The kids went to different activities every hour. Some read military history and discussed famous battles. Some played games of strategy. Some went for long runs.
I sat in while Douglas taught a class on the Battle of Agincourt. Some played team sports. “I’m giving them a purpose,” he had said. “When I was their age, I was a worthless shit. I needed to be shown that there was more to life than the street, fast cars, and loose women. So now I’m showing them. I’m showing them what incredible things can happen in this world.”
“Who was Jo Anne MacCready?”
“A teacher. My teacher,” he said simply. “I wouldn’t be here without her. She gave me a book about the Battle of Thermopylae when I was a kid and it changed my life. This school was her idea.”
I asked why he’d brought me. “I’m more than a thug, Dmitriy,” he’d said. “Keep faith with the good people who help you. The money I get from dictators and foreign governments goes to showing these kids greatness in Mrs. MacCready’s name. And if I die getting the money to do that, I will die a hero and rest peacefully knowing that. I want you to face death someday as calmly as I will.”
I remembered how Fong had executed Douglas on the ship in the Taiwan Strait less than a week earlier while I was forced to listen over the ship’s intercom. McCormick and I had evaded capture, and I had wanted to go rescue Douglas, guns blazing. He was the one who had stopped me, who had told me that Douglas would want me to live and win the battle he’d chosen to come fight.
I would keep faith with him. And with Douglas.
It was the dead of night when we arrived at the farmhouse where we had left our supplies earlier that day. We ate cold MRE’s. McCormick just kept that intense look on his face, that anguished expression. He didn’t know what to do. It was plain on his face.
“I have a plan,” I said without fanfare. McCormick looked up as if he’d suddenly snapped into consciousness. “It will very likely result in our deaths,” I cautioned. “But it will help win the war and also meet more… personal goals.”
It only took about a minute to explain the plan as far as I’d thought it through. When I was done, Dietrich’s face was blank, lost in thought. McCormick noted, “You really weren’t joking when you said we’d probably die doing this.”
“No, my young American friend, I was not joking,” I said simply. “But the likelihood of death is not overwhelmingly high until after our objectives have been completed.”
McCormick, all of 26 years old, considered the decision for about five seconds. “I’m in. Dietrich?”
The German shrugged. “I do not think people will soon forget this one. If nothing else, Dmitriy and I will secure our places in the history books next to you, Sergeant McCormick. So, yes, I will participate in this lunacy.”
None of us could suppress a smile. “This last one’s going to be fun,” McCormick said with enthusiasm.
The first thing we needed to do was find out where exactly we’d be going. When McCormick called the Taiwanese to get some intelligence, they told him that the Chinese had been sending around emails and having conversations over encrypted radio about Lieutenant Barker’s location — evidently in a hospital in western Taipei, deep in the zone of PLA control.
“That’s all very interesting,” McCormick said, “but I’m calling to ask for some other information. And, well, I have a few substantive requests.”
“Just name them,” our contact in Taiwanese intelligence replied. If McCormick was popular in America, he held demi-god status in Taiwan, the man who had brought the United States into the war and given them a fighting chance of holding off the Chinese.
After McCormick explained what we needed, our contact said, “On the intelligence front, I know that we already have a very solid estimate about the location you are seeking. We will race to verify the intelligence we have, but I don’t think it’ll be a problem. As for the, as you put them, substantive requests, that is obviously not my department, but I strongly suspect we can provide the first part of what you’re asking for. We will have a stealth drone deliver it to your location within thirty minutes. The Americans are the only ones who have the other part. I need to coordinate that part with them.”
The Taiwanese sent over the intelligence we had been looking for fifteen minutes after McCormick’s call, and the item we had requested a few minutes after that. A drone no larger than a briefcase landed, allowed us to withdraw what we needed, then flew away.
We looked at maps and determined our route to reach the target. “Getting to the building is going to be a nontrivial exercise, but possible,” Dietrich observed. “Reaching the target in the building with three men is going to be very difficult. The subsequent escape, particularly given the building’s surroundings, will be virtually impossible.”
“It’s not that bad,” McCormick said confidently. “If we move quickly, we just need a little bit of luck and we could all make it out alive.”
Dietrich shook his head but didn’t pursue the point further. We had to wait two hours for confirmation that the other pieces of the plan were in place. It was around 8:00 PM local time when word finally came through that everything was ready.
There was nothing left to wait for, and the mission would only become more difficult the longer we put it off. We restocked our ammunition, took a few of the new weapons the Taiwanese had given us, and left the farmhouse, never to return.
We moved steadily northwest through the mountains. Our objective was surprisingly close, only a matter of three or four miles, though the journey would take perhaps four or five hours. We had to make a stop to get something along the way, and then once we left the mountains, we would have to slow the pace considerably to avoid detection. The thermal suits continued to mask us from drones, satellites, and Chinese patrols, though I knew that I could have avoided the patrols without all the Taiwanese wizardry.
For the little errand we needed to run along the way, we had agreed that it would be safer to do it as soon as possible. While it might give the Chinese advanced warning that something was up, we would be far enough away from the objective that they wouldn’t know where we were going. We might have waited until we were right near the target to do this little errand, but then we would have only a matter of minutes before the alert went up right when (and where) we most needed the element of surprise.
I spotted what we were looking for twenty minutes after we had left our farmhouse. Five PLA soldiers were out on patrol about a hundred and fifty yards ahead of us, armed with thermal scopes. They were moving slowly, avoiding leaves and twigs that could make noise and give away their position. Someone fairly competent in the art of the night patrol had taught them how to stay alive in a warzone. They were probably out looking for us. The lucky devils.
“Remember, headshots only,” McCormick whispered. “I’ll loop around them and hit from the rear. Dmitriy, Hans, you split up the three closest to us, I’ll take the two in the rear.”
We muttered acknowledgment, and went about the business. In a little under five minutes, McCormick whispered over the radio, “In position.” Then, a moment later, “Starting in three seconds.”
We heard the soft chatter of McCormick’s silenced rifle, and Dietrich and I each dropped a PLA soldier in the same moment. McCormick shifted to a second target, and Dietrich and I both fired at the last soldier, both of us hitting the unfortunate man in the head. “All Chicoms down,” McCormick said over the radio.