‘Could we offload the crew via sub?’ Cole asked. The US Navy was still the world leader in silent, stealthy submarine technology.
Olsen shook his head. ‘Not a chance,’ he said. ‘From surveillance footage and the Ford’s own eyeball reports, the Chinese navy’s got those waters sealed up tight as a drum. There’s no way we’d get a sub anywhere close to the Ford.’
‘Have we targeted their missile units on the mainland?’
Again, Olsen answered the question. ‘We’ve got the coordinates typed in and ready to go,’ he said. ‘But the trouble with the DF is that most of the missiles are mobile — we have no way of knowing where they are, moment to moment. We just can’t risk attacking the mainland without better intel — and maybe not even then.’
Cole could tell it grated the general to talk this way, defeatism not being in his nature; but facts were facts, and had to be faced.
‘There’s also the additional factor of China’s ex-pat population,’ said dos Santos. ‘China’s last census claimed well over seventy thousand Americans are currently living in China, many of them in and around Beijing. And Wu has temporarily suspended all flights out of the country.’
‘So they’re all trapped there?’ Cole asked.
Abrams nodded. ‘Except for the few who got out early, and those who have travelled overland or by boat; not many, at any rate. And the figures are probably conservative anyway — our own numbers suggest over one hundred thousand, and that’s not taking into consideration all the other people who live there — vast numbers of Koreans and Europeans for starters.’
‘Wu claims that air travel will resume soon,’ dos Santos said, ‘he claims nobody is being held hostage, anyone is free to leave overland if they wish, but outbound flights have been cancelled due to what he calls ‘security issues’ during the transfer of power to the new government.’
‘But they’re being held hostage, just the same as the crew of the Ford,’ Cole said, the severity of the situation becoming clear to him. ‘Wu knows we’ll never attack the mainland while we’ve got so many of our own people there.’
‘Exactly. So what can we do?’ Abrams said with a shrug of her shoulders. ‘We can’t target Beijing, and we’ve had to pull back from the East China Sea, leave the Ford stranded. The only other option would lead to war, and the ramifications of war with China would be enormous. Besides which, we have no idea how strong the Wu government is — does it have the support necessary to govern long-term? Or will it crumble of its own accord? If it does that, then we might not need to do anything at all. We need time.’
‘What’s his game plan?’ Cole wondered aloud. ‘His end-game? What’s he after?’
‘In the first instance, we think it’s the Senkaku Islands,’ dos Santos said, opening the manila file and sliding across the latest satellite images of the area. As the Director of National Intelligence, dos Santos had access to information developed by every agency in the US government. She was young for the job at forty, but had already proven herself more than capable and — perhaps even more importantly — loyal.
Cole looked down, although he didn’t really need to; he knew what the Senkaukus looked like, they had been a major bone of contention between China and Japan for decades. Known as the Diaoyu Islands by the Chinese, they consisted of less than three square miles of uninhabited islands lying between China, Taiwan, and the larger Ryukyu Islands of Japan. And Cole also knew that they had been of no interest to anybody until oil was discovered in the surrounding seas in the late 1960s; it was the same old story.
‘NRO analysis shows that after our forces withdrew from the area,’ dos Santos continued, ‘China’s navy headed out towards the Senkakus.’
‘This makes things even more awkward for us, of course,’ Abrams said, ‘and Prime Minister Toshikatsu has already been on the phone asking for our support.’
Cole nodded in understanding. The US was pledged to assisting Japan defend its territory, and had acknowledged Japan’s claim to ownership of the islands; therefore, if China reclaimed them by force, America would have to intervene. But with four thousand sailors held hostage off the Chinese coast, how could she?
‘What do you want me to do?’ Cole asked the president, although he could already guess what it might be.
‘A military coup is only as effective as the man who leads it,’ Abrams said evenly, spreading out the papers from the manila folder across the desk, showing images of a large, uniformed Chinese man, half of his face obscured by a huge, drooping mustache. ‘Cut off the head, and the body will fall.’
Cole looked up from the photographs and saw that Abrams was staring directly at him, unafraid to give the order. ‘I want you to kill General Wu,’ she said. ‘As soon as you possibly can.’
5
The order to kill didn’t faze Cole in the slightest — years of doing such work had dulled his sense of horror at such actions until it was almost nonexistent.
It hadn’t always been that way, Cole remembered — the first time he’d killed a man, out on patrol with SEAL Team Two back when he’d been only nineteen years old, it had been hard. But, he could admit now, completely at peace with his nature, it hadn’t been as hard for him as it had for many others. And it hadn’t even been the killing that he had felt bad about; it was the fact that he hadn’t reacted quickly enough, had almost let his buddies down.
But he hadn’t let them down. He had killed, and had carried on killing ever since. He truly no longer had any idea how many lives he had taken over the years; he had tried to count once, when his nightmares had threatened to return, but the numbers had just run together into a jumbled mess, hundreds of faces swimming in and out of his consciousness, merging into one another, then drifting slowly one by one, and then altogether again.
For many years, he had lived in denial of a sort; he had truly thought that he had only done what he had done due to his orders, his training, his conditioning. He had been sacrificing his eternal salvation for the benefit of the American people.
And that was still true, of course, although he now understood that there was something else underneath the surface of his psyche. He had been forced to confront it when he had been betrayed by Hansard, when his family had been brutally killed right in front of him, when he had exacted his revenge and then escaped into a life of isolated self-abuse in Thailand.
The awful truth was that he enjoyed the killing; it was what he had been born for, what he had been created to do. He was glad that he had a worthwhile cause to fight for. He often wondered what he would have done had he not been in the military, how his life would have turned out. Would he still have been a killer?
It was an unpleasant question, and one he was reluctant to answer. And at the end of the day, he supposed, it didn’t even matter — he did have a cause, a profession, a worthwhile channel for his urges, and — mercifully — that made it all okay.
‘What do we know about General Wu?’ Cole asked, finishing the cup of coffee and reaching for one of the finger sandwiches on the small table beside him. He had eaten on the plane, but his adrenalin had still been racing and he hadn’t managed to keep much down; now his hunger was appearing with a vengeance.
Catalina dos Santos looked down at her files, though it was hardly necessary; she had already memorized everything there was to know about him.