Beyond all Limits (13 page)

Unless . . .

Unless, he reminded himself, he could catch Ellen Abrams red-handed in illegal activity, up to her neck in murky death squads and unauthorized covert operations.

He raced to the phone, his mind made up.

It was time to make a little visit to the Paradigm Group.

6

Cole had been in submarines before, but had never been truly comfortable in them. He wasn’t claustrophobic, but there was something entirely unnatural about living in a small tin-can under the crushing pressure of millions of tons of water. Conditions were cramped and there was no natural light – the whole set-up was as far from natural as it was possible to be.

But humans are an adaptable species, and Cole was among the most adaptable of them all; and therefore, despite his internal misgivings, he had once again become used to the sensation of living underwater, reminding himself that it was only for another few hours. The crew might well be trapped in here for weeks, or even months, on end. In reality, he had nothing to complain about.

He had nothing but admiration for Captain Sherman and the crew of the USS
Texas
. They were filled with the courage that came from professionalism and realistic training, and were more than willing to venture into the well-patrolled enemy waters of the PLA navy.

Cole remembered Sherman’s reaction to being given his orders.

‘So are we hitting Taiwan?’ he’d asked.

Cole had shaken his head. ‘No,’ he’d said, ‘we’re being a bit more proactive than that this time. I need you to take us to the Chinese mainland.’

Sherman’s face had lit up, an NFL manager being told he was getting a shot at the championships this year. ‘Where?’ he’d asked, his eyes bright.

‘I need you to infiltrate us into the Bohai Sea,’ Cole had said, and he’d seen Sherman making instant calculations. Cole knew it would mean piloting the
Texas
not only through the disputed waters of the East China Sea, but then up through the Chinese-controlled Yellow Sea and up into the protected waters of the Bohai Sea,  surrounded on three sides by the Chinese coastline. Only a madman would make such an approach.

‘Risky,’ Sherman had said, ‘but I’m game. I’m not for sitting around. I want to take the fight to the enemy. You using the SDV to infil up the river from Bohai Bay?’

Cole had nodded. ‘Yeah, but the less you know about it the better.’

Sherman had nodded his head, whistling in appreciation. ‘Hell, if you guys are willing to do that, who am I to complain about getting you there? Passing through the Chinese navy’ll be a piece of cake compared to what you’ll face if we get you there.’

Cole had clapped his hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘
When
you get us there,’ he’d said to the submarine commander with a smile, and Sherman had smiled right back.

Cole had seen little of the captain since then; he didn’t expect Sherman to second-guess his own mission, and Cole had no wish to get in the man’s way while he was involved with his part in it. The CDC would be a hive of quiet activity – the sub rigged for silent operation, everyone’s nerves on end as she tried to slip through the Chinese defenses.

Cole was resigned to this part of the operation; they would either get there or they wouldn’t. And if they didn’t manage, it would mean that they had been identified; and if they were identified, they would be blown right out of the water. It was useless to worry about things that he had no control over, and so Cole used the journey to go over his plans with his Force One colleagues – again, and again, and again. You could never rehearse too much, never plan too much. Time spent in preparation was never wasted.

They had been travelling underwater for over thirty hours now, and Sherman’s last report was that they had managed to pass through both the East China Sea
and
the Yellow Sea without detection. There had been three occasions when they had passed so close to enemy ships that Sherman had ordered the engines cut completely, but in the end they had not been spotted, and had carried on their way.

The journey into the heart of Chinese territorial waters was perilous, but Cole knew that the Virginia-class attack submarine was the most technologically sophisticated ship ever to set sail under the sea. It was the first submarine ever purpose-designed for multi-mission near-land operations.

Its high-yield steel hull, able to withstand colossal pressures, was covered in a seamless, rubber-like substance to reduce the escape of internal noise; and in contrast to a conventional bladed propeller, its propulsion system was designed as a duct-shielded pump-jet unit that reduced cavitation noise to enable quieter operation.

