Still no one betrayed anything. Until, two minutes later, every light in the building went out. Great pictures were no longer illuminated, the glass cases full of treasure went suddenly dull beneath the limited natural light still filtering in through the windows of this dull June day. The National Palace was without electric power, and deep beneath the stone-and-marble floors Major Chiang Lee flew along the underground corridor, a flashlight in his left hand and a hand grenade in his right. He reached the giant automatic generator with just 25 seconds left before it kicked in, and he ripped out the pin and hurled the grenade straight at the big 600-gallon gas tank to the right of the main machinery.
He dove back around the corner of the massively reinforced concrete walls and flung himself to the ground. Four seconds later the thunderous explosion and contained fire ensured that not only was the National Museum without power; it was also going to stay precisely that way for the foreseeable future.
Every secure door both inside the museum itself, inside the labyrinth of underground tunnels and inside the echoing vaults that held the treasures of five thousand years was suddenly useless. If they were open, they would stay open. If they were closed, they would open up easily enough without the power locking devices. Major Chiang Lee, after hundreds of hours of study, a million deceptions and the patience of a Buddha, had done his work.
And now he moved back through the dark passage toward the area where the elevator from the main floor emerged. In the fire-control doorway, right opposite, he retrieved his Kalashnikov machine gun. And he walked back up the emergency stairs into the wide foyer where there were now scenes of some disquiet, though nothing resembling panic. The building had been constructed to such a heavy-duty standard, the rumble of the explosion, 100 yards away deep below ground, had scarcely been detected.
Major Lee fired a short burst from his machine gun, into the information desk, by way of attracting attention. Then he blasted a volley at the six high-security cameras, which he knew would operate for several hours on emergency batteries. Then he ordered everyone to stand back against the walls. He seemed a small, insignificant-looking figure to be issuing such a command, but suddenly he was joined by two groups of six men all leveling smaller, but just as deadly, weapons.
The Taiwanese guards, indoctrinated for years as to the Jihad seriousness of their responsibilities, immediately moved as a trained unit of four men, racing into position behind two huge stone pillars, and opening fire at the aggressors in the lobby. But they were not in time. At the first sign of movement, Admiral Zhang’s commandos hit the ground, returning fire toward the pillars. No one hit anyone, but right behind the museum guards there was a team of six Chinese Special Forces, now with their weapons drawn, and, firing from the rear, they cut down the security men in five seconds flat.
And now nine uniformed guards from the upper floors, pistols drawn, raced down the wide interior stairs. And this was like the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre. Women screamed as the Chinese Special Forces, crouching beneath the benches along the walls, opened up with a sustained burst of fire that left no survivors — just nine bodies sprawled on the wide staircase, blood trickling down the gray stone steps.
Up on the overlooking balcony, a further troop of museum guards had seen the appalling situation and retreated into the main exhibition rooms, slamming shut the massive wooden doors and locking them by hand with their six-inch-long master keys. They used mobile phones, desperately trying to raise the military in the nearby garrison. The Taipei Police were on the line swiftly and assured them of assistance within 10 minutes. Down in the tunnels the underground guards, and those who protected the doors into the vaults, gathered in the dark, 23 of them, heavily armed and massively confused.
By now there were several dozen tourists trying to open the outside doors, and Major Chiang Lee and his men began to herd the crowd inside the foyer toward the main entrance, which was guarded by Special Forces. Each visitor to the museum was searched. All mobile phones were confiscated. The double doors were opened just a couple of feet, and each visitor was dispatched out into the crowd with instructions to leave the area immediately.
By now it was obvious the National Palace Museum had been captured, at least temporarily, by a small squadron of Chinese Special Forces. Lines of tourists returned to the waiting buses, and the eight men remaining in number 213 were now outside their bus brandishing Kalashnikovs and ordering the drivers away.
