Seawolf Class

10

The locals called it Kinmen. The island had another name, however… and westerners who knew something of China's bloody recent history knew the place by that name: Quemoy.

Jack Morton stood on the outside parapet of a concrete tower, binoculars in his hands, staring north toward the lush, green folds of the foothills of the Shiniu Shan Mountains. That was Mainland China over there, fading into the evening mist across a scant three miles of open water. He raised the binoculars to his eyes and studied the far shore. He could see the beach, the play of low surf on rock. A water buffalo chewed endlessly on whatever it was that buffalo chewed. Tangles of barbed wire lined the beach above the high-tide line.

Westward, to the left, a military base or fortification of some sort sprouted in ungainly, weedlike fashion from sand and tropical greenery. The flag flying over the walls was the bloodred banner of the People's Republic. Morton could see a sentry on a parapet behind the gray wall, staring south across the water toward Kinmen. He couldn't make out the soldier's expression but had to assume it was a bored one. The silence was heightened by the gentle hiss and splash of the surf. The place seemed unnaturally peaceful.

"That, my friend, is our objective," Commander Tse told him. "Do not let the fortifications daunt you. We infiltrate people through that beach all the time."

"And they do the same on this beach, I would imagine."

Tse scowled. "Not so often as you might imagine. Not successfully at any rate."

Morton said nothing. The Taiwanese defenders would only know of the failed infiltrations, the ones that had been detected. No matter. Both sides continued to play their deadly games. It was curious, though, that as the war of words was heating up between Taipei and Beijing, as missiles flew across the strait as exclamation marks to Beijing's harangues, this bit of coastline was preternaturally peaceful and quiet.

Tse turned away, and Morton sensed that he'd ruffled the man's feelings. Remember your orders, he thought. Keep your hosts happy.

"This is the place where the Communists invaded Kinmen, isn't it?" he asked. "I was reading about Taiwan and saw an article about the battle."

"Yes!" Tse said, turning back with a smile on his broad face. "You can read about the whole action at the Kuningtou Battlefield Museum." He gestured toward the northwest and a low promontory of land extending north into the channel. "It is there, at that point."

"Military history is a weakness of mine," Morton explained. "I'll have to see it while I'm here."

"Ah! It was a glorious battle! October twenty-fifth, 1949. The Generalissimo's forces had suffered many sad defeats on the mainland, and his forces were falling back to Taiwan. Communist forces stormed ashore on this very beach at two in the morning. They walked headlong into a column of PRC tanks behind the beach. Kuomintang forces swiftly closed in with air attacks and ships. The Communists were forced back on that point of land… there… with their backs to the sea. After twenty-five hours, more Communists landed, but by that time reinforcements had been rushed in from Taiwan. After a fifty-six-hour battle, the last surviving Communists surrendered, at ten a.m., October twenty-seventh. It was a desperately needed victory for Generalissimo Chiang. As a result, Kinmen Island remained free, along with Matsu, further up the coast."

Morton nodded. He had read about the affair, and Tse had not exaggerated the battle's importance. Fifteen thousand Chinese had died in that single, bloody bit of fratricide.

Though the West had largely forgotten about them now, the two small islands of Kinmen and Liehyu, and the archipelago of eighteen tiny islets that comprised Matsu about 170 miles northeast up the China coast, had been very much in the news in 1958, when the People's Republic under Mao had demanded their surrender. The Soviet premier, Krushchev, had been trying to rein in Mao's impetuous adventurism; for his part, Mao rankled that Krushchev didn't consider China a full equal of both the U.S. and the USSR in the world political arena. The two leaders had met secretly for three days in July 1958. Mao's response to Krushchev's patronizing efforts at diplomacy had been to open a forty-four-day bombardment of Quemoy and Matsu. Almost half a million artillery shells rained down on tiny Kinmen alone during that six-week onslaught between August twenty-third and October sixth. The entire world had held its breath, expecting that this was the beginning of World War III.

Morton and raised his binoculars again. A small PLA patrol boat was motoring slowly east along the coast. Her awkward silhouette with a central, squared-off pilot house identified her as a Beihai-class craft, eighty tons and less than thirty meters long, with quad-mounted 25mm antiaircraft guns forward and a second mount aft. She wasn't flying a flag or ensign and probably belonged to a local Communist militia. She chugged slowly along the coast, just outside of the surf line next to the mainland, making perhaps twelve knots.

