Oasis: The China War: Book One of the Oasis Series

by James Kiehle

  But Maggie’s ideas were as clear as mountain water.

  “Are you trying to seduce me?” he asked, echoing a line from The Graduate.

  “Russ—” Maggie replied, drawing out his name. Her laugh, usually haughty, amused by the little people, was more genuine now, if a shade reproachful. “Am I that obvious?”

  Russ downed a long gulp, halving the beer. “No more than a Vegas neon sign.”

  “With me, all glitter, no gulch,” Maggie smiled. “Let’s pretend this is just harmless flirtation.”

  “Easy enough to do.” Russ said, then asked the obvious: “But why me?”

  Maggie opened her purse, hunting for something, and hunched her shoulders. “Why not you Russ? Big, strong, smart. And from what I hear, soon to be my boss. What woman wouldn’t like to seduce her boss?”

  Maggie Chapin was the sole person Russ knew who still smoked and here in oh-so-politically-correct Oregon, people were barely allowed to smoke outside. This meant nothing to Maggie, who lit a Marlboro Gold 100 and sent a tornado of it skyward, then peered at Russ with a curious, slightly unnerving stare.

  “Boss?” Russ was annoyed. “How did you hear about that? That’s supposed to be a secret.”

  “From Ted. Who else?” Maggie replied, taking a fresh puff, trying to make smoky O’s.

  “What a jerk,” Russ said and Maggie laughed.

  “Face it, Russ, you can’t hide secrets from me.”

  Russ, always captivated by Maggie’s impeccable look, couldn’t turn his eyes. A very cool woman. The fact that Maggie still smoked in this weird new century made her seem a glamorous, wanton throwback to the Audrey Hepburn era of martinis for lunch, opera gloves, and cigarette holders. Maggie pulled this facade off as well as anyone.

  “I haven’t even told my wife about buying the paper.” Russ said, looking at his beer.

  “My luscious lips are sealed,” Maggie said, leaning forward.

  Russ studied shiny, dancing hot spots reflected by her lip gloss as white teeth clamped down on the cigarette tip and well-turned lips sucked on it—a long drag.

  “You’ve had ten seconds to consider it, now what’s your answer?”

  Russ held up a hand, wiggling a finger.

  “I took a vow.”

  “Such a boy scout,” Maggie said, not pleasantly. “I’m married, too. And Catholic. What difference does that make?”

  Nothing and everything, Russ thought. Still, how could he even pretend to resist Maggie with this chivalrous defense?

  “You don’t take vows seriously,” Russ told her. “That’s the difference.”

  “This isn’t high school, Russ.” Maggie smoked again, aimed a big zero smoke ring his way. “Besides, what you don’t know is that Claude, for want of a better term, is a certifiable asshole.”

  “My wife would say the same about me if she knew this covert meeting was taking place.”

  Not listening to him, Maggie’s face pinched up, apparently recalling bad memories. She crossed her arms. “Sometimes I think my betrothed placed a GPS chip in my vagina. Real control freak.”

  “Well, that’s not a problem I have. Judy trusts me.”

  “Should she?”

  “So far, I’ve been a pillar of virtue.”

  “I see.” Maggie stubbed out her cigarette forcefully. “Then I’ll change the subject. Maybe we should talk about how high the river is instead? Or the upcoming bond issue?”

  “Ah,” Russ laughed, feeling better. “A business write-off. You’re a genius, Maggie.”

  The cigarette wouldn’t go out. The burning red cherry drifted smoke.

  “Did you know I was considered for a Real Housewives spinoff?” Maggie asked. “If Claude hadn’t been so freaking jealous, you might be jacking off to me on TV in your den.”

  “We don’t have a den,” Russ grinned. “And, no, I wouldn’t.”

  Her mouth seemed to clench. “Tell me the honest-to-fucking-god truth, Russ—you aren’t interested in a tumble with me? Not even a little?”

  Russ’s reply laugh was subdued. Nervous and conflicted, he weighed the pros and cons. On one hand, here was the chance for a long hidden fantasy to spring to life. On the other hand, a wedding ring.

