Captain Crocker himself looked pretty battered. Both his eyes were blackened, and his right cheek was swollen. There was blood caked around the corners of his mouth. But he seemed to be able to move around without pain, and now he emerged from the cell block with Rick Hunter.
Before him was a scene of chaos. A thick pall of smoke hung over the jail, and there was still fire, which could be seen above the walls, from the exploded helicopters and fuel dump. There were scattered bodies all over the place, none of them SEALs.
Judd and Rick walked past the men, heading for the interrogation block in company with SEALs Buster Townsend, Paul Merloni and Bobby Allensworth.
At the door, Lieutenant Commander Hunter said, “Sir, you’d better not come in here…we might get resistance.”
“If I don’t come in, you might get killed. I’m an expert on the layout of this place and I’m the only one you’ve got.”
“Okay, sir,” said Rick, drawing his service revolver. “You know how to use this thing.”
“Expert,” he said. “I’m the fucking Wyatt Earp of the deep. Okay, follow me into the hallway, which you seem to have already demolished. Then I’ll follow you guys down the passage.”
Judd Crocker stepped over the rubble, followed by Rick and Bobby. But before they reached the end, Lieutenant Allensworth put his hand on the captain’s shoulder and said, “Wait, sir. Let me just stick a gun barrel in that doorway, see if anyone’s left alive. It’s better I shoot him than he shoots you.”
“No argument from me,” said Judd.
Bobby shoved his MP-5 around the corner and opened fire immediately. But there was no need. Whoever had been in there was no more, buried beneath the rubble.
Judd led the way down the corridor to the three rooms. Two were open, with lights on, the doors just ajar. The third room was closed. Buster came forward and booted wide the door of the first room. He entered and hammered four rounds into the panel of the door just in case someone was hiding behind it. Then he did the same to the second room, and there was no one there either. Which left the room where the door was shut.
“LIEUTENANT COMMANDER LUCAS!” yelled Judd.
“In here, sir,” came a muffled reply.
“Steady, sir. Don’t touch the door…leave it to us…Paul…”
Lieutenant Merloni, unrecognizable in the dust and smoke, stepped up beside the mission leader.
“Ready?”
“Sir.”
Rick Hunter, with an outrageous display of strength, booted the door off its hinges with two massive kicks, one high, one low. And as he did so he jutted his machine gun, but not his body, around the corner, and they all heard the Chinese guard open fire, straight at the barrel of Rick’s MP-5.
Unhappily for his family, the guard did not see Paul Merloni slide around the doorway on the floor and open up, shooting from low down at point-blank range with a wall of fire that killed the guard instantly. And now they could see Linus Clarke tied to a chair, a soaking-wet bath towel on his lap.
The second guard, Commander Li himself, dropped his rifle and put his hands in the air, just too late. Judd Crocker came through that doorway like a charging bull, fueled by the frustrated fury of almost two weeks of captivity. He rammed his left hand hard up under Li’s throat and carried him back ten feet from the wall, holding him suspended three inches above ground level, his feet kicking wildly.
Then the CO drew back his right fist and smashed it into the Chinese commander’s face, letting him drop to the floor.
“STAND BACK, SIR! RIGHT NOW. HE’S STILL ARMED…WATCH THAT PISTOL…SIR…SIR…STEP ASIDE!” Paul Merloni was not joking.
But Judd Crocker was not stepping aside for anyone. He drew Rick Hunter’s service revolver and shot Commander Li clean through the forehead, twice.
“That’s for a young friend of mine named Skip Laxton,” he said. “You murderous little bastard. Call it frontier justice.”
As he stepped away, Rick Hunter could see tears rolling down the CO’s bruised and battered face.
By now, Buster had cut the XO free and Linus Clarke finally stood up, throwing the towel to the ground. He did not look anywhere as beaten up as the rest of the crew, but it was clear that he had been through some kind of trauma. He was shaking, but he was clean and looked better fed than the others. Also, he was wearing a Chinese uniform shirt and shorts.
However, there was no one else left alive in the building, and Rick Hunter ordered everyone out, back into the courtyard to assess the damage done to Judd Crocker’s crew.
By the time they retraced their steps along the corridor, the lights were beginning to fail, and they kept fading, then surging back on again. This was scarcely surprising, given the general pounding the place had taken. Both searchlights had now gone out, and the lines of men now stood in almost complete darkness.
Judd Crocker shouted to ask if anyone had seen Lt. Commander Cy Rothstein, but no one had. He turned to Rick Hunter and said, “That’s the combat systems officer, cleverest man on the ship. He was under heavy interrogation…I’m extremely concerned about him.”
The SEAL leader asked if everyone was out of all three cell blocks. “Affirmative, sir,” replied Chief McCarthy.
“Make one more search, Chief…take flashlights…we gotta very important guy missing…Lt. Commander Cy Rothstein…start calling out his name.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Anyone else, Chief?”
“No, sir. All present and correct, sir. Except of course for Skip Laxton.”
“Anyone know if he could have been taken off by air?”
“Nossir,” said Lt. Shawn Pearson. “He and I were communicating through the wall until about three days ago. He’s been in the interrogation block, and I saw the same guard take him back there…it’s just that I haven’t heard from him since…”
“Jesus Christ,” said the CO. “The little bastards have killed him.”
A few more minutes passed, and then the searching parties began to arrive back. “There’s no one left in the cell blocks, sir. No one alive.”
“Well, there’s no one in the interrogation rooms, either,” said Rick. “We’ve checked them. The guardroom’s rubble. The comm room’s rubble, the dormitory badly damaged, but most of the personnel have been gassed, and anyway he couldn’t be in there. I must therefore conclude that Lieutenant Commander Rothstein has been killed. And in any event, I’m afraid we cannot remain a moment longer or else we’ll all end up dead. We have to get off this island.”
“Right, Lieutenant Commander. I understand that. Judging by their methods of interrogation, I hold out absolutely no hope whatsoever for his rescue.”
Just then a sporadic burst of gunfire burst from the hill overlooking the southern wall of the jail. The bullets flew into the big crowd in the jail yard and two seamen went down out on the left.
“IT’S THOSE TWO LITTLE BASTARDS WHO GOT AWAY FROM THE OUTSIDE PATROL!” yelled Bobby Allensworth.
“GET IN UNDER THE WALL, EVERYONE…TAKE COVER RIGHT NOW…BOBBY…GIMME ONE OF THOSE FLARES…” Rick Hunter was moving fast. He lit the flare and held it in his gloved hand, letting go at the last minute when it sparked and made liftoff. They all watched it head into the night sky, burst and illuminate the entire hillside.
Buster yelled first. “THERE THEY ARE, SIR, RIGHT UP THERE…LEFT OF THE TREES…”
“Paul, Rattlesnake, Buster, Steve…follow me. We have to get rid of them. Bring the big machine gun…otherwise they’ll try to pick us off all the way to the beach…take care of those two wounded men, Olaf…THE REST OF YOU STAY AGAINST THE WALL TILL WE GET BACK…”