U.S.S. Seawolf (39 page)

And now they could see a familiar clump of willow trees hanging almost above them, and Zhao pulled in the sail, cutting the speed to only two knots, and they drifted
quietly in toward the land. Up ahead was another boat, and Gao picked up three quick flashes of light. “That’s him,” he hissed. “We’re right on target.”

And now they could hear the splash of oars as the little rowboat made its way toward them. “Dong! You there?”

“Okay, Zhao…I’m coming alongside.”

The two boats bumped together. They shook hands, and the box of fruit with the single melon was handed over. “Hurry now, Zhao…you go quick…go now…there’s patrols everywhere.”

“Good-bye, little brother…take care now.”

Zhao laid the big junk onto a southwest course, and the light breeze gusted now over his port bow. The sail was already tight and he kept it there, heading the boat up, steering out into the channel, switching the navigation lights on again.

And far away, in distant San Diego, three separate checks, each one for $10,000, were being deposited in three separate bank accounts, owned by Zhao, Gao, and young Dong, three Chinese nationals preparing for a new life in the USA, a country none of them had ever even visited.

Quinlei Dong rowed to the shore, leaving the old boat surrounded by reeds, moored to an iron bar he had hammered into the muddy shallows long ago. From here to the road was almost a mile, but the grasses were tall and Dong wore high gumboots as he squelched his way forward, carrying the box, splashing his way back to his car.

It took him 25 minutes in the pitch dark, and then he stood in a clear stream that ran under the road, cleaning off his boots. He put them in the trunk with the box of fruit, reversed the car out of the woods and hit the main road into Canton. It was almost 10:00
P.M.
and he looked forward to a late dinner at his small home in the market area, right off the Liuersan Road, by the Shamian Island bridge.

He and his wife, Lin, had lived there for 15 years, since they left college in Beijing. Both of them had been
in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and they had seen several friends and one cousin shot down and killed by the military. As such they had elected to get out of the capital and move to the quieter, warmer city of Canton. And there they had nursed their grievances against the ruling Communist party, vowing one day to leave China for the United States, as so many of their friends had done over the years.

Young Quinlei had been recruited by the CIA before he left the university, during the six months following the massacre in the square. And in the ensuing 17 years he had built up a nest egg of almost $450,000 in his bank in San Diego, keeping Langley informed of the arrivals and departures of ships, personnel, and a myriad of other naval detail.

Dong’s degree in electronics saw him rise rapidly in the Navy dockyard, not working on the ships, but in the many operations rooms on the shore. He had made himself a computer systems expert, and had personally installed many of the major lighting grids throughout the yard. At 37, he was the deputy chief electrical engineer, a civilian position, but always working closely with the Navy executive.

Each day he reported for work at 8:00
A.M.
finishing at 5:00
P.M.
He was subject to random searches by the guards on the way out, but not on the way in. And now he was preparing for his biggest task yet on behalf of his American masters. By Monday morning he and Lin would be on their way. They had just two more nights left in the little house near the Shamian Island bridge.

Many of their possessions were already packed. Their nine-year-old son Li was asleep, and Lin had gone to much trouble preparing what might be their last meal together in China—a superb Shao Xing chicken, cooked whole in Hua Diao wine, accompanied by flat rice noodles.

They dined together at the end of the small kitchen, drinking only water and saying little, as if afraid even the
walls might have ears for their conversation. For tomorrow morning Dong would begin arguably the most dangerous mission ever attempted by a local CIA field operative in this part of the world.

They cleaned up after dinner together, and were in bed before midnight. Neither of them slept much, and by the time dawn broke over the city, Dong was already up, unzipping the melon and removing the electronic parts it hid so efficiently. He ripped open the black plastic bags and studied the small black box, the power pack that would last for around six hours. He checked the terminals, checked the wiring, checked the length of wire he had been given. Then he checked the main fitting, walking to the window, staring through the lens, focusing the cross-hairs, fitting the lens to the square box, then checking the connection between the power pack and the square box, nodding with satisfaction when he flicked the switch and watched the green light flicker, then glow firmly in the morning light. He was getting a half-million dollars for this. There had to be, he knew, no mistakes.

