As suddenly as it began, the Mainlander onslaught passed. Brigadier General Mao was puzzled. He ordered the signalman to do a radio net call and assess his troops’ condition. All radios were silent; not even static. He noticed the bunker’s emergency lights were on. Not surprising, the barrage probably cut the power lines. He ordered the landlines used — he had assumed the intense barrage would have severed some of the lines. To his surprise, all of the stations reported, save one.
The brigade intelligence officer had been working on the situation simultaneously and walked up to his commanding officer to brief him on what he knew, “Sir, I have some information.”
“Please, major, proceed.” The general was heartened that they had absorbed the enemy’s first blow and were still functioning with military efficiency.
“Sir, the bombardment of our positions lasted only five minutes, although, I must admit, it was a robust bombardment. Initial estimates are that ten battalions of rocket and tube artillery participated in the attack. We were able to contact Quemoy via our underwater cable link. They are fine. No bombardment. They have lost contact with our naval elements in the vicinity, however. Sir, one more thing: Quemoy HQ can’t raise Taipei on the radio. In fact, they can’t hear anything on their radios.”
One of the signalmen, looking very nervous, interrupted, “Sirs, I believe all of our radio receiver circuits have been burned out.”
“What?” Both the general and the major asked in unison.
Looking more comfortable, the signalman continued, “Sirs, it’s as if all our topside antennas got hit by lightning.”
The major’s stomach went more queasy then it did in the middle of the barrage, “General, sir, I believe I know what happened. The Communists have exploded a nuclear bomb somewhere nearby. The bomb’s electro-magnetic pulse has destroyed all non-protected electronic equipment. We have been sheltered because we are buried, but our radios have a direct electrical link with the outside world through their antennas. The land lines work because they’re buried.”
“Send out a nuclear and chemical reconnaissance team. I want to know what happened.” Turning to his operations officer, the general said, “Colonel, keep the men on full alert for at least the next four hours, then begin a 16 hours on, eight hours off schedule for everyone. We may be here for a while.”
Fu Zemin could hardly believe the orders he had just read and was busy destroying with a bottle of mineral water. Taiwan itself was being invaded! Not the insignificant island of Quemoy! My recommendation was accepted! He only had seconds to wonder why he was sent here to watch over Admiral Wong and the Quemoy invasion preparations. Fu was being ordered to fly to Taiwan with elements of the 85th Infantry Division and be the Party’s official representative on the island until relieved! He could hardly believe his luck!
He wished he could tell someone, then he thought of how he was getting to Taiwan — with elements of the 85th Infantry Division. The military. War. Danger. He remembered how he hated personal privations. How he avoided military service through his father’s Party connections. Still, how dangerous could it be if the Party chieftains were willing to send him, a highly placed and very knowledgeable Party foreign affairs advisor, to Taiwan?
He speculated on whether the Party had accepted the rest of his memo — his recommendation to follow-up the reunification of Taiwan with a campaign to conquer East Asia before an anti-China grouping of states could contain China’s rightful ambitions.
He smiled. He was a hero of China. He himself might even rule Asia some day.
The 747–400 had just touched down at Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport — just another Chinese flight from Hong Kong as far as anyone outside of the aircraft was concerned — routine business travel.
The aircraft was taxiing towards the terminal when all its electrical systems went dead. The aircraft’s engines flamed out and it slowly came to a halt just shy of the terminal. Normally this would have greatly concerned the tower, but they had larger troubles to worry about. Just a few minutes before the understaffed tower (40 % of the air traffic controllers were on sick call) received a report about a large force of Mainland jet aircraft approaching Taiwan. They were to clear the skies of civil aviation, vectoring them away from the potential areas of confrontation. As they were redirecting aircraft all of their radio equipment popped and began smoking, the terminal and approach radars went down, and the power went out. The emergency systems failed to kick in. The tower was dead.
The controllers were flabbergasted. For a space of five seconds — an eternity in air traffic control — the tower was completely silent. The chief controller finally spoke, “Did we get a lightning strike? I didn’t hear any thunder. You there, Ju, go down the tower and check for external damage, maybe we were hit by something. Lin, call Taipei control and tell them we’re out of business. What the? Flight 557 from Hong Kong, the 747, it looks like it’s in trouble!”
The senior controller pointed down to the 747 at the far end of the terminal. Steam seemed to be billowing out of its now open passenger exits.
Lieutenant Colonel Chu Dugen looked at his watch through his protective mask. He always hated wearing the bulky things, but they worked, and, if one trained in them enough, they weren’t much of a hindrance. The commandos used Israeli protective masks. The wide lenses offered much more peripheral vision than the old goggle-eyed Soviet-era protective masks the PLA used.
In two more minutes, the 747 would have finished disgorging its supply of the incapacitating agent, a phenothiazine-type compound that affected its victims in a non-lethal fashion, rendering them, in most cases, unable to act upon the information their brains processed. Another two minutes after that and the first missile-delivered incapacitating agent would burst over the airport. If all went according to plan, every armed defender within five kilometers would be rendered passive for half a day or longer, giving the commandos precious time to secure CKS International for the follow-on forces.
Another minute went by. Dugen hazarded a look out of the passenger window. He saw three airport workers pointing and laughing at the ‘steaming’ 747. Dugen smiled. The agent was taking effect. A fourth worker was simply staring into space, a large fire extinguisher at his side.
The Chinese attackers had been ingenious in their attack planning. Rather than using only one type of incapacitating agent, the high command decided on three, each with its own advantages.
The first type, used in areas where direct military contact was expected, such as CKS International Airport, was a compound based on phenothiazine. This drug, easy to deliver in militarily significant doses via air burst bombs or missiles, acted as a depressant on the central nervous system. The people so affected would not have their higher reasoning powers seriously impaired; they would understand their surroundings — they just wouldn’t care about what they saw. They would completely lack any motivation to resist or follow orders. This drug had another advantage: it was easily counteracted with amphetamines. This was key because, if the drug remained in the air in aerosol form or was somehow absorbed into the skin, the attackers would also be subject to its effects within a few hours. Thus, by wearing a protective mask, the attackers could remain immune from the more immediate effects of inhalation and, because the agent’s effects could be reversed, the wearing of a bulky and constraining protective suit could be avoided.