Daylight on Iron Mountain by David Wingrove

intercept at source any missiles they might attempt to launch.
    Not that the Americans were a single socio-political force these days. It was many years since their President had spoken for them all with a single voice. As of that morning there were 118 separate ‘states’ within the borders of the original sixty-nine, with at least eighteen so-called ‘Presidents’, not a single one of whom was on speaking terms with another. Most of them were warlords, tinpot tyrants of the worst kind. Jiang Lei knew their sort. He had dealt with them many a time.
    The biggest question was, who to take on first, and in which order.
    Jiang Lei had no doubt at all where the bridgehead ought to be.
    ‘Richmond,’ he had answered; as he had answered Tsao Ch’un and the Seven nearly a week ago, on that morning at Tongjiang.
    And for good reason: it was so eminently defensible, with the sea at his back and the Appalachian mountains forming a natural defensive barrier to the north and west.
    ‘Why not Washington?’ Amos had asked, playing devil’s advocate.
    ‘Because that’s what they expect.’
    Jiang Lei had thought about this a lot since he had first suggested it, and it made more and more sense every time.
    ‘Washington we leave to rot. Or rather, we infiltrate and sow the seeds of its self-destruction. Were we to take it first it would become a symbol of liberty for the Americans. They would unite and throw everything at us to get it back. However, if we can make them perceive it as a den of corruption and self-interest…’
    ‘Sodom and Gomorrah…’
    ‘…then hopefully it will make our task much easier.’
    ‘And after Richmond?’
    ‘We roll back our enemies, state by state, along an ever-expanding front.’
    ‘Divide and conquer, eh?’
    ‘While
we
keep unified.’ Jiang paused. ‘Ideally we don’t really want to fight them, only I’m not sure we’ve got a choice. Some of them, I’m certain, could be bought. Some of them, I’m sure, can be persuaded to join us peacefully. But the majority will fight us tooth and nail. Poor and broken as their country is now, they still see themselves as the natural leaders of the world, and us as the usurpers. That’s where this whole campaign differs from the others. The Africans, the Europeans, even the Asians… each of them saw our coming as historically inevitable. But not the Americans. To them we’re little more than thieves, come to steal away their eminence, much as we stole their industry and their wealth.’
    Amos studied him a moment longer. Then he smiled broadly and clapped Jiang on the back.
    ‘I’d say we’re done, dear friend. We can leave the detail to the generals, neh? Can’t have us do
all
their work for them!’
    Jiang smiled at that.
    Richmond it is, then. And within the month.
    ‘So it begins,’ he said, looking to Amos, seeing how his eyes seemed to glow with an unnatural excitement. ‘So it begins.’

Chapter 14
A CHANGE OF SKY
    T hey came for Jake that morning, two dark-suited men from the Ministry. There was no time to pack a bag or say goodbye. Seated in the craft – the compartment completely empty but for the three of them – Jake began to wonder if he would ever see Mary or the kids again.
    He knew what this was about. Boss Wu! Boss fucking Wu!
    The silence, the sheer abstraction of the agents troubled him. Both were Han in their mid-twenties, and both wore shades, like old-school CIA agents. But they didn’t need those to create a sense of anonymity. Their faces, cold, expressionless and closed, served just as well.
    How long the journey took he didn’t know. It must have been three hours at the very least, the whiteness of the City below them unvaried and unending. It was like some vast glacier, pierced in places by the dark, upthrusting shapes of mountains, looking like massive shards of flint embedded in that smoothly horizontal surface. Yet as they banked towards their final destination, so it opened up below him. There, jet