U.S.S. Seawolf (48 page)

It was the first time in living memory that anyone had marched along the corridor and just barged straight into the President’s private office without even knocking, regardless of who might be in there. Even President Clarke’s secretary was slightly taken aback as Arnold Morgan made his entry.

The Chief Executive, unused to being interrupted this brutally, was on the phone and looked annoyed until he saw who it was, and noticed the broad smile on the face of his National Security Adviser.

He just dropped the telephone, quite literally on the floor, and left it dangling there. And he stood up and said in a tremulous voice, “Tell me he’s safe, Arnie. Please just tell me he’s safe.”

“He’s safe, sir. On board the nuclear submarine USS
Hartford
, under the command of Commander Jack Crosby. They’re on their way back to the carrier, USS
Ronald Reagan
. Linus is shaken, but unharmed. He sent you his love via the satellite.”

President Clarke almost collapsed with relief. He sat back in his chair and just kept saying, over and over, “Thank God…Thank God…Thank God…,” and he
let the tears stream down his face. He was too happy to stop them, too joyful to care.

Admiral Morgan just said, gruffly, “You need me anymore, sir? We’re still pretty busy on this. I was going over to the Pentagon…”

“No, Arnold. No, I’m fine now. You go right ahead. But could you ask Kathy to come in and see me, soon as you’re on your way…”

“Sure, sir. Maybe catch you a little later?”

“Arnie, I sure hope so. If it hadn’t been for you…for your belief in our ability to hit back…I don’t think I would ever have seen Linus again…”

“Thank you, sir. God bless you, and Linus. I’ll send Kathy right over.”

The admiral left the office as brusquely as he had entered. He marched back down the corridor and said to Kathy, without breaking stride as he passed her desk, “Coffee. Car. Go see the boss.”

Then he moved back into his own office and called Admiral Mulligan. It was 0445 tomorrow in the South China Sea, a quarter to four in the afternoon in Washington.

“Hi, Joe. How do we look?”

“According to Frank Hart, the SEALs should be leaving the island right now with the second and final group of crewmen, all eight boats…starting to take off some of the Special Forces. Their ETD Xiachuan for the second run out to the submarines is 0445, their time. No one is reporting any Chinese activity within a fifty-mile radius of the transfer zone four miles south of the beaches.”

“Hey, that’s great, Joe. What time do they estimate the last guys get away?”

“Frank’s saying oh-five-fifty-five. Which is almost dawn.”

“Hmmmmm. That puts the last transfer in daylight, right?”

“Fraid so. But we do not really expect a Chinese attack.”

“Don’t you? I wouldn’t put anything past those little pricks. ’Specially when they’ve had their noses put out of joint, as they most certainly have.”

“Well, we can only keep watching, sea and air. Anything shakes loose, I’ll call you…”

“No need, Joe. I was just coming over to see you. Get some decent coffee ready, will you? Kathy’s ignoring me.”

The CNO laughed as he put down the phone. And almost immediately Admiral Morgan’s internal line rang.

“Outer desk to base. Coffee one minute. Car downstairs. Over and out.”

The admiral hit the intercom button and snapped, “Base to outer desk. Cancel coffee. Meet me in our favorite Georgetown restaurant at nineteen-thirty. Will you marry me?”

“Outer desk to base. Lovely to the first. No to the second. I love you. Over.”

The admiral gathered up his briefcase and headed out, marching down to the elevator that would take him to the underground garage where his chauffeur, Charlie, would be waiting if he valued his life, job and pension.

Kathy, meanwhile, was in the southwest corner of the West Wing, entering the Oval Office.

“Hello, sir,” she said. “I’m so happy for you. Isn’t it the most marvelous news?”

“The best possible,” said the President, and the future Mrs. Arnold Morgan noticed that he looked about 10 years younger than he had an hour previous.

“But now I want you to do me two favors.”

“Of course.”

“I want you to arrange for the church across the street in Jackson Place to be open, and please inform the Secret Service that I am planning to walk over there in the next half hour. Tell ’em to make whatever arrangements they need. Second, I would like you to come with me—I expect you remember we were together when my prayers were answered. And I would like us to walk to church together.”

