“Life is full of shitty choices,” the pilot shot back. “Are you suicidal? If we open the bomb bay doors those fighters will swat us out of the sky.”
Before the copilot could think of an answer to that verity, the tail gunner sang out on the ICS, “Number two has dropped his landing gear! He’s turning out of formation. And there goes number four! They must be going to land at Lantau.”
There it is! the pilot told himself. Make up your mind.
He retarded the throttles; with the nose in a climb attitude, the speed bled off sharply. Now he reached for the gear handle and moved it to die down position. As the hydraulics hummed and the gear extended, the pilot said to the copilot, “Better hope it’s a short war.”
Three of the bombers dropped their landing gear and turned for the airfield at Lantau. Only one continued to climb away to the northeast. Ma Chow’s wingman went with the landing bombers while Ma Chow followed the one climbing out. As it passed twenty thousand feet he broke away.
He did a large 360-degree turn while he watched the lone H-6 disappear into the haze. When it was completely gone, he checked his compass, then dropped the fighter’s nose.
Down he went toward the city below, accelerating rapidly. In seconds the plane was supersonic. He kept the nose down, let it accelerate.
Passing five thousand feet, Ma Chow engaged his after-burners. The airspeed slid past Mach two.
The tail of the fighter was hidden by a moisture disk condensing in the supersonic shock wave as Ma Chow flew across the PLA base below a thousand feet. Then he lifted his fighter’s nose and rode his afterburner plumes straight up into the gauzy June morning.
Wu Tai Kwong and the members of the Scarlet Team were standing outside the closed main gate in plain sight of the PLA troops behind the gate and perimeter fence and in the observation tower when the shock wave of the racing fighter hit them like an explosion. When the crowd realized what it was, they cheered lustily.
Every person in the crowd looked up to watch the fighter disappear into the haze over their heads.
Wu listened to the fading roar of the engines and glanced at the hands of his watch, which were creeping toward seven o’clock.
At two minutes before the appointed hour, Wu nodded at Virgil Cole, who had a portable York control unit hanging from a strap around his neck. He used the unit to walk Alvin York forward and stop it next to Wu, who examined the robot with interest. This was the first time he had seen a York up close in the daylight.
When the Scarlet Team had looked it over, they stood aside, giving the soldiers on the other side of the fence their first good look. Cole walked the York to the closed metal gate, stopping it just a few feet short.
As the seconds ticked away, the crowd gradually fell silent. All that could be heard was the buzzing of the television helicopter overhead. Looking around, Cole tried to guess how many people were there. A quarter million, he thought, more or less. Most were unarmed, of course, but that was not the point. In human affairs numbers matter.
At precisely seven o’clock, Wu Tai Kwong nodded at Cole and he clicked on an icon.
Alvin York stepped forward, seized the gate, and tore it from its hinges. The robot threw the gate off to one side, then walked through the opening with its head scanning and minigun barrel spinning. Behind it walked the Scarlet Team, and behind them, all the people in the world.
The waiting soldiers threw down their rifles and stood aside. Alvin York and the Scarlet Team walked on by.
The Scarlet Team was not around when the crowd found Governor Sun hiding in a storage closet in a barracks. They dragged him outside and stripped him naked.
By the time Wu and Cole fought their way through the packed humanity, it was too late for Sun. The crowd used their fingernails to rip the flesh from his bones, then they pulled his limbs from their sockets and wrenched them from his body. He screamed some, then succumbed. Even if Wu could have reached Sun’s person, it is doubtful that anyone could have stopped the mob.
The blood riot was captured by the television camera a few hundred feet overhead. Fortunately the human wave that swarmed over the base was fairly well-behaved and Wu’s armed men were able to prevent wholesale looting of the military stores.
By noon the crowd had thinned considerably, and by mid-afternoon Wu’s lieutenants began herding civilians off the base so they could see what was left.
Wu and Cole departed soon after Sun’s death. They had much to accomplish and very little time.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jake and Callie Grafton went to bed in the consul general’s suite in the U.S. consulate while the rebels were fighting the PLA in Kowloon. After the television chopper brought them back to the consulate from the Barbary Coast, Jake merely nodded at the marines at the gate, who snapped him smart salutes, and walked through. He informed the consulate duty officer that he was expecting a call from Washington, which was an untruth of a low order of magnitude.
The duty officer was juggling telephones as he tried to coordinate the efforts of the staff, which was trying desperately to keep Washington informed of the progress of the battle in Kowloon as they learned of it. The duty officer muttered “Yessir” at Jake, who wandered off with Callie in hand. When the duty officer was out of sight, Jake made a beeline for Cole’s bedroom.
They were under the covers with glasses of champagne on the nightstand ten minutes after they locked the door.
“I have a serious question to ask and I want a serious answer,” Callie said.
Jake sipped champagne and wriggled his toes under the silk sheets. Silk sheets! God, how these billionaires lived! “Sure,” he said, to humor her.
“Okay, here goes: If you were asked, would you accept an appointment as an officer in the Free Chinese Navy?”
“Have you been mulling that for the last two days?”
“I just wondered. What’s your answer?”
“Hell, no. They might not make me an admiral. I’m not going to join anybody’s navy unless they make me an admiral.”
“What if they offer to make you an admiral?”
“I’d have to think about it.”
“Really?”
“No. I’m pulling your leg. Turn out the lights and let’s snuggle.”
“I’m too sore to make love,” she said.
“And I’m too tired. Turn out the lights, lover, and let’s pretend until we collapse.”
She reached and got the lights. “Do you mean it? If Wu Tai Kwong asks, you’ll say no?”
“He won’t ask, but if he does, I’ll say what an honor it is to be asked, blah blah blah, but unfortunately blah blah blah.”
“You’re absolutely sure?”
“You and I are hitting the road the first chance we get. We are going back to the land of Coke and hot dogs as fast as we can get there.”
“Level with me, Jake.”
“You’re really serious, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
He thought about how he should say it. “If you hadn’t been kidnapped, I wouldn’t have had to kill those guys tonight. I’m not blaming you; I just don’t want to have to fight this fight. This is a Chinese civil war — it’s their problem. I’m willing to fight for my country and my family, and that’s it. Sure, those guys tonight got what they had coming, but I’m not God, don’t want His job. If we go home we’re out of it. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” She did understand, and she felt relieved.
“I was damned worried about you, Callie. Staring at the spectre of life without you was not pleasant. Maybe it’s posttraumatic shock — I don’t want you out of my sight, not for the foreseeable future.”