Director Chou — who never made his requests by phone or computer but always visited the laboratory personally — had commissioned Shek to make very specific bombs over the last week. He wanted something small and powerful that could blow out the hull of a thirty-thousand-ton freighter. He wanted something else that would detonate cold: destroy a room on top of a high-rise structure without setting a fire or causing collateral devastation below. That required a briefcase-sized device with interior deflectors, steel ribs, and titanium mesh that would release the explosion without scattering superheated debris. Shek never knew where these devices were headed, nor did he care. Chou took care of him and his aging mother. Like his father, Chou was a military man and a loyal Communist. That was all Shek had to know.
A few days ago, however, Shek received a visit from someone else. Another military man who had learned of his work for Chou and needed a secret device of his own. He asked if an explosive could be prepared that would endure heat reaching 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit without detonating. Shek told him the real problem was not detonation but evaporation. At that temperature the medium carrying the chemicals would vaporize, causing the explosive to malfunction. Shek said it would be possible if the package were encased in a low-density, high-purity silica 99.8-percent amorphous fiber similar to the material used in the thermal tiles of the American space shuttle. Shek said he had something similar to that in his equipment closet. By that time Shek had guessed that the explosive would be used on a rocket, probably a ballistic missile, and foresaw a more difficult problem.
“The charge itself can be small, but the added weight of thermal shielding will immediately cause a missile or rocket to shift course,” Shek told him. “Even some of the larger fireworks I built had no tolerance for imbalance.”
“Added weight will not matter,” the individual said, smiling broadly and showing a gold tooth.
“But sir, it will cause the rocket to veer.”
“Mr. Shek, I want you to create the device. How long will it take?”
“Ten hours, maybe a little longer.”
“Good. I will return then. You will be generously rewarded.”
Shek did not care abut that. He did not mind killing people here and there, anonymously. They were enemies of the state or they would not be targets. But ever since he began making fireworks, Shek had been a student and devotee of space flight. He did not know what kind of rocket the man wanted to destroy, or why. But he did not want to be a part of it, whatever nations were involved.
“You will do it,” the visitor replied coldly. “If you refuse, your mother will be brought here and shot in front of you. In the legs first. Then the arms.”
Shek began assembling the man’s bomb. He finished it on time. He did not ask what it was for. He did not want to know.
Now, however, he was watching television while he worked on a design to inject fuel into a lightbulb so it would explode when it was turned on. He saw a television newscast about the next launch from Xichang. It would take place the following afternoon, on National Day. A Long March 4 rocket would be used to carry a communications satellite aloft. Shek used his low-level security password to look up the project on-line. He read that the manufacturer was the Unexus Corporation and that the power source was plutonium.
Shek felt sudden nausea unrelated to the gas fumes. At a height of seven miles, as originally proposed, the destruction of the satellite would have caused the resultant radiation to remain primarily in the upper atmosphere. There, air currents would have diluted the effect and disbursed it over a wide area. An explosion under three miles would cause extensive fallout, much of that directed downward by the blast.
What this man planned was worse.
Far, far worse.
THIRTY-ONE
The commander in chief of the Taiwan Armed Forces, based at General Staff Headquarters, Ministry of Defense, in Taipei, sat in a conference room. With him were the commanders of each of the services. Except for short rest periods, the six men would be in this room for at least the next twenty-four hours.
Exactly one day before any rocket launch on mainland China, the 427th Taiwan Flight Wing, based at Ching Chuan Kang Air Base, went on alert. The nationalist Chinese did not expect an attack, and the planes did not leave the field. But the pilots all went to the ready room, and the radar was put on double data status. This meant that the sophisticated new American-built strong-net radar systems at Ching Chuan Kang were interlocked with the systems at Pingtung Air Base North, home of the 439th TFW. That gave the military overlapping pictures of the mainland coast. Instead of receiving a blip with each sweep of one system, incoming images were constant. The double data system left holes in Taiwan’s northern coast, but high command was not overly concerned. If an attack came from North Korea, Seoul would let them know.
Not that the Taiwanese high command expected an attack. Rocket and missile tests by the People’s Republic of China were more an opportunity for a drill than an anticipation of hostilities. It was a chance for the Taiwanese Armed Forces to show their across-the-strait military adversaries that they were watching.
And ready. Twelve hours after the radar scan had begun, Taiwanese Fleet Command would dispatch one cruiser each from the four major naval facilities at Kenting, Suao, Makung, and Keelung. Two recently commissioned dieselpowered submarines would be launched from the new mountain stronghold in Hengchung on the southern coast. Six hours after that, in Tsoying, the Taiwanese Marine Corps would prepare for deployment by sea and air. On the books, their mission would be to recover anything that might land in Taiwan’s territorial waters. But each man knew that in the event of a real crisis, their target could be anything from the vanguard of the PRC fleet to a coastal base or industrial complex.
In all, just six vessels and under three thousand men would be activated in this initial phase of national defense. If the TAF subsequently identified an actual threat from the PRC, the military would move from EWI — the early warning and information phase — to an aggressive electronic warfare phase. This would constitute a massive blocking of mainland communications and reconnaissance systems. Concurrently, Taiwan would launch its forces in a strategic counterblockade capacity to ensure that the waterways and air lanes would be kept free for the TAF and its allies. Antiballistic armament would be launched to intercept any missiles fired from the mainland coast. One hundred fifty F-16 fighters were the cornerstone to this capability. The American-made jets were faster and more powerful than the sixty French Mirage 2000-5 jets that formed the backbone of the PLAAF.
This information and counterattack superiority would form the basis of the initial Taiwanese thrust. It would be followed by a fully synchronized, multiservice and extremely quick response to any sea or land assault, or even the hint of one. There was no doubt in Taiwan that an initial thrust from the PRC could be met and stopped. Their entire strategy depended upon decisively repelling a first strike and holding a second wave. If a struggle went beyond that, and the United States did not intervene, the PRC would simply overwhelm them.
No one expected it to come to that. War benefited neither nation. Taiwan and the PRC did a great deal of business with one another. Not just black market activities but legitimate investments and industrial development. And those numbers were increasing exponentially. The only ones who objected to that were the vintage Communists and the military hard-liners. Both groups were losing ground to the young entrepreneurs. Ironically, these young men and women were a product of a successful Communist policy: the decades-old one-child-per- family rule. Family planning prevented an estimated three hundred million births, which would have taxed the infrastructure and kept Chinese mothers out of the workforce. But it also created a generation of pampered, entitled Chinese. These young adults wanted what their Taiwanese counterparts had: brand-name clothes, electronic toys, and high-end automobiles. Neither Communism nor militarism was going to give them that.
Nonetheless, the commander in chief and his staff still put the Taiwanese military through its carefully planned defensive motions. There was always the chance that someone in Beijing would think the future looked better draped in red instead of silver and gold. Reason and greed were powerful motivators. Unfortunately, so were habit and vanity. That combination could be catastrophic, especially if a political or martial cause to which someone had dedicated their life was in danger of being extinguished.