"Right on time," Tse said, noticing that Morton was tracking the patrol boat with his binoculars. "We will time our approach to avoid their maritime patrols, of course. These days, they are not as zealous in their rounds as they once were."

"Do they have anything larger in the area?"

"A few Huangfeng-class missile patrol boats… that is a PLA-built version of the old Soviet Osa I. And there is at least one Hainan-class patrol boat in the area, but its appearances are infrequent. Our biggest tactical problem, though, will be the large number of armed trawlers. The PLA and local militias employ hundreds of them up and down the coast. They are ordinary fishing trawlers of one or two hundred tons, but armed, usually with one or two machine guns. They perform double duty…as legitimate fishing boats and as fisheries patrol craft, and therefore they have no set patrol schedule."

"No sophisticated sensors or sonar equipment, though?"

"No. Absolutely not." Tse grinned. "Not even fish-finders! Keep in mind that in many ways we are still dealing with a third world nation. The PLA believes in numbers, not in technology."

Tse's confidence on that point was worrisome. In general, yes, Mainland China employed military technologies twenty to thirty or more years behind those of the United States… but they still fielded a well-equipped, well-trained, and fanatically dedicated military force, one intent on catching up to the West in all respects.

The sound of footsteps on wet concrete coming up the stairs behind him interrupted his thoughts. Lieutenant Commander Chris Logan joined them, saluting as he approached.

"Excuse me… Commander Morton? Commander

Tse?"

"Good evening, Commander Logan," Tse said. He bowed slightly to Morton. "I shall allow you two to talk."

"Thank you, sir." As Tse drew off, Garrett addressed his 2IC. "Hey, Jammer. Whatcha got?"

"The men are all squared away at the new barracks, Skipper. No problem there. Flying roaches the size of your hand. Some of the guys are threatening to start hunting them, secure a little extra protein with the meal rations."

"Sounds good."

"We may have a problem with the local ammo, though. The stuff's ancient."

"Five five-six?"

"Yessir. The parafrogs mostly carry Taiwan copies of the M-16A1. Fires 5.56 by 45mm rounds. But they have old stuff, too. Even thirty-cal M-1 rifles, World War Two vintage."

"They've had to make do a long time. I've seen some of the soldiers here on Kinmen carrying Taiwan copies of Thompson submachine guns."

"Cool. Good weapons."

"What kind of weapons do they have in the specfor armory? Chicom gear?"

"Lots of Chinese Communist stuff, yeah. Plenty of Type 68s and Type 73s." Those were various Chinese copies of the Soviet AK-47.

"And lots of seven six-two to go with them?"

"Yes, sir. And it looks to be in pretty good shape."

"I think I'm going to suggest that we go in carrying Chicom weapons," Morton said. "We're allowed to use our initiative on this one, but our orders are damned specific about not alerting the PLA to an American force trespassing on their territory."

"Some of the guys were talking about using suppressed H and Ks. Of course," Logan added with a grin, "if we actually get into a firefight, we've screwed up."

"Always," Morton replied. "Okay, I guess I wouldn't mind having a couple of H and Ks along for quiet wet work."

"What about Tse's people?"

"That's up to them." He shook his head. "I don't have a good feeling about this one, Jammer."

"I know what you mean, Skipper. No time to train, no time to get to know our opposite numbers."

"And we're going to be completely in their hands. They've routinely infiltrated over there. We haven't. I don't know why SOCOM doesn't just have them take out those launchers. Definitely high-risk, with low payoff. I have the feeling we're here just for show, for politics, and that's never good."

"Well, if we get into trouble over there, we can always call for help. We know we can get artillery support, and if we're real lucky, maybe they'll send us sexy underwear."

Both SEALs laughed. Taiwan's use of women's underwear had provided endless amusement for the platoon since they'd first heard the story.

After the initial bombardment of Kinmen and Matsu in 1958, Mao, when confronted by the very real possibility of U.S. naval intervention, made a remarkable offer. If the U.S. Navy stayed out of the Strait of Formosa, he would bombard Kinmen and Matsu only every other day. The offer had been rejected, but Mao, after a unilateral one-week cease-fire was extended to three weeks, had begun the on-again, off-again bombardment on his own.

The Taiwanese had replied in kind. For the next twenty years the PLA had launched symbolic artillery bombardments on Kinmen every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, while Taiwan had fired at the mainland every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Sunday, by unspoken agreement, was a holiday for both sides, a day of rest. By the time the ritual duels ended in 1978, 570 ROC soldiers had died… along with an unknown number of PLA troops on the mainland.

