Foxbat pr-3

by James Barrington

  The Oval Office wasn’t designed for discussions involving a large number of participants, so only seven people had assembled there. The President and the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Director of National Intelligence were in attendance, as well as Hicks and Muldoon themselves.

  ‘How certain are you of this?’ the President demanded as his opening gambit.

  ‘Right now, we’re not certain of anything, Mr President. The photo interpreters at N-PIC believe the latest images show four nuclear weapon transport vehicles, and they’ve traced one of these back to the vicinity of the nuclear plant at Yongbyon. That proves a truck probably adapted to carry a nuclear warhead was driven to a missile launch site, but it doesn’t prove the truck was ever at Yongbyon, nor that there was ever a missile warhead in it. It’s inevitable that there are always gaps in our satellite surveillance programme, but one picture shot at Mayang does apparently show a warhead attached to the top of the No-dong located on the pad.’

  ‘And what’s your take on this, Don?’

  General Donald Sterling shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Mr President. I don’t doubt that the North Koreans are up to something, but I still find the idea of them threatening a first strike against Japan difficult to believe. And it wouldn’t necessarily work anyway, since we’ve positioned Patriot PAC-3 missiles at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, and those should be able to take out most incoming weapons.’

  ‘“Most” isn’t “all”, General,’ Walter Hicks pointed out.

  ‘Agreed, though they’d probably take account of eighty to ninety per cent of any first strike. But my feeling is that a threat against Japan seems altogether too complex and convoluted. The North Koreans aren’t interested in Japan: they want to grab control of the southern part of the peninsula. So why don’t they just go ahead and invade?’

  ‘Two reasons, General,’ Muldoon broke in sharply. ‘First, they know the contents of Oplan 5027 just as well as we do. They know that if they just mount up and head south, they’ll easily smash through the DMZ and the defences behind it, and maybe even take Seoul. But they also know that we’ll land reinforcements within a couple of weeks, and do our best to push them right back where they came from. And that then our intention will be to take Pyongyang and occupy their nation. That’s indisputable, so if they do want to invade South Korea, and get to stay on there, they’re going to have to be clever and sneaky about it.

  ‘That’s the first reason. The second is that if they do target Japan with nuclear weapons, the Japanese will scream so loudly under threat that we’ll have no option but to back off, to save them from worse. The moment we do that, there’s nothing at all to stop North Korea taking the South, and the missile threat will remain even after they’ve occupied the entire peninsula. If this plan comes off, we could lose South Korea and Japan without a shot being fired in anger, and without being able to do a single thing about it.’

  ‘Of course we can do something about it,’ Sterling snapped. He wasn’t used to being lectured by a civilian – far less a civilian who worked for the fucking CIA – in front of the President of the United States of America. ‘We could take out their missile sites, right now.’

  ‘With what, General?’ Hicks asked. ‘If I recall correctly, the diplomatic moves that we tried earlier didn’t get us anywhere, and the only definite response from Pyongyang was that if they were attacked either by the US or the South Koreans, they would consider it an act of war and respond accordingly. If you send in a strike force from south of the DMZ, or use our own silo-based missiles or bombers, that’s most definitely an act of war against North Korea.

  ‘Unless you can guarantee to eliminate every single missile and aircraft the DPRK owns, before the dust has settled Pyongyang will have launched whatever they’ve got left – nuclear, chemical, biological or otherwise – straight at Seoul and killed half the population of South Korea. And in the eyes of the world it would be our fault for launching an unprovoked attack. We’d be censured by every nation on Earth, and the reparations we’d be forced to pay could bankrupt us.’

  The silence that followed was broken finally by the President himself. ‘Well, General? I think the Agency has made a valid point. Could you actually guarantee to destroy every single North Korean missile and aircraft?’

  ‘Obviously not,’ Sterling muttered, fuming.

  ‘Right,’ the President said crisply, ‘so let’s look at our other options. If a first strike is out, what can we do, apart from just standing by and watching? Mr Hicks?’

