Third World War

by Unknown

  Fan was on his feet, too, dropping his pack of cigarettes into the top pocket of his shirt. 'You have a right to be angry,' he said with an edge of sympathy in his voice. 'You have lost your son. I am sorry. A father and a son have a sacred bond. You are a brave man to have called this meeting in your grief.'

  Fan could have left the room then. But he was a more decent man than Chen. He had seen his own father killed in the Cultural Revolution and he understood that mob killing on the street was different from the slaughter of men on the battlefield.

  'I do not agree with Chen's methods,' continued Fan. It was an unexpected admission. 'Whether he designed it like this, I do not know. The events that have brought us here are military. Yet we are men of politics and diplomacy. I do not like our allegiance to Park Ho. I do not approve of biological warfare. But I did approve of Memed's coming here because of his influence in the Islamic world. And I do agree with Chen's analysis. If we keep our nerve we will emerge from this stronger. Chen is right. It is not a time for compromise.'

  'Thank you,' said Song. The reality he faced was ungraspable and he handled it by answering quickly and quietly. 'I will negotiate with Washington along the guidelines we have discussed.'

  He took time underscoring the points he had noted down, while Fan put on his coat. Yan showed him out and pressed the lift button. Song got up and stood by the window, seeing his reflection in the glass, superimposed on a glimmer of dawn light in the sky. The owner of the building was not there. He watched Fan get into the lift. Yan shifted his weight. For a moment, Song thought that Yan would leave as well. But the lift doors closed, and Yan came back into the room, poured himself a coffee and sat down.

  'I need to speak to Andrei Kozlov,' said Song.

  'I'll arrange it.' said Yan. 'One hour from now?'

  Song nodded. Yan pulled a phone from his pocket, but as he was about to dial a number, he noticed a warning light flashing and the phone vibrating.

  'Yes,' he said sharply, glancing down to get a pencil and paper, then not bothering. 'We're on our way,' he said, ending the call and turning towards Song. 'That was Chen,' he said. 'North Korea has launched four Taepodong-2 missiles at the United States.'

  ****

  69*

  ****

  Washington, DC, USA*

  'Confirmed, sir,' said Pierce, his voice barely a whisper but the sound carrying to everyone in the room.

  'Warheads?'

  'No way of telling.'

  'Trajectory?'

  'Not certain at present. The western seaboard,' said Pierce. 'Way beyond Hawaii.'

  Jim West sat transfixed, staring at the screen in the White House situation room. His silence, lasting only a few seconds, was fathomless. Kozerski, Pierce, Newman, Campbell, Patton and others stood in a circle, but several feet behind him, giving him space to think. The screen flickered and picked up images of the missiles. It was unable to agree on data between radar and satellites, so the picture, jumping and blurred, was unsettled.

  'Strike back,' ordered West.

  'Launch,' said Pierce, shifting away, and issuing his instructions in a low voice. 'Malmstrom - five Minuteman 111s - yes. Toksong-gun, Dukchun, Kanggye, Mangyongdae and Kanggamchan.'

  The screen divided. The pictures tracking the missiles remained unsteady. The cameras on the silos at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana, relayed images in clear colour.

  'One hundred and five seconds,' said Pierce. 'Moving out of the boost phase.' He turned to West. 'We will not be attempting a boost-phase intercept. We have nothing in the area.'

  To hit a missile in the boost phase, the interceptor missile needed to be within 150 miles of the launch site. Toksong-gun, embedded deep in a mountain range, was sixty miles from the nearest coastline, and no American-equipped warship was close.

  The launch site was also only fifty miles from the Chinese border.

  After the boost phase, the missile would take twenty-five minutes to reach its target. Satellite data from tracking the trajectories of the missiles was being deciphered and coordinated with information from long-range radars working out of the United States, Greenland and the United Kingdom. Computers were calculating the best early point to take out the missiles. If the first attempt failed, a second wave of missiles would be launched as a back-up.

  The missile-defence technology had been debated and tested for more than three decades. It was still embryonic and it had never been used for real. The four missiles, travelling as if in a convoy, changed colour as they broke out of the earth's atmosphere. From silos in Alaska, sixteen interceptor missiles were launched against them.

  'Decoys?' said West.

  'We don't think there are any,' replied Pierce. 'They've thrown everything they've got at us.'

  'Evacuations?'

  'Rescue and health personnel are on standby,' said Patton. 'But they don't know what for.'

  'Good,' said West. 'To evacuate would be to surrender.'

  His attention turned back to the other screen, where a flare of light wrapped in smoke pouring from the ground indicated that the first Minuteman 111 was being launched. For a second it seemed to falter, hanging in the air, the flames lighting up the bleak, brown landscape around it. Then it picked up, becoming a speck trailed by a graceful arc of smoke. Three more Minuteman 111s launched, one after the other, their outer shells almost fifty years old but their software, engineering, guidance and fuel systems constantly updated and modernized. Never before had they been used to strike an enemy country.

  'Thirty-three minutes,' said Pierce. 'These are single-vehicle with 5-kiloton warheads. Low yield, and only military targets.'

