‘Yes, sir.’
Liu understood perfectly. He was being ordered to secure an area with almost no time left in which to do so; an area which — if Wu’s schedule had been confirmed earlier — should have already been cordoned off and checked. Essentially, Chen was making sure that if anything should go wrong, it would be Captain Liu Yingchau that would be blamed for it — probably his punishment for rousing the colonel on the telephone the night before.
But despite his misgivings — he would now be held responsible if the American operation to kill the general was successful — he nevertheless saluted and marched from the office with a smile on his face.
He had discovered what he needed; Wu was on his way back, and would be at the festival as promised.
He would let the American unit’s team leader know immediately.
‘How are preparations coming?’ General Wu asked from the secure satellite telephone onboard the private jet which was carrying him back towards Beijing.
‘Good,’ came the voice of Admiral Meng Linxian. ‘With the Americans unable to fly over our expanded territorial waters with their drones and surveillance aircraft, they are forced to rely on their satellites — and we know where they are, and how to avoid them.’
Wu was immensely pleased — he had managed to shut down the surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities of his enemies almost entirely, making them blind to the East and South China Seas. The Americans didn’t dare send any aircraft over China’s waters for fear that the USS Ford would be destroyed in retaliation; and other nations knew that their aircraft would almost certainly be shot down if they tried it — the improvements in anti-aircraft capabilities his country had made in the last decade would almost guarantee it.
He congratulated himself again on his crippling of the Ford and his handling of the situation since then. It was perfect; simply perfect.
‘Our carrier?’ Wu asked next.
‘En route with the battle group,’ Meng announced, ‘and as far as we can tell, entirely undetected.’
‘It will only be a matter of time before they realize that it has left the Taiwanese coast,’ Wu said thoughtfully, stroking one end of his large mustache. ‘And then they will ask themselves where it is headed.’
‘Yes,’ the admiral agreed, ‘but by that time, it will be too late. The battle group will be in position, and — with the situation how it is — who will dare try and stop us?’
Wu smiled again, pleased with the admiral’s confidence. And the man was right, too — who would dare stop them?
Wu had killed the Chinese president, instigated a military coup and taken over control of the country, crippled an American aircraft carrier, retaken the Diaoyu Islands and invaded Taiwan — and so far the international community had hardly batted an eyelid.
Yes, Admiral Meng was quite right — nobody was going to stop him this time, either.
Cole was eating breakfast at the Grand Café buffet, following the routine explained to the CIA by Hoffmeyer the night before and included with an information packet that had been left for Cole with the dry clothes and ID in the sewer.
It was important that he continued to act as the real Hoffmeyer would — eat the same foods, drink the same beverages, go to breakfast at the same time — because as a foreigner it was possible that he was under surveillance. In fact, due to his meeting with Wu later that day, that possibility was almost a certainty.
As he ate his cereal and melon and took a sip of his creamed coffee, he casually surveilled the café and the surrounding area.
Sure enough, a man in his early twenties over in a corner booth who had been nursing a single coffee for far too long was looking furtively over at him from time to time, and an older man in the foyer beyond was almost staring at him in between unconvincing glances at his newspaper.
The presence of the men — at this stage Cole couldn’t spot any more, but assumed they would swap over with colleagues once Cole left the café — didn’t disturb him in the slightest. Indeed, their presence almost reassured him — it was merely business as usual.
His secure cell phone beeped, and Cole looked casually at it, hiding his pleasure at the message. Despite the encrypted software, Liu had sent the message in code anyway, but Cole understood it quickly enough — General Wu was on his way to Beijing.
Cole was glad — the meeting that had been set up gave him his best chance at eliminating the man safely and without detection.
He had called a number given in the information pack earlier that morning, the contact number of the assistant who had helped arrange the meeting. He’d said that he’d seen Wu on the news in Taiwan and had wanted to confirm that their meeting was still going ahead.
The voice on the other end of the line had said gruffly that it was none of his business, and that the meeting would be going ahead; if General Wu wasn’t there, then somebody else would meet Hoffmeyer in his place.
Cole had wanted to argue, to demand that he would only deal with General Wu, but didn’t want to arouse suspicions too much and had in the end acquiesced gracefully.
The security around Wu’s movements was incredible, but Cole could easily see why. Leaving Beijing — and the security of the Zhongnonhai — had been a risk. If the US had discovered when he was travelling, they might have been able to pinpoint his aircraft which could then have been taken out by a missile, an aircraft, or a predator drone.
But it seemed that Wu was a man who liked taking risks, especially if it involved ‘winning over the people’, which must have been the reason for his visit to Taiwan in the first place. To show himself as unafraid, to create the image of a battlefield commander.
Norma Valente’s report for the Paradigm Group on General Wu had indicated that this was indeed how he saw himself — the Genghis Khan of the 21st century.
His presence in Beihai Park that coming afternoon was also a calculated risk; outside of the security of the Zhongnonhai he was exposed, vulnerable. But in Wu’s mind, presenting himself to his people as a victorious, returning general fresh from the frontlines of Taiwan — his ‘gift’ to the Chinese mainland — was worth it.
Cole sighed, leaning back in his seat and sipping his coffee as he thought about the general. Was the man capable of launching nuclear missiles?
He already had no doubt in his mind that Wu would destroy the Ford as threatened, if pushed too far, and Cole wondered about what would happen if he was unsuccessful in this afternoon’s operation.
If Wu lived, and Navarone’s operation was successful, how would Wu react? Would he blame America? Would he kill over four thousand US servicemen and women in revenge?
And if he did, what would President Abrams do? A full-scale invasion was something that would be a truly horrific prospect — for both sides.
Nuclear reprisal would be another option, but Cole didn’t believe that Abrams would be the one to launch first.
No, Cole decided, she would order the troops to go in; there would be a full naval bombardment, Japan would be used as a base to launch bombing raids, and then — when the Chinese coast had been sufficiently softened — the ground troops would invade.
It would be tough — the Chinese military was vast — but it was achievable. The only question would be how many young men and women the US government would be prepared to lose.
And the other question, of course, was — if Wu thought he was going to lose a conventional war — if he would retreat to the Taihang Mountains and instigate global annihilation.
The thought itself was almost too much to consider, and Cole turned his mind off to such second-guessing.