the level of resistance.
The bus driver, a lean, hard-eyed Chinese agent, had spent all morning rounding up his passengers, collecting them from a series of safe houses in the Sungshan District, where they had been lying low since the first parachute drops of the Special Forces five days previously.
These were the elite of the Chinese Army, supremely trained Oriental SAS men, and now they were poised to strike, each man armed only with a concealed machine pistol or a folding submachine gun, as bus number 213 crept slowly up to the base of the wide stairway to the palace.
It stopped, leaving its engine running, and the doors slid swiftly open. Forty-two men stepped slowly out into the rain, gathering in groups of six, separating on various levels of the steps. Slowly, without urgency, they made their way to the top and walked through the huge doors into a somewhat grim, drab and unspectacular interior main hall, in almost shocking contrast to the grandeur of the exterior. On either side of the hall was a towering wing, filled with spectacular treasures, and the groups of Special Forces, unsuspected, unrecognized, moved up to the ticket office and paid their entrance fee of $80 new Taiwan dollars, which is around U.S. $2.50.
In their original groups of six, they dispersed among the crowds into various great rooms, to the left and to the right, and to the upper floor. No one made a move, until the final group moved up to the counter and requested six tickets, handing over an NT $500 bill. On it was painted a tiny machine gun, and the young Lieutenant who offered it told the cashier, “Right now, Lee, GO!”
Lee, who had been in place on behalf of the PLAN Intelligence Service for the past five years, swung out of his booth and walked swiftly across the hall to the information desk and disappeared into a door marked EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY.
Still no one betrayed anything. Until, two minutes later, every light in the building went out. Great pictures were no longer illuminated, the glass cases full of treasure went suddenly dull beneath the limited natural light still filtering in through the windows of this dull June day. The National Palace was without electric power, and deep beneath the stone-and-marble floors Major Chiang Lee flew along the underground corridor, a flashlight in his left hand and a hand grenade in his right. He reached the giant automatic generator with just 25 seconds left before it kicked in, and he ripped out the pin and hurled the grenade straight at the big 600-gallon gas tank to the right of the main machinery.
He dove back around the corner of the massively reinforced concrete walls and flung himself to the ground. Four seconds later the thunderous explosion and contained fire ensured that not only was the National Museum without power; it was also going to stay precisely that way for the foreseeable future.
Every secure door both inside the museum itself, inside the labyrinth of underground tunnels and inside the echoing vaults that held the treasures of five thousand years was suddenly useless. If they were open, they would stay open. If they were closed, they would open up easily enough without the power locking devices. Major Chiang Lee, after hundreds of hours of study, a million deceptions and the patience of a Buddha, had done his work.
And now he moved back through the dark passage toward the area where the elevator from the main floor emerged. In the fire-control doorway, right opposite, he retrieved his Kalashnikov machine gun. And he walked back up the emergency stairs into the wide foyer where there were now scenes of some disquiet, though nothing resembling panic. The building had been constructed to such a heavy-duty standard, the rumble of the explosion, 100 yards away deep below ground, had scarcely been detected.
Major Lee fired a short burst from his machine gun, into the information desk, by way of attracting attention. Then he blasted a volley at the six high-security cameras, which he knew would operate for several hours on emergency batteries. Then he ordered everyone to stand back against the walls. He seemed a small, insignificant- looking figure to be issuing such a command, but suddenly he was joined by two groups of six men all leveling smaller, but just as deadly, weapons.
The Taiwanese guards, indoctrinated for years as to the Jihad seriousness of their responsibilities, immediately moved as a trained unit of four men, racing into position behind two huge stone pillars, and opening fire at the aggressors in the lobby. But they were not in time. At the first sign of movement, Admiral Zhang’s commandos hit the ground, returning fire toward the pillars. No one hit anyone, but right behind the museum guards there was a team of six Chinese Special Forces, now with their weapons drawn, and, firing from the rear, they cut down the security men in five seconds flat.
And now nine uniformed guards from the upper floors, pistols drawn, raced down the wide interior stairs. And this was like the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre. Women screamed as the Chinese Special Forces, crouching beneath the benches along the walls, opened up with a sustained burst of fire that left no survivors — just nine bodies sprawled on the wide staircase, blood trickling down the gray stone steps.
Up on the overlooking balcony, a further troop of museum guards had seen the appalling situation and retreated into the main exhibition rooms, slamming shut the massive wooden doors and locking them by hand with their six-inch-long master keys. They used mobile phones, desperately trying to raise the military in the nearby garrison. The Taipei Police were on the line swiftly and assured them of assistance within 10 minutes. Down in the tunnels the underground guards, and those who protected the doors into the vaults, gathered in the dark, 23 of them, heavily armed and massively confused.
By now there were several dozen tourists trying to open the outside doors, and Major Chiang Lee and his men began to herd the crowd inside the foyer toward the main entrance, which was guarded by Special Forces. Each visitor to the museum was searched. All mobile phones were confiscated. The double doors were opened just a couple of feet, and each visitor was dispatched out into the crowd with instructions to leave the area immediately.
By now it was obvious the National Palace Museum had been captured, at least temporarily, by a small squadron of Chinese Special Forces. Lines of tourists returned to the waiting buses, and the eight men remaining in number 213 were now outside their bus brandishing Kalashnikovs and ordering the drivers away.
Inside the main foyer another gun battle broke out when guards from the tunnels broke through the emergency exit and began shouting orders to the crowd. Unaware of the gravity of the situation, they never had a prayer when the Special Forces gunned them down at close quarters. Six of them died instantly, the rest retreated back down to the dark tunnels, which was going to pose a substantial problem for the Chinese.
Ricocheting bullets had already injured four American tourists, one of them a very young boy, age around eight. The four-man medical unit that was integrated into the attacking force was attending the wounded, using their own supplies, and as they worked, the large crowd was slowly exiting the building and moving down to the buses.
At this point, the Chinese moved to secure the museum. Two bigger machine guns, plus ammunition, were brought up to the foyer from the waiting buses. All outside doors were locked by hand, and a dozen sentries were posted. The remaining 28 attackers split into three groups of six, and one of 10, the main assault force that would storm the exhibition rooms where there were still armed security guards.
They hit the one on the upper left first, blasting the door open with machine-gun fire and then spraying the room with 50 rounds, calling for total surrender. A stray bullet shattered a glass case and smacked straight through an early-seventeenth-century Qing Dynasty helmet used by a long-dead emperor for reviewing troops. The bullet cracked open the head of one of the three decorative dragons, split a large ruby in half and probably did about a million dollars worth of damage.
But the helmet survived, and it fared better than a black pottery wine jar, fashioned in the shape of a silkworm cocoon, and dating back to around 300 B.C. This shattered on impact with another Kalashnikov bullet, and joined the remnants of a priceless foot-high, jade Kuei tablet from the early Shang Kingdom, more than 1,000 years before Christ.
A line of bullet holes also decorated the upper reaches of one of China’s most valuable paintings,
The four cowering guards plainly realized that if the Chinese Special Forces were prepared to inflict millions of dollars’ worth of damage on the contents of these rooms, their own lives were not worth four cents. And they came forward, unarmed with their hands high, and as they did so they heard the thunder of the second machine gun as it obliterated the lock on the door that guarded the room across the wide stone corridor on the upper right.
Again the Chinese Special Forces came in low and hard, the machine gun ripping bullets into the room, from a floor-level position. The two central glass cases were blown apart, glass from the tallest one flying everywhere. But
