Tom Clancy's Op-Center--Call of Duty by Jeff Rovin

Author:Jeff Rovin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

* * *

It had been an easy scientific equation.

When Yang Dàyóu was a boy, he had been fascinated by legendary creatures that flew, particularly the dragon and the phoenix. His grandfather, who had marched with Mao Zedong, had been a revered hero of the Long March—a code breaker who translated intercepted communications from the enemies of the nascent Chinese Soviet Republic, the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek.

Li Dàyóu told his grandson tales of survival but also fables about China. Spreading his arms and puffing his chest as he sat on his favorite chair, and blowing smoke from his ever-present cigarette, the elder Dàyóu described big billowing leathery wings as he said, “The dragon is the symbol of water, of rain, and a bringer of good luck.” Then, shrinking into himself, stretching his arms out straight, and turning his narrow face to the sky, he said, “Fenghuang, the phoenix, the magical rooster, is the union of sky and earth, the product of yang and yin. It stands for honor, great morality—the ultimate physical and spiritual grace.”

Throughout his life, Yang had vacillated between wanting to be one or the other of the legendary creatures. Li Dàyóu died in 1967, when Yang was just eight. Without Li’s stories to sustain him, the boy asked his father to tell him about magical things. Gao Dàyóu was not a dreamer. He was a different kind of visionary: he had served in the People’s Liberation Army Air Force and become an aeronautical engineer, designing new aircraft based on Soviet designs. He talked to his son about the “real” dragons and phoenixes, the rockets designed to lift satellites and humans into space.

That was it for the boy. He wanted to build things that flew like the dragon and the phoenix. Not just flew but ruled over all birds, like his beloved creatures of mythology.

Yang had worked hard, as his father and grandfather had worked hard, and he had carried their ideas, their inspiration to the skies, merged with his own passion for Chinese flight. The idea that he would betray that for any reason was not just repugnant but impossible. Even for the safety of his son, who had drawn on his own interests, made his own way.

General Chang’s proposals were impossible, if for no other reason than that Yang was not a nightingale, a real and submissive bird whose nature was just to sing, to maintain the harmony of the day for its owner. Neither the dragon nor the phoenix would accept incarceration. Like the latter, Yang intended to soar from the ashes—with one key distinction.

He did not intend to die first.

If the engineer had remained in the room he would have been taken to Taiyuan No. 3 prison in Shanxi. He would have remained there incommunicado until the political works commander had rendered a foregone verdict on one of two charges. Had Yang confessed to the false charge of criminal negligence, he would have been sentenced to life in prison. Had Yang confessed to nothing he would have been charged with treason and executed within the month.

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