  'Low yield,' repeated West, wondering if he was being too cautious again. Caution and compromise had brought things to where they were now. Each time, he had thought there was a way through, but each time his delay had escalated the risk.

  'Tell the Chinese,' said West. He turned in his chair. 'Chris, straight through to their command and control. And the Russians.'

  'Sir,' said Patton.

  'Yes, Tom?'

  'Six simultaneous suicide bombings.'

  'Oh shit.'

  'Baltimore. San Francisco. Denver. Elizabethtown, that's in Pennsylvania, Southampton on Long Island. Dallas . . . hold on.' West watched the missiles from Alaska reposition themselves towards the Taepodong-2s. 'This from Downing Street, sir. They have bombings in Piccadilly Circus, London, and Birmingham.'

  'Smallpox?' asked West, as if a suicide bombing without the variola major virus would be fine - just an everyday event.

  'Don't know yet - ' he listened to the incoming call. 'OK. Stand by. Mr President, we have an ID on the Times Square bomber. His working name is Hassan Muda. He escaped the Philippines with Ahmed Memed . . . OK, go on. Give me all of it,' said Patton. 'Get those pictures over here soonest. Yes. And Muda. Yes. Incontrovertible . . . Yes. No. It has to be something we can release to every government, every network, every . . . you got it. Good.'

  Patton kept the line open, but concealed his voice from the caller. 'Ahmed Memed is in Beijing. He is under the protection of the Chairman of the Military Commission, Chen Jianxiong. He is inside Zhongnanhai. Muda is also the prime suspect in the mortar attacks on Mehta's house.'

  'As soon as we've hit North Korea, I need to speak to Kozlov,' said West. 'What are the casualties, Tom?'

  'Still coming in. Dallas, at least thirty dead. San Fransico, forty. Elizabethtown, three. Should know more in a couple of minutes.'

  West's gaze fixated back on the screen, where the four North Korean missiles and the sixteen American ones were getting closer to each other.

  'Kill vehicles primed,' said Pierce.

  The image showed the small front end of the interceptor missiles breaking away from the rockets to seek out their targets. They would fly independently, guided by their own avionics, constantly updated by radar and satellite computer data. Their task was to identify the enemy warheads and destroy them.

  'Three failures,' said Pierce. His
tone was level, as if he did not expect the defence system to work perfectly. Three kill vehicles had failed to separate. The technology was still brand new, and at extreme temperatures, flying at five miles per second, this was one of the most common test problems.

  'Thirteen left,' muttered West.

  'What the--?' exclaimed Pierce, as four interceptor missiles veered off, away from the targets. He glanced down at West, but the President was absorbed in the screen. There was nothing he could do now. 'Back-up launched,' said Pierce.

  'Strike one,' said Kozerski from the back of the room. The closest person to him was Lazaro Campbell and he slapped him on the back, looking round to see who else was joining in the brief celebration. Newman smiled. West didn't move. Patton, while missiles were heading towards American soil, was only interested in suicide bombings. 'Variola major detected in Elizabethtown,' he said. Kozerski and Campbell listened as if a knife had sliced through their euphoria.

  Another interceptor knocked out a Taepodong-2. 'Strike two,' whispered Kozerski.

  'Caroline . . . Tom Patton . . . Elizabethtown . . . Yes . . . Can you get there? Good. Let me know soonest. We'll alert the Harrisburg hospital, and we should assume it's in the other target areas.'

  On the screen, two Taepodong-2 missiles remained in flight. 'A couple of minutes should give us a clear,' said Pierce.

  'Any more launches?' said West.

  'Negative, sir,' said Pierce. 'Third stage.' The main missile sections fell away, leaving the smaller third-stage solid-fuel rockets and the warheads moments away from re-entry into the earth's atmosphere. 'It's going to be close,' said the Defense Secretary.

  'Oh my God,' said Kozerski.

  All but two of the interceptor missiles veered off towards the now defunct second stage of the Taipodong-2s. Each of the four back-up missiles followed, taking a trajectory that would let them gain ground not on the incoming enemy missiles but on the interceptors.

  'What's going on?' asked West.

  'God knows,' said Pierce. He pressed his headset button. 'Can you correct it? . . . I know it's a guidance malfunction,' he shouted, 'but can you fix it?'

  'Shit,' muttered Kozerski, as the kill vehicle of an interceptor broke away and destroyed another interceptor.

  'They said it could never happen,' said Pierce, shaking his head.

  There was complete silence in the room, no longer from concentration, nor from hope that things could ever get back to normal. It lasted well past the break in the line of defence. Someone should have spoken, but no one wanted to. The satellites and radar were confused because they were not meant to follow the missile as far as this. The picture jumped and skewed. The target coordinates flipped over like stock prices, as computers tried to calculate where the warheads might land. Patriot missiles were fired. One hit its target. One North Korean missile remained in flight.

  Everyone stood aghast, helpless, staring at the screen, its data becoming meaningless. They were numb to what was happening.

