‘Land-based missile forces are fully briefed and their alert status has been increased from ninety minutes’ notice to sixty minutes’ for launch. Of the five hundred Minuteman Three missiles, only twenty-three have been reported as unserviceable. Eighteen of these have minor software or other faults, which have been assessed as capable of rectification within six hours. Five have major faults, which would take over thirty hours to fix.’
‘That’s not a bad turnout,’ Winchester interrupted. ‘Where are those missiles with major faults located?’
Neuberger paused for barely a second before replying. ‘One each at F E Warren and Minot, and three at Malmstrom in Montana. Interestingly,’ he added, ‘the minor faults are similarly spread – three at F E Warren, five at Minot and the other ten at Malmstrom.’
‘OK, we’ll make a note of that. It sounds like somebody at Malmstrom’s falling down on the job, so maybe I’ll send a few no-notice inspection teams over to Montana once this party’s over. What about the bombers?’
‘Barksdale is reporting four per cent of their B-52s unserviceable, and Minot has three per cent out of action. Whiteman reports only one B-2 unserviceable. On Guam, which is probably where our immediate response would originate if the North Koreans do decide to cross the line, Andersen reports all aircraft serviceable.’
‘So, in summary, we’re in pretty good shape,’ Winchester concluded. ‘Let’s hope we don’t have to take this all the way to the wire.’
MV Kang San 3, North Pacific Ocean
It had been, by any standards, an unusual voyage.
The two three-thousand-ton cargo ships – the Kang San 5 was in company – had sailed from Wonsan over a month earlier. They’d each had their normal complement embarked, but both were additionally crewed by ten soldiers, all under the command of a chung-yong, or lieutenant-colonel, on the Kang San 3. All the military personnel had been armed, and the ships’ captains had been visited at Wonsan by a senior government official and been instructed to obey their orders without question.
A week before the ships sailed, an armed convoy had appeared at the Wonsan dockyard and a large crate had been loaded into the forward hold of the Kang San 3. The hold had then been locked, and a relay of soldiers posted on guard outside.
The ships had headed south into the East China Sea, passed east of the island of Taiwan, and continued south to Legaspi in the Philippines. They’d taken on maximum fuel and off-loaded most of their cargo of cement, embarked several hundred bales of cloth destined for merchants in Papua New Guinea, and sailed again.
Their next port of call had been Lae, on the east coast of that island. Once the cloth had been unloaded and they’d again filled their bunkers, the two ships had set off without embarking any fresh cargo. They’d steamed north-east through Micronesia, past the Marshall Islands and on across the open expanse of the Pacific Ocean to Honolulu. After refuelling, they sailed again, heading east-north-east in the general direction of Los Angeles. They kept well clear of all the main shipping routes, because that was the way the planners in Pyongyang wanted it.
When they reached a position about fifteen hundred nautical miles north-east of Hawaii, the captain of the Kang San 3 was handed a sealed envelope by the chung-yong.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said, as he read the orders a second time.
‘You don’t have to, captain,’ chung-yong Lee Kyung-Soon replied. ‘All you have to do is obey. Do you have any questions about your instructions?’
‘No, but—’
Lee shook his head. ‘Then we understand each other. Order your crew to prepare to abandon ship immediately.’ Through the bridge window he pointed at the Kang San 5, a quarter of a mile off the starboard bow, which was visibly slowing down in preparation to receive the crew of her sister ship. ‘I will join you myself once I’ve completed my final tasks on board.’
As the captain made a broadcast to alert the crew for action, Lee headed down the companionway from the bridge and made his way to the forward hold. The two soldiers on guard outside saluted him as he approached, and unlocked the watertight steel door. Inside the hold, he headed across to a wooden crate that was the only thing the cargo space now contained, loosened six turn-buckles that held one of its sides in place, and dropped the panel to the floor.
In the crate was a bulky spherical object trailing wires and cables, with a basic control panel partially obscuring it, apparently inactive, since none of the lights was illuminated. On the floor of the crate were two large dry-cell batteries, terminals already connected, with a series-fitted master-switch screwed to the side of the crate.
