Seawolf Class

15

The sound of the old cannon banged out across Victoria Harbor on the dot of noon, just as it had every day for much of the last century. The old three-pounder, a relic from 1901, was one of the better-known landmarks in Causeway Bay, thanks to Noel Coward's 1924 song about mad dogs, Englishmen, and the noonday sun. Even though it was a reminder of British rule, it continued to sound each day in Communist-controlled Hong Kong, if only because it was now a popular tourist attraction.

Garrett was about three miles away, trotting up the steps to the Kowloon police station where the Sea-wolves were being held. The sound carried well across the water, however, and the distant bang, loud enough to be heard above the traffic and street noise and echoing off distant buildings, startled him. It was a reminder that he was very much alone in hostile terrain… alone and unarmed.

Kazuko was on her way back to the airport. Funny. She'd seemed less shaken by the attack than Garrett. "I was talking to the people at the Japanese Consulate on the phone," she'd told him an hour ago, before they left the hospital. "It seems there've been several incidents like this happen to tourists in Mainland China. Someone breaks into a hotel room, threatens the occupants… racism pure and simple. They told me there was even at least one incident where an American was found with an Asian girl. They thought she was Chinese, but she was actually Japanese and the guy's wife at that." She'd shrugged. "Mistakes happen."

"That was no damned mistake," he'd told her. "Even if it was, that kind of racist crap is unacceptable no matter what the circumstances. They don't like you and me being together? They can damn well get over it.

"But everything about those creeps points to them being MMI — Ministry of Military Intelligence. They're not going to care two yuan who I'm dating… not unless it helps them somehow. And just maybe we can use that to our advantage…."

He strode into the police station, a dingy, noisy place with rubbish on the floor and the mingled scents of alcohol and urine. The place must have been doing a heavy business in drunks the night before. On one wall, a large portrait of the Chinese president was flanked by a pair of bright red PRC flags.

The desk lieutenant barked something in Chinese as Garrett walked up to the desk, then looked up, saw that he was a westerner, and shifted to accented English. "Yes? You want?" A name plate on the desk had a row of Chinese characters, and the man's rank and name in English: LIEUTENANT XIAN GAO.

Garrett flashed his ID. "Commander Garrett, U.S. Navy. I need to talk to whoever's in charge here."

"I in charge," Xian said stiffly.

"You don't have a captain here?"

"This satellite station. Captain Yuen at main station, downtown. You want?"

"I want my men," he said. He was aware of how alarming he must look — an American in civilian clothes, with a bloodied gauze bandage tied around his head. "Seven men, sailors off the USS Seawolf. They were brought in here last night after a fight."

The man's eyes narrowed. "Your captain already call. These men held for trial. Bad, very bad. They shoot up place." He held up his hand, thumb and forefinger extended to imitate a pistol, and added, "Chow! Chow!"

Garrett kept his face bland. "Was anyone hurt?"

"No hurt, no bad. But much damage to place."

"My men were not armed when they went there, Lieutenant," he said quietly. "Where did the guns come from?"

"I not know. When police arrive at Fuk Wai, one of your men is holding gun, shooting at ceiling. He very lucky he not shot by police."

"Your men are well-trained, sir. If he had a gun, he must have taken it off of someone else. Who? Not your police, surely."

Lieutenant Xian looked uncomfortable. "Employees at Fuk Wai hostess club have guns."

"Ah. Did they shoot at my men first? Who started it?"

"They say they try get your men pay bill. A fight start. one of your men grab gun, shoot."

Garrett nodded. He was dancing pretty close to the edge, not knowing exactly what had happened. He did know that U.S. sailors wouldn't have had guns while they were on liberty. Someone had been trying to impress them with a show of hardware, it sounded like, and overstepped some bounds.

"This place, the… what did you call, it?"

"Fuk Wai. Hostess bar. Very clean, very honest place. Good place."

"I'm sure it is. And the bouncers obviously had guns. What are they…Triad?"

He was guessing now, but at least it was an educated guess, one based on some research he'd done before leaving the boat. Many of the bars, brothels, and hostess clubs in Hong Kong either paid protection money to or were owned outright by one or another of the city's notorious triads, criminal gangs that were the Chinese equivalent of the Mafia. The triads supposedly traced their ancestry back to revolutionary groups fighting the Manchus and had helped bring that brutal regime down in 1911. Flaunting snappy names like 14K and the Bamboo Union, they were active throughout southern China in everything from youth gangs to the sellers of Swiss watch copies in the streets, and from bodyguards for wealthy visitors to the vastly powerful masterminds of sprawling and competing criminal empires.

