by Fritz Galt
Moving in silence, he climbed over a crumbled wall and began the ascent. After a few steps, he grabbed a tree branch and paused to search for a possible route. He took the opportunity to press the man with questions.
“What would your advice be after a disaster like this?”
“Take cover.”
Mick shifted the weight with an abrupt jerk. “I mean, what are you going to tell General Li that he doesn’t already know?”
“Start walking first.”
He started along a line of trees that he could use as handholds while traversing the slope of running clay.
“We must activate the civil defense system and the military reserve,” the man said. “Bring all our assets to bear. We must call upon veteran organizations. We have to direct the neighborhood cells. We must mobilize the military schools, district police, cab drivers and bus drivers.”
“Doesn’t the general know all that?”
“You fool. He needs consensus. These things aren’t automatic. We’re not trigger-happy American cowboys.”
“So he’s going to wait for your advice while a million crucial decisions must be made all at once?”
“He’s been listening to me for years. He responds to my voice.”
“You haven’t been in government for years.”
“You fool. I haven’t been twiddling my thumbs, either. I’m running for governor, you know.”
“If we ever survive this mess.”
The wind blew them sideways, and they tumbled together into a cluster of bushes.
Lying on his side, Mick gradually noticed that the tremors had ceased. The earth was worn out and still. Thank God. All he and the old man had to deal with was a super typhoon.
“You clumsy fool. You dropped me. I’m not a youngster, you know.”
Mick bit his tongue and hoisted the old man onto his back once more. They worked their way through a bamboo forest that creaked and groaned in the wind. In general, he followed the path of the former walkway back toward the parking lot.
At least the old man had a radiophone. Mick could try to place a call himself.
“There’s my car. Ha, it’s not damaged.”
“Which one?”
The old man pointed. “The Lincoln. And there’s my driver.” A black stretch limo was coated with soggy red petals from the flame tree.
“Why an American car?” Mick asked his prickly load.
“I have many supporters on the island. We have an important election to win.”
The wind blew Mick toward a huge mud puddle in the parking lot. “Is the military buying votes for you?”
“Put me down,” Nan-an demanded.
He was in the middle of the puddle.
“Put me down. I refuse to be carried by you.”
“Is the military buying votes for you?” Mick repeated.
The downpour was relentless as he waited for Nan-an to respond.
“You can’t smear my campaign with allegations of corruption.”
“Fine, but the military is installing you.”
“They’re my friends. But they aren’t above the law. Their means are entirely legal. Now move your stumpy legs. We don’t have all day.”
“What legal means does the military have to raise money?” He resumed walking. “Surely not from taxes.”
“Of course not. The military is fully accountable.”
“So how are they funding you?”
“I refuse to divulge details.”
Mick smiled. The old man had already divulged plenty. Sloshing through a final puddle, he fell against the limousine. The driver hopped out in his dry suit and opened the door for Nan-an.
Once on solid ground, Nan-an regained his full height, straightened his jacket, entered the car and slammed the door in Mick’s face.
A few seconds later, the door swung open. A gust of wind tore it from the old man’s heavily veined hand.
“Get in here, you fool. You’ll catch a cold.”
Bowed over against the powerful gust, Mick fell into the car. He could barely haul the massive door shut.
“Hello, General,” Nan-an was saying into the radiophone. “Restore order at once. You’re in charge.”
Nan-an waited, listening impatiently. His eyelids could barely cover his large eyes as he screwed up his face in anger.
The more he heard, the angrier he grew. At last, gripping the heavy instrument in his tiny hand, he pulled it away from his mouth and shouted at it. “No, you fool. Impose martial law.”
Chapter 23
“Natalie!” Bronson Nichols screamed through the rain.
His economic counselor’s bent figure sat unresponsive in the grass.
Chaos reigned all about him. His mission lay in ruins. His charges stretched out wounded on the soaked lawn. Secretaries with steno pads and janitors armed with broomsticks guarded the compound’s crumbled walls. Wind threatened to spread fire from a neighboring building to the institute’s grounds.
Natalie’s secretary gently shook her by the shoulder.
At last, Bronson saw Natalie remove her hands from her face. She looked up into her assistant’s anxious eyes.
He trotted across the soggy turf to her side.
“The director is here,” Michelle announced.
Natalie struggled to her feet.
“That’s okay,” he shouted over the wind. “Are you hurt?”
“This is awful.”
“Yeah, well if that’s all you’ve got to say, pull yourself together. Steve is hurt.” He pointed across the lawn to where Steve Novak lay immobile.
They staggered toward the fallen man.
She gently prodded Steve by the shoulder. He jerked away and winced in pain.
“What do you think’s wrong with him?” Bronson asked.
“A bad shoulder, for one thing,” she said.
“He broke our office door down.”
“May have dislocated his shoulder.”
Bronson struggled out of his suit jacket and shoved it under Steve’s head.
“Thanks for the diagnosis, Miss Nightingale,” Bronson said. “I could have figured that out myself.”
“Hey, what makes you think I’m a nurse?”
