Rick Hunter headed left, up the hill, in the cover of the trees, running softly through the dark, followed by four of his most trusted men. “Keep right on this treeline till we get above them…cut ’em off from cover…keep ’em pinned down on the hill…so their only way out is toward the beach…”
Rick issued his orders as he ran, and when he was high enough above the last known position of the two remaining Chinese guards, he told Paul to loose off another flare, this time through a proper launcher, rather than hand-held.
It arched like a big rocket high up over the hill, and burst in a dazzle of light. “There they are, sir…right down there…nearer the jail than when we last saw them…”
“TAKE ’EM OUT, STEVE…MACHINE GUN…”
The big petty officer opened fire immediately. Paul sent up another flare and they all saw the last of the patrol guards get up and run for higher ground. But they never made it, and the five SEALs packed up their flares and ammunition belts and headed back down to the jail.
In the mind of Admiral Zhang Yushu, all was lost in this ill-fated adventure. The American submarine was gone, indeed the entire Canton dockyard was almost gone.
And now it was obvious to him that the forces of the United States had landed on Xiachuan and taken the jail. There would be, he knew, many, many casualties, and much worse, no prisoners.
So far as he knew, only two of the Americans had actually died. And they were the only two Americans who were safe, so far as he could tell. The rest of them, if they escaped, which they now seemed certain to do, would sing out to the whole world what had befallen them after their ship had been essentially hijacked in international waters.
It was not, and had never been, the policy of the regime of Communist China to give a damn what the rest of the world thought. But increasingly, in the interest of international trade, they had tried to be at least agreeable to world opinion.
This looked to Zhang like trouble on a grand scale. In fact, this could turn out to be Tiananmen Square in the jungle. For the first time in his entire life, Zhang Yushu thought his career might be on the line here.
He was simply uncertain whether any C-in-C in any part of the People’s Liberation Army/Navy could afford to be the only person responsible for a disaster of this magnitude: nuclear catastrophe, many Chinese deaths; failure to incarcerate prisoners, many more Chinese deaths; loss of two massively expensive helicopters to foreign enemy on Chinese soil; loss of a highly expensive guided missile patrol boat in Chinese waters, on a Chinese jetty, to the same foreign enemy; and worldwide public condemnation of Chinese methods of interrogation of a most important friendly trading partner.
And only one solitary person to blame: Admiral Zhang Yushu himself, architect of the entire, hideous comedy of errors.
Admiral Zu stood up and walked across the room, wearing a deep frown.
“Is there any point speculating that the Americans may not actually have attacked our island, and that we are just experiencing some kind of major power cut?”
“None. No power cut would affect the radio or the satellites. The reason we are unable to contact Xiachuan is because the Americans have attacked it. There is no other explanation. And I know them so well.”
“But how?”
“We’ve seen no large helicopter platform within two hundred miles of the coast. Therefore, they can’t be using helicopters. So they must be using ships. And only submarines could get close enough without our seeing them. And then small landing boats to bring them to shore.”
“But they cannot overpower our forces. We have more than one hundred fully armed guards and many other personnel.”
“Well, we may have beaten them, driven them off. But somehow there’s been a battle. That’s why we cannot make contact with the island. What worries me is the coincidence with the submarine’s demise. Just a few hours ago, we lose the ship, and now the island is completely inaccessible.”
“Well, what do we do? Send in reinforcements? Helicopters? Troops? Artillery?”
“No, Jicai. It’s much too late for that. It would take us two hours to prepare at this time of night, and another hour to get there. No, our only chance is by sea, because if the Americans are there, they came in submarines. And if they came to rescue the prisoners, they will have to leave in submarines. They could not have used surface ships or we would have seen them long ago.
“Jicai, this is a Navy problem. If we want to catch and punish the Americans, it will be on the sea. If we can catch them in Chinese waters, we are at liberty to attack in self-defense. We may even have the chance to put a couple of American nuclear boats on the bottom of the ocean.”
Admiral Zu looked across the room at the now-distraught Commander-in-Chief as he strode back and forth, reflecting on this local but Homeric struggle between two of the world’s great powers.
“But how, with what?”
“Jicai, if they are about to evacuate Xiachuan, they are almost certainly on the surface or in shallow water. Our destroyer, when it gets there, could attack very effectively.”
“Well, sir, let’s look at the charts. Right here is Xiachuan. If the Americans came in underwater, they would be around here, where it’s forty meters deep. Plainly we cannot get ships out of Canton at the moment, since the entire waterfront is radioactive…so whatever ships we send to intercept will have to come from here…four hours away.”
“What ships do we have available, Jicai? The big new destroyer for a start, eh? Xiangtan. It carries guns, torpedoes, surface-to-surface missiles and two ASW helicopters. Also, she makes over thirty knots through the water, and she has reasonable sonar.”
“Yessir. And the light Jianghu-class frigate Shantou is ready to sail immediately.”
“She carries A/S mortars and depth charges, correct?”
“Absolutely, sir.”
“Then I think we must proceed, Jicai. Send for both commanding officers. I think we should explain to them personally precisely what we expect of them. We could, with good reason, hit an American submarine.”
“Good reason?”
“Certainly, a big American nuclear boat in Chinese territorial waters, an island that had been attacked by an obviously American force from the submarine…oh yes, Jicai…we could make that sound very plausible. We could even claim hot pursuit, continuing to chase them in international waters and demanding their legal arrest.”
“I am just not sure where any of this is taking us, Yushu. Let’s face it, if the Americans have their prisoners back, why not just let them go? They’re going anyway, and Seawolf is lost.”
“That has to do with loss of face, Jicai. I agree that the prisoners are probably going home. Mostly. And I understand that they will talk about us and our methods of interrogation. But I would prefer that not all of them went home. I would just feel better if we were able to sink an American submarine, which would take a few dozen of the prisoners down with her…that would be more satisfactory to me. I would feel that I had not been completely humiliated. And in the halls of power in Beijing, that might look much better for me. I might even retain my job.”
“Yushu, in all the years I have known you, I have never heard you speak like that before, considering yourself above the principal military picture.”
“Jicai, I have never had to. Now it’s different.”
“And what of the warships now on their way? What will I order them to carry out?…”
“Jicai, you will tell them to sink any American submarine, no matter what the risk, no matter how difficult. As many as they find.”