Lee reached inside and turned the switch. Immediately the control panel sprang to life, lights illuminating and dials registering. He checked the instrumentation against a printed list clipped below the panel, then began running through a series of actions to ensure that all the circuits were fully functional.
Satisfied that the instrumentation was registering correctly, he moved to the second and final phase of his task. He turned his attention to a small alphanumeric keyboard located directly below a ten-inch TFT panel and fed in a six-digit code that he’d been instructed to memorize at his last briefing in Pyongyang. The panel lit up and a menu appeared that Lee methodically worked his way down.
The penultimate item on the list was a communication check, and Lee simply selected ‘radio’ and checked that the built-in receiver was getting a signal from the Kang San 5, where the lieutenant had been instructed to broadcast music on a specific frequency. The tiny speaker immediately began emitting sounds definitely not to Lee’s taste, but that didn’t matter.
He keyed the frequency he’d been instructed to use, and checked twice to ensure that he’d got it right. That done, he made a final visual check of the entire apparatus before he turned away and walked out.
On deck, he opened his briefcase and extracted a satellite telephone and GPS receiver. He noted the position the GPS was recording, then made a thirty-second telephone call, before making his way towards the waiting lifeboat.
Forty minutes later, the Kang San 5 began a slow turn to the west, towards the distant Midway Islands, and began picking up speed, leaving her deserted sister ship now dead and silent, wallowing in the long swell.
HMS Illustrious, Yellow Sea
The flight deck of the Illustrious was a scene of noisy, but clearly organized, chaos. Without ear defenders, the roar of jet engines was deafening, and Richter’s nostrils immediately filled with the unmistakable smell of burning kerosene. Two Sea Harriers were waiting at the aft end of the deck, their Pegasus engines running, and both still with telebrief lines connected, so Richter guessed their pilots were getting last-minute instructions from the Operations Room. On the deck in front of them, the Merlin that had served as his personal taxi was shutting down, rotors folding into the fully aft position preparatory to the helicopter being towed over to the starboard side of the deck, close to the island, to clear the carrier’s runway for the Harriers. Meanwhile, right forward, on zero spot just to the right of the ramp, another Merlin was waiting to lift off.
Waiting for him at the bulkhead door in the island – the steel structure containing the bridge, Flyco and other offices on the starboard side of the deck – was a lieutenant wearing 3J rig, a dark blue ‘woolly-pully’ over a white shirt. He led Richter up to Flyco, on the port side rear of the bridge. In fact, Richter knew the way blindfolded, as he’d spent around four years at sea on all three of the CVS carriers when he was a squadron pilot, and on numerous occasions had been required to report to either Commander (Air) or Lieutenant Commander (Flying) and, during Sea Harrier operations, both officers were to be found in Flyco.
‘Mr Richter, sir,’ the lieutenant announced, and a bulky man with a heavy beard, sitting in the right-hand chair, swung round, the three rings on his shoulder epaulettes glinting in the sun. In front of him, the ship’s Lieutenant Commander (Flying) was sitting in another black swivel chair, controlling flight-deck operations.
‘Welcome back, Spook,’ said Roger Black. ‘I wondered if the “Mr Richter” we had been asked to collect from Kunsan would turn out to be you.’
Richter smiled and extended his hand. ‘Congratulations on your promotion, Blackie.’ When he’d last seen Black – during a spot of continuation training in the eastern Med that had turned into rather more than the routine two weeks – he’d been Lieutenant Commander (Flying) on board the Invincible.
‘So what kind of trouble are we in this time?’ Black asked. ‘Whenever you’re around, uncivilized things seem to happen. There were a few bodies lying about on Crete after you left the island, I understand.’
‘They weren’t all my fault, Blackie, and this time none of it’s my fault.’
‘It seems you know this gentleman?’ a voice interrupted. Black stood up and Richter turned round to face the captain, a tall, slim, fair-haired man with thin lips and a nose that even an ancient Roman might have considered excessively aquiline.
