Five minutes later they had found refuge hiding in the trees and darkness in Tung Lo Wan Garden. All around them on the street, police cars raced by in all directions, and several cars full of young tough-looking men passed by, often slowing to shine flashlights in the park.
All the men lay flat in the grass, though Petty Officer Jim Shipley kept half of his body over Zha Shu Hai to keep him still and quiet.
Chavez called Biery and was pleasantly surprised to learn that the IT director had managed to pass his first challenge in the field. He’d argued his way past a police barrier to get “his” minivan out of the parking lot, and Ding directed him to their position.
CPO Michael Meyer checked on his wounded men and then crawled over to the three new guys in his group. He did not know who these men were, really. The short Hispanic guy was oldest, he was doing all the talking; the tall younger American kept a sweat-soaked paper mask over his face; and the Asian guy looked both worn-out and freaked-out.
Meyer motioned to Yao. “We saw you behind the target location. I had Poteet bag you. Didn’t know you were OGA. Sorry about that.”
Yao shook his head. “No problem.”
“Wish we could have hooked up with you from the beginning, but we were told you guys have a massive breach over here, so there would be no coordination.”
Yao said, “Can’t argue with the thinking on that. There is a breach, but it’s not out of Hong Kong. Trust me, no one knows where I am or what I’m doing right now.”
Meyer raised an eyebrow behind his ballistic eye protection. “Okay.”
Chavez asked, “Who are you guys?”
“DEVGRU.”
Chavez knew that U.S. Special Warfare Development Group, or DEVGRU, was the organization formerly known as SEAL Team Six. He wasn’t surprised to learn this element was pulled from one of America’s most elite special-mission units. Hell, even with all the damage they’d taken, they’d probably wasted twenty enemy in the past twenty minutes and were on the way to completing their mission objective, though Ding had been around enough to know that Meyer would remember this event only as the mission where he lost a man.
The Navy team leader reloaded his HK. “With all our injuries and all the helos in the air, our exfil is going to be a bitch. You boys know the area better than we do. You got any bright ideas about extricating ourselves from this bullshit?”
Now Chavez leaned over. “I’ve got a guy on the way in a minivan. If we squeeze we can fit everyone. Where is your rally point for the exfil?”
The SEAL said, “North Point Ferry Pier. A couple klicks from here. We’ve got RIBs coming to pick us up.”
Chavez realized these guys must have come into the harbor via boat or submarine, and then had their guy already on the shore pick them up in the van, while their other two colleagues kept their eyes on Zha. It was a pretty quick and dirty op for a busy city like Hong Kong, but Ding knew the DoD was desperate to stop the cyberthreat that was plaguing their network.
Meyer turned to Chavez. “I pulled my two guys out of the bar because I wanted to do the takedown with seven operators, and one man behind the wheel. They said there were four or five armed guards and that was it.”
Ding said, “There
“Shit,” Meyer said. “We should have known.”
Chavez shook his head. “Murphy’s Law.”
Meyer nodded. “Gets you every time.”
Just then the headlights of a vehicle entered the road that ran through the little park. The vehicle slowed down to a crawl but continued closer.
Ding called to Gavin, “Where are you?”
“I’m heading east. I… I am really turned around. I don’t know where the hell I am.”
“Stop right where you are.”
The vehicle on the road stopped.
“Flash your lights.”
The lights flashed.
“Good. We’ve got you. Pull up about two hundred yards on the double, then scoot into the back. Make room, we’ve got to fit a dozen bodies in there.”
“A
Chavez was behind the wheel now and heading northeast, following Yao’s instructions from the front passenger seat. In the back, nine living men and one body were pressed together like cordwood. The men grunted and groaned with each jolting bump in the road, and every turn pressed air from the lungs of the men at the bottom. SO Lipinski, the ST6 medic, valiantly fought to check bandages on any wound he could access with his one free hand in the scrum. The rest of the wounds just had to remain unattended.
Ding kept his speed down and his lane-switching to a minimum, but at a red light on Gloucester Road a 14K spotter walked into the street and looked right at him. The man pulled a mobile phone out of his pocket and brought it to his ear.
Chavez looked straight ahead. He said, “Damn. This isn’t over yet.”
As the light turned green he accelerated forward, doing his best to not just haul ass, hoping against hope that the spotter would make the decision that the maroon minivan was not, in fact, full of armed
But his hopes were in vain.
As they moved east through the rain on a side street running parallel to King’s Road, a small two-door car rolled into the intersection with its headlights off. Chavez was forced to swerve to avoid being sideswiped.
As the car drove alongside Chavez’s side of the minivan, a man rose out of the passenger-side window, sat on the door, and then swung an AK-47 rifle over the roof of the car, pointing it toward Chavez.
Ding drew the Beretta pistol in his waistband and fired through his window, across his body, while he held the wheel with his left hand.
Several AK rounds tore into the minivan before Chavez struck the driver of the two-door with a bullet into the side of the neck. The car swerved violently and slammed into the wall of an office building.
“Who’s hit? Who’s hit?” Chavez yelled, certain that, with this many men in this small vehicle, multiple men would have been struck by the powerful 7.62-millimeter rounds.
Everyone checked in, the wounded men proclaimed they were in no more pain than before, and even FastByte22 answered Adam that he was okay when he asked him if he’d been shot.
It was a small miracle that the four rounds that hit the side of the minivan struck the dead special warfare operator pressed against the wall of the vehicle.
Chavez raced to the east faster than before, but still he was careful to not draw any more attention than was necessary.
After consulting with Adam Yao about the best place to be picked up by boat that was far enough away from the site of the hit, Meyer struggled to get his radio mic to his mouth under the crushing weight of the other bodies on top of him. Finally he established comms with his extraction and told them they would do the pickup several miles to the east in Chai Wan.
Chavez made it to the location just after three a.m., found a secluded rocky beach, and everyone struggled to get out of the tight minivan.
Here, behind the cover of high boulders, Lipinski, the element’s medic, rebandaged all the wounded men. Both Reynosa and Bannerman had lost a lot of blood, but they were stable for now.
While they waited for the SEALs’ rigid inflatable boats to come for the pickup, Jack leaned over to Ding and spoke softly: “How about we hold on to FastByte’s little computer?”
Chavez just looked at him. “Way ahead of you, kid. We’ll give Gavin a crack at it and then find a way to get it
