Miss Jane laughed, despite the fact that it was entirely possible no one in the entire history of the White House had ever issued such a blunt command to a sitting President of the United States.
She relayed the message verbatim to the Chief Executive, who also laughed, as much as he was capable of laughing these days, and excused himself from a meeting with Harcourt Travis and the Israeli ambassador. Then he made his way to Admiral Morgan’s office with the utmost speed and stealth.
“Hey, Arnie…how do we look?”
“Sir, we look just about as good as it’s possible to look, given our awful circumstances.”
“Have we found ’em?”
“Yup, we found ’em.”
“Have we got a shot at rescue?”
“It’s under way, sir. Siddown. Let me fill you in.”
When President Clarke returned to the Oval Office 20 minutes later, he no longer felt that the burden of the catastrophe in Canton was entirely on his shoulders. Right now he felt he was sharing it with a lot of very, very good guys, and that in the end, there was a real chance Linus would make it home. He had not felt that way before.
The huge Sea Stallion helicopter came thundering, out of the night for the third time, hovering and then touching down gently on the runway lately vacated by the Galaxy. Off to the left, standing outside in the warm air blowing southerly off the Philippine Sea, were Lt. Commander Rick Hunter, Chief Petty Officer John McCarthy, and a half-dozen other SEALs who had been supervising the loading of the gear and their 40-odd colleagues who had already made the journey out to the Ronald Reagan.
Colonel Hart was working high in the tower with Lt. Commander Bennett and a small staff setting up the operational headquarters on the carrier. These were excellent quarters, because Admiral Art Barry, the battle group commander, had decided the SEAL commander should work in conjunction with his own 70-strong staff in the admiral’s own ample-sized ops room.
This was principally because Operation Nighthawk would be relatively short, just a few days, and it would not be worth installing a brand-new set of comms and computerized naval charts. Besides, Admiral Barry was longing to know precisely what was going on, and he very much wanted to work with the legendary Colonel Hart, around whom an unmistakable aura of mystique revolved.
Anyway, Art Barry now had the carrier under way, moving southwesterly in a long swell toward Taiwan at around 25 knots. When Rick Hunter and his men arrived they would have made by far the longest of the three helicopter journeys. But the Sea Stallion had a range of almost 600 miles and clattered along at 130 knots, eating up the now 90-mile journey from Okinawa in 45 minutes.
It touched down on the gigantic 1,090-foot-long flight deck of the carrier at 0430, and the SEALs set about unloading the last of their crates, the ones with the high explosive. There were two forklift trucks and four ordnance staff from the carrier to assist in the removal of the C4, the limpet mines, and the 40-pound satchel charges, and to ensure that they were safely stored, ready for transportation to the island of Xiachuang.
Chief John McCarthy went down in the aft lift on the port side with the forklifts in order to check and mark the explosive cases in their designated area. Several of the other SEALs, already regarded with some awe by the deck crew, stood around looking at the lines of fighter/attack aircraft, placed neatly around the perimeters of the flight deck, with the great central runway left clear for landing on at all times. The carrier’s giant steam catapults can have these fighters away at 20-second intervals if necessary.
Flight crew pointed out the aerial cavalry gathered on the deck of this ferocious example of front-line United States naval muscle: the 20 F-14D Tomcats, ranged in two lines on the starboard side. Toward the stern, the SEALs could see four EA-6B Prowlers, four Hawkeyes, six Vikings, two Shadows, and six helicopters.
In two long lines to starboard was a total of 36 F/A-18 Hornets, the lightning-fast workhorse of the U.S. naval attack strike force. Out here in the black of the Pacific night, the Ronald Reagan, America’s mighty fortress at sea, seemed to flex its rippling muscles as it pitched heavily through the rising ocean, with more than 2,000 fathoms beneath the keel. And it seemed well nigh incredible that the all-powerful U.S. military machine could not just roar in anger, right out here from this colossus of an aircraft carrier, and terrify the Chinese into returning Seawolf and the men who drove her.
But the subtleties of modern checks and balances of power, and the appalling ramifications of war on a global scale, sometimes render such monstrous examples of brute strength back to the age of the dinosaurs. Sometimes it works, but not always. And this was one of the tricky ones. The SEALs’ silent methods, involving high planning and low cunning, more often than not left an enemy utterly bewildered as to the identity of the culprit.
God willing, this weekend would see them carry out their deadly work in secrecy. And it was paradoxical that the most terrifying secret of all was already standing unrecognized, less than 100 feet away, from the on-deck SEALs. No, one noticed two F/A-18 Hornets, armed, parked separately at the end of the line, both ready to go, the second in case the first failed to start. No chances taken.
Clipped underneath the fuselage of each Hornet was a 14-foot-long, dark green, laser-guided armor-piercing Paveways bomb, its warhead containing almost 1,000 pounds of compacted high explosive, sufficient to penetrate the heavy steel hull of a big nuclear submarine.
8
There were 15 men in attendance, including the 12 SEALs who would make the insertion into the island tonight, led by Lt. Commander Rusty Bennett. He sat at the main table with the mission’s forward platoon leader, Lt. Commander Rick Hunter. In front of them sat Rusty’s number two man, the ASDV and landing boat expert Lt. Commander Olaf Davidson. There were two lieutenants, Paul Merloni and Dan Conway; the grappling-iron ace Chief Petty Officer John McCarthy; and the ex-deep water fisherman Petty Officer Catfish Jones. The two SEALs from the bayous, Rattlesnake Davies and the alligator-killing Buster Townsend, were also there, plus four other noncommissioned SEALs.
Standing up behind the table was the overall mission controller, Colonel Frank Hart, now wearing a SEAL uniform, holding a mahogany officer’s baton. Behind him was a large bulletin board to which was pinned a chart of the island of Xiachuan. At the back of the room, allowed to sit in, was Rear Admiral Art Barry.
The doors were locked, and outside, two armed sentries were on duty. No one was permitted entry. And the tension inside the room was high. All of the SEALs sat silently, alone with their thoughts, not least the one they all tried to hide away: “Tonight may be the last night of my life.”
Frank Hart was slowly pacing the width of the room in front of the chart. There was taughtness written all over his face. “Gentlemen,” he said, “you all know the broad outline of tonight’s mission, which you must regard as covert in the extreme. You are to land on the island, in the south, establish a rendezvous point behind the beach, and then the observation party will move northeast, a distance of six miles, probably through tall jungle, and establish two observation posts as near to the jail as possible without getting caught.
“Now I have delayed this briefing until the last moment, because it is essential that it remain fresh in your minds. For those of you who have not been told, I will now let you know formally. Inside that jail, probably undergoing the harshest form of interrogation, is the entire crew of Seawolf, among them the ship’s executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Linus Clarke, die son of the President of the United States.