Red Cell (43 page)

The still-smoldering crater was larger than she’d imagined on the flight over. The rough oval was two dozen yards long, half as wide, and deeper by at least ten feet than the tallest man in the hole. The fire had burned the nearby vegetation to its roots, and the surface was an odd
mix of blackened rock and light-brown earth. It felt stiff. Only a few sections of the plane were still visible, all black, whether from the original RAM-absorbing topcoat paint or the heat of the fire now extinguished, she didn’t know. Some of both, she supposed. The plane had hit the ground at a sharp angle and set off a wide-reaching fireball, judging by the burn radius. Kyra realized then that some of the pebbled detritus under her feet was shrapnel from the plane. Small wisps of smoke were still rising from the pit. She hoped it was not carcinogenic but knew chances were not good. The stiff wind carried most of it away as it came over the crater’s lip, but the men inside had filter masks on their faces.

Jonathan was standing at the crater’s edge staring down into the pit. She reached his position and stood next to him. He didn’t turn. “Any word on the pilot?” he asked.

“Taiwanese Army picked him up in the woods outside Baisha Township. There was no sign of PLA search-and-rescue in the air over the Strait,” Kyra said.

“Surprising,” Jonathan said. “I would think they would want their test pilot back.”

“I would,” Kyra said. “They’ll find a way to spin his detention in their favor.”

“That seems likely,” Jonathan agreed. “What about that seaman apprentice?”

“Her name’s Cassie,” Kyra said.

“Did a little sisterly bonding, did we?”

“A little,” Kyra admitted. “Spent some time talking to her down in sickbay after surgery. Turns out she’s from Virginia too. A place called Dillwyn in Buckingham County, not thirty miles from my parents’ place. Anyway, they got the shrapnel out. It missed the artery but managed to cut up some muscles and other blood vessels. She’ll be in rehab for a while. Probably get transferred to shore duty.”

Jonathan nodded. “You called Cooke?”

“Yeah,” she said. “There’s a team on its way here to help the Taiwanese go over the wreckage. She’s expecting us back tomorrow. The Navy is going to fly us to Pearl Harbor in a few hours and we’ll catch a commercial flight to Dulles. I thought we were going to get a day in Honolulu to sleep off the jet lag, but I guess not.”

“The president needs some answers sooner,” he said. “He still has to talk Tian down.”

“You don’t think this is over?” Kyra asked.

“I suspect the shooting is finished, but there are always the diplomatic rituals to follow,” Jonathan said.

“Do you think the PLA would have gone after Taiwan if that thing had crippled the
Lincoln
?” Kyra asked.

“Actually, I doubt they ever truly intended to take out a carrier when this all started. I suspect they just wanted to test the stealth against our radar systems, but Pollard’s little furball caught them by surprise and suddenly they had more on their plate than they were ready to handle. Or maybe they did intend to fire on a carrier all along. If they’d hit
Lincoln
, and President Stuart had ordered the Navy to pull back, there’d be a really nasty power shift going on right now in this part of the world. Maybe Tian Kai really was gambling for high stakes.”

“The Navy wouldn’t have seen it coming if you hadn’t told them to look for it.”

“Our saving grace is that the Chinese don’t know that,” he said. “They might think Nagin and his boys got lucky. And I could have been wrong.”

Kyra stared into the craters and watched as two men struggled to lift some twisted metal—part of the cockpit frame?—where others could secure it to another harness. “There’s your smoking gun,” Kyra said.

Jonathan shifted his feet and kicked a piece of metal a few inches toward the crater’s rim. “Nagin said it was beautiful. It’s a shame he had to tear it up.”

“It tried to put a missile into the ship we were on. I’m not sorry,” she said. “You sound surprised.”

“I suppose I am,” Jonathan said. “The Chinese have a wonderful sense of design in many specialties, but military hardware isn’t one of them. The PLA has never paid much attention to the aesthetics. They’ve had a hard enough time making their homegrown gear work, much less make it pretty, not that we always do a great job of that either, I suppose. They didn’t build this thing alone.”

“You think the Russians helped?”

“They would be the most likely candidates.” Jonathan nodded. “But the Chinese are trying to innovate. They’ve had to steal technology to get to the point where they could do that, and buy what they couldn’t steal. But they’re turning a corner. They’re showing ingenuity.”

