The other team members and I tracked Jed, Volodya, and Priest's progress on Fei's computer screen, which displayed the camera feed for each of the three soldiers. Douglas, Fei, and I were the ones directly tasked with providing technical support for the mission, so we sat at a table right next to the screen. Taleb, Dietrich, Grant, and Brook hovered nearby, listening in and seeing the progress of the mission on the glasses cam feeds.
When Priest announced that he was ready, Douglas replied, "Alright, lads, get moving. You've got four hours of night left."
On a second computer screen, Fei had a satellite view of the mission running with map data overlaid. Because the mission was taking place at night, the camera was switched to thermal mode, detecting the heat emissions of the area. We watched as the blue markers indicating the three men began to move away from the van and toward their objective.
The men were about ten miles northeast of Quanzhou, the port city directly across the Taiwan Strait from the battlefield. Two miles downstream from the men, the massive railroad bridge stretched across the wide mouth of the Luoyang River.
Volodya and Jed moved straight to the river itself. I watched on Volodya's video stream as the Russian commando emerged from the brush to look out over the water. It was an overcast night, perfect for our purposes. The lights of refineries downstream suffused the night with a yellowish haze, not bright enough to see by, but bright enough that patrolling soldiers of the People's Liberation Army could not adjust their eyes well enough to the dark of the river to see any approaching threats.
Of course, as close as Volodya and Jed were to the water, they couldn't help but notice its color.
“Is that goddamn stuff orange?” Jed whispered with disgust.
Volodya laughed softly. “It's like a cleaner version of the Black Sea. Someday I must tell you about my days planting mines in Sevastopol. You'll quickly forget the smell. Just don't swallow any of it.”
Douglas covered the microphone in front of him and said, “Bloody liar. That smell never goes away.”
The Russian and American commandos stripped off their clothes, revealing wetsuits underneath. Each took a waterproof, silenced Ak-2000U submachine gun from their backpack and slung it over their shoulder.
“Just like the good old days,” Volodya noted with an affected wistful grin. “Swimming through some chemist's mess with nothing but Aleksandr Kalashnikov to keep me safe. Ah well, such is life in the Spetsnaz and Colonel Douglas's Holy Mercenary Army.”
Douglas guffawed at the observation, and Volodya smiled at the shared joviality as he checked his rebreather mouthpiece.
Despite his statement about Aleksandr Kalashnikov, Volodya also took the time to strap an old Spetsnaz knife to his hip to complete his kit. Jed, the explosives expert and stronger swimmer, carried their thirty pounds of plastic explosives. When he had strapped the last of his gear into place, he reported to Volodya and to Douglas, “Ready to go.”
Douglas answered, “The next train's due in 45 minutes. Get your asses moving.”
“Yes, sir,” both Volodya and Jed responded.
The two stepped out into the river. The water was cold, as one would expect in a river still swollen with the spring melt, though the wetsuit removed much of the chill. Without a word, the two commandos swam about a hundred feet to the middle of the river and began the trek downstream.
Priest wended his way through the vegetation on the north bank, always endeavoring to stay as far away as possible from the large highways that traced both sides of the river. He froze every time a car whizzed by on the highway, an infrequent occurrence now that the wartime gasoline rationing in China had begun to take effect.
Priest's equipment differed somewhat from that of his colleagues swimming down the Luoyang River. A silenced Dragunov sniper rifle graced his back, a weapon whose design was significantly older than its user. It was, however, dependable and, more importantly, standard PLA issue, meaning that little valuable information could be derived in the case of its capture. In his hands, Priest carried a .40 caliber pistol in case he ran into anyone on his way down the river. Finally, a single flashbang grenade hung down from one of the shoulder straps of his backpack. With that equipment, he made his way along the riverbank.
Twenty minutes passed. Fei zoomed out from our team members to survey the Chinese garrison at the bridge.
There were twenty gray blobs on and around the bridge, most of them gathered in the guard shacks and makeshift encampments on either end. Three sets of two soldiers each paced around the narrow walkway on either end of the railroad tracks.
Even from a satellite a hundred miles overhead, it was clear that the soldiers were mostly going through the motions. They did not stop often to scan the river as they would have if an attack were realistically expected.
Priest made his way through the sparse vegetation. Each step was cautious — with a sniper rifle slung across his back in the middle of enemy territory, there could be no talking himself out of trouble. Any encounter would cost the life of at least one of the parties involved.
The background noise of the highway stole his ability to hear anyone nearby and the stench of the river robbed him of his olfactory sense, but he wore nightvision goggles to augment the one source of information left to him.
Suddenly, a voice sounded off to Priest's left asking a question in Chinese, and the Taiwanese naval commando froze in his tracks. A moment passed, and the voice sounded again, this time much closer.
Fei translated for us. “Put your hands up!”
No one else in our house spoke as we watched Priest's glasses video feed.
Priest turned to face the questioners. Two policemen had come through the bushes, and now they stood about fifteen feet away, their service pistols drawn and pointed at the man they had found prowling along the river with a sniper rifle and silenced pistol.
Fei groaned. “He's had it, man. He's done. Oh God.”
“Quiet,” I ordered. “He's got an ace up his sleeve. Let's just hope it works.”
Priest put his arms up, the silenced pistol still in his hand. I could imagine him taking a deep breath, closing his eyes, and praying that the Taiwanese tech gurus knew what they were about.
He said in English, “I surrender.”
Inside the flashbang hanging from Priest's shoulder strap, a central processor noted that the tiny microphone wired to the outside of the grenade had picked up the code phrase that Priest himself had programmed in a few hours earlier. This was one of the innovations the Taiwanese had passed along to us, and I mentally thanked them for including such a useful device. The flashbang's processor, detecting the code phrase, immediately initiated the detonation sequence.
A blinding flash temporarily scrambled the picture and a loud bang sounded over the radio. Taking advantage of the policemen's disorientation, Priest opened his eyes and brought his silenced pistol down, firing two shots at each of the policemen. From the near-point blank range, he could hardly miss.
A moment passed. “All clear,” Priest reported, his voice betraying just a hint of the adrenaline rush he was experiencing. “How the hell did those two sneak up on me?”
Douglas answered, “They must have been driving along the highway, using thermal scanners on the trail along the river. Maybe the area's frequented by drug dealers or prostitutes or something. When they got a reading, they came down to investigate.”
“Should I go wreck their car or anything?”
“Negative, at this time of night, it's unlikely that many people will drive by. The ones that do will probably not investigate too closely. We only need to stay covert for about ten more minutes. Continue on to your post.”