Death Blow sts-14 Read online

  Howie walked down the alley at his foot-dragging rate. If anyone saw him they would look right through him. Street bums were of no consequence, especially in Tijuana. It took him twenty minutes to go down the two blocks to where he had left his car. Actually it wasn’t his. He had “borrowed” it in Coronado, and changed the rear license plate to one he had taken off a wrecked car in a junk yard a month before. It always paid to be prepared. He’d drive the ’92 Chevy back to Chula Vista, just over the border on the U.S. side where he had left his Ford Mustang the night before.

  Leave nothing to chance. Plan, plan, plan, and then work your plan. He had the system down. It worked. He stopped two miles from the kill house and cleaned up his face and hands with baby wipes, changed into a sport shirt and perched a Padres baseball cap on his head covering up his military crew cut. He had no trouble crossing the border.

  An hour later he came out of the shower in his Coronado apartment. It was nothing fancy. He could afford much better, but it wouldn’t fit in with his public middle-class lifestyle.

  He checked a small book that looked as if it held times and distances of his daily workouts and runs. The book showed a date last week and 112.6. He would call the bank tomorrow night and have the computer voice read off his balance. Then he would write down the new time for a run. It should be 122.6. Yes, ten thousand dollars in two e-deposits would be added to his bank account tomorrow morning. This was in a bank he didn’t use regularly and where he didn’t put down his real name. The name and numbers were hidden in the book of running times dating back five years.

  Howie had stashed the Ruger and its silencer in a secret compartment he had built into the floorboards of his 1998 Mustang. The hiding place was barely three inches deep and eight inches wide. The top was designed to look like an access panel under the floor mats.

  Now he toweled off, checked the news on the all-night TV station and looked at his hand-held computer calendar.

  Today was Monday, nearly 0330. The platoon would have muster this morning at 0700. He wouldn’t be late. Had never missed a roll call since the day he signed on with SEAL Team Seven four years ago.

  2

  Dushan, People’s Republic of China

  United States Senator Gregory B. Highlander stared at the paper a Chinese soldier had just given him at the door of the small house they had been provided in this remote village 20 miles northeast along the coast from Zhanjiang in south China. They were a 150 miles southwest of Macao in one of the poor peasant backlands of China. Senator Highlander knew the message had to be bad news.

  The Republican senior U.S. senator from Idaho couldn’t believe it. He had his wife read the formal document for him a second time. It was written in Mandarin and she was half Chinese. They had come to this small, poor village a week ago to track down his wife’s last known relatives. Several had been killed in the great Mao purge, others sent into the countryside. Some simply disappeared.

  “The orders are clear, Greg. It says we are considered enemies of the Chinese people, and we are required to stay within our house until further notice. We are not to contact any Chinese in the area and may leave only with an escort to obtain food. It doesn’t say how long this house arrest will last.”

  “Surely our embassy—” The senator stopped. The State Department and the embassy in Bejing had argued against this trip by the chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. They told him he was the most important man in the Senate for getting military expenditure bills through Congress and that a person with his knowledge of the U.S. military establishment and weaponry simply shouldn’t go on a tourist jaunt into the People’s Republic of China, which had remained belligerent.

  Now he sat heavily in one of the three wooden chairs in the sparsely furnished living room of the modest house that his wife’s distant cousin had arranged for them to use for their stay. It was owned by another distant cousin, and there had been a lot of bowing and chattering as the cousins met for the first time in their lives just a week ago.

  Senator Highlander had believed that he, his wife, and their daughter would be in no danger on this visit. He was an important person in the U.S. government. The Chinese would not dare think of curtailing his travel or do anything that might make him uncomfortable, let alone that he might complain about to the embassy. Yeah, he had been dead wrong on that one. He winced at the word dead. No he couldn’t think that way. Now he realized that he had been wrong to agree to come. His wife thought that things had loosened up enough in China for a trip she had been planning for over fifteen years.

