The cammies in the waterproof pouches were a precaution. They needed to be prepared in case they did get cut off from the water or had to go inland to that other facility. The cammies were much easier to fight in on land than the restrictive wet suits.
Murdock went over and over their plans for the poison-gas missiles. They had to be disabled without letting any of the gas escape. They didn't want to kill a hundred thousand Chinese. Besides, if they ruptured the containers, the thirteen SEALS on-site would be the first to die.
Murdock heard motors in the water. They sounded close. He turned the light on his attack board up high and pointed it around him in a signal to the others. It meant come to the light. Soon he had all the men close by. Murdock signaled that he was going up for a sneak and peek.
He lifted to the surface and pushed out his face so he could see around. He pulled back his mask. Not fifty yards to starboard he saw a Chinese patrol craft. It idled in the water. He could hear the crew chattering. For a moment he thought about simply ignoring it and going back to depth and proceeding. He changed his mind and he and Holt went back down to the men. He found Willy Bishop. With hand signals he told the men to stay at depth and wait. He untied himself from Holt, then took Bishop to the surface. They pulled out their rebreather mouthpieces and talked. "You have some TNAZ handy?" Bishop nodded. Murdock pointed to the idling patrol boat. "Let's give them a small blast. Enough to blow it out of the water with a ten-minute fuse."
Murdock lifted Bishop far enough out of the water that he could unzip a waterproof pocket on his vest and take out half of a quarter-pound chunk of TNAZ. He took a timer detonator from another pocket, and then Murdock let him down. He held both out of the water and inserted the detonator into the chunk of explosive and set the timer for ten minutes. They both swam silently toward the boat. There were no lookouts.
Bishop wedged the explosive into a fitting on the boat about two feet above the waterline. He pushed the timer to activate it, and they dove down and swam back to where the rest waited. Jaybird was waving the attack board with its light fifteen feet underwater, and they found the rest easily.
Murdock checked his watch. They swam toward their objective for seven minutes. Then he motioned the others to the surface. They watched behind them. The boat had moved farther away from shore. They could see its running lights. A minute later the sky flashed with a bright blue-white flame and a rolling thunder of the explosion rocketed across the water at them. The patrol boat shattered into a hundred pieces and the fuel on board caught fire, and for a moment a bright light cut into the darkness. Then it faded.
Murdock motioned down and the men went to fifteen feet and resumed their swim toward the shore.
Before long Murdock could hear engines powering above them. They must have sent out more patrol boats to find out what had happened to the first one. Nobody would ever know. It would give the Chinese something to wonder about. For a moment Murdock thought it might put the Chinese on a higher alert. He was sure the whole country was alerted after what had happened at the atomic island and at the air base. This explosion sinking a patrol boat wouldn't help. The Chinese had too much coastline to really seal it off to invaders. That was one military problem China would always have.
Murdock and Holt, tied together again, swam for another twenty minutes. They should be close to shore. He and Holt worked up to the surface for a look.
They could see the lights of the town now. It was a big place. Ahead they spotted the entrance to the harbor marked by a row of lighted buoys. Convenient. As they watched, they saw a pair of boats larger than the patrol craft. The two boats worked back and forth across the channel leading into the harbor like a pair of Prussian guards. They must have sonar and radar, but neither would show the swimmers. The only way the boats could find them would be with some frogmen of their own.
They all swam again. Soon they were under the guard boats near the channel. They kept swimming forward, the sound of the guard boats faded, and they were inside the bay. A hundred yards farther inside, Murdock lifted to the surface again to check, and found the channel marker buoys where they should be. The SEALS hugged the left side of the entrance and worked along close to the shore. They were at less than fifteen feet now as the water became more shallow in this undeveloped part of the harbor.
They almost swam into a point of land inside the bay, and Murdock surfaced for a moment to check his position. Yes. Around this point and then along the side of the bay for maybe a half mile. The Chinese Navy docks should be in that area. They moved cautiously now, past some warehouses, some shallow water docks, then a boatyard.
Murdock took one more quick peek. They were just outside the Navy's restricted area. He saw docks, warships, and the part he was interested in — Pier 12. It was clearly marked. On Pier 12 was the warehouse where the loaded gas missiles were supposed to be held prior to loading on the Luda-class destroyers.
From the dark waters of the bay a hundred yards offshore, the SEALS checked out the dock and its security. It had much more protection than they could see from the satellite photos.
The building itself was set twenty feet back from the edge of the pier, evidently to facilitate loading. There were two chain-link fences around this end and side of the warehouse. They spotted a roving guard on foot. Inside the fences Murdock pinpointed four stationary guards. The fences could be electrified.
Behind the fences he could see big double truck-type doors and a smaller one to the side. Just getting into the building would be a fight.
He sent word back to Bishop to come up front.
"The wire," Murdock whispered to him.
"No problem. Use primer cord and cut a man-sized hole in the first one and then the second one. Need some fire support. Have to have those sentries and guards eliminated first."
"Are the fences electrically charged?"
Bishop took another look at the setup and shook his head. "No, Sir. No juice in them. Be a snap to cut through."
Murdock used hand signals to the clustered SEALS, and Red Nicholson and Kenneth Ching moved out as scouts to get under the dock and then on-site and take out the roving guard.
They swam underwater to the pier, went under the wooden supports to some dry land, and took off their rebreathers and fins. Then they went up the ladder to the dock. The roving guard outside the wire moved toward them unaware. Red cut him down with a three-round silenced burst from an MP-5. At that point none of the stationary guards could see them. The two SEALS pulled the body off the dock and dropped him into the bay. They kept his AK-47 and four magazines of ammo.
The two SEALS waited out of sight from the dock on the ladder, and Murdock couldn't figure out why. Then he spotted a second roving guard riding a bicycle up the dock. When he was almost beside them, Ching jumped up and said something in Chinese. The man turned his way. Ching grabbed him, applied a choke hold from the back, and lifted the man off his feet and let him fall, a foot breaking his neck.
Chin dropped the dead guard into the bay and sent his bike in after him.
Now they looked for the fixed guard posts. Ching stayed where he was, and Nicholson went back to the ground under the edge of the pier and ran down to the second ladder up from the water. It was fifty feet down the dock and gave him a better view of the side of the building. Nicholson now used a silenced M-4A1, the old CAR-15 with its.223 screamer rounds. He lifted just over the edge of the dock and checked his field of fire. Just the two fences. He'd have to hope one of his rounds would get through.
The guard on his end was in a small shelter at that end of the building. Nicholson braced on the ladder, leaned on the dock, and set up his shot. He tried for a chest hit. Red fired twice and the guard slumped in his guard station.