Fourth Crisis: The Battle for Taiwan (22 page)

With only four Taiwanese army platoons and some police at
hand, the mayor of Magong City ordered his police chief to lower the flag
flying above City Hall.
 
In hopes of
sparing the town and its citizens from violence, a white one was raised in its
stead.
 
Torn by the decision, the mayor
stepped onto his apartment’s balcony.
 
He
heard the pleas of his police chief again, and they echoed in his head.
 
A low rumbling reverberated from Magong
City’s airport.
 
Two Vigorous Dragons
roared overhead.
 
These Chinese aircraft
shook the old building to its foundation.
 
Heartbroken to see Communist jets roaming freely through Taiwanese
skies, the mayor began to sob.

◊◊◊◊

With overwhelming airpower at its back, Chinese naval
surface groups punched through the Taiwanese naval forces.
 
With the cream of Taiwan’s navy out of the
way, Chinese amphibious operations commenced forthwith.

Painted orange by the late afternoon sun, the men and
machines of China’s 1
^st
and 2
^nd
Marine Brigades assembled
off the west coast of Taiwan.
 
The
collection of landing ships, hovercraft, and troop transports sailed for the strategic
Taiwanese ports at Mailiao, site of a petroleum terminal and tank farm; and to
Kaohsiung, with its vast container facility.
 
A third amphibious prong would hit the beaches of Liuqiu, a
geographically important islet off the southwest coast of Taiwan’s main
island.
 
At Kaohsiung, along with several
other merchantmen similarly trapped in the Taiwanese port, the Greek bulk
carrier
Himitos
lay at anchor.

Having watched missiles and airplanes crisscrossing overhead
for two days, her captain enjoyed some momentary quiet on the bridge.
 
Sipping a coffee and fingering a string of
worry beads, he looked out over the ship’s four big deck cranes, and then out
to the port’s breakwater and the Strait beyond.
 
Squinting into the glaring sunset, the Greek spotted two inflatable
raiding boats on the horizon.

A small Chinese flag whipped from the lead boat’s radio
antenna.
 
A Chinese marine surveyed the
port and spoke into his radio.
 
The
rubber raiders came about.
 
Smoke
generators started up and chugged thick grey smoke that concealed the port’s
entrance.
 
The cloud lingered, and the
sound of machines grew from within it.
 
Air cushioned personnel landing craft rode inflated skirts, emerged, and
sped into the harbor.

Each hovercraft docked at a tire-lined concrete wharf and
disembarked its team of Chinese operators, who sprinted for the terminal’s
power distribution grid and fresh water manifold.
 
Pushed by three ducted propellers, a huge
hovercraft trudged past the breakwater, passing by a quay stacked with multi-colored
containers waiting to be loaded on ships, trains, and trucks.
 
Then the hovercraft lined up with a boat
ramp.
 
Big propellers reversed and blasted,
slowing and stopping the Chinese hovercraft on the ramp.
 
The craft’s bow door opened.
 
Crab amphibious armored personnel carriers
and a Dragon Turtle light tank scuttled out and climbed the seaweed-covered
incline.
 
The two smaller hovercrafts
turned and led the larger one from the harbor.

The Crabs and the Dragon Turtle sped for the main wharf; a
concrete appendage sized to accommodate modern container ships, and positioned themselves
by the wharf’s travelling gantry crane.
 
Assault
squads dismounted.
 
The all-clear was
given and two big troop transport ships prepared to dock.
 

The ships came in fast for their size, and kicked up mud and
sand as they slowed and paralleled the wharf.
 
Lines were secured and gangways lowered.
 
Beating their best practice time, 800 Chinese marines disembarked.
 
At the port’s southern perimeter, amphibious
armored personnel carriers, light tanks, and infantry fighting vehicles swam
ashore and scrambled their way up the muddy embankment.
 
They fanned out and secured the flanks and
the terminal’s perimeter road, and established a strongpoint at Highway #71, blocking
the major north-south artery,
 
the most likely
route for a Taiwanese counterattack.
 
Vigorous Dragons swooped in and flew menacingly low over the water,
making their presence known.
 