Sherman had captained the
Texas
for eighteen months now, after two tours on an LA-class attack sub, and confirmed that this ship was a real move forward over its predecessor. He had supreme confidence in her ability to avoid Chinese detection, and Cole was encouraged to share the man’s confidence.

He had been very impressed with the way that the
Texas
had managed to avoid the Chinese submarine that had acquired it on the surface during Force One’s nighttime entry, and it lent great credence to the technical statistics; once it had submerged and gone silent, the enemy craft simply hadn’t known were the
Texas
had gone. It had become invisible.

There was some worry that reports might go back about a US sub operating in the area, and that Wu might begin to suspect some sort of operation was underway, but Cole didn’t think it would matter. Wu would surely know that the US Navy would be probing the perimeter of China’s defenses, testing for future action. The
Texas
was outside of China’s territorial waters, and it would just be seen as the expected border patrolling that came with the ongoing situation. Wu would probably be more suspicious if there were no such sightings.

The work Sherman and his team had done in the early days of this conflict had also helped, of course; by probing the Chinese defenses around the USS
Ford
, they had already pinpointed the location of many of the PLA navy’s vessels, and therefore knew exactly where to avoid.

The snaking, serpentine route Sherman had led them on had perhaps not been the quickest from point to point, but Cole was convinced it had been the safest. The fact that they were still alive helped confirm it.

But now they were entering the Bohai Sea, a body of water that was almost entirely encircled by the Chinese coastline. There was only a narrow channel which led from the Yellow Sea to the Bohai Sea, little more than one hundred kilometers across – and over half of that was obstructed by small islands, leaving a true channel of less than forty kilometers in width.

Added to the complications was the fact that the Bohai Sea led to the all-important port town of Tianjin, which in turn serviced Beijing.  In essence, all goods travelling by sea for use by Beijing’s population of twelve million citizens, passed through the Bohai Sea – which made it one of the busiest seaways on the planet.

But when Cole had developed his plan, he had known that this was the case; in fact, he was hoping that the sheer density of marine traffic in the area would help the
Texas
to remain undiscovered. The major problem would be coming too close to the surface in the shallower areas and being hit by a container vessel – that would really mess up their day.

Captain Sherman seemed to know what he was doing though, and he in turn had absolute faith in his crew, which Cole took to be a very good sign.

And while that crew had been doing
its
job, Cole had been doing his – hard at work with Navarone and the other members of his team, going through the upcoming operation play by play.

The Force One team had not interacted with the SDV release team from Pearl to any large extent, preferring to remain as covert and as anonymous as possible, although Cole had liaised with the officer in charge to discuss timings.

The operation was so secretive and compartmented that SDVT-1 wouldn’t even know where they were when they helped unload the mini-submarine from the
Texas
. They would swim out in full SCUBA gear, ensure the SDV left the DDS safely, disengage it from its platform and then seal the DDS back up before returning back inside, all the while completely unware of which sea they were operating in.

Cole wasn’t concerned about the SEAL team – they were consummate professionals, and could be relied upon to do their jobs exactly as they were supposed to. Unloading the SDV wasn’t without risks, but was for a large part a purely technical exercise. The real dangers would start once the SDV was underway.

The insertion into the Forbidden City would be complicated, and success would depend heavily upon the correct information getting to them; the ministers were being constantly moved, and Liu Yingchau, Force One’s contact in Beijing, had been tasked with getting an up-to-date location for them.

But it would be the extraction which would be the hardest part of Navarone’s job – the Central Politburo of the Communist Party of China was the group which had been interned, and which Force One was expected to rescue, a group which traditionally consisted of twenty-five people; twenty-two now that Tsang Feng was dead and two other members had defected to Wu’s military regime.

Which meant that Navarone and his four teammates would have to somehow get nearly two dozen middle-aged politicians out of one of the most secure capital cities in the world, and then out of a country which was on a war footing with its neighbors.