The triads rarely had anything to do with gwailos; their targets of choice tended to be local businesses, the Hong Kong movie industry, Macau's gambling concessions, wealthy Chinese visitors both in China and abroad, and the traditional rackets of extortion, prostitution, loan sharking, smuggling, and corrupt politics. But western visitors might run afoul of them in the streets or in some of the sleazier hostess clubs and bars. Kazuko had told him once that some of the more colorful triad characters affected the criminal "look" made popular by Hong Kong martial arts movies— flashy suits and dark glasses.

The Communists had smashed the triad hold on the opium business in and around Shanghai back in 1949 and helped make them a truly international empire; nowadays, the triads worked hand in black hand with the PLA and with corrupt government officials. Hong Kong had always valiantly, if mostly unsuccessfully, tried to resist the gangs. The ICAC — the Independent Commission Against Corruption — had so far done a good job at exposing triad infiltration into local police and government.

But it was a losing battle, especially now that Beijing had arrived on the scene with its own ideas of how government and the Hong Kong police should be run, its own choices of personnel, its own agenda.

Xian appeared uncomfortable at the mention of the triads. "There…is no triad," he said. "That old story. False story."

Denial. A longtime favorite of politicians and city administrators everywhere when faced with a problem that would not go away. "Uh-huh. So… if we have local bouncers packing guns, and there's no such thing as triads, that suggests they work for someone else.

Maybe… the PLA? The MMI?"

"What you say?"

The man's English might be broken, but Garrett knew better than to assume that poor English meant poor thinking. His eyes were hard and sharp. He knew exactly what Garrett had just suggested.

Garrett pulled the business card Officer Kuo had given him from his wallet and passed it across the desk. "This gentleman came to St. Elizabeth's and talked to me just this morning. It seems the MMI was trying to roust me as well, out at the airport hotel." Reaching up, he touched the bandage on his head, felt the sticky wetness on his fingertips. "They did this to me and assaulted my girlfriend, a foreign national. Do you detect a common thread here?"

"What are you talking about?"

Interesting. The lieutenant's English had just become a lot sharper, and more polished as well.

"I and my men are from an American nuclear submarine in Victoria Harbor. The crisis between China and the United States almost came to a head the other day. My guess is that the Ministry of Military Intelligence thought it could grab some people off that sub, make it look like an ordinary assault or a bar fight… and maybe pick up some information on one of America's latest submarines. What do you think?"

"Your men were arrested and brought here, sir," the lieutenant said slowly. He was looking at the business card, as though reading it carefully. "But that had nothing to do with… outside agencies. They were involved in a fight with the club's management, and with some Russian guests."

"Ah, yes. A group of Russian sailors. How do they figure into this?"

The man shook his head. "They not want to pay bill."

His English was slipping again. "Were they fighting with my men?"

"No. Your men… help Russians, when people at club try to get Russians to pay."

Garrett nodded sagely. "The old story, huh? A rip-off? A con? Put hidden charges on the patrons' bills, then threaten them with arrest or worse when they don't pay?"

The lieutenant nodded. "That… appears to be what happened."

"That sounds like a triad tactic. But if there's no triad, it must be an MMI trap. Which do you think?"

The police lieutenant blinked, then leaned far back in his chair. He'd just been put in a nasty double bind. He could admit to being either part of a triad con or part of an MMI sting operation against foreign nationals.

"What is it you want?"

Garrett spread his hands expressively. "I want to do what's right. The Seawolf has a sailors' fund, money we can use to pay for the damages and, ah, for any inconvenience. But my boat is leaving, and those seven sailors are going to be on her. Today."

He had to be careful here. He wasn't sure whether Lieutenant Xian was amenable to a bribe or not. If he wasn't, Garrett knew his offer of money had to be made in such a way that Xian could overlook it as a bribe and accept it as payment for damages.

"There are really just two ways to handle this, Lieutenant Xian," he continued. "I can walk out of here with my men and leave you the money to pay that hostess club for any damages…or you can keep them here and start an international incident. Our countries are close enough to war as it is, don't you think? If I were you, I'd hate to think I was the one who'd called down a cruise missile attack on Hong

Kong."

"If I kept your sailors here," Xian said, all pretense of broken English gone now, "it would be because they had started the international incident. Not me." But he was clearly thinking about this hard. "Damages at the Fuk Wai total at least a thousand dollars, American."

