Beyond all Limits (14 page)

8

Cole checked his equipment one more time as he waited to exit the submarine into the Dry Dock Shelter via the mating hatch.

He was wearing full SCUBA gear, including connections for the open-circuit air tanks inside the SDV which the team would be using for most of the infiltration. He also had a LAR V Draeger rebreather strapped to his chest, ready to be used when they were in the shallower waters inland, when people might notice the tell-tale bubbles released from an open-circuit unit. It would be nighttime of course, but you could never be too careful – the last thing Cole wanted was for some passerby to wonder why there was a trail of bubbles travelling along the water, and to inform the authorities. The chance of detection was pretty large as it was, without giving the enemy an unnecessary advantage.

He wore a full tactical rig over his wet suit, equipment and ammunition in waterproof compartments. On his leg was a stainless steel Smith and Wesson 686 .357 magnum revolver, perfect for its reliability in or out of the water, and he also carried an M4A1 carbine with suppressor. There were more modern rifles available – such as the FN SCAR, a weapon purpose-designed for use by US Special Operations Command – but Cole preferred to use what he knew, and the M4 had demonstrated its utter reliability over the decades.

Cole had placed a condom over the end of the M4’s suppressor to keep water out, and noted that all the other members of his team had done exactly the same. It wasn’t that the gun wouldn’t fire if the precaution wasn’t taken; it was just that the barrel would have to be drained before firing, a procedure that could leave them two seconds too late if they were discovered and had to open fire instantaneously. With the rubber in place, Cole could burst out of the water and start firing right away.

He carried a diver’s knife on the other leg to the revolver, and a dive computer on his wrist so that he could instantly see barometric pressure, depth and navigational information. Night-vision goggles hung from a strap around his neck.

Cole recognized that most of the things he carried were – for himself, at least – not meant to be used; they were merely for self-protection should his unit be discovered. His ultimate goal was to reach Beijing completely undiscovered, and assassinate General Wu with his bare hands.

The rest of his team
would
need their gear though, and were carrying even more than him, including an array of explosives and back-up weapons in large waterproof kit-bags.

Hopefully, Cole told himself, all he needed was a dry change of clothes.

If
everything went according to plan.

Cole’s chosen method of Force One’s infiltration was to pilot the SDV through the busy waterway of Bohai Bay and past Sanhe Island into Yongding New River, which led inland towards Beijing.

It would have been ideal if the SDV could have taken them all the way to the Chinese capital, but Cole knew this wasn’t practical; the Yongding didn’t actually reach Beijing, and they would have had to divert along the Chaobai New River. But dams and shallow waters would make progress along the Chaobai impossible for the SDV past a certain point, even if its batteries were capable of travelling the two hundred kilometer distance.

And so Cole had planned to discard the SDV in a section of deep water of the Yongding and then swim using the rebreathers to a rendezvous point near the G25 Changshen Expressway. Here, they would liaise with the CIA contact, provided that all was well.

Cole knew that this was another potentially fatal part of the mission – they could be discovered leaving the water, or meeting the agent’s vehicle, or else the agent might not even turn up. Another possibility was that the agent had been caught and divulged the route, and Force One would be met by a battalion of soldiers.

Well, Cole thought, that’s what he’d brought the M4 along for. Just in case.

But even if they liaised successfully with the CIA agent, they still had to travel by road and then enter the city itself, and Cole had left this up to the CIA man, bowing to his superior knowledge of the area and the obstacles they might face.

Cole hoped the man knew what he was doing.

But as always, Cole reminded himself, it was first things first; and with that, he nodded at the other members of his team and passed through the access hatch into the DDS transfer trunk.

The operation had commenced.

PART THREE

1

Despite the enormous pressure, Captain Hank Sherman was not sweating; his skin was dry and cool, his respiration perfectly normal, his heart rate barely above resting.

The US Navy selected their submarine captains for their incredible cool under operational conditions, and Sherman was among the most experienced of that nation’s skilled submariners. And even now, in the middle of the Bohai Sea, his craft crawling along underneath a cavalcade of merchant marine traffic while the radar and sonar operators of the PLA coastal defense forces tried to distinguish friend from foe, Sherman looked like he was an executive sitting down for a sales meeting in a comfortable office – an everyday occurrence, and all business.

Sherman had piloted the sub through the narrow strait which separated the Yellow Sea from the Bohai just a few hours before, coming into the enclosed sea in the late afternoon – perfect to make his position in time for the nighttime dispersal of the SDV.

He had avoided the wider northern section of the strait, knowing that it was busier and monitored far more closely than the waters around the southern islands, and had instead travelled completely undetected between the Miaodao Archipelago and Tanglang Island.

It had been a nerve-shredding journey, so close to elements of the Chinese coastline, and Sherman had been forced to admit that – despite his years of operational success – this was the first time he’d had to infiltrate the territory of a technologically competitive nation. It was one thing to patrol the waters of the Persian Gulf and deliver special ops teams into Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan, but it was an altogether different prospect to invade the waters of an enemy which had a real chance of detecting him.

