by Sean Parnell
“Let’s go,” Steele said, “and thanks for the ride.” He saluted smartly from his eyebrow.
“Godspeed.” The captain returned the salute, handed Panther a microphone, and Panther barked an order to his men to gear up, and it boomed throughout the sub.
Five minutes later, the commandos were back in all their kit, stacked up in two lines running fore and aft from the control room, and the three large Zodiac carriers and the clumsy flamethrower had been maneuvered below the stern hatch. The klaxon sounded again, the compressors hissed and blew ballast, and the interior lights went dark, then flipped over to combat orange.
Steele gripped a vent pipe and looked up as the Sea Dragon breached the surface. It bounced and shuddered and settled, and then a sailor undogged the stern hatch, got soaked head to foot in seawater, and rocketed back down the ladder. Up above, Steele saw a circle of paling night sky. The stars were dimming. He looked at his Rolex watch, then at Panther and Jackson and said, “Tell the men they can leave their NVGs. This is gonna be hell in living color.”
Steele took the lead while behind him the men shouldered, pushed, and hauled the Zodiac cases up through the hatchway and onto the deck. The Sea Dragon was still making seven knots, the air was joint-cracking cold, and the waves curled over the gunwales and sloshed across the plates in slithering, slippery black pools. They laid the fat cases out line astern behind the conning tower, unzipped them and disgorged the contents, folded the cases up and tossed them back down the hatch to be used again—they were optimistic men, and young. Then they unfurled the boats and hooked up the battery-powered air pumps. The pumps hissed air into the rubber hulls, but the deck was pitching and rolling, and the men were so burdened with weapons and ammo that they fell and tumbled and scrambled upright again, like helpless children on some sort of Tilt-A-Whirl.
One of the commandos lost his footing, fell on his ass, and slid right over a gunwale. Hank Steele saw it, slammed himself prone on the deck, grabbed the man’s drag handle on the back of his load-bearing vest, and was almost pulled overboard with him, except two more of Panther’s men crashed onto Hank’s legs and hauled him and their comrade back onto the deck.
No one said a word. They just went right back to work.
Steele, Panther, and Jackson were each commanding a boat crew of seven. They helped the men slot in the tongue-and-groove floorboards, lock in the side rails, and assemble the small black aluminum oars. The flamethrower went into Panther’s last boat, each of the Zodiacs held two LAW rockets, and Steele and Jackson each had one of Ralphy’s Whipsaw pistols with a slung canvas case of shuriken blades.
They all had plenty of guns, grenades, and ammunition, but none were wearing body armor. If the Zodiacs flipped, the plates would drown them. And they hadn’t been issued luck. The only quartermaster for that piece of gear was God.
Steele stalked the rolling deck and ordered the commandos to straddle the Zodiac hulls, four on each side of each boat, weapons slung from their necks, balaclavas and helmets on, oars at the ready. Then he mounted the prow of the first boat, looked up to see the captain peering down at him from the conning tower, and shot him a thumbs-up. The captain waved and disappeared, the stern hatch clanged closed, the Sea Dragon hissed, and a mass of bursting air bubbles roiled the black waters on both flanks of the sub.
And all at once it was gone, with nothing but the periscope and snorkel gleaming above the waves, and then those disappeared as well.
Jackson’s Zodiac crawled up along Steele’s port side, then Panther’s appeared to starboard. Steele peered due north as his eyes adjusted to the nothingness left in the submarine’s wake, and there in the distance, at about three miles, the black hump of Uotsuri came into focus against a feather of pale pink sky. Steele nodded at Panther, then Jackson, and then looked to his left at the man across from him on his boat.
He saw the green eyes in the early light, nodded at his father, and they rowed.
Chapter 47
Senkaku Islands, East China Sea
“You will kill everyone on deck.”
Zaifeng stood on a slab of granite, gripping his Chinese bo as he issued his final briefing to the Swords of Qing. The slimmest sliver of pink was breaching the eastern horizon, but the island of Uotsuri and the sea were still dark, and the air was windless and cold.
