Target of the Heart

by M. L. Buchman

  “Time of last contact?”

  “2215 hours,” Sophia announced.

  Both Pete and Danielle immediately adjusted the dials on their wrist watches. “That was forty-five minutes ago.”

  “Nothing since.”

  Pete glanced at Danielle and she grimaced.

  “He said it would take a minimum of four hours.”

  “Shit! What the hell are we supposed to do for four hours?” Actually he had some ideas on that, but he wasn’t dumb enough to suggest it.

  # # #

  Danielle knew the mission plan well enough that she could follow every move, at least every move that the SEAL team wasn’t having to make up as they went.

  At 2215, Luke and the other three SEALs had arrived at the Jiangnan Shipyard.

  Next they’d find their way past the outer breakwater to stow their rubber boat under a dock.

  By 2245 the SEALs would scale the ocean side of an eight-hundred foot long Coast Guard cutter, because the dock side was sure to be guarded. The ship was still under construction so there should be multiple points of entry, they were counting on that.

  Inside the ship by 2300 and racing the clock and the Chinese security guards.

  She and Pete met up with the rest of the 5E crew at 2400 hours for lunch in the ship’s mess.

  None of them ate very well.

  At 0030, the Night Stalkers attempted to start up a Frisbee game between the helicopters crowded together on the aft deck. There was barely room for the four birds. The stars were lost behind a light overcast and the deck was pitch black except for subtle perimeter lights that warned you of a forty-foot plunge from deck to ocean about five steps before you took it. When they almost lost The Whistler disc over the side, they’d given up on that.

  By now the SEALs should have infiltrated the command area of the superstructure. They’d be recording every aspect of the ship from the placement of the heavy deck guns to the best paths for future boarding if they ever had to attack one of these ships. The Activity’s intel geeks had gone after the construction plans, with surprisingly little luck. They must be stored on a server that wasn’t connected to anything else.

  Recording the ship’s layout was the secondary mission.

  Now at 0100, if they were anywhere close to on schedule, they should be entering the Chinese equivalent of the Ashland’s Plot Room. Modern ships were less about the amount of steel in their hull and more about the computer and control systems being used aboard them. A system had to be able to analyze a target that was still two hundred miles over the horizon as being friendly or hostile. Then they must decide to fire on it before they in turn could actually launch a missile—many of the modern missiles had a hundred-mile range and if the enemy craft was supersonic, safety margins went away far too quickly.

  The SEAL team had two primary missions—a piece of classic military doublespeak for “don’t screw up either one.” First find out exactly what electronics were installed on the ship, and second put in an undetectable tap. The goal was to transmit every electronic command to the U.S. intelligence agencies, using China’s own equipment and antennas. It would be a variable-frequency, high-density squirt transmission, almost impossible to trace. That’s if they even noticed it in the first place.

  By 0130 Danielle was eyeing dark corners to drag Pete into for mindless sex. It wasn’t that she wanted sex; it was about the farthest thing from her interest at the moment. She simply needed to be doing something. The rocking of the big ship on the relatively quiet ocean wouldn’t normally be enough to bother her, but in the near pitch darkness, she always seemed on the verge of catching a boot when she encountered an unexpected angle to the deck.

  At 0200 she went looking for him and found him in the middle of the aft deck, arms crossed and glaring at the Chinook. Within moments the entire crew was there, as if they’d all homed in together at the same moment.

  A buzz of, “This is killing me.” “Still no word.” “What if—” “How soon—” swarmed to life.

  “We go now,” Danielle’s flat statement silenced the whole group. Because they were sure as hell achieving nothing out here in the emptiness of the East China Sea.

  “We don’t know when they’ll need us.”

  “It’s two in the morning. If they don’t need us before six a.m., the sun will be up and we’ll have to wait until tomorrow night.”

  Groans rippled around the group.

  # # #

  “What are you suggesting?” Pete’s voice silenced them. He had some ideas of his own.

  Knowing Danielle, it was probably the same idea, so he answered his own question. “The Carrie-Anne and the Beatrix are aloft in five minutes.”

  Danielle’s nod confirmed her thoughts.

  “We have four hours of fuel. If they need us, we’ll be that much closer.”

  “We don’t!” Dozer protested. “My Little Bird only carries two hours. Even if I throw Patty overboard, it’s not going to help enough.”

  “Hey!” Patty protested, but was ignored. So she smacked Dozer on the back of the head and he grinned at her.

  “The Little Birds will follow either when we get the call from the insertion team or at 0400, two hours to sunrise.”

  None of the Little Bird pilots looked pleased, but it was the best solution Pete had. If they flew the two main birds a hundred miles closer to the coast and circled, they’d be able to respond to a call in ten minutes instead of forty-five. The increased risk of being spotted the longer they were there was marginal, as long as they were careful.

  As they prepared the birds for flight, he and Danielle were alone for just a moment.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Spiderwoman. Like we’re already too late.”

  She nodded, her eyes wide enough to catch the dim red deck lights.

