Montana had slipped in under the patrol boat, gliding into the pass between Haicang and Gulangyu Island. She had headed northeast, coming around to the east side of the spit, where SEAL Chiefs Tanner and Phillips locked out and swam ashore.

Tanner had thought it was high time that he and his blond, freckle-faced colleague got more involved in the Ghost Team's exfiltration, and after the captain had briefed them on the mission and asked if they had questions, Tanner had answered, "Sir, SEAL Chief Phillips and I have just one question."

"And that is?"

"We don't understand why Mitchell and his team didn't join the navy."

Gummerson had grinned and dismissed them.

Now they sprinted up from the beach and reached the woods, where they wove a breathtaking path through the trees and neared the pier, just as Gummerson called to say there'd been trouble back at the boat dock. Four soldiers dead. More undoubtedly on the way. The Ghosts were loading up now, but they couldn't sit at the dock. They'd have to putter down the coast a thousand yards or so, slip up to another pier, and wait there, while hell broke loose behind them.

So Tanner and Phillips had even less time to get the job done. Wearing a pair of NVGs, Tanner studied the ferry and crane, just as the operator lowered a pallet of fifty-five-gallon fuel drums onto the pier under the watchful gazes of three members of the barge crew.

Tanner gave Phillips the signal.

They moved in.

FISHING BOAT
XIAMEN HARBOR, CHINA
APRIL 2012

Mitchell had ordered Jenkins and Beasley to haul Buddha's body onto the fishing boat and lay him along the rail. Boy Scout lay beside him. The DIA had been emphatic about returning the bodies and not allowing them to remain in China, where they might provide clues that could topple an even larger network of spies still in the country, some of whom also worked for the National Security Agency.

Mitchell remained on the deck at the stern, monitoring the SEALs' progress via his HUD, while Jenkins took the wheel. They chugged slowly away from the pier, everyone down low, weapons at the ready. Dark waves thumped and lapped at the hull, and their foamy wake was quickly swallowed back by the harbor.

About a kilometer ahead, to the southwest, the pier jutted out from the sand spit, and Mitchell barely made out the silhouette of the crane with his naked eye.

"Well that didn't take long," said Diaz, pointing toward the stern.

A pair of headlights came down the shoreline road, and the vehicle appeared, another military truck turning toward the boat docks.

"Jenkins, throttle up a little bit," said Mitchell.

"You got it, Boss."

"Joey, how are you doing?" Mitchell asked, raising his voice over the engine's higher-pitched gurgles and whine.

"Alex gave me that shot," answered Ramirez. "Arm's numb."

"The dragon didn't pounce on Taiwan, but it stepped on us pretty good, eh?" asked Mitchell.