  He was an idiot. Now what he had to do was think of some way that he could get out of this burning house situation. Contacting the embassy was out. The house didn’t even have a telephone. He wouldn’t play his ace card unless he had to. As a powerful U.S. senator he had grown accustomed to getting his own way, of winning fights in the Senate about military spending, and even having his own way at home with his wife and daughter. He had earned the right, damn it. He had come up the hard way, from a farmer father who was blown out of the Nebraska dustbowl in 1937. Then the long trip to Oregon, where the family had done a little better; but still they ate a lot of grapefruit and oatmeal that first year of 1937–1938, mainly because it was cheap and good for them. He had made it through high school, played in the band, and graduated somewhere in the middle of his small-town high school class of ninety-eight seniors.

  The Model A Ford Roadster he had bought in his senior year cost him $225. It had yellow spoke wheels, a top that came down, and a rumble seat, a 1931 Model A. When he bought the car, his grades went down but he stayed on the tennis team and graduated. Not until the second half of his senior year did he think about going on to school. His parents couldn’t afford to pay college tuition or buy books.

  A small private college in his home town suggested he might want to play on its tennis team. They had no scholarships, but they could help him get a job on campus to pay the tuition: $225 for the first semester. He sold the Model A to get the money.

  The senator looked outside the small Chinese house and saw something new. A military guard with a submachine gun slung over his shoulder, stood just beyond the small gate in front of the house. He guessed there would be one at the back door as well.

  Damn fine mess I’ve got us in this time. Not so bad for me, but Lydia and Darla. God damn it to hell!

  Lydia Highlander watched her husband. She had inherited her English father’s fine coloring, a peaches and cream complexion that was flawless at fifty-two years. The Chinese heritage showed in her almond eyes that slanted delightfully, and in the flat bridge of her nose. Her sleek absolutely black hair hadn’t been cut for two years. It flowed around her shoulders and down her back. She touched her husband’s arm.

  “Greg, it will be all right. They wouldn’t dare hurt you. We must figure out how to get you back home.”

  “How to get all of us back. I won’t go and leave you two here.” He paused, then shrugged. “There’s only one way now. You know about the heart stimulator machine I brought with us?”

  “Yes. I knew it wasn’t that. What is it?”

  “I’ll show you.” He took one of their unpacked suitcases and opened it. The maze of wires, dials and readouts built into a metal box looked medically complicated and professional. He moved the unit to a small table and unscrewed a plate on the back. From the metal case he pulled out a long rectangular, metal object.

  “It’s called the SATCOM for satellite radio communications.” He took a small dish antenna from inside the box and spread open the dish part into a circle. He set it on a small tripod by the window and moved it around a little.

  “Should work there.” He hooked it to the radio. “With the proper frequency I can call up any phone number in the world, access the president or the chiefs of staff, my own office, the CIA, anyone.” He looked in a small notebook that had been in the fake metal box and pointed at a frequency.

  “Yes, I think we’ll talk to the CIA. This is really t
heir jurisdiction. First I have to make sure the antenna is tuned toward one of the satellites overhead that will relay the signal. There are supposed to be such satellites all around the world. They told me it would work.”

  He moved the knobs then adjusted the dish antenna twice and waited each time. A moment later a beep came from the speaker on the radio. The radio itself was about five inches square and sixteen inches tall. It had a built-in round flexible antenna and a handset. The whole thing including batteries weighed only ten pounds.

  “We have the satellite tuned in, now here’s hoping I did everything right.” The senator picked up the handset and pushed the send button.

  “CIA, this is Senator Highlander calling from a small town in China. Looking for some help. Do you receive me?”

  He turned the set to receive and listened but the speaker remained ominously silent. He tried the same words again, and then a third time. Then a voice came through faintly.

  “Senator Highlander. Your signal is weak. Increase your power to eighteen watts. What do you need?”

  “CIA, moving to eighteen watts. We’ve been put under house arrest here in China. Armed guards at the front and back doors. We need to get out of here. We’re at Dushan, a small village about twenty miles north of Zhanjiang which is on the south coast of China. We’re about three miles from the South China Sea. Can you help us? I have a lot of information about this country. She’s on a wartime footing.”

