by Ian Slater
Then the red “Red” phone from Beijing rang. Zhou Zhang, the premier of the most populous country on earth, urgently needed to speak to the President of the most powerful nation on earth. Eleanor buzzed the interpreter and the President himself, and noted that it would now be early dawn in China.
“Hello, Mr. President,” was the first and last English phrase the Chinese premier used, because he knew there was no room for error, or the slightest misunderstanding. His message, a courtesy to the President, was the same message his ministers for defense and the interior were now conveying to their counterparts in Europe and Russia: The Chinese mainland was under attack by the forces of renegade Taiwan, which was obviously taking advantage of China’s preoccupation with its northwestern terrorist problem to launch a sneak attack against China’s eastern seaboard.
The President had no sooner thanked the Chinese premier for advising him of Beijing’s point of view than Eleanor handed him a decoded “Eyes Only” transmission. Both the NSA and CIA were reporting that the Nationalist government in Taipei was emphatically denying that it had ordered any attack against the Communist Chinese mainland.
“All right,” the President told Eleanor. “But how about the offshore Chinese islands? The Nationalist-held islands are within spitting distance of the mainland. What’s going on there? Every day the Communists shell the Nationalist island of Kinmen with propaganda pamphlets, and the Nationalists are bunkered in a complex you wouldn’t believe.” He took off his reading glasses, dropping them tiredly on the Oval Office desk. “Ever since 1949 they’ve been at loggerheads.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Taiwan
A typhoon alert had been issued at 3:50 A.M., the typhoon expected to make landfall at Shihmen at the northernmost tip of the 240-mile-long, leaf-shaped island of Taiwan, which varies in width from its tapered five-mile-wide southern extremity up through its eighty-five-mile-wide waist, to the northern end of the leaf, where the distance from west to east coasts is about thirty-two miles.
In the small village four miles east of Shihmen, the wife of fifty-one-year-old Moh Pan awoke in the predawn darkness, foisting off her husband’s groping hands from beneath their bedroll. “No,” she said firmly. “It’s time.” It was already five o’clock.
“A few minutes?” he pleaded.
“No. After.”
“After?” Moh snorted. “After, I’ll be dead!”
“You always say that.” She was out of bed and, though the same age as Moh, moved with the energy of a much younger person. Opening the door, her voice rose above the roar of the black sea. “If I had a mushroom for every time you said you’d be dead, I’d be so rich we wouldn’t have to pick them.”
Moh turned away grumpily, cursing the necessity of picking the damned mushrooms between five and seven every morning, the two-hour slot affording the right temperature and humidity for coaxing the valuable fungi from their dark sheds to their prime market size, no more than an inch in diameter. Any later than seven and the mushrooms would be worth much less at the market in Shihmen. Mumbling at his wife’s rebuttal of his sexual advances, Moh, who was a little hard of hearing, now pretended to hear nothing she said, blaming the unending crashing of the surf against the rocky shore a quarter mile down from the village that nestled in a small, wind-blown dell at the northernmost end of the island. The high surf there marked the tail end of the most recent typhoon, one of the many hurricanes that periodically assailed the island and battered its spectacular east coast. Here, enormous cliffs dropped from wild, bird-filled skies sheer to the violent creamy-edged sea, absorbing most of the typhoons’ power in the form of torrential rains and winds, which, after lashing the island’s mountain spine, were less ferocious when they reached the more habitable and heavily industrialized lowlands of the west coast.
Even there, however, the prevailing easterlies of the typhoons were still strong enough to favor Taiwan’s daily leaflet-filled balloon and loudspeaker war against the mainland, a propaganda battle that had continued every odd-numbered day since 1958, Mao’s mainland Chinese having built the world’s biggest speakers in an attempt to outshout their wind-favored Nationalist enemies entrenched on the hills and coast of Kinmen Island. The latter’s name meant “Gate as if Made of Gold,” for it was seen as the gate controlling the adjacent seas off the Chinese mainland. The island, formerly known as Quemoy, bristled, as did Matsu, with updated U.S. Patriot surface-to-air missiles. The ferocity of the Communists on the mainland who wanted to regain Taiwan and all its islands could be measured by the fact that on Matsu and Kinmen the Nationalists still felt obliged to enforce martial law and maintain the presence of their 150,000 Taiwanese troops. So self-sufficient and self-contained were these islands, which served as early warning radio and radar listening posts for Taiwan, that in addition to enough food, water, ammunition, and medical provisions to last months without resupply, they even had their own currency.