  “How long is Claude away?” Russ asked after a moment.

  Maggie smiled. “Long enough.”

  Russ shook his head and laughed, “I don’t even know why I asked that.”

  “I do.” Maggie leaned forward and held his hands. “Because you want to fuck me so badly you can taste it. Besides, if you don’t want to screw me, I could always play hardball.”

  Russ’s head cocked. “Meaning what?”

  Maggie finished her drink, lifted the glass high and shook it, rattling ice cubes, indicating that she wanted another. Her grin was conspiratorial.

  “I mean that I could always tell her we had an affair,” she said. “I could lie.”

  12. The Man Behind the Curtain

  The next morning: the fart in the spacesuit.

  Thirty words were heard coming from the mouth of the leader of the free world. A private, informal chat somewhere—the Oval Office, the Situation Room, the War Room, aboard Air Force One, at a Starbucks—it didn’t matter where. For once, substance triumphed over style because, in the video, the president was seated at a table, holding a mug reading Big Cheese with his chief of staff and an unnamed, eyes-blurred-out general who sat off to the right. The pretty Ms. Lansing sat stiffly, folded hands on the table, eyes down, wearing a perennially patient smile. The general (presumed to be a four-star named Spivey) rested his chin on his fist, his eyes hard, intent on listening to the president’s resolute words

  The president said, “Yes, colonel, Taiwan will have the bomb, but if China uses even one nuke against them, we’ll launch every missile we’ve got and turn the PRC into embers and ashes.”

  Embers and Ashes. The bottom line on news-crawls and newspaper subheads around the media world. Taiwan Has The Bomb was the lead—not as poetic.

  Thirty words that changed everything.

  China was pissed. The outcry in Beijing was bellicose and unrelenting. Their propaganda department went balls-out to convince the world of China’s victimization. Around the planet, these thirty words were thought to be reckless musings of a president who liked to kick sand in foreign faces and run through the bee hive with a sharp stick, betraying his isolationist dogma as a sham.

  The FBI, Homeland Security, NSA and other agencies launched immediate probes of the source of this leak. Congress threatened to assemble its own team. The video upload was studied, the ISP was located and traced to the source. When their investigations were completed—in a matter of hours, not days—the conclusions in the reports remained secured at For POTUS Eyes Only level. Congress quietly closed their inquiry.

  Officially, so much for that.

  Still, social media spread the video like herpes in the Seventies. The American people, seeing the provocative video first on YouTube and Facebook, were split pro and con on its meaning and intent. Replayed on news channels worldwide countless times, on the internet, the president’s message was liked/not liked by a gazillion hits. Six hundred gazillion Tweets about it. The presidential threat, the thirty words, and the final straw, his middle finger used to make a statement at the end, went not only viral but pandemic, broke all records, sending adorable kittens and Justin Bieber to the back of the queue.

  But what the security service reports and the news didn’t say, couldn’t say, wouldn’t say, was who leaked it? And why?

  The damage was done.That secret was safe forever.

  But behind it? Behind the curtain, pulling the strings, making the case for his seemingly apocalyptic vision of a new Earth, was China’s defense minister, Liang Huatian. His electronic warriors, ever on the prowl, hacked into a secure phone, found the cam-shot video, and sent it out into cyberspace, and making Chinese leaders more willing to step up the rhetoric and take action on Taiwan, pushing Liang’s plan closer to reality. The defens
e minister didn’t exactly plan this, but he used it.

  Some said retribution for being turned down at Stanford.

  •

  That morning, after the president’s video played on the Sun’s big screen TV—silence.

  Finally, somebody asked, “What the hell does this mean?”

  “The Prez wants to go dick to dick with China,” Maggie Chapin said in a loud voice. “Take out his willie, flop it on the table and see who salutes. Stupidest thing I ever saw. Grown men.”

  “They’re asking for it,” Chris Berrenger countered. “China has some secret agenda. I don’t blame the president. He’s got stones down there.”

  “You’re much too naive—all presidents have a boner to go to war,” Maggie told her. “The Military-Industrial complex dumps on us again. They need a war to feed their machine, and I need a smoke.” Maggie went outside, but looked back over her shoulder at the door as if expecting Russ to join her.