Garrett doubted that was true, but in any case he didn't have that much money on him. At least it sounded as though Xian was willing to cooperate. "May I use your phone?"

The lieutenant gestured to his desk phone.

Routing the call through the American consulate again, Garrett talked with Dougherty on board the Seawolf. Lawless, he learned, would be back on board in a few minutes.

"Okay, COB," Garrett said. "I'll try to see the men here. Round up a shore party, as many as you can spare. Armed. Fill the captain in on the situation, and see if the paymaster can put together a thousand dollars in cash."

"What are we doing, paying ransom?"

"No. Damages. If we can settle this peacefully, we will." He glanced at the lieutenant, who was openly eavesdropping. "If they won't settle peacefully, though, we're going to finish this."

"Yes, sir!"

He hung up the phone. "Lieutenant, I'd like to see my men."

There was a moment's hesitation. "I do not yet know that I can release them into your custody."

"Lieutenant Xian, I am the executive officer of the USS Seawolf. That makes me responsible for the men in my command, for their behavior, for their discipline. And I assure you that they will be disciplined."

"And the damage at the Fuk Wai?"

"You heard me ask for the money to be brought here."

"Yes." Xian thought for a moment, calculations flicking behind dark, nearly expressionless eyes. "Very well. I'll have them brought up here."

A few minutes later the seven Seawolves were led into the station's receiving area. They had scuffs, bruises, and disarrayed clothing, but nothing worse. They walked with slow, shuffling steps, their shoelaces were gone.

Garrett caught Toynbee's eye and winked.

"All right, you miserable excuses for human beings!" he shouted in his best parade ground bellow. He'd been Cadet Petty Officer in Charge at Annapolis and could do a fair imitation of a drill instructor. "Fall in! Fall in on this line!"

Startled, the men toed an imaginary line in front of the police lieutenant's desk, standing at rigid attention. Pacing up the line, Garrett launched into a sulfurous tirade. "God damn it to hell! What were you people thinking? Were you even thinking at all? I am going to have your miserable, sorry hides flayed, dried, tanned, and nailed to the Seawolf's mess deck as a warning to the rest of them!"

He reached Chief Toynbee at the end of the line, took his elbow and led him aside. "What's the word, Chief?" he said, sotto voce.

"Hey, sir." Toynbee's tired face brightened. "Good t'see you. Good t'see a goddamn friendly face."

"I hear you. You and the men okay?"

"Yeah, pretty much. Some of us were roughed up a bit when they took us in."

"Tell me what happened."

In a low-voiced murmur, Toynbee began going through the previous evening's events, ending with the gun battle in the hostess club. "Actually, I figure they was trying to hustle the Russkies. Somehow we got mixed up in it. If it wasn't for Queenie, there… I mean, he made those damned gorillas back down. If the cops hadn't shown up when they did—"

"Okay, okay. You have your personal stuff? Wallets, ID?"

"Nossir. They took all that shit when they brought us in here. Even took our belts and shoelaces."

"Back in line." Garrett turned on Xian. "Lieutenant, my people are going to be here in just a few minutes, and when they arrive, they are going to want to take custody of these men. I want these men's personal effects here. Now. Wallets. Papers. Everything signed, sealed, and delivered."

"Sir, I'm afraid that would be…difficult to arrange. You see—"

"Lieutenant Xian. Have you heard the expression 'the ugly American'? You have? Good. Because you have no idea just how ugly I can get when I am provoked. You are going to have a whole roomful of very ugly Americans in just another few minutes.

"Now… you are going to decide how we play this. We can assume that, um, criminal elements tried to hustle my men last night. They fought back, completely in self-defense. We are sorry for any breakages and will pay for the damages. My men go back to the Seawolf with me now. I assure you, on my word as a U.S. naval officer, that they will be punished for their part in the fracas last night.

"Or we can assume that what happened last night was a rather heavy-handed Military Intelligence operation, one that went very bad. As such, it becomes an act of war, and I and my people will respond appropriately. I will take these people out of here. Afterward, I will order that this station be targeted by a cruise missile. You've heard of them? Very accurate." He slammed his palm down on the lieutenant's desk, making him jump. "One could land precisely on this spot if I gave the order. Do we understand one another, sir?"

The lieutenant nodded slowly, the color draining from his face.

"Good. Frankly, if I were you, I would be looking for a way to defuse this situation before you find yourself in a hole you can't get out of. Your superiors are not going to be happy about being caught up in any

MMI plots, are they? Or in being forced publicly to acknowledge the triad presence in Kowloon. You have more important things to do, I'm sure, than babysit drunken American sailors or be the tool of PLA Military Intelligence."

