‘Is that it?’
‘No. I’ve just checked the ticket prices, and the economy-class single fare is a couple of thousand dollars American. Tell Simpson I’m booking a Business Class seat, which I hope will mean the stewardess looks like a woman instead of an all-in wrestler, and I’m not surrounded by goats and Russian peasants. That’ll cost him about three or four thousand dollars, so he’d better make sure the credit card he gave me is good to cover it. If the card maxes out I’ll be using the return half of the ticket I’ve already got to come back to Heathrow. OK?’
‘OK. Have a good flight – whichever one you catch.’
Chapter Twelve
Friday
T’ae’tan Air Base, North Korea
Pak Je-San was getting worried. When he’d sent his emissaries over to the Russian Federation to source aircraft, spares and munitions, he had imposed a rigid communications schedule. All of them were expected to contact him by telephone at least once every twenty-four hours, though he never specified precise times.
Of all his agents, Ryu Chang-Ho was probably the most reliable, and Pak now hadn’t heard from him since Wednesday afternoon. Ryu had been in Perm that evening, and Pak had been expecting his call, even if only to hear that his second approach had been turned down.
But no call had come through, and since Wednesday Pak himself had barely drawn breath as the plan moved inexorably towards completion. He’d been totally committed to organizing the dispersal of the aircraft and stores, and with trying to achieve all that whilst still avoiding detection by the American spy satellites. But at the back of his mind he’d been getting more and more concerned about Ryu, and he now realized he could wait no longer.
He picked up his desk phone and dialled the number of Ryu’s mobile, but all he heard was a recorded message. That meant the phone itself was either switched off or currently outside the range of the nearest cell.
Pak depressed the receiver and dialled the other number Ryu had given him, for a landline in Perm. It rang six times, then a deep male voice answered with a single Russian word: ‘Da?’ – ‘Yes?’ Pak immediately ended the call since the voice definitely wasn’t Ryu’s.
Clearly something had gone wrong and, if Ryu had been rumbled, it meant that the Russians probably now knew that their missing aircraft were in North Korea. If he was already dead, it was possible the authorities in Perm had fitted call-tracing equipment, which was exactly why Pak had ended the call so abruptly. In the few seconds he’d been connected, his precise location couldn’t have been traced, but they might still have been able to identify which country he was calling from.
But now, with Operation ‘Golden Dawn’ already under way, what the Russians knew or didn’t know would hardly matter.
Office of the Associate Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Langley, Virginia
It’s one thing to schedule aircraft movements so as to avoid them being spotted by surveillance satellites, though even that’s extremely difficult because of the sheer number of orbiting vehicles currently scanning the planet’s surface. But it is quite a different matter when massed troop movements are involved. For these simply cannot be hidden from view, and as soon as the first phase of ‘Silver Spring’ began, successive passes by KH-12 birds, recording images every five seconds, started detecting everything from the heat blooms of tank and truck engines to the numbers of individual soldiers.
The moment the N-PIC analysts saw these pictures, they flashed them straight to Langley. The CIA duty staff immediately called in Richard Muldoon, and after a brief glance at the images he telephoned Walter Hicks.
‘What’s your take on this, Richard?’
‘I don’t think we need too much analysis here, Walter,’ Muldoon replied, spreading a selection of photographs across the table. ‘Starting from the west side of the Korean Peninsula, we’ve got the 815th Mechanized Corps moving south-east from Kobuldong towards the DMZ. The 820th Armoured Corps is doing the same from Songwŏlni, and over to the east the 9th Mechanized Corps is heading south from Kosan.
‘At all the southern airfields there are clear indications of increased activity, loads of aircraft parked on hardstandings with fuel bowsers and armament trolleys alongside them. The southerly missile bases are also very active, and so are those on the east coast – Hochon, No-dong, Mayang and Ok’pyong in particular.
