by Don Keith
The process so far had been very easy, beginning with launching the craft out of the dry-deck shelter on the back of the USS Hawaii in deep water twenty-five miles to the northeast of where they now made their way through relatively shallow water. Unlike the older Swimmer Delivery Vehicles, the entire launch sequence for the SWCs was automated. Then, very little to do but watch the auto-pilot as they plodded without deviation on a course to the south and west. Sit back and try to relax in the dark, cramped space as the little electric sub cruised just a few feet below the wavetops. At a max speed of six knots, the outbound trip would take just over four hours for them to reach their target spot.
Then the navigation trace confirmed that Ward and his small team of SEALs had arrived at their destination, the southeast end of the North Luconia Shoals. The mass of coral heads and reefs sat about sixty miles off the Sarawak coast of the big island of Borneo. Like most every geographical feature of the region, these coral structures were the object of disputes, with primary claim being that they were part of the territory of the Spratly Islands. But none of this was of interest to Jim Ward and his mini-sub crammed with scuba-breathing SEALs.
Seahorse Breakers lay only a few hundred yards dead ahead. The reef was named not for the seahorses that swam these waters but for an English opium clipper of that name that had met its deadly fate on the coral heads almost two hundred years ago. The reef stretched across an eight-mile arc of ocean from the northwest to the southeast. Its entire length lay in perilous wait, solid but not necessarily visible, in perfect position to tear the bottom out of the vessel of any unwary mariner. At its highest point, the reef was covered by no more than six feet of seawater.
The SWCS’s bottom profiler showed precisely the sandy ocean floor that the hydrographers had predicted. Ward inched the vessel upward until it cruised only a couple of feet below the surface, then reached over and toggled a switch. From somewhere just behind his seat, he could hear a low hum as the sensor mast outside hinged up. His computer screen shifted displays, now showing a video picture not of the bottom but of the calm, dark ocean surface above them. The high-definition, multi-spectral video camera sitting at the very top of the folding sensor mast panned around, revealing an empty sea. The sun was just rising, low on the eastern horizon.
No sign of one of the stray Chinese ships that Ward knew were anchored off Aitken Reef, twenty miles to the north. Those ships were the reason Ward and his team were out here in the South China Sea, late on a moonless night. The cargo of sensors they were here to plant covertly would give the brass hats back in Pearl a set of hidden eyes and ears on what the Chinese were doing.
Ward stole a glance over at his co-pilot/navigator’s control panel. Ensign Tad Riley, the newest member of the team, fresh out of SWCV pilot’s school and SEAL Qualification Training, sat staring tensely at his monitor, as if he were waiting for the next level of a video game to appear. The screen was still set to the inertial navigation display.
“Tad! Wake up!” Ward told him over the vehicle communications system. “You’re fixated on the screen. Sensor mast is up. You need to get a quick GPS fix and check ESM. We need to know if we have any unfriendlies close by. Then see if we have any message traffic.”
Ward could faintly sense the young SEAL shaking his head, coming back to the here-and-now. Then he could see the monitor flicker to different screens as Riley quickly danced through the displays.
“Skipper, picking up an RM-1290 nav radar and an MR-36A surface search radar. Best bearing three-four-seven. Signal strength is pretty high. Best bet it’s a Chinese Type Fifty-Four ALPHA. And he’s within twenty miles.” Riley rattled off his report. Then, his voice quavering just a bit, he added, “Ain’t supposed to be any warships down here. Intel was we’d see only a couple of research types.”
Ward smiled. He remembered his first contact with someone who might want to shoot at him.
“He’s not likely to know we’re anywhere in the neighborhood. Let’s just get our job done and get our asses back to the ship for some hot chow.”
Ward cut power to the SWCS’s screw and allowed the small craft to settle slowly onto the bottom. The boat ride was over for now. Time to go to work.
