Authors: J. T. Brannan
She seemed to pause momentarily, and Mason could see – although she tried to hide it – that the situation was getting to her.
And why wouldn’t it? She was between the proverbial rock and the hard place, unable to help Taiwan and with the whole Asian continent clamoring for US assistance, lest Wu set his sights on them. And without leading by example, without retaliating against China in some way, what weight would be given to US promises in the future?
Mason didn’t envy her at the moment, but he could sense – like a shark in bloody waters – that there was a hint of opportunity here. If Abrams failed in the eyes of the public to show strong leadership, to at least offer token resistance to General Wu’s wholesale takeover of China and her territories, then her position could arguably be so weakened that her presidency would become untenable.
And who would step into her shoes, once the crisis was over and the world had returned to the status quo?
Yours truly
, Clark Mason thought with a sly grin,
the Vice President of the United States.
Ready to assume the presidency itself, if the current president was unable to perform her duties to the expectations of the American people.
The thought reminded him of the last time he had tried something like this, hoping that Abrams’ handling of the bioweapon threat the previous year would create a similar opportunity. That opportunity had never come, but something else suddenly struck him with that memory – the voice of Doctor Alan Sandbourne.
He knew where he had heard it before.
It took him a while to digest the knowledge, to accept it as true, but in a few short seconds, he was sure. He had no doubt about it at all.
He had heard Sandbourne’s voice piped through the speaker system of this very room, during the bioweapon crisis. Only the name attached to the voice was Mark Cole, a deniable covert operative – a government assassin – codenamed ‘the Asset’.
He had never seen the man, had only seen pictures before his plastic surgery – but Mason was sure he was not mistaken. Doctor Alan Sandbourne
was
Mark Cole.
And what did that mean?
It didn’t take long to figure out – Mark Cole was on Abrams’ payroll, maybe as an individual contractor, maybe even in command of his own damn hit team.
As the meeting droned on around him, Mason withdrew his cellphone and texted his assistant. ‘Get everything you have found on Sandbourne and the Paradigm Group to my office. One hour.’
Mason pocketed his cell and turned back to the meeting, hiding his smile.
He was not a man who missed an opportunity.
4
Mark Cole felt the wind ripping through the cabin of the Black Hawk helicopter which now hovered over the dark seas, his target obscured below him.
Cole and the rest of the Force One team had finished up their training in Coronado, drawn their equipment and been flown out to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam the previous afternoon.
Cole had been pleased with his experience in Coronado, each and every individual now comfortable with the SEAL Delivery Vehicle they would be using. Everyone was experienced in such operations anyway, but it was always nice to be reassured. There was also always the question of how individual operators would gel as a team – but again, it turned out that Cole had nothing to worry about on that score either.
One of the requirements for secondment to Force One was an operator’s ability to work alone when they had to, or to be able to instantly integrate into a team if that was what the mission dictated. As such, Cole had selected personnel of such a high caliber that – after only a few hours of familiarization – they were able to work together as if they’d done so for years.
They were like world-class musicians, each at the top of their game, asked to play together – after only a short time, the very best would always come together in fluid harmony, uniting as one as if they had always played that way.
The aviators from the 160
th
Special Operations Aviation Regiment of the US Army had already arrived in Guam by the time Force One was there, ready and waiting to go.
The pilots of the 160
th
SOAR – the ‘Night Stalkers’ – were the best in the world, able to fly in and out of combat zones without detection, in a wide range of specially modified aircraft. The Sikorsky MH-60 Black Hawk stealth helicopter was one such vehicle, its fuselage altered with the harsh angles and flat surfaces of stealth technology that helped it to avoid many typical radar systems, its rotors configured and adjusted to reduce noise to an absolute minimum.
The Black Hawk’s position over the northern waters of the Ryukyu Islands, in the southern end of the East China Sea, wasn’t quite enemy territory – it was still outside China’s claimed territorial waters – but nobody knew quite how much surveillance the Chinese military had operating in the area, and no chances were being taken. The aircraft – and the huge Virginia-class submarine which waited below it – might still be discovered, and then all hell would undoubtedly break loose.
Despite Cole’s decades of experience, he still felt the cold knots of fear clawing at his belly, telling him to pull back, to abandon the mission, to go home. And as usual, he ignored those feelings completely, shutting them off with absolute mental control. As Mike Tyson’s boxing trainer, Cus D’Amato, had once said, the only difference between the hero and the coward was what they did with their fear. Everyone felt it, but the strong simply refused to give in to it.
