by Fritz Galt
Then they nudged him rudely aside and went straight for an ATM machine.
One pulled a pistol and shot at the lock.
Shi ducked for cover behind a fallen motor scooter.
The other two men, already carrying loaded plastic bags, pried back the ATM’s metal door and pulled out stacks of New Taiwan dollars.
Then, as if their actions were carefully rehearsed, the man slipped his pistol back under his belt, his henchmen tossed their bags over their shoulders, and they trotted back to their cabs.
Righting the motor scooter, Shi watched the three separate taxis roar off to the next bank outlet.
He stood up slowly and clenched his teeth.
The country he knew and loved had disappeared, and evil was taking root.
Mick sat in his car for a moment of final reflection before leaving the site of Nan-an’s death. Outside, heavy raindrops drummed against the roof of the car.
Finally, he turned on the radio to hear what the news had to report.
He could find only two stations: the party station and the military station. And both were only broadcasting test messages. He watched the digital numbers flash past frequency after frequency without finding another signal.
Finally, he heard a faint squeaky voice.
The announcer switched between Mandarin and Taiwanese, often within the same sentence. Mick’s had virtually no comprehension of the ancient Taiwanese dialect. However, he did manage to make out enough Mandarin phrases to get the story.
“Martial law is a power ploy by the Party. Rebel against the system. Hoard all the money you can, because the government will take it tomorrow. Fight the soldiers, fight the police.”
He was listening to the private radio station “Voice of the People,” Rocky Ouyang’s illegal station directed at taxi cab drivers. The station had once been drowned out and even jammed. Now it was the sole voice on the airwaves.
The signal was weak, but the message was coming through loud and clear.
“We urge the People’s Republic of China to offer humanitarian assistance to Taiwan,” he pleaded. “This is an urgent appeal from the people of Taiwan.”
Mick stared at the distant hills blurred by blowing mist.
If Rocky Ouyang’s true intentions had been obscure once, they were unmistakable now. The Ouyang brothers were not merely fomenting civil war in Taiwan. They were inviting the mainland in.
He reached for the ignition and turned the engine over in one stroke. The afternoon was dark and it already seemed like dusk. He turned on his headlights into the gloom and spun away from the fallen tree. Then he headed back up the mountain road.
He had to reach the radio station that overlooked the city and get out a new message before the police got to Rocky Ouyang.
The fastest way back to the northern outskirts of Taipei was indirect, through the tiny villages of Wanli and Yehliu along the northern coastal road.
Fighting the ocean would be tough. But the mountain road was tough enough. His car was awash in floating debris as he drove carefully down what often seemed like an open sluice. Furthermore, the powerful quake had left underwater fissures, deep canyons that swallowed the runoff and careless drivers alike.
To avoid one such crack in the earth, he launched his car into bushes on an uphill slope. His tires spun against mud.
In a crab-like manner, he managed to circumvent the hole in the road, but winced as his door left a crimson streak against a palm tree.
Finally sliding backwards into a safe spot, he looked into the wide canyon that he had successfully bypassed.
A motor scooter lay inside, atop a dead driver.
Debris lay directly ahead. He had to drive slowly over more fallen branches.
At the bottom of a long slope, he saw an overturned gravel truck. He skidded down the slippery road and sucked in his breath as he squeezed between the mountain of gravel and the mountain itself.
That was close.
The road to Wanli wound further down a steep and narrow valley, crisscrossed on bridges over a pebbly stream, tripped past damaged farm huts and ambled through a hill town. Chairs and tables lay strewn along the street of the nameless village. People who had been scouring through the wreckage turned and ran after him.
It took a full hour to travel the three-mile obstacle course of washed out bridges, toppled buildings and desperate citizens trying to cling to his car.
On the coast, the town of Wanli was fully exposed to the typhoon and had suffered even more damage.
A traffic light leaned at a forty-five-degree angle across the two-lane coastal road. He slowed as a sheet of rain momentarily obscured his view. Doors and roofs fluttered and spun overhead like confetti. Downed power lines writhed on the street.
He guided his car past raging breakers that washed over the road. Wanli’s extensive beach no longer existed. Water poured through the old hotel.
The wind seemed strong enough to suck the roof right off Mick’s car. At times, it seemed to lift the entire car off the road.
It was a long, exposed stretch between Wanli and the town of Yehliu. He had just passed a naval station when he approached a van parked by a fenced-in airfield.
His headlights flashed over Chinese characters on the license plate. Only foreigners had plates with Chinese characters. Strange, it was an AIT van.
So, he pulled off the pavement just after the van to investigate. In his side-view mirror, he made out a man seated in the passenger seat. The figure stuffed a CB radio back into its holder, grabbed several pieces of luggage and struggled out of the van.
Using a warm-up jacket, the man tried to shield his thick glasses from the rain.
Mick smacked his forehead. Not him again.
Mick cleared the radiophone off the passenger seat and pushed the door open. “Hello, Dr. Morisot.”
The scientist leaned inside to inspect the car.
“You,” he said.
“Who else? I’ve come to rescue you.”
