Arnold Morgan picked up the first two pictures and studied them, then moved on to the next.
“Now, sir. Take a look at this. See the difference? Right here…right here…”
“Where?”
“Here, sir…this little white spot near the buildings.
“It’s too small, George. Gimme a magnifying glass, will you?”
The admiral leveled the magnifier over the spot and peered through it. “Holy shit! It’s a helicopter.”
“Right, sir. Now have a look at the other white mark down by the water…”
“Christ, George…it’s a Navy ship.”
“Right. Now take a look at the next picture…see, right here, the white mark’s gone…but up here we can see it again…right off the coast…heading for Canton…then here, sir, we got another shot four hours later and it’s back…see, right here.”
Arnold Morgan nodded. “And what the hell, you asked, is all this military activity doing on this deserted Chinese island?”
“Right, sir. So we blew up the photographs, showing every aspect of the place. And here is the first picture. Those old buildings represent a jail…see…there’s the watchtowers. And suddenly, right here, we have an outcrop of radio aerials…and the boat’s back. Looks like it patrols for four hours and then returns. Here’s a sequence of photographs taken approximately every four hours…and here’s the blowup. We identify it as one of those Chinese fast-attack crafts…Huangfens…guess they weigh about two hundred tons…so far as I remember, they’re fitted with Russian guns.”
“George, we’re getting warm…I feel it.”
“Right, sir. But I have not finished. Now look at this…these are shots of the central yard in the jail. There are people, quite a lot of them, in this shot. What would you say? Maybe a dozen, wandering around…see this colored shot…they’re wearing full uniform, with shouldered arms…dark blue…Navy. These guys are on duty…in the middle of a deserted island. In company with a military helicopter, new communications, and a two-hundred-ton patrol boat. Right inside the range you and Colonel Hart gave us for the ferryboat last Sunday. Sir, we’ve found ’em. No doubt.”
“George, if they’re not guarding our prisoners, they’re guarding someone else’s. But the key is the set of pictures you have from last Thursday, this one here…no radio, no chopper, no patrol. By late Saturday, the infrared shots, right here, the stuff was all in place. That night, Saturday, the ferry leaves Canton with our guys, arrives Sunday morning…and your next picture sequence shows a dozen guards patrolling every time the camera clicks…”
“And, sir…in this photograph taken in the small hours of Monday morning…look here…you can see the lights in the towers are on, sweeping across this courtyard…”
“By God, George, you’re right again. We got ’em.”
Admiral Morris gathered up the photographs, left some for reference for the National Security Adviser, and made his exit, “back to the factory.”
Arnold Morgan switched on his big illuminated computer screen and pulled up the chart that featured the entire area around the Pearl River Delta. He needed to think before he contacted John Bergstrom, and he needed to give himself a detailed picture of the tiny island the Navy SEALs must now assault.
He called Kathy in and asked her to bring her notebook, writing down his thoughts as he called them out.
“Okay. It’s called Xiachuan Dao. It’s six miles long and three at its widest point. It’s set about four miles to the west of the island of Shangchuan, which is approximately twice as big. Chart reference 21.40N 112.35E. The jail is situated way up in the northeast corner of the island, which is almost on the edge, since the island is set diagonally in shallow water, northeast to southwest.
“Chart shows one big mountain in the south called Guanyin Shan, thirteen hundred feet high. There’s another peak rising to sixteen hundred feet guarding the entire northern end. There’s a long flat peninsula in the southwest jutting almost a mile out into the ocean.
“The western side is dominated by a long marshy mudflat, so whatever we do, we won’t make any kind of a landing there. The only deep water, close in, lies between the two islands, which is how the ferry got in. And the patrol boat. There’s probably twenty feet in that area, which means we probably go in from the south, and get out to the east using inflatables, four of ’em.
“Incoming from the South China Sea my chart shows a depth of forty-two feet a half mile off the southern peninsula. Following the 112.30-degree line of longitude, I’m showing a very gentle shelf into deeper water, six miles before it gets to seventy-five feet, then another three miles to one hundred feet depth, twelve more miles to one hundred and fifty feet…as submarine country goes, it’s approximately fucking lousy…sorry, Kathy, I thought you were John Bergstrom.”
Kathy giggled at the steely-eyed tyrant she adored.
“To find really decent water, two-hundred-foot-plus depth, you have to be sixty miles out, which means the submarines are probably going to end up on the surface during the takeout, but by then the Chinese Navy is going to be totally involved with a nuclear catastrophe in their own dockyard. Any problems with a Chinese patrol, we sink the sonofabitch, right?”
“Right,” said Kathy.
“Okay, sweetheart. Print that out for me, will you…then get John Bergstrom on a secure line.”
He continued staring at the chart, trying to imagine the terrain the SEALs’ reconnaissance party would encounter. Since the place had been uninhabited for so long, he assumed they would hit primary forest, a landscape dominated by tall, uncut trees, which creates darkness below and thus reduces undergrowth. That was good. What was also good was an ocean bottom that appeared sandy rather than rocky. If the submarine commanders wanted to take a few minor chances creeping in, in the dark, deep as possible in shallow water, they wouldn’t do much worse than scrape off a few barnacles. That was also good.
The secure phone rang. Admiral Morgan picked it up and someone said, “Just a moment, Admiral Bergstrom is right here…”
“Arnie…what news?”
“We found ’em, John. Island, 21.40N 112.35E. I’ve made my first observations…Kathy’s just printing ’em out…get ’em off the satellite in ten. George has a lot of good pix…you should have ’em electronically inside thirty.”
“Perfect. The guys have landed. It’s around oh-one hundred Thursday. They should all be on the Reagan by oh-four hundred. You have a time frame in mind?”
“Is the submarine ready?”
“Yessir. Right on station. Five miles off the carrier’s bow, my last report. ASDV’s prepared, in the shelter on deck.”
“According to my charts, John, we’re nine hundred and fifty miles out — which means that if we leave right away the guys will be in the area, say sixty miles south in deepish water, by Friday afternoon…they go in as soon as it’s dark…and we want ’em out by oh-two hundred Sunday morning…Operation Nighthawk starts Sunday night. It’s tight. Too tight. But it’s now or never.”
“You got it, sir…we’ll talk in an hour. I got Frank Hart on the other line…secure from Okinawa…we’re all set.”
Arnold Morgan smiled darkly, picked up his green telephone and hit a button connecting him to the President’s secretary. “Hi, Miss Jane,” he said. “Arnold Morgan here. Would you tell the President to cease whatever the hell he’s doing for the next ten minutes, and report to my office with the utmost speed and stealth.”