  The ADD had expected this question, but hadn’t anticipated that he himself would be the one it was directed at. ‘I’m an intelligence professional, Mr President, not a military officer. Therefore I’m not the best-qualified person to answer you.’

  ‘No, but I’d still be grateful for your input.’

  Hicks ran through the options in his head. ‘Well, I think we should maintain our present high state of alert. That means keeping the bombers in the air and the missiles at short notice for release, and we should tell Pyongyang that we’re doing so. I think that’s important because it will show them that we’re not going to let them get away with any offensive actions. I’d also suggest sending a couple of Aegis cruisers to the Sea of Japan as soon as possible, to engage any missiles the North Koreans do decide to launch.’

  Sterling interrupted him. ‘The Enterprise Carrier Battle Group includes the Leyte and McFaul, both Aegis guided-missile destroyers. But the Japanese have four Kongõ-class destroyers, a modified version of our Arleigh Burke design with the same system on board, and they’re currently a lot closer.’

  The President shook his head. ‘Sorry, Don, I’ve already talked to the Japanese Prime Minister, and he’s not prepared to commit any of his own forces at the moment. He doesn’t want to risk provoking Pyongyang, and he thinks stationing a couple of Japanese destroyers close enough to the east coast of North Korea to intercept missile launches would be seen as provocative. I might not agree with his position on this, but I can’t argue with that reasoning. Anything else, Walter?’

  ‘We’ll also need the military ready to roll in case the North Koreans do decide to cross the DMZ. I presume you’ve already organized reinforcement troops, General?’

  Sterling nodded. ‘Of course, but the logistics of the situation mean it will still be several more days before the first ships are ready to sail, and then they obviously have to make a lengthy transit.’

  ‘How long?’ the President demanded. ‘The last briefing I received suggested two weeks in total.’

  ‘We can probably improve slightly on that, sir. The latest estimate is ten days from today to the first of our reinforcement troops landing in South Korea.’

  ‘So if Pyongyang decided to mount a conventional invasion and troops crossed the DMZ tomorrow, say, there’d be nothing we could do to stop them, and we wouldn’t have enough reinforcements on the peninsula to start pushing them back for nearly two weeks. We’d expect our subsequent campaign to occupy North Korea to last a minimum of a month, assuming, of course, that neither side resorted to the use of nuclear weapons or other WMD. And that’s presuming we could manage to dig the North Korean forces out of their bunkers.’

  ‘That’s a fair summary, sir,’ Sterling responded, ‘though we could certainly use the bombers out of Andersen to slow their advance. The Korean terrain means that any war in the peninsula is going to be won or lost on the ground. Air superiority helps, obviously, but it’s not the decisive factor that it would be in, say, a European or Middle Eastern conflict.

  ‘The timescale for our campaign in response to an invasion is a real flexible feast because the question of WMD adds a different dimension. The use of these weapons could radically affect the outcome of any campaign in Korea. Whether or not the Agency’s right in its belief’ – Sterling’s tone clearly suggested that he considered this a very remote possibility – ‘that Pyongyang is trying to play some complicated game using nuclear black
mail to neutralize our likely response, we do already know that the country has the capability to detonate nuclear weapons.’

  ‘We’re not yet convinced,’ Hicks interjected, ‘that the missile they fired was actually carrying the weapon that exploded.’

  ‘Nor am I,’ Sterling agreed, ‘but I don’t believe we can dismiss the possibility. This is a difficult assessment, sir, but we do know the North Koreans have produced working chemical munitions small enough to be delivered by artillery pieces, so they clearly have some expertise in the field. And that’s another factor. Their chemical agents include adam-site, phosgene, prussic acid, sarin, tabun and several variants of the mustard gas used back in the First World War. We believe they’ve got at least five thousand tons of chemical munitions in storage, mainly in mountain tunnels that are invulnerable to attack except from something like a cruise missile. And we probably wouldn’t want to hit them because of the risk of spreading the very agent we’re trying to destroy.

