Clare hadn’t left the control room of Victorious in almost fifteen hours, apart from visits to the Officers’ Heads and a couple of trips to the Wardroom for sandwiches and coffee. No hot food had been prepared, or would be available, in the boat until it was secured from silent running, because cooking inevitably causes rattles and clangs as pots and pans are used. All off-watch crew members were confined to their bunk spaces, and all video and audio equipment had been switched off, apart from personal players using earphones only. The atmosphere in the boat was tense with anticipation, but very quiet.
Richard Clare was worried about on-board noise. He was also worried about seabed passive sonar arrays, ASW helicopters and hunter-killer submarines, like the small but silent and deadly Alphas.
But what worried him most was steaming around in the Russians’ back garden. The problem was, he couldn’t see any alternative to this.
The operational range of each Trident II D-5 SLBM carried by the Victorious was around five thousand miles. This meant that, from the boat’s current location, each of the eight MIRVs contained within the Trident’s warhead could easily strike a target anywhere inside the Confederation of Independent States – the territories of the old Soviet Union.
They could also, if the missiles’ navigation computers were reprogrammed, strike any target in the United States located to the east of a line drawn from Miami straight up to Minneapolis. Or, looking south and east rather than west, any target in China, Japan, the countries of the western Pacific Rim or Africa. In fact, about the only nations Victo rious’s missiles couldn’t hit were Australia, New Zealand and South America.
He would have much preferred to be patrolling the wide, safe and, above all, deep waters of the North Atlantic, but in order to hit the targets he’d been given in North Korea, he had no option but to stay in the Barents Sea. The signal from CINCFLEET had made it perfectly clear that time was of the essence: to reposition the boat in the North Atlantic would have taken too long and, for most of the transit, North Korea would have been beyond the range of the Tridents, and that was unacceptable.
It made good tactical sense, but that didn’t mean Clare had to like it.
North American Aerospace Defense Command, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado
For the last thirty years of the twentieth century, and well into the twenty-first, America’s anti-missile defences have relied upon DSP (Defense Support Program) surveillance satellites located in geosynchronous orbit some twenty-two thousand two hundred and fifty miles above the surface of the Earth.
The replacement system – SBIRS (Space Based Infrared System) – met substantial delays, but the new SBIRS Mission Control Station at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colorado, was commissioned more or less on time at the end of 2001, and now controlled the orbiting DSP satellites as well as operating the ALERT tactical warning centre.
The three front-line DSP birds were located over Central America, above the Indian Ocean and more or less over the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Two other spacecraft were available as orbiting spares, ready to take over when one of the satellites reached the end of its useful life.
Their sole purpose was to detect missile launches anywhere in the vast area under surveillance, using a huge infrared telescope designed to identify the heat flare of the missile’s rocket engine almost immediately after launch. The only thing that could delay detection was adverse weather, because thick cloud would prevent the infrared radiation reaching the telescope until the missile had cleared the cloud tops.
Over the Korean Peninsula, the weather was clear, and the Pacific Ocean DSP bird located the launch six seconds after the first-stage motor of the Taep’o-dong fired. Eleven seconds after that, the on-board computers had identified Ok’pyong as the launch site and calculated the missile’s initial trajectory.
Immediately, the DSP satellite transmitted the data to Buckley, where high-speed computers assessed the calculated trajectory to determine if the missile was on a ‘threat fan’: meaning if the flight-path could conceivably end in the United States or any allied nation. The initial data showed that the North Korean missile was heading east-south-east, which meant it couldn’t hit mainland America – but the Hawaiian Islands or even Mexico remained possible, though unlikely, targets.
Simultaneously, Buckley’s data links flashed details of the launch to NORAD. Moments later, a klaxon sounded, a light flashed, and a computerized voice announced ‘Missile alert! Missile alert!’ One of the huge vision screens displayed the warning ‘MISSILE EVENT’ in red in the top left-hand corner. In the top centre was the word ‘SECRET’ and below that, occupying most of the screen, was an outline map of the Pacific Rim, with the Korean Peninsula on the left-hand side.
