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“That’s a roger, Commander.” The admiral pointed to one of his men who stood and left the room.

“So, we’ll see you at the airstrip at 1305.”

South China Sea
Off China

Navy air power performed flawlessly, and the sixteen SEALs stumbled out of the CH46 onboard the gently pitching chopper pad on the Gonzalez twenty minutes ahead of schedule. Most of them had slept on the two legs to the amphibian ship and then to the guided missile destroyer.

A four-striper met them on the deck and hurried them into the compartment they would use for their short stay.

“We heard you were coming,” the commander said. “I’m Randolph.”

“Murdock here,” Blake said and shook the man’s hand. “Do you have a Pegasus for us with two IBS craft?”

“We do. Right now we’re back up to speed and making thirty knots toward your small stream. It’s called the Yibin River on my chart and shows navigation up about twenty miles. We’re still eighteen miles off shore and paralleling it until we come off the Yibin. Another two hours at the most. How about some hot chow? I’ve alerted the mess and your men can order whatever they want from steak to lobster. It isn’t often that we get a combat mission onboard the Gonzalez.”

The sixteen SEALs ate, slept a while, and were on the fantail on the chopper pad twenty minutes early and ready to go down a rope ladder off the stern into the Pegasus, which rode gently as the destroyer made five knots forward in a slow three-mile box ten miles off shore from the Yibin River.

A coxswain came up and talked to Murdock.

“Sir, I’m your driver. We’re ten miles off the river. I understand you want to move in modestly, then the last five miles at no more than ten knots. We stop two miles off and put you in the IBSs.”

“Correct, Coxswain. Then you meander around out there for about two hours when we should be two miles out in the IBSs to meet you with the three packages.”

“We have a SATCOM on board,” the coxswain said. “We’re set on channel one and will wait for a radio check with you when you get your packages in the boats in the river.”

“Sounds good. We’ll have light sticks for the pickup. If you hear any firing at all, come in closer, we might need more help than we figure right now. You have live ammo for your shooters?”

“Absolutely and good men with the guns.”

“Great, time we get onboard.”

Murdock lined up his men in their combat gear and with their weapons and then went down the rope ladder into the gently bobbing Pegasus. Ed DeWitt brought up the rear. Any nervousness Murdock had felt evaporated once he stepped on the Pegasus and moved forward. This was it. Once more into the fray, into the breach, as the poem went. He never went into a mission thinking that this could be his last. It wasn’t in his nature. He went in knowing that he would come out. Knowing that he was serving his country and doing a damn good job. But this wasn’t just another mission. This was the one right now, the most important one he had ever been on. The current one had to feel that way.

He turned and hurried the men into their seats in the cramped insertion craft that could do forty-five knots in a calm sea. Good, the quicker they got up that river the better.

Now that it had started, Murdock couldn’t wait.

3

South China Sea

The loaded Pegasus growled along at twenty knots and Murdock went to the coxswain.

“Making too much noise, Chief. Cut her down to ten knots and we’ll listen. Not supposed to be any Chinese out here, but we can’t count on that.” The coxswain cut the speed. The new sound of the big twin 4,500-horsepower diesels was a lower growl, but Murdock shook his head and asked to cut down the speed again. At last they crept through the soft swells at five knots and Murdock was satisfied.

“Our timetable isn’t important going in,” he told the driver. “I don’t want to alert anybody along shore that some boat is heading toward the river.”

“Hey, I don’t want to get shot at either,” the coxswain said.

Murdock called for a full stop when he figured they were a mile and a half offshore of a cluster of lights. Dobler inflated the first IBS and put it in the sea. The Pegasus had stopped, and the big engines idled.

Bravo Squad went in the first IBS and then Dobler inflated the second one and dropped it in the wet. Alpha Squad and Murdock moved into it, drag bags and all, and cast loose. The two boats were tied together with a forty-foot line as they turned toward shore. Both engines started on the second pull and they purred along at five knots, heading in with what Murdock decided was an incoming tide.

All of the SEALs had on their personal Motorola radios. They had a transceiver clipped on the belt, an earpiece, and a mike that fastened around their neck and perched a half inch from their lips.

Murdock made a radio check, and all fifteen men signed on in the correct order. “Ten minutes to the river mouth. If there’s no traffic, we go right up the middle of the stream,” Murdock told the SEALs. “Doubt if we can keep the SATCOM antenna on target for a talk with the senator, but we have detailed directions how to find him. Up the river two miles then a slight bend to the left. His house is another mile on beside two tall trees. He’ll have the lights on and be on the riverbank with a flashlight if he can get there without the guard spotting him.”

“How close do we motor to the house?” DeWitt asked.

“Let’s beach it a hundred yards before we get to the right place,” Murdock said on the Motorola. “Jefferson, it’s your turn in the barrel. You’ll stay with the IBSs to ensure that we’ll have them safe and secure when we come back and save a five-mile swim.”

“Yes, sir, Commander,” Jefferson said.

“All of you make sure your weapons have suppressors on them, that your mags are full, and that there’s a round in the chambers. No twenty-millimeter mags in the Bull Pups, at least not yet.”

The men ducked low in the rubber ducks as they passed over a small bar and into the channel of the Yibin River. It was no more than forty yards across here. Murdock wondered how it could be navigated for twenty miles upstream.

The cluster of lights turned out to be three buildings near the left-hand side of the stream. They had a dock with night lights. One boat had tied up there, but Murdock could see no people. At less than thirty yards they motored quietly past the lights and back into the dark.

Clouds scuttered over the moon. Now a dark period. Murdock watched along the left-hand shore for the features that the senator had told Stroh about. He saw a temple to the left. Yes one sign post. A short way on a small stream came in from the left. Second indicator.

A shot jolted into the quiet night. The men in both boats ducked lower. The sound came from the right.

“At ease,” Murdock whispered into his mike. “That was a rifle shot but it was half a mile off. No concern of ours. Stay low.”

A boat came chugging toward them showing one pale light forward.

“Left shore now,” Murdock said to the mike. Both boats turned sharply toward the left shore and stopped against a grassy bank. The diesel engine chugged along, and the small wooden boat steamed downstream.

“Fishing boat,” DeWitt said. “Getting an early start. Must be some good shoals or banks offshore.”

The boats moved back to the middle of the stream. Now they could see houses and sheds crowding the bank on both sides. How could they spot the house they needed? Murdock wondered.

“Three miles up the river now,” Jaybird whispered into the mike.