Vanishing Point - Marc Cerasini [45]
Though his US government-issue Green Card identified him as Anh Hsu, an immigrant from Hong Kong, only the name on the card was accurate, the personal history a careful fabrication devised by China's military intelligence bureau, the Second Department. In truth, Hsu had never even seen Hong Kong, even after he fled the tiny rural village in the Jiangxi Province of South-Central China where he was born. Hsu's village did not even have electricity until the mid-1980s, and Mao's modernization programs passed them by. Consequently, Hsu was raised without the education or benefits of the city-bred youth of Beijing, or even China's newest acquisition, Hong Kong. The people of Hsu's village were perpetually poor due to abysmally low agricultural prices, so poor that no one in his town — not even the town doctor — owned a bicycle or a clock, let alone a radio or television.
Because of the Communist's government's Draconian birth control laws which limited Chinese couples to two children, most female babies born in Hsu's village were placed outside to die of exposure. Girls were considered useless mouths to feed, while boys would at least grow up to work the fields. Considered too uneducated and unskilled for factory work, compared to those citizens born in the cities, Hsu faced a dull future as a subsistence farmer.
So, to escape that fate, he became a member of the two and a half million strong People's Liberation Army, the largest military on Earth, enlisting just days after his seventeenth birthday.
Through drive, diligence and hard work — and by exhibiting a cold ruthlessness that impressed his superiors — Anh Hsu moved up the ranks, until he was promoted to a level seemingly unattainable for one of such lowly birth and questionable heritage — a Captain in the Second Department's Human Intelligence Bureau. Among his newfound skills, he learned to speak English like an American. But Hsu was not content with a behind-the-scenes position analyzing data on some desk-bound general's staff. In an effort to boost his visibility, Hsu volunteered for service in the 6th Special Warfare Group, a unit that performed a variety of operational missions including counterterrorism, long-range reconnaissance, sabotage, hostage rescue, hit-and-run strikes, and deep penetration warfare.
Captain Hsu's military achievements and fanatical drive eventually attracted the attention of Communist Chinese espionage agent Jong Lee, also a member of the Second Department. Lee, an active espionage agent who passed himself off as a Taiwanese lobbyist when spying on the West, was one of China's greatest operatives. Because of his formidable reputation, Jong Lee was permitted to recruit Captain Hsu.
For his part, Hsu admired Jong Lee because he never displayed a dearth of imagination, nor the slavish lack initiative of his peers in the PLA. Lee was not afraid to act, and act boldly.
It was Jong Lee who devised their current mission to seize America's most advanced technology from under the long noses of the United States Air Force, and it was Lee who convinced his masters in Beijing to go along with his perilous plan. Along the way, he also convinced Captain Hsu to join him, though in the end it did not take much convincing. Like Jong Lee, Captain Hsu despised the decadent Western democracies, and resented their phenomenal wealth and economic might.
And so tonight, after months of planning and preparation, I will lead a commando raid so audacious it will shift the balance of power between the United States and China forever. Perhaps our daring strike here, in the enemy's heartland, will convince those old fools in Beijing that the time for war against America is now...
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5:48:02 p.m. PDT
Hangar Six, Experimental Weapons Testing Range
Groom Lake Air Force Base
Dr. Reed made the introductions, starting at the top of the food chain with Dr. Phillip Bascomb, then working her way