Dominating this display was a large red dot positioned over Ok’pyong, indicating the launch point, and a line pointing east-south-east, showing the missile’s initial trajectory. At the end of the line was a quadrilateral shape, narrow where it joined the line but widening out from that point. This showed the threat fan: the computer system’s assessment of the area within which the missile could land, which was updated every second or two as additional data was processed.
Automated instructions were sent to the Pave Paws phased-array radar control room at Beale Air Force Base in California, and the new X-band radar base on Kwajalein Atoll in the western Pacific, listing the launch and trajectory coordinates and instructing the radars to begin tracking the missile.
The moment the launch data had been confirmed by an automated back-check to Buckley, officers began broadcasting verbal confirmation to supplement the automatic threat warning systems.
‘All stations, this is Brass Hat. Ballistic missile launch detected from Ok’pyong in North Korea. Initial trajectory one two seven degrees true, flight-time is – on my mark – two minutes and fifty-five seconds. Stand by for calculated impact point. This is not a drill.’
North Pacific Ocean
One hundred and eighteen seconds after lift-off, and well out over the Pacific Ocean, the first stage of the Taep’o-dong dropped away, its fuel expended, and the second stage immediately ignited. That was scheduled to burn for a further one hundred and five seconds before the third, solid-fuel, stage would fire.
Two hundred and twenty-three seconds after launch, the second stage of the Taep’o-dong disengaged from the missile and began a long uncontrolled tumble to the sea below, and the third-stage motor flared into life. The programmed burn time was one hundred and two seconds, but the fuel was actually expended in ninety-eight seconds. Not that it made any difference.
Three seconds after the sensors had confirmed the engine was dead, six explosive bolts fired on the third-stage/payload junction, and the now-empty tube fell away, taking with it the telemetry transmitter. Now that the third-stage burn was complete, there wasn’t anything the scientists and technicians at Ok’pyong could do to direct the weapon, because the nose-cone hadn’t been designed to be steerable. All they wanted was extreme range, and they’d know the result of the test-flight soon enough.
The warhead on this missile wasn’t a nuclear device or a chemical weapon or anything of that sort. In fact, about all the aerodynamic tip of the Taep’o-dong contained was a dozen hollow metal objects designed as radar reflectors, and a small explosive charge to rupture the nose-cone before re-entry. The cone itself was made from fibreglass with a heat-resistant ceramic coating to be as light as possible, and the weight and shape of the ‘warhead’ had been carefully calculated to ensure reasonable directional stability whilst still achieving maximum range.
The final component was a small transmitter inside a protective heat-resistant canister, locked onto a single frequency, and a radio altimeter that would send it an electronic signal when the canister reached a predetermined height above the ocean. The transmitter would then begin sending out a repeated signal and that, the missile designers had calculated, would be sufficient to achieve the desired result.
Ok’pyong missile base, North Korea
/> One after the other, the telemetry screens ranged in front of the North Korean technicians went blank. Though they all knew in advance that was exactly what was supposed to happen, some of them still looked slightly nervous, as if they might somehow be blamed for the ensuing loss of data from the Taep’o-dong.
Only the commanding officer looked pleased as he picked up the secure telephone to tell Pyongyang that the missile had functioned precisely as they’d planned.
North American Aerospace Defense Command, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado
‘Say again,’ General Wayne Harmon demanded.
‘We’ve lost contact with the missile, sir, just after third-stage burnout at around three hundred twenty seconds, and the DSP birds are no longer holding it. I’ve run diagnostics and everything’s in the green. The Pacific Ocean satellite is still tracking residual heat from the burnt-out second and third stages. When we lost it, the missile had reached just over two hundred miles altitude, seven hundred miles down-range and a speed of thirteen thousand miles an hour.’
‘OK,’ Harmon said, ‘so that’s the end of the boost phase and it’s up in the thermosphere. The Pave Paws at Beale should still be tracking it, and we’ll get their feed momentarily. And if Beale can’t locate it, Kwajalein Atoll will pick it up. Project the trajectory, see where the DSP birds think it’s heading.’
