Firestorm

3

It had taken fifteen minutes to get Joe "Ricochet" Lampedusa into sick bay on the submarine and start treatment. Murdock had been met as soon as he came inside the submarine by the boat's skipper, Captain Johnson, and Don Stroh, the CIA spook who had been chaperoning and passing orders to the SEALS lately.

Murdock had been respectful but firm. "First I see that my man gets the medical attention he needs. Then we talk. Fifteen minutes isn't going to kill anyone." The captain's brows went up in surprise at the abruptness, nearly insubordination, of the junior officer, but Don Stroh took the man aside and explained it to him.

Stroh told him about the SEALS' unity, their cohesion, the way they were closer than most families and how they depended on each other for their very lives. It was a bonding that was equaled nowhere else in the armed services.

When Murdock met the other two in the officers' mess nearly twenty minutes after their first talk, the captain looked uneasy. Don Stroh waved Murdock to a chair with a pair of cold Cokes on the table in front of it.

"Now," Stroh said. "Murdock, let's see what you fished out of Mainland China for us."

Also on hand was Kenneth Ching, Quartermaster's Mate First Class, the Third Platoon's language expert, newly signed on. He'd been a SEAL for four years, had seen his share of the action, and was fluent in reading and writing Chinese and speaking various dialects. A civilian Chinese man who came with Stroh was also present.

Murdock took out the documents from inside his shirt and gave them to Stroh. He opened the plastic and scanned the papers a moment, laughed, and gave them to the Chinese civilian. "It's all Chinese to me," he said. Nobody laughed.

Stroh motioned to Ching, and he and the Chinese civilian looked at the papers critically.

"I am Hubert Wong," the Chinese civilian said to Murdock. "These characters are in the simplified Mainland style, perhaps Mr. Ching will do better on these papers than I can."

"What does it say?" Stroh asked. "What's the title page say?"

Ching looked up at Murdock, who nodded.

""Classified Secret' is all over the first page. A stamp of some sort. The lead title is "Final Plans for Invasion of Chinese Island of Taiwan.'"

Stroh shouted in delight. "Good. Now we've got our work cut out for us. Let's get to it."

Murdock signaled Stroh and stood. "Let me know what they are doing. Then maybe we can work out some way to help stop them. I need to check on the rest of my men."

He left the room, and again the captain lifted his brows.

Murdock made sure his platoon had quarters, a place to shower, and fresh uniforms. The EM mess would be open to them as soon as they were ready. He went to his assigned quarters, a closet-sized room, and showered, then put on dungarees to match the ones worn by his men. Next he called the steward and had him bring a large steak with all the trimmings and two cups of coffee to wash it down. By then he felt ready to face the committee and the Chinese plans for an invasion.

By the time he got back to the conference room two hours after he had left, sleeves were rolled up, papers littered the table, and Ching kept translating the documents, with occasional help from Hubert Wong. Much of it consisted of orders for various units and troops. These were stacked to one side.

Soon it was evident that there would be four main parts to the invasion of Taiwan by the Mainland Chinese forces.

Captain Johnson frowned at the CIA man. "Mr. Stroh, sensitive information like this must be on a need-to-know basis. This is top-secret material. What's an enlisted man doing here? And what's the clearance level of Lieutenant Murdock?"

Stroh smiled. "Captain Johnson, let me put you at ease. Your security clearance is the lowest of any man in this room. This is on a need-to-know basis, and if at some point I have to ask you to leave, I'm sure you'll understand."

The captain scowled for a moment, then nodded. "Aye, aye, sir. I'll be getting back to running my boat. Let me know of any special orders you have for me." The captain saluted Stroh, lifted off his chair, and marched out of the small room in a bad mood.

Stroh waited for the door to close, then looked at Ching and Murdock.

"So what the fuck do we have here? Looks like they have hard plans for invasion. Is there a date on their attack?"

Ching looked up and nodded. "Today's the fourteenth of May. Their target date is May eighteenth. We have four days."

"Not long enough," Stroh said. "What were those four main attacks they planned?"

Ching looked at his notes. "First, they will detonate a small nuclear weapon fifty miles south of Taiwan over the South China Sea to demonstrate the power of the blast. Second, they will launch poison-gas-filled missiles from two ships in the strait, striking each of the fourteen major Taiwan military bases to kill everyone on them and for two miles around.

"Third, they will send transport aircraft aloft with three thousand paratroopers to drop into key strategic points on the island and capture those areas. They will fly from a mainland air field.

