Tanner swore and hurried to catch up with Phillips, who had already found their secondary position and was ready for the next detonation.

FISHING BOAT
XIAMEN HARBOR, CHINA
APRIL 2012

Mitchell's mouth fell open, and he found himself clambering to his feet for a better look.

Fifty-five-gallon drums burst apart, catapulting others into the air, all part of a hellish fountain swelling up from the pier to spew orange and red showers of burning diesel fuel. Dozens of smaller bursts mushroomed up before walls of black smoke as the stench of fuel and hot metal finally reached them across the water.

SEAL Chief Tanner had been right about the gunpowder remark, but it was the Chinese who had also invented fireworks, and this display rivaled anything Mitchell had ever seen--in combat or otherwise.

The fuel barge itself finally went up in a single, massive blast, the intense, near-white light coming first, followed by a boom that made everyone aboard flinch as it echoed off the opposite shoreline.

Thousand of pieces of flaming debris shot high into the air, like a swarm of bottle rockets, then tumbled down into the dark water, immediately extinguished, the hissing steam fanning out in ringlets as the bow of the barge suddenly appeared behind the flames. That bow tipped up and began sinking, the rest of the boat either gone or simply unseen behind the raging fires.

The crew aboard the patrol boat, which had been gliding up toward the barge, was scrambling on the deck, the boat beginning to turn away from the catastrophe off their port bow.

But then the crane cabin tore apart in yet another thunderclap, shards of metal slicing through the air like throwing stars that tore into the patrol boat's hull and pilothouse as a dragon's breath of fire spread over the deck, igniting crew members who staggered to the rails and threw themselves overboard.

Tanner's placement of the C-4 was sheer artistry. While the debris continued slamming into the patrol boat, the crane's massive boom blew loose from its support fitting and slowly came down with a screech and groan as piercing as it was foretelling.

And if timing was everything, then Tanner's delay had been intentional, because that boom caught the forward corner of the patrol boat's pilothouse like a sledgehammer on a loaf of white bread.

Metal peeled back amid flurries of sparks and flames licking along the surfaces, but the boat's twin diesel engines kept on, dragging and bending the boom with it, waves suddenly rising up over her sides under all that added weight. Suddenly, her bow became entirely submerged, the water streaming up to her antiaircraft guns.

"Captain, I know fireworks," cried Hume. "And the navy's putting on one hell of a show!"

Not a second after Hume finished, the ammo stored in ready lockers on the patrol boat's stern deck began cooking off in dozens more pops, cracks, and bangs that lit up the shattered boat like a rock concert.