But still the sweat poured, and his heart raced.
He opened the door and climbed down from the cab, walking with the cop to the back of the truck, unlocking the steel double doors and letting them swing open.
The cop looked at the cardboard boxes piled high, then at Yuan, seeming to assess him.
Then he turned, shouting to his colleagues.
Yuan could hear booted feet racing to the truck and his heart nearly leapt out of his chest. Damn it! He didn’t even have his revolver. What the hell was he going to do?
Silently, as smoothly as he could, Yuan’s hand went to his belt, sliding out a thin metal dagger from the horizontal sheath disguised by the thick leather. He palmed it by his side, looking for his opening.
He was still going through his options, his mind racing, when the two other cops stopped next to him and stared into the back, whistling appreciatively, clapping their friend on the shoulder.
What the hell was going on?
The first cop jumped on board and started rooting through the boxes, pulling one from the top of a large pile. It was a forty inch, 3D LCD television, and he called for his colleagues to assist him.
Yuan watched in open-mouthed wonder as they took the TV off the back of his truck and carried it across the brightly-lit nighttime highway towards their own vehicles.
It was a shakedown, as simple as that.
Just as slowly and smoothly as he’d withdrawn it, Yuan sheathed his dagger, amazed that he’d come so close to using it, supremely happy that he hadn’t needed to.
The cops returned twice more, a gift for each of them carted away to the roadblock vehicles, and Yuan just stood there and watched.
When they had finished, the policeman who had been dealing with him looked at him sternly. ‘I presume you know what happened here?’ he asked Yuan.
‘Nothing,’ Yuan said, hiding his elation and pretending to be glum about being robbed. ‘Nothing happened here.’
‘Good,’ the cop said, gesturing to his notebook, and then to his gun. ‘Because we know where you live, if you understand me.’
Yuan just nodded sullenly.
‘Good,’ the cop said again, all smiles now, ‘you are free to go. And please be careful — there are some dangerous people out there.’
‘I will,’ Yuan replied. ‘Thank you for the advice.’
As he climbed back into the cab, Yuan heard the policeman laughing as he strolled back to his friends.
But the cop had no idea that the man he’d just robbed was laughing too.
5
The fishing vessel had finally docked in a small inlet off to the starboard side, and the SDV now continued up the Yongding New River alone.
Cole wasn’t overly concerned that they’d lost their cover, now that they had worked their way inland to some extent, but was monitoring everything very carefully just to be on the safe side — not just the GPS and sonar systems, but the waters themselves, always on the lookout for anything unusual.
He also had to make sure the SDV was continuing to go the right way; to starboard up ahead was the turn-off for a whole network of inland waterways, which they would have to avoid — if they took a wrong turn, it might take them hours to correct the error.
Immediately adjacent to that, as the Yongding curved around to the left was a small island which connected to the left bank of the river via a bridge. If the SDV went to the port side of the island, it would have to slip in between the bridge pylons, which would be unlikely to show up on the sonar systems in enough detail to avoid. Collins would have to rely on the underwater night-vision goggles and pilot the SDV by sight.
The chance of impact in such a situation was too great, and Cole therefore wanted the SDV to take the path between the turnoff for the waterways and the clear starboard side of the island.
Monitoring the ship’s systems, and also the murky green view up ahead, Cole gave hand signals to help guide Collins on the correct route, and he saw now the bulge of the island underwater on the port side, happy they were going the right way.
Confident in Collins’ skills in getting the SDV past the island, he switched gears in his mind to the next section of river, which would take them on a northwesterly course to the rendezvous by the G25 expressway.
His mind occupied, nothing prepared Cole for the incredible noise that suddenly assaulted him, the impact, the shocking, abrupt motion of the SDV as it rolled up and down underneath the water.
Collins looked at him as if to say, what the hell was that?, and Cole could only return the look right back. He had no idea what it could be, nothing had appeared on his instruments; and yet as he looked back behind the SDV, he saw the water swirling as if something had exploded behind them.
Were they under attack?
Cole chopped his hand forwards, giving the signal to Collins to accelerate and get them the hell out of there, and then the impact came again, the colossal sound, the surge of water; and then again, and then again.
The SDV was pulling away, increasing distance when the waters behind started to clear and Cole, hanging out of the side of the SDV, zoomed in with his night-vision goggles to try and see what had nearly hit them.
But when he finally identified it and reached over to tap Collins’ arm, signaling him to slow down, he couldn’t help but smile.
It was kids.
Four kids, half-naked teenagers, kicking and swimming now for the island which the SDV was leaving behind. Cole remembered that there was a bridge over the river just before the island, and realized the kids must have jumped off, dive-bombing into the river.
Cole could barely believe he’d mistaken four teenagers for dangerous explosive weapons, and suppressed a laugh. The bridge was high, and their impact upon hitting the water was exactly like the concussive blast of a grenade.
But, Cole decided, he and the team could laugh about it later; it was during times of relief that you let your guard down, and that was when things could really get you.
And so, back to business, Cole directed the SDV to the northwest and continued with the mission.
Captain Hank Sherman was, like Cole, still on high alert. He too knew the old samurai adage — ‘after the battle, it’s time to tighten your helmet straps’.
It would have been all too easy to have disgorged the SDV, collected back the SEAL dive team, and set back home while patting himself on the back, congratulating himself on a job well done.
But he knew that complacency was the military man’s worst enemy, and it was during the ‘quiet after the storm’ that the worst things always happened; and they happened simply because you weren’t expecting them, which doubled or tripled the psychological impact. He knew that soldiers would try and re-take a piece of ground immediately after losing it for this very reason; the enemy would be high on their perceived success, would make the fatal mistake of relaxing, and thus be completely unprepared to defend their new position effectively.
And Sherman knew very well that he wasn’t out of trouble yet; while he might have got the USS Texas through the East China Sea, the Yellow Sea, and right into the middle of the nearly enclosed Bohai Sea successfully and without detection, he knew this was only one half of the equation.
Now he had to get out again, and there was no reason to think things would be any easier on the way out than they’d been on the way in.
Added to which, there was always the chance that the SDV and its commando team would be discovered, and then the Chinese navy would go all-out to try and find the submarine which had dropped it off.