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 Charlie. 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.
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
