Death Blow

2

Dushan, People’s Republic of China

United States Senator Gregory B. Highlander stared at the paper a Chinese soldier had just given him at the door of the small house they had been provided in this remote village 20 miles northeast along the coast from Zhanjiang in south China. They were a 150 miles southwest of Macao in one of the poor peasant backlands of China. Senator Highlander knew the message had to be bad news.

The Republican senior U.S. senator from Idaho couldn’t believe it. He had his wife read the formal document for him a second time. It was written in Mandarin and she was half Chinese. They had come to this small, poor village a week ago to track down his wife’s last known relatives. Several had been killed in the great Mao purge, others sent into the countryside. Some simply disappeared.

“The orders are clear, Greg. It says we are considered enemies of the Chinese people, and we are required to stay within our house until further notice. We are not to contact any Chinese in the area and may leave only with an escort to obtain food. It doesn’t say how long this house arrest will last.”

“Surely our embassy—” The senator stopped. The State Department and the embassy in Bejing had argued against this trip by the chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. They told him he was the most important man in the Senate for getting military expenditure bills through Congress and that a person with his knowledge of the U.S. military establishment and weaponry simply shouldn’t go on a tourist jaunt into the People’s Republic of China, which had remained belligerent.

Now he sat heavily in one of the three wooden chairs in the sparsely furnished living room of the modest house that his wife’s distant cousin had arranged for them to use for their stay. It was owned by another distant cousin, and there had been a lot of bowing and chattering as the cousins met for the first time in their lives just a week ago.

Senator Highlander had believed that he, his wife, and their daughter would be in no danger on this visit. He was an important person in the U.S. government. The Chinese would not dare think of curtailing his travel or do anything that might make him uncomfortable, let alone that he might complain about to the embassy. Yeah, he had been dead wrong on that one. He winced at the word dead. No he couldn’t think that way. Now he realized that he had been wrong to agree to come. His wife thought that things had loosened up enough in China for a trip she had been planning for over fifteen years.

He was an idiot. Now what he had to do was think of some way that he could get out of this burning house situation. Contacting the embassy was out. The house didn’t even have a telephone. He wouldn’t play his ace card unless he had to. As a powerful U.S. senator he had grown accustomed to getting his own way, of winning fights in the Senate about military spending, and even having his own way at home with his wife and daughter. He had earned the right, damn it. He had come up the hard way, from a farmer father who was blown out of the Nebraska dustbowl in 1937. Then the long trip to Oregon, where the family had done a little better; but still they ate a lot of grapefruit and oatmeal that first year of 1937–1938, mainly because it was cheap and good for them. He had made it through high school, played in the band, and graduated somewhere in the middle of his small-town high school class of ninety-eight seniors.

The Model A Ford Roadster he had bought in his senior year cost him $225. It had yellow spoke wheels, a top that came down, and a rumble seat, a 1931 Model A. When he bought the car, his grades went down but he stayed on the tennis team and graduated. Not until the second half of his senior year did he think about going on to school. His parents couldn’t afford to pay college tuition or buy books.

A small private college in his home town suggested he might want to play on its tennis team. They had no scholarships, but they could help him get a job on campus to pay the tuition: $225 for the first semester. He sold the Model A to get the money.

The senator looked outside the small Chinese house and saw something new. A military guard with a submachine gun slung over his shoulder, stood just beyond the small gate in front of the house. He guessed there would be one at the back door as well.

Damn fine mess I’ve got us in this time. Not so bad for me, but Lydia and Darla. God damn it to hell!

Lydia Highlander watched her husband. She had inherited her English father’s fine coloring, a peaches and cream complexion that was flawless at fifty-two years. The Chinese heritage showed in her almond eyes that slanted delightfully, and in the flat bridge of her nose. Her sleek absolutely black hair hadn’t been cut for two years. It flowed around her shoulders and down her back. She touched her husband’s arm.

“Greg, it will be all right. They wouldn’t dare hurt you. We must figure out how to get you back home.”

“How to get all of us back. I won’t go and leave you two here.” He paused, then shrugged. “There’s only one way now. You know about the heart stimulator machine I brought with us?”

“Yes. I knew it wasn’t that. What is it?”

