Battlefield Taiwan

Spies

It was a cool November morning as Major Wong poured himself a cup of tea and sat down at his desk to review the week’s flight plans for anything of interest. One item that caught his attention was a flight to New Delhi, India, at the end of the week. When he saw who would be on the trip, he became suspicious, and then a plan formed.

“I need to contact my handlers about this immediately,” he thought.

After completing a series of advanced training programs and extensive background checks, Wong had been assigned to a small cadre of PLA Air Force pilots who flew executive aircraft for high-ranking members of the Chinese Communist Politburo. Wong had been a member of this elite group for nearly four years, ferrying senior government officials around the country and the world, until one day he had impressed Chairman Zhang, the Head of Chinese State Security.

While making a routine flight from Beijing to Shanghai, Wong’s aircraft had come into contact with a small group of birds. One of the birds had been sucked into an engine intake, causing the engine to fail. Had Wong not been as expertly trained as he was, the aircraft might have crashed. Ever since that day, Wong had become Chairman Zhang’s personal pilot.

Unknown to Chairman Zhang, Major Wong had been secretly recruited by the American Defense Intelligence Agency nearly ten years ago, when he had attended a flight training program held by Bombardier Aerospace regarding various executive aircraft that the Chinese Air Force was purchasing. During his training, he had been approached by one of the flight instructors.

The instructor had told him casually, “If you’re willing to provide information on the flight plans of certain individuals, you will be compensated handsomely.”

At first, Major Wong had refused, but the more he’d thought about it, the more he’d begun to tell himself it really wasn’t a “state secret” who was flying on his plane or where they were going — not with social media and the press always reporting on everything.

Then, during one of his training flights, when it was just him and his instructor on the aircraft, he asked what they would want to know, how much he would be compensated, and how he would communicate that information to them. Once these questions had been clarified, and he felt reasonably sure he could pull it off, he’d agreed to be a spy for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

After a couple of mundane years flying senior Politburo members around the country, he had been promoted to major and transferred to private service for Chairman Zhang. When he’d informed his handlers of this new posting, they increased his compensation considerably. At last check, he had accumulated over three and a half million US dollars in his account in the Cayman Islands. His plan was to retire to some white sandy beach in another few years, drinking Mei-Tais and chasing scantily clad women.

Then the war had started, and everything had changed. His handlers had tripled his pay for information to compensate for the increase in his risks. His handlers especially wanted him to identify when and where Chairman Zhang and President Xi would be traveling outside of China. While Chairman Zhang was not going to be traveling to India at the end of the week, his trusted aide Wu was. Major Wong was pretty sure his handlers would still be interested in this information. He was one step closer to a sunny, sandy shore.

While the majority of the embassy personnel had been flown out of the country at the start of the war, a small skeleton crew still remained at the compound and carried out the daily functions of diplomacy, which, while minimal, were still important. Terry Bell, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in China, continued to man his post at the embassy, despite the risk of being detained as a spy in China during a time of war. This took an extraordinary amount of courage, considering that he could legitimately be shot if he were ever captured or his true identity discovered.

While he sat in his office, reviewing the latest military report from Korea, his smartphone chirped, indicating he had received a text message. Knowing this smartphone was only used by his sources to contact him if they had information he would value, he immediately opened the message. A grin spread across his face.

“This could be the opening in the war we’ve been hoping for,” he thought as his mind began to process what his source had just offered.

Terry grabbed a notepad and immediately wrote down a few details, then he developed a quick plan to capitalize on what his source had just offered them. He grabbed his secured phone and placed a quick call to the Deputy Director of the DIA to get the ball rolling.

The phone rang twice before a gruff, familiar voice picked up. “This is Marty.”

Terry replied in an excited voice, “Marty, I think I found that break we’ve been looking for. My source that’s been providing us with the travel details of Chairman Zhang and President Xi just told me that Chairman Zhang’s righthand man, Wu, will be traveling to New Delhi in five days, and on top of that, he’ll only have three security guards with him.”

Terry went on to explain his plan for how they would abduct this high-value target, speaking quickly because of the adrenaline that was pumping through his veins.