He was dressed for combat, wearing his black tactical trousers, tunic, and boots, with a load-bearing vest packed with ammunition. A QBZ-95 bullpup rifle was slung across his chest and his QSZ-92 pistol was tucked in his thigh rig. But neither of the weapons was fixed with suppressors, nor were those of any of his men. He was no longer concerned about the thunder of gunfire. In fact, he wanted it.
The more horror, the better.
Next to Zaifeng was an artist’s easel pinned with a four-foot-long laminated overhead photo of the USS Roosevelt aircraft carrier. It had been sent to Zaifeng by a Shanghai contact who’d purchased it from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. The photo was illuminated by chemlights hung from the ends of Japanese fishing poles jammed into the sand. The chemlights were eerily green phosphorescent, and more than sufficient.
“That is your primary mission, above all else,” Zaifeng continued. “There will be aircraft, air crews, and ground crews on deck, and you must eliminate all threats so that the Gantu-62 team can enter the superstructure and the bridge. You will use your machine guns, sidearms, rockets, and grenades, set the aircraft ablaze and show no mercy. Am I clear?”
“Yes, Xian Sheng,” his commandos said in unison, but they did not shout.
Before Zaifeng on the beach below, thirty-two men stood in a semicircle of three ranks. Their assault rifles were slung from their necks, some carried Chinese RPG-7 antitank tubes and quivers of rockets, and two had Type 67 light machine guns resting on bipods in the stony sand beside their Gore-Tex boots. They were dressed and kitted like Zaifeng, except for the six helo pilots in flight overalls, and six more men dressed in Level IV chem-bio suits. Those six spacemen stood to one side, sweating under their oxygen rigs, holding their helmets under their arms and staying well clear of the other men’s bristling weapons. Rips or tears in their suits could result in their deaths before they’d accomplished their tasks.
Off to Zaifeng’s right as he faced the sea, the three Harbin Z-20s had been stripped of their camouflage netting and their Red Chinese stars had been groomed and refreshed. Their crew chiefs had switched on their APUs, and the massive blades were starting to turn, like hulking athletes warming their muscles.
Until just fifteen minutes before, only Zaifeng and Po had known the exact nature of the mission. Yet when Zaifeng had tapped his bo on the photograph and said, “Gentlemen, this is your target, the United States Navy aircraft carrier Roosevelt,” there hadn’t been a single murmur or swallow. The Swords were believers, and disciplined.
“We will be executing a raid on this ship,” he’d begun, “much like the trial run on the Windhoek. Our tactical objective is mass casualties. Our strategic objective is that the Americans will fault Beijing, and therefore strike back in fury at the CCP. Thus we’ll begin our historical reclamation of the Empire.”
The men had cheered at that, and Zaifeng couldn’t help but smile. Now he delved deeper into operational details.
“And so, here is the plan, and your orders. The Roosevelt strike group is currently sixty-four nautical miles east of this island, steaming for the Jima gap. We will approach the carrier off the starboard stern, as if in a provocative flyby. To date, although many PLA aircraft have harassed the Americans this way, they have never opened fire, nor will they today. Their rules of engagement are determined by attorneys in Washington, rather than admirals.”
Some of Zaifeng’s men smiled. He jabbed his bo at the spinning-up Harbin Z-20s.
“Helicopter number one will have no one aboard but the pilots.” He nodded respectfully at two of his air crews. “You pilots will pass the ship a hundred meters off the starboard side and proceed past the bow
for half a kilometer. You will then call Mayday over the international emergency net, and ditch your craft in the ocean. . . . I suggest you be wearing your life vests.”
No one raised an eyebrow or an objection, though it was obvious that even if the pilots survived the ditching, a rescue would be unlikely. Zaifeng carried on.
“Helicopter number two, with twelve warriors aboard, will then call the ship and announce its intention to rescue. The Americans will not forbid the act, in accordance with international law. In fact they may slow their speed to observe, or assist, but that is of no matter.”
Zaifeng moved his bo tip to the stern of the ship.