  Hungover from the night before, silently rebuffed in her efforts to seduce him, Maggie was in a cantankerous mood, though truthfully, it was weird. It took all of Russell’s willpower to say goodnight at the bar after her come on, but now he was keeping his distance. Her threat of blackmail was both exciting and despicable and it made him question his own character.

  “We aren’t going to war,” Ted Gallo announced. “I’ll bet the White House leaked that as a warning to China. It’s all part of a game. It’s bullshit.”

  The video was replayed. Again and again.

  Russ, staring at the tube like a living zombie, knew that China-Taiwan would lead the paper again the next day, and he already guessed the headline.

  It wouldn’t be Embers and Ashes.

  Much more succinct.

  A single three-letter all caps word that scared the shit out of him.

  WAR.

  •

  Shiue Hua was finally finished.

  Finished packing, finished spying, finished with her day job as China’s defense minister’s driver. No more Mercedes and Vespa’s for her. Hua would buy a sports car when she finally reached Grand Cayman, her new home, driving something sleek and sexy, using only a fraction of her million-dollar espionage-funded nest egg. All she had to do was take a cab to the airport where her forged-by-the-Americans passport, visa, and travel papers would get her on a flight to Hawaii, then wing away to the islands for some much needed R and R and, best of all, freedom.

  Hua snapped the final Samsonite-clone shut just as a hard knock at her front door surprised her. She checked her watch. Her taxi driver was early, probably a good thing. She strode to the door and swung it open, saying, “I’ll just be a minute—”

  “Leave the bags,” a uniformed officer told her. Behind him, two police with sidearms drawn. “You won’t be needing much more than your toothbrush in prison.”

  “For what?” she asked, using those enormous eyes tactically.

  “Treason.”

  13. Communion

  Fools led by fools.

  For the first time he could remember, Li Cai Wen was of two minds.

  America or China?

  Was Li a traitor for even having such thoughts? Maybe. Certainly to those in Beijing, his motives were being questioned.

  Raised in Hong Kong and schooled in the English tradition, Li had been playing tug-of-war with his loyalties for years. Living in New York had spoiled him, gave him a democratic perspective, and now the direction his native land was going offered only a collision course.

  The strategy seemed insane.

  It bothered the attaché that Liang Huatian and his gangster wing of the party could have manipulated so many and so much in their ambitious, deceitful, and avaricious favor. This lunatic idea of retaking Taiwan was causing massive headaches, as much at home as around the world. The financial markets do not like uncertainty and while both gold and oil were on an historic rise, stocks began to sink and the dollar’s value—tied to it the PRC’s Yuan—jumped around like a pogo stick. Was this part of Liang’s plan? To screw with the entire world’s economy?

  Still, Li Cai Wen wondered: What was it about Liang that made him so powerful? Surely not his ghastly looks. His secret had to be information. Liang Huatian, the master of knowing, was perhaps the J. Edgar Hoover of China, uncovering details and secrets about party bosses, military commanders, rich people, that they wouldn’t want out under threat of death.

  It had to be that. How else could Liang alone make Taiwan such a priority? An island important only in a few aged Maoist minds. Yes, Formosa’s economy was surely in the top twenty worldwide, but then so was Spain; the invasion simply couldn’t be economic. What was the reason for this?

  It was time to decide. America? China?

  Flip a coin?

  Li Cai Wen, needing comfort, consulted the prophecies of Amaria, dated three weeks before.

  He read Communion.

  All so clear, this watery pool of certainty in measures taken— not remorse.

  Cousins take arms, neighbors interfere— all lost in belief

  Impromptu lights illuminate, the thunder frightens—glorious smile of rage

  Ice become holy waters— unimpeded cleansing washes over us…

  cold, wet, sobering

  Consumed by fires— breathtaking embers of salvation

  From the sky— invisible angels spread the ash of souls

  When you learn of this, take heed.

  Choose your side.

  Li Cai Wen picked up the phone and called a number.

