Red Shark

Scott looked through the ASDS’s open lower hatch and saw Rus Kramer’s upturned face.

“We’ll be waiting right here for you, Commander. Good luck.”

Scott sketched Kramer a salute, then sealed the hatch. Moments later, the midnight black, bullet-shaped vehicle lifted off its four latching pylons. Aboard the Reno, Deacon retrimmed to compensate for the sudden loss of fifty-five tons of shock-hardened titanium and steel and ten men and their gear. The mini-sub, maneuvering on its thrusters and a six-bladed prop powered by a compact lithium-ion battery, cleared the Reno’s afterdeck, and, with Deitrich and Allen at the controls, surged toward Matsu Shan.

Inside the red-lit ASDS, Scott, Jefferson, and the six SEALs, faces blackened, wearing dry suits over cammies, their gear ready and staged, sat facing each other across a narrow aisle. They would soon lock out of the mini-sub for a stealthy surface swim onto an island controlled by heavily armed drug-traffickers. They knew that if they were caught there’d be no backup for rescue; they’d either have to fight their way out, E and E — evade and escape — or risk capture and possibly torture. Scott remembered Carter Ellsworth saying it would be a piece of cake. Too bad Ellsworth wasn’t sitting across the aisle, thought Scott, H-gear weighing him down, nervous sweat seeping into his eyeballs, knees quaking. Scott just once wanted to have Ellsworth and Radford along on a balls-in-a-vice op so they could see what it was really like to be a gun fighter.

For the rest of the team it was gut-check time. Time to mull what the possibility was of getting in and out without blowing something or someone away, including themselves. Scott hoped Deitrich and Allen were fully occupied flying the vehicle and not, like him, deep-thinking.

Scott looked at Jefferson, and saw that his eyes were closed. Was he thinking about Scott’s fuckup in Dubrovnik or how they’d fly the micro air vehicles into the villa without the bugs being discovered and smacked with a fly swatter? If they were, it’d be all over and they’d be in for a fight. Matsu Shan wasn’t Dubrovnik, and Wu Chow Fat wasn’t Karst.

Scott did box drills in his head, reviewing their direction of travel, how far it was to the beach, and, as best he could, accounting for tides and currents. They’d done a time hack before liftoff, and now he rucked back his dry suit’s wrist dam and looked at his watch: soon, very soon.

The ASDS hummed quietly as it cruised toward shore at six knots, ten feet below the surface. Up forward, Deitrich had a hand on the joystick, thumb on its roller-controller, and both eyes on the computer screens used for controlling ballast and trim.

Directly in front of copilot Allen and to Deitrich’s right were two monitors, both enabled but blank, linked to the craft’s sonar system and the electro-optical periscope, which they’d use to surveil the AO — area of operation — as the ASDS closed the island.

Before liftoff, Scott had taken a trick at the Reno’s scope. From two thousand yards offshore, the channel and beach, seen in eerie green NV mode, looked deserted except for the motor launch tied up at the dock. There was no sign of anyone, nor was there any sign of the White Dragon. There was also no sign of the chopper, though it was hard to be sure, since Scott’s sea-level view of the landing pad/parking area where the craft would have been parked was partially cut off by the sheer height of the bluff. Still, he should have been able to see something, at least the tops of its drooping rotor blades. Scott had a premonition but kept it to himself.