Out of three hundred thousand armed service personnel in Taiwan, less than two thousand had been killed by PLA forces, which now left a huge number for the PLA to police. At the moment, it seemed that they were being confined to their bases, which the PLA was turning into makeshift prison camps. It wasn’t a long-term solution, but Wu accepted it as a suitable temporary stop-gap.
He wondered about the will of Taiwan’s reserve forces — reputed to number three and a half million, although the number of people actually physically able to fight would be much less than this. But there would still be a lot of them, with basic military training.
Wu discounted the reserves almost as soon as he had thought of them. The military bases — and therefore all weapons and equipment — were safely in the hands of the PLA now, so what would they have to fight with? Pitchforks and kitchen knives?
Wu also understood the respect that the Taiwanese people had for the power of the PLA — or at least the fear, which was even more useful. And of course everyone on the island would know what Wu might do if pushed — withdraw his own people completely and wipe Taiwan off the face of the earth with his missiles.
But Wu had no wish for things to get to that stage. He truly wanted to welcome the people of Taiwan into the PRC, to make them a part of the one true China. And he knew that the best way of doing this was to win the hearts and minds of the people — to make them want to be a part of the People’s Republic.
The way they had been abandoned by their leadership was a good start — they would feel betrayed by Rai and the others, and would have been pleasantly surprised by the relative non-violence of the invasion. They were primed to listen to an offer of amalgamation, and Wu’s speech yesterday evening, symbolically made from the steps of the Japanese-designed, Renaissance-Baroque Presidential Office building, had been designed to win them over quickly.
The next morning he would fly back to Beijing, in time to make the Dragon Boat festival — another chance to meet the citizens of his new Chinese empire, to impress them with his grace and generosity. He was personally sponsoring the teams who would be racing in Beihai Park, to the north of the Zhongnonhai.
He was due to fly out in four hours, and wondered idly whether he should go back to bed. But there was no point — he was awake now, and would only feel worse if he went back to sleep now.
Except for the occasional visit to the members of the Politburo in the Forbidden City, Wu hadn’t left the Zhongnonhai in Beijing since this whole thing began, until his flight to Taipei the previous afternoon. He was weary, he was tired, and he felt his energy waning. It had been part of the reason why he had taken the girls to his chamber — the all-necessary pleasures of the flesh helped to keep his mind sharp.
But even in the middle of the night, he couldn’t fully rest — he had to know exactly what was going on at all times. A part of him knew he had to relinquish control at some stage — he had the entire Central Military Commission to help run things after all, a glut of senior military personnel to make sure everything was going as planned. But another part — the stronger part — simply refused to let go. What was happening now was his validation, what he had come to think of as the entire reason for his existence. It was bad enough that he hadn’t been here in Taiwan to oversee the invasion himself; but he at least realized that with his new position came new responsibilities, and the Paramount Leader of the PRC shouldn’t be leading the troops into battle himself.
But why not? Just because the leaders of all the other nations on earth were content to hide away from the realities of the wars they waged, why should that mean he was obliged to follow the same route? Maybe next time, he thought to himself, he would lead the army himself, just like the emperors of old.
He would be the Genghis Khan of his generation, and his people would love him for it.
Yes, he considered with a smile, that would be something to think about.
Despite not wanting to sleep, he looked over at the three attractive young women warming his bed, but finally decided against that too — they had already served their purpose, and Wu was no longer in the mood.
Instead, he gestured with his head to the corner of the room, where Zhou Shihuang sat in the shadows watching; always watching.
‘They’re yours,’ he said to the one-eyed man as he strode to the bathroom, clapping Zhou on the shoulder as he went. ‘Use them as you will.’
The smile that passed his bodyguards lips was unsettling, but Wu decided not to dwell on what Zhou wanted to do with them.
They had outlived their usefulness anyway.
8
Cole checked his equipment one more time as he waited to exit the submarine into the Dry Dock Shelter via the mating hatch.
He was wearing full SCUBA gear, including connections for the open-circuit air tanks inside the SDV which the team would be using for most of the infiltration. He also had a LAR V Draeger rebreather strapped to his chest, ready to be used when they were in the shallower waters inland, when people might notice the tell-tale bubbles released from an open-circuit unit. It would be nighttime of course, but you could never be too careful — the last thing Cole wanted was for some passerby to wonder why there was a trail of bubbles travelling along the water, and to inform the authorities. The chance of detection was pretty large as it was, without giving the enemy an unnecessary advantage.
He wore a full tactical rig over his wet suit, equipment and ammunition in waterproof compartments. On his leg was a stainless steel Smith and Wesson 686 .357 magnum revolver, perfect for its reliability in or out of the water, and he also carried an M4A1 carbine with suppressor. There were more modern rifles available — such as the FN SCAR, a weapon purpose-designed for use by US Special Operations Command — but Cole preferred to use what he knew, and the M4 had demonstrated its utter reliability over the decades.
Cole had placed a condom over the end of the M4’s suppressor to keep water out, and noted that all the other members of his team had done exactly the same. It wasn’t that the gun wouldn’t fire if the precaution wasn’t taken; it was just that the barrel would have to be drained before firing, a procedure that could leave them two seconds too late if they were discovered and had to open fire instantaneously. With the rubber in place, Cole could burst out of the water and start firing right away.
He carried a diver’s knife on the other leg to the revolver, and a dive computer on his wrist so that he could instantly see barometric pressure, depth and navigational information. Night-vision goggles hung from a strap around his neck.
Cole recognized that most of the things he carried were — for himself, at least — not meant to be used; they were merely for self-protection should his unit be discovered. His ultimate goal was to reach Beijing completely undiscovered, and assassinate General Wu with his bare hands.
The rest of his team would need their gear though, and were carrying even more than him, including an array of explosives and back-up weapons in large waterproof kit-bags.
Hopefully, Cole told himself, all he needed was a dry change of clothes.
If everything went according to plan.
Cole’s chosen method of Force One’s infiltration was to pilot the SDV through the busy waterway of Bohai Bay and past Sanhe Island into Yongding New River, which led inland towards Beijing.