It is a titanic rift in the granite buttress that makes up the eastern side of the island of Formosa, a sheer-walled crevasse worn down through solid stone. The river that had been the instrument of the gorge’s creation still boiled along its floor, the white of its foam contrasting with the grays of the stone and the greens of the moss and lichen that sheathed it.
Man had left his mark here as well. A highway had been blasted and chiseled into the south wall of the canyon and a railway roadbed had been carved into the north.
And then there was the door.
It was set in the northern canyon wall, a spur of the rail line feeding into it. The concrete of its framing had long ago exposure-darkened to match the surrounding rock, and the inch-thick armored steel of its panels was streaked with rust.
The mouth of a quarter-mile-long bunker/tunnel, it had been constructed back in the 1950s as a munitions-storage site. Hundreds of such installations had been constructed throughout Formosa in preparation for the final, inevitable showdown with the mainland. Sunk deep into the mountain’s underbelly, it had been used for this critical if uninspiring function for decades.
Then, two years ago, its tasking had been changed.
Air horns blared, sending echoes rippling through the canyon.
The doors of the bunker parted and slid aside with a howl of hydraulics, allowing the deep-throated rumble of a diesel power plant to escape. A small switching engine rolled out of the tunnel. Moving at a walking pace, it swung out onto the mainline track.
Three rail cars trailed behind it. The central car was a windowless command-and-control van. The first and third each mounted an erector/launcher rail and carried a single, slender, finned form. The upper stage of each white-painted missile flared out into a bulbous, lozenge-shaped warhead.
The launcher crews and site-defense force walked beside the cars as they deployed. The attention of the security men focused out to meet any potential threat, that of the missile men turned inward toward their deadly charges.
The train braked to a halt, its engine powering down to an idle. The security troopers pivoted and dropped to one knee, assault rifles at the ready. The launcher crews held at parade rest, grimly awaiting the orders that would send them into action.
They would wait in vain for the next fifteen minutes. The air horns blared again. The switching engine revved up to power and, like a crayfish returning to its hide, the missile train reversed slowly back into its cavern.
The last of the launcher crew followed it into the tunnel.
The doors closed behind it. The Nationalist nuclear-deterrent force had just executed its first mission.