U.S.S. Seawolf (41 page)

The SEALs who had seen the jail were divided into two groups of four, Rusty Bennett, Dan Conway, Buster Townsend and John in
Greenville
, Paul Merloni, Rattlesnake Davies, Chief McCarthy and Bill in
Cheyenne
. Hopes of sleep declined rapidly. In each ship there were 28 other SEALs whose curiosity was getting the better of them with every passing mile.

The maps and charts were excellent to study, but the opportunity to speak to colleagues who had actually been in the place was overwhelming. And the issues they all wanted to discuss were (a) the number of guards, (b) was the jail nearly impregnable, short of blowing it up? and (c) did they have a real chance of success?

The veterans were accurately optimistic. So far as anyone could tell, the Chinese had no idea there was any danger. The guard was moderate but not scarily large, and all of the men who had been in there thought success was
nearly certain, as long as they could smash up the communications system thoroughly.

And all the way in, both Lieutenant Commander Bennett and the vastly experienced Chief McCarthy went over and over the lesson: If we hit the comms hard and fast, we’re golden. If we fail to do so, we have a very good chance of dying. None of the SEALs liked the latter option at all.

1800. Sunday, July 16
.
Liuersan Street. Canton
.

Quinlei Dong carried his toolbox out to the car and stowed it in the trunk. In his hand he carried a square white box that contained a brand-new electrical switch. He started the engine and turned along the old familiar way to the People’s Bridge, and then took the road to the dockyard. It was a bright warm evening, the sun still high, as the master electrician pulled up to the gate.

The guard walked up to him, a different man from yesterday. “Hello, sir. Where are you headed?”

“Same place as yesterday and all last week, the ops room in B Block, where the electrics are still in chaos.”

“Why are you here on a Sunday?”

“Mainly because, on pain of death, I have to have the system up and running by tomorrow morning at 9:00
A.M.
sharp…orders of the commandant…you think I like being here?”

The guard smiled. “Do the guards at Block B know you’re coming?”

“They do. I told them all yesterday. Here, you see this switch…this is the new part. I was just about ready to have the whole yard dug up to find the fault when I noticed the old switch had burned right at the back. Now I have to put this little devil in place. Thirty minutes and I’m out of here. Come and help me if you like—I need an assistant.”

The guard laughed, checked the windshield sticker and said, “Okay, Mr. Quinlei…see you a bit later.”

Dong drove on slowly through the empty yard, empty, that is, except for the waterfront, where there was the usual army of personnel surrounding the American submarine. He parked his car in his usual spot, way along the back street, much nearer the derelict stores building than the ops room where he was working.

He walked back briskly to where there was one single guard at the bottom of the B Block stairs. The two men greeted each other cordially, recognizing each other from the previous day’s meeting.

“Got the new switch, heh?”

“Right here. I’ll be about a half hour.”

“Okay.”

Dong climbed the stairs and began to clear up his mess. The new switch was unnecessary but he fitted it anyway and then made his wire joins, cleaning up the clutter and replacing the ceiling panels. He checked the electrics all through the room, dumped the trash in a bin and strolled downstairs. It was exactly fifteen minutes before seven.

“That it?” said the guard.

“That’s it for me. You can lock up now. I won’t be back. Lights all working, computers all working. See you tomorrow.”

“’Bye, Mr. Quinlei.”

Dong walked back along the street to his car, went to the driver’s side and stared back the way he had come. The guard must have gone into the building, because he was no longer outside. So far as he could see, the street was completely deserted. And he dashed for the big building, pulling open the door and ducking inside, his heart pounding.

And now he had to hurry, because the guard could return at any moment and he would wonder why the car was still there, maybe even walk along to find out.

Dong hit the iron stairs running, taking them two at a
time, charging upward to the seventh floor. When he arrived he shot back the two bolts and stepped carefully out onto the roof. He ducked down and edged along to the chimney block, then reached up and undid the trash tie, removing the gray plastic cover in one movement. Then he edged up onto the sloping part of the roof and stared through the lens at the crosshairs. The submarine had not moved, nor had the viewfinder, and he was looking at the precise spot on the deck of USS
Seawolf
he had fixed on yesterday.

Then Quinlei Dong, husband of Lin, father of nine-year-old Li, switched on the laser machine that would guide an American bomb toward the first major nuclear catastrophe in the entire history of Canton. He watched the little green light flicker, then harden up, and he knew the invisible laser beam was lancing across the jetty, over the heads of the massed ranks of China’s naval guards, pinpointing a spot on the ship’s casing, illuminating it for the incoming bomb, which, right now and for the next six hours, could not miss.