But despite his reservations, he knew that the Virginia-class sub he commanded had been designed exactly for missions such as these, and if any submarine in the world was capable of performing such a task, it was the USS
Texas
.

He was well into the Bohai now, his sonar operators picking up such dense traffic in the waters above that Sherman felt certain that – even if the
Texas
wasn’t discovered – the SDV was sure to be seen by someone. The waters of the bay were shallow, the rivers that ingressed into the mainland even more so.

Intelligence reports also estimated that there were up to three Soviet Kilo-class submarines currently patrolling the waters of the Bohai Sea, under the banner of the PLA Submarine Force’s East Sea Fleet. However, Sherman’s crew hadn’t found signs of any, and his own analysts suggested that they might have left the close coastal waters to project power further out to sea, possibly as far as Taiwan. And anyway, with their diesel-electric engines, Sherman was confident that his crew would detect them before they could detect the
Texas
.

Sherman had already given the order for the special ops team – he still didn’t know who they were, or which branch of the military they represented – to enter the DDS and prepare for disembarkation.

He now received confirmation that the team was in place within the SEAL Delivery Vehicle, and the DDS had been flooded and pressurized.

Some of the divers from SDVT-1 were also now in the DDS, while others exited from the lockout trunk to help control things from outside.

Sherman looked around the combat direction center, checked for another update from his sonar operators, and consulted his large-screen monitor one last time. In place of a traditional periscope, the system used fiber optic imagery to generate above-sea views of the surrounding area.

The live images of the nighttime sea confirmed what the sonar said – there were cargo ships to both port and starboard, but not close enough to interfere with the release of the SDV, and further to stern were two fishing trawlers.

The area directly around the
Texas
was all-clear.

He looked across the CDC to the SEAL lieutenant in charge of the SDVT-1 squad and raised an eyebrow.

The commando looked back and nodded his head.

Sherman turned to his intercom and gave the order.

‘Launch SDV. I repeat – launch SDV.’

He sighed, at once relieved and terribly nervous.

It was out of his hands now.

Cole watched through his underwater night vision goggles as the SDVT-1 divers unlocked the circular hatch at the end of the DDS, opening it with the assistance of the team members waiting outside.

Cole was sitting in one of the two pilot’s seats, holding himself clear of the frame slightly and looking back so he could see where he was going as Collins reversed the SDV back out of the tubular Dry Dock Shelter, helped by the expert hands of the release team divers.

Cole and Collins were fully open to the elements, the pilot area simply two recessed gaps in the fuselage. There were sonar and GPS tracking and navigation systems, but the SDV was so small and maneuverable that skilled operators often relied on sticking their heads out and simply piloting by direct line of sight, using a manual control stick for the rudder, elevator and bow planes. Not too bad in shallow waters during the day, but far more problematic at night when the undersea kingdom was entirely pitch black and operational security demanded the absence of electric lights. The night-vision gear they had was good, but Cole was glad Collins would be doing most of the driving.

Still, he reflected as the battery-powered all-electric propulsion system slowly pulled the vehicle into the open waters of the Bohai Sea, at least he could see where he was going, a luxury that his four colleagues in the passenger compartment sadly didn’t have.

Navarone, Davis, Grayson and Barrington were all going to have to sit in the cramped, flooded, dark compartment behind Cole and Collins for the duration of the journey, a fact for which Cole didn’t envy them. But the ability to cope with the demands of such claustrophobic environments was one of the hallmarks of the special forces operator; it wasn’t just how well a person could fight, but their willingness and capacity to withstand the appalling conditions in which they often had to operate.

The infiltration up the Yongding New River from Bohai Bay was just under forty kilometers, well within the SDV’s sixty-six kilometer range. The mini-sub could go as fast as eight knots, but Cole and Collins had decided that five would be a more manageable cruising speed, and both men knew that it would often be far less than that as they entered shallower waters.

Figuring an average speed of only about three to four knots for the entire journey then, Cole expected to be at the RV point near the Changshen Expressway in five to seven hours. Cole’s CIA contact had agreed to meet the team on the G25 at four the next morning, exactly seven hours away. If they were early, then they would wait in the dark for the man to arrive; if it looked like they were going to be late, then they would have to risk increasing speed to make up the time. Seven hours was already a worst-case scenario according to their plans, but Cole knew that even the best laid plans might go completely wrong.

The SDV was fully out now, and the divers were disconnecting the hoses and pipes which fed the mini-sub from the dry dock. Cole watched the lead diver through his night-vision goggles as he gave the signal that the SDV was now fully under the pilot’s control, and felt the vehicle turn in the water as Collins led it round to face towards the Chinese coast.