  The closer the warhead came to earth, the clearer the picture became. It changed from a spongy blue-grey mass around the outer atmosphere to images of high-rise buildings, the coastline. Highways emerged as distinct shapes. The name of the city appeared at the bottom of the screen, the district, the ground zero strike area, compiled by data from a new computer at a battle management control centre. A box screen showed a street map: the buildings, the day-time and night-time populations, the hospitals, the bunkers, the agencies, their contact numbers and their lines of control.

  A yellow flare tore across the screen. Briefly it went to black. It came back with flakes of light appearing like jagged shards of heat searing up from the ground. They could see it was blindingly hot, bright and destructive, with a grey-black spiral surrounded by licking flames.

  Slowly, second by second, the camera lenses were blocked out by a cloud.

  ****

  70*

  ****

  Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania*

  The helicopter turned into the wind and came gently down on a tarmac quadrangle behind the Elizabethtown fire station. Caroline Brock brought the mask over her head and sealed it. She had begun to feel feverish just after taking off from Washington. But she hadn't slept, it seemed, for weeks. She was running on adrenalin. She needed sleep, but she didn't want to go home. It was too lonely.

  As she jumped down, her tongue found a lesion on the side of her mouth. Her legs didn't support her weight as they should. A muscle spasm shot through her thigh. She walked quickly out from under the rotor blades, just making out the voice in her headset. 'It's Oakland . . . a single 10-kiloton warhead . . . ground zero six kilometres east of Oakland Airport.'

  A wave of nausea swept through her. She couldn't see through the mask. Maybe it was clouded up. She fumbled. She had to sleep. Another lesion. Her knees buckled. Where was her strength? She righted herself. Someone was holding her up. Ahead was the red of a fire engine. She could make out the colour, but not the markings.

  'Caroline, it's Tom here. Are you in Elizabethtown?' A voice, distorted and ringing. Too much information. She had to get away.

  'Tom--' she managed. Her throat was on fire. She coughed. A wave of heat began rising up inside her body, striking out her energy. 'Tom, I'm no good,' she whispered. 'I'm sick. I'm infected--'

  She fell with the sentence unfinished. Caroline Brock remembered nothing else until she woke up in a hospital bed and saw the pustules on her hand.

  ****

  71*

  ****

  London, UK*

  'We stay with them, Charles,' said Stuart Nolan. 'Every inch. Shoulder to shoulder. No surrender. Put it out now.'

  Through the window, the Downing Street garden looked idyllic, daffodils shining in clear sunlight. Nolan stood by the French windows, his hand running back and forth down the cold glass.

  There were 350 dead in London and Birmingham. Variola major had been detected in both cities. The pattern had been exactly the same as in Times Square - the aerosol dispersal of the virus first, followed by the suicide bomb. The detonations had been at the optimum time, just before dawn, in dry cold conditions, so that the virus could survive for several hours before latching on to a victim.

  'Are you sure?' asked Colchester, handing Nolan a Cold War document file. Nolan opened it where he was standing. For the past hour, Colchester had been feeding him with documents analysing nuclear conflict. He quickly read this one.

  'A nuclear attack would mean the loss of nearly one-third of the population,' said the report. 'Blast and heat would be the dominant hazard, accounting for more than 9 million fatal casualties, against fewer than 3 million from radiation. Four million of the 16 million casualties would be caused by a single bomb on London. The standard of living of the reduced population, although substantially lower than at present, would still be well above that of the greater part of the world. The country would be left with sufficient resources for a slow recovery.'

  'They write as if it's something they can plan for,' said Nolan.

  'In those days they did,' agreed Colchester. 'The key was how to prepare to strike first and not get found out.' He picked up another file to give to Nolan, but the Prime Minister shook his head. 'I've seen enough,' he said, closing the file in his hand and tossing it on to a coffee table. 'Thank God, it's Jim West's call,' said Nolan.

  Britain had a harsher view than America, and it was this conversation that Nolan needed to have with West before he addressed Parliament.

  'He's through,' said Colchester, switching the line through to Nolan's telephone.

  'Whatever you want us to do, we will do, Jim,' said Nolan. 'I am placing our forces, conventional and nuclear, under your command.'

  'Caro--' Nolan heard West say. 'Right. I'm going down there . . . George Washington . . . I don't give a damn . . . Sorry, Stuart. Oakland's been hit. Of course, you know. I heard that, and thank you. Chris Pierce knows - hold a moment, Stuart - Tom, yes . . . Thank God for that - Stuart, sorry, no Chuck's cal
led in. He lives in Oakland. Runs a transport company there. But he's fine. Damn nuclear attack and all I think about is my son. Now, give me your advice.'

  West spoke fast and staccato. Nolan needed to break through and get his attention, just for five seconds. He needed to state Britain's view, however unpalatable it might be, and he didn't bother with niceties. 'We must destroy China's nuclear capability,' he said. 'If it helps, we'll fire first. China has gone the same way as North Korea and Pakistan. Except it's more lethal.'

  'Memed's in China,' said West.

  'Exactly. The Cold War rule was that the first to strike would be the winner. They now know our missile defence is fallible. Strike China now and stop Russia in its tracks.'