On the display screen, a green line appeared, running straight through the quadrilateral and finishing in the North Pacific Ocean about midway between Hawaii and the west coast of Mexico.
‘This reminds me of the Taep’o-dong type 1 they fired back in ninety-eight,’ Harmon observed, ‘except that the trajectory is different and this one looks like it’s going a hell of a lot further. Unless they’ve incorporated some kind of mid-course guidance, it’s no threat to us. This looks in fact like a pretty standard missile test. Keep checking the track and let me know when the DSP birds detect re-entry.’
A few seconds later the first data from the Pave Paws radar was overlaid on the screen, supplemented moments afterwards by the feed from Kwajalein Atoll. The two radars were displaying good solid contacts, and the predict vectors fairly closely matched the track suggested by the DSP satellites.
‘All stations, Brass Hat. DSP missile tracking confirmed by radar. Predicted impact point is between Hawaii and the west coast of Mexico. Trajectory calculations suggest no threat to the US or any allied territory. Initial analysis supports routine test of a three-stage missile, probably a Taep’o-dong type 2.’
The predicted impact point was necessarily vague, depending on a number of different factors, including the missile’s speed, the maximum altitude it would reach before gravity started pulling it back to Earth, and its aerodynamics and ability to withstand the heat generated by atmospheric friction during re-entry. The longer the radars tracked the missile, the more accurate the prediction would become.
‘All stations, Brass Hat. Radar data indicates the missile has just passed the apogee. Refined calculations suggest the impact point will be approximately one four zero degrees west, thirty-five degrees north.’
And then something unexpected happened.
‘Sir, the Kwajalein Atoll radar shows the warhead breaking up.’
‘What altitude?’
‘Around three hundred and twenty miles.’
‘It’s not atmospheric friction, then. Maybe they’ve developed a system of decoys that they’re trying out. Or even an MIRV.’
A Multiple Independently-targeted Re-entry Vehicle is a way of combining several weapons inside a single missile. Typically, the nose-cone is ejected simultaneously with first-stage burnout, to reveal the MIRV ‘bus’ – the device that carries the individual warheads. After passing the apogee, the ‘bus’ manoeuvres using small rockets controlled by an inertial guidance and GPS system to alter its trajectory to match that of the first weapon. Once established, it releases the free-falling nuclear device, manoeuvres again to the trajectory of the second weapon, and repeats the process. Defending against this type of attack is extremely difficult, and such missiles frequently include decoys, with a radar signature similar to the warheads, and chaff – the last being thin strips of aluminium designed to swamp radars. If the MIRV warheads are released soon after apogee, meaning the top of the missile’s trajectory, the spread can be very large.
Ever since the alert began, General Harmon had been in direct communication with both the Pentagon and the White House.
‘Mr President, we’re detecting about a dozen returns, spreading out in a fan. It now looks like a test of decoys, not a MIRV, because the trajectories are fairly close together and the release occurred simultaneously.’
‘And the impact point?’ The President had asked this same question four times since the three-way conversation had started, and each time Harmon had given the same answer.
‘In the Pacific, sir, somewhere north-east of Hawaii.’
‘So you’re sure none of the warheads, or whatever this fucking thing is carrying, could reach American soil?’
‘No, sir. The laws of physics are absolute. The contents of the North Korean warhead are headed straight down towards the surface of the ocean, and there’s not the slightest possibility any of them could hit even Hawaii, let alone the continental US.’
MV Kang San 5, North Pacific Ocean
Standing at the stern of the Kang San 5, Lee Kyung-Soon saw the flash and checked his watch. Right on time. Moments later he saw a compelling and utterly distinctive shape climbing above the horizon, and a few seconds after that heard the echoing thunder of the detonation.
