Red Shark

Another WP and the vehicle park went up. Burning men staggered around flaming trucks and SUVs. Another grenade topped yet another guard tower. A few short bursts from M4s and PKs, and it was over.

Scott heard Jefferson on the line say, “Anybody down?”

Zipolski: “Nicked in the hand.”

Brodie, Ramos, Caserta, Van Kirk, and Leclerc checked in unhurt.

“Scott, you okay?”

His hands had begun to shake uncontrollably. He willed them to stop, but they wouldn’t. He looked at the faces of the dead women in the beam of his penlight. Not young, not old, but hard, very hard. One of them had wound her long black hair tight in a bun on the crown of her skull. It had come apart and now was soaked with her blood, oozing from a gaping head wound that looked black in the pen’s red light.

The other woman lay on her back, both arms trapped under her buttocks, dead eyes wide open, lower lip trapped under a row of crooked front teeth. Her black shirt had been torn open by grenade fragments that had penetrated her back and, after shredding vital organs, exited out her front. He wanted to tell himself that they had gotten what they deserved but knew that that wouldn’t make him feel less guilty for what he’d done. Nothing would.

“Scott?”

“Right. I’m okay.”

“We count at least sixteen dead here. You?”

Scott balled his hands into fists to stop their shaking. “Six up here.” How many they’d killed on the beach was anybody’s guess. Scott felt something go out of him: Radford had gotten it wrong, way wrong.

“Any sign of Fat?” asked Jefferson.

“What? No, he’s probably still holed up somewhere in the villa. We’ll do a room-by-room. Give me Ramos and Leclerc.”

“You got ’em. Anything else?”

“What about the junk? Is anybody aboard?”

“We’re gonna find out.”

“Chief Brodie, you there?”

“Aye, Skipper?”

“Better sitrep Reno and the SRO.”

“Copy that.”

Sweaty, dirty, Scott sagged against a wall and peered with NV past the shattered glass doors into the villa’s main living area. He desperately wanted to rest, but there was no time. Fat and possibly some of his men might be hiding in the labyrinth of the villa’s interior. Fat had to be captured alive and interrogated to find out what had gone wrong, why the mission had been a colossal fuckup.

* * *

Deng Zemin, eye to the periscope, said, “There are fires burning on Matsu Shan.” His comment was unnecessary: The first officer was watching the video monitor slaved to the periscope. To him it looked as if the whole island was on fire.

“An accident perhaps?…” said the first officer.

“Perhaps, but I don’t think so,” Zemin said. “Infrared indicates very high temperatures but small thermal cores. Weapons, perhaps.”

The first officer made notes on his electronic data pad.

Zemin folded the periscope’s training handles and nodded. The scope dropped away. After considering, he said, “Come to new heading, one-nine-zero. Engage creep motor. Observe ultra-quiet routine. Initiate passive sonar search for Target One.”

The first officer accorded Zemin a look of understanding. They had been fooled: A U.S. 688I was in the area after all. Which meant that U.S. Navy SEALs were likely in the area too. Maybe on Matsu Shan. If so, then a mini-sub had put them ashore and was waiting to take them off. Find the mini-sub, find the 688I.

19

Key Largo, Florida

The president stood, hands in pockets, gazing out over Florida Bay, which was chockablock with pleasure craft, at Coast Guard and Secret Service boats chasing down those that had violated the Florida White House’s no-sail zone.

The president turned his attention back to the five men seated by the swimming pool around a table cluttered with sweating glassware, empty potato chip bags, and luncheon plates with uneaten pickles. They had arrived wearing clothes more suitable for the colder weather in Washington, D.C. They had shed their jackets and ties but not the pallor they’d acquired from spending too-long days and nights in conference rooms and offices.

The president sat down again at his place between Carter Ellsworth and Secretary of Defense Dale Gordon. National Security Advisor Paul Friedman faced the president and was flanked by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Jack Webster, and by the deputy chief of the CIA, Holland Paige.