CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CADE DECIDED THAT the luxurious Newport Beach mansion offended him. He instructed Henry to have the valuables and personal effects packed and put into storage, and the house made available to the authorities for housing evacuees. The influx would improve the tone of the neighborhood, he told Marie. As for the yacht, Warren was to place it at the disposal of the military for the coastal transportation fleet being hurriedly expanded. He and Marie would move into quarters at the mission. Luke elected to come too, retaining his position as Cade’s right-hand man for the duration. Besides putting them close at hand for the work there, it would ease traveling. Marie preferred this arrangement.
* * *
Luodine planned to tour the front-line areas, rear bases, refugee centers, hard-hit zones, collecting original material that the mission would send back to Chryse along with whatever could be got from other sources—the fruition of the idea that had begun forming in her mind during her experiences in Segora. The plane that the Air Force provided turned out to be a C22-E twin turbofan military airlift VIP transport, normally carrying sixteen passengers, but in this instance fitted out as a flying communications post. It arrived with a pilot, copilot, and technical sergeant for support at Edwards Air Force Base in the high desert above Palmdale. The base had been hit by intermediate-range conventional missiles launched from over the Rockies but was still flying operations. Yassem flew out there with Hudro and Nyarl in one of the mission’s flyers to meet the crew, brief them on the mission, and check over the equipment before tomorrow, when the team was due to depart. Since Hyadean flyers were few and in demand, after being dropped off at Edwards, they sent it on to Newport Beach to collect Cade, Marie, and Luke, and take them to the mission with the belongings they were bringing from the house.
Meanwhile, Luodine was organizing the mission’s communications room as a clearing center for forwarding despatches to Chryse. A Colonel Nacey from FWA military intelligence, along with a small staff, was attached to the operation to ensure that sensitive information was not released prematurely. The main item that she had not mentioned in her outgoing reports—although the Union commanders who needed to know would be aware of it from their own sources in any case—was that a mixed AANS force under a Chinese flagship had sailed from Hawaii to intercept the carrier groups moving north, now approaching the equator west of the Galapágos Islands. The officers on Nacey’s staff called the situation “Midway in reverse.”
But it was becoming clear that the move from Hawaii was just part of a far larger and more audacious plan only now beginning reveal itself. Luodine sat, stunned, alongside Nacey, while on a screen in front of them a spokeswoman from Beijing summarized the action that had been taking place since early that morning. Confused reports had been coming in from various sources about air drops in Mexico and fighting along the Panama Canal Zone, but this was the first coherent account linking it all together. President Jeye himself had been notified officially only within the previous hour—although Nacey thought it likely that he and his military commanders had known privately before then.
“Scattered resistance only is being encountered at Acapulco. We have already commenced air operations farther to the south, supporting the landings north and south of the canal. The main Hyadean defenses were neutralized before they could come into effective operation. . . .”
“Wyv, you’d better get Orzin here,” Nacey told Wyvex, who was hovering behind. “This is unbelievable.” Wyvex tried calling Orzin on his communicator, failed to get a response, and left. Luodine thought of calling Nyarl at Edwards with the news, but then decided to let it ride. He would find out soon enough.
The Chinese had intervened in Central America with a series of long-range airborne landings and support strikes to secure air bases. So far, they were down at six locations in Mexico and two in Costa Rica, with planes refueling and flying missions from one of them already. In addition, forces had been dropped on both sides of the Panama Canal, clearly with the object of cutting the reinforcement and supply connection from the Caribbean to the Union carrier groups in the Pacific. In what sounded like an incredible series of blunders on the part of the defending Hyadeans, the attackers, moving fast and with sound jungle training, had achieved almost total surprise, in some instances overrunning opposition still flailing around, trying to get dressed. In others, the cumbersome and complicated Hyadean heavy weapons had been seized before they could be brought to bear, and spearheads had reached the shores of Gatun Lake, separating the two sections of the canal, in at least four places. With the defending airfields taken out preemptively by undetected sea-skimming cruise missiles, an entire Union supply squadron and battle group trapped between Colón and Balboa were shooting it out against shore-based missiles and guns that were becoming more effective by the hour, and which would soon be augmented by local air support.