SEAL Team 666

15

They’d soared to within a hundred yards of a cruise ship glittering beneath them, laughter and music drifting from it at 0130 hours. The passengers would be witness to the events that were about to unfold if they were sober enough to grab a telescope or high-powered binoculars.

The approach was the trickiest part of the operation. They weren’t prepared for a water landing. A two-hundred-meter length of the second wharf had been designated as their landing zone. A building and rack of storage containers would screen them from the target if they played it right.

Overhead imagery had identified six roving guards and several static cameras, all easily overcome or ignored.

They landed one after the other, coming in low and flaring at the last moment, their black chutes and body armor blending in with the sky, then the close shadows of the night-drenched wharf.

Holmes took out a guard who was lighting a cigarette as they landed. With sound suppressors affixed to all the weapons, his two shots to the man’s chest sounded like loud coughs.

The team wrapped their chutes, harnesses, and oxygen tanks, then dropped them over the edge of the wharf into the South China Sea. After a weapons and commo check, they began to move.

The cargo ship was docked at the end of the wharf. A single guard stood beneath a light at the gangway. Like the other one, he wore the green uniform of the Chinese army. A billed Mao hat rested on his head. He carried an AK-47 at his shoulder. The thing about guards was that they spent their entire lives preparing for a single moment when they had to be ready. It was a minuscule number of guards who didn’t eventually succumb to the boredom inherent in such a task. This man was no exception. He’d found a place to lean, and by the rocking of his head, he was back and forth between the waking world and his place on Mao’s Long March.

Walker had the Stoner out of its case, the optics installed and ready. He helped the guard along his way with a 7.62mm nudge through the head. The guard’s hat popped off as his torso rocked back; then he slumped to the ground.

Another guard ran down the gangway. He’d been obscured by the railing. He was fumbling with a walkie-talkie on his hip when the Stoner coughed again. The QD sound suppressor was about a foot long and extended the barrel length of the Stoner by about six inches. The extra weight was a surprise to negotiate, Walker realized. The first round took the guard in the hip, shattering it and spinning him around. The second round took him in the upper back, exploding a fist-sized hole out of his chest.

That left three more guards somewhere aboard the ship.

Holmes ordered Walker to find a high point, then took the other SEALs and quickly made their way along the dock to the gangway.

Walker already knew where he was going to go. He’d spied a place atop one of the cargo containers that was hidden from view on both sides. Hoover had been ordered to stay with him, so the dog could watch his six.

It was a quick climb to the top and Walker lay prone as he aimed through his sight. If anyone showed up, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.