It had been a simple ambush, and now we moved to claim the prize. It was easiest for me; the PLA soldiers were slightly shorter than the average American, and one of the deceased Chinese was just a bit taller than me and a little fatter. I slid the uniform jacket off the body and unbuttoned his pants, trying both of the articles on over the skin-tight Taiwanese thermal suit. “A perfect fit,” I observed with satisfaction.
McCormick and Dietrich, a bit taller than average, had to cram themselves into the PLA uniforms. “I can barely breath in this damn thing,” McCormick groused.
“Neither could he!” I joked, laughing at my own wit. My two companions groaned.
We emptied the PLA soldiers’ packs and transferred in our own equipment. I silently blessed the Taiwanese engineer who had designed the silencer on the T97 rifle. With a simple adjustment, it fit the barrel of the Ak-2000’s carried by the Chinese, meaning that we wouldn’t have to carry both with us.
We left the silencers off for now, planning to put them back on when we got closer to the target. They would obviously only raise suspicion if Chinese soldiers saw them on our weapons. After all, we looked like ordinary PLA infantry, and ordinary PLA infantry did not carry silenced weapons.
The thermal suits came with face masks, of course, and they looked close enough to Chinese face masks that we felt comfortable leaving them on. By the time we were done, the only things that marked us as impostors were McCormick and Dietrich’s eyes, both blue. Hopefully, no one would get close enough to see, and, just in case, I would walk in front whenever we encountered Chinese soldiers.
We hid the bodies in deep brush, then continued on to the northwest. Once again, we saw the shimmer of Taipei through the rain and fog, though this time we didn’t turn away. We continued on to the northwest, seeing the PLA reinforcements continuing to stream into the area.
“Concitor’s going to have his hands full,” McCormick observed.
“He can handle it,” I judged.
“How do you know?” McCormick asked.
“He has to.”
We continued on, the tension mounting. It wasn’t new to be in enemy territory. It was new to have to pretend to be the enemy, to be walking with unsilenced weapons, ensuring that if we had to fight, it would draw thousands — maybe tens of thousands — of PLA from all directions.
When we were about a half-mile away from the objective, we spotted a path of stone next to a drainage ditch. The path had lights above it, though they were off at this point.
“Have to take off the thermal goggles now,” McCormick said. “We shouldn’t need them from here forward anyway.” We all reluctantly removed the systems, and we waited a minute for our nightvision to adjust.
We continued down the path, knowing what was likely waiting for us at the end. Sure enough, I spotted four PLA soldiers standing sentry duty where the path ended, leading to a wealthy gated community of tall apartment buildings and boutique shops. The line between the wilderness of the forest and the beginning of Taipei was being guarded by four men.
“Can we get past them?” McCormick whispered. Our uniforms were meant to allow us to walk the streets of that gated community, but the PLA soldiers standing guard duty would obviously ask for some kind of identification from three soldiers who had just wandered in from the forest. None of us spoke Chinese, making it totally impossible that we could make it through such an encounter.
I took a moment to examine the surroundings. There was a mansion-like building a few dozen feet from the entrance, and Taiwanese intelligence had suggested that it was filled with more soldiers. They could probably see the sentries, and they would surely notice if the four sentries all suddenly dropped dead.
The community was surrounded by fencing on the side facing the forest, but it didn’t have barbed wire or anything at the top. We could hop the fence somewhere and then push into the gated community. There might be security cameras, but they would likely be obvious and in the open, meant to deter crime more than to detect a sophisticated incursion.
“Let’s jump the fence somewhere to the west,” I suggested. That would take us a bit further away from our target, meaning we’d have to spend a longer time walking the streets in our disguises and hoping that we weren’t detected. However, the really dangerous part of the approach was getting into the gated community, not walking the streets outside. Inside the gated community, we were just three more anonymous soldiers. While we were hopping the fence, we were obviously people who did not belong, people who needed to be fought.
I led us to the right for about a hundred and fifty meters and stopped. “I’ll go ahead and check the fence here, see if it’s somewhere we can sneak in,” I whispered. The others nodded in deference to my stealthiness.
The trick to being quiet, I have found, is moving slower every time you feel the urge to move faster. If there is no obvious reason, like someone pointing a gun at you, speed will get you detected and killed. Instead, just go slower, be more deliberate, more willing to bend to nature’s rhythm to get you where you need to go. In this case, I spent ten minutes walking about a hundred meters, almost crawling from tree to tree.
I was coming up on the backside of a large apartment building. As I had expected, there was a visible camera looking out into the wilderness, but it was stationary. I looked for the next camera and saw that the field of vision for the two didn’t quite overlap. There were a few tricks up my sleeve for getting through, but with non-overlapping fields of vision, it became much easier: just walk through in between the areas of coverage.
Looking up into the apartment windows, I could see that some of the lights were on. I thought for a moment about whether there would likely be soldiers looking out. No, I decided, the rooms would most likely be occupied by civilians who weren’t about to be looking out the windows, waiting to report a sighting to the PLA. There wouldn’t likely be many Chinese soldiers resting here, six or seven miles from the battlefield that would decide the war in the next twenty-four hours.
“Coast is clear, this is a good spot,” I whispered over the radio. “Move up.”
I kept an eye toward the east, making sure that the four guards at the entrance weren’t strolling over this way. I didn’t see any patrols, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t walk around the corner at just the wrong time and ruin the mission.
It did occur to me, though, that this was probably the last time at which the mission could fail and we would survive. With the thermal suits, we could run into the forest and stand a fair chance of getting away. After this, once we were in the gated community, all encounters would be at easy visual range. If they saw us and knew who we were, there’d be no end to Chinese reinforcements until they got us.
Shaking away the thought, I saw McCormick and Dietrich approach the fence. I whispered, “Dietrich, go first, then Clay.” I wanted to be last because I was the quietest, and if McCormick or Dietrich made noise, it might be written off if no other noises were made.
The two climbed the six-foot fence easily, and then it was my turn. And just like that, we were in.
Without a word, I led us around the apartment building, taking a quick peek around the corner to make sure that no one would see us strangely emerge from behind a building. The only people on the street were PLA, but none were facing us in that moment.
I slung the Ak-2000 over my back and stepped forward, not even bothering to look back to see McCormick and Dietrich do the same. We were just three PLA soldiers walking to or from an assignment. Nothing to see here.
We strolled down the street the apartment building was on, which ran downhill in a series of switchbacks toward other large apartment buildings. When we reached an intersection, I took a left. I had memorized a map of the gated community and knew precisely where we needed to go.