Inside the main foyer another gun battle broke out when guards from the tunnels broke through the emergency exit and began shouting orders to the crowd. Unaware of the gravity of the situation, they never had a prayer when the Special Forces gunned them down at close quarters. Six of them died instantly, the rest retreated back down to the dark tunnels, which was going to pose a substantial problem for the Chinese.
Ricocheting bullets had already injured four American tourists, one of them a very young boy, age around eight. The four-man medical unit that was integrated into the attacking force was attending the wounded, using their own supplies, and as they worked, the large crowd was slowly exiting the building and moving down to the buses.
At this point, the Chinese moved to secure the museum. Two bigger machine guns, plus ammunition, were brought up to the foyer from the waiting buses. All outside doors were locked by hand, and a dozen sentries were posted. The remaining 28 attackers split into three groups of six, and one of 10, the main assault force that would storm the exhibition rooms where there were still armed security guards.
They hit the one on the upper left first, blasting the door open with machine-gun fire and then spraying the room with 50 rounds, calling for total surrender. A stray bullet shattered a glass case and smacked straight through an early-seventeenth-century Qing Dynasty helmet used by a long-dead emperor for reviewing troops. The bullet cracked open the head of one of the three decorative dragons, split a large ruby in half and probably did about a million dollars worth of damage.
But the helmet survived, and it fared better than a black pottery wine jar, fashioned in the shape of a silkworm cocoon, and dating back to around 300 B.C. This shattered on impact with another Kalashnikov bullet, and joined the remnants of a priceless foot-high, jade Kuei tablet from the early Shang Kingdom, more than 1,000 years before Christ.
A line of bullet holes also decorated the upper reaches of one of China’s most valuable paintings, A Literary Gathering, a massive work exquisitely done in ink on silk for the Emperor Hui-tsung of the eleventh-century northern Sung Dynasty. It still hung, high on the east wall, and might ultimately be restored.
The four cowering guards plainly realized that if the Chinese Special Forces were prepared to inflict millions of dollars’ worth of damage on the contents of these rooms, their own lives were not worth four cents. And they came forward, unarmed with their hands high, and as they did so they heard the thunder of the second machine gun as it obliterated the lock on the door that guarded the room across the wide stone corridor on the upper right.
Again the Chinese Special Forces came in low and hard, the machine gun ripping bullets into the room, from a floor-level position. The two central glass cases were blown apart, glass from the tallest one flying everywhere. But the principal casualty was a large carved ivory Dragon Boat from the Qing Dynasty, again early seventeenth century, perfectly created, right down to the eight oars, the 16 pennants, and the deck canopy, all set in a gold-painted lacquer box. The Russian-made bullets hit it broadside on, reducing it to shards of split white ivory: a destruction of history sufficient to reduce any curator of any museum to unashamed tears.
Two paintings, set high on the west wall, above a colossal stone table, also were raked with machine-gun fire. The large one to the left was priceless, a sixteenth-century work by one of the four masters of the Ming Dynasty, Ch’iu Ying. Entitled Late Return from Spring Outing, it was a world-acclaimed picture, ink and color on silk, executed by one of the greatest artists of the Emperor’s Imperial Painting Academy. The bullets had r
ipped right across it in two lines, and it would never be restored.
The slightly smaller picture to the left, however, was in ruins, and its demise would be mourned by art historians for years to come. It was a rare and magnificent work by Chao Kan, the tenth-century painter from Nanking, and its title evokes the elegant quality of the landscape: Early Snow on the River. It was a masterpiece by a great master who had trained at the Academy of Art of the southern T’ang court. He had used just ink and light color on silk, outlawing any trace of worldliness, as his fisherman worked the icy river, with a small band of travelers wending their way wearily along the windswept bank. Twenty million modern greenbacks would not have bought one half of it.
Two of the security guards, sheltering under the stone table, were hit and killed; the others begged for mercy and were permitted to surrender. And they trooped outside to join their colleagues with their faces to the wall, hands high above their heads, under the scrutiny of the Chinese raiders.