Xian and Garrett locked eyes for a long moment, neither man blinking, neither looking away. This was the payoff, Garrett thought. He'd given Xian a way to back down without losing face. Whether there were gangsters behind this mess or PLA spooks, he couldn't possibly want to have anything to do with the situation. If Xian would just let him show the way out…

Suddenly, Xian barked an order. Moments later several policemen arrived with boxes, the men's personal effects. "Queensly, Kenneth," one of the officers said, reading from a card.

"Get your things when they call you," Garrett ordered, "then get back in line. No talking."

"Uh… permission to speak, sir?" Toynbee said.

"What is it, Chief?"

"Well, sir… they got those Russians locked up back there still. Doesn't seem right, us getting off and them being in jail, y'know?"

Garrett sighed and looked away. "That's stretching it, Chief," he said quietly. "I don't know if I can get you guys out, much less the Russian Navy!"

"They're good people, sir."

"Drinking buddies? You just met them last night!"

"Well, yessir. What's your point? Like I say, they're good people, and we shouldn't leave 'em behind. Those cells back there are god-awful, sir."

Garrett took a deep breath, again catching the stink of the front room. The cell areas in the back must reek he thought. If the cleanliness of the front reception area was any indication as to how well the police force was supported by the new government…

"Back in line, Chief. I'll see what I can do."

He walked over to Xian's desk. The lieutenant looked up. "I am calling my captain," he said. "This is all very irregular."

"You go ahead and call. But when my people get here, we're going out through that door."

"You Americans are very sure of yourselves."

"No. Not at all. We just don't like being pushed around by people who think they can take advantage of us." He nodded toward the doorway leading to the cell blocks. "What about the Russians you brought in with my men?"

"What about them?"

"We have established that my men may have been guilty of damaging some private property. There were several Russian naval personnel involved as well. Why should my men walk free and the Russians stay in jail?"

"Your men may not walk free, sir! And the charges are very serious! Discharging firearms within city limits…drunk and disorderly conduct… "

"The firearms were used to threaten my people first, Lieutenant. You know it and I know it. They acted in self-defense — and with considerable restraint, I might add, if they didn't outright shoot anyone. Drunk and disorderly, well, that's Navy men on liberty. Isn't the first time it's happened, now, is it? I told you, I'll pay for the damages, and if you want to put the whole city of Hong Kong and Kowloon off limits to Americans and to American money in the future, well, that's your business.

"But right now you have to decide whether you're going to be the trip wire for an international incident… or have the common sense and decency to let these people go. All of them!"

They fenced back and forth for several minutes more, but Garrett could see Xian's resolve weakening. The lieutenant did not make the threatened phone call, and after a while he gave the order to have the Russian prisoners and their effects brought to the front as well.

Garrett continued to parade back and forth in front of the Seawolves, tearing into them for everything from their disrespect of authority to their slovenly personal habits. They would, he assured them, be chipping paint for the rest of the cruise, if they didn't all wind up in Portsmouth Naval Prison for insulting their hosts in a foreign port.

It was an act, of course, and the men knew it. They played along, however, wearing expressions that ran from bland self-control to something just short of terror.

It was nearly 1300 hours when the front door to the police station opened and Master Chief Dougherty himself entered. He was wearing a Sam Browne belt with a holstered 9mm Beretta and was carrying a thick manila envelope tied shut with string.

"The skipper's outside, sir," Dougherty told him, handing him the package. "He didn't want to come in and screw up anything you had going in here. Do you need him to take over? Or the shore party?"

"Have them stand by, COB. We should be out of here in a few minutes. Transport?"

"Covered, sir."

"Great. Tell 'em we'll be out in a few minutes."

"Aye aye, sir."

He handed the envelope to Xian, who took it, unwrapped the string, and began paging through the sheaf of bills inside.

"Will that cover the damages, sir?" Garrett asked.

"Yes. Yes, this should do nicely." He looked at Garrett. "You know, I should wait until my captain gets here. I do not have the authority to release these men."

Garrett tensed. Was the whole deal going to fall through after all?

"However, Hong Kong is still in charge of her own internal affairs," Xian went on. "She takes orders from Beijing, relies on Beijing to handle all matters of self-defense and treaties. But in most ways we continue as we always have."

"I understand that, Lieutenant."

