No one else seemed unduly perturbed over this state of affairs. The other delegations Japanese, Filipino Korean, the other Chinese factions, had, each in turn, added their own share to this growing pool of polite neutrality. Spaced around the conference room’s perimeter, the Asian statesmen sat listening, emotions carefully disengaged. It was an environment that the average Western diplomat might find daunting. However, Van Lynden had been here before.
“No one has said any thing yet because no one yet has any thing to say.” he continued on the notepad. “Everyone has been establishing and testing their channels of communication now, they’re in a holding pattern, waiting for the cue for the real show to start. The big fight building on the mainland!”
“I suspect that will be it.”
Suddenly, their full attention snapped back to the speaker’s dais. While the English translation had remained as blank as before, the first faint tinge of true feeling had crept into Premier Chang’s voice.
“I remind those who attend this conference and the world as a whole, of the triumphs and tragedies of the People’s Republic. We have risked all, we have overcome all, and we have defied all! As the other socialist states have lost heart in the struggle, we have persevered! It is our intent to continue to do so!”
Van Lynden watched the eyes of the small, heavyset man focus around the room, checking off the other delegates, lingering longest on the combined Nationalist/UDFC block. Beyond the neutrality of his features, those eyes glittered coldly.
Better tighten it up, Comrade, the secretary of state thought. Your mask is slipping. You really hate everyone else.
“In this room and you’re just dying to show it in the face of blind eyed rebellion, in the face of the thugs and gangsters of the Nationalists, in the face of this outside interference in the internal affairs of China. We shall persevere!”
Concluding, Chang turned away from the dais, moving abruptly. At the PRC table, General Ho looked on impassively, the tall soldier’s stone-planed features allowing not even a suggestion of what he might be feeling. To date, he had not yet made a presentation at this conference.
Ms. Sagdda’s pen flashed once more. “At least we know who the lead man of the Red delegation is.”
“No! Chang’s just pushing the line. Ho’s the key man. When he starts to talk we’d better be ready to listen.”
Jorge Apayo, the Philippine secretary of state and host chairman of the conference, assumed the dais and announced that the American representative had requested time to address the conference.
“Well, my turn now.” Van Lynden murmured to his assistant. Removing the translator phone from his ear, he got to his feet and crossed to the podium. He had opened the folder that held his notes and was just taking that first, deep speaker’s breath when he noticed something back at his table. Lucena Sagada had been wearing a second earphone, one that linked directly into the U.S. communications center in the hotel. Now she tilted her head and lifted her hand to the ear that held the link. A moment later, she picked up the marker pen that he had been using and scribbled furiously on their legal pad. Reversing it, she flashed Van Lynden the message “It’s happening now!”
The U.S. secretary of state replied with a minute nod. He took a second, deliberate breath and closed the folder that held the notes he had prepared. Leaning into the dais, he spoke.
“Ladies and gentlemen. People are dying. It is time we set to work.”
13
The young Nationalist Army officer lay stretched out on the thin, sour smelling soil, the handset of the held telephone held tightly to his ear. Its buzzing earner tone was very important to him at the moment, it direct linked him not only to the other three launcher vehicles of his unit but back to his battalion headquarters as well. Very soon, his life was going to depend on that link.
His antitank section had forward deployed to this ambush site just before first light, setting up in the thin cover of a brush line that separated two fields. By necessity it had been a hasty deployment, they’d had to move up during the narrow window of opportunity between the withdrawal of the PLA night patrols and the estimated zero hour of their attack. His vehicles would have to rely on their camouflage nets and the rapidly dissipating morning mist for cover.
His command vehicle was two yards to his rear and two to his right. An open Toyota-clone 4 X 4, it mounted a Taiwanese made copy of the Israeli designed Mapats antitank missile launcher. His gunner knelt in the truck bed beside the weapon, peering through the sights of the laser targeting unit. The loader/driver crouched just behind him, alert and waiting, the fiberglass canister of a reload round cradled in his arms.
Setting the phone down for a moment, the Nationalist officer tilted his helmet and pressed the side of his head to the ground. Now he could hear something else, a deep, rumbling reverberation through the earth.
Readjusting his helmet and reclaiming the handset, he spoke a single sentence.
“They are coming.”
And they were. Great lumbering forms plowing through the ground fog Main battle tanks and armored personnel carriers, deployed in the classic Red doctrine “wall of steel” battle formation, grinding in toward the Nationalist defenses.
“Stand ready.”
The antitank officer had already picked his mark down range, the rubble of the old stone wall at the far end of the field, maybe a thousand meters out. Still clutching the field phone, he used his free hand to bring his binoculars up to his eyes. No need to call out targets. His men knew their business. Wait for it. Wait for it. The first rank was driving up and over the wall. For a split second, their gun barrels and optics would be elevated above the horizon and out of firing alignment.
“Shoot!”
Four designation lasers lanced out at the Communist AFVs. Four heavy antitank missiles followed an instant later. Riding plumes of crackling orange fire downrange, three of them found a home.
The big shaped-charge warheads of the Mapats rounds punched cleanly through the forward armor of their targets, incinerating them from the inside out. Deck hatches blew open, and dark clouds of vaporizing flesh and metal boiled into the air. Ammunition exploded and the massive turret of one Type 85 lifted off of its hull on a pad of flame.
“Good salvo!”
“Risk a second?”
“Do it!”
“Reload!”
Behind him, he heard the hollow tank of the expended round canister ejecting from his vehicle’s launcher. He used the shouted cadence of his firing team’s reload drill to time his next order.
Out across the field, the Reds began to react. APCs clanked to a halt, dropping their tail ramps and releasing their infantry squads. Tank guns traversed wildly, seeking targets, and tracer streams began to lash the Nationalist positions.
“Shoot!”
Four more rounds blazed across the open ground. Four targets died. The young officer’s field glasses happened to focus on a Red YW534 armored personnel carrier just as it took its hit. The vehicle’s tailgate had dropped, but its infantry squad had not yet had a chance to disembark. Now they were expelled from the rear of the vehicle as chunks of shreded humanity intermixed in a white-orange fireball. He yelled his final order into the handset.