War Tactic by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldwide Library
Published: 2015-09-08T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The members of Phoenix Force paddled their rubber launch through the cover of darkness. Twilight had only recently transitioned to full darkness. The stars overhead, the sound of the waves…it would have been a beautiful night, if not for the grim business that awaited them on the captured freighter. The Bapor na Pangkargada looked deceptively quiet as they made their way silently toward it.

The Glock pistols the men carried—as well as McCarter’s Browning—had threaded barrels. The team had affixed sound suppressors to their pistols to facilitate quiet takedowns once they got on board. To do that, though, they would first have to create an opening. At the front of the boat, Hawkins and Encizo took the lead in steering the rubber landing craft, which had been borrowed from the Filipino navy.

They did their best to avoid any obvious light sources on the deck of the ship. These included brief flares they had been tracking as they made their way from a Filipino patrol boat that had paused far enough away not to tip their quarry that they were approaching. So far the cooperation they were getting from the Filipinos was a testament to Brognola’s ability to cajole, persuade and smooth over potential international incidents.

“There it is again,” James whispered. His voice was so quiet he almost wasn’t making any sound at all. You had to be extremely careful when maintaining noise discipline on open water. The water carried sound incredible distances. Something as innocent as a muffled cough could give them away if the soldiers on the deck of the freighter were alert.

McCarter nodded. One of the men on the deck was chain smoking, and every so often he would light up a new one with a lighter that might as well have been an acetylene torch. The thing gave off a bright yellow beacon that was easily visible from across the water. If these blokes were Chinese military, McCarter couldn’t believe it was the kind of behavior troops weren’t taught to avoid.

The Chinese uniforms worried McCarter. None of it fit, and he couldn’t see the Chinese making a mistake like that. There was no denying the Chinese flag the attackers had run up on the Bapor na Pangkargada, but that in itself was suspicious simply because there was no denying it.

It didn’t make sense for the Chinese to tip their hand like that. They weren’t above muscling into the region, of course. They had already planted oil rigs in territory claimed by other nations, pretty much daring anybody who wanted to make an issue of it to come and try. But always, with the Chinese, was the idea of flexing their might. They had an awful lot to prove. Essentially, everything they did was geared toward saying to the world, “We are a superpower,” and they conducted their affairs accordingly. Capturing hostages on a Filipino freighter was the kind of thing that drove the Filipinos crazy and created diplomatic tension with the Chinese, especially among NATO nations who were looking on in anxiety over the South China Sea and China’s expansion into it.

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