They screamed
over the Greek ship. The sound and spectacle sent her officers ducking
again.
 
Down the coast, the Chinese
amphibious assault on Mailiao was equally successful.
 
It was on the sleepy Taiwanese island of
Liuqiu that unexpectedly fierce resistance was met, however.

◊◊◊◊

Coastal Huandao Road overlooked the long beach on Liuqiu’s
eastern shore.
 
Civilians—fishermen
mostly—had been organized by the island’s military police unit.
 
It was on Huandao Road that they watched,
peering out to sea through binoculars.
 
With lawn chairs, smoky grills, and full coolers, the beach watch had
become a social gathering where they discussed war and politics, and took turns
scanning the calm horizon.
 
Although
Chinese ships passed frequently, none had yet turned for Liuqiu.
 
Speaking his native Lamai dialect, one
lookout reported all clear with a walkie-talkie and put his eye back to his
hobby telescope.
 
Sandy, serene beaches
sprawled below the cliffs upon which he was perched.

They had been prepared with firing positions and ammunition
caches.
 
Announced and discussed in the
town square, the plan for defense comprised a reaction force of men and weapons
able to rapidly mobilize, deploy, and employ to counter an attack originating from
any direction.
 
The coastal road that
circled the kidney-shaped island was perfect for getting the small force of
trucks, tanks, and infantry to the right spot, while paths in the wooded hills
facilitated ambushes and strategic retreats.
 
Although the enemy could assault Liuqiu from any compass point, most
expected a landing on the flat, open eastern beach.
 
The lookout again focused the telescope, and
noticed that several silhouettes had appeared on the horizon.
 
They were small boats with hunched shapes
aboard, he noted.
 
He clicked his
walkie-talkie and reported.
 
The sound of
motors arrived on the breeze.

Taiwanese military police, stationed in the nearby harbor,
jumped into their vehicles and sped off.
 
They then manned their trench positions and weapons, and readied heavy
machineguns and anti-tank missiles.
 
A
single Brave Tiger main battle tank joined the deployment, clattering up the
hill and positioning itself into a prepared revetment that protected its hull
and provided a clear field of fire over the beach.
 
Taiwanese soldiers and militiamen draped camouflage
netting over the tank, and set machinegun crews and snipers, to over-watch on
the flanks.
 
Mortar crews elevated their
tubes to predetermined settings.
 
In a
trench line that zigzagged, soldiers braced their rifles, pressing their butts
into their shoulders.
 
Having hurried,
the Taiwanese now awaited that which became inevitable.

Chinese pathfinders weaved through the breakwater and came
ashore in rubber dinghies, dragging their boats onto the sand.
 
The Chinese marines spread out and dropped
prone.
 
With the area seemingly quiet,
they fired a flare that climbed to the sky and arced.
 
This signal invited the main force to
commence landings.

The rumble of diesel engines arose from the darkened
horizon.
 
Packed with Chinese marines, a
line of landing craft emerged from the dusk and sped toward the beach, their
square bows smacking the waves.
 
Within
the open hold of one craft, a man vomited on the back of another, starting a
chain reaction of puke.
 
Chinese
amphibious armor, bobbing on the rolling surface, followed these craft.
 
Whistles were blown amid “Beach in sight” screams.
 
The flat bottoms of the landing craft rode up
onto the beach, crunching on rocks and sand, and bow ramps crashed down.
 
The Taiwanese opened fire.

One of the rectangular craft became a flesh blender as
Taiwanese heavy machinegun fire ricocheted within.
 
Another disgorged screaming Chinese marines
into the surf, and guns up on the bluff hosed them down.
 
More landing craft scraped ashore, spilling
men onto the beach.
 
These Chinese invaders
took several steps before the cliff-top machineguns traversed their way.
 
Mortar rounds burst in the air and on the
beach, showering the invaders with hot needles of metal.
 
Men fell beneath this unnatural rain, and a sickly
pinkish foam spread over the gentle surf.
 
A few Chinese scampered to a beach boulder and fired blindly back at the
wooded hill.
 
A Chinese Dragon Turtle light
tank dragged itself onto the beach.