The ropes were dropped from the open door of the Black Hawk and the team lined up, thickly-gloved hands waiting to take hold of the rappelling line which would take them to the waiting submarine.
But this was no simple exercise; the submarine was being moved up and down, side to side by the large swells of the black nighttime sea, and to avoid detection had no visible lights running across its decks. There were people down there, somewhere, who would be busy tying off the rappel line onto the deck, to secure it so that all Cole and his colleagues had to do was to slide down and move off.
But with two moving vehicles, separated by thirty feet of pitch black air, joined by a single rope, there was a lot that could go wrong. If the sea pitched suddenly one way and pulled the rope taut, the chopper would have to disengage it to stop itself being dragged down into water; and if the helicopter was accosted by an unexpected air current, the rope would also have to be discarded.
And in both cases, there might well be Force One members still sliding down it. Cole didn’t visualize what would become of anybody caught out in this way; he’d spent enough useless energy on negative thoughts, and now it was time to act.
The loadmaster, looking down with the assistance of his night vision goggles at the submarine riding the swells thirty feet below, was waiting for his opposite number on the black deck to confirm the rope was anchored.
Cole’s feet edged closer to the door, gloved hand wrapped round the rappelling line, waiting for the loadmaster to clap his shoulder and send him out into the dark emptiness beyond the chopper’s door.
Captain Hank Sherman was far from happy; still, he never was when his submarine was ordered to surface in unfriendly waters.
He had thought it would have made more sense for the special forces team to be taken onto the boat back at White Beach – that way they would never have had to perform such a risky boarding. But he’d been told that the operation was due to be conducted to a very tight time frame, and the USS
Texas
had to set off before the team was en route or else they would never make their final destination.
Wherever the hell that was, Sherman thought angrily. But he knew that such a quickly mounted operation was absolutely predicated upon secrecy, and his anger subsided as he accepted the necessity of compartmentalization. Still, he thought the captain of the ship might at least be told where the ship would be headed.
All in good time, Hank,
he told himself.
All in good time.
He was on top of the conning tower, the night air hot and sticky but relieved ever so slightly by the feint breeze drifting in from the west. But although it was soothing for him, the breeze also meant that the waters were becoming a little choppy, the swells beginning to rise.
It wasn’t anything to worry about unduly; this time of year, the weather could become a lot worse at any moment, terrific downpours coming out of nowhere and destabilizing his submarine far more than the gentle rocking it was experiencing at the moment.
But every second spent above the surface was one more than Sherman was comfortable with; the entire purpose of a submarine was that it was hard to detect, and it was hard to detect predominantly because it operated
below
the water. Like all submariners, Sherman had an ingrained hatred of surfacing his ship in any area other than a naval base of the United States.
Not that this particular area was being patrolled by the Chinese, at least not as far as anyone was aware. The ‘ring of fire’ that surrounded the downed USS
Ford
was further southwest, in the triangle made between Taiwan, the Ryukyus, and the Chinese coast from Fuzhou to Hangzhou. The
Texas
, and the Black Hawk above her, were just outside that envelope.
Sherman had also been informed about the invasion of Taiwan, which was now in full swing, and knew that this meant there would be less effort made to patrol this particular area. He had been amazed that the Chinese were pushing ahead so quickly, and wondered if Taiwan was to be his mission, and not the
Ford
as he’d first hoped. Was the special operations unit going to be landed on Taiwan to help repel the attack?
Well, he’d find out soon enough if this landing went smoothly.
He was watching his men secure the rappelling line, right next to the attached Dry Dock Shelter when the message came over the radio.
‘Sir,’ the voice said urgently, ‘we’ve detected a Chinese sub.’ Sherman recognized the voice of Luke Dennison, sonar operator from the sub’s Combat Direction Center, and his heart leapt in his chest, his hands gripping the metal guardrail, knuckles turned white. ‘And it’s heading this way.’
Major Levi Trautman, pilot of the Blackhawk which hovered in the dark skies about the
Texas
, received the message loud and clear; they were potentially compromised, and a decision had to be made immediately.
Abort, or get everyone off the chopper as soon as humanly possible.