Cole had come up with a plan to achieve this, and Navarone and the rest of the group had added suggestions and refinements which made it even better, but it remained an extremely complex task. Some might even have labelled it impossible.

Contingency planning allowed for things going wrong; if twenty-two was too many, then just the six remaining members of the Politburo Standing Committee would be rescued. This group represented the top leadership of the Communist Party, and would be the kernel for the government in exile which Abrams had covertly agreed to set up in Washington.

Of course, things could go even worse than this, but Cole decided not to dwell on things he couldn’t directly control. A large part of the operation’s success would depend on Liu’s getting everything into place in time, and Cole prayed that this would be the case.

Cole reclined onto his bunk, eyes closing, body relaxing. They would be in the Bohai Sea within the next six hours, and he didn’t know when he’d get another chance to rest. If he’d learned anything over the years, it was to rest while you got the chance. He knew the others would be doing the same.

The success of his own mission – to assassinate General Wu – was also not going to be entirely under his control. To get as close as he needed to the man necessitated several other variables all coming together as desired, and for that he was at the mercy of the CIA.

The US embassy in Beijing was still functioning – Wu wanted the status quo to remain as much as possible – and that meant that the CIA liaison officers were still available.

Before leaving the United States, Cole had been in touch with them and – with presidential authority – told them what he needed.

Unable to communicate with the outside world from the submarine, Cole was left to wonder if they had been successful. But time would tell, and all would be revealed when Cole finally got to Beijing.

But there was also a lot to worry about before he even got there, and so Cole decided to do the most sensible thing he could under the circumstances.

Within thirty seconds, he was sound asleep.

7

‘I’m sorry Prime Minister,’ Ellen Abrams said evenly, ‘but we cannot help at this moment in time.’

Abrams knew the response this would elicit from Toshikatsu Endo, Japan’s deeply worried chief politician; he would be angry, incensed, furious that American promises were being reneged on.

But Abrams simply couldn’t inform him of what was going on. If she was to tell him – or even hint at the fact – that a covert mission to kill Wu and rescue the communist Politburo was actually already in the process of being carried out, then it wouldn’t remain a secret for long.

Toshikatsu’s colleagues – and enemies – in Japan’s Diet were both waiting for any sort of news, any indication that the Americans were doing something to help. If Toshikatsu even suspected that this was the case, he would be hard pressed to keep it to himself in the face of such cross-party pressure. And that wasn’t even to consider the Japanese public itself, which was clamoring for answers, and which Toshikatsu had a responsibility to pacify.

And if Toshikatsu told anyone, the news would spread like wildfire, and would soon make its way to General Wu and China’s new military government. It was better to keep everyone completely in the dark on this one, Abrams realized. If she told Japan that America was unwilling to help her, then that would also get back to General Wu, and he would subsequently have his thoughts about American weakness confirmed. Such arrogance would be the man’s downfall.

‘You cannot help?’ Toshikatsu said breathlessly. ‘That is your final word on the matter? Despite
Anpo?
’

Anpo jōyaku
was the common Japanese term for the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan, a version of which had existed since as far back as 1952. It pledged US assistance in the case of an attack on Japan, territory which President Barrack Obama had confirmed included the Senkaku Islands back in 2014.

Abrams quietly cursed her predecessor for his commitments to those bits of rock; life would have been so much easier if he had not been quite so explicit.

As it was, Abrams was in direct breach of that agreement, and could see no way around the situation given the current conditions on the ground.

‘I’m afraid that the reality is that this entire situation is volatile and unstable; if we get involved directly, Wu might just decide to launch his nukes, we have no idea just what kind of man he is. And who do you think his first target is going to be?’

Abrams let that hang in the air for a moment, so that the terrifying notion could ingrain itself in Toshikatsu’s consciousness.