With a dissatisfied grunt, the man stuffed his baggage behind the seat, gathered his windbreaker around him and slumped into the car, along with several gallons of rainwater.
He looked over Mick with a sweaty, flushed face. “I’ve been radioing for over an hour.”
“Sorry I took so long. What happened to the rest of your crew?”
Morisot swallowed and turned away. “They left me behind to watch the van.”
“Where did they go?”
“Who knows? Stupidity seems to rule the roost around here.”
“Did they leave you behind on purpose?”
“Well, they said if I knew so much I could drive it myself.”
Mick nodded. He could picture it all. He would have laughed if it weren’t so pathetic.
“Listen, I have to make a call,” Morisot said. “Do you have a phone?”
Mick indicated the radiophone behind his seat.
“Super. Can you jump out of the car and give me a few minutes for a personal call?”
Rain was lashing the shoreline harder than ever. “Professor, we’ve only got an hour’s worth of daylight left. We have to drive as far as we can tonight. You can make your call later.”
Morisot looked glum, but didn’t protest.
Mick steered past the tiny fishing port of Yehliu with its colorful red, yellow and blue trawlers. Black and white dragon eyes painted on the bows looked panic-stricken as the fleet strained against their ropes. Clouds hung low over a seething landscape of whitecaps. But there was something strange about the waves. They were no longer coming ashore. The wind was driving them out to sea.
He hydroplaned through the outskirts of the market town of Chinshan, then veered toward the relative safety of the mountains. Thus began a long ascent up the slopes of Yangmingshan National Park.
The pavement ascended gradually at first. Frightened pigs trotted in the middle of the road, their bamboo enclosures flattened by the storm.
The rain had stopped and Mick could see vast meadows of p
ampas grass and dwarf pines shaped by the wind. Small brushfires popped like firecrackers as they spread from one pine to another.
“Why are you slowing down?” Morisot snapped. “The storm is over.”
Mick came to a halt. His headlights peered into a crevice. To pass it, he would have to hang a wheel over thin air.
“Should I go faster?” he asked his passenger.
“No. Take your time.”
Mick eased the front wheel under Dr. Morisot up to the gaping hole.
“Would you be careful?”
“Would you like to drive?”
This wasn’t going to work.
Mick looked around to check his options.
Down behind them was the coastline. The silvery, descending mountain road and the waving fronds of grass caught the glint of a setting sun. Ivan was blowing north to meet its next victim.
Mick looked forward. Clouds had begun to clear, leaving the island in a brittle chill. He could see why the Portuguese had called her Ihla Formosa, or Beautiful Island.
If he turned back, the road was relatively clear. But it led nowhere. He could never reach Natalie or Rocky Ouyang by turning back.
Ahead lay the precipitous shoulder of Seven Star Mountain, standing dusky and grand against a canvas of stars. But there was a minor canyon in the way.
“Get out,” Mick said. “We’ll push the car.”
Chapter 27
The city was strangely quiet as Natalie stood at the center of the compound. Her clothes had dried with a sooty smell. Clouds were scattering in the twilight.
As if her assignment to establish communications and coordinate humanitarian aid for Taiwan weren’t difficult enough, her anxiety and anger made it nearly impossible.
In the wake of the worst series of natural disasters in Taiwan’s history, she visualized Mick struck dead by lightning and Alec drowned in a tsunami. And she could kill her boss.
What a day it had been. A tangible sign of the scope of the tragedy was a mob of desperate families waiting outside AIT. Guards had already processed and let in several hundred dazed Americans, who fell exhausted onto the institute grounds.
Staff, secretaries and spouses worked in teams providing comfort and relief. They guided the men, women and kids, all clutching their American passports, past her toward the building that they now called “home.”
The institute was barely a building any longer. Becky Mackenzie had condemned two entire wings of the U-shaped structure. Even the lone central hallway in which people crowded lacked a roof. Adjacent offices had long since sprung their locks and allowed the public in.
Those were just the Americans, a fraction of the overall population on the island. Where did Natalie start to help them?
Admiral Shi sat among the survivors and huddled around a cup of warm tea. He had just piled a boatload of information on her and she had gone to tell Bronson Nichols in his partially reassembled office.
Taiwan’s military had been stashing billions of New Taiwan dollars in China.
“Buying stock in Kuang Hua Petrochemical?” Bronson had said, incredulous. “Can we prove that?”
“I got it straight from the admiral’s mouth,” she had replied.
“Has the whole world gone nuts? They’re playing right into the Commie’s hands.”
“But the big question is this: are the Chinese just taking advantage of this or did someone set up Taiwan’s military?”
“Like I said, anybody who can crush their own kids on Tiananmen Square could certainly pull a stunt like this.”
“Okay, then show me the evidence,” she had demanded.
Bronson glared at her, but bit his tongue. “You get back to your job. I want to see the aid flowing today.”
She had whirled about and stormed out of the office.
As she stood outside, two Chinese-Americans were let through the gate. One was an elderly man and the other a small boy wearing a Dodger’s cap. The man bounced a small rubber ball to the boy and kept up a patter about catching the ball at the top of its bounce.
