PROLOGUE
Since first light, they had been observing the blue-water Fleet of the People’s Liberation Army/Navy moving menacingly back and forth in a classic “racetrack” pattern, 50 miles offshore. Twenty-two warships in total, including the new 80,000-ton aircraft carrier from Russia, so new it did not yet have a name.
The Taiwanese had nervously tracked the destroyers of mainland China: the Luhus, the old Ludas and the new Luhai; they’d logged the surface-to-surface missiles unleashed in short fireballs by the Jiangwei frigates, just as they had done three times before in the previous 18 months.
They had watched the fleet move ever nearer, then finally cross the unseen dividing line down the middle of the Strait of Taiwan and continue into Taiwanese territorial waters. Instantly the supervisors signaled Tsoying, their main naval base, and the automatic alert to the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor flashed onto the satellite.
Two hundred miles east of Taiwan, the American admiral on the giant U.S. Nimitz-class aircraft carrier
But at 1357 on that clear, cool April day in the Taiwan Strait, every alert there had ever been in the tracking stations of Taiwan faded into obsolescence. Mainland China suddenly fired a big, short-range land-attack cruise missile straight at the capital city of Taipei.
The military tracking radars in Taiwan’s coastal station west of Hsinchu picked it up 45 miles out, hurtling in over the Strait at 600 mph, low-level, no higher than 200 feet, on a varying course around zero-eight-zero, right out of Fujian Province. At first they thought it was an aircraft overflying the Chinese fleet, but it was too fast and too low, making 10 miles every minute.
There was no time to shoot it down, and decoys were useless against the kind of preprogammed inertial navigation system used in a Russian-designed M-11 cruise, which this most certainly was. The military barely had time to assess the danger before the missile came screaming in over the coastline, plainly visible to any local citizen who happened to look upward.
At the time there was heavy traffic all along the Taipei West Coast Freeway, and one military truck driver spotted it, couldn’t believe his eyes, and drove straight into a tourist bus, ramming it right through the central guardrail into the path of oncoming traffic and causing a 59-vehicle pileup in which 14 people were killed.
Simultaneously, the emergency radio procedures desperately urged people to remain in their homes, if possible below ground, in the face of imminent missile attack. No one knew whether the cruise carried a nuclear- tipped warhead, but the danger of radiation was uppermost in the minds of the authorities.
Everyone in air traffic control at CKS International Airport, four miles from the traffic pileup, watched the missile streak across Taiwanese airspace, both onscreen and from the big viewing windows. It seemed to make a slight course adjustment and then rocketed across the city of Taoyuan. It was still making 600 mph and maintaining height as it cleared the railroad terminal, passing dead overhead the new McDonald’s off Fuhsing Road.
Right now it was 120 seconds from Taiwan’s capital and all the military could do was warn the populace to take cover. They informed the U.S. and United Nations Headquarters that they were under immediate missile attack from China, and at 1406 the cruise came in sight of Taipei.
But, to the astonishment of the military, the missile kept right on going, straight across the center of the city, over the Tanshui River and on to the second-largest container port in the country, Keelung, up on the northeast coast. But it did not stop there, either, but headed right on out into the Pacific, where it crashed and blew up 30 miles off Taiwan’s coast.
The Taiwan military protested in the strongest terms to Beijing, seeking assurances that there were no more missiles on the way. The Prime Minister himself contacted Beijing directly, to deliver an icy warning to China’s Paramount Ruler that Taiwan’s armed forces would fight to the last inch of their ground to preserve their independence. And, if they had to, Taiwan would hit back at China with U.S.-built guided missiles, which were far superior to anything the Chinese had in their current arsenal.
“We may go,” the Prime Minister concluded. “But we’ll take Beijing with us. That I promise.”
The Chinese neither apologized nor gave any assurances that such a thing would not happen again.
Admiral Arnold Morgan was listening with mounting fury to the reason why the Chinese ambassador to Washington was not able to report to the White House in the next 20 minutes.
“He’s in a conference, Arnold,” insisted his secretary. “They won’t even put me through to his assistant. They say they’ll get a message to him and he’ll call you in a half hour. He’s actually speaking with the General Secretary of the Communist Party, who you know is in town dining with the President tonight.”
“Kathy O’Brien, upon whose very footsteps I worship the immediate airspace,” growled the NSA. “I want you to listen to me very carefully. I do not care if Comrade Ling Fucking Guofeng, Honorable Ambassador to our nation, is in direct spiritual contact with Chiang Kaishek, or speaking at this very moment to the deranged ghost of Mao Zedong or any of those other goddamned coolies who rose to power. I want him here in twenty minutes, otherwise he will be Ling Fucking Guofeng,
“Arnold, I will pass on your wishes to the highest possible authority.”
Seventeen minutes later, Ambassador Ling was escorted into Admiral Morgan’s office.
“Siddown. This is serious. And listen.” The admiral was not in a gracious mood.
The ambassador sat, and said with the utmost courtesy, “Would it be out of order, Admiral, for me to wish you good morning?”
“Yes, it would, since you mention it. I’m more concerned with the fact that a few hours ago, your goddamned pain-in-the-ass country almost caused a fucking war.”
“Admiral, surely you are not referring to that insignificant incident in our Taiwan Strait?”
“Insignificant? You crazy sonsabitches threw an M-11 cruise missile straight over the city of Taipei. You call that insignificant?”
“Admiral, I have received a most reliable communique that it was a mere accident. The missile somehow became out of control…in any event it failed safe, and flew into the Pacific. Quite harmless.”
“Ling, I don’t believe you. I think you guys have taken up a new twenty-first-century sport called
“Well, I can appreciate their anxiety.”
“Ling, what would you have done if the Taiwanese had had a little more time, and our Carrier Battle Group had been a lot closer? How about if the Taiwanese had started throwing missiles back? And we decided to take out a couple of your Navy bases, maybe knock out a few of your missile sites? What then?”
“Admiral, I do not think that would have been very wise, for either the Taiwanese or yourselves. We are no longer the backward, militarily unsophisticated nation you once considered us. These days we have missiles to match your own, in both power and range. Serious intercontinental ballistic missiles. ICBMs, Admiral. Made in China. You would do well to remember that.”
“Ling, the most you guys have ever done is to employ a group of devious little spies and sneak thieves to try and steal from us. But when you get the stuff it’s always too advanced for you to adapt. You’ve had more missile test failures than even I can count. You always
Ambassador Ling ignored the insult. “Admiral,” he said, “your assessment of our capabilities was probably accurate for many years. But no longer. We have effective long-range missiles now. We are as big a threat to you as you have always been to us.”
