Beyond all Limits (6 page)

‘Added to which,’ Olsen said, ‘he seems to have gained effective control over the entire military – China has naval and air superiority in the area, and we daren’t make a move just yet. The risks are too great, and we’d stand to lose a great deal more besides.’

‘Could we offload the crew via sub?’ Cole asked. The US Navy was still the world leader in silent, stealthy submarine technology.

Olsen shook his head. ‘Not a chance,’ he said. ‘From surveillance footage and the
Ford
’s own eyeball reports, the Chinese navy’s got those waters sealed up tight as a drum. There’s no way we’d get a sub anywhere close to the
Ford
.’

‘Have we targeted their missile units on the mainland?’

Again, Olsen answered the question. ‘We’ve got the coordinates typed in and ready to go,’ he said. ‘But the trouble with the DF is that most of the missiles are mobile – we have no way of knowing where they are, moment to moment. We just can’t risk attacking the mainland without better intel – and maybe not even then.’

Cole could tell it grated the general to talk this way, defeatism not being in his nature; but facts were facts, and had to be faced.

‘There’s also the additional factor of China’s ex-pat population,’ said dos Santos. ‘China’s last census claimed well over seventy thousand Americans are currently living in China, many of them in and around Beijing. And Wu has temporarily suspended all flights out of the country.’

‘So they’re all trapped there?’ Cole asked.

Abrams nodded. ‘Except for the few who got out early, and those who have travelled overland or by boat; not many, at any rate. And the figures are probably conservative anyway – our own numbers suggest over one hundred thousand, and that’s not taking into consideration all the other people who live there – vast numbers of Koreans and Europeans for starters.’

‘Wu claims that air travel will resume soon,’ dos Santos said, ‘he claims nobody is being held hostage, anyone is free to leave overland if they wish, but outbound flights have been cancelled due to what he calls ‘security issues’ during the transfer of power to the new government.’

‘But they’re being held hostage, just the same as the crew of the
Ford
,’ Cole said, the severity of the situation becoming clear to him. ‘Wu knows we’ll never attack the mainland while we’ve got so many of our own people there.’

‘Exactly. So what can we do?’ Abrams said with a shrug of her shoulders. ‘We can’t target Beijing, and we’ve had to pull back from the East China Sea, leave the
Ford
stranded. The only other option would lead to war, and the ramifications of war with China would be enormous. Besides which, we have no idea how strong the Wu government is – does it have the support necessary to govern long-term? Or will it crumble of its own accord? If it does
that
, then we might not need to do anything at all. We need time.’

‘What’s his game plan?’ Cole wondered aloud. ‘His end-game? What’s he after?’

‘In the first instance, we think it’s the Senkaku Islands,’ dos Santos said, opening the manila file and sliding across the latest satellite images of the area. As the Director of National Intelligence, dos Santos had access to information developed by every agency in the US government. She was young for the job at forty, but had already proven herself more than capable and – perhaps even more importantly – loyal.

Cole looked down, although he didn’t really need to; he knew what the Senkaukus looked like, they had been a major bone of contention between China and Japan for decades. Known as the Diaoyu Islands by the Chinese, they consisted of less than three square miles of uninhabited islands lying between China, Taiwan, and the larger Ryukyu Islands of Japan. And Cole also knew that they had been of no interest to anybody until oil was discovered in the surrounding seas in the late 1960s; it was the same old story.

‘NRO analysis shows that after our forces withdrew from the area,’ dos Santos continued, ‘China’s navy headed out towards the Senkakus.’

‘This makes things even more awkward for us, of course,’ Abrams said, ‘and Prime Minister Toshikatsu has already been on the phone asking for our support.’

Cole nodded in understanding. The US was pledged to assisting Japan defend its territory, and had acknowledged Japan’s claim to ownership of the islands; therefore, if China reclaimed them by force, America would have to intervene. But with four thousand sailors held hostage off the Chinese coast, how could she?

‘What do you want me to do?’ Cole asked the president, although he could already guess what it might be.

‘A military coup is only as effective as the man who leads it,’ Abrams said evenly, spreading out the papers from the manila folder across the desk, showing images of a large, uniformed Chinese man, half of his face obscured by a huge, drooping mustache. ‘Cut off the head, and the body will fall.’

Cole looked up from the photographs and saw that Abrams was staring directly at him, unafraid to give the order. ‘I want you to kill General Wu,’ she said. ‘As soon as you possibly can.’

5

The order to kill didn’t faze Cole in the slightest – years of doing such work had dulled his sense of horror at such actions until it was almost nonexistent.

It hadn’t always been that way, Cole remembered – the first time he’d killed a man, out on patrol with SEAL Team Two back when he’d been only nineteen years old, it had been hard. But, he could admit now, completely at peace with his nature, it hadn’t been as hard for him as it had for many others. And it hadn’t even been the killing that he had felt bad about; it was the fact that he hadn’t reacted quickly enough, had almost let his buddies down.

