Seeing Zhou picking himself up off the deck, apparently unhurt, the captain raced downed the steps to check on the others. He found them huddled in the machinery s.p.a.ces below decks, desperately frightened but unhurt. When she heard the superstructure disintegrating under the hail of machine gun bullets, Holly had been certain that her grandfather was dead. Now he was standing before her with an indescribable look on his face, like he"d just sunk the whole d.a.m.n Chinese navy. She threw her arms around him and squeezed as hard as she could.
Suddenly they heard Zhou screaming in the wheelhouse. The captain told them to get their heads down as he raced back up the steps, his exhilaration melting into fear as he prepared for what he might find there. Once again, Zhou stood with arm extended, pointing to something off the bow. But when the captain"s eyes followed Zhou"s arm, what he saw was the most beautiful sight in the world: the USS Hawaii, on the surface not more than fifty yards away. Captain Sidney Ralston was on its sail holding a megaphone.
"Captain Davis," his amplified voice boomed, "I"m sending an inflatable to pick up you and Mr. and Mrs. Walker. We have very little time; there"s a destroyer ten klicks from here moving at high speed. I don"t have to tell you what my sub looks like on its radar right about now."
The captain rushed into the wheel house and yelled down into the engine room for everyone to get topside as quickly as possible. By the time everyone was on the deck, two US sailors holding life jackets were waiting on the deck, nervously glancing over their shoulder in the direction of the approaching destroyer.
There were only three life jackets. When Holly realized what was happening, her expression changed from elation to grim determination. She stood squarely in front of her grandfather.
"I"m not leaving without Ping!"
Her grandfather looked her squarely in the eye: "If we don"t leave right now, young lady, we won"t ever leave. We"ll send someone back for our friends."
"I don"t care. I"m not leaving without Ping. If it weren"t for her, I"d be in pieces now."
The Chinese standing on the deck saw the American sailors with only three life jackets. The fishing boat had its own life preservers, but the message was nevertheless clear: the Americans intended to abandon them. Disappointment etched their faces as they grimly awaited their fate. Without saying another word, the captain grabbed one of the life jackets and started to help Ping into it.
"You two get those life jackets on," he said to Holly and Ray, "and help me get Ping into the inflatable. We don"t have time to argue."
The megaphone barked an urgent warning that they were out of time. With the help of the two sailors, Ping, Holly and Ray were lowered into the inflatable and its small outboard quickly propelled them to the side of the sub. Before she disappeared through the hatch on its sail, Holly looked back at her grandfather. It had all happened so fast; she"d thought they"d all been saved but suddenly she was saying good bye. Two minutes later, the sub had slipped beneath the waves.
There hadn"t been enough time for the sub"s crew to stow the inflatable and knowing it might well end up saving their lives, the captain dove over the side and swam toward it. It was soon tethered to the stern. Zhou was checking the controls in the wheelhouse. The throttle and radio had been shot away, but the steering gear was still intact. He ordered one crewman below to manually control the engine speed and two more to pa.s.s orders down from the bridge. Captain Davis held the binoculars to his eyes.
"We"ve got company."
54.
A ship more heavily armed as the one captain Davis had once commanded was now closing at over 30 knots. Over five hundred feet in length, the size of a World War I battleship, the Type 052C destroyer was not unfamiliar to the captain, its 48 long-range surface-to-air missiles, 8 anti-ship / land attack cruise missiles, 2 - 30mm close-in weapons systems, 6 torpedo tubes and 100mm main deck gun made it the pride of the Chinese navy and a dangerous foe of the United States.
The destroyer was clearly not looking for a fishing boat; that could be dealt with later. There was no doubt that it had seen the submarine surface and was now tracking it. By revealing himself, Captain Ralston had placed the USS Hawaii in jeopardy. The captain knew Sidney Ralston to be a careful man; they had spent considerable time together. Why had he risked his submarine to rescue three of his countrymen?