‘Yes, sir, we met on board the Invincible when I was Little F.’
‘Welcome aboard, Mr Richter. I’m Alexander Davidson.’ The captain extended his hand. ‘I gather you’ve some information for us about what’s going on north of the border.’
Richter nodded, with a glance round Flyco before replying. As well as the three senior officers, a naval airman was sitting waiting to execute Little F’s instructions and control the deck lights, and just beyond Flyco, on the left-hand side of the bridge wing, a lookout was standing with binoculars hung around his neck. From past experience Richter knew that rumours spread on warships at almost the speed of light, and what he had to tell the captain now probably shouldn’t be allowed too wide a distribution.
‘Could we perhaps adjourn to the Bridge Mess, Captain?’
Davidson raised his eyebrows slightly, but nodded. He walked back onto the bridge to inform the Officer of the Watch where he’d be, then returned to Flyco and led the way down one deck. Richter and Black followed him into the Mess and the commander slid the door closed.
‘Well, Mr Richter?’
‘I probably don’t know a great deal more than you do because I’ve spent most of the last two days in the air.’
‘Where were you two days ago?’ Black asked.
‘Pretty much in the middle of Russia at a place called Slavgorod North. I was with a GRU general trying to find out who’d stolen about half a squadron of MiG-25 Foxbat interceptors from the Russian Air Force.’
‘And did you?’
‘I think so, yes. We believe Pyongyang coordinated the thefts and that the aircraft are now somewhere in North Korea, probably sitting in hardened shelters close to the DMZ. We also think a theft of around fifty AA-6 Acrid air-to-air missiles from a depot in Dobric, Bulgaria, was orchestrated by the same people. Bolt the Acrids to the under-wing pylons of the Foxbats and you’ve got a very potent weapon system.’
‘Agreed,’ Black observed, ‘but even if the North Koreans have, what, twenty Foxbats loaded for bear, as the Americans would say, that’s still only a tiny number of aircraft in relation to their known air assets. I don’t see why the Foxbats would pose too much of a threat, simply because of the aircraft the South Koreans can operate. So why are you here, and why is everyone so worked up about this business?’
‘I’m here,’ Richter said, ‘because this is where my boss wants me to be, and I don’t have too much say in the matter. But the worry shared by SIS and the Americans is that possession of those Foxbats might encourage the North Koreans to escalate this into a nuclear conflict. And the reason we think that is simple – EMP, electromagnetic pulse.’
Briefly, he explained the design of the MiG-25. Then Davidson asked him almost exactly the same question as Bae Chang-Su had done in Seoul, and Richter gave him virtually the same answer.
‘Are you seriously suggesting the North Koreans will use nuclear weapons?’
‘I really don’t know, but it’s difficult to come up with any other valid reason for them stealing the Foxbats. The aircraft is old – even obsolete – but it’s the only interceptor in the Korean Peninsula that could survive the EMP after a nuclear detonation, and still function. And that’s what’s worrying both London and Washington.’
Ok’pyong missile base, North Korea
The Taep’o-dong 2 missile sitting on the launch pad at Ok’pyong had taken the North Koreans almost a year to prepare.
Like its predecessor, the Taep’o-dong 1, its first two stages were liquid-fuelled, but the third stage was powered by a solid-fuel motor. That also contained the payload, and designing that was what had taken the most time. The device sitting at the top of the forty-six-metre-high ballistic missile was special in every way, and designed for a single purpose. As far as the North Korean scientists were aware, it was the first, and quite probably the last, such ‘warhead’ ever constructed.
Alongside the launch pad a servicing gantry had been erected, and white-coated technicians swarmed over it, checking that everything was properly secured and ready for the launch. The final procedure, before the countdown began, was to load the fuel tanks of the first two stages, and for that manoeuvre everybody left the pad apart from the fire crews and a mere handful of other essential personnel.
Four hours later, the Taep’o-dong 2 sat ready. The pad was now deserted apart from the armed guards posted to ensure nobody approached it, and the countdown began in a blast-proof concrete bunker half a mile from the site.