A veteran of over one hundred special forces missions, Trautman wasn’t the sort of man to abort unless he was being fired upon by vastly superior numbers, and his engines were out, and some of his crew had been shot. And maybe not even then.
He wasn’t scared of a Chinese submarine; even if the ship was armed with surface to air missiles, it wasn’t likely that they would be able to get a tag on the Black Hawk, launch, and hit it; the MH-60 was too well-protected, too agile and too fast for that to be a concern. But if the
Texas
had ID’d the submerged Chinese ship, then the Chinese sub had almost certainly got a fix on the
Texas
. And the real problem was that – if the chopper was picked up on radar as well – it wouldn’t take a genius to realize that a special ops team was being taken on board.
But Trautman was willing to bet that his aircraft hadn’t been spotted yet. It was one thing for a submerged ship to pick up on an eight-thousand ton craft in the same body of water; it was another thing altogether for it to pick up a light, stealth-enhanced airmobile unit thirty feet above that water.
He informed Captain Sherman of his opinion, delighted that the submariner was of the same mind, then changed channels to send his orders to the loadmaster. ‘We have possible enemy contact in the water,’ he said calmly, ‘so get those troops off the chopper, and do it
now
.’
He received confirmation, and prepared to bug out as soon as the coast was clear.
Cole got the message over his own comms system and knew they would have to get down to the deck as smoothly, and as quickly as humanly possible; the captain would want them safely ensconced in the sub, and the sub back down in her natural underwater environment, before the enemy craft was able to get a fix on what was going on.
Cole cursed inwardly; he knew that if the chopper was seen, then the Chinese would immediately understand that a special ops mission was underway.
But, he told himself, the chopper wouldn’t be seen; the Night Stalkers were the best, and Major Trautman was arguably their best man. If the team got down in one piece, the Chinese would be none the wiser.
Knowing what was at stake, Cole was moving before the loadmaster even clapped his shoulder, hands wrapped around the line as he hurled himself out into the warm, moist, pitch-dark night.
Captain Sherman watched through his night vision goggles as the troops rappelled down the line, one after the other in tight formation; the first one landed, taking the impact with supple, buckling knees, disengaging and moving off to the side to allow the next one to hit the deck behind him; then the next, then the next, then . . .
Holy shit!
As Cole’s second-in-command, Jake Navarone was at the back of the group, making sure everyone left smoothly and securely.
As soon as he saw the form of Julie Barrington disappear into the inky black below him, he too stepped out of the doorway, gravity sending him instantly down the line towards the
Texas
.
And then the unthinkable happened; either a giant swell hit the sub or else an updraft caught the chopper, but suddenly the line went taut.
Navarone knew immediately, instinctively, what would happen next; to save the chopper being brought down, the line would be released. He was still twenty feet in the air.
Time seemed to be suspended.
In the pitch dark he could only feel the sensations ripping through his body, unable to see anything at all; his stomach lurching upwards at the rapid descent, the line pulling him sideways, snapping him back.
‘Clear!’ he heard below as Barrington landed on the deck, and he knew he was alone now, the last man left on the line, and he willed himself to fall more quickly, as if sheer force of will would increase the force of gravity.
And then he felt the line going slack, and didn’t know whether the ship or the chopper had corrected themselves, or if the safety trigger had been activated and cut the rope loose.
He had been travelling for several seconds now, and decided that he couldn’t just wait and see what would happen; he had to take matters into his own hands.
He let go of the line and pushed himself forward through the warm dark night as he dropped, trying to follow the original path of the rappelling rope, hoping that he would land on the deck of the submarine, praying that he hadn’t miscalculated, that he hadn’t been higher than he’d thought, that he wouldn’t break his legs when they impacted the metal deck, or that he wouldn’t end up in the water, the crew of the sub having to waste valuable time looking for him, rescuing him as the Chinese sub moved ever closer.
But then his feet struck metal and the impact wasn’t too bad, his knees buckled in the way he’d been trained.
And then one of his feet slipped, and he felt it going, sliding over the side of the boat, his landing point compromised.
His arms waved about as he tried to correct his balance, but it was too little, too late; his body was tilting at too great an angle, and then he was falling, legs gone from under him, hands clawing as he tried to grip the side of the sub as he fell.
But then he felt strong hands gripping him, pulling him back up, hauling him up to the deck.