But he hadn’t let them down. He had killed, and had carried on killing ever since. He truly no longer had any idea how many lives he had taken over the years; he had tried to count once, when his nightmares had threatened to return, but the numbers had just run together into a jumbled mess, hundreds of faces swimming in and out of his consciousness, merging into one another, then drifting slowly one by one, and then altogether again.

For many years, he had lived in denial of a sort; he had truly thought that he had only done what he had done due to his orders, his training, his conditioning. He had been sacrificing his eternal salvation for the benefit of the American people.

And that was still true, of course, although he now understood that there was something else underneath the surface of his psyche. He had been forced to confront it when he had been betrayed by Hansard, when his family had been brutally killed right in front of him, when he had exacted his revenge and then escaped into a life of isolated self-abuse in Thailand.

The awful truth was that he enjoyed the killing; it was what he had been born for, what he had been created to do. He was glad that he had a worthwhile cause to fight for. He often wondered what he would have done had he not been in the military, how his life would have turned out. Would he still have been a killer?

It was an unpleasant question, and one he was reluctant to answer. And at the end of the day, he supposed, it didn’t even matter – he
did
have a cause, a profession, a worthwhile channel for his urges, and – mercifully – that made it all okay.

‘What do we know about General Wu?’ Cole asked, finishing the cup of coffee and reaching for one of the finger sandwiches on the small table beside him. He had eaten on the plane, but his adrenalin had still been racing and he hadn’t managed to keep much down; now his hunger was appearing with a vengeance.

Catalina dos Santos looked down at her files, though it was hardly necessary; she had already memorized everything there was to know about him.

‘To a certain extent, he’s an unknown quantity,’ she admitted, ‘which is one of the reasons he was able to take everyone by surprise. All we have at the moment is his military file, although we’re working hard to get more data. Fifty-six years old, born June fourth, nineteen sixty-four in Chengdu, Sichuan province. No information on parents or siblings. Joined the People’s Liberation Army at seventeen, reportedly fought well during several border clashes with Vietnam, which stemmed from the Sino-Vietnamese War in seventy-nine. Eventually led units as a captain against the Vietnamese in the late eighties before transferring to the Second Artillery Corps. You’ve heard of the Great Wall Project?’

Cole nodded. ‘I’ve heard about it, although I’m not sure if the rumors have ever been verified. Supposedly the Chinese have built a system of tunnels, thousands of miles long, underneath the Taihang Mountains, named after the Great Wall due to its size and the amount of work that’s gone into it. They’re apparently using the tunnel network to hide their nuclear stockpile – which is again rumored to be several thousand rather than the mere hundreds they claim to have.’

Olsen nodded. ‘That’s the rumor,’ he confirmed, ‘and that’s all it is really. But enough people seem to be telling the same story for us to at least give it some credibility. I know we’ve been defensive partners of the Chinese for over a year now, but that doesn’t mean they trust us any more than we trust them, and they’re not likely to have let us know about such a system, even if it exists.’

Dos Santos also nodded in agreement. ‘General Olsen’s right,’ she said, ‘it
is
just a rumor. But General Wu was posted to the Taihang region for several years, along with several battalions of engineers, thousands of men. A lot of tunneling could have gone on in that time, and Wu’s record indicates his elevation to general rank occurred about the same time the stories about the network being completed started to leak out. It’s been suggested by some of our analysts that it was a reward for his work on the Great Wall Project.’

Cole thought, grabbing his third sandwich. ‘I guess it explains how he could organize the use of the
Dong Feng
mobile units before he’d gone through with the coup itself – he would know all of the officers from the Second Artillery Corps, they’d all be loyal to him. If those stories about the Great Wall are true though, I guess that makes things even worse.’

‘Yes,’ Abrams agreed. ‘The possibility is that we now have a madman in control of the only country in the world whose military could give ours a run for its money – and he’s possibly the very man who helped design and engineer a nuclear missile network that could vaporize our own in an instant.’

‘Resources?’ Cole asked.

‘Anything you need,’ Abrams replied. ‘Pete and Cat have already opened up the channels, you’ve got full military and intel back-up. You come up with the plan, and let them know what you need.’

Cole nodded. ‘I’ll need a full intel dump,’ he said, turning to dos Santos.

The Director of National Intelligence nodded, smiling. ‘I’m already working on it, I’ll send you over everything we have to your office.’

Abrams sipped her coffee, then looked back over at Cole. ‘There is another aspect to the mission,’ she said.

‘The government officials?’ Cole asked.

Abrams nodded. ‘We suspect that Tsang Feng is dead already, and it’s a possibility that other government ministers might be next. We need to get them out before they’re targeted, or else we’ll have nobody left to run the country when Wu’s gone.’

‘Do we know where they’re being held?’

Dos Santos nodded. ‘We’ve got a contact in Beijing, he contacted us as soon as this thing broke out. Liu Yingchau, a captain in the Chinese Special Operations Command. Navarone knows him, I believe.’