Room by room, the Special Forces took the museum, the staff was taken prisoner, the last tourists ejected from the building and the machine guns placed strategically on front and rear balconies.
At 1445, the sound of helicopters could be heard, out over the surrounding park. The Special Forces commander, in conference with Major Chiang Lee, knew they must be Taiwanese reinforcements, because the signal had not yet been sent back to the beachhead at Chinsan that the museum was secure.
Instantly they ordered all prisoners out onto the steps with instructions to clear the area, and they radioed Bus 213 to open fire at will on the incoming helicopters. Crammed with special police and the remnants of the Army still in the area, the choppers came clattering in over the trees, and immediately flew into a hail of bullets, from the high front balcony and the area to the rear of the bus.
The lead aircraft took the brunt of the heavy fire from the balcony and suddenly exploded, veering over almost in a full somersault and crashing, rotor first, bang into the green tiled roof. The second helicopter was hit from below and its main engine stopped dead, which caused it to drop like a stone from 100 feet, obliterating itself on the stone forecourt and then exploding, killing 15 tourists and injuring 39 others.
The third one banked left across the trees and flew swiftly back to the nearby Army garrison. Meanwhile Major Chiang Lee sent in the signal to the beachhead that the National Palace Museum was safely in Chinese hands for the moment, save for the underground tunnels and vaults, which still contained resisting security forces of an unknown number.
Twenty minutes later, the first of two waves of Chinese airborne battalions came in over the park, the big helicopters and transporters containing two antiaircraft detachments equipped with QW-1 SAMs. This new modified missile with its 35-pound warhead is equipped with a lethal IR homing device accurate to three miles.
The incoming battalion was also equipped with portable antitank weapons and light mortars, and the troops began to jump out into the park, swarming out of the aircraft onto the wet, green grass below, and forming an instant steel ring around the museum. They tied up with the commandos on the Special Forces that had originally taken the museum, and swiftly moved their missile defenses into position.
The museum was not yet completely secure from attack. But it would need a formidable modern force to break through right now. Taiwan had no chance of recapturing the palace, and only a remote shot at destroying it from the air at this point, because its air force was tragically weak and its missile defenses just about spent.
But the treasure trove of the Chinese centuries was firmly under the control of Beijing for the very first time since Chiang Kai-shek’s 14 trains, bearing the very soul of his vast country, had rumbled down to the east coast ferries, almost 60 years previously.
9
0900. Wednesday, May 30.
The White House. Washington, D.C.
News of China’s tightening stranglehold on the island of Taiwan was emerging with leaden slowness. Beijing, unsurprisingly, was releasing nothing. And there had been no time for any of the Western media’s Far Eastern correspondents even to reach Taipei before the iron grip of the Chinese military took hold of the region.
Add to this the complete rupture of all Taiwanese military communications, and the West was left with no sources, no information and no prospects of obtaining any. The only news emerging from the island was the occasional sly and undercover dispatch from the pseudo-embassies, and they had access to very few hard facts. The air battles, which had now been fought over several days, had taken place more than 60 miles from mainland news reporters, out of sight, out of earshot, basically out of reach.
And on this Wednesday morning, the mood in the West Wing of the White House was very somber. The hard men of the United States armed forces, Admiral Arnold Morgan, Defense Secretary Bob MacPherson, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Alan Dixon, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Tim Scannell, had been proved powerless to fight two enemies in two separate theaters. They were tied up in the Strait of Hormuz, guarding the world’s main oil routes, and China was effectively left to do whatever it liked.
News was trickling in of a very large Chinese force landing on Chinsan Beach. It was already moving southeast to the port of Keelung. It had taken three days to muster, and the Chinese airborne troops had accepted very heavy casualties as the depleted but still determined Taiwanese forces constantly attacked them on the ground.