The greater question: is China looking for a war? The Dawn Flower and the USS Hawaii were now, beyond any doubt, in South Korean waters. Could China possibly be so arrogant that they would sink a United States warship to cover up what had been going on in Tianjin Central Hospital #77. Or had they moved beyond that? Was this to be the ultimate demonstration of their power and the United States" weakness? If they did sink the submarine, what would the American president do? What could he do?
The limits of American power and that of the president would be on display for all the world to see if the destroyer, now clearly visible, fired its weapons. The United States had reached a point where it needed China more than China needed it. China"s mighty economy would be hurt but not crippled by American tariffs and sanctions. The American economy, at its weakest point in more than eighty years, had neither the industrial might nor the natural resources at its disposal to survive a long war with China.
This is not 1941. The United States is not a relatively cohesive society that could be counted on to pull together to face a common threat. The "Melting Pot" had fractured into competing interests, religions and values It was now questionable how many Americans actually consider themselves Americans first or something else. Would the smart phone generation sacrifice their tablets, video games and flat screen televisions in a national emergency? Or would the enormous stress of open military conflict with China propel the United States into chaos rather than victory?
As Captain Davis watched five hundred feet of enemy destroyer closing on the spot where the USS Hawaii had submerged, he realized that what would happen in the next few moments could become one of the most important inflection points in modern history.
Then he noticed something that, at least for the Dawn Flower, was a far more immediate threat. The frigate that had fled when the South Korean F- 16"s appeared was now trailing the destroyer, obviously seeking the protection of its formidable anti-aircraft defenses. No longer fearing air attack, it was free to take care of unfinished business, namely the fishing boat that had made the breakout possible.
With the radio shot out, there would be no more mayday calls, and the South Korean coast was still little more than a smudge on the horizon. At less than one third the speed of the frigate, the fugitives" elderly fishing boat would be overtaken in a matter of minutes.
The air-slapping sound once again drew the captain"s attention to the Helix antisubmarine helicopter lifting off the stern of the destroyer. Armed with torpedoes and a modern version of depth charges, it is a formidable sub killer. But the Hawaii was also a highly capable submarine and if either the Helix or the destroyer loosed weapons at her, the rules of engagement specifically authorized her to return fire. Captain Davis, the only living captain on the planet to have survived such an engagement, felt the same cold chill he experienced that day in the Gulf of Mexico. Unless there was a stand down, today a ship would die. He prayed it would not be the USS Hawaii.
The frigate veered off, the sharp silhouette of its bow clearly showing it was now headed for the Dawn Flower. Zhou"s father spoke to his son in words that by their dark tone needed no translation. The grandmother began to weep. The captain put his only fresh magazine into the pistol. He told Dr. Min to ask the police officer, who had the only other gun on board, if he was prepared to kill anyone who attempted to board the Dawn Flower. The police officer looked at the captain and nodded, but it was obvious that though he carried a gun, he had never faced one.
The captain then asked Dr. Min to tell everyone other than Zhou and the police officer to go down to the engine room. The frigate was launching an inflatable. In it were three sailors and an officer, all carrying Kalashnikovs. The three men remaining on the bridge concealed themselves as the captain peered though a ragged opening created by the helicopter"s bullets. Zhou waited until the boarding party was almost alongside the Dawn Flower and then spun the wheel, turning the boat"s stern toward the inflatable. Boarding the stern over the spinning propeller would be both difficult and dangerous, so the inflatable turned and attempted to come alongside again.
This time, Zhou spun the wheel in the opposite direction, striking the inflatable and nearly spilling the men inside. Making another attempt, the inflatable held a position parallel to the fishing boat"s rail as a sailor prepared to leap over to the rail and haul himself aboard. Inside the wheelhouse, the captain prepared to shoot him.
Suddenly a loud speaker on the frigate broadcast a message that the captain could not understand, but whose urgency was clear. The sailors in the inflatable looked up in surprise and then, without hesitation, swung the bow of their tiny craft back toward their ship. Zhou was smiling broadly and pointing his finger at the roof of the wheelhouse. The captain didn"t understand until he heard a distant roar. He rose and carefully moved out onto the side deck opposite the frigate and looked up just as three flights of FA-18"s roared overhead. FA-18"s could mean only one thing: a carrier was nearby. He wondered briefly if the destroyer would be so arrogant as to attempt to shoot down the American planes; it clearly had the means to do so. But where there is a carrier, there is a carrier battle group. It would be an encounter that even this powerful destroyer would not survive.