  ‘They’ve done less work on biological weapons because of the danger to their own population if they deployed them, but we do know they’ve developed weaponized strains of anthrax, bubonic plague, cholera, smallpox and yellow fever. Because we don’t know exactly how they’ve engineered these bioweapons, we can’t develop vaccines or inoculate our forces against them, so we’d have to rely on full NBCD suits and masks for protection. And that would make the physical fighting of this war a lot more difficult – the suits are effective, but they’re very cumbersome, and the masks can cause problems with communication systems.’

  ‘Are you really saying we might not win a war against them, if it came to that?’ the President asked.

  ‘No, sir. We have the technology and the resources to defeat them, that’s not in doubt, but it won’t be easy. The North Korean conventional forces are imposing enough. Add their probable willingness to scatter chemical and biological munitions over the battlefield, or even use nuclear weapons, especially if they’re being forced to retreat, and you’ll appreciate that we could face a long, bloody and very costly campaign. If we do end up fighting another war in Korea, my personal belief is that we should be thinking at least in terms of months, not weeks, before we could bring it to a conclusion. And it could very easily turn into another Vietnam.’

  The last sentence clearly hadn’t pleased the President. ‘So what do you suggest?’

  ‘I think we may have to consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons at an early stage in the conflict, preferably after the North Koreans have employed some kind of weapon of mass destruction, so that America will be seen as defending South Korea against an unprovoked attack, but we should also be prepared to use them in a first strike, as that should ensure the campaign will be finished quickly, with a minimum loss of American or South Korean lives.’

  The President turned in his seat to look at the Secretary of Defense. ‘Do you agree with that assessment?’

  ‘I’ve no doubt the general’s right about Pyongyang’s chemical and biological arsenal, and I believe they’d resort to using any and all weapons at their disposal if they thought they were losing the war. I think we should be prepared to employ whatever force is necessary to stop a North Korean attack, and that should include tactical and possibly even strategic nuclear weapons.’

  ‘What about the first strike option?’

  The Secretary of Defense shook his head firmly. ‘No, Mr President. On that subject I have to agree with the Agency’s recommendation. If we initiate a conflict, America will be reviled and there would be the most severe international repercussions. My view is that we should certainly be prepared to use whatever weapons we have, but only in response to an attack initiated by Pyongyang.’

  ‘So what do we do right now?’

  ‘I suggest, Mr President,’ said General Sterling, ‘we continue with our plans to reinforce the troops we already have stationed in South Korea. I also think we should ensure that Pyongyang is fully informed that we’re doing so. We should meanwhile keep our homeland ICBMs at a high alert state, and keep the bombers from Andersen airborne, with fighter support, and close enough to North Korea that they’re painting on their surveillance radars. And then we wait for the gooks to either finish this exercise they’re allegedly running, or begin whatever the hell else they’ve got in mind.’

  Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) Complex, Malmstrom Air Force Base, Great Falls, Cascade County, Montana

  As the alarm bell rang again in the missile control capsule, Major Richard Whitman reached out for the red telephone with some trepidation. The keys were inserted and turned to the ‘ready’ position, and the Emergency Action Message had been authenticated. The next logical step would be the launch itself.

  Known as the ‘release’ message, the Nuclear Control Order is the last instruction given before actual firing of the missile, but is subject to additional verification. A second missile control crew in one of the squadron’s other four launch capsules must conduct the same sequence of checks on all the various messages received. Any crew in the squadron can thus delay the launch of a missile if they believe the order to be invalid.

  This delay lasts only for a fairly short period, after which the veto is automatically cancelled, but it can be applied as many times as is desired, and a single crew could therefore effectively prevent the launch from taking place.

  Finally, to release the missiles, the two officers have to turn their keys to the launch setting simultaneously and hold them there for at least five seconds. This is the reason for the wide separation of the two control positions, as the keys are simply too far apart for one man to turn them both at the same time.

  ‘Stand by for Nuclear Control Order,’ said the voice on the telephone. ‘Prepare to copy. Nuclear Control Order is code Foxtrot Lima Charlie Two Six Two Seven. Read back.’