‘The North Koreans have made us aware of a scheduled no-notice exercise.’ Muldoon opened a folder and extracted a single sheet of paper. ‘It’s called “Silver Spring” and it’s the usual scenario: faced with an unprovoked assault from the capitalist lackeys in Seoul, the brave North Korean forces will fight to the last man to repel the evil invaders.
‘Two things worry me about this, though. First, the DPRK forces usually busy themselves conducting paper exercises, not real-world stuff. Second, while all these troop movements could be entirely innocent, if they are planning an invasion, deployment of these forces is just what you’d expect. My concern is that what we’re looking at now is the implementation of a secret movement order from Pyongyang, under the cover of this “Silver Spring” exercise, and that when the moment’s right they’ll head south across the border, catching everyone wrong-footed. In that case, we’re watching the DPRK transitioning to war – and there are no prizes for guessing which country will be under attack.’
‘There’s no chance that they really are just conducting an exercise?’
‘I wouldn’t put any money on it. Don’t forget the Foxbats. N-PIC have identified the munitions on the trolleys beside them as R-40 air-to-air missiles – AA-6 Acrids – and probably the T variant. They’re loading the ’bats with warshots, and that means they expect to use them.’
‘OK,’ Hicks said, ‘I’ll take this evidence to the DNI and see if he still thinks the North Koreans are just undertaking a service upgrade. I already checked with the Pentagon about our force dispositions, and we’ve nothing local to the Korean Peninsula. Our closest maritime support – that’s the Enterprise Carrier Battle Group – is about three days away in the north Pacific Ocean. We’ve got a couple of frigates off Busan in South Korea, and a hunter-killer submarine about a thousand miles south of the peninsula.’
‘That’s all?’
‘Yup, that’s all. The only other Western naval asset anywhere close is the British Royal Navy’s carrier Illustrious, heading for home. It’s currently off the south-east coast of Japan, en route from Tokyo to Manila. The ship has seven Harriers on board, plus there are three other warships – frigates, I think – and four supply ships in company.’
Muldoon laughed briefly. ‘Seven Harriers? The North Koreans have got, what, eight hundred plus combat aircraft? I know every little helps, but that’s just ridiculous.’
‘Yes, I know. The DNI won’t be able to ignore these,’ he tapped the photographs, ‘so, exercise or no exercise, the Joint Chiefs will at the very least hike the DEFCON state. There’s not a hell of a lot more we can do here at Langley, but my guess is the White House will kick the military into gear. They’ll get the Enterprise moving as fast as possible, and warm up the B-52s and the Minutemen. They’ll try and talk to the North Koreans as well, but at present we don’t have any direct diplomatic contact with Pyongyang, and I doubt if a few stern words from our current National Security Adviser would cut much ice with them anyway.’
Muldoon nodded. ‘I can’t argue with any of that, but one thing bothers me – apart from the US getting dragged into yet another shooting war. Pyongyang knows our commitment to South Korea, and their leaders must realize that we’ll oppose them once they cross the DMZ. OK, they may have timed this action so that we don’t have any naval forces in the immediate area, but they sure as hell know we’d send some real fast. Every analysis I’ve seen confirms that the North Koreans can start a war, but they don’t have the resources to win one, or even consolidate any territorial gains they might make. So why are they doing this?’
‘Maybe their “divine leader” is a lot more
stupid than anyone’s giving him credit for.’
‘Maybe… or maybe he’s a lot smarter than we thought, and he’s discovered a wrinkle that he thinks might make this work. And there’s something else. We had a request from the British SIS yesterday, asking for our present force dispositions relative to the Korean Peninsula. I told you they’ve got this man in Russia looking into the missing Foxbats and according to their source the MiG-25 was built specifically to counter incoming ICBMs. Maybe Pyongyang has stolen the aircraft to defend the country against any retaliation from us using missiles. And the Foxbats wouldn’t have any trouble carving up our B-52s as well.’
‘Shit,’ Hicks muttered.