  “Let’s get up in the air, then you hustle your pretty ass to the China coast. You hustle it hard.”

  “Roger that.”

  Chapter 15

  Danielle hustled her ass hard.

  They were aloft in under five minutes. This time the DAP Hawk was tight on her blind spot; she felt exposed, uncomfortable without the familiar Little Birds also close by. The ADAS camera offered a full three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view, but the back left quadrant was always a weak spot for any rotorcraft pilot. Rafe tucked the Beatrix in there nice and tight which made her feel a little better.

  Sophia was calling out the locations of marine and air traffic before Danielle was a mile off the deck of the Ashland.

  For the first half of the flight no one spoke, and Danielle flew on raw nerves. Unable to stand it any longer, she flicked the intercom control to pilots only.

  “Talk to me, Pete.”

  “Sure, you need me to take over?”

  “For a minute, sure.”

  “I have command,” his hands were smooth and confident on the controls.

  She removed her hands and flexed them, tried shaking out the nerves that rippled along them. Within thirty seconds, she couldn’t stand it any more and took up the collective and cyclic once more.

  “I have command,” she called.

  “Well, that was a long break.”

  “Best I’ve got.”

  “Hell, Spidey, worst you’ve got is better than most folks’ best.”

  “Worst I got? I catch a blade and we all go for a swim unless the Chinese Coast Guard feels like rescuing us.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Pete’s voice didn’t sound forced in its cheerfulness. Since when had The Rapier become cheerful?

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, you catch a blade this close to the Never Exceed Speed then we’ll all be dead in seconds. After that we’ll sink like a stone. In the big picture of possibilities, I wouldn’t worry about the Chinese if we crash.”

  “Since when did you tur
n so chipper? What have you done with my dark, broody lover?” Danielle swung around an ore carrier inbound from Australia. Sophia, watching from far above, sent her scooting south to avoid the next boat.

  “Dark and broody? Me?”

  “Oui!”

  “It was when you said tu et moi. A beautiful woman, a hot pilot, and a sexy French accent. Somewhere along the way I decided I was a pretty damned lucky guy. That brightened up my day quite a bit.”

  “Okay, my handsome hunk of a lover. Guess what?”

  “What?”

  “We’re flying into China. And if we’re caught, we’ll probably start a war. Definitely tossed in a shitty Chinese jail for spying or treason or something.”

  “Could be a problem. Unless their cells are co-ed. You, me, a hard bunk. Possibilities.”

  “Men!” Danielle gave it her best scoff. He might have sex on the brain, but he was making her feel better despite that.

  They arrived as close as she dared to the outer harbor barrier islands and turned to circle back out to sea in a holding pattern when the radio crackled to life.

  Danielle was glad for Pete’s steady hands still riding the controls or she might have actually delivered them into the watery depths outside of Hangzhou Harbor.

  # # #

  “Pete. Tell me you were smart,” were the first words over the Chinook’s radio.

  Pete didn’t need to recognize Luke’s voice, he was the only one who should be on this frequency. Before answering, Pete flipped the intercom back to include the three crew chiefs in the rear of the helo. They didn’t need to hear about his relationship with Danielle, but they deserved to know exactly what they were flying into.

  “Me or Danielle, can’t be sure; we’re both pretty damn smart you know. Currently at the outer island of Zhoushan to the south edge of the harbor.”

  “Good! You’re here. That’s a relief. We’re boxed in. Every goddamn ship that went chasing down the coast after the Germantown has come back. There’s no way we can move back out to sea.”

  “Your alternative is for us to fly into a crowded harbor?”

  “We’ve spent the last hour dancing with security forces back and forth across this goddamn cutter. They aren’t sure that we’re here but they will be pretty damn fast. We got it done, so we need to get out before they get too suspicious.”

  “Roger, hang on.”

  Danielle had been circling them slowly off the south entrance to the wide outer harbor. The SEALs were deep in a secure military shipyard along the north shore—nine minutes away—across thirty miles of waters thick with pissed off Chinese Navy and Coast Guard vessels just looking for a fight to assuage their egos after the Germantown decoy had blithely ignored them during its passage.

  Pete racked his brain for everything he’d read about Hangzhou Harbor and the Qiantang River. Heavy population to the north, very few people to the south where usable land was limited quickly by jagged rocky heights.

  North of the SEAL team’s current location was even worse. Over the ridge from Hangzhou sprawled the megalopolis of Shanghai.

  Coal, ore, and lots of oil shipping would also be clogging both harbors, far more imports than even the U.S. needed. China was sucking mud. Their economy was in screaming growth. They had the labor pool to support it, but not the developed resources. They were switching from being a top global exporter to becoming one of its top importers.

  Which didn’t help him at all.

  It was a city of incredible tourist attractions that he’d always wanted to see.

  Two World Heritage Sites; one on a lake and the other inland. West Lake had one of the archetypal gardens that had influenced the rest of China and Japan for over a thousand years. The city had the oldest Catholic church and the oldest mosque in China…which didn’t do the trapped SEALs any damn good at all.

  The streets of Shanghai were…useless.

