Chapter Twenty-Four
Monday
Cobra One and Two
Ten minutes later the two aircraft crossed the DMZ into South Korean airspace and turned west. They knew they wouldn’t make it back to the ship with what they had in their tanks, so instead landed at Seoul to refuel.
The airport was in a state of chaos, to put it mildly. The nuclear weapon in the Seersucker had detonated twenty miles away at around nineteen thousand feet, and the EMP had done considerable damage. Radars and radios weren’t working properly and, before they approached, the two Harriers had been forced to use Guard frequency, which someone in the Control Tower was monitoring on a standby radio. Fortunately, the pumps on the fuel bowsers were simple electrical devices, and so had been unaffected by the blast.
Just over four hours after they’d taken off from the Illustrious, the two aircraft landed back on board.
T’ae’tan Air Base, North Korea
When Kim Yong-Su had explained the reality of the situation to the ‘Dear Leader’, he’d received the most explicit instructions.
Clearly they couldn’t proceed with the invasion. They’d utilized almost all the plutonium in their vaults and, as two of the three EMP weapons had been destroyed, the ability of the South Korean forces to repel them was only slightly affected. To proceed would have virtually guaranteed that the Americans would land troops in South Korea, because obviously the Taep’o-dong bluff hadn’t worked. Within minutes of the attack starting, US Navy aircraft had entered North Korean airspace and destroyed fourteen of their MiG-25s and badly damaged three others, for the loss of just two of the Super Hornets.
With his plans in ruins, the ‘Dear Leader’ was looking for someone to blame, and he didn’t have to look very far. The plan had been suggested and conceived by Pak Je-San, and so its failure was clearly his fault. Which explained why Kim Yong-Su had just landed at T’ae’tan with a squad of soldiers in two Mil Mi-8 transport helicopters.
Twenty minutes after it touched down, one of the helicopters was airborne again, heading north with one extra passenger on board, the man lying bound, gagged and blindfolded on the floor. Fifteen minutes after that, the second aircraft took off and followed the first, a woman and two young children lashed together and secured to one of the fuselage side strakes.
HMS Illustrious, Yellow Sea
‘We paid a very high price, gentlemen,’ Captain Alexander Davidson said, ‘but, thanks to the two of you, I think the end result was better than we had any reason to expect in the circumstances.’ He was standing in the Main Briefing Room, with Roger Black beside him. Dick Long and Richter were slumped in the front row of seats, both looking exhausted.
‘We’ve had confirmation from Seoul,’ Black said. ‘Their patrols found the wreckage of both Harriers on the ground below the site of the airburst. The bodies of Charlie Forbes and Roger Whittard were still strapped in. The initial medical evidence suggests they were killed instantly by the blast when the weapon detonated.
‘According to the latest signals from CINCFLEET, based on American technical intelligence, North Korea’s now abandoned the invasion attempt. They’ve started withdrawing their additional troops from the area close to the DMZ, and their forces appear to be reverting to normal readiness. Despite the detonation of the North Korean nuclear weapon, it looks as if both sides are going to maintain the status quo. It’s possible that the cruise missiles they fired contained their entire supply of plutonium and, without the destructive effects of the EMP to cripple the South Korean forces, they weren’t going to risk proceeding.’
Black glanced at his watch. ‘The bar’s opened already, because of what happened to Charlie and Roger. You should both go down there. The rest of the squadron will want to talk to you about the mission, but be careful how much you tell them. Officially, neither of you ever crossed the DMZ, and all the action took place over South Korea. Sign the bar chits with “Viper”, as it’ll make accounting easier.’
An old Royal Naval tradition is that on the day an officer dies, the entire wardroom drinks on his mess bill, which is then written off.
‘Why not?’ Richter murmured, and stood up.
Office of the Associate Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Langley, Virginia
‘It looks like they’ve given up,’ Muldoon said. ‘The latest pictures show the extra troops dispersing, and there’s noticeably less activity at most of the North Korean bases.’