‘That’s about the size of it,’ Muldoon agreed. ‘If I’m right, it’s a real high-risk strategy, but just because it’s high-risk doesn’t mean it won’t work.’
National Military Command Center, the Pentagon, Washington, DC
Walter Hicks gazed around him as he walked into the NMCC at the Pentagon. It was pretty much as he remembered it from the last time he’d been there, another occasion on which America was confronted with a nuclear exchange, only then the threat had been much closer to home.
The National Military Command Center is a suite of offices situated on the third floor of the Pentagon. One office processes the raw data, making it a very noisy environment because of the rows of clattering telex machines that print reports and information from sources around the world. A battery of clocks shows a selection of world time zones, and there’s a permanent map display to indicate the location of America’s strategic assets and the principal troop dispositions of all other major national armed forces. The Emergency Conference Room is next door, and by comparison extremely quiet.
The ECR comprises two different levels. The Battle Staff, the NMCC’s duty officers, sit on either side of the ‘leg’ of a huge T-shaped table and collate data. Positioned along the bar of the ‘T’ are four Emergency Action officers, each at a specialized console equipped with an awesome array of communication links allowing them to contact American forces almost anywhere in the world.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff, essentially the American President’s War Cabinet, have seats on a raised platform above and to the left of the Battle Staff table. Opposite them are six huge colour television screens that can display maps of any part of the world, plus charts, plans, surveillance photographs, troop concentration data and other types of graphic or text that might help to clarify a particular situation.
The NMCC forms part of a single vast command structure that includes the White House Situation Room and the hardened facilities at Cheyenne Mountain; at Offutt, the location of the Underground Complex; and at Raven Rock. All these sites are linked by telephones, faxes, telex machines, radios, computers and high-speed secure data links. The briefing would be delivered in the Pentagon, but the duty staff at the other sites would also be able to hear every word that was said.
Walter Hicks listened with a sense of déjà vu as the Senior Duty Battle Staff Officer introduced him. It wasn’t the first time he’d briefed the Joint Chiefs but, unlike on the previous occasion, the substance of this briefing would be largely conjecture. He began almost every sentence with a qualifier – ‘We think’; ‘Analysis suggests’; ‘It is possible’ and so on – and he didn’t like resorting to that at all. The Joint Chiefs didn’t like it either, and said so, repeatedly.
‘The CIA has been informed, I hope,’ a senior USAF general interrupted almost immediately, ‘that the North Koreans have a no-notice exercise called “Silver Spring” planned sometime in the next month or so?’
‘Yes, General, the Agency is well aware of that. Our concern, however, is that Pyongyang may have scheduled this exercise simply to allow them to mobilize their forces for an invasion of South Korea without attracting unwelcome international attention until it’s already too late.’
‘What proof have you that what’s going on right now in North Korea is anything more than such an exercise?’
‘Absolute proof is probably impossible to find, because we have no HUMINT resources north of the DMZ, so we’re entirely dependent upon our interpretation of the technical intelligence obtained. The NSA has intercepted a much higher than normal level of signal traffic in North Korea, primarily from Chunghwa, their Air Command headquarters, and Hwangju, the headquarters of the Third Air Combat Command. They haven’t managed to decode many of these messages, because it looks as if the North Korean military are using new encryption routines, but nothing Fort Meade has deciphered so far indicates that this is more than just an exercise.
‘Despite that, we’re very concerned on two counts. First, most North Korean military exercises we’ve been made aware of in the past have been paper or tabletop routines. But this time the satellite imagery shows deployments of major forces along a very broad front, all ultimately heading towards the Demilitarized Zone. These movements include large numbers of troops as well as armoured divisions. We’ve also detected increased activity at various airfields in the south of the country and at missile launch sites. That might be explained as part of the exercise, but only if we accept a fundamental change in the way the North Koreans normally do things. We could easily discuss the implications of these movements all day without reaching a consensus.
