U.S.S. Seawolf

by Patrick Robinson

  Admiral Morgan himself had a signal from John Bergstrom in Coronado. And that was excellent news. Nothing elaborate, no details, just a coded Nighthawks roosting. Which meant that the SEAL reconnaissance team had been into Xiachuan Dao, done their business and were safely back in the Ronald Reagan. Arnold Morgan was hugely relieved.

  Jake Raeburn also had good news. His man in Canton had collected the laser marker and established it high on a building overlooking the submarine. If there were no hitches, he would switch it on at 1900 local time the next day, and the bomb would hit two hours later.

  This meant Nighthawk was GO. Lt. Commander Rick Hunter’s big SEAL team would hit the beach at Xiachuan Dao sometime before 2300. After that it was in the lap of the gods. But the SEALs had done it before, and the admiral believed they could do it again. Admiral Bergstrom was confident. In Colonel Frank Hart they had the best possible overall commander. The only question was how close inshore the submarine commanding officers could go before they had to surface.

  Arnold Morgan was counting on the fact that the massive diversion in Canton Harbor would cause such a commotion that there would not be a warship anywhere around the prison island with the slightest inclination to be looking for American submarines. The crisis up the Pearl River would be all-consuming, and a whole lot worse than Three Mile Island.

  The three men continued to speculate in hushed tones as to the possible outcome of the mission. But shortly before 0100 the telephone rang, and this time the news was somewhere between suspect and bad.

  The call was for Admiral Morris. One of his operators studying satellite pictures had made a shrewd observation, that a fleet of Chinese Navy trucks had suddenly appeared out of nowhere in the town of Yangjiang on the mainland, some 45 miles northwest of the jail. The operator counted a total of 12 trucks, painted in dark blue naval livery. In addition, a large Russian-built troop transporter helicopter had just landed at Xiachuan.

  “I just wondered, sir, whether this might add up to a movement of the prisoners—you know, perhaps leaving the island and heading off to some inland jail. Neither the trucks nor the chopper was anywhere in sight four hours ago, and there’s a fairly good road between Yangjiang and Southern Fleet Headquarters at Zhanjiang.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant…very well observed. I’m grateful. Let me know if anything else catches your eye, will you?”

  “Who’s seen what, George? Lay it right on me,” rasped Admiral Morgan.

  “My guys think they might be getting ready to move the prisoners.”

  “WHAT? NOW?” thundered Arnold Morgan. “JESUS CHRIST! NOT NOW!”

  “Well, it’s two in the afternoon over there. I suppose it’s possible. But it is Sunday. I shouldn’t think they’d do much until Monday morning. And if they did, there wouldn’t be a damn thing we could do about it, except watch.”

  “But what have your guys seen?”

  “A convoy of twelve Navy trucks arrived in Yangjiang, which is just about the nearest major town to the island, about forty-five miles away to the northwest. And a big troop transporter helicopter just landed at Xiachuan…”

  “That’s not bad. That’s fucking terrible,” snapped the admiral.

  “Well, not if they don’t plan to hit the road until Monday morning. If that’s the case, we don’t care one way or the other.”

  “No, I suppose not. And anyway, there’s not much we can do about it—just zap the submarine and the dockyard, and let the prisoners go. Which will not please the Chief.”

  “No, I suppose not, Arnie. But even Linus Clarke cannot be worth a war with China, a war in which they might feel compelled to slam a West Coast city in retaliation.”

  1000 (local). Sunday. July 16.

  Admiral’s Briefing Room.

  USS Ronald Reagan.

  With four hours to go before departure back to the island, Lt. Commander Rusty Bennett was operating on pure adrenaline. Like his seven colleagues, he had slept most of the way from Xiachuan to the carrier, and he would try to sleep going back in this afternoon.

  However, right now he was in a maelstrom of activity. The weather forecast was perfect, more heavy rain before midnight, sweeping up from the southwest the way it had been for over three weeks. The senior SEAL officers were poring over the maps they had drawn of the jail, studying the precise distances from the new assault point on the beach, a half mile from the watchtowers. Rusty and Colonel Hart were noting the heights and times on distance and assessing the Chinese guard strength. Rusty could tell that the colonel was on the edge of his nerves as he paced the room, anxiety written all over his face.

  Lt. Commander Rick Hunter sat silently with blowups of the maps, measuring distances with a steel ruler, hitting the STOP-START buttons of his stopwatch, counting out the seconds, trying to imagine in his mind the time it would take his men to cross the outer track and scale the wall, dragging the black padded ladders behind them.

  Over and over he checked the patrol times, writing in his notebook the precise whereabouts of the guards when his boys would bolt across the rough ground to the wall. He counted out the seconds it would take for the guys to take out the four tower guards and then get the ladders back to the ground, ready for the second assault wave on the jail wall. This would be made by the men who must remove the patrolling guard inside the wall without being heard by the patrol outside the wall. He and Frank Hart had long decided that the three, silent killers required for this move would be the SAS men from Bradbury Lines in England, Sergeant Fred Jones and his corporal, Syd Thomas, plus the ex-paratrooper Charlie Murphy.

