“Very well,” Fong said. McCormick helpfully held out a radio headset that he had plucked from the floor of the apartment. Fong checked the frequency, then made a quick call in Mandarin.
I didn’t wait to see if Fong’s message had gotten through. More Unit One soldiers were pouring out of the elevators, and I kept them at a distance with careful aimed shots that wounded another of their number. Return fire chattered down the hall, and the bullets tore into the doorframe.
Fong engaged in a quick conversation on the radio, and after a minute or so, the gunfire abruptly went silent outside.
The first step of the operation had succeeded. I slapped Dietrich on the back. “Well, Hans, we just surpassed Pinglin as target number one for the People’s Liberation Army. Not bad for a Bundeswehr officer who got kicked out for being too hard on the enemy!”
Dietrich smiled. “Or for a drunken muzhik officer with delusions of grandeur.”
McCormick in the other room paid no attention to our celebration. “Very good, Colonel Fong. You may yet survive this episode.”
Fong looked back blankly. “I should have anticipated your method, McCormick. You are always quick to take hostages. My wife and children will no doubt never forget that character trait of yours.”
“You’ve picked up on that tactic yourself with Lieutenant Barker, haven’t you colonel?” McCormick asked, anger flaring in his eyes.
Now it was Fong’s turn to smile. “Ah, so that’s what this is about. You want to trade my life for hers. Has the enigmatic American sergeant gone soft? Finally done crying over that ex of yours, are you?”
McCormick didn’t rise to the jab. “You don’t have much to complain about in this deal. Dmitriy here would have put a bullet in your head the second we came in if Barker weren’t in the picture.” That was not quite true, but I didn’t say anything. “As it is, you have a chance to save your life.”
Fong was quiet for a moment, then said, “I am perfectly willing to ask for her release, and I am certain that my request would be accepted. If that is all you want, I am absolutely willing to make that trade.”
When I had first come up with the plan, I had assumed this would be Fong’s response. Barker was essentially irrelevant; Unit One had captured her almost by accident. They had set up a trap to eliminate the squad that had destroyed the command center and ammunition dump, and Barker had happened to survive the ambush.
The only American the Chinese might not have traded to save Fong was Colonel Concitor. One American lieutenant more or less wouldn’t swing the war, but Fong certainly could. He was the only Chinese commander who had won a major victory against the Americans. He was the best they had.
McCormick said, “I’m glad you agree. Now the only question is how we arrange the trade. I don’t know where Barker actually is, but I assume she’s not actually in western Taipei.”
Fong held a poker face for a moment, then decided that it didn’t really matter. “Correct, sergeant. You have seen through our little ruse.”
“Is she on the island?”
“No,” Fong said. “I won’t go into any more specifics than that, but we obviously weren’t going to leave her somewhere you could get to her.”
McCormick detailed the exchange. “We will wait here while you bring her back to Taiwan. Give her a civilian car and have her drive down to the American lines at Pinglin. When Colonel Concitor confirms that she has arrived, I and my colleagues will board a helicopter that will land on the roof of this building. We will bring you with us to the roof and leave you there.”
“Unacceptable,” Fong said dispassionately. “You will kill me as soon as Barker is safely back in Pinglin.”
“Then my team would die as well, colonel. Do you think I’m willing to sacrifice us all just to kill you?” McCormick snorted. “You have yet to beat Concitor even once. I like his odds to win one more time against you.”
Fong thought about a combative response, then evidently thought better of it. He didn’t want to sour a potential deal. “How about this compromise: we go to the roof once Barker is back on the island and en route to Pinglin. Traffic is very manageable in Taiwan these days,” Fong said with a grin. “It will only take her twenty or thirty minutes to reach Pinglin once she’s back on the island. That way, we can still kill Barker if you go back on the deal.”
McCormick answered, “I agree, but we will go to the roof when she’s five minutes from Pinglin. Wouldn’t want to give your Unit One boys too much time to plan an ambush on the roof.”
Fong nodded. “We understand each other, Sergeant McCormick. Getting Barker here might take a few hours. I will make the necessary calls.” With that, he used the radio receiver to relay the request to release Barker.
“Excellent,” McCormick said. “Now we just have to make sure your people don’t get too eager to have you back.”
A few hours would be perfectly acceptable for us, of course. Every hour Fong was here was another hour he couldn’t be present to help plan and organize the massive final Chinese assault on Pinglin.
There were a few things we could do to make our position more secure. We shut, locked, and barricaded the door with every piece of movable furniture we could find. If Unit One wanted to break in, it would take them at least thirty or forty seconds to clear the way for an entry. That was far more time than we needed to kill Fong.
Next, we put curtains over all the windows. In the bedroom where we kept Fong, we stood a king-sized mattress up against the window as well to make doubly sure that no one would be able to see anything or rappel down from the roof and swing in through the window.
We found some duct tape in the apartment and used it to seal every air or heat vent in the apartment. It was a chilly spring night, and the rooms might grow a little chilly, but it was a small price to pay to be sure that Unit One couldn’t put any flexible cameras into the room through the vents.
Still not done. I walked around and tapped the walls, looking for any hollow or weak points. Anywhere I thought the wall seemed weak, I found some spare furniture to put in front of it. We would not be killed by overlooking anything, and between me, Dietrich, and McCormick, we had enough experience and professional paranoia to think of every possible way Unit One could try to infiltrate the apartment.
One last task: now that we didn’t need to appear to be PLA soldiers, McCormick put on special gloves that had been part of our resupply.
Then we had time to kill. It was an odd feeling of partial relaxation, knowing that thousands of Chinese soldiers knew exactly where we were and would seize any opportunity to kill us. If McCormick felt the strain, he showed no sign. Instead, he chatted with Fong.
“One minute, I see you on a ship out in the Taiwan Strait, and the next you’re commanding PLA regular forces. How’d that end up happening?”
Fong rubbed his head gingerly where I had hit him. “Isn’t the American saying, ’I knew a guy who knew a guy’? Then I started winning.” He shrugged. “Meanwhile, you seem to have been demoted from sergeant to… what, non-state actor?” Laughing at his own wit, he said, “This war has not been a boon for your career.”
McCormick joined in the laughter. It would have been the old Bond movie cliché if Fong had actually pointed it out — they were not so different, the two of them. Even I grinned slightly, though I wasn’t quite as good as McCormick at hiding my distaste for the Chinese commander who had executed Colonel Douglas.
“Speculate with me for a moment,” McCormick said. “Let’s say you return to command after this episode and your offensive takes Pinglin, breaks through to Yilan and wins the war. What does the People’s Republic do then?”
“How should I know?” Fong asked. Shrugging, he said, “I assume we enter an armistice with the United States and resume our old trade relationship.”