Rusty Bennett was a keen amateur military psychologist. Not as good as Colonel Frank Hart, but he was good, and everyone knew both he and Rick Hunter were being made commanders as soon as this mission was over. If they could get it over.
At 0900 Dan Conway reported high activity in the jail. Prisoners were being marched out of the main cell block and lined up in rows of 12 in the courtyard. Other prisoners were being escorted out from the two side buildings at either end of the block. But these men were brought out individually. Rusty Bennett judged that the main block contained communal cells, and that the side buildings were places to isolate individuals, probably men under interrogation.
The SEALs were too far away for recognition of Seawolf’s officers, but there were now no lingering doubts that this was indeed the crew of the American submarine. Almost everyone was still in uniform, U.S. Navy trousers and shirts. But even from the hillside it was obvious that some of them had been badly treated. Three or four of the men were being supported by crewmates, among them the captain, who had been brutally beaten up in the interrogation center.
Brad Stockton was still on his feet, with the assistance of Shawn Pearson and Andy Warren. Big Tony Fontana, by some miracle, had refrained from getting into more trouble and appeared uninjured.
The SEALs were not of course to know that Lt. Commander Cy Rothstein had died in the torture chamber of a brain hemorrhage, sustained when the little guard lieutenant had hit him one time too often with the butt of a rifle. After two days of sustained, unmerciful punishment, Einstein had told them nothing.
And the incident confirmed one obvious fact. The prisoners were never going to leave China to talk about their experiences. Not if Admiral Zhang had his way. Even he, the master of a massive but remote naval kingdom in the east, knew that world human rights courts these days had teeth, whoever you might be. The shocking specter of the massacre in Tiananmen Square still haunted China’s rulers, 17 years later. And it would almost certainly go on doing so.
The SEALs watched from on high as a new figure emerged: Commander Li strode out in his high boots from the little house with the aerials. The gates were already opened, and he marched forward, plainly to address the prisoners. Rusty and his men could not hear what he said, but it sounded angry. A few minutes later Li turned on his heel and exited the jail.
“You want me to shoot the little prick right now, sir?” asked Lieutenant Merloni.
“Perfect idea, Paul,” replied Rusty. “Which do you prefer, sudden death from a Chinese fighter plane, or court-martial when we get home? If we get home.”
“I’ll take the court-martial, sir. But not by much.”
And now they could all see the guards moving forward. There were 30 of them now, and they were separating some men from the lines and marching them forward toward the other big house inside the jail walls, right opposite the guard room. That was the one building they really could not see from the hillside, but Rusty hoped to get a closer look sometime in the afternoon or early evening.
By 1015, Rusty judged it time to move. “We have seen no sign they are patrolling anywhere beyond the immediate outside wall of the jail,” he said. “No guard has made one move into the forest…which is good, because we have a lot of work to do.…Dan and my team will make our way back into the trees and then head on down to the beach, check out the details of the patrol boat and its jetty. Then we’ll stay within a half mile of the jail and look for a landing site for the main group.
“I can’t see what the undergrowth is like, but we may have to clear some kind of a path for the guys to come through…remember, it will be pitch dark when they get here, and we want to get a landmark clearly positioned, and on the computer with full GPS numbers.
“You’ll see from this diagram I’ve made right here…Colonel Hart has given us his suggestion for a spot…really, we just gotta check out that it’s safe, and if not, locate another one…just so you guys know where we’re working.
“Tonight we’ll go and have a look at the water, right after dark. We don’t want to guide the inflatables onto a pile of rocks. Meanwhile, Paul, I want you take Chief McCarthy and try to get some accurate measurements of the jail size, and distances between points. Try to get an accurate fix on the height of the walls, the gate and the towers. And try to find out how they lock the fucking door, since we need to blow the sonofabitch off its hinges tomorrow…I still think we’ll go with det-cord.…
“Rattlesnake and John, stay up here and keep watching…recording all movements down below. I noticed through the glasses the Chinese have obviously been trying to clear some areas of vegetation, but they haven’t done much of a job…and luckily there’s a lot of very good cover, very close to the jail wall in several spots. Mark them on the laptop. So Dan and the chief should be able to get in close…but not too close, for Christ’s sake. We’ll meet back here and compare notes at, say, fifteen hundred.”
“Okay, sir, we’ll get moving now.”
The SEALs split up, six of them heading back up the hill into the trees, making a circular route to their allotted operational areas. All the routine tasks with which they were charged were achieved in silence and stealth. The area for the assault chosen by Colonel Hart was perfect. Rusty and Buster planted a rock in front of the trees where the big team would enter the forest. Behind there, in deep shadow, they cut a clearing for the boys to gather tomorrow night and sort out their positions.
Two hundred yards away Bill lay on the bank of a stream that flowed past the jail to the north and watched for interruptions. If anyone approached either him or the beach, he would duck back into the trees and make contact with Dan Conway, who would race to alert Rusty and Buster to keep the noise level way down.
But not one of the Chinese guards ventured anywhere beyond the jail compound, except to patrol the outside wall. It was, as Lt. Commander Bennett had said earlier, beyond their imagination that the Americans would actually attack their own jail, on their own remote island, right offshore, surrounded by thousands of miles of the South China Sea, plus half of the Chinese Navy, just a few miles from the city of Canton.
By the time they regrouped in the hide they had a ton of information. The patrol boat had gone out shortly after 1000 and stayed out until 1400. There was a long stone jetty where it moored alongside, 600 yards precisely from the assault point. They’d send a couple of SEALs over the side of the incoming Zodiacs and have them stick a couple of limpet mines on the hull, timed to detonate precisely when the choppers went up and the comms room did an imitation of Hiroshima.
By then, thought Rusty, we’ll hopefully be up and in the compound, and the outside patrol should be dead. The rest, he decided, might be a bit more problematical. And he did not like Chief McCarthy’s report on the watchtower situation. Not one bit.
John McCarthy was a very experienced mountaineer and he could throw a long grappling iron like Peyton Manning going for the end zone. But he was plainly worried about this attack.
“The walls are fifteen feet high, made mostly of smooth concrete, but with a flat wooden frame right to the top, like beams in an old house. I can hit the top beam with a grappling iron and climb up the knotted rope inside one minute. But we do not have long. I think we’ll have to take out the outside guards first, which is not good. I would have preferred to have four climbers on top of the wall, unseen, and then climb the ladder to the tower top.
“Quite frankly, I cannot imagine our four men all getting to the top without being seen by the tower watchmen. Then we’d have to shoot them, and that would make noise, ten minutes before we want anyone to know we’re there. In my view, we desperately need those ten minutes, and the only way I can see to nail the tower guards in silence is if it rains. And I’m recommending we wait until it does.”