Dong knew it was open. He had deliberately wrecked the locking mechanism five days earlier. And now he grabbed the handle and twisted, pulling the door outward and slipping inside, closing it behind him softly.
He crossed the dark, deserted floor, making for the iron stairway, which led right up to the roof seven floors above. He walked slowly, not knowing quite how he would deal with the locked door at the top. When he got there, the problem solved itself. The door was jammed shut with two big bolts, top and bottom. All he had to do was open them, and he was on the roof.
He stepped out carefully, crouching low, moving slowly inside the parapet. At the southern edge, overlooking the main submarine jetty, there was a chimney block, and he pressed back against it, staring down at the guard patrols in front of USS Seawolf. If one of them took a real hard look at the roof, they would see him. That was his main assessment.
But now he opened the toolbox and took out the round viewing lens. He took his measurement, knowing that the spot on the deck he sought was exactly half the distance back from the rear of the sail, as the total height of the fin: i.e., if the sail was 40 feet high, he was looking for a geometric spot 20 feet back. The actual numbers were irrelevant. It was that half-distance stat that counted. Dong could not measure feet and inches, but he could measure halves and doubles with his eye and his steel ruler.
He put his thumb on the ruler at the halfway mark. Then he took it horizontal instead of vertical, and there in front of him was the precise spot he sought. He held the ruler steady with one hand and lifted the lens to his eye, with the other focusing the crosshairs precisely at the end of his own thumb. Directly below that, he knew, was Seawolf’s nuclear reactor. Now he had only to fix the device to the chimney block, which was the difficult part.
A small bracket would need to be drilled and screwed into the brickwork at a spot just above his head. If he stood on the toolbox he could manage that. It was the noise that worried him, but it would not take long, just two holes, about an inch and a half deep. He could do that.
Dong removed the black parts from the box, and took out a screwdriver and a portable drill. Then he took off his jacket and wrapped it tightly around the drill to suppress the high-pitched whine of the electric tool. Then he stood up on the toolbox, held the bracket in place and hit the button on the drill, which bit into the brickwork. The jacket kept the noise to a minimum, and the gusting southwest wind scattered what sound there was high and away. Twice he went into the wall, and then he stopped and ducked right down, and stayed there for 10 minutes.
Finally he stepped back onto the toolbox, and, using a hammer and a thin Phillips screwdriver, rammed the plastic plugs into the drill holes. Then he lifted up the bracket and screwed the first bolt into the first plug. Then he did the second, fixing the bracket firmly to the chimney.
Five minutes later he slid the main fitting onto the bracket. Then he climbed up the sloping part of the roof, keeping one foot on the toolbox, and stared down at USS Seawolf, placing the crosshairs exactly at the end of his thumb, aiming directly at the spot above the reactor.
Dong connected the wires between the main box and the power pack, tightening the terminals with small electrician’s pliers. Then he slid the power pack into the bracket where it fitted perfectly. He turned on the switch and watched the green light flicker and harden up. Then he climbed up the roof again and checked his bearing, checking again the accuracy of his measurement.
It had been a fairly simple job, but for something this important, nothing was simple. He took a section of gray plastic out of the box and wrapped it carefully around the device, securing it below with a trash-bag tie. Now all he needed to do was escape.
Back down the iron stairway he went, opening the door slowly, and ensuring that the coast was clear. Not a soul was in the back street behind the building, and he closed the door carefully, walking back to the building in which he was officially working.
The guards were still there, and he went inside again, and climbed the stairs. In fact, he needed only to clean up, but he needed an excuse to return again tomorrow, and he parted several wires, leaving them exposed on the carpet.
Fifteen minutes later, he went back downstairs and said goodbye to the guards, telling them he’d come back to finish tomorrow afternoon, because he had to replace a faulty switch that was the cause of the problem. He’d need less than an hour.
No one bothered to search him on the way out, and the same guard who had advised him about the quality of life on the way in now did the same on the way out. “Good day for family, hah? You go have a nice time, Mr. Quinlei…I’ll hold the fort here…ha-ha-ha.”
The President’s National Security Adviser right now answered to no one. He had been given firm orders by the Chief Executive to get Linus back no matter what. The President understood that this meant Seawolf had to be, essentially, scuttled. And that the Navy SEALs team would have to go in guns blazing to break open the jail and subdue whatever opposition there was.
The military details did not need to be relayed to this particular President in this particular incident. He wanted his only son back, and that was the end of it. Admiral Morgan had been tasked to mastermind the rescue, and that he had most certainly done. So far.
And now he was in conference with his most trusted operators: Admiral George Morris, Director of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, and Jake Raeburn, head of the CIA’s Far Eastern desk. It was midnight in Washington, one o’clock the following afternoon in the South China Sea.
Admiral Morris had reasonable news. Seawolf’s reactor had been running steadily now for three days, and was still doing so. The satellites showed no visible sign of increased activity inside the jail on Xiachuan Dao, nor was there any sign of a transfer of prisoners, although it did seem that certain members of the American crew were being relayed back and forth to the Canton dockyard. The Chinese naval hardware had not increased, but still consisted of one fast attack patrol boat and two helicopters, occasionally only one.
Admiral Morgan himself had a signal from John Bergstrom in Coronado. And that was excellent news. Nothing elaborate, no details, just a coded Nighthawks roosting. Which meant that the SEAL reconnaissance team had been into Xiachuan Dao, done their business and were safely back in the Ronald Reagan. Arnold Morgan was hugely relieved.
Jake Raeburn also had good news. His man in Canton had collected the laser marker and established it high on a building overlooking the submarine. If there were no hitches, he would switch it on at 1900 local time the next day, and the bomb would hit two hours later.
This meant Nighthawk was GO. Lt. Commander Rick Hunter’s big SEAL team would hit the beach at Xiachuan Dao sometime before 2300. After that it was in the lap of the gods. But the SEALs had done it before, and the admiral believed they could do it again. Admiral Bergstrom was confident. In Colonel Frank Hart they had the best possible overall commander. The only question was how close inshore the submarine commanding officers could go before they had to surface.
Arnold Morgan was counting on the fact that the massive diversion in Canton Harbor would cause such a commotion that there would not be a warship anywhere around the prison island with the slightest inclination to be looking for American submarines. The crisis up the Pearl River would be all-consuming, and a whole lot worse than Three Mile Island.