“Well, yessir, I do of course remember. There’s a morning service at St. John’s, sir. And an evening one. I’ll make sure it’s open in the next half hour.”

She left the office and returned to her desk. A longtime White House staffer, she knew precisely the right buttons to press. And she hit the line to the usher and requested that someone contact St. John’s Episcopal Church and ensure that it was empty, open and ready to receive the President of the United States, as it had received every President since James Madison.

The next call, to the Secret Service, was more serious, because the prospect of the President walking anywhere in public is apt to hit them like an ice storm in Tahiti. A lot of people need to be alerted, since the White House grounds are swept at all times by infrared, electronic eye, audio and pressure sensors. Video cameras on the roof and all over the grounds record every movement. There is actually a full SWAT team positioned on the White House roof, machine guns drawn, every time the President enters or leaves. And that assumes he’s traveling in a bulletproof car.

The mere prospect of the President, in the company of the secretary to the National Security Adviser,
walking
to church was cause for a major operation. To a Secret Service agent, the 300 yards from the north corner of the West Wing to St. John’s represented something close to the Pope crossing a minefield. In fact, the President would be crossing a quiet private road, closed to all traffic and patrolled at all times by squadrons of police.

But when Kathy O’Brien announced that the President was walking to church, about 140 people went into full alert, as would be expected in a gigantic fiefdom that costs upward of a billion dollars a year to run. Guards were detailed to surround and accompany him every yard of the way, from the front door of the Earthly God to the open door of the Greater God.

They set off together at a quarter to five, walking through the corridors of the West Wing and then stepping
out into the hot, sunlit 18-acre gardens, where there awaited more armed men than there were on the evacuation beach at Xiachuan.

Surrounded now by the protectors of the President, they strolled up through the lawns and across the private road into Jackson Place on the west side of Lafayette Square. And from there it was just a few yards more to the pale yellow-painted Georgian church with its six tall white columns and three-tiered tower.

The door to the empty St. John’s was wide open, ready to welcome the President of the United States on a private visit. When they arrived, he ordered everyone to remain outside, while he and Kathy walked in and closed the main door behind them.

And there in the cool half-light of the 190-year-old church, “the Church of the Presidents,” John Clarke humbled himself before his God, kneeling quietly next to Kathy O’Brien in the front row of the left-hand pews and silently expressing his ineradicable gratitude for the safe delivery of his only son, Linus.

His prayer was, he said, not just thanks, but a formal recognition that his “still, small voice” had been heard above the tumult of a world of sins. It was, he believed, an affirmation of his faith, the faith with which he had been brought up by his Baptist family in faraway Oklahoma.

He remained kneeling for perhaps 10 minutes, and then he turned to Kathy O’Brien and asked if she was ready to accompany him back to the White House.

They both stood and walked back down the dark red carpet of the left aisle. At the door, before he opened it, John Clarke said quietly, “I am not the President of anything in here, am I?”

“No, sir. No you’re not. But I am sure you are welcome, because God gets many more requests for help than He ever does expressions of thanks. And it was St. John himself who wrote the words of Our Lord, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

And there was a smile on the face of the Chief Executive as he walked back to the White House with a clear conscience.

0555. Monday, July 17
.
On the beach. Xiachuan Dao
.

As the senior officer in the evacuation, Captain Judd Crocker elected not to leave the island with the second flotilla, but rather to wait for the final boat and travel in the cold light of dawn with Lieutenant Commander Hunter and Ray Schaeffer.

And there were already orange fingers of light out over the water as the eastern sun fought its way above the horizon. They could not yet see the five Zodiacs making their way across the bay, but they could hear a distant growl of outboard engines, moving very fast over the flat calm water.

Three minutes later the SEAL drivers came charging into the beach, a new note of urgency obvious in their attitudes as they cut the motors and hauled up the engines, while the SEALs in the shallows grabbed the painters and hung on to the boats. There was no need even to spin them around away from the waves now, because the ocean was like a pond.

