Fourth Crisis: The Battle for Taiwan (10 page)

Along with this lone, wasted soul, other Chinese sleepers had
awakened that day.
 
He and his comrades
had conducted an orchestra of mayhem at Taiwanese surface-to-air missiles
sites, radar stations, and critical communications nodes.

◊◊◊◊

North of the Mall’s Reflecting Pool, next to the stark
Vietnam Memorial, Constitution Garden was a serene respite.
 
It captured the city’s dirt and noise in a hedge
of mature maples that swished in the early-evening breeze.
 
Jade and Richard sat on a bench where they listened
to birds twitter about their day.
 
Richard
had had the idea of sharing some dinner before her night class.
 
He pulled two foil logs from a plastic bag
and declared them ‘the best burritos in all of DC.’

“It’s huge,” Jade marveled at the ‘little donkey’s’ girth, and
accepted it with hesitation, placing it on a napkin.
 
Intimidated by the burrito’s heft, she grabbed
for a greasy tortilla chip instead.
 
“My
parents want me home,” she said with a crunch.
 
Richard took a big bite in hopes of escaping the need to answer.
 
“Would you ever come back to China with me?”

“I would love to see the place someday,” Richard mumbled.

“You know what I mean,” she continued, and shoved an entire
chip into her mouth.
 
Richard wondered if
that was her idea of a marriage proposal.
 
He shifted uneasily.

“Jade, this is my home.”
 
Richard looked to the garden’s small lake and the island that memorialized
the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence.

“You do not belong here.
 
You are Chinese,” Jade persisted.

“No.
 
I am
Chinese-American.
 
Don’t confuse the
two.”

“You’re not white enough to be American,” Jade stabbed.
 
Richard rolled his eyes.

“Look.
 
Being American
is a state of mind; a culture of liberty.
 
It’s not about race.
 
Don’t let a
few ignorant people confuse you.
 
You can
only pity and try to educate them,” Richard lectured.
 
Jade believed he was referring to the drunken
college student they had encountered, but he actually spoke of her.
 
There was a long silence.
 
In that moment, Richard realized the crisis
might break them.
 
Already full, he took
another bite of the burrito to occupy his mouth.
 
Somebody nearby cursed their cell phone and a
car horn blared.

They both squinted into the low sun.
 
Richard saluted to block the blinding
glare.
 
A black sedan honked again and weaved
across grass and sidewalk, drawing curses from the after-work crowd.
 
The car raced at Jade and Richard and then halted
before their bench.
 
A man in black with slicked-back
hair and sunglasses leapt out.
 
He greeted
Richard by name, flashed credentials, and apologized for the interruption.

“Please come with me, sir,” the US Secret Service special
agent told Richard.
 
Richard wondered if
he had missed a call, and took out his cell phone.
 
It had no reception.
 
“
Now,
sir.”
 
Richard stood and apologized to Jade,
saying he would see her at home. He was then nudged through the car’s back
door.
 
Jade watched the car swerve on the
grass and speed off again.
 
She placed the
unfinished remains of their picnic in a trash bin and started a lonely walk
back to campus.

Instead of going up 23
^rd
Street, the car turned
onto Constitution Avenue.
 
Richard
realized they were not going back to the State Department.
 
He asked the driver where they were
headed.
 
The agent spoke to the rearview
mirror, stating they would arrive at their destination shortly.

“Destination?”
 
Richard checked his phone again.
 
There
was still no signal.
 
“Hey, who’s your
cell carrier?” he asked the agent.
 
This
time there was no answer at all.
 
They
neared the White House.
 
Richard cursed
to himself and straightened his tie.
 
The
car passed protestors from both sides of the Taiwan issue who hurled insults at
each other and the mansion.
 
A thin blue
line of police separated them.

The car turned up Executive Avenue and approached one of the
White House’s gates.
 
The agent directed
Richard to prepare identification as they stopped at the Park Service
guardhouse.
 
The window came down and the
air-conditioned car quickly filled with muggy air heavily scented by fresh cut
grass and roses.
 
Richard sneezed.
 
Continuing up the semicircular drive toward
the East Wing, Richard noticed several marines on the building’s rooftop.
 
The car pulled into the shade of the
porte-cochere and stopped at an ornate pillared doorway.

Richard and the agent passed through a metal detector built
into the door frame, and entered the East Wing’s lobby.
 
Another Secret Service agent asked if Richard
was armed, though he did not wait to start patting him down.
 
Satisfied, the agent pointed to the far
door.
 
Richard began a silent, escorted
walk.
 
An old African-American butler gave
a nod and continued to wind a centuries-old grandfather clock.
 
Richard passed an office where he noticed
several computer screens that displayed Andy Warhol’s ‘Mao.’
 
The colorfully abstract Chinese Communist
leader smiled back at frustrated American staff that repeatedly pushed
Crtl-Alt-Del on their keyboards.
 
With a
pat on his shoulder, the escort pushed Richard along, inducing him to an
elevator guarded by two marines in full dress.

After a recheck of credentials, one of the marines inserted
and turned a key, and the waiting elevator opened.
 
The Marine’s bright-white gloves pointed the
way.
 
Surprised to be proceeding alone,
Richard hesitated and then entered.
 
The
elevator descended slowly into the city’s bedrock before it stopped with a
gentle bounce.
 
The doors slid open at
the arched basement level where Secretary Pierce waited.

“Read.” She shoved a file at Richard.
 
Just three lines of the Chinese action
summary were enough to visibly awe the young man.
 