As a sideline to the artillery duels, though, Taiwan had engaged in extensive propaganda attacks on the mainland. At one point the largest neon sign in the world had stood above this very beach, with characters large enough to be read from the port city of Xiamen on the mainland. It had read, "Three Principles of the People: Reunify China," which, interestingly enough, was a popular slogan on both sides of the Strait of Formosa. The sign, evidently, had become a major tourist attraction on the mainland; when Taiwan finally took it down, the city council of Xiamen had formally complained.

Loudspeakers, also claimed to be the largest in the world, had been set up on both sides of the channel, blaring propaganda broadcasts back and forth. Morton couldn't quite imagine what that cacophony must have been like. And, since artillery shells loaded with leaflets didn't travel all that far, Taiwan had begun a program of launching balloons from Kinmen bearing canisters loaded with top-secret propaganda material for dispersal across the mainland.

The world finally learned the true nature of this propaganda, however, when one balloon actually traveled halfway around the planet and was intercepted in Israel. The canister was opened, and it contained…

Transparent women's underwear.

Evidently, Taipei thought the frilly airborne gifts would undermine PLA morale, inducing large numbers of them to defect.

The balloon drops had their serious side. During 1989, balloons had carried Taiwanese newspapers across the channel, to keep the mainlanders informed of what was going on at Tiananmen Square, and it was said that some people in Fujian Province relied on the air drops for news in the same way that folks in Nazi-occupied Europe had tuned in to the BBC on illegal radio sets.

But for the SEALs, the idea of bombarding the enemy with sexy lingerie was priceless, "worth every penny of admission," as MN1 Fuentes had put it.

"Maybe we should pack a few hundred rounds of Playboy," Logan added. "You know, bring out the really big guns."

"That might go against the Geneva Convention, Jammer. Cruel and unusual."

"Okay, okay. We'll save the skin magazines for the terrorist suicide bombers… you know, the ones who grow up as Islamic fundamentalists, not even allowed to look at a woman until after they get married."

"You have a nasty and fiendishly twisted mind, Jammer. I like that."

"Why, thank you, sir!"

Morton's mood sobered, however, after his 2IC completed his report and returned to the barracks. Taiwan and Mainland China had been playing a very strange, very deadly game for over fifty years, and as the U.S. government had estranged itself more and more from Taipei, they'd understood that game, understood its nature, understood its sheer deadliness less and less.

And First Company was smack in the middle of play.

Over the years, tensions between Taiwan and the mainland had gone up and down. In general, and from the West's perspective, things had gotten better. As diplomatic overtures were made to the People's Republic, as Washington and the rest of the world distanced itself from the Nationalists, Beijing's rhetoric had toned down and the threat of an invasion across the Strait of Formosa had grown more remote. This was due in large part to the growth of Taiwan's economic presence on the mainland; nowadays, Taiwan did more business with Mainland China than they did with the United States. Kinmen, once a base for 70,000 ROC troops on an island with a total population of only 52,000, now maintained a garrison of only about 10,000 men. Frogmen still used the island to stage intelligence-gathering incursions across the channel, but not with the regularity — or the sheer viciousness — of years past. Today the island was a tourist attraction, and the main port of embarkation from which illegal Chinese immigrants to Taiwan were shipped back to the mainland.

But the situation had changed sharply just in recent years… and ironically, the change had been brought about by Taiwan's democratization. Kinmen and Matsu had been under direct martial rule until 1993; the islands had even maintained their own currency, to keep all the money, and the people, from fleeing to Taipei. The Nationalists had ruled Taiwan with an iron hand, first under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, then under his son, Chiang Chingkuo. An opposition political party — the Democratic Progressive Party — had been permitted only grudgingly, and after 1986.

The Nationalist party, the Kuomintang, or KMT, had maintained all along that it was the rightful ruling government of all of China; in fact, over 460 KMT legislators pretending to represent mainland constituencies had retained their seats in the government — since they were unable to stand for reelection in their districts — until they were at last forced to retire in 1991. The nation's first truly free elections had been held shortly after that.

And Beijing continued to insist that Taiwan was a rebellious province of the People's Republic, that Taiwan would be invaded if the island ever made a formal declaration of independence, or if it dragged its feet in negotiations to reunify with the PRC. Beijing had not made any moves in that direction beyond diplomatic pressure against attempts to sell weapons to Taiwan, which they considered to be interference in China's internal affairs, and a great deal of rhetoric. With Taiwan investing in more and more mainland businesses, Beijing was not anxious to shut down the flow of hard cash.