“I’ll show you.” He took one of their unpacked suitcases and opened it. The maze of wires, dials and readouts built into a metal box looked medically complicated and professional. He moved the unit to a small table and unscrewed a plate on the back. From the metal case he pulled out a long rectangular, metal object.

“It’s called the SATCOM for satellite radio communications.” He took a small dish antenna from inside the box and spread open the dish part into a circle. He set it on a small tripod by the window and moved it around a little.

“Should work there.” He hooked it to the radio. “With the proper frequency I can call up any phone number in the world, access the president or the chiefs of staff, my own office, the CIA, anyone.” He looked in a small notebook that had been in the fake metal box and pointed at a frequency.

“Yes, I think we’ll talk to the CIA. This is really their jurisdiction. First I have to make sure the antenna is tuned toward one of the satellites overhead that will relay the signal. There are supposed to be such satellites all around the world. They told me it would work.”

He moved the knobs then adjusted the dish antenna twice and waited each time. A moment later a beep came from the speaker on the radio. The radio itself was about five inches square and sixteen inches tall. It had a built-in round flexible antenna and a handset. The whole thing including batteries weighed only ten pounds.

“We have the satellite tuned in, now here’s hoping I did everything right.” The senator picked up the handset and pushed the send button.

“CIA, this is Senator Highlander calling from a small town in China. Looking for some help. Do you receive me?”

He turned the set to receive and listened but the speaker remained ominously silent. He tried the same words again, and then a third time. Then a voice came through faintly.

“Senator Highlander. Your signal is weak. Increase your power to eighteen watts. What do you need?”

“CIA, moving to eighteen watts. We’ve been put under house arrest here in China. Armed guards at the front and back doors. We need to get out of here. We’re at Dushan, a small village about twenty miles north of Zhanjiang which is on the south coast of China. We’re about three miles from the South China Sea. Can you help us? I have a lot of information about this country. She’s on a wartime footing.”

“Senator, understand your problem. Will take it up immediately. Keep your SATCOM on burst sending so China can’t pick up your signal. It’s all encrypted in the set. Will contact you in two hours and every two hours after that. Have the set turned on.”

“Thank God. We’ll be waiting.”

Darla, his sixteen-year-old daughter, had been in the next room, but came in when she heard the radio speaker. She stood wide eyed watching the exchange.

“Is it dangerous here, Daddy?”

“It could be. I’m trying to get us out of China.”

Darla’s eyes went wider. Their slant was less than that of her mother’s but apparent and her nose was more rounded. Her skin was not as perfect as her mothers. She wore shorts and a T-shirt, her soft dark hair kept cut short for easy care. “Not much ice skating here, huh, Daddy?”

“Not that we’ve seen. Now, how is our food supply? We could be here for several more days. Do I need to go out and get something from that small market and store we saw when we came in?”

The senator looked at his wife. He was maintaining a steady calm on the outside. Even as he asked about food he was thinking about a story he had read on Chinese prisons, and detention camps. He shivered as he remembered the pictures of what China did to some of its own people. Now those visions kept slamming into his mind.

The clock in the equipment room of Third Platoon, SEAL Team Seven, showed 0730. The sixteen SEALs had been called out early to get the news.

“We’ve got work to do,” Lieutenant Commander Blake Murdock told his men. “We move out from North Island Naval Air Station at twelve hundred. We go fully loaded with weapons, double ammo, and anything else you can think of that we might need on a hot firefight. I’m not sure which direction we’re traveling, but Commander Masciareli asked me if Kenneth Ching was fit for duty.”

“China? We’re heading for China?” Jaybird Sterling, machinist mate second class, asked.

“Speculation,” Senior Chief Boatswain’s Mate Will Dobler snapped. “You heard what the man said. Let’s get cracking. We’ve got an hour to get our gear ready to travel. Double loads of ammo in your drag bag. Uniform of the day will be desert cammies. Take one change of clothes. We’ll work out weapons assignments now.” He looked at Murdock. “Commander, what mix do you want?”

“We don’t have the slightest idea what we’re going to be getting into. Let’s take two of the EARs, five of the Bull Pups, and the rest standard. We’ll leave the fifty here this time. The Bull Pups can do the same job. Check for ammo supply on the Pups.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Dobler said. “Move it you swabbies. We’ve got an airplane to catch.”

Murdock put his gear in order, then inspected the men at 0830. Speculation about where they would be going was running wild.