Nonetheless, the tide of warriors sweeping across the strait from the mainland, by both air and sea, was just too great, too engulfing for the Taiwanese to stop. Tens of thousands of Chinese troops made the beaches from the vast flotilla of civilian boats, merchant freighters and naval ships. This was a mission that had all of China behind it. And all the efforts of the remaining battalions of Taiwan’s northern army proved unable to break through the “screen” of Chinese marines who fought doggedly to protect their beachhead from attack.
And now they were on the move, and Admiral Dixon considered they would swiftly attempt to capture the port of Keelung. Early reports, telephoned in secret from the pseudo-embassies, had the Chinese growling along the road, marching behind tanks and armored vehicles. But the Admiral offered a ray of hope here, because there was a major Taiwanese defensive force in this area. It had been formed six years previously with the express purpose of holding off a Chinese attack on Keelung, and the invaders would have to fight for every inch of ground in the port city.
It would perhaps come down to attrition, like most of China’s wars. And then there could be only one winner. In Arnold Morgan’s opinion, the Taiwanese would be suing for peace within 10 days.
This was Black Wednesday, no doubt. And at 0915 a White House agent entered the office of the National Security Chief to inform all four men that the Navy helicopter taking them to Andrews Air Base was on the lawn.
From there they were flying up to Cape Cod, landing at the sprawling Otis Air Force Base, and then heading on by Navy helicopter to Marblehead, Massachusetts, 20 miles up the north shore from Boston, for the funeral of Lt. Commander Ray Schaeffer. Admiral Morgan himself had insisted that the SEAL Team Leader be awarded, posthumously, the highest possible decoration in the United States Armed Forces, the Medal of Honor. As a SEAL, Ray Schaeffer’s award was for many, many services rendered to his country. It would be awarded with no public announcement whatsoever.
Three thousand miles away in California, the funeral of U.S. Navy SEAL Charlie Mitchell was also taking place, and it would be attended by Admiral John Bergstrom and the Pacific Fleet C-in-C, Admiral Dick Greening. CINCPACFLT had personally recommended that the rookie combat SEAL quietly be awarded the Navy Cross.
In Marblehead, there was an air of terrible sadness. The Schaeffer family had lived there for generations, and Ray’s wife, Wendy, with their two little boys, Ray, Jr., age nine, and Bobby, six, was returning to live in the old family house down by the water, where Ray’s widowed father now lived alone.
The church wa
s packed, with crowds lining the narrow street outside, and General Scannell read a moving eulogy, regretting that the Lieutenant Commander’s area of operations was classified to such a degree that no one would ever know precisely where he had served, and with what “unfathomable courage” he had carried out his duties. “I hope,” he concluded, “that his Medal of Honor, and the presence here of the senior military figures in America, will offer some testament to the regard in which he was held in the United States Navy.”
Eight Naval officers carried the casket bearing the fallen SEAL to his last resting place, and the church bell tolled out over the little seaport as they lowered the body of Ray Schaeffer into the ground.
Admiral Arnold Morgan read the final prayer, offering the sentiment that “ordinary people, like ourselves, may sometimes find it difficult to understand what drives a man like Lieutenant Commander Schaeffer forward, to comprehend that selfless gallantry which is bestowed upon so few. I don’t suppose Ray would have been able to explain much, either. And so we will just have to accept that God granted him an inner light, and we now wish him farewell, sure in the knowledge that light will guide him home. Amen.”
At the graveside Wendy Schaeffer was erect and brave with her arm around Ray, Jr. But little Bobby wept uncontrollably for his lost father and Admiral Dixon knelt down to comfort him.
The only good news throughout the day was the formation of a Schaeffer family trust, which was begun with a $100,000 personal donation from the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Boston banking heir, Admiral Scott Dunsmore.
The rest was a catalog of sorrow and remembrance, and the four military chiefs from Washington took their leave as soon as the burial was over. They were back at the White House by 1630, and it quickly became clear that the flight had done nothing to lessen their fury toward the Republic of China.
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