The captain descended the ladder to the engine room like a man in his twenties. Lacking words, he simply turned his palms upward and a raised his hands emphatically, as a preacher might raise his congregation from its knees. One by one the frightened fugitives huddled there stood and embraced each other.
If there"d ever been a cup of coffee that tasted better, he couldn"t recall it. Sharing it in the captain"s quarters of the USS George Washington (CVN-73) made it one to remember. His quarters on the cruiser had certainly been comfortable, but Captain Samuel Johnston"s quarters on this 1094 foot aircraft carrier looked like the last Hyatt he stayed in. But the Hyatt hadn"t been anywhere near as noisy; the whole ship shuddered every time the catapults shot another Hornet into the sky.
"At that point, I was crouched on the deck of the Dawn Flower"s bridge looking through one of the bullets holes the chopper"s machine-gunner made and getting ready shoot the Chinese sailor who was trying to board us. I was just feeling mightily grateful that I"d gotten my granddaughter and her husband off, "cause the odds of my Chinese 9mm against four AK"s weren"t very good. So how the h.e.l.l did the Hawaii just happen to show up before the curtain went down?"
"Richard, I honestly don"t know," answered Johnston. As you know, the battle group is based out of j.a.pan and we were on routine patrol off the coast near Cheju, South Korea. A priority message was handed to me stating that the whole d.a.m.n Chinese Northern Fleet was sortieing. My XO and I looked at each other like "would somebody please wake us up?""
"Then, when the North Koreans started deploying their ships, we were ordered to head up to just north of Seosan in case we were needed. That"s when we heard your Mayday. I was hearing your voice, Richard, but I was not believing what I was hearing; it was just too d.a.m.ned implausible. If I didn"t know the sound of your voice, I probably would have a.s.sumed it was some sort of ruse. h.e.l.l, I had no idea you were in Asia."
"Then we saw the Hawaii surfacing on our radar; we thought they must be out of their minds. I don"t have to tell you of all people how often a nuclear attack sub surfaces in the middle of hostilities. It"s a number with a whole lot of zeros and a decimal point at the beginning. Actually, I was hoping you might be able to tell me how the h.e.l.l they got there."
"I"ve got a hunch, but that"s as close as I could come right now. Maybe we"ll both find out in Pearl," said Richard.
"And maybe we won"t," answered Johnston, chuckling. "So the Chinese actually had the b.a.l.l.s to think they could get away with kidnapping American tourists and turning them into organ donors?"
"Yeah, at least some of "em did. They were real close to cutting up Holly when I got there. I saw several European-looking women in the rooms down the hall who probably were the intended recipients, so I told "em they were going to be the donors and not the donees. You should have seen the looks on their faces! I couldn"t stick around long enough to find out what happened next, but I"ll bet it wasn"t pretty."
"Listen, Sam, I wanted to ask to you about the Chinese men and women who were with me on the fishing boat; I wouldn"t be here if it weren"t for them, and my daughter and her husband would be in pieces by now."
"We got "em showers and clean clothes; some of "em were pretty ripe. They"ll be going back to j.a.pan with us. I don"t know what"ll happen from there, but after what you"ve told me, I"d be willing to bet they"ll be allowed to settle in the good ole US of A. Meanwhile they"ll have all the good chow and movies they can handle."
"Sam, I appreciate your optimism, but there are some very powerful people on both sides of the Pacific who would prefer this story never be told. Thanks to you, China lost round one, but if they were willing to send practically their entire northern fleet to stop us, they"re not going to just roll over. Frankly, I don"t think the lives of those people are going to worth a dime once they"re off this ship."
"You really think that something could happen to them in j.a.pan, Richard?"
"Of course I do, Sam. How much do you think China would be willing to pay just to make this go away? They"ve spent millions already sending those warships out to sea. If they have to spend a few million more, they won"t hesitate. Who"s going to protect them in j.a.pan?"
