Free Fourth Crisis: The Battle for Taiwan by Peter von Bleichert Page B

for impact,” shouted George Washington ’s public announcement
system.   Everyone grabbed a wall or crouched
to lower their center of gravity.   An
unusual quiet permeated the nuclear supercarrier and her crew.
    The outer casing of the first Chinese warhead separated.   Tungsten flechettes, released from inside,
fanned out and showered George Washington .   The flechettes ignited as they ripped into
the antenna tree and domed radars that crowned the supercarrier’s seven-story
island.   Then they entered the island and
pierced PRIFLY—primary flight control—before continuing through to the next
level: flight deck control.   Even running
out of energy, they kept going, then deformed and came apart, spraying the
supercarrier’s navigation and flag bridges with their burning remains.
    George Washington ’s
island became a frappé of torn metal, flesh, and bone.   Surviving equipment lost power.   Fires started and the ship’s alarms sounded.   The American rear admiral glared at his
gushing gut and stared at the headless sailor slumped beside him in a
chair.   Then he collapsed and crashed to
the vibrating steel deck.   Mustering his last
energy to move a thumb, he touched his beloved George Washington for the last time.   The sky cracked again.
    The second surviving Chinese warhead slammed headlong into
the American supercarrier’s flight deck. Crashing through its non-skid rubber
and thick steel plate, it burrowed through the gallery and three-deck, all before
it dropped into the hangar.   Within the
hangar’s open expanse, the warhead felt itself speed up, and the 660 pounds of high
explosives contained by the armor-piercing jacket was triggered.
    George Washington ’s
stowed aircraft were consumed in the detonation, and one massive blast door
jumped its track, pancaking other airplanes like a junkyard compactor.   The eruption exhausted at the supercarrier’s elevators
and fantail, shooting out fireballs and parts of men and machines to the
sea.   George
Washington shuddered.   Black smoke
spurted from air vents and portholes, and flame licked up the blackened sides
of the ship as she lurched and started a dead wheel turn.   The broken island’s communication with the
ship became disengaged, and auxiliary steering initiated from deep within the
hull.   To the tumultuous din of a cycling
alarm, power to the shafts was reduced.   George Washington straightened out and
slowed down.
    ◊◊◊◊
    Below hilltop apartments, in a field not far from the Taipei
Zoo, a double perimeter of razor wire surrounded a Taiwanese air defense
site.   Within the berm that surrounded
the site were PATRIOT surface-to-air missile launchers, antenna masts, and a
radar unit.   Heavy cables connected
everything to a shipping container that housed an engagement control
station.   Inside it, Taiwanese airmen
watched the skies on consoles.
    A bland, concrete condominium overlooked the site.   Just one of many, inside the building, at its
sixth floor, was a small but expensive apartment where a man ate a breakfast of
cold rice and salted fish.
    The man listened to the radio, and to the sorrowful cries of
a pipa—a four-string Chinese lute—it delivered.   He drenched the day-old food in soy sauce and looked to a kit-cat clock
on the wall whose eyes and tail swung back and forth, as it ticked to the top
of the hour.   This lone man had lived in
Taipei for years and held a simple job at an electronics factory.   Despite the innocuous façade he had erected,
the man at the breakfast table was in fact a member of the People’s Liberation
Army Special Operations Forces; an ‘operator’ in military parlance.   This operator chewed his fish and spun the
radio dial.   He left behind the lulling
pipa it broadcast and settled instead on a station full of static.   The radio clicked.   The white noise cleared.
    A woman began to broadcast numbers in Chinese.   Her voice enunciated each as though reading a
love poem.