But with the arrival of the DPP on the political scene, things had been changing, changing fast, and not necessarily changing for the better. The Democratic Progressives were calling for the creation of an independent Taiwan, a Republic of Taiwan that would have no claims to the mainland but would also be free of Beijing's rule. They'd been making other moves as well — requesting a seat in the UN for the ROC in 1994, for example, though they'd been expelled from that organization in favor of the PRC in 1971. When Taiwan's president, Lee Tengui, made a high-profile visit to the United States in 1995, Beijing had responded by holding "missile tests," dropping test warheads into the sea twelve miles from Taiwan's coast… and letting it be known that Los Angeles was within range of China's nuclear arsenal.

The missiles had flown again in 1996, in a transparent attempt to scare Taiwanese voters away from Lee. This ham-fisted version of diplomacy backfired when the U.S. Navy sent two carrier battle groups to Taiwanese waters and Lee won a landslide. Beijing had resorted to missile diplomacy yet again in 2000 to prevent the election of a DPP presidential candidate — Chen Shuibian — and again their attempt to control Taiwanese elections had failed.

But now the DPP was pushing harder than ever for an independent Taiwan, and that was flatly and completely counter to Beijing's will. Though the ROC continued to pretend that things were getting better, the mainland was casting a longer and darker shadow across the strait than ever. Pundits wrote that Taiwan held a very angry dragon by the tail and that now they were clinging to it for dear life. The latest use of missiles against Taiwan merely underscored Beijing's determination. Their "renegade province" would not be granted independence, whatever the rulers in Taipei might imagine.

No one believed that the ROC's military — outnumbered by the PLA by at least ten to one, and without the best and most modern military equipment — could repulse an invasion alone. Everything depended on whether the United States would be willing to come to little Taiwan's defense.

That was the big question, of course, and one very much on the minds of Beijing's rulers. The United States had been steadily distancing itself from Taiwan ever since Washington had withdrawn diplomatic recognition from the ROC in favor of the PRC in 1979. And ever since September 2001 the U.S. military had been increasingly committed to the War on Terrorism, in places ranging from Afghanistan and Iraq to Mexico and the continental United States. Beijing might feel certain that the U.S. would not involve itself in yet another war, especially a war in such an unpopular cause as Taiwan's independence.

Which left First Company, SEAL Team Three, in an awkward and unpleasantly exposed position. With orders to take out mobile launchers on the mainland near Xiamen as a symbolic gesture of defiance, they could find their presence suddenly denied by the government that had sent them. To Morton's eye, this one had the smell of a suicide mission.

And he didn't like that one bit.

"The trouble with America's China policy is that Washington never knows what the hell it's doing when it comes to either Mainland China or Taiwan!" Chief Toynbee said, with all the royally self-assured air of one of Seawolf's bona fide China experts. "In short, our China policy sucks!"

Garrett laughed, along with most of the men, officers and enlisted both, gathered in the mess hall for an informal bull session. News of Seawolf's impending visit to Hong Kong had spread through the submarine at something greater than the speed of light, with most of the hands in the know even before Lawless had made the formal announcement at 1500 hours that afternoon.

The upcoming visit to Mainland China, then, was on everyone's mind and in every conversation. Mess tables had been cleared off and wiped down after evening chow, and off-duty members of the crew were beginning to gather in expectation of that night's scheduled movie.

By one of those eerie twists of serendipity that serve to make truth stranger than fiction, the movie that evening was The Sand Pebbles, with Steve McQueen. The epic story of an American gunboat in the 1930s-era China of warlords and revolution seemed uncannily appropriate. Originally, the extra-long movie was scheduled to be shown in two parts spread over two nights, but the CO had decreed that since the Seawolf would be in Hong Kong the following night, the entire three-hour film would be aired in one sitting.

"Look how long we backed Chiang!" Toynbee continued. "And him claiming all along that he and the KMT were the real government of all of China! And until Nixon came along, that's the way we believed it, too. Talk about your tail wagging your big-ass dog!"

"Nixon just saw a chance for the big corporations to make some money in the PRC," someone in the back said.

"Sure," Master Chief Dougherty said. "And what's wrong with that? The idea was to keep the peace, not to go to war with the most populous nation in the world over a bit of real estate the size of Maryland. Backing Chiang all those years was nuts."

