“And what if they are discovered by a Chinese Navy patrol?”
“We’re hoping the disaster in Canton will totally overwhelm the entire Chinese Navy. If we get detected long-range, it’ll still take them more than two hours to get anywhere near us, because Canton will be right out of action and it’s a long way to Zhanjiang. It will still take ’em a damn long time to get to us…just means the SEALs will have to fucking hurry.”
“What are the odds against success?”
“The odds are not against. Ten bucks gets you twenty we’ll make it. It’s the surprise element. That and the fact that the Navy dockyard in Canton is going to be a nuclear wipeout.”
“What does Admiral Bergstrom think?” asked the President.
“He thinks we can pull it off. Otherwise he would refuse to send his precious SEALs in.”
“Joe?” said the President, looking directly at Admiral Mulligan.
“We’ll make it, sir. We’re sending in the best we got.”
The President arose. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said. “Please don’t think I am unaware that most of you are doing this for me. And please tell the guys my personal thoughts and prayers will accompany them every yard of the way…may God go with them.”
And everyone heard his voice break when he added, “If they could just bring him back safe…”
And they all saw the great man brush his right sleeve across his eyes as he walked with immense dignity from the room.
Admiral John Bergstrom arrived back in California at 0700, showered and changed at the base, having slept all the way on the military flight from Washington.
And now he was in overdrive, surrounded by three assistants, operating on the phone lines to Little Creek, Virginia, and to his own platoons right here on the Pacific Coast. He also had a phone open to Bradbury Lines, Herefordshire, England, headquarters of the British Army’s fabled SAS regiment, which worked in tandem with the SEALs more often than most people realized.
The SAS commander, Colonel Mike Andrews, was sympathetic to the idea of three of his troopers playing a part in this highly classified American mission. He liked it for the camaraderie it would build between the regiments, and he thought it would be a tremendous shared experience in terms of strategy and operational methods. Also, he knew the politicians would love it, because the Conservative Prime Minister of the day had a relationship with President Clarke much like that between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Spiritually close. Philosophically unbreakable.
But most of all, he thought his men could really help Admiral Bergstrom, whom he knew, liked and respected. He had men who had fought and killed in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Kosovo, among other places. Iron men who had moved through rough terrain like panthers, experts with knife, gun and explosive. Men who had operated under the harsh SAS Rule OO1—kill or be killed, with only a split second to decide. Mike Andrews’s boys would be priceless in the Chinese tropical jungle. And both he and Admiral Bergstrom knew it.
“Only one minor hurdle, Admiral,” he said. “They would have to volunteer. I could not order them in to fight on behalf of a foreign power — not even you. And if they did volunteer, I’d have to clear it with the Ministry of Defense, probably as high as the Chief of Defense Staff. However, I do not anticipate a problem. I’ll be back inside three hours. Same phone number? Excellent. ’Bye.”
Admiral Bergstrom had already made up his mind who would lead the team in for the assault on the jail, wherever it was: Lt. Commander Rick Hunter, a former team leader from Little Creek, six feet three inches tall, not one ounce of fat on his steel-muscled 215-pound frame. Rick was a native of Kentucky, a big, hard farm boy from the Bluegrass State, son of Bart Hunter, a well-known breeder of thoroughbred racehorses out along the Versailles Pike near Lexington.
Bart naturally thought his son was insane to select a career that might bring him face to face with death on a regular basis when he should have been home on the farm, raising the yearlings, preparing them for the Keeneland sales. However, watching baby racehorses slowly grow up, studying pedigrees, talking to vets and spending a lifetime with other local “hardboots,” all talking about the same subject, simply did not do it for Rick.
He dropped out of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, where he was a collegiate swimming champion, and a year later he enrolled at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. From there he had never looked back, climbing the ladder of command and finally being accepted as a Navy SEAL, a job to which he brought outstanding talents. As a third-generation farmer, he was naturally a brilliant marksman with the strength of a full-grown polar bear. He was also a tireless swimmer and an expert in demolition, unarmed combat, and landing craft. As Bart Hunter’s oldest son, he was used to exercising authority on the 2,000-acre horse farm. Men sensed that and turned to him as a natural leader.
A couple of years earlier he had led a sensational SEAL mission deep inside Russia. The operation had been “black,” nonattributable, and few people knew anything about it. But John Bergstrom knew, and he was also aware that after such a mission it was customary not to use the same personnel again, but rather to use the men to train up the next generation.
However, in this case, the rules were somewhat different. This one must succeed. And direct from the presidential level, he had been told he must use the very best men. Lt. Commander Hunter was the best he had ever had. He was going to end up an admiral…maybe sitting in this very chair.
And Admiral Bergstrom had no hesitation in calling his commander at Little Creek and requesting that he dispatch Rick Hunter immediately to Coronado, in company with 20 more hand-picked SEALs, preferably veterans, possibly BUD/S instructors with special skills in jungle warfare, surprise attacks, explosives, “and jail breaks, if there’s anyone around.”
The BUD/S instructors were, of course, the toughest men in all the SEAL platoons. They were the granite-hard regulars who ran the training “Grinder,” whose job it was to drive men physically and mentally into the dark uplands of total sacrifice, to take them to a place where unbearable pain becomes bearable, where fear vanishes, and where achievement is all. The BUD/S instructors drove men into a place they did not know existed, a place where, having given their all, they came back from the dead, from total exhaustion, and found more.
Of course, they did not all find more. Some collapsed, some hit a mental brick wall and just sat slumped on the ground, some just gave up, others did not really see the point. But when the dust cleared, there were a few men who still stood tall, chins out, shoulders back, eyes forward. Still defiant. Upon these few, these precious few, would be pinned the golden Trident badge of the U.S. Navy SEALs, the badge that sets them apart from all other combat troops in the United States Armed Forces.
The 21 SEALs who made the flight west from Little Creek to San Diego were a diverse and eclectic group, mostly veterans from every walk of life. Some had started in big-city tenements, others in wealthy suburban households. They were from the North and from the South, and they were black and they were white. And some were secretly scared, and others weren’t. But they were united in spirit, prepared if necessary to die for one another. They were SEALs. And that is unlike any other calling.
Lieutenant Commander Hunter sat up front next to a younger officer, 30-year-old Lt. Ray Schaeffer, a native of the Massachusetts seaport of Marblehead who had gone straight from high school to Annapolis. Ray was a real seaman, a superb swimmer, expert navigator, yachtsman, fisherman, and the platoon middleweight boxing champion. His family had lived in Marblehead for generations. His father, a local sea captain, lived in a medium-sized white colonial house down near the docks. In one corner of the living room was an ancient illustrated family tree that showed that a Schaeffer had pulled one of the oars when the men from Marblehead had rowed General Washington to safety after the lost Battle of Long Island.