He carefully placed the black electronic parts in the lower section of his toolbox, hiding them among rolls of wiring and tape, keeping them separate, to look like random pieces of an electrician’s box of tricks. At 7:30 on this Saturday morning, his telephone rang and when he answered, a voice said simply, “Yes.” He knew who it was, the same man he had worked with for many years, an American broadcast executive downriver in Hong Kong.

Rarely has the word “yes” signaled so much. It meant that the American satellite operators in Fort Meade, Maryland, had picked up the red infrared “paint” on the pictures from space, showing that
Seawolf
’s nuclear reactor was running again as she lay alongside in the Canton base.

It meant that the electronic laser beam that would illuminate the precise area of the deck above the reactor should now be fixed in place.

It meant that Arnold Morgan was about to do what he had said he would do. He was going to hit
Seawolf
, and put Canton’s naval dockyard out of action with it.

Quinlei Dong said good-bye to Lin, who was trembling with fear but refusing to cry.

“Please, please be careful,” was all she could manage.

He placed his toolbox in the trunk and started his little car. He drove briskly east, along the Liuersan Road, and crossed the People’s Bridge. From here it was a straight 15-minute run down to the dockyard, and when he arrived the routine was simple.

“Hello, Mr. Quinlei,” said the guard at the gate. “You work too hard—it’s Saturday…should be home with the family.”

“No, Sun…not too hard…too slow…should have been finished last night!”

The guard laughed and waved him through, shouting, “You hurry up, now…nice day to take out the family.”

Dong drove slowly through the grim dockyard buildings, noticing as he had done constantly these past few days that the place was literally crawling with guards, all along the jetties, and then in a mighty regimented group near the American submarine. Quinlei the electrician, his privileged status displayed in a red and white sticker on his windshield, stayed away from the main dockside areas, driving along the quiet streets between the buildings a block from the water, a block from the submarine.

He had deliberately left incomplete a rewiring job he had been working on all week, up in the ceiling above an ops room. And now he made his way up the stairs once more, nodding to the guards at the doorway, and mentioning that he was going up to finish the new terminal for the main computer. The guards had seen him coming and going for two weeks and scarcely responded, just smiling and saying, “Okay, Mr. Sparks.”

At midday, he walked downstairs again, carrying his toolbox and his small lunch bag. He turned to the senior guard and said, “I’m going to have lunch down by the
water, but I’ll be back. I’ve run into a problem, so don’t lock up…this thing has to be running for Monday morning. Right now I’ll be lucky to have it running by New Year!”

“What was it, sir…that main cable they dug up last month?”

“I thought it must be…but I’m not so sure now. I think there’s a fault inside the building. I might ask one of you to give me a hand for ten minutes this afternoon.”

“No trouble, sir…glad to help.”

Quinlei Dong strolled quietly back toward his car and moved around to the far side, out of the view of the guards. Then he rounded the corner of the building, checked to see that no one was watching, and sprinted across the street to another tall brick building in which there was a small, gray steel back door. This was the old dockyard stores, derelict now, unused for the past five years, and because of budget restrictions likely to stay that way for the next five. The modern Chinese Navy spent money on new ships, not old buildings.

Dong knew it was open. He had deliberately wrecked the locking mechanism five days earlier. And now he grabbed the handle and twisted, pulling the door outward and slipping inside, closing it behind him softly.

He crossed the dark, deserted floor, making for the iron stairway, which led right up to the roof seven floors above. He walked slowly, not knowing quite how he would deal with the locked door at the top. When he got there, the problem solved itself. The door was jammed shut with two big bolts, top and bottom. All he had to do was open them, and he was on the roof.

He stepped out carefully, crouching low, moving slowly inside the parapet. At the southern edge, overlooking the main submarine jetty, there was a chimney block, and he pressed back against it, staring down at the guard patrols in front of USS
Seawolf
. If one of them took a real hard look at the roof, they would see him. That was his main assessment.