"My point exactly," Toynbee said. "It was nuts. But then we started trying to appease Beijing, and we all know that appeasement never works worth shit. We booted Taiwan out of the United Nations and started dealing with them kind of under the table, hoping Beijing wouldn't notice. We kept selling them weapons… but not too many weapons or weapons that were too advanced, because that would make Beijing mad. We wanted to preserve the possibility of doing business with China, but we didn't want to lose the economic miracle that was Taiwan. We tried to keep it both ways."

"Come off it, Chief," Larimer said. " 'Economic miracle'? The Kuomintang ran one of the dirtiest, most corrupt governments in the world."

"Yeah," someone in the crowd called out. "They were corrupt, despotic bastards, but at least they were our corrupt, despotic bastards!"

"The KMT was booted out of office in 'ninety-six, Chief," Garrett pointed out. He'd been reading up on the political situation in Taiwan over the past couple of days. "Their candidate came in a very poor third."

"And who were we supporting in those elections?" Toynbee asked. "Who were we hoping would win? The KMT! And even though the new government has done more real political reform in Taiwan in a few years than the KMT did in fifty-five years of one-government rule, we're still treating Taiwan like some sort of invisible, poor relation. No embassy. No formal relations. All trade handled through the American Institute, a private corporation in Virginia."

"So what's your point, Chief?" Garrett asked. "It was useless to try keeping Communist China isolated, and pure idiocy to just ignore them, to pretend they didn't exist. It's better to talk and trade with them than to fight, right?"

"Yes, sir, it is. But there's such a thing as looking out for your friends, y'know?"

"The KMT was friends with American money," a second-class yeoman named Michaels said. "In fact, they were friends with everybody's money, including every drug lord in the West Pacific! Chiang was the biggest crook and maybe the biggest dictator going out here. Like Diem. Or Noriega."

"Chiang was a puppet," someone else said.

Toynbee shook his head. "Shit, people! I'm not talking about the Kuomintang. Yeah, Chiang was a dictator, and I suppose he was a political tool for us, like Diem was in South Vietnam. Someone we could prop up as a local rallying cry against the Communists. And maybe we should've helped him more, and maybe not. What I'm talking about is the people of Taiwan. The ordinary folks who just want to be free to live their own lives and not have the government — I don't care if it's the KMT in Taipei or the Communists in Beijing— breathing down their necks."

"We've been protecting Taiwan right along," Dougherty pointed out. "The Communists were all set to invade Taiwan fifty-some years ago. And we sent a couple of carrier task forces to the Strait of Formosa and made 'em back down. The way I heard it, there were aircraft on those carriers armed with nukes. We were on the verge of a nuclear shooting war with Red China, and maybe the Soviet Union, too, and all to keep Taiwan from being taken over."

"That was then," Toynbee said, stubborn. "That was before Nixon went to China and we decided to cozy up with Beijing. That was before we decided that Communist China was a legitimate nation, and Taiwan wasn't."

"Come off it, Chief," Lieutenant Tollini said, laughing. "Do you seriously think we should have kept recognizing Taiwan as the only real China?"

"No. I'm just sayin' that our China policy has never made sense. We backed Chiang long after common sense said we should have written him off… but we dumped him when it became convenient. We still guarantee Taiwan's right to exist… but as a kind of non-nation. An aberration on the map. An aberration that's still home to twenty-two million people.

"And now, just when we're up against it and about to go to the wall for Taiwan again, some bureaucrat in D.C. gets the collywobbles and pulls the plug on us. Sends us to fucking Hong Kong on a show-the-flag public relations cruise! Man, it just don't make sense!"

"Hey, Chief Toynbee," one sailor called out from the back of the mess hall. "You're married to a Formosan girl, ain't you?"

"Yeah, Burke, I am." Suddenly, Toynbee's voice was cold, with a hard, wary edge to it. "What of it?"

"Just that kind of explains why you like the chinks so much, huh?"

"What's to explain?" The question was a growl. Toynbee lurched to his feet, his fists clenched, his expression dangerous. "We're talkin' about people here. Not chinks. Not slants. Not—"

"Yeah, yeah, okay, Chief. No offense, right?"

"I'm not so sure about that. Sometimes I find you damned offensive, Burke."

"Easy there, people," Garrett said. "Both of you stand down!"

"Maybe I will after I swab the deck with that damned snipe," Toynbee said.

"Cool it, Chief!" Dougherty snapped. "You heard the XO!"

