Beyond all Limits (9 page)

2

Jake Navarone dropped his bags to the hot cement as he looked around the naval base, hands on his hips. It had been a long time.

Naval Base Coronado was a consolidated military installation which held eight separate naval facilities across 57,000 acres of San Diego County. One of these was Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, which itself contained the Naval Special Warfare Center – home to the legendary SEAL training school which made men out of boys.

Navarone had undergone his own training here, at the tender age of eighteen, just out of high school, and he remembered well the twenty-four week Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL course – by far the most grueling period of his year of basic training for the teams. The dropout rate was said to be as high as ninety percent and, looking back, Navarone thought that was about right for his intake too. Most of the people he’d met in those early days had failed to last the course. And even now, after years in the elite Naval Special Warfare Development Group which was more popularly known as SEAL Team Six, BUD/S was still the toughest training he’d done, and he looked around the base with mixed feelings. There was pride, certainly; but still, even after all these years, there was a slight hint of trepidation, as if he was still that long-haired eighteen year old boy stepping off the bus for the first time.

Navarone looked around and saw Mark Cole had paused where he stood too; but only for a moment, a brief flicker in the man’s eyes which was soon gone. He reminded himself that Cole had been trained here too, even before Navarone. He wondered what feelings the base conjured up for his boss; he couldn’t imagine the man being perturbed by anything. He was a rock, a special operations legend, and Navarone felt privileged to be on the same team, hand-picked. He must be doing something right, he supposed.

But the job with Force One wasn’t without its complications. Navarone had never married, but liked to spend his leave with his parents and his two much younger sisters back in Florida.

He’d only just got there, about to sit down to a dinner of grilled crayfish, when he’d received the emergency alert. Not even one full afternoon of peace.

But Navarone understood the fact that he was a volunteer; he didn’t have to do it. He didn’t need to be on Force One; hell, he didn’t have to be on Team Six either. He could easily leave, set up his own private security firm, be at home eating crayfish gumbo whenever he wanted.

But that wasn’t the life he wanted, the life he
needed.
He had an innate desire to be the best, the leader in his field. It just so happened that his field was covert military operations, and the best unit in the world was Force One.

How could he say no?

He saw the other members of his team hit the tarmac, jumping off the truck that had brought them here.

Chad ‘Country’ Davis was a six foot two, two hundred and twenty pound Delta Force operative who looked like he ate babies for breakfast and then flossed his teeth with barbed wire. A veteran of the 82
nd
Airborne, the Rangers, and the US Army Special Forces before joining Delta, the man was as tough as old boot leather, the epitome of everything a commando was supposed to be; and yet Navarone also knew that he was a loving family man with a heart of gold. Whoever came across him over in China would never know that though, Navarone was sure. They would only see the Viking berserker, and it would likely be the last thing they ever saw.

Julie Barrington was the only female in the group, but she would be a tremendous asset. A long-time paramilitary officer with the CIA’s Special Activity Division, she was a unit leader for that organization’s elite Special Operations Group, and an expert with explosives and small-arms. Navarone had seen her on the range, and turned down her offer of a friendly shoot-off; there was no chance he could have won.

Sal Grayson was Air Force, a Pararescueman with the AF Special Operations Command. Among the best-trained troops in the entire US military, PJs – or ‘Para Jumpers’ – were taught how to infiltrate any type of enemy territory in order to save and rescue other military personnel. Navarone had the ultimate respect for Grayson – the man was able to put himself in the line of fire with the goal not to kill the enemy, but to rescue his brothers and sisters in arms. He would be the team medic, and Navarone could never hope for someone more experienced in combat trauma treatment.

The last person on the team was another Team Six man, Tim Collins. He was young compared to the rest of the group, but Navarone had worked with him many times in DEVGRU, and had found him to be talented and capable beyond his years. If Davis was the prototypical commando – big, strong and terrifying – then Collins was a schoolboy in comparison. But give him a sniper rifle, and he could hit some things Navarone couldn’t even see.

Navarone realized the group was top-heavy with SEALs – three out of the six of them – but he also understood that it was necessitated by the nature of their infiltration into Beijing, which Cole had explained to them in Forest Hills the day before.

They had travelled overnight after a full day of briefings at the Paradigm headquarters back in DC, and despite getting some sleep on the flight, Navarone stretched and yawned as he faced the lightening Pacific Ocean, the hazy red sun rising steadily behind him.

‘I hope you’re not tired, Navarone,’ Cole said, turning towards him with half a smile, ‘because you’re damn sure not going to be getting much rest before this thing is over.’

‘Don’t worry about me, sir,’ Navarone said with half a smile of his own. ‘I’m ready to shoot and scoot anytime you say so.’

‘Good,’ Cole said with a curt nod. ‘Then let’s get started.’

Cole had brought the team to Coronado for two main reasons. The first was to draw weapons and supplies. Water would feature heavily in their insertion, and the SEALs still had the best kit for such operations. The other reason was that it was home to the training wing for the SEAL Delivery Vehicle, the flooded mini-submarine they were going to use for part of their infiltration into Beijing.

The SDV was a key element of the SEAL teams, delivering a crew of two pilots and four passengers far further into an operational area than they would get by swimming alone. It was a large, electrically-propelled craft that looked not dissimilar to a torpedo. The two pilots, in full SCUBA gear, controlled the SDV from the semi-open front end, while the four passengers, also in SCUBA gear, travelled in the fully-flooded rear compartment.

Piloting the craft was a skilled job, and one that was only taught here in Coronado. That was why Collins was here, despite his relative inexperience – before joining DEVGRU, he had been an SDV pilot with SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team One. Cole would be co-pilot for the insertion, and Navarone would stay in the back to keep an eye on the other three team members.