  “Senator, understand your problem. Will take it up immediately. Keep your SATCOM on burst sending so China can’t pick up your signal. It’s all encrypted in the set. Will contact you in two hours and every two hours after that. Have the set turned on.”

  “Thank God. We’ll be waiting.”

  Darla, his sixteen-year-old daughter, had been in the next room, but came in when she heard the radio speaker. She stood wide eyed watching the exchange.

  “Is it dangerous here, Daddy?”

  “It could be. I’m trying to get us out of China.”

  Darla’s eyes went wider. Their slant was less than that of her mother’s but apparent and her nose was more rounded. Her skin was not as perfect as her mothers. She wore shorts and a T-shirt, her soft dark hair kept cut short for easy care. “Not much ice skating here, huh, Daddy?”

  “Not that we’ve seen. Now, how is our food supply? We could be here for several more days. Do I need to go out and get something from that small market and store we saw when we came in?”

  The senator looked at his wife. He was maintaining a steady calm on the outside. Even as he asked about food he was thinking about a story he had read on Chinese prisons, and detention camps. He shivered as he remembered the pictures of what China did to some of its own people. Now those visions kept slamming into his mind.

  NAVSPECWARGRUP-ONE

  Coronado, California

  The clock in the equipment room of Third Platoon, SEAL Team Seven, showed 0730. The sixteen SEALs had been called out early to get the news.

  “We’ve got work to do,” Lieutenant Commander Blake Murdock told his men. “We move out from North Island Naval Air Station at twelve hundred. We go fully loaded with weapons, double ammo, and anything else you can think of that we might need on a hot firefight. I’m not sure which direction we’re traveling, but Commander Masciareli asked me if Kenneth Ching was fit for duty.”

  “China? We’re heading for China?” Jaybird Sterling, machinist mate second class, asked.

  “Speculation,” Senior Chief Boatswain’s Mate Will Dobler snapped. “You heard what the man said. Let’s get cracking. We’ve got an hour to get our gear ready to travel. Double loads of ammo in your drag bag. Uniform of the day will be desert cammies. Take one change of clothes. We’ll work out weapons assignments now.” He looked at Murdock. “Commander, what mix do you want?”

  “We don’t have the slightest idea what we’re going to be getting into. Let’s take two of the EARs, five of the Bull Pups, and the rest standard. We’ll leave the fifty here this time. The Bull Pups can do the same job. Check for ammo supply on the Pups.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Dobler said. “Move it you swabbies. We’ve got an airplane to catch.”

  Murdock put his gear in order, then inspected the men at 0830. Speculation about where they would be going was running wild.

  “Not a clue,” Murdock told them again. “Orders came through channels from our beloved commander, that’s all I know.”

  “Seems kind of lonely without Don Stroh giving us a call on the SATCOM,” Bill Bradford, quartermaster’s mate first class, said. “He still gonna be sticking his big nose in here from time to time?”

  “I’m sure he will,” Murdock said. “The through-channels flap will be hot for a while, then calm down. He says he’s free to talk to us after we get an assignment.”

  They had special chow at 1000, then another inspection and lined up to board two six-by trucks for transport to North Island, only two miles away. They were early. Their bird was being turn-around serviced. It was a Gulfstream II (VC11). The troops grinned. It was a fancy business jet the military used for VIPs or for fast moves of small groups of men.

  The plane had a low wing with a twenty-five-degree leading-edge sweep, three degrees of dihedral from the roots, and low wing fences at midspan. The trailing edge had one-piece single-slotted, Fowler-type flaps inboard of insert ailerons.

  The T-tail had a broad, slightly swept vertical fin with a small dorsal fillet and full-height rudder. At the top of the tail were swept, horizontal stabilizers with full-span elevators. Two Rolls-Royce turbofan engines with Rohr thrust reversers were mounted on short stubs that were located high on the rear fuselage; the inlets overlapped the trailing edges of the wings. Fuel was carried in wing tanks.

