Battlefield Taiwan

Snatch n’ Grab

Deputy Minister Wu had just concluded a successful business trip to New Delhi. As both China and Russia moved forward with the global objectives of Red Storm, it was now time to start bringing the Indians into the loop. India’s agreement to supply China with the resources they desperately needed and the manufacturing of war materials for Russia should be enough help to turn the tide against the Allies.

“I was wrong to doubt Chairman Zhang when he said this plan could work,” thought Wu. “It’s like what that General Yang told us during the briefing of the Formosa invasion: ‘A poor plan executed violently is better than a great plan executed poorly.’ Two years from now, China will be the lone superpower in the world, with Russia at our side.”

Wu let a smile slowly spread across his face.

A couple of hours into their flight back to Beijing, a flight attendant approached one of Wu’s bodyguards, whispered something into his ear and then walked away. The guard approached Wu. “Sir, the pilot says we are going to make an unscheduled stop at Lhasa.”

Wu looked up at the guard, a bit uncertain as to why they would make a stop in Tibet. Lhasa was way off the beaten path. “Go find out why we need to make a stop. We need to make best speed to Beijing,” he ordered.

“Yes, Sir,” the guard replied dutifully, rushing off to do as he was told.

After a few minutes, the guard returned. “The pilot says one of the engines is reporting an oil pressure problem. He wants to stop at Lhasa and have it checked rather than risk the engine cutting out.”

The guard looked a bit nervous. While it was significantly safer to fly than drive, when a problem with an aircraft happened, it tended to be fatal at 30,000 feet.

Wu just nodded and went back to preparing his notes for his eventual meeting with Zhang. He wanted to make sure he brought up the possibility of approaching the Russians about letting China mine inside Siberia for certain materials that would help keep their manufacturing base running at full capacity. If they could get the Russians to cede control of certain mines, the Chinese could increase production of war materials, and in turn help the Russians by manufacturing certain pieces of equipment, just as India would be doing for them.

An hour later, their aircraft landed to little fanfare at the small airport outside of Lhasa. The pilot came into the cabin and spoke to Wu directly. “Sir, it will take the mechanic approximately four hours to check the engine and various sensors to make sure there is not a problem.”

Wu was annoyed at being temporarily stranded in Tibet but recognized that it was better to be cautious with a mechanical problem than try to press their luck and end up crashing.

Seeing that it was nearly lunchtime, Wu decided he would head into Lhasa and get something to eat. “I’ve never actually been to Lhasa. Perhaps there is a nice restaurant to eat at here. Look on the bright side — I’ll get a chance to see another side of China I wouldn’t have otherwise seen,” he thought as his stomach grumbled.

He caught the attention of one of his bodyguards. “Find a vehicle we can use to head into town for some lunch,” he ordered.

In short order, the group of four men were in the vehicle and on their way to Lhasa while the pilot stayed behind with the aircraft and the mechanics.

Twenty minutes into their drive, they spotted a small checkpoint manned by several PLA soldiers. There were a couple of cars being stopped and then waved through, nothing out of the ordinary. Wu’s vehicle slowed down, and the bodyguard driving it lowered his window and produced his Politburo security credentials, letting the guards know that they were escorting an important person and to let them pass.

Deputy Director Wu was busy reading a message on his smartphone, completely oblivious to the fact that two of the three soldiers at the roadblock were moving towards each side of the vehicle. The bodyguards, however, caught this deviation from what they had observed with the vehicles that had been stopped prior to them and tensed up. The guard sitting next to Wu said something to his partners in the front seat, and they immediately reached inside their jackets for their sidearms.

In one swift and fluid motion, the three army soldiers moved their rifles to the ready position and opened fire on the car. The windshield and the side windows of the car shattered, spraying the individuals in the vehicle with small glass shards. The guard sitting next to Wu tried to raise his pistol to fire at the attackers but was suddenly pumped full of lead as half a dozen bullets hit him in the chest and one round met its mark in the center of his forehead.

The driver, who had already been hit by multiple bullets, immediately smashed his foot down on the accelerator in an attempt to get his charge and comrades out of the ambush taking place. The vehicle lurched forward maybe ten feet, nearly running down one of the attackers before a large-caliber round hit the engine compartment, causing the vehicle to stop almost instantaneously. The attackers shot the driver several more times, and he slumped forward onto the steering wheel. The horn blared under his weight.

The guard in the front passenger seat managed to get his pistol up and fired two quick shots off, hitting one of the attackers before his head exploded in a red mist, spewing blood, brain matter, and bone fragments across the entire car, splashing Wu in the face and dirtying his fancy designer suit.

