In moments the Chinese troops along the southeastern side of the hilltop were dead, wounded, or fleeing in utter confusion. Morton gave the call over the tactical channel for Tse and his men to come on down.
Minutes later the Taiwanese commandos were jogging down the slope, carrying their dead and wounded with them. Tse met Morton at the edge of the clearing and shook the American's hand. "Thank you, Commander. I… don't quite know what to say."
" 'Thanks' will do fine for now. Let's get the hell out of here."
"Affirmative to that!"
Bullets snipped among the leaves overhead. The PLA forces were reorganizing. The Taiwanese and their American escort began moving south along the dirt road, the last men in the column walking backwards laying down heavy bursts of rearguard fire.
Five minutes later the first Chinese troops came down the road, a couple of platoons on foot, and more piled into the backs of four trucks. The SEALs of Second Squad, well-hidden in the forest, waited until the lead elements were already past before triggering the first pair of claymore mines… then the second… then the third….
The claymores, each with its distinctive, convex-curved "This side toward enemy" face, had been mounted on their tripods in a staggered array that blanketed the road from both sides. Packed with seven hundred ball bearings apiece and a kilo and a half of shaped high explosives, claymores acted like titanic shotguns when triggered, slicing through vegetation, flesh, and even light armor in broad, expanding swathes of bloody destruction. With the kill-zones of the mines overlapping, the Chinese troops on the road were shredded by blast upon blast upon devastating blast.
PLA troops outside the kill zones immediately plunged into the woods beside the road, seeking to avoid further emplaced mines; thirty yards into the forest, they ran headlong into another line of claymores, set by the retreating SEALs to further discourage close pursuit.
The survivors were not eager to follow closely. The SEALs began leapfrogging backward, one line of men crouching in the brush, covering the rest as they fell back, then falling back in turn while the other SEALs covered them. Before long, contact with the enemy was broken, and there were no further sounds of pursuit.
The rain fell harder, as thunder — natural thunder as opposed to the manmade variety that had echoed off the hills earlier — boomed. The SEALs and their Taiwanese allies continued moving south, then east, back toward their insertion point.
Gradually, as the fast-paced minutes of the skirmish lengthened into hours, Garrett ordered Seawolf's speed increased, putting more and more distance between the submarine and any possible search and pursuit.
From the sounds dwindling astern, the PLA Navy had lost the Seawolf completely in the explosion and in the next few moments of chaos. A dozen other naval vessels, from patrol boats to a second Luda, were converging on the area, and Toynbee was even able to report the presence of helicopters passing overhead, so sensitive were Seawolf's underwater ears.
An initial survey of the damage to the boat was completed. The sail was partly flooded. It was sealed off from the rest of the boat by watertight doors, but the periscopes and electronic masts still worked. Handling was a bit sluggish; with water in the sail, Seawolf was top heavy and clumsy but still answered well to the helm.
And there'd been only one casualty — Lawless. The crew was silent, at first.
"Skipper?" Lieutenant Ward said after a long time. "Yes?"
"Didn't you run into a Chinese ship with your last command?"
Ward's tone had a sparkle to it. He was attempting an uneasy joke, hoping, perhaps, to lighten the atmosphere inside the control room.
Good man, Garrett thought. Thanks for the straight line.
"Actually, what I hit last time was a Chinese Kilo-class submarine," he said. "Not, properly speaking, a ship. This time, though, I thought I'd try to ram the destroyer instead. At command school they call this 'innovative tactics.' What do you think?"
Gentle laughter and nervous chuckles fluttered through the control room.
"I'd say, sir," Ward replied, "that any tactics that let you walk out of an enemy harbor full of ASW assets is a good one."
"Thank you, Weps. And good work on swimming that fish. That's what helped us break contact." He waited a beat, then added, "You know, people, I'm going to have to think about this. Hitting the enemy target with a torpedo instead of with my submarine. That's such a wild idea, it just might work!"
It was a weak joke, he thought, but this time the laughter was louder and harder, without the nervousness. While a skipper was expected to show no weakness, he thought he could afford a bit of self-deprecation. The crew would need a strong bond to get them past a double assault on their emotions…the abrupt transition from peace to war, and the death of Captain Lawless.
"Sonar, Conn. What do you have nearby?"
"Nothing close, Captain," came the reply. "We're in the clear."
"Up periscope."
The Mark 18 scope slid smoothly up through the overhead, and Garrett took his place at the eyepiece. In the fast-dwindling light he could just make out the humps of mountains to the northwest. Walking the scope through a full 360, he saw no surface vessels on the horizon at all.
"Radio Shack. What do we have up there?"
"Lots of traffic, Skipper. We're recording."
At Garrett's command, Seawolf released a souvenir of her visit — a radio transmission buoy keyed to send an account of the action just past after an hour's elapsed time. It informed those higher up the chain of command that the Seawolf had been slightly damaged and that Garrett had taken command after Lawless's death. If enemy listeners homed on the brief, burst transmission, they would find only empty ocean.
"Down scope," he said at last. He grinned at Tollini. "You know, that's a hell of a note, when the only defensive maneuver we can make is 'down periscope.' "
"We used to say that on board the Miami when we pulled duty inside the Persian Gulf," Dougherty put in. "The water's so shallow there you feel like a bug on a plate."
"Should get better from here on out, Skipper," the diving officer said. "Bottom is dropping fast… we're passing the hundred-foot mark now."
"Good. Mr. Simms… plot us a course north toward the strait, best possible speed. We'll need to surface after it's dark to make repairs to the sail. And we'll need to see what COMSUBPAC has in mind for us. Until they tell us otherwise, though, I'm assuming we're go for our original mission — to listen for Chinese subs in the Strait of Formosa."
"Those orders'll likely read 'listen for, find, and sink' now," Dougherty said.
"Agreed. It would be nice to get in a few licks of our own."
A radioman entered the control room, a message flimsy in hand. "Captain? Flash-priority urgent. From COMSUBPAC."
"Well, they're on the ball!" COB said. "They don't have our update yet," Garrett said. He scanned the decrypted message.
TO: CO USS SEAWOLF, SSN21
FROM: CINC COMSUBPAC
DATE: 20 MAY 01
USS JARRETT, FFG33, SUNK BY ENEMY ACTION FORMOSA STRAITS 1815 HRS 20 MAY. A STATE OF WAR IS CONSIDERED TO EXIST AT THIS TIME BETWEEN THE US AND THE PRC. YOU ARE DIRECTED TO TAKE SEAWOLF INTO THE STRAIT OF FORMOSA AND COMMENCE OPERATIONS ALONG MAINLAND CHINESE COAST, ENGAGING ALL ENEMY TARGETS WITH SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON PRC SUBMARINE ASSETS.
There was more to the message — signal codes and communications protocols, for the most part, and a purely gratuitous warning not to allow Seawolf to be trapped in Hong Kong, but the body of the message was brutally to the point.