The team slid back the steel canopies that covered them, switched to their SCUBA air tanks, and swam out of the SWCS. Jason Hall and Tony Garcia, two longtime members of Ward’s team, each grabbed a sensor package and swam away, headed up the reef to the north. Bill Ross and Sean Horton, only slightly less veteran to the team, flippered off to the south. Ward and Riley got busy connecting up the comms and control module for the main device they were delivering.
Ward was just finishing burying the module out of sight beneath a convenient coral head when Hall called him over the comms link.
“Skipper, think you’d better see this.” The miniature acoustic communication system made Hall’s normally deep, gravelly voice sound tinny, but it allowed the divers to communicate clearly out to a couple of hundred yards. Optionally, they could shift to text messaging and go even further.
Ward kicked over to where Hall was hovering over something located on the bottom, half covered with sand. The dull-gray metal tube was about six feet long and a foot in diameter. But there was no marine growth on it. Whatever it was, it had not been down there very long.
Ward dropped closer to the bottom and closely inspected the tube. The fiber-optic line coming out of the tube was almost invisible. Ward followed it for a couple of hundred yards until it ended in an anchored buoy that floated, tethered, just below the surface. He could just make out a dozen or so other fiber-optic lines heading out in various directions from the anchor.
A light flicked on for the SEAL. This was a sensor net, very similar to the one he and his team were in the process of planting. Besides the United States, only one other country had the technology to do this. Now the question became what were the Chinese looking for, and, even more importantly, had Ward and his guys already been detected?
Ward grabbed the buoy and its anchor, snapped the thin fiber-optic cables, and headed back toward the SWCS. As he passed Jason Hall and Tony Garcia, he ordered the pair to take the mystery sensor back to their mini-sub. Some geeks in some labs would love getting a look at this thing.
Without the purloined sensor and buoy, Ward could now swim hurriedly back to the SWCS and get ready to drive as far away from this spot as he could. He climbed into the pilot’s seat and quickly scanned the gauges. Tad Riley was a half-second behind him, sliding down into the co-pilot/navigator seat.
As Ward powered up the craft, the rest of the team piled in.
“Please raise your seatbacks and tray tables. We hope you enjoy the flight.”
The men grumbled, as much over the accommodations as their leader’s joke. It was a tight fit, even without now carrying the Chinese sensor and comms node. Ward ignored the grousing as he deftly lifted the sub off the bottom and headed upward, toward the surface.
“Tad, get a message off to Hawaii. Tell them that we found a bottom-mounted Chinese sensor network out here in the same area where we were placing our own sensors. Let ’em know we’re heading back to home base ASAP.”
Ward saw it as soon as the sensor mast cleared the water. The Chicom helicopter. And it was coming in out of the north, low and fast. The bird was headed straight at them, too, and it was already too damn close!
“Skipper, that’s a sixty-R,” Riley called out. “It’s one of ours.”
“Nope. Not likely. That’s one of the new Z-20 ASW birds. Almost for sure off that Chinese destroyer we were hearing.” Ward was already lowering the sensor mast and angling the boat back toward the bottom again. “I’m betting he’s here to find out what happened to his sensor system. He finds us, he’ll put two and two together. And he ain’t gonna be happy.”
Even with a couple feet of water separating them from the sunshine, they still felt and heard the Chinese helicopter flying directly overhead. Ward moved the boat even lower, trying to snuggle up against t
he bottom, but the depth gauge only read ten feet. That meant only about four feet of water separated them from a very angry Chinese ASW helicopter. The trick would be to stay as deep as possible without kicking up a telltale cloud of sand and silt from the big screw that drove their submersible.
Riley nudged Ward.
“Skipper, I’m picking up heavy screws on the sonar, off to the north. SNR is going up.”
Ward grunted. That would be their buddy, the Chinese destroyer. The neighborhood was suddenly getting very crowded with people who would not be at all hospitable to Ward and his SEALs. Best to slink out as quietly and unobtrusively as possible, let the chopper chase sharks and the destroyer dodge coral outcroppings.
“It makes sense,” Ward said, mostly to himself. “That Z-20 can’t do anything to us except hold us down. She doesn’t carry much in the way of ordnance. But the destroyer…we need to get really, really lost before that tin can shows up.”