“Not a clue,” Murdock told them again. “Orders came through channels from our beloved commander, that’s all I know.”

“Seems kind of lonely without Don Stroh giving us a call on the SATCOM,” Bill Bradford, quartermaster’s mate first class, said. “He still gonna be sticking his big nose in here from time to time?”

“I’m sure he will,” Murdock said. “The through-channels flap will be hot for a while, then calm down. He says he’s free to talk to us after we get an assignment.”

They had special chow at 1000, then another inspection and lined up to board two six-by trucks for transport to North Island, only two miles away. They were early. Their bird was being turn-around serviced. It was a Gulfstream II (VC11). The troops grinned. It was a fancy business jet the military used for VIPs or for fast moves of small groups of men.

The plane had a low wing with a twenty-five-degree leading-edge sweep, three degrees of dihedral from the roots, and low wing fences at midspan. The trailing edge had one-piece single-slotted, Fowler-type flaps inboard of insert ailerons.

The T-tail had a broad, slightly swept vertical fin with a small dorsal fillet and full-height rudder. At the top of the tail were swept, horizontal stabilizers with full-span elevators. Two Rolls-Royce turbofan engines with Rohr thrust reversers were mounted on short stubs that were located high on the rear fuselage; the inlets overlapped the trailing edges of the wings. Fuel was carried in wing tanks.

The Gulfstream Aerospace plane had a crew of three, and normally carried nineteen passengers. Its wingspan was sixty-eight feet ten inches and it was seventy-nine feet eleven inches long. Maximum cruise speed at 25,000 feet was 581 mph. It had a ceiling of 42,000 feet and a range, with maximum fuel, of 4,275 miles.

The SEALs lounged on their drag bags and packs on the tarmac fifty yards from where final fueling of their jet took place.

“Damn, this time I hope we draw one of them tasty little Air Force women stewards,” said Jack Mahanani, hospital corpsman first class.

“Hell of a lot better ride than a C-130,” said Paul Jefferson, engineman second class.

They loaded at 1130; stowed their vests, weapons, harnesses, and drag bags; and settled into civilian-type, lean-back, first-class seats.

“Now this is living,” Colt Franklin, yeoman second class shrilled. “This is really living.”

A tall black woman in an Air Force uniform with three stripes on her sleeves came out of the plane’s flight cabin. “Gentlemen,” she said, and everyone shut up and looked up. “My name is Andrea, and I’m crew chief on this bird. Anybody barfs gets to clean it up himself. You be nice to my baby, or I’ll razz you all the way to our first fuel stop. Y’all hear me?”

“Yes ma’am,” the sixteen SEALs said almost in unison.

“Good. Just so we understand each other. I hear you haven’t eaten since ten o’clock. Poor babies. I’ll have some high-quality Air Force box lunches for you an hour after takeoff. Now settle back and enjoy. Usually I get admirals and senators and generals for passengers.” She frowned, lifted her brows, and shook her head. “From admirals to this. Please, Lord, have mercy, I got saddled with a whole passel of froggy guys.”

She grinned, and the SEALs hooted as she went out the main door.

Thirteen hours and two stops later, the sleek business jet rolled to a stop at T’aipei airport and the SEALs transferred quickly to a U.S. Navy bus that took them to the port where they were bunked down in a Navy building. It had a small mess hall and twenty bunk beds.

That was where Don Stroh contacted them through a base telephone.

“Enjoy your tourist flight?” Stroh asked Murdock.

“Terrific, especially the in-flight movie. Now who in hell is going to tell us where we’re going and what we’re supposed to be doing?”

“That would be me. Uncle Sugar has a small problem, three of them actually. This blunderbuss senator, who also is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is stuck in China. They have him under house arrest at a little village in south China down below Macao somewhere. He says China is at a fever pitch, that the whole damn place is almost on a wartime footing. He expects something big and wild to pop at any time. He wants out.”

“I can understand his thoughts.”

“His wife and teenage daughter are with him. Three packages, all must come out untouched and totally unharmed.”

“Our job is to go in and bring them out?” Murdock asked.

“You’re quick, Murdock. Except when those calico ocean bass are biting. You have to wait for the second nibble, then strike with a good upward snap with the rod. That’s the reason I can outfish you any day in the week.”