‘The second factor is more compelling. Why have the North Koreans secretly acquired at least ten MiG-25s? We’re concerned that they’ve obtained these Foxbats to counter the more advanced aircraft employed in the South Korean Air Force.’
‘That won’t wash, Mr Hicks,’ the general interrupted again. ‘The Foxbat is an obsolete design. Yes it’s fast, but it’s not agile. The MiG-25 is old technology and there’s no way it could survive in air combat against modern warbirds like the F-15 or F-16.’
‘That’s your field of expertise, General, not mine,’ Hicks replied equably, ‘and I don’t entirely disagree with you. But there is another possibility that’s more worrying. The British SIS has obtained information from the Russians that the Foxbat was specifically designed to intercept ICBMs in the terminal stages of flight. So maybe the North Koreans want them as a last-ditch defence against a missile attack.’
This statement was followed by a long silence. The possibility that the MiG-25 was anything more than just an old, fast interceptor had clearly not occurred to the assembled officers.
‘A missile attack from where?’
‘From us. From a Minuteman in a silo in Montana, or from one of our boomers. As I understand it, our nearest surface group is at least two or three days’ sailing time away from the peninsula, so if North Korean forces do head south, across the Demilitarized Zone, the only viable counter to such an invasion might be the missiles in our silos or submarines.’
‘The President would never authorize a first strike against North Korea, Mr Hicks,’ another general pointed out, ‘and there would be no need for us to take the nuclear option. We’ve got bombers at Andersen Air Base on Guam as a deterrent against exactly this kind of incursion. They’re B1-Bs, B-2s and B-52s, and they’re more than capable of flattening any advance the North Koreans could achieve. And whether it took us a few days or even a few weeks, we could easily land enough forces on the peninsula to push them back using conventional weapons and tactics.’
‘I know,’ Hicks nodded. ‘What concerns the Agency is the other side of the coin, if you like. We may not resort to the use of nuclear weapons, but the fact that the North Koreans have obtained these aircraft suggests to us that they might be intending to do so. We believe they could be planning a blitzkrieg assault across the DMZ, and then would attempt to stop any counter-attack by threatening to target their nuclear arsenal on any assets we might send in support. As a viable threat, that would stalemate the situation. And knowing the regime in Pyongyang, we shouldn’t doubt they would carry out this threat if they had to. If this operation goes the way we think it might, we could easily lose South Korea totally.’
The Gold Room, the Pentagon, Washington, DC
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Despite its official name, the Emergency Conference Room had not been designed for conferences, only briefings, so as soon as Walter Hicks had finished delivering the Agency’s assessment of the current situation, the Joint Chiefs left the ECR and moved along the corridor into the ‘Gold Room’ conference suite, also on the third floor of the Pentagon.
Thirty minutes after Hicks had departed, the Joint Chiefs of Staff decided that the situation in North Korea was sufficiently serious to merit an upgrade in the alert status of US forces worldwide, and the most senior general present recommended this precaution to the President in a lengthy telephone conference call that included the Secretary of Defense.
Fifteen minutes after that, the American alert state was upgraded to DEFCON Four, and alerting signals were dispatched to all units and formations, worldwide. At the same time, most specific orders were flashed to the USS Enterprise in the North Pacific Ocean, but for the eyes of the captain only.
The President then instructed the Secretary of Defense and his National Security Adviser to contact Pyongyang to obtain clarification of North Korea’s intentions, and to request an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the ongoing situation. That, the President said, would probably turn out to be just another goddamned waste of everyone’s time, but after the Iraq fiasco he thought they should at the very least go through the motions.
Base Communication Center, RAF Mildenhall, Suffolk
In a scene repeated in communications centres around the world, the warning bell, to indicate receipt of a signal classified ‘Secret’ or above, sounded as the teleprinter began clattering. The Duty Communications Officer walked briskly over and scanned the lines of text as they were printed out.
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