The Dragon Turtle fired its coaxial machinegun, raking the
dunes.
 
A Taiwanese soldier at the edge
of the woods aimed his tripod-mounted TOW missile at the front of the Chinese
light tank and pulled the trigger.
 
The TOW
arrived and served the enemy tank with a shaped charge warhead that pushed high-velocity
molten copper through the tank’s dense steel shell, doing bloody murder within.
 
The tank stopped and smoldered at water’s
edge.
 
High above the beach, from the
safety of its revetment, the Taiwanese tank fired its main gun and pummeled
enemy landing craft with armor piercing rounds.
 
It then switched to deadly ball shot to blast the Chinese marines.
 
Those lucky or skilled enough to make it to
the dunes ran into mines that exploded before them, scattering ball bearings
and shrapnel, leaving only stained boots where men once ran.
 
Shrieking across the beach, a Chinese Fantan
strike aircraft dove in and strafed the overlook.

A Stinger missile shot from the forest canopy knocked off the
Fantan’s vertical stabilizer.
 
The Fantan
spun in and exploded on a shallow reef.
 
Two more Chinese attack aircraft swept in to drop cluster bombs on the
trench line.
 
One dropped a laser-guided
bomb on the Taiwanese tank as more Fantans came in low over the water and screamed
over the landing craft and amphibious armor, tossing cylinders into the
woods.
 
Gelatinous gasoline—napalm—ignited
and sucked the oxygen from the air, suffocating those it did not
incinerate.
 
The Taiwanese were stunned
by the close air support during which several more landing craft had sneaked in
and deposited marines on the beach.

Liuqiu’s commander had suffered many casualties and his one tank
had been destroyed.
 
He initiated a
well-practiced retreat.
 
Under rocket and
machinegun fire, the Taiwanese abandoned their positions.
 
Snipers provided final cover fire as the last
of the defenders melted into the woods or sprinted to camouflaged vehicles and
sped away.
 
With his remaining men safe,
the Taiwanese commander jumped into a last pickup truck.
 
He flipped open a cell phone, dialed a number,
and pushed [Send].

Buried beneath the beach’s sand was a 2,000-pound aerial
bomb, connected to another cell phone.
 
This cell phone rang and triggered the buried aerial bomb.
 
Everything above the improvised explosive
device disappeared in fire, sand and flesh raining back down.
 
The flood tide quickly claimed the large
crater as a pool.
 
Beneath a small black
mushroom cloud, the beach became momentarily quiet, and a seabird landed to
pick at the carnage.
 
Diesel engines
rumbled once more as the Chinese landing continued.
 
Amphibious armored personnel carriers, light
tanks, and landing craft that carried trucks and marines arrived to claim the
beach and cliff.
 
They staked out the
shore road and moved on to the nearby harbor.

The Chinese spread out and secured key junctions in
town.
 
The Chinese troop transport
Xuefengshan
—
Snow-peaked Mountain
—lingered offshore, where she finally signaled
and turned for Liuqiu’s small port.
 
Twenty minutes later,
Xuefengshan
had docked and unloaded 200 marines, ammunition, light vehicles, supplies, and
a Favorit surface-to-air missile battery that was hurriedly set up beside the
harbor’s riprap breakwater.

◊◊◊◊

General Zhen picked at a dinner tray resting on maps arrayed
across his desk.
 
With scant appetite, Zhen
instead poured another cup of coffee—his sixth so far today—and walked to the
window.
 
Songshan, now an efficient
Chinese base, operated smoothly as airplanes and helicopters came and went, a
line of MiG 29 Fulcrums took on fuel and weapons, and, bathed in yellow
spotlights, paratroopers ate at a kitchen trailer. Knowing battle lay in front
of them, they then cleaned weapons and rested on cots.
 
Zhen took a shaky sip of coffee, stood, and
went to a map pinned to a wall.
 
On it he
saw red markers, covering Kaohsiung, Liuqiu, and Mailiao.
 
With
these ports secure
, he strategized,
we
can shift from aerial to maritime supply
.
 
Zhen removed a green pushpin from the mainland port of Xiamen and stuck
it into the Taiwan Strait.