"Well, as long as they"re at the Yokosuka Naval Base, I"m sure as h.e.l.l they"ll be fine. The base has the best security that the Navy can provide."
"OK, but what then? What if the President or the State Department orders them turned over to Immigration?"
"Well, then the Navy would have to turn them over. Listen, Richard, you don"t really think that the United States Government is going to harm these people, do you?"
"Not for a minute, Sam, but I also don"t think for a minute that once my friends are in the custody of Immigration that they"ll be allowed to speak to anyone. And I"m not at all sure that China couldn"t put enough pressure on the State Department to have them returned. I didn"t see the State Department rushing in to Hong Kong to help find my family. If I hadn"t gone there myself, they"d be dead now. Let"s face it Sam, State looks out for State and not for its own citizens, much less some very inconvenient Chinese immigrants."
"What do you want me to do, Richard?"
"Just do your best to keep my friends safe at Yokosuka until I can figure something out. OK?"
"I"ll do everything I can, Richard."
"Thanks, Sam, from me and from my family. Say, you don"t happen to know where the Hawaii"s headed, do you?"
"I"m afraid that"s above my pay grade, but I"m sure your daughter and her husband along with that amazing Chinese lady are having the ride of their lives. I"d love to spend some time on that boat myself; I hear she"s got some gear unlike anything else in the fleet."
"You know, for a minute there," said Richard, "I was thinking that destroyer was going to try to shoot down your Hornets."
"Yeah, that crossed my mind too. They knew we were close and I figure they just weren"t ready to die yet, much less start a full-blown war. It"s one thing sinking a seventy-five year old Filipino destroyer in the middle of the night, but quite another attacking a United States Navy Carrier Battle Group in South Korean waters. We woulda scratched that Chinese destroyer in less than five minutes, that I can a.s.sure you."
"Sam, you know, when your Hornets went over, I thought for a moment that the Chinese might have decided to show us who"s got the biggest b.o.l.l.o.c.ks on the block these days. The worst part was, when I asked myself what the president would do if that happened, the answer I came up with was nothing."
"Between us," said Sam, "I"ve asked myself that question a time or two and come up with the same answer. It was a close thing out there today; it could"ve gone off the tracks. I guess somebody in that destroyer or maybe in Beijing had a bout of common sense. One thing"s for sure, there"s some boys in the Pentagon right about now who are throwing back a few."
"I expect your right. I think I"ll go below and have a talk with my friends. Thanks again for saving me and my family, Sam. I owe you one."
55.
"To any South Korean naval vessel, this is Captain Richard J. Davis, United States Navy Retired. I repeat; To any South Korean naval vessel, this is Captain Richard J. Davis, United States Navy Retired. We are being pursued by unknown Chinese warship attempting to return us against our wills to Tianjin. There are three Americans aboard who were kidnapped by Chinese authorities and are attempting to escape. Please acknowledge. Out."
To the ham radio operator in Sydney, Australia, it was a very strange broadcast, as it was to an operator in Hawaii and at least six other locations around the world. At any given hour of the day or night, thousands of ham radio operators worldwide with sophisticated radios and tall backyard antennas sample the myriad radio signals that constantly circle the globe. The unusual message could likewise not escape the attention of thousands of South Koreans whose scanners picked up the distress call.
Across the Yellow Sea, captains monitoring their ships" radar screens watched in fascination as what had begun as a few blips gradually merged into an armada heading out to sea. And in a now familiar pattern, these puzzling and alarming events quickly found their way onto the "social media." In less than two hours there had been more than a hundred thousand hits and almost as many questions. The electronic sieve known as the internet was dripping fuel onto countless fires.
The South Korean Emba.s.sy in Washington was the first to receive a call, but it was not long before the Chinese Emba.s.sy"s phone began to ring. To an amba.s.sador making final preparations for the visit of the heir-apparent to the Chinese presidency, a skeleton had fallen out of the closet just when the guests were arriving for dinner.