This ship was, he knew, a safe distance away from the explosion on board the Kang San 3, but despite that he walked briskly back to the accommodation section and climbed up to the bridge. There he made a broadcast forbidding all crew members to venture out onto the upper decks for at least the next two hours. He knew that radiation could pass through steel, but at that distance there was realistically very little danger from fall-out, and the blast wave would dissipate long before it could reach them.
North American Aerospace Defense Command, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado
The klaxon sounded again, startlingly loud in the vast operations room. ‘Nuclear detonation! Nuclear detonation! Stand by for location.’ General Harmon looked up at the display screens, his eyes confirming what he was hearing through his headset. ‘Whereabouts, for fuck’s sake?’
‘North Pacific Ocean. Approximately fifteen hundred miles northeast of Hawaii. It now looks like the North Korean missile was a live one.’
‘Mr President,’ Harmon said, his voice high with tension, ‘I repeat there’s no danger to us or anyone else, but we’ve just detected a nuclear detonation in the North Pacific. One of the devices deployed from the North Korean missile was obviously a functioning nuclear weapon.’ The silence on the line was so long that for a moment Harmon thought the communication link must have failed. ‘Mr President?’
‘Still here, General. What’s the location of the explosion?’
‘Roughly fifteen hundred miles north-east of Hawaii, sir. And that means—’
‘I know what it means, General. It means the fucking North Koreans can now deliver a nuclear payload to the west coast of mainland America.’
Office of the Associate Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Langley, Virginia
‘I don’t believe it,’ Walter Hicks said. In front of him lay a series of photographs of the aftermath of the nuclear detonation in the Pacific, taken from surveillance satellites, and a hastily prepared schematic showing the path the North Korean missile had followed. This did, Hicks had to admit, suggest that the warhead had been responsible for the detonation.
But if that hypothesis was correct, it left a whole raft of unanswered questions, starting with how and finishing with why.
‘What have we got from Ok’pyong?’ he asked.
Richard Muldoon leant forward and placed three more photographs on Hicks’s desk. ‘These,’ he said, ‘are fro
m the pass immediately before the North Koreans hit the starter button. They show a large, probably three-stage, missile on one of the pads at Ok’pyong. Based on the shadow and the angle of the sun, and making an allowance for the thickness of the launch platform, N-PIC has calculated the height at between one hundred forty and one hundred fifty feet, with a diameter of just over six feet. That means it’s a lot bigger than a Scud or a Taep’o-dong 1, so their analysis is that it was almost certainly a Taep’o-dong 2. It had probably been fitted with an elongated nose-cone, as the one they launched back in July zero six from Musudan-ri was only about one hundred twenty-four feet tall.’
‘Do you believe North Korea’s developed a missile-capable nuclear weapon, and that’s what they’ve just test-fired?’
‘I don’t know, but it is the logical conclusion. There’s no doubt that they fired a missile, and there’s also no doubt a nuclear weapon was detonated at about the time and at the same place the missile landed. I’m just not certain the two events are linked, not least because all our previous estimates suggested that the Taep’o-dong 2 had a likely maximum range of about four thousand miles. The distance this missile travelled was closer to six thousand. That’s a hell of a jump – a massive improvement if it was carrying a nuclear warhead as well. Empty, maybe it could have made the distance – with a weapon on board, I doubt it.’
‘How big was the nuke?’
‘Think Hiroshima. Ten, maybe fifteen, kilotons, an absolute maximum of twenty. We’ll have a better idea when we get the results of the atmospheric sampling.’
‘An air-burst?’
‘N-PIC doesn’t think so. The Keyhole birds recorded two small merchant ships in the area shortly before the launch from Ok’pyong. Early images showed them sailing south-east in company, but a few hours before the explosion one of them turned north-west towards Polynesia, and the other stopped moving altogether. If the missile was the real deal, the stationary ship probably had a homing device on it – the Taep’o-dong is very inaccurate – and the second vessel then embarked the crew and sailed out of the danger area. Personally, I think we’re looking at a redundant merchantman with a bomb in the hold triggered by a timing device. N-PIC’s tracking the second ship, and we’ll confirm its identity pretty soon, but it looks as if both were flying North Korean flags.’
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