position at the back of the building and quickly worked out that it was a dormitory for the guards. Rusty did not much like the idea of killing men sleeping in their beds, but if he left them they’d rush out and start killing Americans. As usual, on SEAL missions, there was no alternative to the harshest possible course of action. Anything less, you’re likely to end up dead yourself.

  They had a while to ponder the situation, keeping the stopwatch on the guards, checking the watch change at 2000. Outside the dormitory there was just one guard, and he was relieved every two hours, the door being mostly open with men obviously sitting around on their off-duty evenings.

  And then, at exactly nine minutes after nine, one of those million-to-one chances actually happened. The single guard suddenly began to walk right toward the precise piece of ground where the three SEALs were lurking. They all saw him coming. The distance was only 40 yards, and in the light from the building, they saw that his rifle was slung over his shoulder, and his right hand was unzipping his fly. The guy was just coming over for a pee in the undergrowth.

  The SEALs froze and the guard kept walking, straight at Rusty, who flattened himself into the ground facedown. The other two were four feet on either side of him, and there was no escape. They could not run, they could not slink back into the woods because they would be seen, and they certainly could not shoot him. The noise, would cause an uproar. Even stunning him or throttling him was no good because he would be missed.

  “Holy shit!” whispered Rusty. “He’s gonna walk right over us.” And he was perfectly correct. The guard, ready now to take aim into the bushes, actually stood on Rusty’s right leg. He probably thought it was a body, but Rusty did not move. The guard turned, startled, as if to call out, but he never made it. Rattlesnake was on him, cleaving a four-inch slit right across his throat, severing his windpipe, his jugular and his vocal cords with one devastating movement. The guard was dying before he hit the ground, but the one thing he could not do was call out. And now the SEALs had a major problem.

  Lt. Commander Bennett instantly took over. “Quick, one of you on each arm and drag him back into the woods. And for Christ’s sake don’t get covered in blood…steady, guys…keep going…get him well clear…”

  Forty yards later they stopped. “Hold it,” said Rusty. “Look, the biggest danger right now is that trail of blood…we have to get rid of it. Buster, get back up the hill and come back with a machete, pruning shears and the two trenching shovels, and one of those rubberized ground sheets.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  It took him nine minutes and he slipped back through the trees so silently that no one picked him up until he was back, standing next to Rattlesnake. “Jesus, Buster. Where the hell did you come from?”

  “Just practicing.”

  “Okay, guys…we can’t clean, this scrubland like a carpet, so we’ll obscure the blood instead. Cut some of that palm tree stuff with the shears and we’ll put it all over the grassy area where it happened. Right here it’s not so bad, just earth. They won’t know what’s happened to him and I doubt they’ll search before the morning. Meanwhile we’ll drag him down toward the beach and bury him deep. When we get there we’ll get his boots off and his cap and rifle and place it somewhere where it’ll be found…with a bit of luck they’ll just think he went for a swim and drowned, or deserted.”

  What had seemed like a quiet night had turned into a very dangerous situation, and they were all tired when they finished digging the grave and then walked the six miles back to the original rendezvous point. But it was midnight now and the eight SEALs had to go. They handed over the computer with its notes and diagrams to Lt. Commander Davidson, and told the holding team that with any luck they’d be back around 2300 at the assault beach as planned.

  Commander Davidson and his men had had a dull watch, never seeing anyone, but they did spot the patrol boat about a mile offshore around 2100. According to the combined data on the satellite and their laptop, it was due to go out again at 0100 until 0500. This was a good moment to set up the satellite dish and send the report back to Colonel Hart.

  Olaf and Catfish walked down to the water with Rusty and his men as soon as they had changed into their wet suits. They carried big palm fronds to cover up the footprints in the sand, and they shook hands on the dark soundless beach. It was still raining slightly as they moved into the water, carrying the attack boards, breathing through the Draegers, and there was still no sound as they glided into deeper water heading out to the ASDV that awaited them, issuing its friendly little sonar bleep every 30 seconds.

  0939 (local). Sunday, July 15.

  Office of Southern Fleet Commander.

  Zhanjiang.

  Admiral Zhang was thoughtful. He and Admiral Zu were looking at the daily report from Commander Li. It was mostly routine, mentioning any critical information they had been able to glean from the prisoners, and data on the general running of a temporary military facility. Costs, requirements, arrivals, and departures.

  However, at the bottom of the report, which came in on the fax at 0900, there was a final paragraph which ought not, really, to have exercised anyone unduly. It
stated, “One of the Navy guards at the dormitory has gone missing. He did not report for duty at 0200, and his bed had not been slept in. At first light we conducted a thorough search, and unhappily discovered his boots, socks, trousers, cap and rifle on the beach. However, there was no sign of him, and we have therefore concluded he went for a swim, late at night because of the heat, and either drowned, or deserted. We have alerted police at Shangchuan Dao to watch for a body along the western shore of the island, since that is where the tide would undoubtedly carry him.”

  Admiral Zu had read the entire report carefully, especially making notes regarding costs and requirements. Only as an afterthought did he remark, “They lost a guard last night. Apparently drowned or deserted. Found his clothes on the beach.”

  Admiral Zhang held out his hand. “May I see?”

  “Of course, last paragraph.”

  “Hmmm. That’s rather worrying. Because the man could have been an American agent, working against us. Somehow getting information on the prisoners back to the CIA.”