  ‘Roger, Command,’ Whitman said. ‘I copy Nuclear Control Order code Foxtrot Lima Charlie Two Six Two Seven.’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  Dave Fredericks already had the Emergency War Order folder open, and was running a stubby finger down the list of Nuclear Control Order codes – the so-called ‘Gold Codes’ – all of which have seven digits.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Foxtrot Lima Charlie Two Six Two Seven decodes as “Bring all missiles to Alert Fifteen, and hold at fifteen minutes to launch”. At least we’re not at war yet,’ he added.

  ‘Not quite,’ Whitman replied, ‘but we’re sure as hell getting closer. OK, you heard the man. Start bringing them to the boil.’

  Oval Office, White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC

  The Secretary of Defense replaced the telephone handset and turned round. ‘Offutt reports our ICBMs are now at launch minus fifteen minutes, Mr President.’

  ‘Let’s hope they stay there, as I don’t much like this,’ the President said, to nobody in particular. ‘We seem to be waiting now on Pyongyang and, if the Agency’s right, when they do decide to jump, there might not be a lot we can do about it.’ He turned back to Walter Hicks, who was refilling his coffee cup from one of the silver pots the stewards had brought in fifteen minutes earlier. ‘We’ve looked at a nuclear blackmail attempt before, Walter, so how credible do you think this threat is against Japan? Does the Agency feel sure the North Koreans could possess warheads small enough to be carried by their short-range missiles?’

  ‘It’s credible enough to take seriously, Mr President. They’ve been working on their atomic weapons programme for a long time now. Back in the fall of ninety-eight two nuclear weapons were tested at Ras Koh and Wazir Khan Koh in the Kharan Desert in Pakistan. At that time, Pakistan couldn’t possibly have produced enough plutonium from its research reactor at Pinstech to create one nuclear device, let alone two. So we believe those tests were joint ventures between North Korea and Pakistan, with Pyongyang – or rather Yongbyon – supplying the fissionable material and most of the technology. That’s why we believed they had a credible nuclear capability even before that Pacific explosio
n, and that’s why we should take them seriously now.’

  ‘And you think their intention is genuinely to target Japan?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’ Hicks shook his head in a helpless gesture. ‘All I can tell you is that we think they must certainly have a fairly small nuclear arsenal. If they were going to fire weapons across the DMZ into South Korea, we would expect them to use their southerly missile bases, and shorter-range weapons like the Scud B or Hwasong 5 and 6. All three of those can reach the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula, and they’ve got maybe seven or eight hundred altogether, easily enough to ensure some would get past our Patriot batteries. They’d probably launch non-nuclear missiles to overwhelm the Patriots, and then fire their missiles armed with nuclear warheads towards the end of the barrage. And, of course, there’d be no way of our telling what each missile was carrying until it detonated.

  ‘Preparing to launch nuclear-tipped No-dong missiles from places like Mayang and Ok’pyong only makes sense if they’re planning to fire them in an easterly or south-easterly direction. And the only target that’s out there is Japan.’

  ‘You seem to be forgetting something, Mr Hicks,’ the Secretary of Defense interrupted. ‘The No-dong has a fairly limited range, and the shortest straight-line distance from North Korea to Japan – or at least to Kyūshū, on Japan’s south-west tip – is directly over the southern end of the Korean Peninsula. If Pyongyang was really trying to threaten Japan, they would be more likely to load the nuclear warheads on missiles at their southernmost bases, which lie just north of the DMZ.’

  Hicks shook his head again. ‘I disagree, Mr Secretary. As I’ve just said, if they fired their missiles directly over South Korea, the Patriot batteries would certainly be able to take out some of them. Pyongyang knows we’ve got Patriots there, even if they don’t know their exact locations. To avoid that risk, if they are targeting Japan, launching their missiles on a south-easterly trajectory from bases well to the north of the DMZ is the only strategy that makes sense. That way they’d avoid the Patriots, and once they’re in the air we’ve got nothing that can stop them. I don’t have too much confidence in the effectiveness of the PAC-3 batteries on Okinawa, because the best time to intercept an ICBM is during the boost phase, not after the missile’s re-entry.’