The lead driver came in yelling, “OKAY, SIR, LET’S GO…all equipment in the second boat plus three…seven in each of the others…we’re outta here.”

The light was having a nerve-wracking effect on everyone. Surely the Chinese could not now be unaware, somehow, that a diabolical attack had occurred on their heavily manned jail, even if the SEALs had wrecked every possible communications system. No one expected a counterattack by night, but this was different. The cloak of darkness was gone, and everyone on the beach felt very vulnerable as the light grew stronger.

The very least the Chinese Navy must do would be to
send a couple of helicopters in to find out why they could not contact the jail anymore. If those choppers arrived in the next five minutes they would surely open fire on the fleeing Americans.

“COME ON, YOU GUYS…LET’s GO! GO! GO!”

The lead driver, veteran Petty Officer Zack Redmond, was growing more jumpy by the minute. And he was not alone. Olaf Davidson was in the water, manhandling the machine guns into the boats. Buster and Rattlesnake were up to their waists, shoving men up and over into the boats.

When it was Rick’s turn he stood next to them and bent his left leg at the knee, and the two SEALs grabbed his tree-trunk shin and lifted. The world’s largest jockey thus vaulted over the gunwales like Bill Shoemaker at Santa Anita.

It was a minute after 0600 when the last boat was pushed the few yards out deep enough to lower the engines. The beaches were completely deserted now, and as the five motors roared into life, all of the SEALs found themselves looking back at the tiny Chinese island on which they had fought with such superhuman courage.

The black smoke over the jail had gone, and the place looked peaceful again, an idyllic tropical beach, with water turning more turquoise blue every minute. Nonetheless, they were all ecstatic to get away from it. Only Judd Crocker looked sad as he stared at the jungle and wondered where the body of Lieutenant Commander Rothstein had been buried, and if anyone would ever know his final resting place.

The Zodiacs hurtled out into the bay, and now for the first time, the SEALs could look at the seaway between the two islands. Opposite, on the shores of Shangchuan Dao, the coastline was long and flat, with low mountains rising in the background. Xiachuan looked altogether more rugged. But the best news was the total lack of activity. Here on this bright Monday morning, there was
still no sign of even a junk, far less a warship. And the U.S. Navy drivers opened the throttles and sped across the calm sea, making their course change after three miles, and then making a beeline sou’sou’west, straight toward the waiting submarine
Greenville
, in which most of them had arrived.

0620. Monday, July 17
.
On board the Chinese destroyer
Xiangtan
.
112.20E 21.30N
.
Course zero-eight-zero. Speed 30
.

Colonel Lee had held his ship at flank speed all the way from Zhanjiang, easily outpacing the much smaller frigate
Shantou
, which was currently some five miles astern.

Lee had twice checked in with his own fleet commander, Admiral Zu Jicai, and had been told that Admiral Zhang had by no means altered his mindset. In fact, he was as determined as ever that the guns, missiles and torpedoes of
Xiangtan
should open fire on the Americans at the earliest opportunity, the earlier the better.

Colonel Lee was bewildered. It was so atypical. After a lifetime in the Navy of China, he had never been told to open fire, not even when Taiwan was involved, or even Japan. This was totally out of character. China was a very old civilization and it had long ago learned that discretion was almost always the better part of valor.

Letting loose high explosive at a modern-day trading partner with whom all-out war would be a massive disaster for China was not reasonable. And the Chinese prided themselves on reason. They might cheat, lie, steal, obfuscate the truth, evade and frequently commit the sin of omission. But lack reason? Never.

And here was this great Chinese warship being ordered to march, effectively into the jaws of death, with
guns blazing. In peacetime. In cold blood. In total madness, so far as Colonel Lee could tell.

He turned to his XO, Lieutenant Commander Shoudong, and murmured for the umpteenth time, “I do not understand it.”

The XO did not understand it either. But now he was becoming fatalistic, ever since the last call to Fleet Headquarters. And he said resignedly, “Sir, we are probably ten miles from the edge of the search area. Does this really mean that if we pick up a submarine, we just go straight in and start firing?”