Stephen Coonts - Combat

“But why go ashore in secret?” Heishui asked. “The U.S. and the criminal government of Taiwan are allies. Why didn’t they simply fly in? Unless they didn’t want us to know about it.”

“That’s a reasonable assumption, Captain.”

Heishui looked up at his executive officer. “What is it? What are you thinking?”

Lagao was uncomfortable. He had served with many officers in his career but never with one who so hated speculation as Heishui. Yet his captain had asked him a direct question, and one of the primary functions of an executive officer was to make suggestions.

“I was thinking that the reason we’re here is to resolve the issue of Shi Shizong. Taipei has gone too far this time. They need to come home.”

Heishui looked at his XO thoughtfully. “Go on.”

“If Shizong were suddenly to disappear from Taiwan, and show up someplace else, our position would not be quite as tenable.” Lagao chose his words with extreme care. He was walking a fine line between reason and treason.

“We have spies at every international airport on the island: He would be spotted if he tried to fly out,” Heishui said. “And there are probably others who are very close to him, watching his every move. How else would we know as much about him as we do?” Heishui dismissed the suggestion. “The Taiwanese are not interested in giving him up in any event. They want him as badly as we want him.” He shook his head. “And you’re forgetting the Nanchong. ”

“What if the Americans mean to kidnap him?” Lagao pressed.

A startled expression crossed Heishui’s face. “Take him away aboard the American submarine?”

“However improbable, Captain, it is a possibility that we should consider.”

“What would they do with him?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Lagao said. “The point is he would no longer be on the island. Other than the Nanchong, there’d no longer be any current reason for us to be here.”

“Unless we could prove that he was aboard the Seawolf , and report it to Ningbo,” Heishui answered. He picked up the growler phone. “Sonar, this is the captain.”

“Sonar, aye.”

“What’s Sierra Eighteen doing now?”

“He’s heading to the bottom, sir.”

“What about the inflatable they sent up?”

“It’s heading ashore, sir.”

“How do you know that?”

“I can hear the small outboard motor.”

That’s exactly what Heishui thought. “The moment it returns I want to know. It may be hours, even days, but I want to know.”

“Yes, sir.”

Heishui hung up. “When they come back the Seawolf will lift off the bottom. They’ll make noise. In the confusion we’ll send a man up with night-vision glasses to see with his own eyes who is aboard the inflatable.”

“Cut the motor,” McGarvey ordered urgently. Hanrahan complied instantly. They were about fifty yards off a commercial wharf. There were no boats tied up, nor were there any lights except for one pinprick of a yellow beam. Hanrahan spotted it.

“A patrol?”

“Looks like it.” The flashlight moved slowly to the left, stopping every few feet. At one point the narrow beam of light flashed across the water. It was far too weak to reach out to them, but they ducked nevertheless.

On their chart the dock belonged to a fisheries company. Either the fleet was out tending nets, which McGarvey found hard to believe in the middle of a war situation, or all fishing had been suspended and the boats had been commandeered for patrols. They had expected to find minimal activity there tonight, but this was even better than they’d hoped for.

The city of Keelung, just a few kilometers to the southeast, was mostly in darkness, blacked out because of the threat of invasion. But behind them, for as far as they could see in every direction were the dim red-and-green lights of the commercial fleet and the numerous military patrol boats the Seawolf’ s sonar had picked out. Coming in had been like playing dodgeball.

After ten minutes the point of light disappeared around the corner of the warehouse and processing center. They waited another full five minutes to make sure that the guard wasn’t coming back, then paddled the rest of the way in.

The old wooden docks were up on pilings. They worked their way beneath them, the water black, oily, and fetid with rotting fish and other garbage, then pulled themselves back to the seawall and to the west side, where they found a ladder. The only way anyone would spot the inflatable in what amounted to an open sewer would be to get into the water to make a specific search for it.

They had changed into civilian clothes on the way in: light sweaters, khaki trousers, soft boots, and jackets. After they secured the boat they scrambled up the ladder and stepped ashore with the credentials of U.S. Navy advisors to the Republic of China’s Maritime Self-Defense Force.

“Welcome to Taiwan, Lieutenant,” McGarvey said, and keeping low they headed across the net yard in the dank humidity of the nearly silent early morning.

Harding hadn’t slept in more than thirty-six hours. Once they were settled on the bottom, and he had made sure that his boat was secure, he drifted back to his cabin, where he kicked off his shoes and lay down on his bunk. McGarvey was one tough character, and Harding held a grudging admiration for the man that was beginning to grow into a friendship. But in Harding’s estimation McGarvey was also one lucky son of a bitch. By all laws of reason he and Hanrahan should have been spotted on their way ashore. Four different patrol boats had come to within spitting distance of their inflatable and yet had passed right by. And they were still going to have to get back tonight after dark if they were successful ashore. There was another worry, too. Paradise had reported the conversation between McGarvey and Hanrahan in the escape trunk. They were apparently bringing someone back with them, and there was only one person on all of Taiwan he could think of who’d be worth the risks they were taking.

The phone over his bunk buzzed. He switched on the light and answered it. “This is the captain.”

“Hate to bother you, skipper, but we’ve got company,” Paradise said.

Harding sat up. “What are you talking about?”

“Sonar’s picked up some stationary noises. Maybe pumps, nuclear-plant noises. It looks as if we’ve got a PRC Han-class submarine parked on our back porch.”

“I’m on my way.”

Hanrahan was in the front seat of the ancient cloth-goods delivery truck speaking Mandarin with the driver. They’d hitched a ride on the main highway into Keelung just as the rain began in earnest. The drab old city was known unofficially as the rainiest seaport in the world, and although it was dawn by the time they reached the train station, visibility was limited to less than one hundred feet in the heavy traffic.

“Syeh syeh ni,” Hanrahan told the old man.

“Boo syeh,” you’re welcome, the driver said, an odd expression on his wizened old face.

Everything that came to Keelung by sea had to leave either by rail or by highway, so the train station was busy twenty-four hours per day. Passengers and small parcels were loaded from the street side through the terminal, while trucks and a special spur line running up from the docks used a commercial loading yard across the tracks.

“Your Mandarin sounded pretty good,” McGarvey said as they hurried across the street.

“Thanks, but I only had two years of it at Fort Benning.”

“It’s gotten us this far.”