‘I’ve just got back from the White House, and the President’s decided we’re not going to embark on a military response,’ Hicks replied. ‘Pyongyang has sent an apology for the nuke that detonated over Seoul. They’re claiming that the release was an unauthorized act by a disaffected officer, and officially we’re buying that. They’ve already offered financial reparations for the damage caused, and that includes the two British Harriers that were lost trying to take out the Seersucker.’
‘They’re buying their way out? But North Korea’s virtually bankrupt.’
‘I know, so I guess they’ll just increase their production of hard drugs for a few years to cover the cost. The problem we have is that if we did decide to eliminate that psychopathic dwarf in Pyongyang, we’d either have to use nukes ourselves or get dug in for another Vietnam, and neither option’s politically acceptable in the present climate.’
‘So we wait for the next brilliant plan the little shit comes up with?’
‘I guess so,’ Hicks said, ‘but maybe next time we’ll be better placed to take him down.’
Camp 22, Haengyong, North Hamgyong Province, North Korea
North Korea isn’t a particularly big country, and the flight took only just over an hour. Both helicopters landed a few minutes apart on the square that lies between the armoury and the office of the Camp Director.
Once the rotors had stopped, the prisoners were hustled into the torture and detention centre on the west side of the square. Preparations had been made for their reception, and the order of their arrival had been specified. Pak Je-San was already gagged and strapped to a chair bolted to the floor in front of the clear glass wall of the gas chamber when his wife and two children were led towards the killing room.
The moment he saw them he began pulling at his bonds, but the soldiers who had secured him knew their trade, and his struggles were completely ineffective.
Kim Yong-Su smiled pleasantly at the woman, who was clearly terrified, her hands clutching at her children’s shoulders, and opened the airtight door to usher her inside the chamber. He looked, bizarrely, like a doorman at a good hotel welcoming a favoured guest, and within moments the three of them – Pak Je-San’s wife and his two sons, aged ten and eight – had stepped inside. There was, after all, no other option for them.
The door was sealed and the internal pressure checked. Pak moaned in anguish as his wife stared helplessly at him through the armoured glass, and his eyes filled with tears.
Kim Yong-Su ordered the cameras to start recording – although it was an execution, useful data could still be obtained – then walked across and took the chair beside him. He settled himself comfortably, then nodded to the chief scientist, who started a stopwatch and opened the valve that allowed the gas to flow down the injection tube and into the chamber.
‘We’re using soman,’ Kim remarked in a conversational tone to Pak, who’d closed his eyes and bowed his head as he heard the rush of the injected gas. ‘It shouldn’t take long.’
The gas chamber wasn’t soundproofed, but the thick glass wall served to muffle any sounds from the inside.
When his wife screamed, Pak looked up and stared at her for what he knew would be the last time. His sons had already collapsed, their slight frames twitching involuntarily as the agent wreaked havoc on their nervous systems. Urine and faeces stained their clothes and the grubby metal plates that formed the floor. Then his wife fell backwards and Pak closed his eyes again. That he couldn’t bear to watch.
Four minutes later the gas flow was switched o
ff and the pumps began purging the chamber. Pak looked up again, at the three pathetic bundles that had once been his family, as strong hands began releasing the straps that held him in the chair. Anger burned inside him, but he knew resistance was completely futile.
Three prisoners wearing grey overalls and gas masks opened the door of the chamber and dragged out the bodies. A sharp command brought Pak to his feet, and he shuffled round to the chamber entrance, Kim walking beside him.
‘For you, we’re going to use tabun,’ he explained. ‘It’s not quite as fast-acting as soman, so you’ll have a little more time to suffer.’
Pak Je-San stepped into the chamber and waited for the door to be closed. He’d resolved to simply sit down close to the injection pipe and inhale as deeply as he could, to finish his life quickly.