  At this point, all three commanders knew they must be prepared to “go noisy.” But Rick Hunter and Frank Hart were desperately trying to buy a few more minutes to blow up the guardroom, before the patrol boat, choppers and comm room were taken out simultaneously.

  “I don’t think we can expect them to wipe out the guard patrol and then get across the yard without being spotted by anyone, and then hit the guardroom.” That was the colonel’s assessment. Rick thought it might be possible, but agreed it was unlikely. “Better to get three more guys up and over while we hold the watchtowers and slam the guardhouse right on time…exactly when the others explode.”

  Both men knew the problem. There just might be a telephone or even a radio in the guard house. If the three SAS men were seen by anyone, the alarm would be raised and the Chinese just might get a signal away before the rest of the communications went out. Three extra men inside the jail could dictate the life span of any guard house communications. “And that way,” said Rick, “the SAS guys can concentrate on opening the main gate, either with explosive or peacefully, depending on the opposition.”

  “Okay,” said Rusty. “That means we leave the ladders in place after the guys clear the wall. How many seconds do we have before the patrol rounds the corner and sees them?”

  Rick studied his notebook. “Thirty…max. Look, the guard is right here when the SAS guys go in. It takes ’em forty-seven seconds to walk down this side before they get to the corner. I’ve got seventeen seconds from the bottom of the wall…they’re taking grapplers, right? For the fifteen-foot drop over the other side.…Okay, make sure the next three guys with the satchel bombs know exactly where the grapplers will be. If they’re quick, they can kick the ladders over flat when they reach the top of the wall. They have about thirteen seconds before the outside guards have any view at all…”

  And so it went on, into the third and fourth hours, the detailed notes, the fractional times, the assessments, the risk element, the need for sudden noisy brutality, the contingency plans: “What if these guys are spotted…what’s our number one priority if someone blows the whistle before we’re quite ready…THE COMMS, always the comms. Hit that and they cannot get reinforcements. Fail to hit that, and we’re all dead.”

  On an intellectual level, the colonel had a serious problem with the limpet mines on the patrol ship, which would need to be fixed with a timed detonation of, perhaps, 60 minutes whil
e the SEALs put everything else in place. Which made that timing device in the water under the ship extremely important.

  “Too important,” said the colonel. “The timing of the entire mission is dependent on a limpet mine. Because when that blows, we have to go noisy. And that means everything else we do is absolutely dictated by the moment the limpets will blow. I’m unhappy with that. But I’m even more unhappy with the sequence if something goes wrong.”

  “How do you mean, sir?”

  “Okay…we all realize there may be a point when some Chinese guard blows the whistle, perhaps twelve minutes before we’re quite ready. Let’s say he yells, at which point we go automatically…the guys with the bombs outside the comms room hurl ’em in, someone blows the choppers, we hand-grenade the towers, blow the gates and fight our way in, firing at will, making the absolute maximum of our surprise element.

  “BUT, down on the jetty there’s a patrol boat with a fully active radio system. Inside the boat there may be a trained operator, plus a couple of guards. They hit the military airwaves and announce that the jail is under severe attack. Because right now it’s going to sound like World War Three…the boat has of course only ten minutes to live, but that ten minutes could be enough, and I don’t like it. Because if they get a signal away, you guys are dead.”

  “Hmmmmm,” said Rick Hunter. “I don’t like it either.”

  “Well, it’s easily solved.”

  “It is?”

  “Sure. Let’s not use limpet mines at all. We’ll put two guys behind the jetty with antitank weapons, those very light, hand-held launchers…either when they hear the first bang or on your radio command, they slam a couple of those babies straight into the ship fore and aft, and no one’s making any phone calls.”

  “Beautiful. That’s a great call, sir. Same with the choppers?”

  “Definitely. We don’t want any fixed time detonations. Because in the end they could turn out to be a real PITA.”

  “A what?”

  “PITA. Pain in the Ass.”

  Lt. Commander Hunter shook his head. There really was something about Frank Hart, super brain, always on top of the situation, always with time enough for the wry quip. Bergstrom said his appointment had come direct from the White House.

  He was honest, too. “Rick,” said the colonel, “I like the euphemism PITA so much, I would like to claim it as an original, complete with copyright and exclusive usage clause. But I cannot do so.”

  “Why not?”

  “Admiral Morgan invented it, and he likes it more than I do. But I’m still using it.”

  Down below, the SEALs were preparing to go, checking their weapons, cleaning and lightly oiling their guns, adjusting their camouflage. Some were already blacking their faces and hands, tightening their belts, standing alone, practicing their readiness to attack. You could have cut the tension in those rooms with a kaybar fighting knife. Petty officers walked among them, encouraging, warning, urging them to be alert at all times, remembering always the creed of caution, of silence, forbidding the wearing of any jewelry, checking pockets for loose change that might rattle and cost someone his life.