The day would be spent with basic familiarization for Davis, Barrington and Grayson, and a session of all-important
re-
familiarization for Cole, Navarone and Collins.

It didn’t trouble Cole unduly that they were openly here on the naval base, despite Force One’s covert status. It was a training center, and the people here were anyway used to covert ops; no questions would be asked, and no answers would be listened to even if they were. Boxes had been ticked in the right places all the way up to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and that was all anyone needed to know. As to what the six people were really up to, it was nobody’s business but theirs.

The idea for the insertion had come to Cole early on; there really hadn’t been any realistic alternative, he’d been forced to admit. Conventional means of infiltration such as parachute insertion were out of the question. There was no way that the airspace anywhere near Beijing could be penetrated without major reprisal. It might have been feasible to drop into the countryside somewhere well outside of the capital, but Chinese air defences were pretty decent even in the most uninhabited areas of the country nowadays – and even if successful, Cole and his team would then need to infiltrate possibly hundreds of miles overland, with all their equipment.

And so for the infiltration of Beijing, Cole knew he would have to go back to his SEAL roots – waterborne insertion.

He had called Olsen as soon as he’d had the idea – he needed to know if there was a submarine in-theater that could be used at short notice. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had snapped his fingers and Cole had gotten what he needed; right this minute, the Virginia-class attack sub, the USS
Texas
, was docked on the eastern side of Okinawa Island being fitted out to receive the SDV. Apparently it had been operating clandestinely around the East China Sea, probing the defences of the surveillance network which surrounded the crippled aircraft carrier. Cole wondered if the captain would be angry at being pulled off-task, or excited by the prospect of engaging in something rather more proactive. Cole supposed it would all depend on how much he had been told.

Cole watched his team mates as they filed onto the base and smiled; if anyone could get into Beijing and get the old government out to safety, it was them.

And, he had to admit, if anyone in the world was capable of killing General Wu, it was Cole himself.

Captain Hank Sherman smoked a cigarette impatiently, waiting on the harbor dock as the last bolts were secured to the specialist Dry Dock Shelter which was now fitted snugly on top of his submarine, right next to the conning tower.

A large metal canister, thirty-eight feet long and thirty tons in weight, it enabled a SEAL Delivery Vehicle to be transported to its theater of operations and then released clandestinely underwater to approach its target.

Sherman and the
Texas
hadn’t been with the USS
Ford
when it was hit; his sub had just left Guam after a minor refit, and had been heading out on patrol to the South China Sea. They’d been rounding the southern tip of Taiwan when they’d been informed. It had been the worst moment in Sherman’s long and storied professional career, and Sherman and his crew could swear that they felt the impact through hundreds of kilometers of open sea. They had been ready – and eager – for immediate retaliatory action. He well remembered being told by Admiral Kincaid Jones, Chief of Naval Operations – on the orders of the president herself – to stand down, not to enter the East China Sea, to leave the
Ford
crippled and alone.

There’d almost been a mutiny onboard when he’d informed his crew of the president’s orders, and he had felt like leading it himself. But his professionalism had won through in the end, and he had done as he was told. And in the end, he’d been forced to admit that his country really had no choice if she was to avoid war with China.

But, Sherman reasoned, why not go to war with China? Despite Chinese advances, her navy – in fact, her military generally – was still no match for that of the United States. It wasn’t all about who spent the most money, who had the most troops, who had the best equipment – although admittedly, all these things helped. No, Sherman knew it was the experience and expertise of the military personnel themselves who made the real difference – and China’s were still poorly trained, unmotivated, and inexperienced in comparison. Sherman had no doubts about who would win.

Still, he knew that nobody ever really won a war – too many lives would be lost to ever make it a political possibility. And then there was the thorny issue of General Wu’s mental state, and his readiness to use China’s unknown nuclear resources if pushed too far. And even Sherman knew that the possible rewards of counter-attacking China could never be worth the repercussions of nuclear war.

Sherman was a man who was used to conflict. From the Arabian Gulf to the Arctic Ocean, he had seen action all over the world and now – as captain of his own advanced attack submarine, he badly wanted to do something –
anything
– to help.

It had been Sherman himself who had come up with the idea of probing the Chinese defences, in preparation for a potential counterstrike if negotiations broke down. The LA-class attack sub USS
Chicago
had been accompanying the
Ford
, but it might as well have been hit too for all the good she could do now; the new Chinese government had ordered the submarines that were part of the carrier group to remain on the surface when they pulled out of the area, so that they could be monitored. Sherman had argued that the Chinese had no idea where the
Texas
was, and so wouldn’t know to look out for him so soon after the incident. But he was close – he could be there within a day and a half, ready to go silent and enter the lion’s den. There was opposition to his suggestions in some quarters – many felt that it wasn’t worth the risk of the Chinese finding out, that it would make things much worse – but Sherman argued that if the situation deteriorated, then the US navy would need as much intelligence on Chinese displacements as it could possibly get.

Admiral Jones had finally agreed, and Sherman had been slipping his near-silent ship in and out of the Chinese naval perimeter ever since, gathering data for future military action and – so everyone hoped – a rescue mission to the
Ford
.

He had been incensed when the order had come for him to pull back, to return to the safe waters of White Beach Naval Base, a sheltered port in Nakagusuku Bay on the eastern side of Okinawa – far from the Chinese naval presence in the open waters northwest of the island. Had Jones lost his nerve, he’d wanted to know? Was there so little will to combat the Chinese that even reconnaissance missions were being banned?