‘If you think that is a risk,’ Toshikatsu said reasonably, his composure regained, ‘then surely you simply can’t afford to stand back and do nothing. If he launches missiles at us, who is to say that you will not be next? And then where does it end?’

This was the time when Abrams wanted to reassure him, to offer him the small mercy of telling him about the Force One mission, however indirectly.
We are not standing back. We are not ‘doing nothing’. Right now we have our best people infiltrating the Chinese mainland itself. If they succeed, then this thing might soon be over.

But she knew she couldn’t. America had to be seen to be reluctant to act, to want to avoid conflict; then Force One’s attack on the system would be all the more effective.

‘Prime Minister Toshikatsu,’ Abrams said resignedly, ‘I think you are going to have to accept the fact that you have lost the Senkaku Islands. It seems that the main reason that Wu wanted them was only to use them as a base for military action against Taiwan – a situation that we have no reason to get involved with. Our analysts suggest that Wu will curb his behavior after incorporating Taiwan back into the People’s Republic of China, and I tend to agree with them. He will want the PRC to be accepted by the world at large, so that he has a greater chance of staying in power.’

Toshikatsu was silent for a moment as he thought about what Abrams had said. Although it wasn’t true – that wasn’t what US intelligence analysts thought at all – she thought that it at least
sounded
reasonable.

‘That is not what my own people have concluded about the man,’ Toshikatsu said eventually. ‘They believe that Wu is a megalomaniac who wants to create a new Chinese empire – first in East Asia, then heading west. They think that the less we interfere now, the more we allow him to get away with, the bolder he will become. The policy of appeasement was – with hindsight – hardly the best way of dealing with Nazi Germany, wouldn’t you agree?’

Abrams fought hard to remind Toshikatsu that his country had fought
with
Nazi Germany; he was hardly in any position to lecture on the issue, even if he
was
right.

And, Abrams could admit, appeasement
wasn’t
the way to combat men like General Wu; taking the fight to them was always the better option, and the one she followed, despite her leading Toshikatsu to think the contrary.

‘I am confident in our position on the issue,’ Abrams said, wishing to bring the conversation to a close. ‘It is our belief that the trouble will end with Taiwan.’

‘And if it doesn’t?’ Toshikatsu pressed her.

‘Then,’ she allowed, ‘we will have to just cross that bridge if we come to it.’

She knew it wasn’t what Toshikatsu wanted to hear, but it was what she needed to tell him.

Now she could only wait and hope that the Force One mission was successful; because if it wasn’t, then a lot more people would have to die before this thing was over.

General Wu De swung his corpulent body off the four poster bed which took up nearly half of the chamber located in the basement rooms of the Presidential Office Building in Taipei. He was amused that it was all too similar to rooms that could be found under the Zhongnonhai government compound in Beijing, the Communist Party headquarters nestled right next to the ancient walls of the Forbidden City.

Perhaps communists and nationalists were not so very different after all, he mused, when you got right down to it.

Wu ignored the sleeping bodies of the three girls who lay next to him – secretaries from the presidential office – and strode naked to the telephone which rested on the credenza near the gilt-edged door.

Wiping the sweat from his face, he dialed a number which was answered immediately. ‘Update?’ he asked.

Wu listened as the report came through from the operations briefing room further down the subterranean corridors, and was pleased to hear that everything was still going well. Ports had been secured, along with airfields and ground force bases. Civilian deaths and casualties were still minimal – well below the threshold his advisers had said would  precipitate an international backlash – and the only real problem now was what to do with all of the military personnel who had been forced to surrender.

The will to fight had deserted the Taiwanese military at almost the exact same moment that Rai Po-ya and the rest of his government had hightailed it to Australia. With no political leadership left to steer the ship, and in the face of overwhelming odds – Wu had sent a force of half a million across the water to reclaim Taiwan, assisted by the most sophisticated vehicles, weapons and equipment in the region – the Taiwanese generals had no wish to sacrifice their soldiers in a war that was unwinnable, and had stood down.