As Moh Pan reluctantly dragged himself out of bed at a few minutes after six, he glimpsed what he thought were metallic glints at the gray edge of the world, about forty miles due north of Shihmen. At that moment on Kinmen, 173 miles westward across the Taiwan Strait, the military headquarters was abuzz with consternation over what night vision binoculars on Kinmen’s western side had revealed was a flotilla of Communist PLA navy fast-attack Houxin and Huangfen patrol boats heading eastward toward Kinmen. Though capable of thirty-two and thirty-five knots respectively, the Communist attack boats were approaching the Nationalist island slowly, only to make a U-turn back toward the mainland at high speed, leaving clearly visible wakes of phosphorescence in the plankton-rich sea. Meanwhile, Matsu HQ was receiving frantic inquiries from Taiwan’s Tsoying Naval Base, a hundred miles eastward, which in turn was receiving urgent inquiries from the U.S. State Department and the Washington intelligence community. The latter, despite their eye-in-the-sky spy satellites and other gizmology, couldn’t figure out exactly what the hell was going on.
Walking to market, pulling the cart full of mushrooms, Moh Pan looked north again to see whether he could see any ships, or had it been the glint of aircraft? Perhaps he should call Shihmen’s Civil Defense Office. “Do you have your cell?” he asked his wife.
“Battery’s dead,” she answered. “You forgot to recharge.”
“Of course,” he countered. “And I suppose I’m to blame for the typhoon too?”
She refused to answer. He just wanted to start a fight. He was giving her the evil eye.
Paying no attention, his wife tightened her scarf against the rising wind.
On Kinmen, where Moh Pan’s son, Ahmao, was doing his National Guard service in the army, the Nationalist garrison was completely nonplused. Did the sudden maneuvering by the Communists patrol boats presage an attack? Or were the Communists merely taunting the Taiwanese as they had so many times during their so-called “military maneuvers,” using elements of their PLA navy and PLA air force fighters, mere seconds from Matsu and Kinmen and only eight minutes from Taiwan itself? Such maneuvers, in this case by attack patrol boats from China’s East Fleet, were no doubt designed not only to rattle the nerves of the Nationalists, but to serve as a constant reminder to the Taiwanese that Beijing believed Taiwan was nothing more than a renegade province that sooner rather than later would be forced to rejoin the Communist mainland. And on that day, Taiwan would be forced to give Beijing back the enormous treasure Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Tse Tung’s mortal enemy, had taken with him and his Nationalist Army across the straits in 1949. Beijing had been encouraged since 1978 in its dream of reunification when U.S. aid to Taiwan and U.S. recognition of Taiwan as an independent nation ended, and then a year later, in 1979, when the U.S.-Taiwan national defense treaty died. Even so, every President from Harry Truman, who, despite his reservations about Chiang Kai-shek — whom he called “Cash My Check”—to Bill Clinton in 1996, had at times dispatched a CBG, carrier battle group, up into the Taiwan Strait to keep the uneasy peace between the two antagonists. And now the P
resident and his advisors thought it prudent to repeat his predecessors’ cautionary move, as one of the first questions every President asked in times of impending crisis was, “Where are the carriers?”
