Kang swept his eyes around the room at the members of China’s Politburo, scattered about the hall in small groups — some shouting boisterously, others whispering nervously.
‘Look at them,’ Kang said with disdain. ‘Lost without someone to lead them. They are all thinking the same thing — those who can see past the possibility of being shot, that is. They’re thinking if Wu fails, and we are reinstated, who among us will assume the role of Paramount Leader? They think it, but they daren’t do anything about it. This is your time, Wubei — time to impress people, time to take charge.’
‘But what about Hua?’ Chang asked. Hua Peng was the Premier, the prime minister of Tsang’s regime and the logical choice to replace Wu if things were to suddenly change.
Kang smiled. ‘You let me worry about Hua, you just do what I tell you. Do you understand?’
Chang nodded his head uncertainly. ‘Yes… Yes, I do.’
Kang pointed across the hall to a small bronze of a duck in flight. ‘The duck,’ he said. ‘You’ve seen them sitting calmly on the water, yes? Sitting calmly, peacefully, although under the water its little feet are kicking a hundred beats a minute, all the time scrabbling for survival. That is me, Wubei. That is you.’ He turned back to Chang, hooded eyes staring straight at him. ‘If you are to become leader when this is all over, you cannot let anyone see what is going on under the surface.’
General Wu De, Paramount Leader of the People’s Republic of China, strode into the Hall of Martial Virtue, a wide smile breaking underneath his thick, oiled mustache.
‘My friends,’ he said, arms open, ‘my friends. How are you?’
He laughed heartily then, watching as all eyes turned to him, to the armed soldiers who entered with him, to the black-robed man who stood right by his side, the glass eye in his scarred, shaven head enough to make everyone just a little nervous. That was the joy of Zhou Shihuang, Wu’s three-hundred pound personal enforcer; his ability to make people nervous.
Wu had received reports that — although he had given order for the members of the Politburo to be constantly moved around in order to confuse and disorient them, they were still gathering in groups to chat and to organize plans against him. His source had highlighted one individual in particular that was a distinct threat to him.
But Wu didn’t want to confine the entire Politburo to cells, and he had no desire to kill them — such a move would be a public relations disaster with the people he wanted to lead, as well as a dangerously volatile challenge to international diplomacy. Besides which, they were useful as hostages, and might even decide to join him after being given some time to consider their options.
But he did want them to consider such options in the correct light; one in which Wu De was their leader, and they obeyed without question.
To make sure this situation occurred, Wu was about to play one of his favorite games; kill a chicken to train a monkey.
‘It has come to my attention,’ he began as he strolled through the hall, passing the cowering politicians, ‘that some of you are already thinking about what will happen if I am gone. Who will lead, now Tsang is dead? Well,’ he said with a smile as he stopped next to Hua Peng, ‘the answer is simple. Hua Peng is your Premier, is he not? Logically then, he will replace me. Unless…’
In the blink of an eye, Zhou Shihuang swept past his master, with a speed that belied his immense bulk. In one fluid move, the huge man seized the arm of Hua Peng, wrenching the wrist back towards his hand, breaking it like a twig. In the next instant, with Hua’s child-like screams still filling the air of the hall, a crushing side kick came stamping down, destroying Hua’s kneecap with a sickening crack.
And then — even before Hua’s body could collapse to the floor — Zhou reached out to take hold of the Premier’s head, twisting it savagely between his hands, snapping the neck cleanly and silencing the screams forever.
General Wu watched the body fall to the floor with great satisfaction, before turning back to the other Politburo members.
‘Let there be no more talk of what might happen, yes?’ he asked. ‘I suggest you all accept that things have changed, and agree to follow my leadership.’
But Wu knew something else altogether would result from Hua’s sudden death — with the Premier out of the way, division and segregation would spread throughout the Politburo as each one of them vied for a chance at the top slot. There were four Vice Premiers who would be keen for advancement, just for starters.
The group would be hard pressed to organize a resistance of any kind now, too consumed with political in-fighting and ambitious back-stabbing to unite against Wu. They would therefore be weakened and broken, and much easier to subjugate in the long term.
Everyone in the hall was silent, and Wu surveyed them slowly, eyes meeting each one in turn — careful not to smile when he met the hooded, knowing eyes of his old friend Kang Xing — and then, satisfied that the lesson had been learned, he nodded once.
‘That was unfortunate,’ Wu said, ‘but I do have good news. Today our forces will attack the traitors of Taiwan. We will reclaim it as our own, one more step on our journey towards a new Chinese Empire.’
He looked down at the body of Hua, gestured toward it with his hand. ‘This was regrettably unavoidable,’ he said, ‘but I will not let it despoil this special day. I trust you will not let it do so either.’
The threat clear, his work done, Wu turned on his heel and left the Hall of Martial Valor, the dead chicken left on the floor behind him, a clear sign for the monkey.
Class was over.
2
Jake Navarone dropped his bags to the hot cement as he looked around the naval base, hands on his hips. It had been a long time.
Naval Base Coronado was a consolidated military installation which held eight separate naval facilities across 57,000 acres of San Diego County. One of these was Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, which itself contained the Naval Special Warfare Center — home to the legendary SEAL training school which made men out of boys.
Navarone had undergone his own training here, at the tender age of eighteen, just out of high school, and he remembered well the twenty-four week Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL course — by far the most grueling period of his year of basic training for the teams. The dropout rate was said to be as high as ninety percent and, looking back, Navarone thought that was about right for his intake too. Most of the people he’d met in those early days had failed to last the course. And even now, after years in the elite Naval Special Warfare Development Group which was more popularly known as SEAL Team Six, BUD/S was still the toughest training he’d done, and he looked around the base with mixed feelings. There was pride, certainly; but still, even after all these years, there was a slight hint of trepidation, as if he was still that long-haired eighteen year old boy stepping off the bus for the first time.
Navarone looked around and saw Mark Cole had paused where he stood too; but only for a moment, a brief flicker in the man’s eyes which was soon gone. He reminded himself that Cole had been trained here too, even before Navarone. He wondered what feelings the base conjured up for his boss; he couldn’t imagine the man being perturbed by anything. He was a rock, a special operations legend, and Navarone felt privileged to be on the same team, hand-picked. He must be doing something right, he supposed.
But the job with Force One wasn’t without its complications. Navarone had never married, but liked to spend his leave with his parents and his two much younger sisters back in Florida.