Kyra shrugged and stared into the hole. “I’m sure we’ll see another one of those.”

“No doubt,” Jonathan said. He paused to watch the portable crane deposit its load on the flatbed. The wing section scraped across the metal truck bed with a painful screech and the workers began to chain the debris down. “Still, by the time they’ve perfected it for manned fighters, we’ll be coming at them with unmanned fighters.”

“They’ll try to steal those too,” Kyra said. “Maybe we should be stealing more of their gear.”

“You really were born to work for NCS, weren’t you?” Jonathan asked. Kyra smiled and said nothing. He removed his hand from his coat pocket and put a small device in her hand. “Have a souvenir.”

Kyra turned the unit over in her hand. It was a gauge with cracked glass over a sphere lined with horizontal markings and Chinese characters. “What is it?”

“The plane’s attitude indicator, I think.”

“The PLA still uses mechanical gauges in their planes?”

Jonathan shrugged. “For that one they did. I guess they haven’t mastered the art of designing an all-glass cockpit.”

“Won’t they want this?” Kyra asked, nodding her head in the direction of the recovery team in the hole.

“Every plane in the world has one, so it wouldn’t tell them anything about the plane’s capabilities,” Jonathan said. “When they don’t find it, they’ll just assume it was there.”

“Isn’t that stealing?” Kyra asked, smiling. “I told you before, if you have to ask before you take something, you’re working for the wrong agency.”

“You missed your calling,” Kyra said. “You should come work for us.”

“Thank you, no,” Jonathan said. “I assume that Seahawk is waiting for us?”

“Yeah.”

“A shame,” Jonathan said. “All we get to see of Taiwan is a smoking hole.” He turned and began to climb the hill. Kyra followed and tried to keep her footing in the loose dirt and metal shavings.

ZHONGNANHAI, BEIJING

Dunne was not nervous about meeting with Tian. He’d been demarched too often in his life for that and even Tian couldn’t rouse those feelings in him anymore. He was just tired of dealing with such
men. They were pure political animals for whom every encounter with the US was a personal test, and Dunne was tired of the diplomatic bloodletting. Hearing too many lies and telling too many of his own had worn out his soul; he needed to go home and heal. It was time to let younger men with more fire in their soul for dealing with hypocrites and confrontations take his desk.

This meeting, though, he was looking forward to. It had been a long time since he’d felt that. This meeting would be different. For once, it would be about the truth. Diplomats got to talk to chiefs of state like this maybe once in a career.

“Ambassador Dunne, would you like some tea?” Tian asked. He was unmoved, as though the Battle of the Taiwan Strait had never occurred, much less gone against him.

“No, thank you, Mr. President.”

Tian nodded. “Zeng, leave us,” he ordered in Mandarin. “This meeting will be private.”

Zeng bowed and left the room. Tian turned away from the counter and teapot and returned to the chair behind his desk. Dunne didn’t sit. This wasn’t the time for it.

“I would have Zeng stay to translate,” Tian said, switching back to English, “but I believe this discussion will be less pleasant than our past meetings.”

“I don’t doubt that, Mr. President,” Dunne said. “I’m sure your English will be more than suitable.” If nothing else, Dunne was sure that Tian knew enough English curse words. Most of the foreigners he’d ever met did.

“Ambassador Dunne, your country has interfered in Chinese internal affairs,” Tian announced. “It will not happen again.”

“With respect, the United States will always stand by her allies,” Dunne replied.

“And your commitment to the ‘One China’ policy?”

“Our commitment has never been absolute, sir,” Dunne admitted. “We acceded to it to keep the peace in the hope that China and Taiwan could work out a peaceful settlement. If China is determined to go to war instead, President Stuart might have to reconsider his position on the issue.” Dunne was perilously close to overstepping his bounds as a diplomat by talking about a president’s future actions, but this was one time that he was willing to go to the edge.

Tian looked at the ambassador and Dunne saw a flash of rage behind
the man’s eyes, but his face never moved. “There can be no other position now. The United States and Taiwan have lost. Surely you see it.”

“Quite the contrary,” Dunne told him, surprised. “From our point of view, it is China that has lost . . . lost a great deal more than you realize, I think.”