The carriers, thought to be outmoded in twenty-first-century war, were floating U.S. air bases that were now more important than ever before, given the number of U.S. overseas bases that had been closed once the Cold War had ended, a war in which the U.S., like the Soviet Union, had made many an unsavory deal with a tin pot dictator in order to prevent one another from gaining an advantage in the other’s hemisphere. The current occupant of the White House had quickly discovered that in the war on terrorism, which involved so many different flashpoints, even the might of the U.S. Navy was stretched thin. America’s twelve CBGs were spread far and wide, standing off “the powder keg of the Middle East”—Afghanistan, Iran, as well as the new Iraq, to say nothing of the far-flung U.S. missions to combat terrorists and their myriad bases throughout Central and South America and amid thousands of islands of the Indonesian and Philippine archipelagos. Then there were missions in Pakistan and throughout the Africas, where American citizens were being kidnapped, murdered, or threatened.
In all this, the carriers served as stand-ins for all the land bases the United States had lost in post — Cold War client countries that now felt they could go it alone. Especially troublesome to the U.S. Navy, however, was the loss of the huge complex at Subic Bay in the Philippines. And so it was that this President, with a mandate to continue waging the war on terrorism until the terrorists were beaten, knew more than any President since JFK about where his twelve carrier groups were at any one time.
“Eleanor, all of our carriers are overextended,” the President said over the phone. “Do we have any available in dock?”
She didn’t know. A quick call to the CNO’s office in Washington, the transit coding causing a delay of only 1.5 seconds, gave her the answer. There was one in Bremerton, Washington State’s big maintenance yard. It was the USS Turner, a Nimitz-C class flat top, a nuclear aviation carrier.
“The Turner.” The President nodded. “Western Pacific Fleet?”
“Yes, sir. In for overhaul.”
“What’s its completion date?”
Eleanor, phone still in hand, relayed the question to CNO, then informed the President, “Estimated time of completion, five days.”
The President shook his head. “No. Tell them they’ve got twenty-four hours. I want the Turner to join the McCain, which I believe—” He brought up the CNO’s map on his computer screen. “Yes, there’s the McCain. South China Sea. I want McCain to steam north to the Taiwan Strait ASAP!”
And it was so ordered. The McCain would steam north immediately, the Turner to leave Washington State in the Pacific Northwest within twenty-four hours.
“The Turner’s CO didn’t like that, Mr. President,” proffered Eleanor. “Said it’s almost impossible to speed up overhaul from five days to one.”
“He doesn’t have to like it. He only has to do it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get me the McCain’s CO, Growly.”
“Admiral Crowley,” Eleanor reminded him diplomatically.
“No, Growly,” riposted the President. “Always bitching about how much more we give the other armed forces. He’s a pain in the butt.”
“Like Freeman,” put in Eleanor’s junior aide.
“Exactly, but Freeman’s retired, thank God,” replied the President, overhearing.
“Know their jobs though,” said Eleanor Prenty, giving her junior aide, who looked ready to join in the dissing of Freeman and Crowley, a withering look. It told the aide he had best hold his tongue, though Eleanor realized she was being hypocritical. She’d not only ignored Freeman’s phone message to call him, she’d forgotten all about it. Freeman, despite his legendary status among military types, was regarded as a “has-been,” and the truth was, he had no political clout at all. In short, he was of no consequence to the administration’s agenda.
“You through to McCain?” the President asked impatiently.
“Not yet,” she replied, the image of the Nimitz-class carrier in her mind’s eye. The carrier was named after the Vietnam hero, Senator John McCain, who, after being shot down by North Vietnamese Communists, being held prisoner, and tortured in the “Hanoi Hilton” for years, would not cave in. Dragged out in front of the blinding TV lights in Hanoi with other American prisoners as Communist propaganda, McCain was blinking so much that it looked as if he might have a damaged retina. In fact, his apparent affliction was the personification of defiant cool, his blinking a Morse code message to those at home watching that what the Communists were saying was a load of BS.
Admiral Crowley was now on the line, his voice gruff as usual. He had to respect his Commander in Chief, but he detested politicians.
“Admiral!” said the President heartily, scrolling down Crowley’s file on screen in front of him. “How’s your boy Richard doing? Must be his final year at Annapolis?”
“Yes, sir,” came the admiral’s reply.
“Has his heart set on Fallon, I hear?” continued the President. Fallon was the top gun school in the Nevada desert.
“Well,” answered the admiral, “he’ll have to learn to walk before he can run.”