She pulled him along as he continued reading,
bumping him into a four-star army general as they all pushed into the
Presidential Emergency Operations Center.
 
PEOC’s heavy vault door clanged shut as senior staff settled around an
oval table flanked by large video screens.

Secretary Pierce took her seat among the group that included
the president, several of the joint chiefs, and the assistant to the president
for national security affairs, better known as the national security
advisor.
 
Richard found a chair among the
other civilian and military aides.
 
Settling in, he continued to read.
 
Richard felt eyes upon him and looked up to find the army general
staring.
 
Richard nodded cordially, though
he also recognized the suspicion in the man’s look.
 
He has fought Asians before, Richard thought,
probably Koreans and Vietnamese, maybe even Chinese, too.
 
We all look the same to him.
 
Loathing simmered beneath the general’s thin,
politically correct crust.
 
That crust had
been cracked today, blown open by Chinese missiles.
 
Richard looked away from the suspicious glare
of the man he had sized up.
 
A map of the
Pacific theater came up on the screen with red marks on Guam, Okinawa, and in
the middle of the Philippine Sea.
 
Pictures of the damaged supercarrier
George
Washington
appeared, along with still and video shots of the wrecked island
air bases.
 
The Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs—a silver-haired admiral—began the meeting with continuity of government
protocols.

“Mr. President, NAOC has departed Omaha, and Vice President
Campos is at Mount Weather.
 
Air Force
One is standing by at Andrews.
 
Marine
One is four minutes out,” the admiral said. “We’ll have to keep this short.”

“What do we know, Nathaniel?” President Keeley asked of his
national security advisor.

“Well, sir, before we lost contact with the Taiwanese, they
were claiming the missile launch that started this whole thing was initiated
from within Communist China.
 
Their people
discovered some virus that had sat dormant and undetected before activating in
their defense network.
 
A Trojan dragon,
if you will.”
 
The advisor saw the
president’s tired eyes glaze over, and decided to keep it simple.
 
“Mr. President, just after sunrise Pacific
time, the Chinese hit Andersen and Kadena Air Force Bases with cruise
missiles.
 
The bases sustained heavy
damage.
 
We have suffered large losses of
both lives and equipment.
 
The
George Washington
was also hit with ship-homing
ballistic missiles.
 
She is limping to
Manila.
 
The supercarrier
John C. Stennis
was sailing from Oahu, when
her reactors’ cooling pumps shut down.
 
They got them going again, but not before the cores overheated and
vented, contaminating most of her engineering spaces.
 
Stennis
is adrift and awaiting tugs.

“How the hell?” the president wondered, aloud.

“Hacked.
 
Someone apparently
had gained access to the ship’s network and got into power plant control.
 
We assume it was the work of People’s
Liberation Army information warfare units.
 
Analysis of the attack’s digital exhaust points in that direction.
 
It could have been much worse, though,
sir.
 
Much
worse.”
 
Everyone pictured two nuclear
cores melting through the bottom of the supercarrier and exploding on contact
with seawater; an atomic disemboweling.
 
“
Ronald Reagan
is the last
flattop we have in the Pacific right now.
 
Hers will be the next carrier strike group to arrive in theater.
 
On top of all this, we have experienced
distributed denial of service cyber attacks on the White House and Department
of Energy, and, as of five minutes ago, the cities of Boston and Atlanta have
lost electrical power.
 
It’s doubtful
these blackouts are coincidence, especially since cellular service is also down
on the eastern seaboard.
 
Finally, one of
our ‘recon’ satellites was blinded as it passed over China, likely hit by the
ground-based laser at Tianan.
 
We’re
re-tasking other satellites to fill the gap, but we don’t have much in the way
of regional reconnaissance right now,” the national security advisor lamented.

“We have an SR-92 Blackburn departing Nevada as we
speak.
 
It’ll be over China in half an
hour.” He explained that, because with its hypersonic speed and that it would
be flying against the rotation of the earth, it wouldn’t take more than that.
 
The president turned to the secretary of
state. “Get our people out of Taiwan,” the president ordered.

“Done.
 
Sir, I recommend
you establish communications with Beijing as soon as possible.
 
Use the red phone,” Secretary Pierce advised.

“Not until you’re safely in the air,” the army general
interjected.
 
The president sighed,
deeply.
 
The gravity of the situation
weighed heavy in the room.

“Secretary Pierce, have the Taiwanese made any formal
requests of us?” the president asked.
 
She frowned, and gestured to the national security advisor.

“Mr. President, we are unable to contact their government,
or their Ministry of National Defense.”

An aide answered a flashing telephone.
 
He ran to an air force general and spoke
urgently into his ear.
 
The general’s
eyes widened, and he stood.

“Mr. President, a second Chinese launch has been initiated.”

“At us?” The president demanded.

“It’s too early to tell if it’s intercontinental, sir.
 
Mr. President, it’s time to get the hell out
of Dodge,

Secret Service agents entered the bunker in numbers, signifying
the president’s helicopter was touching down on the White House’s South Lawn.
 
The agents surrounded the president, and, with
feet barely touching the floor, the leader of the free world was bundled to his
aircraft.
 
The meeting was over.

◊◊◊◊

Rocket brigades of the People’s Liberation Army’s Second
Artillery unleashed hell.
 
East Wind
ballistic missiles lifted and climbed out from fixed silos and big trucks, and East
Sea and Long Sword cruise missiles departed shore launchers.
 
The high-low missile swarm journeyed across
the Strait.
 
Taiwanese air bases, air
defense sites, marshaling areas, naval depots, power plants, telephone
exchanges, and railway junctions were all on the menu.