Cole nodded. Jake Navarone was one of Force One’s best operatives, Cole having recruited him from SEAL Team Six after an operation at a North Korean prison camp the year before. Liu Yingchau had been one of two Chinese special forces officers seconded to JSOC for the mission, and had been the only one of the two to survive. Navarone had spoken very highly of him, and that was good enough for Cole.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘We can trust him. How’s his cover?’

‘Well, as part of the military, he’s supposedly behind Wu and the other generals. Luckily he was in Beijing to help train their armed police, and he’s been pulled in, ordered to help guard the government compound. He’s safe for now, as far as we know.’

‘Is that where they’re being held?’ Cole asked. ‘The Forbidden City?’

Abrams nodded. ‘Yes, although Liu is not inside and doesn’t know the exact location.’

Cole sighed. Beijing’s Forbidden City was enormous, an incredible architectural marvel that harkened back to the heady days of Chinese power, a vast imperial palace used as the center of the Chinese empire from the Ming to Qing dynasties. It covered one hundred and eighty acres, and housed nearly eight hundred separate buildings containing nine thousand rooms.  Cole was going to need much more specific information before he could arrange any sort of rescue mission.

‘Will he be able to find out their exact location?’ he asked.

‘CIA’s handling him for now,’ dos Santos said. ‘I’ll try and find out, get you in the loop.’

‘I don’t want him to get caught, but we need more solid info.’ He paused, frowning, and finished his coffee. ‘And although I trust him, we can’t discount the possibility that he’s being played, and whatever he says is disinformation planted by Wu. We’ll need secondary corroboration at the very least.’

‘I know,’ Abrams said uneasily. ‘I know. But we need to act quickly, and you might have to act at a stage where other agencies wouldn’t.’

Cole shrugged. She was right, at the end of the day; if it wasn’t an emergency, if time wasn’t a factor, if there weren’t a hundred other issues, then other more conventional units could be used.

But in a situation like this, with next to no useful intelligence and the threat of four thousand US servicemen being killed, then Force One was the only option left.

‘How long do we have?’ Cole asked, his mind already going through plans and scenarios.

Abrams was about to speak when her phone rang. She held up a finger, asking Cole to wait, and answered; not many people were put straight through to the President of the United States.

Ellen Abrams listened to the frantic voice on the other end of the line, and felt her own pulse racing. Japanese Prime Minister Toshikatsu Endo was not given to overstatement or the crowd-pleasing boisterousness of many of his political rivals. He was a refined, quiet, thoughtful man who was a professional in every sense of the word. But the impression Abrams had now was different, and chilled her to the core; he was outraged, frightened, angry and uncertain all at the same time.

‘Madam President,’ she heard him say breathlessly, ‘it has already begun; Wu’s done it, he’s already done it!’

‘What?’ Abrams asked as calmly as she could. ‘What has he done?’

‘Invaded the Senkaku Islands!’ Toshikatsu exclaimed. ‘The Chinese Navy has blown one of our coast guard vessels out of the water, and then landed on the island. When challenged by the Okinawan prefectural police, our officers were shot dead! Dead!’

Abrams’ blood ran cold. It was happening fast, just too damned fast. She knew that the Japanese government had posted extra officers on the uninhabited islands, in case uninvited visitors should want to land there. But they had expected small recon vessels, not the entire Chinese Navy.

It was tantamount to a declaration of war on Japan, and Abrams was all too aware that the United States was a defensive partner of that nation.

She sighed, reaching for her coffee; saw her fingers trembling, and withdrew the hand.

Could she risk thousands of US servicemen and women on a promise made to a foreign country over a string of uninhabited rocks? China hadn’t invaded the mainland itself; and it wasn’t even China, not really. It was just one lone madman who’d bullied and intimated enough other people to follow him that he was now in charge – temporarily at least.

But then what message would non-action send to the world at large, both to America’s allies, and her enemies? She would be seen as a nation that welched on her commitments, it would cause her allies to mistrust her and her enemies to grow bolder.

But was it worth going to
war
over?

She realized that Toshikatsu had been talking all this time, and began to listen once more.

‘So what is your answer?’ the fearful voice demanded. ‘Are you behind us? Are you with us?’

But now she had heard him, she still couldn’t answer; she just didn’t know what to say.

Cole watched as President Abrams struggled to come to terms with what she was hearing. He knew what it was; Wu had decided to take the Senkakus early. It was a good strategy, to act while everyone was still reeling from the change in government, before other nations could regroup and start to plan their own counter-strategies.

But Cole had an unshakeable faith in Ellen Abrams’ leadership, ever since he had first met her as a senator on a fact-finding tour of Iraq. She was straight-talking, conscientious and passionate, with a huge set of figurative brass balls. She’d given the green light for Force One, after all.

‘Yes,’ he heard his president say to Toshikatsu, ‘you have my word that we will do our best.’ With that, she put down the telephone and looked straight at Cole.

‘You asked me how long we have,’ she said. ‘Well, there’s your answer – Wu is already going into action. And that means that you have to, too.’