  The—

  “What time is it?”

  “0310,” Danielle responded.

  “What’s the date?”

  “September—”

  “No, the Chinese date.”

  “How am I supposed to know that?”

  “Come on, Spidey. Thought you knew everything.” Pete should not be enjoying himself at the moment, but he really was. The adrenaline was buzzing hot through his veins. If he was right, this was going to totally kick ass. And he was going to have the hottest Chinook pilot in the military to give them a chance of pulling this off. And if he screwed up, they’d all be dead so it wouldn’t matter anyway.

  “Sophia,” Pete clicked onto the Avenger’s frequency which would relay his call back to her container in Japan. “What’s today’s date on the Chinese calendar?”

  There was a long pause as she accessed the Internet.

  “Eighth lunar month. Eighteen day.”

  “Perfect! The tide in Hangzhou. What time does it come in?”

  Another long pause.

  “0350 and—”

  He didn’t care about the afternoon tide. He flipped back to Luke’s frequency.

  “Hey, Altman, buddy. I need you to check something out for me.”

  “What? Make it quick.”

  “I need you and your team to take your little boat for a scenic cruise northwest, I repeat northwest from your current position.”

  “Inland? Up the fucking Qiantang River?” There was a very satisfying choking sound in Altman’s throat. Unnerving a DEVGRU Commander was even more fun than he’d thought.

  “You must be mid-channel under the Jiubao Highway Bridge in exactly twenty-seven minutes. Believe me when I say there won’t be any other boats there.”

  “Shit! Twenty-seven?” Pete could hear scrambling in the background. “What do I do when I get there?”

  “Go surfing.”

  Altman didn’t have time for more than a few choice words before he got moving, but they were very satisfying to Pete’s ego.

  They’d be even more satisfying if they all survived this.

  Chapter 16

  Danielle listened as Pete called the Little Birds to come rushing in, but they were almost an hour out. They’d be no help in the plan’s execution, neither would the DAP Hawk. But, he said, they might need all three to cover their escape.

  Why didn’t that sound good?

  Whatever Pete’s plan was, it was going to happen in twenty-six minutes.

  Next he directed the DAP Hawk to remain outside the harbor and to be ready for all hell to break loose at 0355, right after whatever magical moment Pete had figured out.

  She still didn’t have a clue.

  “Let’s fly southwest.”

  “Southwest?” Danielle looked up at the mountains of Mainland China on the south side of Hangzhou Harbor. What lay in front of them didn’t look the least little bit like water. It looked like farmland backed by rugged mountains. “Have you fucking lost it?”

  “Trust me, Spiderwoman. I’m spinning a delicate thread here.”

  “I’ll Spiderwoman you right in the snoot! Merde! You are so lucky my hands are busy.”

  “Trust me, Danielle.”

  And just that simply, she did. She wasn’t sure how she felt about his power over her if Trust me, Danielle was all it took. And she really did, apparently with her very life.

  She turned southwest and goosed the Carrie-Anne to life. There wasn’t time to think about her heart.

  He guided her ashore between Yuyao and Ningbo, which meant nothing to her, but she could see them marked on the tactical display spread on the inside of her visor. They crossed a pair of highways and then she was in topography she recognized. Ridge and valley. Like the back byways of the Appalachian Mountains, the Chinese mountains were coated by lush growth with streams and rivers in the bottom of every valley.

  And like Afghanistan, the valleys were brutally steep
and unpredictable in their sharp turns. Her predictive software didn’t know what to make of the tiny hamlets and ridge-perching villas.

  So it was up to real-time and reflexes, which was actually her favorite kind of flying. She still needed the enhanced electronic view, but she had to solve moment to moment the best line of attack, and the best route.

  A narrow twist lead to an abrupt waterfall.

  She soared up the face, could practically feel the cool spray that speckled the windshield. Then bursting out among a cluster of riverside homes above the steep falls.

  “These people are phoning us in like mad. I can feel it.”

  “You think they’d expect anyone other than their own military to fly through these valleys? We’re probably safer here than out in the harbor. And if they do call us in, radar isn’t going to show squat. Definitely not a stealth Chinook sliding through their mountain valleys.”

  She hadn’t thought of it that way.

  “0338,” Pete called out the time. “C’mon, Sweet Lady. Show me what you can do.”

  “I’m not sweet!” she managed between gritted teeth.

  “Sure you are, Spiderwoman. You’re about the sweetest damn woman there ever was. I mean you put up with me, don’t you?”

  That earned him a snort of laughter from the crew chiefs on the intercom who would be using their miniguns to brace themselves into position and scanning for likely targets.

  “Put up with—” it came out as a ragged sputter. She was flying into decidedly hostile territory and he still hadn’t told her why or what she’d be doing there.

  Pete was deep in communication with Sophia deciding on the best routes, sometimes leaving Danielle on her own, sometimes directing her to cross over into the next valley or start trending north.

  If she wasn’t putting up with him, then what was she doing?

  “0342. Eight minutes to the G15 bridge. We can’t be late.”