He waited for a few seconds, looking out over the parapet at the American submarine. Even at this hour, early on Sunday evening, there was unusual activity around the great underwater ship. He could see a group of four men in white laboratory coats talking to uniformed officers on the casing; three other men were walking back across the gangway. He could see, on top of the sail, at least four uniformed figures on the bridge. Guards were everywhere.

Dong ducked down before they saw him and moved quickly back to the door, quietly bolting it behind him. He flew down the stairs to the first floor and reached the steel door to the outside. He pushed it open a crack, and to his horror heard voices and footsteps. For one appalling moment he thought he had been seen, and that a patrol was on its way in to search for him.

He eased the door shut and waited. Then he opened it again and there was silence. Up ahead he could see two
guards disappearing around a corner. He checked again that the street was clear; then he slipped outside, and walked resolutely the 50 yards to his car. He started it quickly and drove around the back of C Block, avoiding the guard to whom he had spoken earlier.

At the main gate, he was stopped and asked if he had finished his work. Dong replied that he had, and that he had advised the other guard that he could lock the building up.

“Okay, sir…see you tomorrow?”

“’Specially if the lights don’t work in B Block!”

The duty guard laughed and waved him through the gates for the last time. Thirty minutes from now, he and Lin and their little boy would be on the road south toward Kowloon, where the American agent had new identities for them all. Dong and his little family would be on the evening flight to Hawaii, and then Los Angeles.

2015. Sunday evening
.

Lt. Commander Olaf Davidson and his team had deflated their Zodiac, buried it with most of their equipment, and left the original rendezvous point on the distant southern peninsula of the island. And now Catfish Jones and Al, fully armed, faces blackened, carrying the big machine gun, were moving into a spot right above the new landing beach a half mile from the jail, still in sight of the patrol boat, which had just left the jetty.

Olaf himself was up in the SEALs’ hide with Hank, overlooking the jail, checking off Rusty Bennett’s list of guard times, numbers and patrols both inside and outside the wall. The slightest change in the pattern would be noted and assessed. But so far the SEAL commander had recorded every movement precisely as it had been for the previous two days and nights. The only minor variation was the seven-minute lateness of the patrol boat’s departure and the arrival earlier in the afternoon of a big Russ
ian-built helicopter. There were, however, still only two on the landing pad, as there usually were, according to Rusty’s report.

Down at the beach, in the gathering darkness, Catfish had the night-sight binoculars trained on the jetty, where two seamen had cast off the patrol boat’s lines and now stood talking. Rusty’s notes said they always left the area as soon as the boat departed and returned to the dormitory. Catfish hoped they would do the same in the next half hour, otherwise he and Al would have to kill them.

Meanwhile Al made ready the signaling lights and established the machine gun in a position covering the approach to the jetty. If the big SEALs landing party was sighted and the Chinese swarmed down to the beach to repel them, the first 50 of them would never get past the wall of .50-caliber bullets that would spit death at them, straight out of the jungle.

Up in the hide, Olaf Davidson checked his watch. It was 2103. The guard change outside the jail had taken place right on time, and he could see the four men walking in pairs slowly around the jail. If things went according to plan, this was their last patrol. The boys would be in less than two hours from now.

2109. Sunday evening. South China Sea
.
The Flight Deck. USS
Ronald Reagan
.
18.25N 112.35E. Speed 25. Course 225
.

Lt. Commander Joe Farrell glanced up at the island. The red light signaled four minutes to launch. Ahead of him, through the cockpit window, he could see the brightly lit runway stretched out in front. All around him the launch men were moving into position. Even stationary, the big engines screamed at the slightest touch on the throttle of the supersonic F/A-18 McDonnell Douglas Hornet.

The aircraft would effortlessly carry 7.7 tons of bombs if necessary, but tonight she carried just one, the 14-foot-long Paveway with its laser-guidance system and 1,000-pound high-explosive warhead.

Two minutes went by, and now the light blinked to amber. The crewman crouching right below Joe, next to the aircraft’s nose, signaled him forward and moved underneath the fuselage, locking on the thick catapult bridle.

High above him the light turned green. The “shooter,” Lieutenant Dale, pointed his right hand at the pilot and raised his left, extending two fingers:
Go to full power right now
.

Joe Farrell opened the throttle, releasing the howling, murderous energy of the engines. Lieutenant Dale flattened out the palm of his hand, staring hard at the pilot:
Hit the afterburners
.