Behind him he heard a sudden commotion, and looked round in surprise. The door had slammed shut, but Kim Yong-Su was inside the chamber. The government official was yelling and banging on the door, but the smiles on the faces of the men outside told their own story.
And despite himself, Pak began to laugh.
HMS Illustrious, Yellow Sea
The mood in the Wardroom was subdued. Most officers who weren’t on duty were there, standing or sitting in small groups as they discussed the events of the last few hours. Richter was sitting in one corner, half a cup of coffee on the table in front of him, and still wearing flying overalls, a technical breach of etiquette that no one appeared too concerned about. He was wondering if he could be bothered to change before lunch. Or even to eat lunch. All he really wanted to do was sleep.
When the communications rating appeared in the doorway, Richter knew almost instinctively that he was the addressee on the signal the man was holding. He got up, walked over towards him, signed the Classified Documents Register, and ripped open the envelope. The message was short and to the point, and Richter knew immediately that he wasn’t going to be getting much sleep in the near future. Or, at least, not on this ship.
RICHTER, ILLUSTRIOUS. RETURN LONDON IMMEDIATE. OVERRIDE PRIORITY FRANTIC. SIMPSON, FOE.
Thirty minutes later Richter was escorted onto the flight deck by the duty SE rating. They stopped just abeam the Merlin’s cargo door and waited for the pilot, Craig Howe, to give permission for him to board the aircraft. The moment the marshaller waved him forward, he walked across, ducking as he moved under the rotor disk.
As he strapped himself into the seat, about to lift off for Seoul, Richter wondered just what the hell Simpson had got them involved in now. He’d only heard the ‘FRANTIC’ priority code-word used once since he’d been at FOE, and had hoped he’d never hear it again. But, he reflected, leaning back and finally closing his eyes, he supposed he’d find out soon enough.
Author’s note
EMP and the MiG-25 Foxbat
The existence of the electromagnetic pulse caused by the detonation of a nuclear weapon was not suspected by the American scientific community until 9 July 1962, as a direct result of a classified experiment called Starfish Prime, itself part of a series of tests code-named Operation Dominic. Utilizing a Thor launch vehicle carrying a W49 warhead, this was a high-yield – 1.4 megatons – nuclear test conducted at an altitude of around 250 miles over the Pacific Ocean, which had significant, and previously unsuspected, secondary effects.
Some one thousand miles distant in Hawaii, power lines fused; televisions, radios and other electrical equipment burnt out; and hundreds of street lamps failed. On other Pacific islands, microwave links were destroyed, cutting telephone connections. Only when this damage was analysed did American scientists realize the potential damage that a high-altitude nuclear blast could cause to an advanced and technology-dependent society.
The Russians, in contrast, had known about this effect for at least seven years, following their detonation on 22 November 1955 of a 1.6-megaton thermonuclear device code-named RDS-37, and possibly as early as 1953 when they exploded the comparatively low-yield (400 kilotons) Joe 4 weapon.
What is almost certain is that knowledge of the destructive effects of the EMP guided the design of the MiG-25 Foxbat interceptor’s avionics. The Mikoyan-Gurevich bureau’s use of valve technology in this cutting-edge fighter, rather than readily available solid-state electronics, only makes sense in this context.
It is also a fact that there were no existing or planned Western aircraft that could fly at anything like the speed the Foxbat could achieve: one was clocked on radar in the early 1970s by the Israelis at Mach 3.2. Despite this, the MiG-25’s Machmeter was red-lined at Mach 2.5 and, according to Viktor Belenko, if the aircraft’s speed exceeded Mach 2.8 there was a danger the engines would accelerate out of control. This was at least in part because the Tumansky R-15B-300 afterburning turbojets had originally been designed for use in a single-engined and single-use Mach 2+ reconnaissance drone, the Tupolev Tu-123 Yastreb or Hawk.