That’s when the first grenade exploded in the water nearby. The concussion rocked the SWCS and had each man’s ears ringing. Jim Ward had a momentary flashback to another mission. He had endured a near-death experience in the Bahamas when a Russian spy tried to concussively end his days with hand grenades exploding while Ward was underwater. Lucky to be alive. Even luckier to still be able to be a SEAL after that.
But at the moment, Jim Ward did not feel so lucky.
Then a second and third grenade boomed, even closer. The helicopter pilot had likely concluded that he could do more than simply hold the SEALs down until the surface warship got to the scene. A well-placed grenade might just send this interloper to the bottom forever.
A fourth grenade, this one extremely close to the SEALs. The mini-sub rocked sickeningly. Ward wrestled the control to keep her headed downward.
Enough of this! he thought.
“Break out the weapons, guys,” he ordered. “We’re gonna have to shoot it out with that bastard before he gets lucky with one of those firecrackers. We’ll surface. Concentrate fire on the cockpit. If we can take out the pilot...”
Ward reached down beside his seat to feel for his own SCAR-17 assault rifle. With the other hand, he angled the sub toward the surface again. He felt more than saw the team slide back the steel canopies above them.
Just then, another grenade exploded, certainly only yards away.
“This son of a bitch is giving me one hell of a headache,” Ward muttered just as the boat broke the surface into brilliant sunshine. Even as he set the controls to run on the surface, he heard the crack of outgoing rifle fire from the four SEALs behind him. He ripped off his diving mask and then stood with his SCAR-17, ready to contribute to the fusillade.
The Z-20 was only fifty yards astern. Maybe a hundred feet in the air, if that. Little wonder he was coming so close with his cherry bombs. As Ward put his laser site on the cockpit, he could already see several bullet holes pocking the plexiglass. His guys were good. He added his own firepower in the form of aimed, three-shot bursts.
The helicopter pilot had obviously been surprised by the sudden emergence of a mini-sub full of angry SEALs. And that they had come out of hiding, trying to shoot him from the sky. He pulled back on the collective, trying to gain altitude and distance. As the bird pitched up and away, a side hatch slid open and a pintle-mounted, 12.7mm machine gun swung out, a viper ready to strike. The first burst splashed a stream across the water in front of the SEALs. Ward felt the boat lurch as a couple of slugs pierced through the boat’s bow dome.
Ward immediately switched his aim over to the hatch and emptied his magazine into the hole. The gunner fell out, dangling from his safety harness, already dead.
Then, as the helicopter continued its upward pitch, frantically trying to escape the hail of bullets from the six SEALs, it assumed an impossibly steep angle, defying the laws of aerodynamics.
Suddenly, the bird lost its grip on the air and slid backward, falling, crashing into the water tail first. Its rotor continued to spin, splashing, flailing in desperation like a drowning swimmer, flames and debris shooting off in every direction as the helicopter exploded. Then it settled deeper into the sea, the gentle waves covering most of the smoking hulk.
It was a few moments before anyone in the mini-sub said anything. They stood there as the SWCS bobbed gently in the waves, then bobbed even higher when the swells from the chopper’s impact reached them. It was Tony Garcia who finally piped up.
“Skipper, we don’t want to be late for chow. Supposed to be pizza night and I don’t want the anchovy ones to be gone.”
Ψ
It always seemed to be rush hour in Taipei. If traffic was a measure of the success of the nation’s economy, Taiwan was on a roll. But at 2230 on a weeknight?
TJ Dillon stepped out of the Tonghua Night Market. Linjiang Street was jammed with traffic, as usual. He looked up and down the busy thoroughfare in front of the restaurant. No sign of his car and driver.
Admiral Ward’s dining recommendations had turned out to be superb so far. He touched his belly. The cho dofu had been delicious, if aromatic. It wasn’t called “stinky tofu” for nothing.
