U.S.S. Seawolf

gonna be sixty-four guys, and the quicker they deploy and get into position the better. I don’t want the boats more than a half mile away when they land — but we have to watch that fucking Chinese patrol boat, see what time it goes out and comes back all day today.

“Also, we have to select a pickup point…remember, these guys in the jail may be very weak…and there’s over a hundred of them, if no one’s been killed. It’s a huge task to get ’em down to the shore and on board the inflatables. I know the colonel and Rick want it done as secretly as possible, but I just have a feeling we’ll need to kill a goddamned lot of Chinamen to pull this one off. Anyway, we need to choose two Sites, one for the assault and one for the getaway, with detailed notes…”

At 0830 the main gates opened again, and through them walked three uniformed Chinese servicemen. Two of them wore caps and carried documents; the third of them wore just uniform shorts and an open-necked white shirt with epaulets. He was taller than the other two, with sandy-colored hair, almost unheard of among Chinese nationals. It was easy to see that he looked different, but from where Rusty stood it was impossible to identify Linus Clarke.

Since he had cringed in terror from the towel, he had been isolated from the rest of his crewmates, and flown up to Canton each day to assist the Chinese technicians in their efforts to copy Seawolf. So far as Linus could see, it was that or death, and every man, he reasoned, had a right to save his own life, by whatever means.

And now he took off again on this bright Saturday morning, flying overland, back to the billion-dollar submarine he had singlehandedly been responsible for losing, failing to accept the advice of either the Officer of the Deck, Lt. Andy Warren, nor indeed that of the vastly experienced Master Chief Brad Stockton. In his mind, Linus could still hear Brad’s voice that night: “You want me to let the Co know we’re groping around the ass of a 6,000-ton Chinese destroyer…I think he should know…Sir, we don’t know how long that towed array is…that towed array is…that towed array…”

The words echoed in his mind. They were the last words he heard before he slept, the first he heard upon waking. Sometimes he heard them in his sleep. They were words with which he must live for the rest of his life, however long that might be.

And he stared down at the hillside below, as the Helix Type-A clattered over the island, right above the “Hide” that contained the Navy SEALs who were attempting to rescue him.

A half hour later a new helicopter came in, making its approach from the northeast. Rusty watched it flying dead toward him and then at the last minute saw it swerve right over the jail and drop down over the cleared area from where the Helix had just departed. He watched four men disembark, two of them walking straight to the jail doors, which were immediately opened, the other two heading for the little house with the radio aerials. Both men carried metal toolboxes. Rusty guessed, both correctly and happily, that there was some kind of problem in the comm room.

“That little house is the biggest problem we have,” he pondered. “If we are seconds late taking it out, they will have a signal away that the jail is under attack, and that will be it. We’ll come under attack from the air and sea, and we may not get out alive.” And he emphasized his words into the computer.

“WE MUST HIT THE COMM HOUSE BEFORE WE DO ANYTHING — THAT’S OUR NUMBER ONE TARGET. WE MUST STOP THEM TRANSMITTING A MESSAGE NO MATTER WHAT.”

He checked the words out, and Lieutenant Conway, leaning on the rocks next to him, staring through the binoculars, added something else. “I’ll tell you some thing, sir. We have two other targets just as important. Maybe three.”

“We have?”

“The helicopters have radios.…I know they will not have anyone aboard…but if one of these Chinese officers is smart, and still alive when we blow the comm house, he’ll rush to one of those choppers and fire up the radio. Likewise the patrol boat…that’ll have satellite comms on board, as you know. There’s bound to be someone on it, and we can’t take the chance some smartass isn’t going to get on the horn to the Canton base.”

“You gottit, Dan,” said Rusty thoughtfully. “Sometimes things that are staring you in the face need saying, to clarify a task…and you, baby, just said ’em. And I’m going to note them down right now.”

“Remember one other thing, sir.”

“What’s that, kid?”

“If you hadn’t pointed up the main issue, that we have to kill the comms, I’d never have either thought of it, or said it.”

“That’s generous of you, Dan,” said Rusty, plainly admiring a young man who didn’t need personal credit for things, only the satisfaction of getting them right.

Rusty Bennett was a keen amateur military psychologist. Not as good as Colonel Frank Hart, but he was good, and everyone knew both he and Rick Hunter were being made commanders as soon as this mission was over. If they could get it over.

At 0900 Dan Conway reported high activity in the jail. Prisoners were being marched out of the main cell block and lined up in rows of 12 in the courtyard. Other prisoners were being escorted out from the two side buildings at either end of the block. But these men were brought out individually. Rusty Bennett judged that the main block contained communal cells, and that the side buildings were places to isolate individuals, probably men under interrogation.

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…