"Many of us involved in the civic administration of Hong Kong do not appreciate the… the interference of other groups in our affairs. Or the fact that such groups would use us to their own ends. There are some people flying here from Beijing now to interview your men. I recommend that you and your ship be gone by the time they get here." He tied the manila envelope closed again. "You did not hear this from me, however." He cracked a sudden, unexpected grin. "My English… not so good, no?"

Garrett extended his arm and shook Xian's hand. "Thank you, sir. Good luck to you."

"And to you, Commander."

Garrett marched the fourteen former prisoners out of the police station and into the dazzle of Kowloon's midday sun. Three large, Chinese flatbed trucks were parked outside, with a dozen of Seawolf's men posted on and around them. Garrett assumed the trucks had come from the city docks — requisitioned or hijacked, he didn't know.

Captain Lawless was there in uniform, arms crossed and a fierce look on his thin face. Incongruously, there was a beefy-looking man in a Russian naval officer's uniform standing next to him, and several Russian sailors in their striped T-shirts mingled with the American sailors.

Garrett didn't salute Lawless — he was not in uniform himself — but he walked over to the captain and came to attention. "Our people are secure, sir," he said. "But I recommend we get back to the boat as quickly as we can and make all preparations for getting under way. We may be sitting on a hornet's nest here."

"So I gathered." Lawless nodded toward the Russian officer. "This is Captain First Rank Yuri Shtyrov, formerly of the Russian attack submarine Nevolin."

"Pleased to meet you, sir," Garrett said, bowing slightly.

"And you, Commander," the Russian said. "You have freed my men as well?"

"Yes, sir. The seven who came in with our people, at least."

"Thank you, Commander. Sometimes, after a long cruise, the men get… restive. They are eager to enjoy the accommodations of a foreign port and sometimes celebrate too hard."

"From the sound of it, a hostess club was trying to rip them off. That led to the fight."

"' Rip…them off'?"

"Take advantage of them. Take their money."

"Ah."

"You said formerly of the Nevolin, sir?"

"Da." He hesitated, as though measuring the two American officers. "I should perhaps warn you both. We — my crew and I — brought Nevolin here to turn him over to the Chinese. He is a new submarine, very fast, very powerful."

"What we call the Sierra class," Lawless said. "We knew she was in Canton. We didn't know her, uh… his status." Russians always referred to their vessels as masculine.

"As of several days ago he was officially part of the PLA Navy," Shtyrov said. "We bring him to Guangzhou, turn him over to Chinese Navy. We will return on board our electronic listening vessel in Victoria Harbor. I… should not tell you more."

"We appreciate the word, Captain Shtyrov," Lawless said. "I suggest that right now we get the hell out of here."

"Da. There is a lot of hell here to get out."

"Have your men get aboard the trucks, Captain. We'll take you to your ship."

"Thank you, Captain."

Garrett clambered into the back of one of the flatbeds, along with the men he'd retrieved from the station and several of the shore party. Dougherty handed him a Sam Browne belt with a holstered Beretta and three loaded magazines. "Just in case, sir," he said.

But the drive back to Victoria Harbor was uneventful. The little convoy picked up Hong Chong Road and followed it through the Cross-Harbor Tunnel, emerging on Hong Kong Island at Causeway Bay next to the former Royal Yacht Club. They followed Gloucester Road west then, in light traffic, reaching the naval piers at just before 1330 hours.

As the Russians climbed off the truck, Garrett and Lawless joined Shtyrov for a final good-bye. "Take care of yourselves, gentlemen," the Russian said. "I recommend that you get clear of the harbor before the Nevolin comes down the Pearl River. He is a good boat, with excellent ears… and… let us say he has been working closely of late with our GKS."

"Thank you, Yuri," Lawless said. "We won't forget this."

"It is we who thank you, Captain. This… incident would have had unfortunate repercussions, both in Moscow and in Washington."

"Until next time, then."

"Da. Dasvidanya."

"Let's get back to the Seawolf, Mr. Garrett," Lawless said. "It's time, as they say, to get out of Dodge."

"Aye aye, sir."

"And… "

"Sir?"

"Good work getting our people out of there. I was getting nowhere through the consulate."

"Seemed best to cut through the red tape, sir."

"Red in more ways than one. I was told Beijing had an interest in our people."

"It may have been an MMI sting, sir. I can't be sure… but I was able to use the possibility to scare the local cops. They don't like Military Intelligence screwing around in their affairs any more than we do."

"Most folks just want to be left alone, Commander. Most folks just want to be left alone."

"That, sir, is a universal given."

The trio of requisitioned trucks hurried them back to the Seawolf.