Steve opened his eyes and grimaced. “Will you two shut up?” A ring of military aides in civilian clothes circled closer. “This is serious.”
“Understatement of the year.” Bronson rose to his feet and loosened his tie. “I’ve got personnel stationed around all four walls. We’ve got sick and wounded and no doctor in sight.”
He whipped off his necktie and tossed it to the ground.
“No, I mean this earthquake,” Steve said. “China is behind it.”
“Behind a natural disaster? Are you delusional?”
“It’s true, sir,” Natalie said. “There’s more to this than meets the eye. I’m afraid someone purposefully planted an atomic bomb that triggered the earthquake.”
What kind of Kool-Aid was everyone drinking?
“Sir,” Natalie said. “Someone started this on purpose.”
He studied her tart expression. He couldn’t imagine an atomic bomb being used for such a purpose, nor could he imagine Natalie admitting that she was wrong. “So do you admit the Commies could pull such a stunt?”
“Don’t start that again.”
“Well, how many countries have atomic bombs?”
“I just talked to Alec before this all started,” she said. “He was beaten up while investigating it. He was working on one of the largest faults in the Pacific Plate. Evidently, someone used an A-bomb to trigger the earthquake. He warned us to take cover, so I alerted the city, and they set off the air raid warning.”
The entire scenario defied reason. “Why do you keep saying ‘someone’ did it? Are you accusing Beijing or not?”
Steve intervened. “We’re investigating all avenues right now.”
“How? Where? In this mess?”
In Bronson’s opinion, Steve needed psychiatric help in additi
on to First Aid. And Natalie seemed averse to reality these days. He yanked his shirt open.
“I just got off the phone with our embassy in Beijing,” Steve explained. “They’re looking into some monetary connections.”
“It takes more than money,” Bronson retorted. “It takes a bomb.”
“And Taiwan doesn’t have a bomb,” Steve said.
“See what I’m saying?” he shouted in the howling wind. “China must be behind this.”
He glared at Natalie. “Wasn’t it China that sent a message to General Li?”
Her blue eyes shifted accusingly at Steve, and glared sharply.
“Don’t blame Steve,” Bronson said. “Your husband alerted me to this problem and filled me in on the details. So the Commies got to General Li.”
“I’m afraid he might be compromised,” she admitted. “It looks like Taiwan’s military might have something to do with what’s happening.”
“Yeah, blame Taiwan,” he said. Then he saw Steve wincing, and it wasn’t the bad shoulder. It must be hard to hear criticism leveled at his own profession.
Damn, the rain was cold. He struggled out of his shirt. His tank top was already soaked with rain.
People stood all around him awaiting orders.
He needed to make a quick assessment. It might take days for the city to offer the institute any security or medical assistance. Telephone service and electrical power would be effectively eliminated. The airport wouldn’t open due to typhoon conditions and earthquake damage. They were essentially stranded.
He bent down to grasp Steve’s limp elbow. Natalie knelt to help him. Bronson’s shirt made a suitable sling. The young man was shivering.
Now for the broader community. The first thing they needed was housing.
“Becky,” he yelled for his administrative counselor.
She and several other section heads splashed up to him.
“Do we have any prayer of salvaging our houses and apartments?”
“No chance, sir,” she said. “Entire buildings are collapsing all around us. I predict massive destruction to our residential housing stock. Do you think the Foreign Buildings Office would allow us to even enter them? Besides that, we can’t keep our maintenance personnel around to shore up our houses when they have their own families to look after. It looks like a complete loss, sir.”
“Then here’s the plan.” He flicked away the water that dripped off his nose.
He needed to activate the institute’s Emergency Action Plan, which called for proceeding on many fronts at once.
“Activate the warden system. Bring all dependents to AIT. They can lock their doors, gather a suitcase and that’s all. Find some way to transport them or have them walk, bicycle or swim. We’ll set up housing here.”
He looked at the general services officer, a young man on his first overseas assignment in that role. He appeared less confident.
Bronson slicked back his hair. “I don’t see anybody mounting a rescue operation in this storm. So, we’ll have to do things for ourselves, okay buddy?”
The young man nodded.
“Now round up your crew.”
The GSO left to gather his workers.
The other key officers remained around him. “In the meantime, we’ve got lots of real work to do. We need to break up into teams.”
He looked around at the dubious faces.
“I want one team to pursue this idiocy about atom bombs. Find out what you can. Get to the bottom of it. Washington will need details and demand evidence. Natalie, you will not be on that team.”
“And how are we supposed to collect evidence?” Steve asked from his horizontal position.
“It’s your theory. You work on it.”
Natalie started to pull Steve upright.
“A second team will establish communications and coordinate humanitarian aid for Taiwan. Pronto. Natalie, that’ll be you.”
The group couldn’t restrain a snicker.
She didn’t look at Bronson as she busied herself propping up Steve.
“Another team will handle American citizen problems. Don’t know what the institute can offer, but citizens will come out of the woodwork. There are around thirty thousand Americans living around Taiwan. We’ll likely see half of them limping into this compound in the next few days, if they’re still alive.”