Lieutenant Commander Farrell saluted formally and leaned forward, tensing for the impact of the catapult. The shooter, his eyes locked into Joe’s, saluted back. Then he bent his knees and touched two fingers of his left hand onto the deck.

He gestured
Forward
! and the crewman on the catwalk just to the left of the aircraft hit the button on catapult one, and ducked low as the massive force of the wire flung the big fighter jet off the blocks.

Joe Farrell, throttles open wide, gripped the stick, his knuckles ivory as the Hornet screamed flat-out down the catapult, leaving a hot blast in its wake. Every veteran pilot and air crewman watching the takeoff held his breath. Up in the island, Colonel Frank Hart, standing with the admiral, found his hands shaking at the sheer formal drama of the moment as Joe Farrell set off to destroy USS
Seawolf
.

The nose of the Hornet rose as she thundered forward, and a collective sigh of relief broke out as the spectacular U.S. Navy fighter attack aircraft rocketed off the deck
and then lumbered into the night sky, carrying her deadly steel burden below, making almost 200 knots, climbing out to port. “Tower to Hornet one-zero-zero…good job there…you’re cleared out.”

“Hornet one-zero-zero, roger that.”

2119. Sunday evening
.
Cockpit of the Hornet
.

Lieutenant Commander Farrell had his eyes down on the instrument panel as the fighter attack aircraft screamed across the South China Sea, 250 feet above the waves, covering six and a half miles every minute. This was the most demanding part of the combat flyer’s art, staying low, below all military radar, knowing that one too-firm touch on the stick will send you hurtling upward onto the screens of the enemy, or alternatively straight into the sea and instant death in a pirouetting fireball.

U.S. Navy pilots practice low-level flying constantly, but the dangers remain, and the concentration required to stay precisely 250 feet above the water at high speed is nothing short of awesome, especially at night.

Farrell’s Hornet was cruising at only 400 knots, but any time he saw a light on the ocean up ahead, say 1.5 miles ahead, he was past it in 13 seconds. And he held the stick hard, his gaze switching from course to height, from windshield to trim, murmuring occasionally into his
microphone, back to the carrier, which was now 120 miles astern, 15 minutes into his journey.

And now he made a course change, just as he howled across the unseen line of longitude at 113.30 degrees, due south of the port of Macao. He turned the aircraft north for the 30-mile run up to the mouth of the estuary to the Pearl River, straight over the Wanshan Dao, less than five minutes flying time.

He saw the island lights right below, and over to the left was the brightness of Macao. He swung nine degrees west of due north, settling momentarily on course three-five-one, hugging the shore in the shadow of the 1,500-foot mountains west of the city of Sanxiang.

One touch on the stick and he was out over the central channel of the river, east of Kowloon, passing the island of Qiao, and then he turned back with split-second timing onto course three-five-zero, right over the vast wetlands. He rammed open the throttle and felt the surge in power as the Hornet accelerated to a speed just below 600 knots, just short of the speed where she might make a giveaway sonic boom. He had her on a beeline for the Canton dockyards right now…and he was ten miles southeast…nine…eight…seven…the miles scorched by under his wings…and now it was six. His automatic preset bomb sight, counting down the seconds, told him to pitch up.

Lieutenant Commander Farrell reached out with his gloved right hand and made the
PERMISSIVE
button. He pulled back on the stick and the Hornet, for the first time, gained height, coming up on a precise 45-degree climb angle. Right below the fuselage, the bomb automatically released, and the big Paveway 3 was flung upward by the sheer force and momentum of the aircraft 3,000 feet farther into the sky, whistling through the darkness at a decreasing velocity, the first mile in four and a half seconds, the second, third and fourth in less than 30.

And now, as it reached the top of its trajectory, it began to head down into its long flight to the ground, its
laser guidance system scanning the terrain below, searching for the tiny illumination so meticulously aimed by Quinlei Dong.

Lieutenant Commander Farrell made an Immelmann turn, racing higher in the sharpest loop he could, upside-down and then rolling out, carefully easing back down to 250 feet above the wetlands. Then he gunned the aircraft back over the central channel, turning south toward the open ocean. Still making almost 600 knots, he was past Kowloon just a few moments before Quinlei Dong parked his car at Hong Kong International Airport.

And like Dong, he would keep going until he touched down on American soil, or at least American steel.