  “I should like to speak with the president,” Li Cai Wen said.

  •

  What was the Chinese word for blitzkrieg?

  Gōngjí?

  Peter Grant couldn’t immediately remember, but at five in the morning local time, China attacked Taiwan with amazing speed and overwhelming power.

  The Taiwanese Air Force and their early detection systems are considered superior to the mainland’s but the ferocity of the siege took everyone by surprise. Waves of missiles and an aerial bombardment that tore up runways and turned aircraft into sculptures—giant twisted metal shards—as tens of thousands of people died in just the first twenty minutes. News reports confirmed that at least forty large amphibious vessels were headed for northwestern Taiwan—a surprise.

  More, the northern end of the island was surrounded by PLAN war ships, until recently staging war games off the mainland, now clearly a cloaked exercise.

  Giant electronic maps covered the wall of the War Room beneath the White House and smaller monitors showed those people absent from the meeting. Besides the twelve senior officials present, Lt. Colonel Peter Grant beamed in via video link from an airplane flying to Idaho. Grant was an invited guest, not a regular, but his airborne companions included the Secretary of Defense and Deborah Lansing, the White House Chief of Staff.

  “What the hell happened to the embargo?” the president asked forcefully. “One minute the Chinese are going to surround the northern half of the island, make it hard for ships to get in and out; the next minute they’re blasting the hell out of the place and paratrooping soldiers into New Taipei’s suburbs? Alfie, give me the skinny.”

  Brigadier General Alfonso Cutler outlined the chain of events using a laser pointer on a map.

  “Sir, the Chinese campaign began with a series of missile attacks by hundreds of conventionally armed DF-eleven’s and DF-fifteen’s. China bolstered this onslaught with squadrons of the H-six bomber, a copy of what we regard as the very capable Russian Tupolev TU-sixteen—”

  “Admiral, please,” the president said, annoyed. “I don’t care what their specifications are, what do you suggest we do? You fine gentlemen and ladies all advised me to go full tilt boogie on the PRC. I played the tough cookie on every news outlet from here to Tierra del Fuego. Or maybe you missed it, maybe you didn’t see me endorsing a game of atomic chicken with Beijing?”

  The president scanned the table, saw only confusion. “Plus, I managed to tell the world that Taiwan, a place no
t even seated at the UN, somehow has the atomic bomb thanks to us.”

  Lansing chimed in. “We know the Chinese posted that video, but why?”

  “Who cares? Water over the Ice Shelf now. I meant diplomatically, military,” the president said. “Where do we go from here?”

  Spivey was next. More than anyone, the general had the president’s ear.

  “Up the Def-Con and get ready to kick some ass,” he said.

  The president, finding this funny, laughed, “That doesn’t help, Marco. This isn’t North Korea, is it? We’re talking about one of the richest, most populated countries in the world, apparently a nation with a pretty darn good military command; good enough for a country that hasn’t been in war since before I was in diapers. America’s had, what, four, five wars? And we didn’t know the real danger here?”

  “In fairness,” General Spivey said, “we had no inkling. Normally we get some sign—”

  “We should have known before they did.” the president’s fist hit the table. “We have drones, satellites, god knows what else up there in the skies. Don’t we have spies?”

  “Not many,” Spivey answered. “Our people don’t blend in well.”

  Exasperated, the president said, “Is Taiwan in any position to defend itself?”

  “Not really,” Herman Locke, the secretary of defense, seated next to Grant and Lansing on the Gulfstream jetting towards Idaho, replied through the video link. “Taiwan can really only attempt to ward off the ground attack. Their air force is pretty much metal confetti and their navy is limited in size, so they have very few options.”

  “What about Taiwan bombing the mainland itself in retaliation?”

  Locke shook his head.“Taiwan has no bombers of any kind. The PRC would have regarded the purchase of bombers as offensive weapons and probably launched their attack years ago had Taiwan even ordered them,” the secretary said. “And for us to attack Chinese cities would be the most dangerous move of all. Better to take cyanide before marching into Shanghai.”

  The president tilted his head and shook it, wondering: Are there any smart guys in this room?