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He was not a man who missed an opportunity.

4

Mark Cole felt the wind ripping through the cabin of the Black Hawk helicopter which now hovered over the dark seas, his target obscured below him.

Cole and the rest of the Force One team had finished up their training in Coronado, drawn their equipment and been flown out to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam the previous afternoon.

Cole had been pleased with his experience in Coronado, each and every individual now comfortable with the SEAL Delivery Vehicle they would be using. Everyone was experienced in such operations anyway, but it was always nice to be reassured. There was also always the question of how individual operators would gel as a team — but again, it turned out that Cole had nothing to worry about on that score either.

One of the requirements for secondment to Force One was an operator’s ability to work alone when they had to, or to be able to instantly integrate into a team if that was what the mission dictated. As such, Cole had selected personnel of such a high caliber that — after only a few hours of familiarization — they were able to work together as if they’d done so for years.

They were like world-class musicians, each at the top of their game, asked to play together — after only a short time, the very best would always come together in fluid harmony, uniting as one as if they had always played that way.

The aviators from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment of the US Army had already arrived in Guam by the time Force One was there, ready and waiting to go.

The pilots of the 160th SOAR — the ‘Night Stalkers’ — were the best in the world, able to fly in and out of combat zones without detection, in a wide range of specially modified aircraft. The Sikorsky MH-60 Black Hawk stealth helicopter was one such vehicle, its fuselage altered with the harsh angles and flat surfaces of stealth technology that helped it to avoid many typical radar systems, its rotors configured and adjusted to reduce noise to an absolute minimum.

The Black Hawk’s position over the northern waters of the Ryukyu Islands, in the southern end of the East China Sea, wasn’t quite enemy territory — it was still outside China’s claimed territorial waters — but nobody knew quite how much surveillance the Chinese military had operating in the area, and no chances were being taken. The aircraft — and the huge Virginia-class submarine which waited below it — might still be discovered, and then all hell would undoubtedly break loose.

Despite Cole’s decades of experience, he still felt the cold knots of fear clawing at his belly, telling him to pull back, to abandon the mission, to go home. And as usual, he ignored those feelings completely, shutting them off with absolute mental control. As Mike Tyson’s boxing trainer, Cus D’Amato, had once said, the only difference between the hero and the coward was what they did with their fear. Everyone felt it, but the strong simply refused to give in to it.

The ropes were dropped from the open door of the Black Hawk and the team lined up, thickly-gloved hands waiting to take hold of the rappelling line which would take them to the waiting submarine.

But this was no simple exercise; the submarine was being moved up and down, side to side by the large swells of the black nighttime sea, and to avoid detection had no visible lights running across its decks. There were people down there, somewhere, who would be busy tying off the rappel line onto the deck, to secure it so that all Cole and his colleagues had to do was to slide down and move off.

But with two moving vehicles, separated by thirty feet of pitch black air, joined by a single rope, there was a lot that could go wrong. If the sea pitched suddenly one way and pulled the rope taut, the chopper would have to disengage it to stop itself being dragged down into water; and if the helicopter was accosted by an unexpected air current, the rope would also have to be discarded.

And in both cases, there might well be Force One members still sliding down it. Cole didn’t visualize what would become of anybody caught out in this way; he’d spent enough useless energy on negative thoughts, and now it was time to act.

The loadmaster, looking down with the assistance of his night vision goggles at the submarine riding the swells thirty feet below, was waiting for his opposite number on the black deck to confirm the rope was anchored.

Cole’s feet edged closer to the door, gloved hand wrapped round the rappelling line, waiting for the loadmaster to clap his shoulder and send him out into the dark emptiness beyond the chopper’s door.

* * *

Captain Hank Sherman was far from happy; still, he never was when his submarine was ordered to surface in unfriendly waters.

He had thought it would have made more sense for the special forces team to be taken onto the boat back at White Beach — that way they would never have had to perform such a risky boarding. But he’d been told that the operation was due to be conducted to a very tight time frame, and the USS Texas had to set off before the team was en route or else they would never make their final destination.

Wherever the hell that was, Sherman thought angrily. But he knew that such a quickly mounted operation was absolutely predicated upon secrecy, and his anger subsided as he accepted the necessity of compartmentalization. Still, he thought the captain of the ship might at least be told where the ship would be headed.

All in good time, Hank, he told himself. All in good time.

He was on top of the conning tower, the night air hot and sticky but relieved ever so slightly by the feint breeze drifting in from the west. But although it was soothing for him, the breeze also meant that the waters were becoming a little choppy, the swells beginning to rise.

It wasn’t anything to worry about unduly; this time of year, the weather could become a lot worse at any moment, terrific downpours coming out of nowhere and destabilizing his submarine far more than the gentle rocking it was experiencing at the moment.

But every second spent above the surface was one more than Sherman was comfortable with; the entire purpose of a submarine was that it was hard to detect, and it was hard to detect predominantly because it operated below the water. Like all submariners, Sherman had an ingrained hatred of surfacing his ship in any area other than a naval base of the United States.

Not that this particular area was being patrolled by the Chinese, at least not as far as anyone was aware. The ‘ring of fire’ that surrounded the downed USS Ford was further southwest, in the triangle made between Taiwan, the Ryukyus, and the Chinese coast from Fuzhou to Hangzhou. The Texas, and the Black Hawk above her, were just outside that envelope.

Sherman had also been informed about the invasion of Taiwan, which was now in full swing, and knew that this meant there would be less effort made to patrol this particular area. He had been amazed that the Chinese were pushing ahead so quickly, and wondered if Taiwan was to be his mission, and not the Ford as he’d first hoped. Was the special operations unit going to be landed on Taiwan to help repel the attack?

Well, he’d find out soon enough if this landing went smoothly.

He was watching his men secure the rappelling line, right next to the attached Dry Dock Shelter when the message came over the radio.

‘Sir,’ the voice said urgently, ‘we’ve detected a Chinese sub.’ Sherman recognized the voice of Luke Dennison, sonar operator from the sub’s Combat Direction Center, and his heart leapt in his chest, his hands gripping the metal guardrail, knuckles turned white. ‘And it’s heading this way.’

* * *

Major Levi Trautman, pilot of the Blackhawk which hovered in the dark skies about the Texas, received the message loud and clear; they were potentially compromised, and a decision had to be made immediately.