Passing her, the man looked up briefly. She saw the same despair in his eyes that she had seen in the admiral’s. Their world had fallen apart, their military had deserted them, the Chinese were going to lop off the head of every man, woman and child on the island and no one was going to do a blessed thing about it.
That did it.
She flicked on her flashlight and marched back into the dark building. There, she excused herself and squeezed past the wet and hungry survivors.
Her flashlight played across the face of Steve Novak in the communications room.
“Get me the Office of Disaster Relief at the State Department.”
Huddled over the institute’s only satellite phone, Steve dialed the Main State operator. Meanwhile, Natalie rounded up the institute’s main section heads for Defense, Intelligence and State.
An ingratiating voice came through the darkness over the speakerphone. It was the Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. “This is Paul Townsend.”
She turned to the phone. “Natalie Pierce here. You’re speaking to a roomful of people.”
“Hello, Taipei.”
She had polled various sections of AIT that afternoon and compiled a laundry list.
“Paul, we need a lot of things for a lot of people. I have no clue what quantities we need, but the damage to the island is widespread and severe. Are you ready to take this down?”
“We already have a rough idea of what’s needed,” Paul said over the speakerphone.
“Then why the hell do we have personnel in the field?” she shot back.
“Go ahead. I’m listening.”
She shined the light on the list. “We need fresh water, cholera pills, typhoid and dengue fever vaccines, rice—”
“Wait. Let me get a pen.”
She turned away from the speakerphone and whispered to the agriculture attaché. “Rice to the Chinese?”
“Don’t worry,” the young man assured her with his Texan accent. “America is one of the world’s leading exporters of rice.”
She continued. “Got your pen? Good. We need first-aid supplies, trauma medics, MASH units.”
“Positive Rh plasma,” whispered Sue Meyers, an RN who was the spouse of the agriculture attaché.
“Positive Rh plasma.”
In the darkness, she conjured up things to add to the list. Her imagination roamed up and down the main highway in Taiwan. She pictured the needy in port cities where fishing boats were overturned by tidal waves, rice farmers whose paddies were washed away by broken levees, mountain dwellers whose access to food and medical care was cut by mud slides.
“We need food, food, food.”
The highway itself was probably rendered useless by fallen bridges and buckled pavement.
“We need road construction crews and equipment, legions of tents, pontoon bridges.”
She spoke as calmly as she could. The distant voice acknowledged her requests one by one.
At last she could think of nothing else.
“That’s it?”
“For now.”
The speaker crackled with static that accumulated over thousands of miles.
She signaled Steve to take over the conversation. He began to brief Paul on the logistics of delivery.
He began with an overview of the dilemma they faced.
“The Chinese are preparing to mount an assault across the Taiwan Strait,” he said. “On the island, radio stations are broadcasting pleas to Communist China to come to Taiwan’s rescue. This will make the American military’s role that much more difficult. We must react fast. The key is to land our craft tonight before the PLA starts flooding these shores with soldiers.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. The room waited for the voice to come back.
“This operation will need presidential approval,” Paul said with a note of uncertainty.
Natalie moved up to the phone. “I don’t care i
f you have to wake up the Lord God Almighty. Get on the ball and bring in the supplies. We’re not calling for an all-out defense of the island. What we’re talking about here is millions of sick, dead, wounded and starving people. Got it?”
“I’ll alert the White House.”
She felt herself trembling. Then someone brushed past in the darkness. She jumped back.
Bronson had entered the room. He picked up the phone set and waved at everyone to leave. All but Natalie shuffled out of the room.
She was damned if he would blame it all on the Chinese without definitive proof.
He clicked off the speaker and shined his flashlight around the room. The beam fell on her.
A voice squawked over the receiver in his hand.
“Don’t hang up,” he shouted into the mouthpiece.
He turned his back to her and spoke in a low tone.
“Paul, this is Bronson Nichols. We’ve got one hell of a mess on our hands. Now listen carefully. We have everything but proof at this moment, but it looks like Beijing is pulling some shenanigans.”
He cupped a hand around the mouthpiece.
“Here’s what we think. It looks like the Chinese planted an atomic bomb on a fault line. That caused a massive earthquake. Lord knows I’ve never seen anything like it.”
He listened and thrust his free hand deep in his pocket.
“I think the U.S. Government should call their bluff,” he resumed. “Confront them at the UN. Send a diplomatic note to Beijing. Accuse them publicly before the Commies storm the beaches.”
He listened for some time, nodding impatiently.
“Okay. I know we’re ahead of the curve, but we’ve got all agencies working on this in perfect concert.”
Perfect concert? Nobody on Taiwan was investigating this.
“We’ll get you evidence before they strike. All we need is time. All I want is for you to use diplomacy to hold off the Red army.”
He grimaced and held the phone away from his ear.
“Like I said, hold them off with every trick in the book. Play every card. I’m no UN expert, but use the Security Council. Call up Ambassador Mallory and find a way. Wake up the Secretary of State and have her call their ambassador on the carpet. Read the Chinese the riot act. Go public with this bomb thing before anything worse happens, for god sake.”