“Boxer, be advised we are Rotten Dog. Our main force is pinned down half a mile inland from lifeguard station number nine. Over.”
“Halo, say again all after main force. Over.”
“Pinned down half a mile inland from lifeguard station number nine. Over.”
Bisping gave O’Leary an ironic grimace and muttered, “That’s what I thought she said.”
“Stand by, Halo. We are presently engaged in a sea battle but will send Marine detachment ashore ASAP. Over.”
“What is their ETA? Over.”
“Stand by, Halo.”
“Don’t keep us waiting too long, Boxer. Our tit’s in the wringer!”
“We read you,” Bisping said, giving the handset back to Brooks. “Her tit may be in the wringer but my balls are on the block.”
Beauchamp came onto the bridge and saluted crisply, snapping immediately to attention. “Gunnery Sergeant Beauchamp reporting as—”
“At ease, Gunny.”
“Sir.”
“Are your devil dogs ready to go ashore?”
“That’s affirmative, sir.”
“Well be advised, Gunny, you and your men will be going very soon, and your condition will be Rotten Dog. Our evacuees have apparently gotten themselves pinned down half a mile inland from lifeguard station number nine.”
“And if we’re torpedoed, sir?”
“Then you’ll be going ashore indefinitely. Either way, Gunny, you’re on in less than ten.”
“Oorah, sir.”
Five miles out to sea, as Commander Reese and his men were creeping toward the sail of the Chinese submarine, they felt the boat lurch forward, its electric motors kicking on to propel the submarine very slowly through the water, barely raising a wake.
Through the murk at that distance, Reese was just able to make out the Boxer’s silhouette lying some five miles distant, but only because he knew exactly where she was and what to look for. In a very short time, however, the Chinese officer watching eastward through his own night vision scope from atop the sail would be making a positive identification and calling below to his captain, who would then—in all likelihood—give the order to launch a full spread of torpedoes at both the Boxer and Algonquin.
There were no ladder rungs on the almost thirty-foot-tall sail of a Song Class submarine the way there were on old fashioned subs, which meant that Reese and his men had to form a human ladder in order for him to reach the rear sail plane jutting backward twenty feet above the pressure hull. Even from atop the sail plane it still took two men standing on one another’s shoulders for Reese to climb the final ten feet. Once atop the sail, he moved quickly forward to the observer’s station, where the Chinese officer was studying the pitch-black shoreline.
Reese heard the man draw an excited breath and saw him reach for the phone, obviously having just spotted the Boxer. He dropped down into the observer’s station and grabbed the officer from behind, gripping him under the jaw with his left hand to twist his face away, jamming a killing knife up through the base of his skull and giving the blade a sharp twist, leaving Reese holding a veritable rag doll. He lay the man down and signaled over the net for the rest of his men to join him.
The next man to reach the top of the sail lowered a knotted rope for six others. Two SEALs would remain down on the hull to kill anyone attempting to escape through the bow or stern hatchways.
As expected, the observer’s hatch was sealed from inside, so Reese signaled for Chief Petty Officer Chou to do his thing. Chou picked up the phone, saying in a sickly voice to whomever it was that answered: “Man, I just got a real bad case of the shits!” Or whatever the Cantonese equivalent of that was.
The wheel began to turn on the hatch, and the SEALs prepared to do battle.
The somewhat bemused Chinese sailor below was standing in a compartment illuminated only in dim red light, and he was opening the hatch into absolute darkness, so he didn’t see the silencer of the MP-5 submachine gun Reese was aiming down into his face.
Reese squeezed off a single round and shot the sailor straight through the forehead, dropping him to the deck with a dull thud. He was down the ladder in a split second, moving rapidly into the next compartment, where he gunned down two more unsuspecting sailors standing at the periscope. He waited until the rest of his men were formed up behind him before sliding down the ladder into the next compartment. From there, half of the team made their way forward toward the control room. The other half remained in position to prevent their line of retreat from being blocked.
Reese and the other three walked boldly into the con and opened fire. The startled Chinese sailors screamed as they died, but the captain of the boat kept his head, leaping for the launch buttons.
Reese fired and killed him, but not before the captain managed to launch a single torpedo.
“Captain! Algonquin reports hydrophone effect! One torpedo in the water—it’s got us dead-bang!”
“Slip both anchors!” Bisping ordered. “All engines full reverse!”
“Launch helicopters!” O’Leary announced simultaneously over the MC. “Launch amphibious craft! All hands rig for impact!”
Having also been prepared for this eventuality, the Algonquin had long since off-loaded the majority of her crew into lifeboats, leaving only the captain, the sonar officer, and a few engineers aboard. The engineers applied full power to the destroyer’s propellers, then scrambled up to the weather deck as the Algonquin captain put his ship into full reverse. She had good power but was starting from a dead stop, so she didn’t move quickly at first. Even so, her captain was hoping against heaven and hell to get the Algonquin into the torpedo’s path before it could detonate beneath the Boxer’s hull and break her spine.
Bisping stood on the bridge watching the other ship through a pair of NVDs as the Boxer oh-so-slowly began to back away. We’re moving as fast as mechanically possible, he thought, but we’ll never make it.
“Captain!” Brooks shouted. “Commander Reese reports he and his men have taken the con.” Bisping got on the radio immediately, ordering the helicopter pilots not to attack the submarine.
“All landing craft away, sir,” O’Leary announced. “The Marines should be ashore within five.” But Bisping didn’t hear him. He was once again watching to see whether his ship was going to be blown out from under him.
“Captain, Algonquin reports it’s going to be close.”
In the same moment, the torpedo passed directly beneath the screws of the Algonquin and, sensing her magnetic field, detonated, blowing off the destroyer’s stern in a huge white flash of froth and fire.
A cheer went up on the Boxer’s bridge.
“Knock it off!” Bisping ordered. “We just lost half our task force and this battle’s not over. Get me Commander Reese on the radio!”
A few seconds later Bisping was talking to Reese. “How do you want to play this, Commander? I want that sub sunk!”
“We can set demolition charges here in the con, sir, to destroy her controls. After that we can abandon ship, allowing you to sink her at your leisure. One of the helos can lift us out of the water.”
“How do you keep the Chinese sailors from killing you after you make it into the water?”
“I intend to leave this boat in flames, Captain. They’ll be too busy fighting the fires to bother with us. They haven’t even tried to retake the con yet, for Christ’s sake.”