“How can we boot up our database?” Gary Shields, his cranky consul general asked.
Bronson would ignore the question.
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and continued. “And the last team will work on transporting our dependents and non-essential personnel off the island. By plane, helicopter or oil tanker if you must.”
Becky, his administrative counselor, laughed with a snort.
There was a hostile silence in the group. What was this? A mutiny?
“Sir, I just heard some important news.” It was Colonel Gabe Starr. The trustworthy former air force pilot was holding a transistor radio to his ear. “The government has declared a state of emergency and is imposing martial law.”
“Crap.”
A further pall fell over the gathered heads of section. In 1989, Chiang Kai-shek’s son had finally lifted decades of military rule.
“Who declared martial law, the president or the military?”
“I’m listening to the military radio station,” Gabe said. “I’ll pick up the party’s station. Hold on.”
As one of Typhoon Ivan’s great spiral arms swept across the island, cold rain plastered Bronson’s bare torso.
The group looked glum, their backs to the blustery wind.
Gabe looked up from his radio. “The Nationalist Party calls martial law a baseless rumor.”
“Ah-ha,” Bronson said. “There’s a ray of hope. I’d say someone is standing up to the military.”
Chapter 24
Eli Shaw sat safely ensconced in his high-security Beijing office when his telephone rang. That would be Hong Kong returning his call.
“Harv?” he said. “Thanks for getting back to me.” He switched the phone to his other ear and stretched the phone cord across his office to the wall map. “Did you feel the quake?”
“Sure did. It was just what we needed,” Harvey Talbot said in his deep voice. “The entire consulate in Hong Kong shook for several minutes. Everyone freaked out. We aren’t used to that sort of thing. People scrambled out of the building like cockroaches.”
“Dangerous,” Eli said.
He calculated distances on the map. Hong Kong was roughly five hundred miles west by southwest of Taiwan’s Orchid Island.
“The epicenter is south of Taiwan,” he said, “where there’s a fault line between the Pacific and Asian plates. We had a man on that spot investigating some hanky-panky. Looks like the People’s Liberation Army and Taiwan’s military were behind it.”
“What, they caused their own earthquake?”
“I don’t know any other way to explain it, considering all the coincidences.”
“I know that the PLA is starting war games on their coast,” Harvey said. “Sounds threatening enough to me. But you’re saying they set off an atomic bomb?”
“The evidence seems to point in that direction.” He took a moment to sketch out for Harvey how both General Li and Alec Pierce, through his research project, were linked to Johnny Ouyang, a stockbroker in Hong Kong.
“Everybody knows Johnny,” Harvey said. “Shorter than me. Wife’s a fox. Fingers in everything.”
“Specifically, we need evidence of Taiwan’s General Li buying Shanghai stocks. Even better, we should find a way to prevent or cancel his transactions. My training tells me to trap the general and stick him in my back pocket. But I suspect that’s what the PRC is trying to do. It’s probably better to keep Taiwan’s military from getting their fingers burned in the first place.”
“So prevent or cancel his transactions?”
“That’s my suggestion.”
Harvey Talbot sighed. “That’ll only happen
if we get Hong Kong’s government involved. They alone can intercede in cross-border transactions.”
“So what’s the problem?” Eli asked.
“These days, we’re not quite sure who’s working for whom in the Hong Kong government. I might have to approach this through private means.”
“Well, be fast. This morning the PRC has dropped support of the Shanghai Securities Exchange.”
“Sounds like a tip I could use.”
“Don’t even think about it.”
“Okay. So, we’ll do a full-court press.”
“Pull out all the stops.” Eli looked at the island of Taiwan just ninety miles away from China in the South China Sea. “We can’t let another country fall into the hands of the Chinese.”
“You’re telling me.” Harvey let out another sigh. “I can tell you a few horror stories.”
Eli already had a sense of Hong Kong’s woes. “Later, Harv. Someday we’ll swap tales over a cup of ginseng tea.”
“Make that a double Scotch.”
With a group of men in spacesuits closing in on May-lin and him, Alec had nowhere to run. And he had only himself to blame. He had sought refuge in the hurricane link fence cage of the tennis court.
Stiff-legged, he turned and faced his orange-suited adversaries. The anti-contamination suits were clunky, but made excellent armor. They had captured him before, and they would do so again.
Alec needed an edge.
He stood back-to-back with May-lin as the four men fanned out around them.
Then a cold shiver traveled down his spine. The muzzle of a pistol jabbed against the base of his skull.
It was May-lin, releasing the safety.
Her sharp, dry voice cut through the wind. “I have him. He’s mine.”
They stopped in their tracks. Through their tinted helmets, he could see sweaty men eyeing him with animosity. After he had decommissioned two of their comrades the previous evening, they were back for revenge.
“Find the others,” May-lin ordered. “Find geologist Hsu and engineer Kuo and bring them here.”
Alec glanced down. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw May-lin spread her feet and wave some sort of military pistol in the air. Where had she gotten that thing?