It was then that the RPG exploded on the port lip of the cockpit. Buffalo could see one guard drop to the deck. He didn’t wait for the second. He motioned the platoon on, and as he kept his machine gun aimed at the deck, four of his shooters made their way slowly up the slick slope of the bow, gaining ground at the more level hull near the hatch. They crouched under the cover of the sail, rapidly pulling gear out of their combat vests. The SEALs were vulnerable but it had to be done. When the four shooters from his platoon had their weapons deployed, he and Buckethead tucked their guns in their vests and climbed the slope of the sonar dome. Once on deck, Buffalo pulled out his ski mask, radio and MAC-10, replacing the clip with fresh ammunition. He tested his radio, then ordered the platoon to go below.
As usual on a SEAL OP the commander of a unit went first — SEALs did not believe in leading from the rear. Buffalo took the ladder rungs two at a time and dropped silently to the deck, leveling his machine gun at the approaches to the ladder. The space seemed deserted. He was in a narrow passageway running fore-and-aft.
At six feet five inches tall and two hundred and fifty pounds, “Buffalo” (short for “Water Buffalo”) Sauer was the proverbial gentle giant, except on an OP. His moniker and radio handle came from his inordinate need for water — drinking, not swimming, although some thought the latter was linked in some mysterious fashion to the former, and hence his joining up with the SEALs. Unlike Morris, Buffalo Sauer seemed quiet to passive on the outside, but Morris and those around Sauer knew that that had nothing to do with the toughness inside, all of which Sauer needed now.
He ordered the assembled platoon to go, and covered the ladder way to the hatch above while the men proceeded up the stairs to the middle level. As he joined them he thought he heard something in the captain’s stateroom, some sort of struggle, but his orders were to stick to the plan. The upper level of the forward compartment was Commander Morris’ assignment To stay here would put the team in danger of being in the path of Morris’ bullets. Buffalo continued down the steep staircase to the middle level, emerging into a narrow passageway that ran the length of the compartment.
He sent a two-man team into a door leading to the petty officers’ quarters, a second team to the port crew berthing rooms, while he and the remaining men continued aft along the passageway to its termination at the crew’s mess. For a space that should be holding the entire ship’s crew, the level so far had been life less, as had the upper level. It wasn’t possible that all the guards had been killed when he and the platoon had come aboard … or could the Chinese have evacuated the ship before the SEALs got there?
Buffalo and Buckethead slowly approached the mess, one of the largest spaces aboard, roughly the size of a small restaurant. The last time Buffalo had raided a 688-class ship the men in the mess had been watching a movie. Taking it had been easy. But now the room could be a holding pen for several dozen prisoners, guarded by ten or more armed Chinese. Buffalo looked into Buckethead Williams’s eyes. No question, the man was pumped, his forehead broken out in sweat, his pupils dilated.
For a moment Buffalo wished he could just lob a stun grenade into the mess. He had considered it when he and Morris had drawn up the assault plan but Morris had vetoed it. The prisoners would be suffering from lack of food, respiratory infections and weakness.
A stun grenade that would paralyze a Chinese guard for a half hour might well kill a man suffering from pneumonia and starvation.
As Buffalo neared the end of the passageway, he could see men in the crew’s mess. He waved Buckethead in behind him as he accelerated into a sprint and ran into the room.
The next seconds seemed hours, the effect of the shot of adrenaline as he crashed into the room, a world of slow motion. Every bench was full of seated men, all wearing blue coveralls, most with their heads on the table tops. The floor space between tables was crammed with bodies, also wearing the blue submariner’s coveralls. Their faces were paper white, thin, emaciated. A memory was keyed in his mind; the faces reminded him of the pictures he’d seen depicting the prisoners in Nazi death camps. The next impression that hit him was the awful stench. The men had been in a sweatbox for days, sitting in their own filth. It was like a stockyard.
Buffalo looked up to the aft bulkhead. Along the wall a row of Chinese guards stood at semi-attention, all wearing Mao jackets and liberty caps with the red star in the center. The guards’ faces were starting to move in reaction to the entry of the SEALs. The next sound Buffalo heard was automatic rifle fire, the cough of a close MAC-10. The sound was coming from his own gun, his body reflexively aiming and firing. The chests of the guards spotted red as the bullets smashed into them. Surprise had neutralized them — for a moment.
He heard a rapid series of shots from over his right shoulder, gunshots that were not the rapid blips of the silenced MAC-lOs but the deep-throated barking of an AK-47. He pivoted, bringing up his weapon, and saw a guard standing against the forward bulkhead in the blind corner along the port side. The guard was emptying his clip, shooting every round he had, not at the SEALs but at the helpless, prostrate men on the deck and at the tables. Buffalo, in a rage, leveled his MAC-10 at the guard, and fired ten rounds into the man’s chest, knowing he should have budgeted only three but the fury of the moment had taken over. He had a brief impression of the other SEALs targeting the guard, the man’s chest exploding, yet he continued to fire into the prisoners, as he sank to the deck. At least a dozen men had been hit or killed.
Buffalo started to call Doc Sheffield to attend them while he and Buckethead took the remainder of the middle level deck. The call was interrupted by the sound of rifle fire coming from the starboard side of the middle level. Officers’ country. He reloaded, checked Buckethead and ran forward to the passageway and toward the door to the wardroom. He took a deep breath, allowing himself just a moment to try to clear his mind of the awful scene he’d just left and prepare himself for what was coming.
Jack Morris shielded his eyes as “Cowpie” Clites’ acetylene torch burned through the side of the forward escape trunk. They were forced to cut through it rather than exit by the lower hatch, which led down to the crew’s mess. With the hostages being held there, an entering team would be shot by the guards. Finally, Clites and “Pig” Wilson pulled in the circle of steel cut by the torch. Morris stepped into the navigation room, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the comparative brightness of the compartment’s fluorescent lights. He felt the strange sensation of his mind fissioning into two separate but parallel parts, one side focused on the action of the present, a second on recording and analyzing. The forward compartment, as Morris knew from his raids on other 688-class submarines, took up roughly the forward forty percent of the submarine.
It was separated from the reactor compartment by a thick-shielded steel bulkhead with only one door in the middle level. So even though he came from the forward escape trunk, he was now in the furthest aft portion of this part of the sub. The port end of the room led to the fan room, the starboard to the radio room. A forward door led to control. A ladder way dropped to the lower decks.
Morris stepped away from the trunk to allow the other men of the second platoon to follow him, while he crouched down, his weapon seeking guards who could come from the radio room door, the fan room, or forward. For a moment he thought back to Norfolk Naval Air Station, where Admiral Donchez had given him the full picture of the Go Hai Bay operation and assured him that he and his men could liberate the Tamp a.
Now he wasn’t so sure. Something inevitably went wrong with every operation — nothing was ever all right. What was it this time? The screw up with the cruise missiles? Something else waiting to mess them up? Now that his men’s footsteps were coming from the escape trunk the time for worrying was over.