The Yantai sank almost immediately. There were no survivors. It took the Hainan eighteen minutes to go down. Three hundred of the slightly more than eighteen hundred of the crew were saved.
The U.S. Air Force planes from Anderson Air Force Base on Guam met the Chinese aircraft halfway across the water. Forming a defensive wall, they diverted the Chinese planes from their course. China and the United States began a deadly game of cat and mouse played in the skies. The loser would be the first side to bunk. In Beijing, the American ambassador to China glanced at his aide, who looked up from his computer and nodded. Then he addressed his Chinese counterpart.
"Two United States Navy nuclear ICBM submarines now in the South China Sea have just completed plotting their target solutions. Their payload delivery point is there," the ambassador said, pointing out the window at the Forbidden City. "A storm has stopped your ships in the Taiwan Strait, and our air force is in a standoff with yours, as we speak."
The Chinese ambassador glanced at his aide, who had just returned from the communications room. With a nod, the aide confirmed that all the information just received was correct.
The U.S. ambassador stared across the desk. "Let's not all die this day," he said in a cold voice.
"If we withdraw will you guarantee not to attack our retreating troops?" the Chinese ambassador asked.
The American ambassador to China reached for a phone.
"We're losing it," Scaramelli shouted.
And then it was quiet.
Scaramelli crept from behind the superstructure. His hair was standing straight in the air from the electrical energy that had been generated. He glanced across the water as the fog began to dissipate. Far away on the horizon he could see the ravaged remains of the once powerful Chinese navy. Collapsing to the deck he glanced into the sky. A ring of black and purple clouds high above was collapsing in on itself as the storm imploded. And then there was a rainbow.
EPILOGUE
Taiwan emerged unscathed. Only hours after the storm the main electrical feed leading into the ocean was withdrawn. By midday the power to the primary electrical grid had been restored and the country, although still on a heightened state of military alert, was almost back to normal.
The storm turned west after decimating the Chinese navy. The Taiwanese island of Quemoy, located just miles from the Chinese mainland, was hardest hit. Hurricane-force winds ripped foliage from limbs and downed trees but the Taiwanese military personnel stationed on the island were deep in their bunkers. Only three soldiers lost their lives. In the Fujian Province of mainland China the cities of Xiamen and Zhangzhou were the hardest hit. Hard-driving rains created a flooding of the river running through Zhangzhou, where mud slides killed thousands. Xiamen was devastated by a tidal wave over twenty feet tall, and most of the buildings nearest the water were washed out to sea. A fierce hailstorm pummeled the city for forty minutes; thousands of Chinese citizens, outside when the storm struck, were either killed or maimed. It was as though the gods had been angered and were showing their ire.
In Beijing, the prime minister sat in his office in the dim light of a foggy morning. His brilliantly conceived plan was in ruins. Rebuilding the navy would take China many years and great sums of money. He now knew his dream of reuniting Taiwan with mainland China would never be realized in his lifetime.
The entire episode had turned into a humiliating failure.
For his role in the failed affair he ordered that Sun Tao be jailed. Before the soldiers could take him prisoner, however, King Abdullah sought his own justice. A team of Saudi assassins dressed in long, flowing, hooded black robes slipped onto the floor where Sun Tao's offices were located. The floor lacked its usual complement of guards, the knowledge that Tao was a marked man having already swept through the building. No one wished to appear loyal to a man on the wrong side of the prime minister.
The man who only hours before had wielded incredible power was now a pariah. Slipping quietly into Tao's office, two of the assassins held him in place in the chair behind his desk as the leader of the team read from a sheet of paper in Arabic. The paper contained the charges and sentence of an Islamic court. Although Tao had no idea what was being said, he understood the sentence as soon as the leader removed a large polished steel scimitar from beneath his robe and motioned for Tao's head to be placed on his desk.
Tao struggled against the hands that held him but his efforts were in vain. With both hands firmly around the hand-tooled solid silver handle of the saber, the leader of the assassins swung the blade down with all his might.
The beheading took but one swipe of the razor-sharp blade — the scalping, one more. When the soldiers sent by the prime minister arrived at Tao's office they were met by a grisly sight. Tao's head had been cleanly removed from his neck and the top of his skull and his scalp lopped off. The open skull that sat on his desk resembled a coconut with its top chopped off by a machete, the inside filled with tuna fish dip. Tao's face bore an ugly grimace made all the more horrifying by the empty stare in his blank, lifeless eyes. Tao's torso, minus the head, sat upright in his chair. When the news of Tao reached the prime minister it confirmed him in his decision. Taking a plastic bottle from his desk drawer, he emptied a measure of white powder into a glass of plum wine, then stirred the mixture with his letter opener. Glancing out the window at the square below, he guzzled the liquid with a vengeance. Three minutes later he took his last sleep.
Taft sat at the desk in the office at his home along the Potomac River. He was exhausted. The type of bone-weary tiredness that comes after intense, protracted stress is finally relieved. The type of melancholy and malaise that come from the burden of knowledge. It is said a person's life work molds his being, forms his backbone, drives his existence. Taft was a man full of doubt.
He had begun his career with the NIA fresh out of the army, full of patriotic fervor and with the strong sense he was doing what was right and good. More and more, lately, he wondered if he was part of the solution or instead part of the problem. His sense of humor, one of the hallmarks of his personality, seemed to be slipping away. After putting the finishing touches on the report he was writing, he pushed Save on his computer and stored the information onto a disk, then ran a program that scrubbed his hard disk clean. Then he reached for the telephone.
"This is Agent Taft," he told the switchboard operator at the NIA. "I need a secure courier for a pickup at my home."
At the NIA the operator consulted a schedule listed on the computer screen. "We'll send someone right away, Agent Taft."
"Thanks," he said as he hung up the telephone.
Taft needed to get away, to cleanse his soul, to feel the power and the beauty of nature. Sitting back in his office chair, he reached for the telephone, then hesitated. Grabbing the telephone, he dialed the number from memory.
"National Museum of American History, Kristin Fazio speaking."
"I'm sorry, I was trying to reach Quickies-R-Us," Taft said easily.
"I've quit all that," Fazio said. "It seems that every time I do that, the gentleman never calls me back."