The Russians have never publicly admitted that the MiG-25 was actually intended to intercept ICBMs, but several unofficial sources have claimed that this was the case.
Camp 22
This is one of about a dozen concentration and slave-labour camps in North Korea, which together hold around 200,000 prisoners. Located near Haengyong in North Hamgyong Province and close to the borders with China and Russia, Camp 22 is the largest, and its description in this novel is accurate.
The ‘crimes’ most of these prisoners have committed would not be considered offences in any other nation. Many are there because they, or one of their relatives, are believed to be critical of the ruling regime or, equally dangerous to Pyongyang, are Christians or support Christianity. And Kim Jong-Il is absolutely determined to stamp out the ‘bad blood’ that causes citizens of his country to entertain such heretical notions: as a matter of course, three entire generations of the criminal’s family will be seized and sent to the North Korean gulag for any such infraction.
Documentary evidence exists that condemned prisoners are transported to Camp 22 by the Pyongyang regime specifically to be used in human experimentation into the effects of poisonous gases and liquids.
These ‘experiments’ range from detailed observations of the effects of newly developed substances in the gas chamber to rough-and-ready executions carried out in the most casual manner. In one reported case, some fifty women were selected at random and fed cabbage leaves laced with an unidentified poison that resulted in them vomiting blood and suffering agonizing deaths within about twenty minutes. In other instances, entire families were gassed simultaneously, the parents desperately trying to protect their children as the lethal concoction began its work.
The gas chamber itself is roughly three metres square and two metres high and primarily made of glass. This allows the ‘doctors’ and ‘scientists’ outside, who film the proceedings and take notes, to have a clear view of the experiments. In this novel I have made one small change in my description: I have described the observation as being made from the side of the gas chamber, whereas the process is normally watched from above, through the glass roof.
Camp 22 holds upwards of 50,000 prisoners. Those who aren’t put in the gas chamber, or tortured to death for the pleasure of the guards, are forced to work on the land or in the nearby Chungbong coal mine. Many there die from their regular beatings or simply through exhaustion because of the appalling conditions.
Women as well as men are sent to this concentration camp and, inevitably, some give birth whilst they are incarcerated. Caring for infants is not a part of the remit of Camp 22, and it has been reliably reported that the guards are instructed to kill all new-born children by stamping on their heads and necks.
Life is hard in the ‘Hermit Kingdom’, but death is harder still.
Glossary
203 Slang term for the American Colt M16A2 5.56mm assault rifle fitted with a 203 grenade launcher clipped under the barrel. This is the preferred weapon of the SAS, whose troopers refuse to use the clumsy and unreliable SA-80, the standard British Army rifle
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AA-6 See ‘Acrid’
ACRB Aircrew Refreshment Bar. Informal snack bar where aircrew can eat and drink before or after a mission
Acrid NATO reporting name for the Russian R-40 air-to-air missile, also known as the AA-6. First constructed in the 1960s, the missile had two variants: the R-40T (infrared homing) and R-40R (semi-active radar homing), and in the late 1970s two longer-range versions, the R-40TD and R-40RD were introduced. Production was discontinued in 1991
ADD Associate Deputy Director of the CIA
Aegis Generic term for the American SPY-1F radar and associated missile launch system installed on ships from several navies. The system is optimized for engaging high-flying, high-speed targets
AEW Airborne Early Warning
AIM-9 Sidewinder. Short-range air-to-air missile
Alpha Russian hunter-killer submarine
ALR-67 Super Hornet Radar Warning Receiver
AMRAAM AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile
An-28 Antonov twin turbo-prop light transport aircraft, NATO reporting name ‘Cash’
An-72 Antonov STOL twin turbofan transport aircraft, NATO reporting name ‘Coaler’
Bagman Slang term for an AEW Sea King observer, after the shape of the inflatable fabric dome covering the modified Searchwater radar that dangles from the side of the aircraft like a large grey pustule
Bergen Standard-issue British Army rucksack
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