"And they do the same on this beach, I would imagine."
Tse scowled. "Not so often as you might imagine. Not successfully at any rate."
Morton said nothing. The Taiwanese defenders would only know of the failed infiltrations, the ones that had been detected. No matter. Both sides continued to play their deadly games. It was curious, though, that as the war of words was heating up between Taipei and Beijing, as missiles flew across the strait as exclamation marks to Beijing's harangues, this bit of coastline was preternaturally peaceful and quiet.
Tse turned away, and Morton sensed that he'd ruffled the man's feelings. Remember your orders, he thought. Keep your hosts happy.
"This is the place where the Communists invaded Kinmen, isn't it?" he asked. "I was reading about Taiwan and saw an article about the battle."
"Yes!" Tse said, turning back with a smile on his broad face. "You can read about the whole action at the Kuningtou Battlefield Museum." He gestured toward the northwest and a low promontory of land extending north into the channel. "It is there, at that point."
"Military history is a weakness of mine," Morton explained. "I'll have to see it while I'm here."
"Ah! It was a glorious battle! October twenty-fifth, 1949. The Generalissimo's forces had suffered many sad defeats on the mainland, and his forces were falling back to Taiwan. Communist forces stormed ashore on this very beach at two in the morning. They walked headlong into a column of PRC tanks behind the beach. Kuomintang forces swiftly closed in with air attacks and ships. The Communists were forced back on that point of land… there… with their backs to the sea. After twenty-five hours, more Communists landed, but by that time reinforcements had been rushed in from Taiwan. After a fifty-six-hour battle, the last surviving Communists surrendered, at ten a.m., October twenty-seventh. It was a desperately needed victory for Generalissimo Chiang. As a result, Kinmen Island remained free, along with Matsu, further up the coast."
Morton nodded. He had read about the affair, and Tse had not exaggerated the battle's importance. Fifteen thousand Chinese had died in that single, bloody bit of fratricide.
Though the West had largely forgotten about them now, the two small islands of Kinmen and Liehyu, and the archipelago of eighteen tiny islets that comprised Matsu about 170 miles northeast up the China coast, had been very much in the news in 1958, when the People's Republic under Mao had demanded their surrender. The Soviet premier, Krushchev, had been trying to rein in Mao's impetuous adventurism; for his part, Mao rankled that Krushchev didn't consider China a full equal of both the U.S. and the USSR in the world political arena. The two leaders had met secretly for three days in July 1958. Mao's response to Krushchev's patronizing efforts at diplomacy had been to open a forty-four-day bombardment of Quemoy and Matsu. Almost half a million artillery shells rained down on tiny Kinmen alone during that six-week onslaught between August twenty-third and October sixth. The entire world had held its breath, expecting that this was the beginning of World War III.
Morton and raised his binoculars again. A small PLA patrol boat was motoring slowly east along the coast. Her awkward silhouette with a central, squared-off pilot house identified her as a Beihai-class craft, eighty tons and less than thirty meters long, with quad-mounted 25mm antiaircraft guns forward and a second mount aft. She wasn't flying a flag or ensign and probably belonged to a local Communist militia. She chugged slowly along the coast, just outside of the surf line next to the mainland, making perhaps twelve knots.
"Right on time," Tse said, noticing that Morton was tracking the patrol boat with his binoculars. "We will time our approach to avoid their maritime patrols, of course. These days, they are not as zealous in their rounds as they once were."
"Do they have anything larger in the area?"
"A few Huangfeng-class missile patrol boats… that is a PLA-built version of the old Soviet Osa I. And there is at least one Hainan-class patrol boat in the area, but its appearances are infrequent. Our biggest tactical problem, though, will be the large number of armed trawlers. The PLA and local militias employ hundreds of them up and down the coast. They are ordinary fishing trawlers of one or two hundred tons, but armed, usually with one or two machine guns. They perform double duty…as legitimate fishing boats and as fisheries patrol craft, and therefore they have no set patrol schedule."
"No sophisticated sensors or sonar equipment, though?"
"No. Absolutely not." Tse grinned. "Not even fish-finders! Keep in mind that in many ways we are still dealing with a third world nation. The PLA believes in numbers, not in technology."
Tse's confidence on that point was worrisome. In general, yes, Mainland China employed military technologies twenty to thirty or more years behind those of the United States… but they still fielded a well-equipped, well-trained, and fanatically dedicated military force, one intent on catching up to the West in all respects.
The sound of footsteps on wet concrete coming up the stairs behind him interrupted his thoughts. Lieutenant Commander Chris Logan joined them, saluting as he approached.
"Excuse me… Commander Morton? Commander
Tse?"
"Good evening, Commander Logan," Tse said. He bowed slightly to Morton. "I shall allow you two to talk."
"Thank you, sir." As Tse drew off, Garrett addressed his 2IC. "Hey, Jammer. Whatcha got?"
"The men are all squared away at the new barracks, Skipper. No problem there. Flying roaches the size of your hand. Some of the guys are threatening to start hunting them, secure a little extra protein with the meal rations."
"Sounds good."
"We may have a problem with the local ammo, though. The stuff's ancient."
"Five five-six?"
"Yessir. The parafrogs mostly carry Taiwan copies of the M-16A1. Fires 5.56 by 45mm rounds. But they have old stuff, too. Even thirty-cal M-1 rifles, World War Two vintage."
"They've had to make do a long time. I've seen some of the soldiers here on Kinmen carrying Taiwan copies of Thompson submachine guns."
"Cool. Good weapons."
"What kind of weapons do they have in the specfor armory? Chicom gear?"
"Lots of Chinese Communist stuff, yeah. Plenty of Type 68s and Type 73s." Those were various Chinese copies of the Soviet AK-47.
"And lots of seven six-two to go with them?"
"Yes, sir. And it looks to be in pretty good shape."
"I think I'm going to suggest that we go in carrying Chicom weapons," Morton said. "We're allowed to use our initiative on this one, but our orders are damned specific about not alerting the PLA to an American force trespassing on their territory."
"Some of the guys were talking about using suppressed H and Ks. Of course," Logan added with a grin, "if we actually get into a firefight, we've screwed up."
"Always," Morton replied. "Okay, I guess I wouldn't mind having a couple of H and Ks along for quiet wet work."
"What about Tse's people?"
"That's up to them." He shook his head. "I don't have a good feeling about this one, Jammer."
"I know what you mean, Skipper. No time to train, no time to get to know our opposite numbers."
"And we're going to be completely in their hands. They've routinely infiltrated over there. We haven't. I don't know why SOCOM doesn't just have them take out those launchers. Definitely high-risk, with low payoff. I have the feeling we're here just for show, for politics, and that's never good."
"Well, if we get into trouble over there, we can always call for help. We know we can get artillery support, and if we're real lucky, maybe they'll send us sexy underwear."
Both SEALs laughed. Taiwan's use of women's underwear had provided endless amusement for the platoon since they'd first heard the story.