“I’m sure he’ll make it,” the President said, adding, “main thing is, Admiral, he’s following his passion. We parents can’t hope for much more than that.”
“True.”
“Admiral, there’s some kafuffle up in the Taiwan Strait. What we’re getting from Beijing and Taiwan is ’they started it first, not me’ stuff. You no doubt have been getting the traffic?”
“Commies are accusing Taiwanese marines of going after one of their offshore islands. Taiwan denies it. Taiwanese are accusing Chinese Communist patrol boats of going for one of their islands.”
“That’s it. Now I want you to take the McCain up there and put yourself between those two. Our other carrier groups, as you know, have their hands full at the moment.”
“Exactly,” said Crowley sternly. Was there an implicit criticism of the White House’s failure to push Congress for more naval appropriations in his tone? It was difficult to tell — he was normally gruff.
“Yes,” said the President noncommittally. “Well, Admiral, we’re already fighting World War Three against terrorists around the globe. The last thing we need is war on another front. We have to be extraordinarily careful.”
“I know the drill, Mr. President. Fire only in self-defense. No preemptive strikes.”
“You’ve got it, Admiral. Beijing’s terrified of any revolt that might spread. That’s why they’re so down on these Falun Gong groups, et cetera. They’re afraid of a chain reaction — a repetition of Tiananmen Square — spreading through China like wildfire, particularly now after Beijing’s had to loosen its grip somewhat and allow some budding capitalism. They’re afraid they won’t be able to keep control of it.”
“I’ve got the picture, Mr. President,” Crowley assured him, somewhat impatiently. Crowley, like Freeman, had a distinguished combat record, and their bluntness belonged more to the tradition of Admiral Bill Halsey and George Patton than to the kind of diplomatic expertise required in a multinuclear-power age where the intemperate remarks of Indian and Pakistani politicians about each other, for example, had taken everyone to the brink.
High up in the McCain’s island that overlooked the carrier’s four and half acres of deck, the diminutive Crowley, who at just over five feet had barely made it into the Navy, put down the phone. The admiral was under no illusion that the President had been prompted — by an aide, probably — about his son’s expectations for top gun. Still, it was nice. The admiral would never ask for special favors from the President — that was strictly against his code — but hell, it didn’t do any harm that the Commander in Chief of the most powerful nation on earth knew your son’s name and where he wanted to go.
The sun was losing altitu
de in the South China Sea, a grand illusion as the world turned, the six thousand men and women who crewed the McCain and her air wing hearing the pipe sounding, “Now darken ship.”
Hundreds of miles to the north of the McCain, in Shihmen on the northern tip of Taiwan, Moh Pan bent low against the advance force eight winds of what had now been officially tagged as Typhoon Jane. Inside the Civil Defense office, Moh waited patiently for his turn to speak to the female clerk, a knockout from Taipei, her ash-black hair pulled back tightly, passing through a silver clasp. Her smile revealed the most beautiful teeth Moh had ever seen in a woman, and her figure was so magnificently proportioned, like the singer Chyi Yu, that he welcomed the wait. In fact, he insisted an elderly woman from his village go before him. He knew his wife would have insisted he demand instant service — his sighting of possible enemy ships or aircraft off the north shore possibly signs of yet another mainland Chinese incursion into Taiwanese sea and air space. Of course, Moh told himself, they could have been Taiwanese ships or aircraft, but it was wonderful standing here, just watching the young clerk breathe.
When his turn came to report, it would be important, he advised himself, to be thorough, not to rush. Perhaps, in the interests of Taiwan’s national security, he should show her on a map approximately where it was off the coast he had seen these “glints”—ask to see a high-scale map of the region, a pictorial accompaniment to his verbal report. A chance to demonstrate what everyone had always said about him — that he should have been an illustrator for the law courts in Taipei, where photographs of the accused were forbidden and readers had to rely on still-life sketches of the accused or victim. Perhaps she would like him to do a sketch of her. In a few strokes he could capture the essential aspects of the face. Moh felt himself becoming aroused.