There was a short pause on the other end before his boss replied, “This is a risky plan, Terry. You’re talking about abducting a senior member of the Chinese government. Not to mention, this strategy would call for that individual to be kidnapped while visiting the soil of a neutral country.”

Marty sighed. “We’d be breaking a lot of international protocols by targeting a government official while on official government business abroad. While I like the idea of grabbing Wu and interrogating him, there is no way we could move forward with nabbing him while he’s on foreign soil. Is it possible for your source to take him to a location of our choosing on Chinese soil?”

This was not the kind of precedent Marty wanted the United States to set. It could make US officials prime targets while traveling abroad, which was not something they needed to add into the mix.

Thinking for a moment before responding, Terry replied, “I think I have just the plan that might work…”

The wind blew softly, ruffling the tent the four members of Operational Detachment Alpha 1110 were using to prepare for their mission. Outside, the rest of the base camp was set at the bottom of a picturesque scene of Mount Kangkar, covered in snow. Walking outside the tent in a nearby clearing, their helicopter pilot, a CIA agent and his source, who was dressed in khaki tour guide clothes, were busy performing a walkthrough and function check of the French Eurocopter AS365 Dauphin.

Despite the short notice of the mission, the CIA had somehow managed to acquire the helicopter from a wealthy businessman in Thailand. Through a herculean effort, they had flown the helicopter to Bhutan and repainted it to look identical to the Harbin Z-9, the Chinese military version of the same helicopter. The chopper would have a crew of two, the CIA pilot and his local guide, and would be carrying a Special Forces team of four men, but there was enough space to carry up to ten people inside the cabin. With a range of 540 nautical miles, this helicopter would be more than able to get them to Tibet and back for their mission.

Chief Warrant Officer Four Charles Lee, call sign “Chucky,” was checking the duffel bag their CIA contact had provided them a couple of hours ago to make sure everything they had requested was there: three Chinese-made QBZ-95 assault rifles, one AMR-2, essentially a Chinese version of the Barrett .50-caliber sniper rifle used by US Special Forces, and four QSW-06 pistols with silencers. It all checked out — everything they needed to carry out this snatch-and-grab mission was there. Because their mission was going to take them into China, they would be wearing Chinese uniforms and using Chinese weapons to blend in.

Everything about this mission had been rushed, from their rapid redeployment from South Korea to their marathon flight to India and then another flight to Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan, not to mention the drive to Kangkar Pünzum National Park. They had spent the better part of 60 hours in transit to get to this point. The cover story was that they were a group of Chinese and Russian mountain climbers who were going to attempt to reach the summit of Mount Kanghar, arguably the highest unclimbed mountain left in the world. However, their true mission was to infiltrate into Tibet and establish an ambush point where they would attack the vehicle carrying Deputy Minister Wu and abduct him for interrogation.

“You really think we’re going to be able to pull this off, Chief?” asked Sergeant First Class Mark Wilson, call sign “Maverick.” He had a bit of skepticism in his voice as he finished putting his Chinese uniform on.

CW4 Lee smiled at his friend’s nervousness. “Come on, Maverick, I think you look every bit as Chinese as the rest of us do,” he said, to the laughs of the other two members of their team, Spike and Bonefish. Maverick was six feet two inches tall with bright blue eyes and blond hair. Lee, Spike and Bonefish were actually of Asian descent and could pull off the appearance of being Chinese.

“You know what I mean, Chief. If anything goes wrong, we’re screwed,” he replied to their laughter.

Turning serious, Lee looked up at his team members. “This mission is no different than some of our past missions in Afghanistan, or even our last mission in North Korea. Yes, we’re all alone, and no one will be coming for us if things do go south, but let’s focus on making sure that doesn’t happen. We have a solid plan. We need to execute and let the chips fall where they may,” Chucky said as he went back to finishing the function checks on the weapons.

Two hours later, they were on board the helicopter, heading towards the Lhasa International Airport located in the small village of Jiazhulinzhen. Their mission required them to land their helicopter near a choke point on the 101-Provincial Road that would take Deputy Minister Wu from the airport to Lhasa, the regional government seat of power.