Out of three hundred thousand armed service personnel in Taiwan, less than two thousand had been killed by PLA forces, which now left a huge number for the PLA to police. At the moment, it seemed that they were being confined to their bases, which the PLA was turning into makeshift prison camps. It wasn’t a long-term solution, but Wu accepted it as a suitable temporary stop-gap.

He wondered about the will of Taiwan’s reserve forces – reputed to number three and a half million, although the number of people actually physically able to fight would be much less than this. But there would still be a lot of them, with basic military training.

Wu discounted the reserves almost as soon as he had thought of them. The military bases – and therefore all weapons and equipment – were safely in the hands of the PLA now, so what would they have to fight with? Pitchforks and kitchen knives?

Wu also understood the respect that the Taiwanese people had for the power of the PLA – or at least the fear, which was even more useful. And of course everyone on the island would know what Wu might do if pushed – withdraw his own people completely and wipe Taiwan off the face of the earth with his missiles.

But Wu had no wish for things to get to that stage. He truly wanted to welcome the people of Taiwan into the PRC, to make them a part of the one true China. And he knew that the best way of doing this was to win the hearts and minds of the people – to make them
want
to be a part of the People’s Republic.

The way they had been abandoned by their leadership was a good start – they would feel betrayed by Rai and the others, and would have been pleasantly surprised by the relative non-violence of the invasion. They were primed to listen to an offer of amalgamation, and Wu’s speech yesterday evening, symbolically made from the steps of the Japanese-designed, Renaissance-Baroque Presidential Office building, had been designed to win them over quickly.

The next morning he would fly back to Beijing, in time to make the Dragon Boat festival – another chance to meet the citizens of his new Chinese empire, to impress them with his grace and generosity. He was personally sponsoring the teams who would be racing in Beihai Park, to the north of the Zhongnonhai.

He was due to fly out in four hours, and wondered idly whether he should go back to bed. But there was no point – he was awake now, and would only feel worse if he went back to sleep now.

Except for the occasional visit to the members of the Politburo in the Forbidden City, Wu hadn’t left the Zhongnonhai in Beijing since this whole thing began, until his flight to Taipei the previous afternoon. He was weary, he was tired, and he felt his energy waning. It had been part of the reason why he had taken the girls to his chamber - the all-necessary pleasures of the flesh helped to keep his mind sharp.

But even in the middle of the night, he couldn’t fully rest – he had to know exactly what was going on at all times. A part of him knew he had to relinquish control at some stage – he had the entire Central Military Commission to help run things after all, a glut of senior military personnel to make sure everything was going as planned. But another part – the stronger part – simply refused to let go. What was happening now was his validation, what he had come to think of as the entire reason for his existence. It was bad enough that he hadn’t been here in Taiwan to oversee the invasion himself; but he at least realized that with his new position came new responsibilities, and the Paramount Leader of the PRC shouldn’t be leading the troops into battle himself.

But why not? Just because the leaders of all the other nations on earth were content to hide away from the realities of the wars they waged, why should that mean he was obliged to follow the same route? Maybe next time, he thought to himself, he would lead the army himself, just like the emperors of old.

He would be the Genghis Khan of his generation, and his people would love him for it.

Yes, he considered with a smile, that would be something to think about.

Despite not wanting to sleep, he looked over at the three attractive young women warming his bed, but finally decided against that too – they had already served their purpose, and Wu was no longer in the mood.

Instead, he gestured with his head to the corner of the room, where Zhou Shihuang sat in the shadows watching; always watching.

‘They’re yours,’ he said to the one-eyed man as he strode to the bathroom, clapping Zhou on the shoulder as he went. ‘Use them as you will.’

The smile that passed his bodyguards lips was unsettling, but Wu decided not to dwell on what Zhou wanted to do with them.

They had outlived their usefulness anyway.