“Not on a clear day, Stroh. Now, how do we get from here to down there? How far is it? Do we have Navy power in the area?”

“Questions, questions. You are to meet with Admiral Barney Chalmers. His place in half an hour. Bring along your team.”

“You’re here in T’aipei?

“Bingo, I told them you were quick. Been waiting for you. I’ve been here all of four hours. But I had an eight-hour head start. See you soon. A man is on his way to bring your people.”

Twenty minutes later Murdock, Lieutenant jg Ed DeWitt, Chief Dobler, Jaybird Sterling, and Joe Lampedusa (operations specialist third class) walked into Admiral Chalmers’s office two buildings down and came to attention.

“Admiral, sir. Lieutenant Commander Murdock and team reporting as ordered.”

“Yes, Murdock, men, sit down. This may take some time. Don Stroh has been telling me that if anyone can bring out our gallivanting senator, you and your men can.”

Murdock nodded in response. He saw Stroh sitting across the table from them and waved at him.

“This little Chinese village is three miles inland, and about seven hundred miles by air from us here,” the admiral continued. “We have some assets in the area, namely two destroyers and a light cruiser. The destroyers are about a hundred miles off Macao and steaming south as we speak to get in position as close to the village as possible while staying twenty miles at sea.”

“Yes sir,” Murdock said. “We can work off a destroyer if it’s cleared to land a CH-forty-six.”

The admiral looked at one of his aides.

“In that area is the Guided Missile Destroyer Gonzalez,” a three-striper said. “I know that she can service and rearm the SH-60 chopper.”

“That fits,” Jaybird said. “The sixty has a rotor diameter of just over fifty-three feet. The forty-six has a rotor diameter of fifty-one feet so it should work.”

The admiral looked at Murdock. “Sir, I rely on my men to assist in all phases of an operation. If Jaybird says the CH-46 will fit on the deck, sir, it will.”

The admiral frowned, then shrugged. “Fine. Now how to we get a forty-six to the Gonzalez?”

“Sir, we have the Amphibious Assault Ship Bataan about two hundred miles north and west of the Gonzalez,” a captain near the Admiral said. “She has six or eight of the CH forty-sixes. The Bataan is about four hundred miles south of Kaohsiung on the tip of Taiwan. We have three of the forty-sixes there.”

“So she’s within range of the destroyer.” The admiral looked up. “I can order the chopper to fly to the destroyer whenever you say, Commander. I’ve had word through channels directly from the CNO that you are to get whatever you want.”

“Thank you, sir. We’ll need two hours to plan out the operation. Do we have any kind of visual on the area, on the house, or the beach along there?”

The admiral looked at his staff. Each man shook his head.

“Not a thing. You’ll be going in blind. I do have one directive. We are not to commit any more aircraft than absolutely necessary to the operation. One chopper in and out would be the preference of the CNO. He said that way there will be less flack when China accuses us of violating her airspace and committing aggression on Chinese soil.”

“And we accuse her of kidnapping three U.S. citizens,” Murdock said.

“Two of whom have dual Chinese citizenship,” Ed DeWitt said.

“Really?” Admiral Chalmers asked.

“Yes, as I understand Chinese law,” DeWitt said.

There was a pause. Everyone looked at the admiral. He reached for his pipe. He picked it off its decorative stand on his desk, carefully cleaned the bowl while the others waited. Then he put the stem in his mouth and nodded.

“All right, let’s see what you men come up with in two hours. My planning people will also be working on an extraction plan. Let’s see who can make the better one.”

Ten minutes later, back in their assigned building, the SEALs gathered around a fold-out table and began to put ideas down on paper. Ed DeWitt held the pencil and pad. Don Stroh came in and walked up to the table.

“Well, well, the honorable Donald P. Stroh of the elite CIA,” Murdock said. “Have you asked for detailed satellite shots of that village? When can we have them and any other intelligence details you CIA guys have on that area?”

“Just as soon as they fax it to me. I requested it five hours ago, so it should be coming soon, if we have anything. Murdock, do you know how many little villages there are in the world? You can’t expect us to have details about every one.”

“Just this one would be fine,” Murdock said. “We’ll take what you give us. Now who has some ideas?”

“To start, we fly off the destroyer the twenty miles to shore and three miles inland,” Joe Lampedusa said. Then he laughed. “Not a chance. We’d have a jillion Chinese rifles pointing at us before we got ready to fly out.”

