“Communists killed my friends in Vietnam at a place called the Ia Drang valley, communists killed my wife and son and youngest daughter in Washington DC… ” He handed over the newspaper, which the woman smoothed out to show the story of the destruction of the USS John F Kennedy group.
“… Communists killed my oldest daughter in the North Pacific… but do you know something?”
Both lawyers looked at him, or rather at the old Colt .45 automatic that he had taken from the bag.
“I have more respect for their killers than I have for you two… the people who killed them did at least have an ideal that they believed in. They didn’t let their lust for greenbacks, drive them to destroy the brave men and women who are doing a job that may result in their own deaths, from falling masonry or cancer.”
Even had the old souvenir of the Vietnam War not distracted them, it is debatable if they would have understood his words, as their creed was so far removed from his. Rudi saw this as he looked into their faces, he saw that these people believed in nothing and nobody but the value of money, no matter what the damage and harm they may cause in acquiring it. Duty to anything but monetary profit was the pastime of suckers, losers and defendants in civil actions.
The contempt on his face sounded a warning bell in the male lawyers’ brain and he turned to run, abandoning his partner and dropping his smart document case in the mud as he did so.
Rudi shot the man twice between the shoulder blades before he could run ten feet and then the young woman through the heart, before turning the gun on himself.
The low orbit RORSAT that had been saved by the actions of the Russian deep cover operative swept across the ocean and downloaded the radar data it carried via a communications satellite. Two hours’ later the three Soviet submarine Wolf packs had the information and began moving into position to meet the convoys from Canada, New York and Texas.
A stack of files sat before the president, each contained an option for carrying the war back to the enemy in Asia and that was something he dearly wished to do. His military advisors had counselled on re-grouping first, marking their ground and holding it whilst building up resources for a fighting return, but he harboured hope of a faster solution anyway.
He had withdrawn to his own quarters, though that was a rather grand description, taking with him some two dozen of the buff folders to peruse.
Each of the files carried on the third page a précis of the operation and after reading four he came to realise that someone had dealt a hand of wild cards to some free thinkers and briefed them to let their imaginations have full rein of the proposals. He wasn’t a soldier but he did not allow that to cloud his judgement, he worked purely off logic as he passed his eye quickly over each, made an assessment and assigned them one of three stacks. Promising, Credible and Incredible.
The Incredible pile outweighed the Credible and the promising stack held just four. The file that held his attention of them all proposed using a large island in a similar fashion as that of the British Isles in World War 2, as a staging point for attacks and possibly even to assemble an invasion force there.
He would keep that file for General Shaw to assign a planning team to. It was possibly their best means of reversing their losses in his eyes and therefore worth serious consideration for expending assets and resources on.
Just so long as Taiwan stood unconquered.
The sound of man-made thunder reverberated down from the north, echoing off the valley walls of the Hsüeh-shan Shan-mo mountains south of Taipei.
The only areas of the island not occupied by the People’s Republic of China was now north of two rivers that ran out of the mountains, the Cho-shui to the east and the T’ou-ch’ien on the west of the island. The southern tip of the island was also denied to them by hard fighting ROCs and civilian volunteers defending their homes.
Taiwan stood alone, the resupply flights of Patriot missiles had ceased several days before, and there was now no challenge to the steady rain of incoming enemy missiles, which landed every fifteen minutes.
In response to public and political pressure US military forces had, over several years previously, been withdrawn from Taiwanese territory. The same situation existed throughout the region, with the exception of South Korea. The US military garrison’s, airbases and naval installations had been drawing back in scale since the seventies until they existed in token only.
The Taiwanese troops dug in along the defence line had heard that morning that the Japanese Island of Okinawa had fallen during the night. Four days before in a spookily similar situation to the landings in 1945, elements of the PRC Tenth Army landed on Higashi beach, where the US Tenth army had landed fifty-seven years before. Unlike that earlier conflict, Japanese defence forces had not been able to mount the same fierce resistance; the attack from Mainland China on her island neighbours had been too much of a surprise and the PRC too well informed of troop dispositions and defences. Reported atrocities against the civilian populace were unverified by independent sources, yet the Tenth Army’s VI and VII brigades who had carried out the landings, were known to be the Penal Units of the People’s Liberation Army of China.
Huddled down in the bunkers and trenches of the Taiwanese final defence line, many a soldier or the naval and air force personnel pressed into service as infantry now that the ships, aircraft and installations were no more, checked watches as 1200hrs drew near.
From the plain in the west, across the mountains to the eastern shores there existed a graveyard of men and machines from both sides. For the past five days the armed forces of Taiwan, the ROCs, had given ground only when the alternative was that of being overrun. The PRC had split the island, and its forces, in two. The forces in the south had their backs to the sea as they held the last ten miles of the tapered southern tip; the front line there was the town of Ch’e-ch’eng.
The northern line was forty miles from the capital but it was the last natural barrier of any substance. Taiwan had no ships left with which to stem the flow of equipment, men and supplies from the mainland. A determined effort had been made before the invasion had been a day old, to snuff it out by driving the PLAN ships from coastal waters, but although they had sunk troop transports and warships, it had failed and cost them dearly. Swarms of PLAAF fighters had swamped the navy air cover almost as soon as it had taken to the air. They had started the day with a surface combat fleet of four Kidd class air defence destroyers, twenty-nine frigates of the Perry, Lafayette, Knox and Gearing classes plus sixty-nine missile and patrol boats. None of the destroyers or frigates had got within range to engage the invasion fleet, only fast manoeuvrable missile boats had managed that but of those that had gotten within range, none had returned. The three surviving air defence destroyers had been given anti-ballistic missile duties protecting Taipei and Chiang Kai Shek airport, where the last one had been sunk by a PLAN submarine the day before.
Sixteen frigates had been sunk during the attack on the invasion fleet and the remainders were picked off by air attacks over the following three days, as had the last of the missile and patrol boats.
Two of Taiwan’s four submarines were tasked with the removal to safety the countries gold and diamond reserves, whilst the last two now sat in Taipei harbour with just their conning towers above the surface awaiting the members of the government seeking to continue in exile.
Just after prior to midnight almost ten hours’ before, the PRC had issued an ultimatum to surrender by 1200hrs that day or they would do unto Taipei and the Taiwanese what Genghis Khan had done to Beijing and its citizens in the year 1215. Surrender or die was the Mogul chieftains’ favoured phrase.