Members of the media began to contact the State Department for an explanation. There was none, at least not for the time being, but in more than a few State Department offices men and women were attempting to do something akin to putting the water back in the bathtub. It was not going well. Their counterparts in Hawaii and j.a.pan had been instructed not to issue any visas to the fugitives, and to do whatever they could to keep them away from the press. But those at the State Department whose fingers were madly stabbing at new holes the dike weren"t even aware of the USS Hawaii"s role in the drama or the people she carried.
"We"re on our way back, Sally, and were all safe; that"s the important thing. Next, we get Brett out of Hong Kong. Once the world learns what"s been going on there and in Tianjin, I think the Chinese will be only too happy to say goodbye to him, but we have to make sure that the world hears about it. There are powerful people who will do their best to make sure that doesn"t happen."
"I want you to get in touch with the senator who"s been helping and alert him to the fact that I, along with the people responsible for helping Holly and Ray, will be arriving in j.a.pan soon. They"re aboard a submarine with the Chinese woman who saved their lives. I don"t know when or where they"ll dock. What"s critical is that we not allow our Chinese heroes to fall into a black hole somewhere. We"re going to need an ally in Washington and the senator sounds like a person who cares."
"Would someone like to explain to me what just happened?" the president said to a room whose occupants all seemed to have noticed something fascinating on the backs of their hands.
Turning to Melvin Larimer, his secretary of defense, "All right, since it seems we almost started World War III, why don"t you tell me what"s going on, Mel." With a look of a schoolboy whose incomplete homework a.s.signment left him hoping for a reprieve, the secretary began: "Mr. President, the George Washington Carrier Battle Group was on routine patrol off Southern Korea when a mayday call was received. The voice was that of a retired US Navy captain, known to the commander, who claimed that Americans had been kidnapped by the Chinese, had subsequently escaped and were being pursued by Chinese naval a.s.sets. From what we understand, a Chinese frigate pursued them into South Korean waters and shots were fired. At that point, at pair of South Korean F-16"s made a low pa.s.s over the frigate, which then retired."
"Let me stop you right there, Mel," said the president. "Is this connected in any way with the alleged kidnapping in Hong Kong?"
"To our best knowledge at this point, the two honeymooners who were kidnapped in Hong Kong were members of the captain"s family. Apparently he went to Hong Kong to fetch them."
"And this "kidnapping" results in the intervention of half the Chinese navy?" the president asked incredulously.
"I think I might be able to fill in some of the gaps," said Thomas Benedict, Director of Central Intelligence. The president"s expression was now at half mast in unwelcome antic.i.p.ation of the bad news he felt sure the DCI was about to share. He kept thinking: If only this were happening in Ireland and not China.
"Commander Moore, our man at the Hong Kong consulate, spoke with the captain and listened to a very convincing recording. It was his feeling that there was some truth to the allegations. Then he learned that the captain"s daughter in the States had been contacted by a Chinese dissident group claiming that foreigners were being kidnapped in order to sell their organs to certain wealthy Caucasians who are reticent to have the organs of another race in their bodies, and in particular the organs of executed Chinese criminals. Apparently they are willing to pay large sums with few questions asked."
"I"m still missing the part about how the Chinese navy got involved in this," interrupted the president.
"It seems that the operations weren"t being performed in some back street in Hong Kong or Shanghai, but in the most prestigious transplant hospital in China. If you"re going to part with a quarter million for a new kidney, you don"t want some third string doctor doing the operation in an alley. All they had to do was keep the victims under wraps until it was time to harvest their organs just prior to transplantation. Once they were no longer inside the unwilling donors" bodies, the organs" origins became, for all extents and purposes, untraceable."
"Apparently there were several highly placed police officials and munic.i.p.al bureaucrats in Tianjin as well as Hong Kong whose palms were being greased. There may have been others in Beijing, but that"s conjecture at this point. When the whole thing came unglued and the authorities discovered that the captain, with the help of a dissident group in Tianjin, had rescued his family and were at large, they panicked. Thinking that they could make it all go away if they could somehow keep him and his family from leaving the country, they pulled out all the stops."
