For some reason, he thought about Frank Gordon. The attackers hadn't been nearly as pleasant or as laid-back mellow as his old friend, but there was something about them, about their manner — their attitude, per-haps — that suggested military intelligence.
And that sent a cold shock down Garrett's spine. An American submarine officer would be a damned juicy target for a military-intelligence sting operation.
So… which had it been? Four well-armed thugs terrorizing someone they thought to be Chinese, sleeping with a foreigner? Or four operators out of PLA Intelligence, finding what they thought was an American submarine officer with a Chinese woman and using the situation to… what? Intimidate him? Compromise him? Blackmail?
There were too damned many unknowns. If they had been milint people, why had they fled when they did? Maybe they'd had orders not to involve foreign nationals other than their target. Maybe they didn't want an incident with Japan. Maybe…
There was no way to know, but he was sure of one thing now. The Hong Kong cops had a reputation for being very good, very thorough… but these two men were afraid.
And that clarified a lot. Hong Kong might be operating under the "one country, two systems" rule, but the local police were still under the thumb of Beijing's governors. They wouldn't want to find themselves in the middle, between the U.S. government and the rulers of the PRC. No doubt they would do or say anything just to make the problem go away.
"You're not going to help us, are you?" he said bluntly.
Kuo looked embarrassed. "Sir, as I told you, there is little we can do in this instance. Our jurisdiction is quite… limited."
"I understand. It's not your fault."
Kuo pulled a business card from his jacket and placed it on the bedside table. It had the address of a Kowloon police station, on Public Square Street. "If you wish to talk to us again, sir… "
"Thank you." He waited until they'd left the room before turning again to Kazuko. "I need to get back to the boat."
"You no go!" the nurse said. "You hurt!"
"Kazuko, explain to the young lady, please, that we were attacked last night by members of the Chinese military intelligence directorate, possibly in an attempt to get me to answer some questions. If she persists in keeping me here, there is every possibility that those men will come back. To this hospital. To this floor. To find me. Ask her if she wants to get caught in the middle of that."
He didn't like using strong-arm tactics, but there seemed no faster way to cut through the bureaucracy. Within fifteen minutes the nurse had both produced his clothing and found a doctor to sign the discharge papers. In the meantime, he'd used his room phone to reach Master Chief Dougherty, by calling the American consulate in Hong Kong and having them patch a radio call through to the Seawolf via the consulate's military liaison office.
"Commander Garrett!" Dougherty said. "It's damn good to hear your voice. Your friend called earlier and told us you were at St. Elizabeth's."
"That's affirmative, COB. I'm getting processed out of here now. But listen up. I think what happened to us last night might have been an intelligence sting. I think they were trying to set me up so I'd be willing to talk to them."
There was a long pause on the line. "I'm very sorry to hear about that, sir. We seem to have another… situation."
"Talk to me, COB."
"Seven of our people have been arrested in Kowloon. They're being held at the local police lockup on Public Square Street. The word we have here is that there was a gunfight."
"Shit! Where?"
"A Kowloon hostess club. And — get this, sir — there are Russians involved."
"Interesting." He thought for a moment. "Can you put the captain on the line?"
"Uh… nossir. He's ashore with Mr. Tollini… at the U.S. Consulate, trying to straighten things out."
"I see." He took a deep breath. "Okay, we'll do this one ourselves. See if you can check that police station on a map. It can't be too far from where I am now."
"Right, sir."
"And round up the boat's MAA and…make it seven men. With arms. Post them on the dock, and don't let any local near the boat. I don't like the way this is shaping up."
"No, sir. I'm with you."
"I'll try to get the captain at the consulate. But if I can't reach him, I may need an armed shore party to come get me. COB, we might just be the sharp pointy end of a whole new war…. "
"Got Commander Randall on the horn, Skipper." About fucking time!
Morton took the handset to the LST-5. "Commander? This is Morton."
"Hello, Jack," the voice at the other end of the line said. There was the faintest of a pause between transmission and reception, partly due to the speed-of-light time lag between Earth and the communications satellite, and partly to the processor time needed to encrypt and decrypt the signal at each end. Commander Kenneth Randall, who'd been on the Kuei Mei Board of Inquiry three years before, was now executive officer of SEAL Team Three back in Coronado and the senior SEAL officer on the operational planning staff for this mission.
He sounded tired. "What time is it there, sir? Did I get you up?" Morton asked.
"Nah. It's about eighteen forty-five. They caught me when I got home from the base. What's up?"
"A cluster fuck in the making, sir. What the hell is going on back there?"
"Your mission's been put on hold," Randall said. "What's this I hear about you already being deployed?"
"It's true, Commander. We're on the mainland now. And my counterpart has his own orders. He's not aborting."
The pause at the other end of the line was much longer than any geosynch time lag. "You'd best start at the beginning, Jack. Give it to me slow."
Morton began filling him in on the situation.
The hell of it was, he found himself in sympathy with Tse. The Taiwanese commando was right. It was impossible for a non-Chinese to fully understand the long struggle — both physical and emotional — between Mainland China and Taiwan. But Morton understood perfectly the need to negotiate from strength, to not show weakness when dealing with an implacable enemy, and especially the need to hit back, and hit back hard, to convince the bully that further aggression was useless.
When Osama bin Laden's terrorist cells had struck at American targets — embassies in Africa, the USS Cole at Aden, a car bomb explosion beneath one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City — American response had been tepid at best. After the Cole incident, President Clinton had launched cruise missiles at terrorist camps in Afghanistan that were most likely empty by the time they were targeted. President Bush had later categorized the strike as using a ten-million-dollar cruise missile to blow up a ten-dollar tent… and hit a camel in the ass. The lack of a forceful response, apparently, had only emboldened the bin
Laden network… with tragic, unforgettably nightmare consequences in the late summer of 2001.
And as a direct result, the United States was now engaged in a full-fledged and bloody war spreading across most of the eastern hemisphere; a low-level, mostly guerrilla-style war, to be sure, but a war nonetheless. A war that had given Beijing the opportunity to make a grab for Taiwan, in hopes that the United States was too preoccupied elsewhere to respond.
If the United States had acted decisively and firmly with the first American deaths, Morton thought, if bin Laden had not been dismissed as a disaffected Saudi nutcase bankrolling his network of revolutionary fanatics, perhaps the tragic events of September 11 would never have happened in the first place.