“So we go in by a launch of some kind and the last five miles by rubber duck,” Jaybird Sterling said. “We go in quiet. We get inland as far as we can without a sound. Use suppressed shots if we need to.”

“Quiet approach,” Murdock said. “Put that down. What else?”

“We use the EAR whenever practical,” DeWitt said. “That way the China News Agency won’t have any bodies to show the world on TV for a month after we leave.”

“Yeah, I like this. But how do we find the guy?” Dobler asked. “They said he has a SATCOM. Can we contact him at a specific time and have him give us directions from the beach?”

“Good point,” Murdock said. “Stroh, can you get what frequency he’s using so we can contact him from here or from the ship? We want to have him describe everything to us before we take off.”

“I’m on my horse to the radio. If we don’t get anything visual, he can fill us in about the area. I’m outa here.”

“So it has to be a night operation,” Lampedusa said. “We hit the beach at 0100. Most of the locals should be asleep or drunk by then. Should leave us plenty of time to run in three miles and walk out, get to our boats and leave.”

“Flotation with three extra bodies?” Dobler asked.

“The IBS can take two hundred more pounds easily,” Jaybird said. “If there’s any problem, we dump overboard all of our ammo, that’s easy two hundred pounds per squad.”

“What if we run into an army patrol?” Murdock asked. “The report said there were two soldiers with submachine guns at the house.”

“The two Chinks we can convince not to hamper us,” DeWitt said. “The EAR would be ideal.”

“What about a patrol?” Murdock pressed.

“Everything we take with us is silenced,” Dobler said. “If we stumble into a patrol, or if they spot us, we fire silenced, work our way out of it. As the last resort we take off the suppressors and cut loose.”

Murdock gave him a thumbs up. “We get to the beach, load up, and motor out to our yacht and get on back to the destroyer.” He looked around. “Any final words of wisdom? No choppers, all silenced. In and out attracting as little attention as possible. Let’s go back and see the admiral.”

A half hour later, the SEALs stood in front of the same group as before in the admiral’s office. Only Don Stroh was missing.

DeWitt laid out the plan for the Admiral and his staff.

“So, Admiral Chalmers. We think a launch from the destroyer at the ten-mile limit, then the IBS boats for the last two miles will give us a silent approach and exfiltration as well. We might be able to get in and back out with the packages and not ruffle more than a few Chinese soldier’s feathers.”

The Admiral turned to his men at the table. They conferred for a moment. Before they could make any comment, Don Stroh came into the room with a sheaf of papers.

“Admiral, sir. I have some late developments.”

“Pertinent, Stroh?”

“Absolutely. They could change our plans.”

The admiral settled back, picked up his pipe again, and put it in his mouth. He nodded at Stroh who stood beside Murdock.

“We have a group of faxes from my office. Nothing that gives us much to go on. One aerial shot of the general area of Zhanjiang, but that’s twenty miles from ground zero. What I do have are some printouts of transmissions from the senator within the last half hour by SATCOM.

“He says their small village is on a river that runs fifty feet in back of their house. It isn’t large but he’s seen thirty-and forty-foot craft moving up and down the river. They don’t look to be flat-bottomed boats. They are three miles from the ocean, but the river runs almost straight from their house to the beach.”

“Anything else, Mr. Stroh?”

“Yes, the senator has given me detailed directions how to come up the river and where to land. He can talk the SEALs in with his SATCOM if they have any trouble. The river looks to be our best bet.”

The admiral looked at Murdock.

“Yes sir, I agree. A slight change in plans. The amphibious landing ship should have a Pegasus on board. If they can airlift it to the destroyer, we can use that for our run in and back from the river. It can throttle down for the last five miles, putting us within two miles of the mouth of that river. Then we go by IBS to shore, up the river to the house, take out the guards with our enhanced acoustic rifle, a non-lethal weapon, grab the packages, and have them in the IBS craft and back down the river before the Chinese change guard shifts.”

The admiral looked at his staff. Two nodded. The captain lifted his brows. “Looks better than what we had in mind, Admiral. Let’s go with the commander’s plan.”

“When?”

Murdock looked at the admiral. “Sir, that would be insertion from the destroyer so we could hit the river at 0100. With a good operation and no surprises, we should be back to the Pegasus not more than two hours later.”