"But at that point they didn"t have the faintest idea where the captain and his family were or how they were planning to leave the county. By the time they figured out that a former naval captain might logically turn to the sea for his escape, the fugitives were already on their way to South Korea. To put it in perspective, the harbor in Tianjin alone is more than nineteen miles long and has hundreds of piers and wharfs, plus there are several smaller harbors in the area. With thousands of ships and fishing boats of every size and with dozens moving in and out every hour, it was a gargantuan task."
"To complicate things, they couldn"t be entirely certain that that the escape had been by sea. They were still checking train and bus stations as well as airports and roads. Because they were dealing with a man who knows the sea and had commanded a warship, they eventually surmised that he would take the way he knew best. Even a.s.suming they were right, there was no way to know if the fugitives had stowed away on a freighter, tanker, someone"s pleasure boat, a large factory fishing ship, or a tiny one family wooden fishing boat. Since hundreds of ships of all sizes had left port in the past day and a half, they reacted in the way the Chinese government invariably reacts to any problem with all available power and little concern for anything or anyone else."
By the time the DCI had finished, the president"s head was buried in his hands. One of his aircraft carrier battle groups had nearly gone to war with a nation whose vice-president was about to pay a visit. As he sat trying to figure out how he could salvage a meeting that had the potential to turn into an unmitigated international disaster, it occurred to him that there might be a way.
Those around him watched in curious but quiet fascination as the creases in his forehead and the knitted brows slowly dissolved, the tension gradually draining downward where it began to pool in a smile. While he wouldn"t share his thoughts with everyone in the room, at least not at this point, he saw an unexpected gift taking shape before his eyes. He was now in possession of information that his soon to be guest had nearly started a war to keep secret. If it were divulged, it would cause incalculable loss of face for China. On the other hand, if the day"s events could continue to remain secret, the future president of China would be greatly in his debt.
The day was definitely looking up. Or so he thought.
"It"s for you, Virg," said Molly.
"Yes, hi Sally. Oh that"s wonderful! I"m so happy to hear it. OK, well why don"t you give me his cell number and I"ll call him on the carrier and he can fill me in."
56.
Mortimer Thurgood, US State Department attache in Tokyo, was on hand when the George Washington docked at Yokosuka Naval Base a few miles from the capitol. In spite of his official status, like everyone else, he was forced to wait for the time-honored custom of allowing fathers who had not yet seen their newborns to disembark first. He had never experienced the welcoming party for an aircraft carrier before and was amazed to see thousands of people, mostly women and children, crowding the pier in growing excitement as the enormous ship was slowing nudged into its berth by powerful tugboats.
Moving up the gangplank against the downward flow of more than six thousand sailors, he was nearly knocked into the oily harbor waters several times by the large canvas bags (sea bags) slung over their shoulders. Reaching the deck at last, he approached the officer whose job it is to screen those seeking access to the carrier. Mortimer dutifully showed the officer his credentials and the official letter announcing the request by the State Department that the Chinese refugees remain on board until more senior officials arrived from Washington.
"Sorry, Sir," the officer said, "I"m not familiar with any refugees." After obtaining a visitors plaque for the State Department representative to wear around his neck, he was escorted to the quarter deck where the Officer of the Deck is usually stationed while in port. Mortimer Thurgood soon learned what every sailor who has ever been a.s.signed to a carrier learned the hard way, a United States aircraft carrier is a very, very large ship. By the time he reached the quarter deck, a sign on officer"s door indicated that he was still on the bridge. By the time, some twenty minutes later, he was able to speak to him, he was told that the refugees had been shuttled off the ship on a Greyhound. Inquiring what exactly was a Greyhound, he learned that the Navy routinely flies cargo and pa.s.sengers aboard the Grumman C-2 Greyhound, a propeller driven plane capable of carrying 10,000 lbs or 26 people, that routinely shuttles to and from aircraft carriers around the world.
The dance had begun.
"I have never heard a more fascinating or troubling story, Captain," said Vice-Admiral Michitaro Yamagato, "it seems our Chinese friends become more emboldened by the day." Vice Admiral Yamagato and Captain Davis had twice met during naval conferences, and after events in the Gulf, he had become a fan of the courageous American captain.