Meanwhile the bomb hurtled downward through the darkness, silently locking on to Dong’s laser illumination, its fins making the course adjustments as it fell, steering the dark green killer immaculately toward its target. No one could see it. No one could hear it. No one could possibly know it was coming.

There were six guards on the foredeck, six Chinese technicians in the sonar room, and twenty other submarine experts in various parts of the ship, several of them Russian. No one knew a thing about it when the Paveway 3 smashed into the casing at 2140 precisely. It came in making a strange, soft, eerie whistle. Inside one millisecond its armor-piercing head had smashed straight through the pressure hull and into the massively protected reactor compartment, exploding with a dull, shuddering
K-E-R-R-B-A-A-M
six feet from the seething mass of the reactor core.

The actual explosion of the Paveway was brilliantly contained by the iron grip of the American-built compartment, but the bomb wreaked fearsome damage internally, catastrophically rupturing the steel pipes of the primary coolant circuit in four places. The water system driving through the reactor under pressure of 2,300 pounds per square inch blew open, flashing off to steam instantly, blasting into the compartment.

The pumps stopped as the control rods automatically dropped into the core to scram the reactor. Both of the big isolation valves, failing safe even after the explosion of the bomb, slammed shut, automatically sensing the cataclysmic drop in pressure in the circuit outside the steel reactor vessel. And now the reactor was being starved of the purified, pressurized water that takes away the heat caused by the fission of the enriched uranium-235 in the core. Control of the lethal fast neutrons was quickly slipping away as the core grew hotter and hotter and hotter.

There was only one chance to save the reactor, and that was the automatic emergency cooler system built to cope with occasions such as this—catastrophic failure of the primary coolant circuit. This, too, has two big valves and is designed to suck in seawater—any water, for God’s sake—and drive it through the core, for its hydrogen content to fight the diabolical energy of the neutrons, the basic energy of an atomic bomb. And the water was life-giving in more senses than one: Its sheer cooling effect is designed to prevent the meltdown of the whole core.

The incoming water is known as the “cold leg.” By the time it powers away from the mass of seething silver-colored uranium-235, it is outrageously hot, and will be driven out through the pipes of the second part of the system, the “hot leg.” But, thanks to the thoughtful activities of Judd Crocker and Mike Schulz while
Seawolf
was being towed into Canton, the isolation valve had been sabotaged to drift open, and now the ship had two hot legs, which represented a total disaster.

The emergency cooler circuit was dead. And the Chinese in the machinery control room, already terrified by the tremor of the bomb’s blast, now saw to their horror how dead it was. They could see the core temperature rising spectacularly, racing upward toward inevitable meltdown. This was a Chinese Chernobyl.

They struggled against it, praying to whatever god might be available on this Sunday night that the emer
gency system would suddenly kick in. But Mike Schultz had made no mistake. Nothing was kicking anything, except for the bomb, in the context of Chinese ass.

Four minutes later, all indications of any possible salvation were lost, and the core temperature was now well above the danger level. Deep in the reactor room the residual radiation and heat were beginning to melt away the casing, and at 2148 the white-hot mass of uranium and stainless steel burned clean through the 15-foot-wide fortified bottom of the reactor vessel and dropped down onto the hull of the submarine.

In a few seconds, it reduced that colossally strong five-inch-thick steel casing to melted butter and dropped into the waters of Canton Harbor. On its way it turned
Seawolf
into a death trap, the radioactive fallout filling the reactor compartment and beyond. The waters of the harbor would be lethally unsafe for a minimum of 40 years.

Up in the control room, the scientists were fully aware of the scale of the disaster. There were radiation alarms sounding everywhere, and there was a weird glow in the water. The warning, “CORE MELTDOWN…CORE MELTDOWN,” had already echoed through the ship, where mass panic now ensued.

The acting CO ordered “ABANDON SHIP!…WE HAVE CORE MELTDOWN!”

There was a stampede to disembark as technicians, scientists, and seamen alike raced for the hatches and the gangways.
Seawolf
still floated, even with her reactor compartment flooded with seawater, but anyone who spent more than 10 minutes on the ship right now was a dead man, probably with a maximum of three weeks to live.

Admiral Zhang’s dream of copying the great American emperor of the deep was over, and suddenly, in the space of just 15 minutes, they were in a desperate damage-control situation. The officer in command literally ran for his life, followed by the scientists, and he roared at them to keep running to the most distant of naval offices right out by the gate.

When he arrived the office door was locked, and he blew the lock off with his service revolver. They all headed for desks and telephones and opened up a conference line to Fleet Headquarters at Zhanjiang, direct to Admiral Zhang Yushu.