"Then, when port facilities are secured, China will send three transports loaded with fifteen thousand troops for three separate dockside landings in Taiwan to facilitate the capture and total occupation of the island."

Stroh stood with a sheaf of notes. "I'm going to get on the radio and run this past my people as well as State, Defense, and the President. Some high-level decisions have to be made quickly if we're going to stop this without a full-scale war on our hands."

He looked at Murdock. "Does this sound like an interesting exercise for your men? I want you to start planning now how you could take down one or all of these operations and stop the invasion cold. Preplanning to be sure. Even if we don't move on this, you've lost nothing and it will be a good practice exercise. I understand the bulk of your equipment is on the carrier. We'll move toward the flattop at max speed as soon as I notify the captain.

"Mr. Ching, you should go over the plans again to see if we missed anything or if any other interpretation could be put on those documents. Wong, you help him out. Let's all get to work."

Murdock found his men in a small day-room the submariners had turned over to the SEALS for temporary use. Most were cleaning and oiling their primary weapons. They had on clean dungarees and had been fed.

Platoon Chief Jaybird Sterling got to him first. "What's up, Skipper?

That paper we brought back tell them anything?"

"We could be busy for the next few days." He gathered them around and briefed them on what the secret Chinese plans spelled out.

"They're finally gonna try it," Gunner's Mate Second Class Scotty Frazier said. "After threatening to do it for fifty years, they're gonna give it a try. Damn me."

"We don't know if it's a go for us or not," Murdock said. "Stroh is on the horn right now with the brass and the President figuring it out. What we need to do is get down to the dirty-dirty here and do some planning. How can we be four places at once, and how can we shoot down this planned invasion before it gets started? Any ideas?"

Most military commanders are shocked to their core by the SEAL methods. Every SEAL operation is a joint process. Planning and tactics and operations are all worked out by the men who will be doing the mission. Officer and enlisted rank means less here than in any part of the military. Every man does his job or he's booted out of the SEALS and back into the "real" Navy where he can chip paint, swab decks, and clean latrines.

Combat veterans of the SEALS know what it is to put their lives in the hands of their team members. They all have been through the most rigorous training in the world, have experienced pain and fatigue and cold and months of harassment and more pain. Few men can stay the course and graduate from BUD/S at Coronado, California. Those who do come out scarred, cocky, self-assured, profane, talented, and with an undying devotion to every other SEAL who has passed the test and weathered the system for six months or more to get his Budweiser pin. That's an eagle, a trident, and a flintlock pistol — the emblem of the SEALS.

The SEALS are a breed apart, and not at all loved by the rest of the Navy, and certainly not by many of the penny-pinchers in Washington when they find out that it costs 80,000 in cash to turn a sailor into a SEAL.

"Let's take them from the top," Platoon Chief Jaybird Sterling said. "That's the big bang. How do you stop somebody from dropping a bomb?"

"Easy," Magic Brown said. "Don't let them get the boom-boom on the delivery vehicle, whether it's a boat or plane."

Murdock nodded. "Bottle up the heavy stuff wherever they hold it. Our people should know where the Chinese have their atomic weapons manufacturing and storage facilities. The word is that there aren't a lot of finished nukes in China's arsenal yet. They must have at least one or two. If this mission is a go, we'll get info from Stroh and his satellite friends about the China nuke workshop and storage. What's next?"

"The poison gas," Seaman Ross Lincoln of the Second Squad said. "What kind is it and where do they store it? They plan to deliver it by ship, you said, so that means naval cannon rounds or missiles."

Doc Ellsworth had just broken down his MP-5 and was in the middle of oiling and reassembly. "I've heard about some of the gas warfare stuff the Chinese have. One great one is the HDL-7. A nerve gas that is as potent as anything our chemical boys own. It's said that a teaspoonful in a big city water supply can kill a hundred thousand people in an hour."

"So we go after the supply and the delivery," Chief Sterling said. "Twice the fun. Can we find out where they store the goodies?"

Lieutenant Dewitt chimed in. "Washington has a complete rundown on the Chinese chemical warfare capabilities, and I think that includes where they make the stuff and store it. We'd need to know what class of ship will be used for the delivery, probably one of their missile-cruiser class. That would cut down on the number of ships needed."

Murdock sat back and listened to his men. None of them were dummies. Most of them read a lot — between brawling, whoring, and drinking, that is. After all, they were SEALS. He wondered how the work was going in the conference room with the interpreters. He also was more than a little interested in how Stroh's talk with the President was going. He'd be surprised if they got any kind of a go-no-go for a covert action within twenty-four hours.