The two men turned and nodded towards each other, and then Collins pressed the throttles and accelerated the tiny submarine inwards towards Bohai Bay.

Cole checked the instruments, visible through the night-vision goggles, and was pleased to see that they were making good progress. It had been a long time since he’d travelled via SDV, and he had forgotten what a rapid and maneuverable form of transport it was.

Collins was an excellent pilot too, keeping the mini-sub as low as it would go, careful to avoid the marine traffic above. They had been travelling for an hour now through the murky depths of the Bohai Sea, warped into an eerie, virtual reality green by his goggles, which at once made things clearer but also more disorientating.

Once again, he was glad that Collins was taking the lead; despite his recent session back at Coronado, there was no way Cole would have been as slick or smooth as the young Team Six man.

Cole was monitoring the sonar and GPS, preparing for the next set of directions – the vital route through Bohai Bay and into the Yongding New River. The bay was filled with inlets and harbors, most of which led nowhere; if the SDV entered through the wrong passage, at best they would reach a dead end and lose precious time, or else find themselves in the wrong river going
away
from Beijing. At worst, they would be found and perhaps even killed.

They were getting close now, and Cole checked the instruments again and again, using his hands to inform Collins of their route. It was strange, his body in and out of the SDV, the undersea world around him black and green, the dark waters silent except for the faint hum of the battery and the whir of the shielded electric propulsion unit; it was like a video game and not at all like real life. Yet he knew that if they made a mistake, things would become real all too quickly.

He was monitoring the GPS system when he felt the SDV lurch suddenly to starboard, the entire vehicle ripped to the side, Collins’ body collapsing onto him, his own grip on the fuselage slipping, knocking him out of the SDV altogether.

His head span, the green and black images spiraling in front of his eyes, unable to focus; his hands reached out, securing themselves to the mini-sub’s frame, pulling himself blindly back towards it before it carried on without him and he was lost forever.

What the hell had happened?

Collins was struggling with the controls, attempting to correct the wildly tilting pitch of the SDV, but it was being pulled hard through the water and even with the throttles open completely, the batteries at full power, the ship merely turned, unable to get forward motion.

Cole’s mind sharpened in an instant, his vision cleared, and he looked in at Collins, who shook his head in confusion.

Cole looked around, turned his head upwards, saw what looked like the hull of a ship high above them, checked the sonar for confirmation. Looking at Collins, he pushed his palm down twice, telling him to cut the power; then he disconnected himself from the central open-circuit air unit and swam past the rear compartment, knocking gently twice on the hull, the message for the other four F1 operators to stay where they were. He knew they would be concerned, ready to burst out of the SDV all guns blazing, but wanted to keep them inside for now, unwilling to compromise the mission.

Cole thought he knew what had happened, and burst into action, swimming powerfully around the body of the SDV as Collins throttled back on the power, maintaining the ship’s position in the water.

Cole pushed through the inky waters to the starboard side, checking the rudder, confirming what he’d thought; it had been caught in a fishing net from the marine trawler above them. His hazy green and black imagery showed thick rope netting, fish flicking back and forwards inside, part of the net caught on the starboard blades.

Holding onto the SDV with one hand, he withdrew his knife with the other and started to cut, aware that the longer they stayed here, the more time the fishing vessel would have to register the weight of its catch and start to haul in the net; and the last thing Cole wanted was for the SDV to be pulled up alongside a Chinese boat just a few hundred meters from the Chinese coast.

He sawed away at the net frantically, just one single twine wrapped around the rudder; but it was thick and heavy, and it was going too slowly; already Cole could feel the net starting to be pulled in.

Cole let go with his other hand, pulsing his legs to keep in motion with the vessels as he secured the rope now with that hand, cutting even more frantically with the other.

He could see the hull above him more clearly now, the net being pulled inexorably closer; he looked back to the net, saw fish swimming past from the hole that he was pulling open, hands working with savage rapidity.

The hull was growing bigger, bigger, and Cole cut even harder, acid in his muscles building up until the pain was excruciating, but he ignored it completely and continued to saw, and saw, and saw, until . . .

The rope suddenly went slack, Cole’s knife finally passing through, separating the SDV starboard rudder from the fishing net, and Cole clamped down on the fuselage and gave Collins the hand signal to
go, go, go!

Collins didn’t need telling twice and immediately burst forwards, throttles open, propelling the SDV fast through the waters, away from the prying eyes of the fishermen above, Cole’s body being dragged alongside the mini-sub, no time to climb back in.

But eventually, finally, the SDV slowed, out of the danger zone, and Cole swam around and climbed back into the open cockpit, securing himself back onto the central air system, breathing a sigh of relief.

He wondered what Navarone and the others must have thought, pulled around in the complete dark of the rear compartment with no idea what was happening, and was glad once again that he was in the front.

Terrifying though it was, at least he knew what was going on; and that, as he well knew, was always half the battle.