Warriors by Ted Bell Page A

have noticed.”
    “The clock is officially ticking. We’re now going to be driven across the island to the Weapons Design Center. This is where Operation New Dawn will be headquartered. As director, you will have a spacious new corner office and sleeping accommodations on the uppermost floor of the new building. From that office, you will become an integral part of China’s New Reality.”
    “Reality? Really, General? Here on Xinbu Island? I haven’t had even a glimpse of reality since your thugs kidnapped me and my family off the streets of Georgetown, two blocks from our home.”
    “Better than assassinating you, I should think. A far better fate than that originally intended.”
    “What?”
    “You may as well know. Premier Li had decreed to the Politburo and to me that you were a grave threat to our national future. That you alone were the single biggest danger to China’s manifest destiny, were we to become locked into an arms struggle with the Americans. Te-Wu Academy had sent a four-man team to Washington to eliminate you and your family. They were in place, reporting to me. Watching each member of the family’s every move for months.”
    “I felt it, damn it. I knew it. But I ignored my instincts.”
    “You were already dead, Dr. Chase. Nothing you could have done. The executions were to take place on the night of your wife’s fortieth birthday.”
    “All of us, I assume. Cleaner that way.”
    “All of you.”
    “But then?”
    “I hesitated. I had escaped to my home in the islands. To think. I walked the beaches all day until I had to sleep. Beaches and mountains are where I get my work done. I had been thinking about you, Dr. Chase. I’d brought along a biography of you, the one by Walter Isaacson called New Century Man. Fascinating. And it came to me one morning that I was about to waste one of the world’s greatest natural resources. And that you were far more valuable to me alive than dead.”
    “A reasonable assumption.”
    “Yes.”
    “What happened?”
    “I went back to Beijing and began to lay the groundwork for what was then called Early Dawn that very day. I saw that China had no need of a costly and protracted arms race with America. Look what it did to the Russians. Your Reagan brought them to their knees by outspending them at every turn.”
    “They underestimated Reagan’s ferocity and tenacity. And the innate power of capitalism. His loathing for the evils of Communism. And Lady Thatcher’s, too, God rest their souls.”
    “Yes. The poor, benighted Soviets could never grasp or match the U.S. war machine’s inherent ability to outspend and outthink them. Reagan launched a sustained economic attack that ended Communism in Russia without a shot being fired. I did not think China had the need to repeat those lessons of history. I saw a way around this problem.”
    “Me?”
    “You.”
    “Deduct me from their side of the equation and add me to yours.”
    “Precisely, my dear Watson.”
    “How close did we get that night? Tell me the truth.”
    “Less than an hour.”
    “My God.”
    “The basement of the 1789 restaurant had been packed to the ceiling with C-4 explosives by my people posing as electricians. We were going to reduce it to rubble. I had my epiphany and pulled the plug on that. The ‘lost’ Chinese ambassador and his wife were merely backup. Both Te-Wu graduates, I can tell you. I ordered them to make sure your family didn’t make it home. “
    “Christ.”
    “And now the end of all that is near. You can make all this suffering go away, Bill. You can ultimately save yourself and everyone you love. You just have to take one last step. Do you understand me? It’s all on the line here.”
    “I understand you far more deeply than you will ever know, General Moon.”
    “I feel precisely the same about you, Dr. Chase. It’s why we get along. Although we are adversaries and not friends, we have a great deal in common. Now, I’d like you to take a look at this.