But now he opened the toolbox and took out the round viewing lens. He took his measurement, knowing that the spot on the deck he sought was exactly half the distance back from the rear of the sail, as the total height of the fin: i.e., if the sail was 40 feet high, he was looking for a geometric spot 20 feet back. The actual numbers were irrelevant. It was that half-distance stat that counted. Dong could not measure feet and inches, but he could measure halves and doubles with his eye and his steel ruler.

He put his thumb on the ruler at the halfway mark. Then he took it horizontal instead of vertical, and there in front of him was the precise spot he sought. He held the ruler steady with one hand and lifted the lens to his eye, with the other focusing the crosshairs precisely at the end of his own thumb. Directly below that, he knew, was
Seawolf
’s nuclear reactor. Now he had only to fix the device to the chimney block, which was the difficult part.

A small bracket would need to be drilled and screwed into the brickwork at a spot just above his head. If he stood on the toolbox he could manage that. It was the noise that worried him, but it would not take long, just two holes, about an inch and a half deep. He could do that.

Dong removed the black parts from the box, and took out a screwdriver and a portable drill. Then he took off his jacket and wrapped it tightly around the drill to suppress the high-pitched whine of the electric tool. Then he stood up on the toolbox, held the bracket in place and hit the button on the drill, which bit into the brickwork. The jacket kept the noise to a minimum, and the gusting southwest wind scattered what sound there was high and away. Twice he went into the wall, and then he stopped and ducked right down, and stayed there for 10 minutes.

Finally he stepped back onto the toolbox, and, using a hammer and a thin Phillips screwdriver, rammed the plastic plugs into the drill holes. Then he lifted up the bracket
and screwed the first bolt into the first plug. Then he did the second, fixing the bracket firmly to the chimney.

Five minutes later he slid the main fitting onto the bracket. Then he climbed up the sloping part of the roof, keeping one foot on the toolbox, and stared down at USS
Seawolf
, placing the crosshairs exactly at the end of his thumb, aiming directly at the spot above the reactor.

Dong connected the wires between the main box and the power pack, tightening the terminals with small electrician’s pliers. Then he slid the power pack into the bracket where it fitted perfectly. He turned on the switch and watched the green light flicker and harden up. Then he climbed up the roof again and checked his bearing, checking again the accuracy of his measurement.

It had been a fairly simple job, but for something this important, nothing was simple. He took a section of gray plastic out of the box and wrapped it carefully around the device, securing it below with a trash-bag tie. Now all he needed to do was escape.

Back down the iron stairway he went, opening the door slowly, and ensuring that the coast was clear. Not a soul was in the back street behind the building, and he closed the door carefully, walking back to the building in which he was officially working.

The guards were still there, and he went inside again, and climbed the stairs. In fact, he needed only to clean up, but he needed an excuse to return again tomorrow, and he parted several wires, leaving them exposed on the carpet.

Fifteen minutes later, he went back downstairs and said goodbye to the guards, telling them he’d come back to finish tomorrow afternoon, because he had to replace a faulty switch that was the cause of the problem. He’d need less than an hour.

No one bothered to search him on the way out, and the same guard who had advised him about the quality of life on the way in now did the same on the way out. “Good
day for family, hah? You go have a nice time, Mr. Quinlei…I’ll hold the fort here…ha-ha-ha.”

2400 (local). Saturday, July 15
.
Office of Admiral Morgan
.
The White House
.

The President’s National Security Adviser right now answered to no one. He had been given firm orders by the Chief Executive to get Linus back no matter what. The President understood that this meant
Seawolf
had to be, essentially, scuttled. And that the Navy SEALs team would have to go in guns blazing to break open the jail and subdue whatever opposition there was.

The military details did not need to be relayed to this particular President in this particular incident. He wanted his only son back, and that was the end of it. Admiral Morgan had been tasked to mastermind the rescue, and that he had most certainly done. So far.