"Whalesong," Morton whispered into his Motorola mike. "Hammerhead One, at the mark. Ready to climb."
"Whalesong," Conyers's voice added a moment later. "Hammerhead Two, at the mark and ready to climb."
"Hammerhead, Whalesong, wait one." Seconds dragged past with agonizing slowness as the CRRC bobbed and slapped alongside the moving freighter. Then, "Hammerhead, Whalesong" came back, slowly and with deliberate emphasis. "You are go for Operation Buster. Repeat, go. Go. Go."
"That's the word," Morton told the others. "Let's do it."
Schiff finished unshipping and assembling the climber's extension pole and grapple — basically a painter's pole equipped with a grappling hook at the business end attached to a rolled-up caving ladder. Letting the ladder unroll, he reached up high, standing in the CRRC with the steadying support of the others, to hook the end of the pole over the freighter's freeboard three meters up, securing it to the gunwale.
In seconds TM2 Ciotti was on his way up the ladder with an ease born of long practice and rigorous training. Schiff went next, vanishing into the darkness overhead, while the remaining five men waited in the bobbing CRRC below. For a long moment there was no sound but the wind and waves, and the heavy chug of the freighter herself as she churned through the swell.
Then a pencil flash signaled once… twice… then two more times in rapid succession. Morton went up the ladder next, gripping the metal rungs with ridged Nomex gloves and leaning far back to maintain tension for the climb. Vandenberg came up behind him, followed by Young, Cyzynski, and with Hanson bringing up the rear. Like shadows, silent and all but invisible, they swarmed up the ladder, rolled over the railing, and dropped onto the deck, immediately taking up their combat positions, H&Ks covering every direction.
A Chinese sailor lay facedown a few feet away, his blood intensely black in the green-yellow monochromatic glow of Morton's night goggles. He wore civilian clothing, the garb of a merchant mariner, but a Type 56 rifle, the Chinese equivalent of the ubiquitous AK-47, was slung over his back, muzzle down. His throat had been cut.
Young and Hanson heaved the body over the railing, careful to drop it well aft of the moored CRRC below. It vanished with a splash instantly silenced by the wind and the hissing ship's wake.
Morton held up his gloved hand, fingers flickering in well-practiced sign-language gestures. You…you… forward. You and you, aft. You two with me…
The huddle of seven black-clad men broke into fire teams, each gliding silently toward memorized and practiced objectives. Having studied the Kuei Mei's deck plans and layout for hours back at Coronado, they knew exactly where they were going. They'd run endlessly through mock-ups of the vessel at the Special Warfare Center, practicing their moves, with the roles of the Chinese crew played by U.S. Marines. Each man knew exactly where he was going and how long he had to get there.
Morton and the two he'd kept with him, Schiff and Vandenberg, made their way forward to a cargo hold access hatch located in the deck just below the loom of the deckhouse and bridge. The hatch cover was secured by steel bars and a padlock, but a moment of Vandenberg's expertise with a pick released the bar and allowed them to quietly slide the cover back. The hold yawning beneath them was dark — reassuring since the lack of light suggested a lack of guards — and one by one they slipped over the hatch combing and made their way down the vertical ladder to the cargo deck below.
VBSS at times resembled a boarding action of the Age of Sail — storm aboard, guns at the ready, taking down the crew and securing the ship before they knew what had hit them. That was SOP so far as raids on suspected drug smugglers went, for instance, or when Intelligence had determined that a suspected terrorist was definitely aboard a certain boat.
There were times, however, when stealth was called for, especially when the intel picture wasn't clear. Intelligence had pinpointed the Kuei Mei's probable cargo as something of interest, but the key word there was probable. In the shadow world of military intelligence and espionage, where nothing was quite as it seemed, a strike force sometimes had to develop its own intelligence, at least in so far as confirming Washington's suspicions was concerned.
And that was the first operational goal for Hammerhead, now that they were on board. The hold was too dark even for starlight optics. Pulling flashlights from their combat vests, the three SEALs made their way through the freighter's hold, which was stacked high with cargo pallets and wooden crates. Destination manifests attached to some of the crates identified them, in English and Pinyin, as machine tools and parts destined for the port of Los Angeles.
Using his Mark I diving knife, Morton prized back the lid to the nearest crate. Inside, beneath a layer of packing material, was…
Something that looked like a heavy tool die.
Schiff pried open another crate nearby. "Negative here," he whispered over the tactical channel, his voice rough in Morton's earplug speaker. "Machine parts."
"And here," Vandenberg said from another crate, farther aft.
"Keep looking," Morton said. The cargo they were looking for would be only a portion of the freighter's entire load. There would be plenty of legitimate cargo, if only to increase the chances of slipping the illegal stuff past U.S. customs.
They went through several more crates, scattering their choices around the hold to get a fair sampling. Morton finally chose a crate at the aft end of the compartment, one underneath a stack of other crates, so that he had to pry the side off to open it up.
Inside were half a dozen M-22 assault rifles, the export version of the Type 56, wrapped in plastic sheeting and coated with Cosmoline. They were missing their magazines, but Vandenberg found plenty of those a moment later in another crate nearby, while Schiff turned up a third loaded with 7.62mm rounds. The contraband seemed sequestered in the forward port corner of the hold, well away from the deck hatches. As the three men concentrated their search there, they found more crates, all labeled "machine parts" and "machine tools," which contained hundreds of the export assault rifles, plus magazines, ammunition, grenades, explosives, bulletproof vests. One large crate held the Chinese version of the Russian RPG-7 rocket-grenade launcher.
The SEALs continued their sampling, finding still more crates of weaponry. Especially worrying were the RPGs, which could take out a police armored car… or an airliner lifting off from a runway.
And all headed for Los Angeles.
"They have enough shit here to start a small war," Vandenberg whispered.
"Maybe that's the idea," Schiff replied.
"The war's already under way," Morton told them. "Beijing just wants to make some money on the side. But they're going to find out that this cargo was a damned bad investment."
The Beijing government had tried this before. Early in the Clinton administration the government had sold off the old Navy base at Long Beach, California; the facilities had been purchased by a Chinese firm as a commercial seagoing freight terminal. Despite its ongoing cosmetic overhaul and the occasional free-market protestations, the PRC was still a Communist state, and the trading company at Long Beach was little more than a front. Several Chinese freighters at Long Beach were discovered to be in violation of federal arms import regulations. Their cargoes had included automatic weapons and ammunition apparently brought into Los Angeles for sale to none other than the Crips, the Bloods, and other notorious street gangs.