“Here on the port side aft is a Phalanx antiaircraft system on a recessed platform three meters below the main deck. At this juncture, helicopter number two will change course and land on the deck to the right of the Phalanx. The left-door gunner will open fire on the Phalanx, which cannot return fire from its defilade position or it will strike the carrier’s bridge. The right-door gunner will open fire on the aircraft and fuel pumps. You twelve assaulters will disembark and kill all personnel between helicopter number two and the superstructure on the carrier’s starboard side.”
“Xian Sheng,” Lieutenant Po whispered. He was standing to Zaifeng’s left and touched his commander’s elbow, an impertinence he’d never before dared. Zaifeng stopped talking and followed Po’s gaze. He was staring at a point in the distant sea beyond the men’s heads. The waves were still black yet the sky was pewter, and there seemed to be a small object floating out there.
“Dolphins,” Zaifeng muttered. “They were here yesterday. Don’t interrupt me again.”
“Yes, Xian Sheng.” Po nodded, but he gripped his rifle, stepped from the granite slab, and started walking down to the beach, just to be sure. Zaifeng looked at his watch and pushed through the rest of his briefing.
“And finally, gentlemen.” He tapped the bo on a spot of empty deck to the left of the carrier’s multistory bridge. “Helicopter number three, with our six Gantu-62 warriors aboard, and six more assaulters, will land here just beside the superstructure. You assaulters will kill any remaining opposition and lead the Gantu team to the superstructure hatches, here. Inside, the Gantu team will split into two elements. Gantu one will deploy its dispenser, work its way up the stairwells to the bridge, and kill all the command staff. Gantu two will descend belowdecks, work toward the bow, and infect all the air ducts and the ventilation systems.”
Zaifeng pulled his bo back from the photograph and stabbed one end down on his boot in the manner of a kung fu Wushu practitioner.
“That is our plan. Simple, yet effective. It is my assumption that when the first effects of the Gantu occur, there will be panic and little resistance. I expect that the Americans will sound their alarms, retreat belowdecks, and seal themselves inside their own coffin. Once all the Gantu is deployed, we will then withdraw.”
He didn’t mention his intention to abandon the Gantu-62 operators inside the carrier. They’d all be contaminated and some would likely be wounded by desperate American gunfire. They couldn’t be allowed back on the helicopters.
“Questions?” Zaifeng offered.
One courageous young commando raised his gloved hand.
“Respectfully, Xian Sheng . . . Where will you be?” he asked.
Zaifeng smiled. “Aboard helicopter number two, with you. Did you think I would stay here and watch this on YouTube?”
The men laughed and some slapped the impertinent one on his back.
Zaifeng raised his bo high over his head.
“To the aircraft,” he ordered, then shouted, “for the sake of the Empire and Honor!”
They all raised their weapons and echoed Zaifeng’s war cry, “For the sake of the Empire and Honor!” And because of that, no one heard Po’s shout from the beach.
Then something like a screaming steel Frisbee whipped through the air, and the first helicopter exploded.
Chapter 48
Uotsuri Island, East China Sea
Eric Steele opened fire first.
Jackson and his men were the first to die.
Steele and his commandos were paddling hell-bent for leather. They were hunched forward, gripping the Zodiac’s fat rubber hulls with their thighs, and slicing the cold dark waves with their blurring black oars like insane Ivy League scullers. But they couldn’t hold back the light. The dawn was starting to halo the island and they were still two hundred meters from shore. Steele’s Taiwanese commandos didn’t speak English, but they understood that the hiss from his lips meant faster.
In the distance on the beachhead he saw the glow of chemlights, the sheen of some sort of briefing board, and a small dark figure, who had to be Zaifeng, their leader, commanding the high ground. He saw the assembly of men bristling with weapons, and over on the left flank where Jackson was supposed to come ashore, the glossy black helicopters with their bright red stars and their thick black rotors spinning faster and faster.
He had to stop those helos. Not a single one of them could get off the ground.
No one had spotted them yet. The whines of the spinning-up helos were covering the sounds of their oars in the water and the panting breaths from their lungs. But then Steele saw a figure break from the briefing. He was heading down the beach, gripping a rifle. He’d smelled something, or seen something, or he just had that hunter’s instinct. Then Steele saw his eyes and knew he was out of time.
