“No idea,” Colt replied, turning to look at his wingman on the other catapult. “But by the looks of it, they’re expecting some heavy resistance.”

“What makes you say that?”

A third pilot in the division spoke up. “Because they put four of us on an Alert Five to be ready for trouble?”

“But in the brief, they said they were just going to recover an isolated person and bring them back and that we were on call just in case.”

Colt shook his head. Ducky was one of the nicest and most competent pilots he had ever met, but it seemed he was having a hard time accepting the gravity of the situation. “Ducky, when was the last time you saw a helicopter like that taking off from the carrier without lights in the middle of the night?”

“With a bunch of frogmen on board,” the fourth pilot added.

To his credit, Ducky remained silent. Colt turned back to try and spot the Hip, but it had disappeared into the inky night. All that was left for him to do was sit and wait for a call he hoped never came, but one he was prepared to answer.

28

Fenjiezhou Island

Dave looked down on the island through his night optical devices and tried ignoring the enormity of the challenge facing them. The uninhabited speck of land sat a little more than a mile off the coast of Hainan Island and comprised some of the most inhospitable terrain imaginable — something the overhead imagery and surveillance photos they had studied during the mission briefing failed to prepare them for.

But that was exactly why men like them existed.

Dense vegetation covered two hills at each end of the island. A narrow draw divided them and connected the rocky and cliff-like eastern side with a narrow, sandy beach on the leeward side. Scaling the cliffs to reach the objective would have provided them the greatest chance of avoiding detection, but it would have been treacherous under the best of conditions. Following a night HAHO insertion, it would have been foolish.

Dave continued descending around the southern tip of the island to approach the beach from the south. Without looking, he knew the others were stacked up behind him in perfect formation to land on the vacant beach. The island was blanketed in darkness, but a handful of lights glowed from the hotel villas dotting the southern hill.

She’s in there, he thought.

The sound of waves crashing beneath him grew louder as he descended below the crest of the hill and made his approach for landing. He made a brief turn away from the island, then reversed course and approached the beach from the west. He flared his canopy at the edge of the beach and slowed his descent while allowing his forward momentum to carry him into a slow walk.

Easy day.

He gave himself half a beat to feel pride in jumping into hostile territory from a Boeing 777 almost seven miles in the air and fifty miles away, then quickly collapsed and gathered his chute and moved inland to the edge of the jungle. He dropped to his knees and began burying the chute in the deep sand at the base of the sharply rising hill to the east. By the time the last SEAL touched down, he held his rifle at the ready and scanned the dark jungle for threats.

“Scar Nine Nine, Mariner One Zero,” Dave whispered, without removing his cheek from the M4’s polymer stock. “In position and moving to the objective.”

“Mariner One Zero, Dusty is green. Continue.”

Dave looked over his shoulder for confirmation that the others were good to go. The clock was ticking, and they needed to find the captured Agency officer and exfil before the Hip ran out of gas. Any undue delay put them at risk of being stranded on the island.

“Mariner One Zero, out.” Dave rose and slipped into the foliage. Although the island was devoid of tourists, multiple P-8A Poseidon and MQ-4C Triton surveillance missions pinpointed the captured officer’s location to within four villas halfway up the hill on the southwest corner of the island. Their task force’s intelligence specialists assessed they would encounter little armed resistance, but he knew better than to take that at face value.

As far as Dave was concerned, half the Chinese army waited for them under the jungle canopy, and he took in his surroundings through the white phosphor night optics that bathed everything around him in an almost natural soft white hue. Compared to older generation night vision goggles that changed everything to a green color, the newer devices put less strain on the eyes and made it easier to spot threats.

Behind him, Todd, Ron, and Graham brought up the rear. All three carried suppressed SOPMOD M4 rifles, but Graham also carried his breaching tool of choice — the Benelli M1014 shotgun loaded with fourteen Aguila Minishells — slung across his back.