The C-in-C was stunned, and he found himself in an argument with the on-the-spot nuclear physicists, who felt that the only way to cope with the catastrophe was to sink
Seawolf
right here, letting her subside and settle on top of the reactor core. Then somehow, they could isolate the area for possibly 500 yards and perhaps contain the water around the submarine, possibly with a dam, anything to stop the contamination from spreading into the city.

However, there were technicians who very much wanted a second shot at the American boat, and they wanted to tow the submarine out into the open ocean and try to remove the key systems from it.

For Zhang this was a ray of hope in the darkness and now, yelling on the increasingly hysterical conference line, he demanded they do as he ordered, tow the submarine out and then board it and have one more try at removing the critical parts.

Dr. Luofu Pang, the senior physicist and one of China’s most respected scientists, finally agreed, or at least he seemed to agree. “Admiral,” he said, “if that is what you order, then I am not in a position to tell the Navy what to do. And so be it.”

But he added, “I will, however, issue to you my final thought: any man who boards that submarine for just ten minutes will die. If you send in many of our expert technicians, we will lose them all. I deeply regret to inform you, sir, that this is not a practical proposition. And if you do issue an order that knowingly sends our best men to their immediate death, after an accident in which I have been personally involved, my advice must be properly recorded, and I shall take immediate steps to ensure it is.”

And then his voice hardened. “Admiral,” he said. “Forget it.”

Zhang knew bald-faced reason when he heard it. And he just said quietly, “Very well, Dr. Luofu. I am disappointed, as a military man. But I bow to the great scientist. Please do everything you can to ensure the safety of everyone in the area. And sink the submarine as you see fit.”

They were big words from, essentially, a big man. Admiral Zhang had not become the youngest-ever Commander-in-Chief of the People’s Liberation Army/Navy by some kind of fluke.

At this time, in the minutes before 10:00 on this Sunday evening, July 16, 2006, the big Navy yard began to react, its nuclear accident organization activating the predetermined plan to deal with such disasters—radiation monitoring and decontamination teams, fire and medical squads, wind and weather checks.

Back in the central area of the city they slowly learned there had been an accident on the base. The police moved quickly to evacuate and cordon off the immediate areas around the submarine, particularly downwind and into the city. Their principal concern was to avoid mass panic.

The police chief called his Beijing headquarters to inform them of the disaster, and already the media were trying to make contact with the Navy itself. It took only another few minutes before Admiral Zhang Yushu was on the line to Beijing, informing his government that somehow or another, the big American nuclear submarine in the Canton dockyard had suffered a serious nuclear accident while engineers were working on the reactor.

They already knew that the dockyard was heavily contaminated, but so far there was no evidence of radiation spreading to the city itself. The police felt it would be unwise to allow any flights into Canton airport until a proper assessment had been made over the next two days.

Back in Zhanjiang, Zhang had his own private worries. His first instinct was that his own scientists had somehow screwed the entire thing up. There must have been American reactor protection systems capable of
dealing with this sort of problem. So the scientists had “done a Chernobyl”—deactivating safety systems in order to carry out some crass experiment of their own. Zhang shuddered. Surely not.

Maybe the Americans had an automatic booby-trap device fitted into the submarine, and they had known all along that it would ultimately self-destruct. Hence the polite, devious messages through the diplomatic channels. Being made to look a complete fool was a condition to which Zhang was not accustomed. Nor was he appreciative.

He summoned Admiral Zu Jicai and briefed him on the disaster in Canton. Jicai was thunderstruck, his natural calm evaporating in emotional turmoil. To Zhang’s repeated question—was
Seawolf
booby-trapped?—his answer was a qualified no. Both men knew they had the cooperation of one of the senior Americans, the executive officer, no less, Lt. Commander Bruce Lucas.

On one evening he had quite agreeably spent the night on board the submarine and had shown no sign of nerves that the ship might self-destruct. He had even been questioned about such a possibility. Both Zhang and Zu had read the report, and the American had assured them he had never even heard of any American warship being so protected.

Nonetheless, both Chinese admirals felt a certain contempt for the American officer who had given in to their demands for information about the inner workings of the great underwater ship. It was connected to the innate Chinese phobia about loss of face, pride in your standing and position. Like all Chinese military men, they had a grudging respect for men like Judd Crocker, Brad Stockton and the unfortunately deceased Cy Rothstein, men who were unshakeable, to the death if necessary, in their loyalty and patriotism.