He tossed his paddle in the boat and ripped the Whipsaw pistol from his front vest Velcro pocket. To his left, Hank felt the Zodiac skew to the right and back sliced his paddle to turn it about, because he knew what Eric was doing. Steele pulled a sawtoothed disk from his pouch, rammed it into the Whipsaw’s slot, rose up on his haunches, twisted left, sighted one-handed on the closest helicopter, and fired.
The .44 caliber blank round felt like the kick of a mule. The spinning projectile screamed in the air like a Stuka siren, chunked into the tail boom of the nearest Harbin Z-20, and a split second later blew the whole thing off in a ball of detonating aircraft fuel and a column of orange fire.
The party was on. The surprise was over.
Jackson’s Zodiac, with his commando’s paddles furiously churning the water, rose on the curl of a wave, crashed down onto a wide reef of coral spines and was instantly grounded. Directly before him at fifty meters, Jackson saw the closest helicopter burst into flames as its tail rotor went cartwheeling down the beach like a blender blade, whipping up gouts of sand. But to the left of that burning helo there were still two more, completely intact. He yelled “Gong keh!,” jumped from the rubber boat, and pounded toward the beach through the surf, and his seven men echoed his battle cry and went hurdling after him.
A thundering burst of machine gun gunfire flashed from the shore, scythed through Jackson’s Zodiac and shredded it into scraps of rubber. The machine gun was joined by rifles, and the bullets found Jackson’s intrepid seven and cut them down one after the other. They tried to return fire, but they were staggering through the surf, and they twisted and fell and their twitching fingers sent wild red tracers sparking off rocks and into the air.
Jackson was almost there. He was ankle deep, with the loaded Whipsaw in his right glove and his XT-105 grasped in his left, when a rifle round fractured his pelvis. He fell to his knees in the water, gasping, then somehow cranked himself up again. Six of the Swords of Qing were marching toward him from his right flank, methodically raining gunfire.
He fired the rifle one-handed and sent one flipping backward. Then a bullet splintered his rifle and broke his left wrist, and another punched through his chest. He staggered forward, raised the trembling Whipsaw, and fired it at the point man’s chest. The bladed shuriken screamed, thunked into breast bone, and exploded in white light and a hundred shrapnels, killing that man and the rest.
Jackson fell on his face in the surf. He wasn’t dead yet, but he drowned.
Eric Steele’s battle was hand to hand, and murderous chaos.
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His Zodiac had almost made the shoreline when a squad of Zaifeng’s men charged from the high ground, screaming and firing their weapons. With his left boot, Steele kicked his father into the water, spun off the hull into the surf, threw the empty Whipsaw away, and opened fire with his rifle. His six ASSC commandos yelled curses in Mandarin and joined him as the Zodiac flipped over and a LAW rocket exploded from the incoming rounds. The orange sun had breached the horizon, there was no cover, and as he’d predicted, it was hell in living color.
Steele shot one man in the face, then another in both knees. A bullet cracked his helmet in half, and as he tore it off he saw one of his men on his right hurling a baseball grenade, and that man disappeared in a burst of bloody mist from close range automatic fire, and the grenade exploded somewhere and its shrapnel pinged off weapons and sliced into skulls.
He saw Chinese killing Chinese, ugly and close. They didn’t duck or go prone on the stony beach but charged at one another like duelers, firing point-blank at each other’s faces and chests, unsheathing their knives and tumbling together to die in tangles.
Farther up on the beach, he saw two men in pilot’s coveralls sprinting to the left toward the helos. At a hundred meters he shot one in the back of the skull, but missed the other, and he spun to the right as he sensed another Sword charging.
It was Po, though Steele didn’t know that. The man screamed something at him, as if Steele were his cheating wife’s lover. At a flat-out sprint, Po fired his QBZ-95 and shattered Steele’s rifle. Steele yanked his father’s 1911 from his holster, and at five meters, shot Po twice in the face just as Po shot him in his left shoulder.
The impact spun Steele around and he fell to his knees, spewing hot breath, facing the ocean. He was half deaf from the close-quarters gunfire. The sea looked placid now, silver and pretty, but it was swirled in blood and rolled with corpses like Normandy.