  The Gulfstream Aerospace plane had a crew of three, and normally carried nineteen passengers. Its wingspan was sixty-eight feet ten inches and it was seventy-nine feet eleven inches long. Maximum cruise speed at 25,000 feet was 581 mph. It had a ceiling of 42,000 feet and a range, with maximum fuel, of 4,275 miles.

  The SEALs lounged on their drag bags and packs on the tarmac fifty yards from where final fueling of their jet took place.

  “Damn, this time I hope we draw one of them tasty little Air Force women stewards,” said Jack Mahanani, hospital corpsman first class.

  “Hell of a lot better ride than a C-130,” said Paul Jefferson, engineman second class.

  They loaded at 1130; stowed their vests, weapons, harnesses, and drag bags; and settled into civilian-type, lean-back, first-class seats.

  “Now this is living,” Colt Franklin, yeoman second class shrilled. “This is really living.”

  A tall black woman in an Air Force uniform with three stripes on her sleeves came out of the plane’s flight cabin. “Gentlemen,” she said, and everyone shut up and looked up. “My name is Andrea, and I’m crew chief on this bird. Anybody barfs gets to clean it up himself. You be nice to my baby, or I’ll razz you all the way to our first fuel stop. Y’all hear me?”

  “Yes ma’am,” the sixteen SEALs said almost in unison.

  “Good. Just so we understand each other. I hear you haven’t eaten since ten o’clock. Poor babies. I’ll have some high-quality Air Force box lunches for you an hour after takeoff. Now settle back and enjoy. Usually I get admirals and senators and generals for passengers.” She frowned, lifted her brows, and shook her head. “From admirals to this. Please, Lord, have mercy, I got saddled with a whole passel of froggy guys.”

  She grinned, and the SEALs hooted as she went out the main door.

  T’aipei, Taiwan

  Thirteen hours and two stops later, the sleek business jet rolled to a stop at T’aipei airport and the SEALs transferred quickly to a U.S. Navy bus that took them to the port where they were bunked down in a Navy building. It had a small mess hall and twenty bunk beds.

  That was where Don Stroh contacted them through a base telephone.

  “Enjoy your tourist flight?” Stroh asked Murdock.


  “Terrific, especially the in-flight movie. Now who in hell is going to tell us where we’re going and what we’re supposed to be doing?”

  “That would be me. Uncle Sugar has a small problem, three of them actually. This blunderbuss senator, who also is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is stuck in China. They have him under house arrest at a little village in south China down below Macao somewhere. He says China is at a fever pitch, that the whole damn place is almost on a wartime footing. He expects something big and wild to pop at any time. He wants out.”

  “I can understand his thoughts.”

  “His wife and teenage daughter are with him. Three packages, all must come out untouched and totally unharmed.”

  “Our job is to go in and bring them out?” Murdock asked.

  “You’re quick, Murdock. Except when those calico ocean bass are biting. You have to wait for the second nibble, then strike with a good upward snap with the rod. That’s the reason I can outfish you any day in the week.”

  “Not on a clear day, Stroh. Now, how do we get from here to down there? How far is it? Do we have Navy power in the area?”

  “Questions, questions. You are to meet with Admiral Barney Chalmers. His place in half an hour. Bring along your team.”

  “You’re here in T’aipei?

  “Bingo, I told them you were quick. Been waiting for you. I’ve been here all of four hours. But I had an eight-hour head start. See you soon. A man is on his way to bring your people.”

  Twenty minutes later Murdock, Lieutenant jg Ed DeWitt, Chief Dobler, Jaybird Sterling, and Joe Lampedusa (operations specialist third class) walked into Admiral Chalmers’s office two buildings down and came to attention.

  “Admiral, sir. Lieutenant Commander Murdock and team reporting as ordered.”

  “Yes, Murdock, men, sit down. This may take some time. Don Stroh has been telling me that if anyone can bring out our gallivanting senator, you and your men can.”