Chiu led them to his vehicle, a Suzuki four-wheeler in military drab. As Maxwell’s eyes adjusted to the dim light of the ramp, he could see aircraft dispersed on the ramp — helicopters, C-130s, single-engine utility airplanes. Sandbagged gun emplacements were sited at regular intervals around the perimeter of the ramp. Taiwan’s central base for special operations, Chingchuankang, was on high alert.
Driving the Suzuki himself, Chiu headed across the ramp. He made no conversation while he drove, speeding past sandbagged security posts with guards wearing black greasepaint and full combat gear, to a sprawling one-story complex. More sandbags, a machine gun post, and half a dozen grim-looking troops guarded the entrance.
Through a light-sealed inner door, Maxwell and Bass followed Chiu into an illuminated hallway. Squinting in the harsh fluorescent light, they entered a capacious room with charts covering three walls. At a row of computers sat half a dozen technicians. On one wall was a large flat-panel screen with blinking symbols that displayed, Maxwell presumed, a real-time military overview of Taiwan and coastal China.
In the center of the room, on an elevated platform, was a three-meter-square plaster-and-cardboard facsimile of an air field. The miniature base contained runways, hangars, buildings, a water tower, revetments, gun emplacements, even missile batteries.
Chiu saw Maxwell studying the model base. “Do you know what you’re looking at?”
Maxwell was impressed. “Chouzhou.”
“The most accurate reproduction we could make, based on reconnaissance photos and the knowledge of defectors who worked there.”
Maxwell caught the note of disapproval in Chiu’s voice. His opinion of defectors hadn’t changed.
“When does the operation go?”
“Soon. Within forty-eight hours. It has been given the highest priority by our… current head of state.” Maxwell caught the note of distaste. He wondered if Chiu had a dislike for the new president of Taiwan, or if he just hated women in general.
Bass was looking at the model, shaking his head. “Jesus, this looks like something from Mission Impossible. How are we going to get in there and out again without getting our asses shot off? This place is more heavily defended than downtown Beijing.”
Chiu gave him a cold look. “That is my concern, not yours. Your task will be to deal with the airplane, nothing more It will be my responsibility to insert you into the base at Chouzhou.”
“Your responsibility?” said Maxwell. “Does that mean that you—”
“I am in command of the raid,” said Chiu. “This is a Taiwanese operation, using our troops and equipment. Everyone—” he gave each man a glower, “—will take orders from me. Without question. Is that understood?”
Maxwell felt himself bristle. No, it wasn’t understood. Something had gotten lost in the mission description. Taking orders from a raving tyrant who hated women and Americans and all other living things wasn’t part of the job.
For several seconds he kept his silence, weighing whether to tell Chiu to go stuff his model base and his mission and his orders, understood or otherwise, straight up his bunghole.
Bass watched him, a curious expression on his face.
Maxwell took a deep breath. The mission comes first. Humor this asshole.
He gave Bass a barely perceptible nod, then he turned to Chiu. “Understood, Colonel.”
Chiu wasn’t finished. “If the United States had not abandoned Taiwan, this operation would not be necessary. The war would be won already.”
“You’ve not been abandoned, Colonel. The U.S. is supplying most of Taiwan’s ships and aircraft and ordnance. We trained your pilots. The Reagan Strike Group is still on station in the Strait.”
“Will they deliver an attack on Chinese air defense sites?”
“Not without provocation.”
“Will they engage the Chinese Air Force when we insert our team into Chouzhou?”
“You know the answer. The United States is not at war with China.”
Chiu shook his head in disgust. “Talk. All empty talk. For fifty years the United States assured us they were our ally. In the final analysis, that’s all it was. Talk.”
Maxwell was getting a quick picture of Chiu. He was obviously a man with a mountain-sized chip on his shoulder. It was hard to figure who he hated the most, China or the United States. It didn’t matter. “Look, Colonel, we’re here to do a job, not discuss foreign policy. If you don’t wish to include us in the operation, that suits me. We’ll return to the Reagan tonight.”
Chiu’s eyes narrowed. He was about to deliver another blast when he stopped and fixed his attention to something in the hallway behind them.
“Our team of foreigners is complete,” he said. “Gentlemen, meet the defector who will take us to the Black Star.”
Maxwell looked over his shoulder. He abruptly lost interest in the model air base, the charts on the wall, the tactical display. His eyes riveted on a rich tumble of black hair, flashing almond eyes, a smile that erased all his anger.
She wasn’t wearing the baggy fatigues and the clunky boots. They had been replaced by snug-fitting Levis, white sneakers, a T-shirt that bore the likeness of, Maxwell presumed, some rock musician. Maybe a dead scientist. He couldn’t tell.
Mai-ling looked like a kid on a college campus.
“I knew it,” she said. “I knew I’d see you again.”
Sovremenny.
Reading the urgent message on the bridge of the Kai Yang, Commander Lei Fu-Sheng felt a surge of alarm pass through him. Everyone had presumed that the greatest threat would come from PLA navy submarines.
They were wrong. They hadn’t counted on the Sovremenny destroyers.
Darkness had descended once again on the strait. The Kai Yang had lived through another twelve hours of daylight. Lei could see only the silhouettes of his escort vessels cruising a parallel course.
After killing the first Kilo class submarine, they had located another and hounded it into the jaws of a fast-moving destroyer squadron, who dispatched it with their own torpedoes. Elsewhere in the strait, another Kilo and a Ming class Chinese submarine had been caught and killed. PLA navy submarines had accounted for the loss of only two Taiwanese warships — a frigate, the Han Yang, and a destroyer whose captain had been too complacent as he cruised out of his anchorage at Kaohsiung.
Until now, it had been a one-sided naval war. The PLA navy was overrated. They had decent equipment, but they were too inept at using it.
But the two Sovremenny class destroyers were something else. They were crewed, according to intelligence briefs, by the cream of the PLA navy. Armed with supersonic 3M80E Moskit anti-ship missiles, the Sovremenny class could kill anything in its theatre — surface, submerged, or airborne.
They weren’t supposed to be a threat. Yesterday Lei and his fellow commanders received assurances that both Sovremenny destroyers—Fan Tzu and Fan Tao—had been caught in their berths at the naval yard at Xiamen when the war began. The first wave of Harpoon missiles had devastated the base. Neither destroyer made it to the open sea.
It was bad information.
The message arrived on Lei’s bridge a few minutes after sunset. The two Sovremennys had appeared in the Xiamen channel, undamaged from the Harpoon barrages, steaming out of their concrete-sheltered berths. Dodging the flotsam in the harbor, they made for the Xiamen channel. They met no opposition as they steamed toward the safety of the strait.