Away from the population centres it would be many months before some heard the news, indeed some had only recently heard stories about Tiananmen Square.
Shopping in the market, the elderly Mr Tung hobbled along, assisted by a gnarled stick and hailed the fishmonger.
“Li xiansheng, ni hao, how do you do Mr Li, are you going to overcharge me for my supper again, you bandit!”
Mr Li turned his one good eye toward the speaker.
“Aren’t you dead yet… too miserly to die and pay the grave tax?”
His customer raised his walking stick, pointing it like a sword at the fishmonger.
“I would ask after the health of your family, only they threw you in the bucket and kept the afterbirth, at the kennel where you were born!”
“Pah!” replied the old merchant.
“At least my Mother walked on legs rather than slithered on her belly!”
The two ancients glared at one another, then laughed like schoolboys and clapped one another on the back, completing their weekly ritual.
Mr Tung followed his friend around the side of the stall where Mr Li made a space for him on a bench, brushing away at unseen dust.
Both men sat quietly, lighting up old long stemmed pipes and watching the world go by. A pretty girl walked past and both men leant forward to watch until she passed from sight. Between them they had one hundred and sixty four years on the planet
Mr Li broke the silence,
“I hear the Americans sank our ships.”
“Humph!” was Mr Tung’s only response, not bothering to look at his friend.
Mr Li went on.
“Three of our ships they say, and they named them.”
Mr Tung nodded.
“My landlady told me last night, her nephew works at the Harbour Masters office, and he knows the ships, coal burning gunboats, very old.” He peered distrustfully at the substance burning in the bowl of his pipe.
“Do you have a relative working in the tobacco trade Mr Li, this has been cut with old carpet I think!”
Mr Li grinned and slapped the man on the knee; they both chuckled away for a minute before settling down again.
“What else did your landlady’s nephew say… I didn’t know you still paid your rent on her sleeping mat?”
“Once a week for the past thirty years,” Mr Tung stated smugly.
“Thirty years ago it was three times a week!” pointed out Mr Li, stressing the point with the pipe stem, pointing it at Mr Tung.
“Thirty years ago she didn’t look like her grandmother.”
Silence resumed as they once again watched the comings and goings around them.
“The old gunboats were rusting away for years and they no longer worked. Last week they towed them away and if the Americans sank them it was because they thought they were seeing ghosts from the Japanese war.”
Mr Li nodded. “Who towed them away?”
“The government men I suppose,” replied Mr Tung with a shrug.
“Ah!” Mr Li responded sagely, as if that explained everything. “The government men.” Anyone who looked official, but was not local was automatically assumed to be ‘a government man’. He took another puff on his pipe before asking.
“Do you think the Americans will invade us?”
Mr Tung did not reply for a moment, he still stared ahead at the bustle of the market place, and then he tapped his friend reassuringly on the knee.
“Don’t worry my friend, the Americans won’t come here,” adding. “Why should they want to buy fish at your prices?”
Across the city in the Politburo offices, Premier Chiu ended a call to Moscow in the same civil tongue with which he had conducted the whole conversation with the Russian Premier. He had a pleasant smile on his face as he replaced the receiver, but once done he hammered his fist down onto the desktop, causing a carafe of water to dance and a glass of water to overturn.
“Wangba dan!” Chiu didn’t know if the Russian engaged in sexual congress with his mother, but the insult burst forth anyway, indicating the Chinese politician’s origins in the provincial gutters.
All the assurances and guarantees had been worthless even though they were allied in the war. Only one bomb had gone off, and it did not chop the head off America if the US media spoke true.
The Russians did not have a back-up satellite to transmit the signal to the bombs and although he knew little of technology, he was not impressed with the Russian excuse that keeping the operation small had been vital to operational security.
He left his office for the committee room, pausing to compose himself before nodding to an aide to open the door to the room where the Politburo was gathered.
He waved everyone back to their seats as he made his way up the room to the head of the table, looking at faces, gauging their resolve, and weighing the news.
Marshal Lo Chong and Minister Pong looked confident, charged even, as they met his gaze. Good, good, thought the premier as he seated himself. I will deal with them first and success would still the tongues of the faint hearted.
“Comrade Marshal, please update us with news of the progress of our armed forces?”
“Starting with Taiwan, yesterday morning our special forces began cutting communications, roads and bridges all across the island; this took place just prior to mass attacks of medium range missiles on all air force bases, airports, landing strips and barracks.”
“And were they successful Marshal?”
The Marshal answered immediately.
“Our airborne assault followed the missile attacks, the amphibious landings began at dusk, comrade Premier and a beachhead has been established, the port of T’ai Hsi is in our hands, heavy armour can begin to be offloaded within the hour.” His eyes gave nothing away, not revealing that over half of the missiles launched had been intercepted by Patriot missiles and air launched AIM-120 AMRAAMs. Fighting was still going on at T’ai Chung AFB and they had lost half of the second wave of paratroops to missiles. The third wave was delayed owing to the lack of aircraft; they had lost fifteen Il-76 transports in the second wave. Fortunately their other airborne operation, at Singapore, was going to plan. The transport aircraft, which had taken part in that operation, would soon be available.
T’ai Chung should have been secured by midnight and transports landing by 0200hrs but they held the runways and little more. The first wave had achieved surprise but the US and Taiwanese armed forces were on alert, albeit for terrorists, and they had reacted swiftly. The second wave, like the first, had a strong CAP protecting it and the first wave paratroops had secured the Patriot site, it was the damned Stinger missiles the defenders had. They had not used them against the air strikes the paratroops had called in earlier, they had reasoned that further waves would be on the way. Their discipline was greater than he would have believed, accepting losses from the fighter-bombers because they knew aircraft could not take the base from them, and only troops on the ground could do that. Six hundred troops, eight light tanks and supplies had been lost. They had landed a further four hundred men by parachute, two light tanks and some supplies. Four transports aborted their runs and returned to the mainland. The pilots and senior paratrooper officer aboard each aircraft had been bayoneted to death on the tarmac after landing, the pilots for cowardice as well as the soldiers, who should have forced the pilots to continue.
“In Singapore, we have secured Tengah Air Force Base and Changi Airport by airborne assault. The land route to Malaysia has been cut and a thousand Marines, landed from merchant ships have seized the harbour. All as planned comrades.”