Before Wu knew what was happening, one of the soldiers had reached his side of the vehicle, opened the door, and grabbed him firmly by his suit jacket, yanking him out of the car. Wu felt himself being spun around and thrown to the ground face-first, as if he were some little girl’s ragdoll. He hit the ground with a loud thud as the wind was knocked out him.

“What on earth is happening?” he wondered, still dazed by the speed of the events unfolding around him.

Suddenly, he felt the pinch of what felt like a needle in his right thigh. In seconds, he felt a slight burning sensation, and then his world began to turn black as all the pain he had just been experiencing faded into the darkness of his mind.

Once CW4 Lee had slammed the autoinjector syringe into the right thigh of Deputy Director Wu, he felt the man stop struggling as he began to drift off to sleep. Prior to their mission, the CIA operative had given them the syringe, telling them to just slam it into their subject’s leg and the drug would do the rest. Director Wu would wake up 24-hours later, a little groggy but otherwise unharmed.

As the body below him went limp, Chucky radioed Maverick, speaking in Chinese to keep up their cover. “Take out the blue truck before he gets away. Spike, Bonefish — grab the civilians from the other vehicles and get them lined up on the road facing the ditch now! We have to move quick and get this done. We don’t have long before this gunfire is reported!” he yelled to his other teammates.

Spike and Bonefish immediately ran to the two other vehicles that had been in line behind Wu’s car. They grabbed the two old men and a young couple out of the two vehicles, dragged them to Wu’s now-bullet-riddled vehicle, and had them drop to their knees, facing the ditch.

While this was happening, Maverick fired a single shot from his Chinese-made .50-caliber rifle directly into the engine block of a blue truck that had turned around and begun to race to the closest village to seek help. Once his vehicle came to a halt, the man jumped out of the truck and made a run for it on foot. Maverick sighted him in and gently squeezed the trigger, sending a single round 800 meters away, where it slammed into the man’s back. He tumbled over then ceased moving; the round had pierced his heart.

As the sound of Maverick’s shots echoed off the surrounding ridges, it only heightened the team’s awareness that they didn’t have a lot of time to execute their plan and get out of there. One of the ODA members unfurled a black Islamic State flag and draped it across Wu’s shot-up vehicle with the four civilians kneeing in front of it.

One of the soldiers pulled out a smartphone, and CW4 Lee got himself ready as he stood behind the civilians. He pulled out a postcard with a brief statement that had been prepared for him by the CIA’s ISIS group. The language, phrases, and demands on that card were all in line with rhetoric ISIS had used inside China in the past. While Chucky read off the statement, Spike filmed it and Bonefish continued to guard the hostages.

While Lee and the ODA members were filming their video, Maverick took one last look down both sides of the highway to make sure there was no unwanted attention heading their way before he grabbed his remaining gear and started running down the hill towards his ODA team members. He needed to move quickly as their ride would be landing soon.

“I can’t believe we’re pulling this off,” Maverick thought as he began to pick up speed.

As he ran, he heard the four single shots and knew Lee had just completed his part of the deception. Just then, he heard the thump, thump, thump of the helicopter blades as their Eurocopter rose above the ridge where he had just been set up, racing towards the Special Forces soldiers and their high-value individual or HVI.

Less than a minute later, the chopper landed, and the ODA members loaded up their HVI and any evidence that could be linked to them. They made sure to leave behind a copy of the video they had just made, along with a written list of demands, ordering the freeing of Islamic militants who had recently been captured or were being held by the Chinese government, along with a few other requests they knew the government would never accede to.

Within minutes of landing, the helicopter was already fully loaded and lifted off, heading back towards Bhutan as quickly as possible. It would not be long before local police or an army unit was dispatched to the ambush site and discovered what had happened. They needed to place as much distance as possible between themselves and the Lhasa Airport. There were still some PLA Air Force fighters at the base that could hunt down their helicopter, if they knew where to look.

Maverick looked at Chucky with a wicked grin on his face. “Did you ever think you’d make a terrorist execution video, Chief?”

The other two operators both laughed at the reference. For his part, Lee just smiled and shook his head.

Two hours later, their helicopter landed at the base camp they had left more than five hours before. The CIA agent ran up to the helicopter, eager to see if they had succeeded in capturing their HVI. Once he saw Wu was indeed on the chopper, he took possession of the four others they had brought with them.

Another man drove a small fuel truck towards the helicopter to get them refueled. Once he got close enough to use the hose, he ran it out to the chopper, filling up the tank with the engine still running.

The Americans had no idea if the Chinese had been able to track them back to the base camp just across the border in Bhutan, so they planned on getting their HVI as far away from the scene of the crime as possible. Once they arrived at the capital, they would transfer everyone to a waiting executive jet that would whisk them away to a safe house in Singapore, where they would finally debrief Wu.