"How would you know, Chief?" RM2 Meyers asked. "You had a concussion, remember?"
"Actually, I don't remember much of anything. But man, that was one hell of a great Hong Kong liberty!"
"Are you going back there, Chief?" Ritthouser asked.
"Sure am, Doc. Ya wanna come? Best little whorehouse in Hong Kong, I tell ya!"
Seawolf's corpsman shook his head. "I don't know about that, Chief. I'm supposed to be warning you poor, benighted souls about the dangers of places like that, remember?"
"Aw, c'mon, Doc!" TM1 O'Malley laughed. "How ya gonna know what to warn us about if you ain't been there yourself?"
"I'm also married!"
"So? What's that got to do with it, Doc?" YM1 Haskell asked. "We won't tell on you!" The others laughed and hooted.
"It's gonna be an interestin' visit, though," Chief Toynbee said. "That was… lessee, I was a first class then. It was, yeah, 'ninety-five. This is my first visit back to this port since the Commies took the place over. Now, they say nothin's changed, but I wonder if the old fleet watering holes are the same."
"Of course they are, Chief," Thompson said. "Half the port must live off the various navies that visit here. That's not going to change just because of a little switch of government. People are still people, and sailors still have more cash than sense when they get liberty."
"Well, it's not like the old days, when we always had ships calling at Hong Kong."
"No, but they still do," Thompson said. "I think the Navy likes to run L.A. boats and the occasional carrier through here just to remind the Chinese we're here, y'know?"
"Well, I know one thing," Toynbee said. "And let this be a warnin' to each and every one of you guys. Stay out of trouble! Back in the old days, the local Hong Kong police boys were efficient, but they were also friendly and they could be real reasonable if you had American dollars. I don't know that I'd want to try to bribe a Chicom cop, know what I mean?"
"Cops are cops everywhere," Ritthouser said. "Maybe you just need to make their acquaintance!"
"And maybe a certain smart-aleck corpsman is going to see Hong Kong by way of the number one torpedo tube!"
"Attention on deck!"
The men started to come to their feet, but Garrett waved them all back down. "As you were. What's up?"
"I, ah, was just filling the guys in on personal hygiene, sir," Ritthouser said. "Especially on how not to come back aboard with STDs."
"Yeah," Meyers said. "He was telling us how guys' dicks fall off when they visit HK cat houses."
"Sounds like a cool lecture, Doc. Wish I'd heard it."
"Yes, sir."
"Chief Toynbee? I understand you've been in Hong Kong before."
"Uh… yes, sir. A long time ago… "
"I need to talk to you."
The XO led Toynbee off to the side of the compartment, where they began speaking in low voices. Meyers looked at the others. "I say the new XO is okay!"
"He'll do," Ritthouser said. "Meanwhile… tell me about this whorehouse…."
"Well," Haskell said, "it's called the Fuk Wai, and you'll know why when you see the girls…"
12
Thundering through the night, the line of Huey UH-1 helicopters clattered scant feet above the waves, unseen in the darkness below. Jack Morton sat on the edge of the cargo deck of the lead helo, his feet braced on the landing skid as the warm, wet wind slapped and tugged madly at his assault gear.
Four helicopters, thirty-two men, eight to a bird. Sixteen men from Third Platoon, First Company SEAL Team Three, and sixteen more from the Taiwan parafrogmen commando unit. It was a larger insertion than Morton liked. While he'd trained in large-scale assaults, the SEALs were at their best in small-unit deployments, usually in eight-man squads or, at most, a sixteen-man platoon. More men than that and the operation could become badly confused real fast, especially if you weren't sure where all of your men were at any given moment.
This was a lot worse, too, because half of the assault force was made up of strangers, the Taiwanese parafrogs. Oh, there was no question whatsoever that they were good. Their training was closely modeled on the insanely rigorous BUD/S training the American SEALs went through. But the Third Platoon had the advantage of having worked and trained together for a long time, to the point that every man knew every other better than a brother, knew him so well you could damned near tell where he was and what he was doing by some arcane sixth sense.
But the SEALs were also trained to take part in hasty insertions, and this op was about as hasty as they came. Fortunately, it was relatively straightforward. Get in, find the PLA mobile launchers a few miles inland, wham-and-scram, and exfiltrate.
They were riding heavily on trust on this one — trusting Tse and his people to be as good as they were supposed to be, trusting the Taiwanese helo pilots to be as good as they were supposed to be, and trusting a Taiwanese patrol boat to meet them at a certain point with a certain signal to get them the hell out of Dodge when the time came. That level of trust came damned hard for SEALs. They knew they could count on one another… but who the hell were these guys?
Morton had been a kid running around with his shirttails out at Swissvale Elementary School during most of the Vietnam War, but he'd heard plenty of stories, especially from TEAM old-timers, now retired, about the love-hate relationship the Teams had developed with intelligence bureaus in general and with the CIA in particular. Intel on enemy movements, deployments, and strength had been so piss-poor dreadful that the SEALs had swiftly formed their own intelligence networks, relying on their own people to deliver when the cowboy hat and shades-sporting boys from the Company had nothing to offer but guesses and hot air.
The situation here was similar — depending on sources of intel about enemy strength and presence that were reputedly good, but untried by Third Platoon. Only the parafrogs' reputation among the SEALs, thanks to other Team members who'd worked with them, made this operation even conceivable.
The copilot of Morton's helo turned in his seat, reached back, and slapped Morton on the shoulder, before holding up three gloved fingers. Morton nodded his understanding and gave a thumbs-up in reply.
Three minutes.
He nudged Chief Bohanski at his left and passed on the three-minute warning. Each of the eight SEALs aboard the Huey began giving one another a final going-over, checking for hanging straps, unhooked buckles, or loose gear.
The SEALs were in full war paint, their faces heavily coated with black and green swaths of an oil-based paint that would not come off in seawater. They wore diving gear — Draeger rebreathers and masks — over combat vests tightly packed with explosives and demo gear, spare magazines, sheathed knives, plastic-wrapped main weapons, and personal radio equipment.
They'd made a final check with USSOCOM by communications satellite relay that afternoon, and received the command "Red Dragon takes flight." The op was a go, their last set of intel downloads on the objective still good.
For a time over the past forty-eight hours, Morton had wondered if the mission might be called off before they deployed. Taiwan television had been full of news reports for the past couple of days of a "friendly visit" by an American nuclear submarine to Hong Kong. That sort of flag-showing happened from time to time, but only rarely in times of crisis as tight as this. The news also carried stories of the possibility of new talks with Beijing, aimed at defusing the Taiwan crisis. Taiwan, however, had not been invited to join those talks, at least not yet, and until that happened it was still business as usual for the ROC parafrogs.