T’ae’tan Air Base, North Korea
Pak Je-San gazed around the hangar with some small satisfaction. The maintainers had by now got two of the unserviceable Foxbats into flying condition, which was a better result than he’d secretly hoped. He now had seven MiG-25s operational here at T’ae’tan and twenty-two in total, including the aircraft he’d dispersed to the other three airfields.
Even better news was that the forty-eight R-40T missiles his agents had stolen from Dobric had arrived the previous day at the port of Bandar Abbas in Iran, and would be flown from there direct to T’ae’tan. They were scheduled to arrive within hours, before being distributed to the other airfields. That would give them a combined arsenal of over one hundred and sixty missiles and that, Pak Je-San felt confident, was more than enough. If they then ran out of munitions, the war would already be lost.
Oval Office, White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC
‘Not exactly a surprise, then?’
‘No, Mr President,’ agreed the Secretary of Defense, walking across the Oval Office and placing a sheaf of papers on the supreme commander’s mahogany desk. He’d just flown back from an emergency session of the United Nations’ Security Council in New York. The President had known the Secretary of Defense for years and trusted his judgement more than almost anyone else in his own administration.
‘What did they say, exactly?’
‘Just what the CIA expected. That all the manoeuvres the NKs are currently carrying out are part of this exercise they claim to be running.’
The President leant back in his seat and steepled his fingers, then abruptly sat forward again. ‘Are we reading more into this than we should? Could it really be just a routine exercise?’
The Secretary of Defense shook his head decisively. ‘I suppose there’s about a one per cent chance that we’re mistaken, but I believe the evidence is unambiguous. North Korea is gearing up for a push south across the DMZ.’
‘I’ve been briefed by the Joint Chiefs already, but what’s your take on this? If the Agency is right, what can we do to stop them? Do we have enough forces in South Korea to counter an outright invasion?’
The Secretary of Defense shook his head. ‘There’s no way of stopping a North Korean advance, because they outnumber the South in armour, battlefield artillery and also men. That’s always been acknowledged as a virtual certainty. What they lack is support and supply chains in depth, so they could certainly get their forces some way into South Korea, but they wouldn’t be able to sustain their advance or cons
olidate their positions, and eventually we’d be able to push them back across the DMZ. The one-liner here is that the North Koreans can start a war, but they can’t finish one.’
‘I don’t want them to start a war. We’ve got enough problems in the Middle East as it is.’
‘If they did cross the DMZ it would give us the excuse we need to take out the leadership in Pyongyang.’
The President shook his head. ‘I know, but the timing’s not right and we’re stretched thinly enough as it is. Right, let’s review the evidence that the North Koreans are planning something.’
‘I do believe it’s convincing, Mr President. The satellite imagery shows definite manoeuvres by their troops, and the Eighth Army is now operating several Shadow 200 unmanned aerial vehicles over the DMZ. They fly at between ten and fourteen thousand feet and they’re pretty much invisible at that altitude. They’ve now been redeployed to cover areas further north and the data they’ve collected support the satellite pictures. We’ve also flown them over the nuclear plant at Yongbyon and other sensitive sites, and we’ve been using Guardrail Common Sensor systems close to the DMZ.’
‘Guardrail?’
‘It’s an airborne communications and signals intelligence system – COMINT and SIGINT – developed by the NSA, and it’s recorded a marked increase in radio and signal traffic in the area. Now, none of this conclusively proves that the North Koreans are planning an invasion, but collectively it certainly suggests they’re planning something.
‘As you know, sir, we’ve normally no direct contact with Pyongyang, so we’ve used the strongest diplomatic language we could at the UN, and told them we’d retaliate if any of their troops moved across the DMZ. We just got a bunch of blank stares from the delegation and a repeat of the It’s all an exercise bullshit. They said if their troops did cross into or through the DMZ it would only be because of navigation errors in the heat of the exercise, and therefore they urged that no retaliation be considered.’
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