Stephen Coonts - Combat

“Step away from the vehicle—” the lieutenant said, as Shizong appeared at the open door. Recognition dawned on the lieutenant’s face instantly. He was visibly shaken. Shizong had been on Taiwan television for more than six weeks. He’d become a celebrity.

“Lieutenant, come here for a moment, please, I would like to ask you something,” Shizong said. Then he switched to Mandarin.

The lieutenant, who had taken out his pistol, lowered it and walked over to the open door. He and Shizong shook hands, and Shizong began to speak, softly, slowly, his voice calm, reasonable, and sympathetic.

Some of the soldiers drifted closer so that they could hear. All of them recognized Shizong. Civilians from the trucks and cars came up, and soon there were at least one hundred people gathered in the chill rain to listen to Shizong, who never once raised his voice. It was, as Hanrahan would later recall, as if he was whispering in your ear; as if he was talking to you personally. It was clear that he affected everybody that way. It was the reason that the old men of Beijing were so frightened of him that they were willing to risk nuclear war to silence him.

At one point the lieutenant looked sheepishly at the pistol still in his hand. He holstered it, then bowed stiffly in front of Shizong. Without looking at McGarvey or the others, he turned and walked away, taking his soldiers with him.

“We may go now,” Shizong said. “There will be no further roadblocks.”

As McGarvey and the others were climbing back into the van, the APCs were already pulling back, and the soldiers were breaking off from their duties and hustling to the Humvees.

Preston started out, slowly at first but gaining speed as the traffic began to spread out. The rain and overcast deepened the night so that coming into a city that was under military blackout orders was like coming into some medieval settlement before electric lights had been invented.

McGarvey directed Preston past the railroad station to the vicinity of the fisheries warehouse and dock where they had come ashore. They parked the van in a dark narrow side alley and walked back to the still-unattended gate into the net yard.

As before there was no activity there, and this time they didn’t even see the guard. Fifteen minutes after leaving the van, they’d made their way down the ladder and scrambled aboard the inflatable, which was tied exactly where they’d left it. They pulled themselves out from under the long dock and began rowing directly out to sea, the rain flattening even the small ripples and hiding everything farther out than twenty yards behind a fine dark veil.

A half mile offshore Hanrahan shipped the oars, lowered the outboard, and started the highly muffled engine; the only question left was how four men were going to get aboard the submerged submarine with only three sets of closed circuit diving equipment.

“Conn, sonar, I’ve got the outboard,” Fisher reported excitedly. “Bearing zero-one-zero, range four thousand four hundred yards and closing.”

“Okay, prepare to surface,” Harding told the diving officer. Paradise looked up from the chart he was studying and came over.

“We’re going to make a lot of noise,” he said. “The PRC captain will know that something is going on.”

“That’s right, Rod. But he won’t know what,” Harding replied. He wasn’t in the mood to explain what he was doing, not even to his XO. He had a good idea what McGarvey was facing and what he was trying to accomplish, and he was going to give the man all the help he could.

The diving officer relayed the captain’s orders, and the boat was made ready to come to periscope depth for a look-see before they actually surfaced. It was SOP.

“Keep a sharp watch on the target,” Harding told sonar.

“Aye, skipper.”

“Flood tubes one through four and open the outer doors as soon as we start up.”

“Aye, skipper,” the weapons-control officer responded.

“Bring the boat to sixty feet.”

“Bring the boat to six-zero feet, sir,” the diving officer said crisply, and they began noisly venting high-pressure air into the ballast tanks. Seawolf started up.

He had everybody’s attention now, and they were working as an efficient unit, exactly as they had been trained to do. The real test, however, Harding expected, was yet to come.

“Take Scotty and two other men and stand by the main stores hatch,” he told Paradise. “I won’t surface until they’re on top of us. But as soon as they’re aboard we’re getting out of here.”

“Are you expecting trouble?” Paradise asked. Dick Scott was their sergeant at arms.

“It’s possible, Rod,” Harding said. “Have Scotty break out the sidearms.”

Heishui was in his cabin looking at a photograph of his wife and daughter, when his XO called him.

“Captain, the American submarine is on the way up!”

“What are the conditions on the surface?” Heishui asked, putting the photograph down. Now was the moment of truth for his boat and crew; and for himself.

“We’re picking up the same small outboard engine as before, about four thousand meters out, and traffic is down to almost nothing. We show two targets, both of them outside ten thousand meters and both seaward.” Their new Trout Creek sonar suite rivaled that of just about any submarine anywhere. Heishui had a high degree of confidence in it.

“Send up the fire squad. But tell them to make certain they have the right target. If we’re lucky, we can end this right now and never have to engage the American submarine.”

“Yes, sir,” Lagao said.

Heishui took a long last look at the photograph of his family, then buttoned the top button of his uniform and went forward and up one level to the attack center.

“Flood all tubes and open all outer doors,” he ordered.

“Aye, sir.” The weapons officer repeated the orders.

“Prepare to get under way,” the captain told his chief of boat, an icy calm coming over him. It was just as good as a day as any to win or lose, he told himself. Live or die.

“We’re on station,” Hanrahan said, checking his GPS navigator. The night was completely still except for the hiss of the rain on the water and the soft buzz of the idling outboard.

“They know that we’re here,” McGarvey said. He did a 360 and so far as he could tell they were completely alone on the ocean. “You’ll have to dive down, lock aboard, and bring up some more equipment—”

“But I cannot swim,” Shizong interrupted.

“You won’t have to do a thing, we’ll do it all for you,” McGarvey said. “Trust me.”

“Periscope,” Hanrahan said excitedly.

They all turned in the direction that he was looking in time to see the light at the top of the Seawolf’ s periscope mast about eight feet out of the water, blinking in Morse code.

Hanrahan held up a hand. “Retreat one hundred yards. We will surface. Repeat. Retreat one hundred yards. We will surface.”

Shizong turned to say something, when a narrow pinpoint of red light appeared in the middle of his forehead. It was a weapons guidance laser and it seemed to come from somewhere to the right of the Seawolf, very low to the water. McGarvey drove forward, his shoulder catching Shizong in the chest and shoving him back.

“Get down,” he shouted.

Preston cried out in pain, blood erupting from a very large hole in his chest. He was flung to the side like a rag doll, out of the raft and into the water.

Hanrahan rolled out right behind him as they continued to take rounds from somewhere in the darkness. He grabbed a handful of Shizong’s shirt as he went. McGarvey, holding on to Shizong’s arm, followed him, the raft and the water all around them erupting in a hail of bullets fired from at least two silenced machine guns.