“Your blindness surprises me, Aidan. I have always considered you to be an insightful person. I think it is very clear what we have gained,” Tian said. “We control Kinmen. Its release will come at a steep price to both of your countries. Part of that price will be the return of the traitor your officers helped escape during these events.”

“I have no knowledge of any such escape,” Dunne said. It was not a lie. He had tried very hard to stay out of Mitchell’s affairs, but he had to restrain a smile at the thought that the chief of station had found a way to twist a knife in Tian’s ribs.

“I believe you. But President Stuart surely knows about it, or will, and I will make the same demand in a few days. If he concedes, we will get our traitor back and his execution will be made public. Your CIA will have shown itself to be feckless again. If not, and he refuses, then Kinmen will remain under our control and Taiwan will blame you for the loss. Your alliance with the island will be strained, and they will be the weaker for it,” Tian said. He sipped his tea and set the cup on the desk. “It would be better to return him, but I don’t expect that President Stuart will do it. It has always been a failing of your country that you will not sacrifice a few lives for the greater good.”

“You are quite wrong about that, Mr. President. The difference between us is that when we sacrifice a few for the many, those few have volunteered themselves. We do not consider our people to be dispensable.”

“Quite foolish of you, relying on people to make their own choices in such matters,” Tian said, almost dismissive. It was one of the few times Dunne had seen true emotion break through the man’s facade. “The people do not know what is best.”

“Only because you refuse to tell them the truth,” Dunne countered.

“The truth is what we say it is,” Tian said.

“That, sir, is foolish.”

“It has served us very well in the past.”

“It didn’t serve you at Tiananmen Square,” Dunne said. “At least not as well as you think it has. I promise, your people haven’t forgotten.
And the rest of the world certainly hasn’t. Pretending it didn’t happen doesn’t make it so.”

The rage flashed behind Tian’s eyes a second time. “You judge us for trying to maintain order at home when the United States tries to impose its order on the world?”

“The United States does not turn its military against its own citizens, sir,” Dunne explained. “A military exists to kill the enemy. When it is used to keep order among its own people, the people become the enemy. Just as you claim there is only one China but you see the Taiwanese as the enemy.”

“They are Chinese!” Tian hit the desk with his hand. “There will be no independence for Taiwan! Their citizens have seen what we will do if they continue to press for separation. The next president they elect may not be a fool, but he will support reunification. We will press him and he will be weak because he will have seen the price of defiance!”

Dunne looked at Tian for a long moment, and then he smiled. “Sir, you have not gained nearly as much as you think,” he said. “I doubt very much that the independence movement on Taiwan is dead. Quite the opposite, I’m sure. I suspect that you are correct about Liang. You have humiliated him, and we’re not altogether sorry about that, but you might find that he was right about one fact. His people will support a leader willing to stand up to you. The next Taiwanese president may be more troublesome than Liang was, and the Politburo will have you to blame for it. You won’t understand this, but people who have tasted freedom are loath to give it up to a bully. So, yes, you hold Kinmen, but the world has seen you for the bully you are. This will play like Tiananmen Square. It’s too late to turn off the cameras. You have set back the world’s view of your country by twenty years. There may be sanctions—”

“There will be no sanctions,” Tian said, waving his hand in another dismissive gesture. “Your country cannot afford them. Our economy is almost as large as yours and Americans want our goods too much.”

“President Tian, you are making the same mistake that every tyrant has ever made about the United States,” Dunne said. “You equate our wealth with unwillingness to sacrifice for a just cause. You’ll be surprised at what Americans are willing to support when their sense of justice has been offended.”
And you offend us, sir.

“America is weak,” Tian said. The contempt was thick. The Chinese president was dropping all pretense of equanimity, whether intentionally
or not Dunne couldn’t tell. “You can’t stand pictures of dead soldiers, expensive gasoline, or anything else that disrupts your easy lives. Americans will not suffer that for Kinmen alone. We will see who is right.”

“I am,” Dunne said without hesitation. “Read history, sir. A great many leaders who believed that Americans are weak because they live well has learned otherwise. And it won’t be ‘for Kinmen alone.’ When the American people hear that you shot down one of our pilots and tried to sink one of our carriers, they will not sit still. There may not be a war, but they will want to see you punished. And you still need our markets more than we need your factories. Your government’s political survival depends on them. Ours doesn’t.”