Another chief, EMC Yolander, was already on his feet at the other end of the compartment, talking quietly with Burke. After a moment Burke got up and left with Yolander, who was the Seawolf's Master at Arms — essentially the boat's senior policeman. But if Burke was a "snipe," as Toynbee had called him, he was also part of Seawolf's engine room gang and therefore in Yolander's division. A quiet word with the man in the passageway outside ought to be enough to settle things, at least for now. Garrett made a mental note to talk with the MAA at the first opportunity and see if there was an ongoing problem here.

The near confrontation left Garrett thoughtful as the movie began a few minutes later. The U.S. Navy was an interesting cross-sectional mix of American culture, beliefs, and attitudes, with some cultural peculiarities all its own thrown in for good measure. People did not shed their prejudices and small-town bigotry with their civvies when they signed up. In boot camp, new recruits from Smalltown, Ohio, found themselves living with former gang members from Chicago, Black Muslim street kids from Philadelphia, Latinos from Miami, Moslems from Los Angeles. The Navy was a melting pot of cultures, religions, and ethnic backgrounds.

And sometimes — especially aboard ships or within the claustrophobic confines of a submarine — the pot became something more like a pressure cooker.

That had always been the case. During Vietnam, the Navy had struggled with racism and racial hatreds, mostly between blacks, whites, and Latinos. In World War II, African Americans in the Navy had been largely restricted to duty as mess attendants and stewards' mates, conveniently ignored, while officialdom struggled with widespread prejudice against Italians, Eastern Europeans, and Jews. Always, it seemed, there was someone to hate, someone over whom you could feel superior.

But in the years since the September 11 terrorist attack, especially, traditional American isolationism had been more manifest as a mistrust, a fear, as an outright hatred of anyone different — anyone who spoke a different language, worshiped a different God, expressed a different culture. Lately, in fact, Navy personnel had been required to attend sensitivity training classes, view movies, engage in cross-cultural role playing, and receive special counseling, all in the name of keeping the lid on the bubbling stew of religious and ethnic bigotry.

At the same time, Navy personnel were far better traveled than most American kids, both those from small-town America and the street kids from the cities. "Join the Navy and see the world" was more than a recruiting slogan. It was a big part of what life in the Navy was all about, and those people willing to have their eyes opened quickly found that different could be interesting, fun, even beautiful. Every duty station where Garrett had been had its share of sailors who loved the place because it was new and foreign and exotic, balanced by its share of men who hated it because it was different.

Quite a few old hands who'd been in the service long enough to be stationed overseas for several years had married local girls. A higher-than-usual percentage of

Navy chiefs and first-class petty officers were married to women they'd met while stationed in Japan or the Philippines, or while on liberty in Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Thailand.

Hell, Garrett thought, he'd been thinking seriously about asking Kazuko to marry him, a year after meeting her at Atsugi. He wasn't sure yet that he wanted to take that step so soon after the divorce from Claire, but he loved her deeply. The idea of crossing cultural — or racial — boundaries didn't bother him in the least.

But there were lots of men who were bothered, men who assumed that different was bad or, at the least, inferior.

And those kinds of assumptions could be big trouble when bottled up on board a submarine.

Garrett found himself becoming absorbed in the movie. He'd forgotten that Steve McQueen's character had a Chinese girlfriend and that the movie dealt heavily with the racial and cultural tensions between the fictional San Pablo's American crew and the Chinese. Had things changed so little since the historically realistic days of the movie's setting? That was pretty damned depressing.

He did wonder how the sudden change in the Seawolf's mission would affect things on board. Tensions had been on the rise since he'd joined her in Japan. Everyone knew that the PLA had a brand new fleet of hunter-killer submarines out and that they were tossing warheads at Taiwan. If every man on board didn't expect a war to break out soon with China, at least every man was braced for that possibility. That realization put a lot of stress on the crew.

Then a radio message from Washington arrived, directing them to cruise into Hong Kong with flag flying, ambassadors of American goodwill. That kind of thing could cause an acute case of emotional whiplash. Pent-up stress could be released in unexpected ways. How well captain and crew handled that release, Garrett thought, would tell a lot about their training, their experience, and their dedication to the boat.

He just wished he could be sure the Chinese were as interested in Seawolf's goodwill visit as the State Department seemed to be. Seawolf was an extremely valuable, extremely expensive American asset, and moored to a dock in Hong Kong, she would be in-the-crosshairs vulnerable.

This, he decided, was going to be a damned interesting cruise.