“Entirely covert, Commander?”

“If at all possible. If we can use the EAR. The soldiers hit will be unconscious for four to six hours and will wake up confused, slightly nauseous, but not having the slightest idea what happened.”

“Very well. Commander, what’s the present position of the ships involved?” The admiral looked at his staff.

“The Bataan is four hundred ten miles from the airfield at the bottom of this island. She’s on a southwest course at eighteen knots. The Gonzalez is roughly fifty miles off the target and about two hundred and fifty from the Bataan.”

The admiral checked his watch. “Gentlemen, it’s a little after 1235 here local time. I know you’ve been across the International Date Line and six or eight time changes, but sun time here is just after noon. The COD doesn’t land on our amphibs, so we go with a Sea Knight. Martin, check with the Bataan to be sure she has a Pegasus available to airlift to the destroyer. Also alert them of a mission and to have a Sea Knight flight checked and ready to go in seven hours. The usual signals to the two ships involved in the action and their part in it.” The admiral turned to the SEALs.

“Men you have a little over five hours of flight time in those choppers. One from the air field in the south to the amphib, another one to the destroyer. I’ll have them airlift the Pegasus from the amphib to the destroyer. This all should put you on the Gonzalez at about 1900. Then you can push off in time to get the Pegasus to that river mouth by 0100.”

“We can be ready to take off in a half hour, sir,” Murdock said. “Oh, one last request. Could you see if the Bataan has a pair of expendable IBS units they could have deflated and in the Pegasus or tied on board?”

“That’s a roger, Commander.” The admiral pointed to one of his men who stood and left the room.

“So, we’ll see you at the airstrip at 1305.”

Navy air power performed flawlessly, and the sixteen SEALs stumbled out of the CH46 onboard the gently pitching chopper pad on the Gonzalez twenty minutes ahead of schedule. Most of them had slept on the two legs to the amphibian ship and then to the guided missile destroyer.

A four-striper met them on the deck and hurried them into the compartment they would use for their short stay.

“We heard you were coming,” the commander said. “I’m Randolph.”

“Murdock here,” Blake said and shook the man’s hand. “Do you have a Pegasus for us with two IBS craft?”

“We do. Right now we’re back up to speed and making thirty knots toward your small stream. It’s called the Yibin River on my chart and shows navigation up about twenty miles. We’re still eighteen miles off shore and paralleling it until we come off the Yibin. Another two hours at the most. How about some hot chow? I’ve alerted the mess and your men can order whatever they want from steak to lobster. It isn’t often that we get a combat mission onboard the Gonzalez.”

The sixteen SEALs ate, slept a while, and were on the fantail on the chopper pad twenty minutes early and ready to go down a rope ladder off the stern into the Pegasus, which rode gently as the destroyer made five knots forward in a slow three-mile box ten miles off shore from the Yibin River.

A coxswain came up and talked to Murdock.

“Sir, I’m your driver. We’re ten miles off the river. I understand you want to move in modestly, then the last five miles at no more than ten knots. We stop two miles off and put you in the IBSs.”

“Correct, Coxswain. Then you meander around out there for about two hours when we should be two miles out in the IBSs to meet you with the three packages.”

“We have a SATCOM on board,” the coxswain said. “We’re set on channel one and will wait for a radio check with you when you get your packages in the boats in the river.”

“Sounds good. We’ll have light sticks for the pickup. If you hear any firing at all, come in closer, we might need more help than we figure right now. You have live ammo for your shooters?”

“Absolutely and good men with the guns.”

“Great, time we get onboard.”

Murdock lined up his men in their combat gear and with their weapons and then went down the rope ladder into the gently bobbing Pegasus. Ed DeWitt brought up the rear. Any nervousness Murdock had felt evaporated once he stepped on the Pegasus and moved forward. This was it. Once more into the fray, into the breach, as the poem went. He never went into a mission thinking that this could be his last. It wasn’t in his nature. He went in knowing that he would come out. Knowing that he was serving his country and doing a damn good job. But this wasn’t just another mission. This was the one right now, the most important one he had ever been on. The current one had to feel that way.

He turned and hurried the men into their seats in the cramped insertion craft that could do forty-five knots in a calm sea. Good, the quicker they got up that river the better.

Now that it had started, Murdock couldn’t wait.