The plane had a low wing with a twenty-five-degree leading-edge sweep, three degrees of dihedral from the roots, and low wing fences at midspan. The trailing edge had one-piece single-slotted, Fowler-type flaps inboard of insert ailerons.
The T-tail had a broad, slightly swept vertical fin with a small dorsal fillet and full-height rudder. At the top of the tail were swept, horizontal stabilizers with full-span elevators. Two Rolls-Royce turbofan engines with Rohr thrust reversers were mounted on short stubs that were located high on the rear fuselage; the inlets overlapped the trailing edges of the wings. Fuel was carried in wing tanks.
The Gulfstream Aerospace plane had a crew of three, and normally carried nineteen passengers. Its wingspan was sixty-eight feet ten inches and it was seventy-nine feet eleven inches long. Maximum cruise speed at 25,000 feet was 581 mph. It had a ceiling of 42,000 feet and a range, with maximum fuel, of 4,275 miles.
The SEALs lounged on their drag bags and packs on the tarmac fifty yards from where final fueling of their jet took place.
“Damn, this time I hope we draw one of them tasty little Air Force women stewards,” said Jack Mahanani, hospital corpsman first class.
“Hell of a lot better ride than a C-130,” said Paul Jefferson, engineman second class.
They loaded at 1130; stowed their vests, weapons, harnesses, and drag bags; and settled into civilian-type, lean-back, first-class seats.
“Now this is living,” Colt Franklin, yeoman second class shrilled. “This is really living.”
A tall black woman in an Air Force uniform with three stripes on her sleeves came out of the plane’s flight cabin. “Gentlemen,” she said, and everyone shut up and looked up. “My name is Andrea, and I’m crew chief on this bird. Anybody barfs gets to clean it up himself. You be nice to my baby, or I’ll razz you all the way to our first fuel stop. Y’all hear me?”
“Yes ma’am,” the sixteen SEALs said almost in unison.
“Good. Just so we understand each other. I hear you haven’t eaten since ten o’clock. Poor babies. I’ll have some high-quality Air Force box lunches for you an hour after takeoff. Now settle back and enjoy. Usually I get admirals and senators and generals for passengers.” She frowned, lifted her brows, and shook her head. “From admirals to this. Please, Lord, have mercy, I got saddled with a whole passel of froggy guys.”
She grinned, and the SEALs hooted as she went out the main door.
Thirteen hours and two stops later, the sleek business jet rolled to a stop at T’aipei airport and the SEALs transferred quickly to a U.S. Navy bus that took them to the port where they were bunked down in a Navy building. It had a small mess hall and twenty bunk beds.
That was where Don Stroh contacted them through a base telephone.
“Enjoy your tourist flight?” Stroh asked Murdock.
“Terrific, especially the in-flight movie. Now who in hell is going to tell us where we’re going and what we’re supposed to be doing?”
“That would be me. Uncle Sugar has a small problem, three of them actually. This blunderbuss senator, who also is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is stuck in China. They have him under house arrest at a little village in south China down below Macao somewhere. He says China is at a fever pitch, that the whole damn place is almost on a wartime footing. He expects something big and wild to pop at any time. He wants out.”
“I can understand his thoughts.”
“His wife and teenage daughter are with him. Three packages, all must come out untouched and totally unharmed.”
“Our job is to go in and bring them out?” Murdock asked.
“You’re quick, Murdock. Except when those calico ocean bass are biting. You have to wait for the second nibble, then strike with a good upward snap with the rod. That’s the reason I can outfish you any day in the week.”
“Not on a clear day, Stroh. Now, how do we get from here to down there? How far is it? Do we have Navy power in the area?”
“Questions, questions. You are to meet with Admiral Barney Chalmers. His place in half an hour. Bring along your team.”
“You’re here in T’aipei?
“Bingo, I told them you were quick. Been waiting for you. I’ve been here all of four hours. But I had an eight-hour head start. See you soon. A man is on his way to bring your people.”
Twenty minutes later Murdock, Lieutenant jg Ed DeWitt, Chief Dobler, Jaybird Sterling, and Joe Lampedusa (operations specialist third class) walked into Admiral Chalmers’s office two buildings down and came to attention.
“Admiral, sir. Lieutenant Commander Murdock and team reporting as ordered.”
“Yes, Murdock, men, sit down. This may take some time. Don Stroh has been telling me that if anyone can bring out our gallivanting senator, you and your men can.”
Murdock nodded in response. He saw Stroh sitting across the table from them and waved at him.
“This little Chinese village is three miles inland, and about seven hundred miles by air from us here,” the admiral continued. “We have some assets in the area, namely two destroyers and a light cruiser. The destroyers are about a hundred miles off Macao and steaming south as we speak to get in position as close to the village as possible while staying twenty miles at sea.”
“Yes sir,” Murdock said. “We can work off a destroyer if it’s cleared to land a CH-forty-six.”
The admiral looked at one of his aides.
“In that area is the Guided Missile Destroyer Gonzalez,” a three-striper said. “I know that she can service and rearm the SH-60 chopper.”
“That fits,” Jaybird said. “The sixty has a rotor diameter of just over fifty-three feet. The forty-six has a rotor diameter of fifty-one feet so it should work.”
The admiral looked at Murdock. “Sir, I rely on my men to assist in all phases of an operation. If Jaybird says the CH-46 will fit on the deck, sir, it will.”
The admiral frowned, then shrugged. “Fine. Now how to we get a forty-six to the Gonzalez?”
“Sir, we have the Amphibious Assault Ship Bataan about two hundred miles north and west of the Gonzalez,” a captain near the Admiral said. “She has six or eight of the CH forty-sixes. The Bataan is about four hundred miles south of Kaohsiung on the tip of Taiwan. We have three of the forty-sixes there.”
“So she’s within range of the destroyer.” The admiral looked up. “I can order the chopper to fly to the destroyer whenever you say, Commander. I’ve had word through channels directly from the CNO that you are to get whatever you want.”
“Thank you, sir. We’ll need two hours to plan out the operation. Do we have any kind of visual on the area, on the house, or the beach along there?”
The admiral looked at his staff. Each man shook his head.
“Not a thing. You’ll be going in blind. I do have one directive. We are not to commit any more aircraft than absolutely necessary to the operation. One chopper in and out would be the preference of the CNO. He said that way there will be less flack when China accuses us of violating her airspace and committing aggression on Chinese soil.”
“And we accuse her of kidnapping three U.S. citizens,” Murdock said.
“Two of whom have dual Chinese citizenship,” Ed DeWitt said.
“Really?” Admiral Chalmers asked.
“Yes, as I understand Chinese law,” DeWitt said.
There was a pause. Everyone looked at the admiral. He reached for his pipe. He picked it off its decorative stand on his desk, carefully cleaned the bowl while the others waited. Then he put the stem in his mouth and nodded.