I waved away the question. “You are unmarried, doctor. Your parents are probably used to you not calling.”
Embarrassed again in another attempted subterfuge, Chao asked pointedly, “And how do you know so much about me?”
“One of my men has been sleeping with one of your nurses.”
Chao scowled. “Fine, so I will be a prisoner here.”
“Yes. However, I think you'll find your time here to be a very good investment.”
"How so?"
"You'll have helped save the last refuge of innovation and dynamism in the world." I smiled. "And you'll be five million dollars richer. But only if we survive."
Chao took a drag on his cigarette and exhaled slowly. "And what about you killing my fellow citizens?"
"It stops the day the Chinese withdraw their forces from Taiwan."
His tired face relaxed a little at that. I had talked the strategy over with Douglas beforehand. Keep throwing carrots at the doctor: personal, financial, moral. Make it easy for him to cooperate, hard to rebel.
Chao said nothing for several minutes. When he finished his cigarette, he stubbed it out in the kitchen sink.
"I will accept your offer of employment. And, so that my period of employment might end a little faster, I will pass along a bit of interesting gossip I heard yesterday…"
That evening when the men awoke from their daytime slumber, Douglas and I took Volodya aside.
Douglas began, "You've been busy lately between the raid and kidnapping the good Dr. Chao. We haven't had a chance to talk about the bridge."
Volodya's face remained neutral. "Yes, sir."
"I ordered you not to attack. I ordered you to withdraw and try again another day."
"Yes, sir.
"And what did you do?"
"I ignored your order, sir." Volodya's voice was as unemotional as if he were telling Douglas about the weather.
"Why?" Douglas asked patiently.
"Because you were wrong, sir. The biggest dangers in the operation were the approach and the actual planting of the bomb. What were the odds that we'd get another dark, foggy night to make the approach a cakewalk? I saw the jet transport coming in and figured it would distract the guards and buy us some time. So I took the opportunity. There were only about thirty seconds between the satellite going out and the jet flying overhead. Not enough time to explain."
Douglas sighed. "Volodya, we have worked together for a long time. That and the fact that your stunt ended up working out are just enough to prevent me from sending your arse back to Australia on the next smuggling run."
Volodya replied, "Thank you, colonel."
Holding up his index finger, Douglas added, "You disobey me in the field again, don't bother coming back."
Douglas let the uncomfortable moment linger for a beat, then added, "We're a bunch of mercenaries. We're already less disciplined than a normal unit. What happens if we stop following orders? Maybe see if the Chinese will pay us more? You're all here for money. The only thing preventing you from going over is loyalty to me and fear that you might get caught by one of us on your way out. And loyalty is just a friendlier word for discipline. You read me, Sergeant Ivanov?"
"Yes, colonel."
"You're dismissed, get out of my sight."
As Volodya walked out, Douglas added, "Actually, one more thing. Good job keeping Jed alive. Would have been damn easier to just jump off the bridge and leave him. Or leave him once you hit the water. Or not kidnap the doctor for him. Why'd you do all that for him?"
Volodya took on a pensive air. "Well, he said something about taking me to Alabama to meet his sister after the war…"
Douglas gave an exasperated sigh. "Alright, sod off, Volodya."
Dr. Chao's gossip was, true to the doctor's word, interesting. One of Chao's friends at the hospital had a medical school classmate working at a hospital in Quanzhou. The doctor in Quanzhou said an extremely high-profile patient had been moved to a hospital in the city. At a time when tens of thousands of wounded PLA soldiers were flooding Quanzhou's hospitals, half of an entire floor had been devoted solely to this one patient's treatment and isolation.
Chao didn't know who the patient was, but rumors had been running rampant. Given the patient's location in a city directly across the Taiwan Strait, he was presumably someone important who had been wounded in the battle.
Was it the premier's son, serving as a representative of the Party in the Army's high command? The more conspiracy minded suspected it was Marshal Deng, the chief of staff of the People's Liberation Army who had supposedly been killed in the climactic Second Battle of the American Institute by Sergeant Clay McCormick of the Knights. Or perhaps it was some unknown dissident from the PLA who had mutinied on the battlefield?
Whoever the patient was, there was unanimity among the members of our cell that we should try to find out.
Fei messaged Taipei for "tech support." Though he would never tell us precisely whom he contacted, it was presumably some part of the Taiwanese cyber-warfare team tasked with hacking Chinese defense networks.
Sure enough, Fei's mysterious friends returned us an answer within two days. Fei told me who the patient was and which of the Quanzhou hospitals he was in. Fei added, “There's maybe fifty guards in the building, a hundred within a couple dozen yards. Could be dangerous getting to him. But, if you want my opinion, sir, I would say it's worth it.”
I ruminated on the news for a few hours, fending off inquiries from Volodya and the other men about who the mystery patient was. Finally, I walked off to find Douglas talking with Grant about soccer in the living room. I asked Grant to leave and relayed the news to Douglas to get his read on whether it was worth the risk.
Douglas considered the issue for a moment and responded, “Not worth it, Ding. This isn't a war of personalities. The Taiwanese need us to hurt the Chinese supply chain, give their boys a chance on the battlefield. We've started doing that with the bridge, but they'll rebuild that in a few days. We need to hit them again, quick, keep their supply situation in chaos. We don't have time to waste on one person.”
I responded slowly, thinking my way through the issue. “That is true. It'll take a day or two to figure out what we can do. But you're only thinking about the military angle. You and the men aren't soldiers any more. We're not just in this to beat the PLA. We're trying to make the whole country sick of the war. Hitting the supplies makes the task of conquering Taiwan more difficult, and that's an important part of the equation. But I also want to work on the motivation. I want the Chinese to look at the news every night and wonder why they're fighting. I want the heroes to be on our side. If we win the news cycles, we'll embolden the U.S. and raise the cost of winning beyond what the Chinese public is willing to pay.
“The man in that hospital is a chip in the public relations game. He's famous all over the world, an icon of the war. We haven't done any PR yet. Getting him would be a perfect way to introduce our group to the world, put a face to the problems the Chinese news agencies are going to have to report every night.”
Douglas arched an eyebrow. “So you've made up your mind, then?”
I nodded. “I just wanted to see if you had thought of any reasons I hadn't considered yet. The op's in your hands, James. If you can't figure out a way to bring it off, we won't do it. But this one is worth fifty bridges if we do it right.”
Chapter 9
Once we established where the patient was and what our plan would be, we had to wait for the cover of darkness.
To pass the time, we shared stories of wars past. Though mine were only tales of corporate raiding, the men offered a bottomless repository of experiences.