He really needed to stay in shape, just in case his employer required him to do something more strenuous than read reports and peruse data and keep track of the newly planted submarine sensors out there in the Philippine and South China Seas. Which, by the way, had so far shown little more than whale farts.
Now, where was Bo, his affable and helpful driver? Too helpful, sometimes. Bo kept telling Dillon he would be honored to take him to those places where he could sample every one of his nation’s pleasures. Emphasis always on “every.” Even when TJ assured him there was a Mrs. Dillon back in the USA, in St. Petersburg, Florida, and that he had chosen to remain true to her and his son, TJ Jr., regardless of the intensity of the temptation.
“Okay, but if you ever want, ours is a very open society. You can only imagine,” Bo would insist, with a sly grin and a quick wink to emphasize the possibilities.
Bo had texted, not three minutes ago, that he was circling the block and would pick him up right here. So, where was he? There was actually work to do on his laptop back in his hotel room.
TJ leaned out, trying to catch a glimpse of the maroon Mercedes. Not exactly the least ostentatious choice for wheels while he was here. Not for someone specifically trying not to be noticed.
Exactly what a rich American executive would arrange, Jon Ward had assured him.
Whack!
Something solid and quick sent TJ Dillon sprawling painfully, tumbling backward almost to the building that housed the restaurant. His head hit the cement sidewalk hard. His first thought was that he had been struck by a car. But then, as he struggled for breath, he heard the unmistakable cracks of gunshots—from two different directions—the screech of tires, a loud, heavy crash as something—an automobile, maybe—slammed into something else immovable.
Then, more sharp gunshots. A barrage of them. A ricochet. Shouts of fear. Or pain?
He tried to get to his feet, to spot an alleyway, a trash barrel, anything for cover. Dillon had been in enough shootouts to know when he was in the middle of one. All he could do was roll into the skinny alcove that led into the restaurant’s foyer. He tried to make himself as small and invisible as he could.
He smelled garlic. Garlic and gun smoke. Then gasoline.
“Master Chief Dillon! Master Chief Dillon?”
Someone—a female voice—was calling his name. At least a name to which he had not answered in more than a decade. He dared a quick look around the corner of the alcove.
A beautiful Asian woman, in a business suit but assuming a perfect fighting shooting stance, her pistol pointed not toward him but at something happening in the street. He glanced that way. A car, on its side against the median barrier, flames already lapping at the engine compartment. A single shooter stretched half out of the driver’s side, motionless, draped across the door, pistol still in his hand, considerable blood dripping off t
he barrel of his gun onto the pavement.
“Sorry for the body block, but...you okay?”
He finally found the strength to stand, but things around him continued to swirl.
“I think so.”
Traffic was snarled. A few curious drivers were climbing out to see what was going on. Smoke billowed from the overturned vehicle. The waver of a distant siren.
“There was another one in the car. Before he wakes up, how about you come with me?”
“My driver was going to be...”
“He won’t be coming.”
She motioned for him to follow her. They stepped quickly to the end of the block and turned left, up the next street. The maroon Mercedes sat there, half on the curb, its front fender against a crooked light pole. Bo was at the wheel, eyes open, a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead.
TJ Dillon knew not to even slow down. Nor to doubt the woman. If she had wanted to kill him, she’d had her chance. He dutifully followed her as she quickly jaywalked across the street to a parking garage entrance.
“You obviously know my name. I must have missed yours.”
“I am Li Min Zhou. Admiral Ward told you I would be in contact, right?”
Yes, he had. But not necessarily in the middle of a raging gun battle on a Taipei boulevard. Someone who could fill him in on some things that might impact what he was doing there. Some things to be on the lookout for and why they might matter.
Li touched the key fob and lights flashed on a Honda Accord backed into a spot not far away. She motioned for him to get into the passenger seat. Only then did she stick the pistol into the handbag she had been carrying on her shoulder.
“Bed bugs.”
“Excuse me?”
“If anyone asks why you switched hotels, tell them there were bed bugs.”
“I’m switching hotels?”