  Almost no one spoke now, as the final minutes ticked by, save for a master chief who was murmuring quietly, “You have been trained for many years to undertake such a mission. No one in the history of military conflict has ever been better trained…if you stay sharp, you guys are invincible…just remember everything you have been taught about care and attention to detail…take no chances unless you have to…and if you have to kill, do it hard, quick and silent, because if you don’t kill him, he’ll sure as hell kill you. I have complete faith in every one of you…and I want you back, every one of you. Don’t let me down, guys. Now go get ’em.”

  The master chief slapped a few of them on the upper arm as he walked out, and a buzzer went off three times. Slowly the SEALs followed him out to the companionway leading to the flight deck, where the big choppers would roar them out over the water to the waiting submarines.

  Colonel Hart and Lieutenant Commander Hunter remained in conference until the last minute. Through the high windows they could see two nuclear attack submarines, USS Greenville and USS Cheyenne, waiting a mile off the carrier’s port beam, with the helicopters hovering intermittently above them, the SEALs hot-roping down onto the deck. He could not see the third submarine, USS Hartford, another 7,000-ton Los Angeles-class nuclear boat, which was cruising with a minimum crew at periscope depth a half mile farther to the west, and would be utilized almost entirely as a rescue and hospital ship for the crew of Seawolf.

  Finally it was time for Lieutenant Commanders Hunter and Bennett to leave, and they shook hands with Colonel Hart before striding out to the elevators, down to the flight deck and on out to the submarines for the next leg of the journey to the prison on Xiachuan.

  1400. Sunday. July 16.

  South China Sea. 190 miles offshore.

  Both submarine commanding officers planned to dive and join Hartford below the surface as soon as the SEALs were safe aboard for the six-hour journey inshore. Greenville went first, diving down to 400 feet and then making flank speed on bearing three-six-zero, heading due north to the island in 200 fathoms of water. Cheyenne followed, at the same course and same speed, about 1,000 yards astern, using a low-power active sonar pulse to keep station. If necessary they could communicate on the underwater telephone, but only in a case of extreme emergency.

  The SEALs who had seen the jail were divided into two groups of four, Rusty Bennett, Dan Conway, Buster Townsend and John in Greenville, Paul Merloni, Rattlesnake Davies, Chief McCarthy and Bill in Cheyenne. Hopes of sleep declined rapidly. In each ship there were 28 other SEALs whose curiosity was getting the better of them with every passing mile.

  The maps and charts were excellent to study, but the opportunity to speak to colleagues who had actually been in the place was overwhelming. And the issues they all wanted to discuss were (a) the number of guards, (b) was the jail nearly impregnable, short of blowing it up? and (c) did they have a real chance of success?

  The veterans were accurately optimistic. So far as anyone could tell, the Chinese had no idea there was any danger. The guard was moderate but not scarily large, and all of the men who had been in there thought success was nearly certain, as long as they could smash up the communications system thoroughly.

  And all the way in, both Lieutenant Commander Bennett and the vastly experienced Chief McCarthy went over and over the lesson: If we hit the comms hard and fast, we’re golden. If we fail to do so, we have a very good chance of dying. None of the SEALs liked the latter option at all.

  1800. Sunday, July 16.

  Liuersan Street

  . Canton.

  Quinlei Dong carried his toolbox out to the car and stowed it in the trunk. In his hand he carried a square white box that contained a brand-new electrical switch. He started the engine and turned along the old familiar way to the People’s Bridge, and then took the road to the dockyard. It was a bright warm evening, the sun still high, as the master electrician pulled up to the gate.

  The guard walked up to him, a different man from yesterday. “Hello, sir. Where are you headed?”

  “Same place as yesterday and all last week, the ops room in B Block, where the electrics are still in chaos.”

  “Why are you here on a Sunday?”

  “Mainly because, on pain of death, I have to have the system up and running by tomorrow morning at 9:00 A.M. sharp…orders of the commandant…you think I like being here?”

  The guard smiled. “Do the guards at Block B know you’re coming?”

  “They do. I told them all yesterday. Here, you see this switch…this is the new part. I was just about ready to have the whole yard dug up to find the fault when I noticed the old switch had burned right at the back. Now I have to put this little devil in place. Thirty minutes and I’m out of here. Come and help me if you like—I need an assistant.”

  The guard laughed, checked the win
dshield sticker and said, “Okay, Mr. Quinlei…see you a bit later.”

  Dong drove on slowly through the empty yard, empty, that is, except for the waterfront, where there was the usual army of personnel surrounding the American submarine. He parked his car in his usual spot, way along the back street, much nearer the derelict stores building than the ops room where he was working.

  He walked back briskly to where there was one single guard at the bottom of the B Block stairs. The two men greeted each other cordially, recognizing each other from the previous day’s meeting.

  “Got the new switch, heh?”

  “Right here. I’ll be about a half hour.”

  “Okay.”