“Who got hit?” Murdock asked.
Nobody responded. Then Lam whispered to Murdock.
“It’s Vinnie Van Dyke. He’s unconscious. Hit bad somewhere but I can’t find any blood. Not a head or neck shot.”
“Try and find the wound and stop any bleeding,” Murdock said. He looked at the machine guns that now fired sporadically. They were less than two hundred yards from the bar into the South China Sea. “Let’s knock out those machine guns,” Murdock said
Lam fired three times, allowing ten seconds for the weapon to recharge. After the second shot the MGs on the right bank stuttered. The third shot closed it down. Mahanani did his work on the other shore and the machine gun fell silent after two EAR rounds.
“Anderson, see if you can get the SATCOM working. Tell him we’re nearly out of the river and into the sea.”
Howie Anderson tried twice but couldn’t raise the Pegasus. Murdock used the radio. “DeWitt, I’m cutting power so we can get a better shot at the satellite. Cut power both boats now.”
This time when Howie tried he got a response from the pickup boat.
“Pegasus here. We’re about two miles out from the mouth of the river. If you saw no shore batteries, we’ll come straight in until we spot your light sticks.”
“That’s a roger, Pegasus. No shore batteries. We wiped out the machine guns. Good sailing.”
“Skipper, found the hole. Looks like it went into Vinnie’s right lung. Knocked him out. Not bleeding a lot but his pulse is slow and his breathing is ragged. He’s alive but I don’t know how long he can hold out.”
“Soon as we’re on the Pegasus, I’ll see what I can do for him,” Mahanani said. “I’ve got some tricks.”
“Motors full speed,” Murdock ordered.
Two minutes later they passed over the shallow bar and were in the South China Sea. Ken Ching bent two light sticks, mixing the chemicals and turning them into bright wands of light. He held them as high as he could facing front in the rubber duck.
Khai did the same thing in the other boat as they powered forward through a choppy sea toward the Pegasus. Every other wave broke hard on the bow of the small rubber boat, showering the riders with spray.
Senator Highlander crouched there in the IBS, tears running down his cheeks. His eyes were closed and he looked as if he were praying. When he opened his eyes, he touched Murdock.
“Commander, I don’t know how to thank you for saving the lives of my wife and daughter. They are the valuable ones in this trio. I was ready to trade my life for theirs. Now I don’t have to. How does a man who made a huge mistake thank the men who came and pulled his family out of the jaws of death?”
Murdock couldn’t think of any way to answer. He patted the senior senator from Idaho on the shoulder and heard a shout from Ching.
“I’ve got running lights slightly to port, Captain. I think the Pegasus has found us.”
Twenty minutes later in the dry cabin of the Pegasus, Mahanani worked quickly over the prostate form of Vinnie Van Dyke. The bullet had penetrated his webbing and slammed into his right lung.
“The lead must have been misshapen and flattened out when it broke through a rib,” Mahanani said. “Lots of damage in there. I gave him some morphine in case he gets conscious. Other than that we keep his head high and keep him warm so he doesn’t go into shock. If the bullet chopped up some of the major tubes in there, he could bleed out in fifteen minutes. So far, so good. Nothing else I can do. They’ll have a doctor onboard the Gonzalez who will have a good shot at saving him. Vinnie wouldn’t live through a five-hour chopper ride back to T’aipei.”
They had cut the Pegasus speed to fifteen knots to reduce the pounding. The coxswain said it would take twenty minutes to get to the destroyer. He had alerted the medical staff onboard about the wounded man, and they would be ready for him on the chopper pad on the stern of the ship.
Murdock sat beside Vinnie. He was still unconscious. That wasn’t good. Damn it, he wasn’t going to lose another man. He wouldn’t permit it. He looked at the senator and his family huddled together not yet believing that they were safe and free. Three for one, it would be a good trade-off. But not if that one dead man was one of his SEALs.
Murdock closed his eyes. This was the toughest part of being a SEAL commander. Watching one of his own lying there with a bullet in him, and no one being sure if he would live or die. Well, Vincent Van Dyke, you big sonofabitch, you are going to live if I have to pump my own blood and breath into your body. You hear me, you cock-sucker? You’re going to live!
4
Senator Gregory B. Highlander had spent two days writing down what he remembered from his ten-day stay in China. He had talked with his wife and put down what she told him from the daily newspapers and television reports she had seen. He had it all spelled out and now he tried to tell the State Department’s Far Eastern Desk supervisor what he had seen. He sent it on a secure encrypted line from the Navy’s base there in T’aipei.
“I know what the feeling is at State, but I was on the ground, Phil. I saw with my own eyes, and my wife heard them talking and she listened to their TV and radio diatribes. I tell you that China is getting ready for war. She’s on a wartime footing, and goading her people into believing that whatever the government does will be right and with the best interests of one and a third billion Chinese….
“Yes, damn it, I told you, there has been absolutely no mention of Taiwan. I and my wife both have the impression that this is not about Taiwan; they are gearing up for something else. I’ve put everything I saw and heard in a dispatch that went out by secure wire an hour ago. I wanted to alert you that it’s coming….
“Don’t be surprised at whatever the Chinese do, and they are going to do something. I believe it will be military, they will strike somewhere, and I don’t have the slightest idea where. There has been nothing in their talk about the target of all of this building war hysteria. They might go anywhere along their borders, from North Korea to Mongolia to Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan, even India. Now there would be a prize, but it would be a tough fight. India has nuclear weapons as well.”
He listened for a moment.
“Yes, I know this is a surprise. Where are your China watchers? Don’t you have anyone in Bejing anymore? Now, I’ve told you, my hands are clean. I think this is justification for the trouble I’ve caused by this trip. I just hope to God that somebody back there will take this warning to heart. They have to, Phil. Somebody has to believe me. What?”
“Coming home? We’ll be traveling by commercial air so it will take us a few days. We’ve rested up two days here in Taiwan, and now we’re ready to travel. How did we get out of China? That’s between my family and a few good men we can’t mention. Let’s just say that we got out and nobody on either side was killed. Well, one of our men did get wounded, but I don’t know what his situation is. We’re out and coming home.”
Lieutenant Commander Blake Murdock sat in the waiting room in the Ladies of Charity Hospital in T’aipei. It had been three days since Van Dyke had been shot on the Yibin River coming out of China. He had made it to the destroyer where a team of doctors dug into his chest and took out six fragments of the lead bullet that had fragmented when it hit his rib after penetrating his web harness.
Van Dyke was still alive. The doctors had done what they could on the destroyer, then when it was safe for him to travel, had sent him back to Taiwan via the amphibious ship in a helicopter. The trip had set him back but the doctors at the best hospital in Taiwan had corrected that problem and now he was what the doctors called out of danger. Still Murdock decided to stay with him. Orders had come through sending the SEALs to an aircraft carrier in the 27th Fleet just south of Japan in the East China Sea. The SEALs would stand watch there in case there were any more Americans in China who needed to be extracted. The platoon would replace a group from SEAL Team One, who had been stationed on the ship for the past two months. Murdock requested that he stay with his wounded man until Van Dyke was ready to be flown to the Naval Hospital in San Diego.