CNN: The feeling here is that Chinese aggression—
Song: Stop right there. Taiwan took advantage of a time when both President Hastings and President Tao were preoccupied with the much more serious problem with India. It was Taiwan, not us, which pushed the independence issue, knowing, and let me repeat that, knowing full well that both Japan and the United States could be militarily drawn into the dispute. If that is not the height of political cynicism and irresponsibility, I don’t know what is. I just hope the American people understand that when they send their young men and women to risk their loves in conflict against us, it would only be to boost the ratings of a phony Taiwanese politician.
The Situation Room, The White House, Washington, DC
Local time: 0145 Tuesday 8 May 2007
GMT: 0645 Tuesday 8 May 2007
John Hastings turned away from the television screen. He said, looking at Bloodworth: ‘Can we live with that? Has he given us the makings of a deal?’
‘Overhalt says Jamie Song is not in direct contact with the President. He certainly doesn’t have the authority of General Leung.’
‘We’re evacuating the Embassy staff on the basis of an ordered departure,’ said Joan Holden. ‘Apparently, the British Embassy has been burnt, with one diplomat dead. We’ve offered to take out their staff as long as it doesn’t conflict with our “no double standard” rule. We have a line open to Reece at the Foreign Ministry. He seems to be camping in Jamie Song’s office.’
‘It’s not a deal,’ said Ennio Barber. ‘It’s an interview on CNN. Might I suggest that one missile strike could get President Tao to the phone? Once that conversation has taken place we can have a deal which won’t cost us the election.’
‘I don’t like his reasoning,’ said Bloodworth. ‘But Ennio’s idea might just work. I suggest two Tomahawks into two DF-15 launch sites in Fujian province. Our IMINT will throw up the coordinates.’
‘All right,’ said Hastings slowly. ‘Do it.’
Military Headquarters, Western Hills, China
Local time: 1445 Tuesday 8 May 2007
GMT: 0645 Tuesday 8 May 2007
‘Two cruise missiles have hit the control tower and runway at Xiamen civilian airfield,’ said General Leung. ‘We should respond by targeting Okinawa.’
‘Not yet,’ said President Tao. Holed up with the military, Tao had managed to cling on to the authority of his presidency. As soon as he emerged, leaving the general to his own devices, he would lose it. ‘A missile launch on Okinawa would force us into a war which has no decisive end. It is against our doctrine of yizhan ershang, winning a victory with one strike. Let us try to follow the line which Comrade Song outlined on CNN. Let them strike us. We will use our air defences to intercept the missiles. We will not strike back. We will try to secure Matsu and Kinmen by the morning, and challenge the Western democracies to recognize Taiwan if they wish.’
General Leung: ‘Then I suggest you tell President Hastings that. We occupy Matsu and Kinmen. Taiwan Island reverts to the status quo. They send no more missiles against our facilities.’
The Situation Room, The White House, Washington, DC
Local time: 0200 Tuesday 8 May 2007
GMT: 0700 Tuesday 8 May 2007
John Hastings had been on the telephone to President Tao for four minutes, using interpreters and patiently letting the Chinese leader run through his prepared script. Then Tao cut into his own lecture with what Hastings could only later describe as a high-pitched yelp. At the same time, Tom Bloodworth’s voice broke through the hum of the war room: ‘Indian missile. The Agni. Launch pad north of Allahabad. Waiting for coordinates.’
Tao left his line open but never returned to it. Analysts later described as gold dust the disjointed conversations recorded in Washington from the Chinese war headquarters. They confirmed that China did have real-time satellite surveillance over India, which picked up the launch at exactly the same moment as it came through on Bloodworth’s screen. The analysts also discovered – although only much later, when the conflict was over – that Tao himself remained in charge, and they were able to break down the command structure and the relationship between him, General Leung and their subordinates. But most significantly, ninety seconds after ending his conversation with Hastings, Tao’s voice was identified as initiating the command. Although Tao’s mood and motive were hotly debated for months to come, it was widely believed that his decision had been made some time earlier and that India’s missile launch was only the catalyst with which he chose to activate it.
Operational Directorate, South Block, Delhi, India
Local time: 1230 Tuesday 8 May 2007
GMT: 0700 Tuesday 8 May 2007
‘Target the Chinese garrison in Namya Ra, Myanmar,’ said Chandra Reddy. ‘Target Chinese supply and airbase in Lashio. Target Chinese ELINT and SIGINT station on Little Cocos Island. Target Chinese naval ships at Hanggyi Island base on the Irrawaddy River delta. All targets are on Myanmar sovereign territory. None is in Tibet. One is in China itself – the DF-21 launch site in Chuxiong, used against Taiwan.’
‘To show solidarity with the Americans and the Japanese,’ said Hari Dixit.
‘For symbolic reasons, they are all conventional missile strikes. We are using the Prithvi with single 500 kilogram warheads from bases in Arunachal Pradesh on targets in Myanmar, and from bases on the Andaman Islands to hit Hanggyi and Little Cocos Island. The Agni from Gorakhpur region is due to impact on Chuxiong. It has a single 1,000 kilogram warhead. Ground-attack aircraft are already in the air for an immediate follow up on Hanggyi and Little Cocos Island. The aim is to put all Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal military activity to an end.’
USS Ronald Reagan, Bay of Bengal: 15° N, 85° E
Local time: 1205 Tuesday 8 May 2007
GMT: 0705 Tuesday 8 May 2007
President Tao’s command came through as a two-syllable message picked up by the National Security Agency listening station at Menwith Hill in northern England, sent through to the NSA at CINCPAC headquarters in Hawaii and relayed immediately to the commander of the USS Ronald Reagan. It comprised yet another phrase, not encrypted, but compressed so that the transmission time was just a fraction of a second. Long Huo, it said, Dragon Fire, beamed down from the same orbiting Chinese satellite which had instructed the Kilo-class submarine to attack the Bombay. An encrypted and frequency-hopping signal almost certainly coming from the Xia-class nuclear armed submarine in the Bay of Bengal was sent back. The Xia could not pick up signals under water and must have been at least at periscope depth. It was daylight and unlucky that no ship was in the vicinity when the Xia came up. The NSA analysts put the vessel at about 150 kilometres south-west of the carrier group. A call was sent to all shipping, commercial and military, to look out for the submarine. Even then it was like finding a needle in a haystack.
The Indians were carrying out round-the-clock antisubmarine patrols in the area of probability where it was thought the Xia could be. The Americans were doing the same, and their experience and more sophisticated equipment, such as trailing kilometres of sonar buoys through the area of probability, meant that vast areas of sea were being eliminated. But none got a positive identification. The water was deep and the Xia had dived. If it was carrying the JL-2, it could be fired from anywhere inside the Bay of Bengal and hit a target in India.
The Xia was under orders to receive messages every twelve hours, and as the Indian missile attack was detected it was on schedule to come up. Had Tao hesitated with his decision, it would have been another half-day before he could have given the command.
The Kremlin, Moscow, Russia
Local time: 1010 Tuesday 8 May 2007
GMT: 0710 Tuesday 8 May 2007
The news of the Indian launch reached President Gorbunov minutes after it got to the White House Situation Room. President Tao came through immediately and said in Russian: ‘I have given the command. It is sea-launched.’ He spoke in a manner which left Gorbunov certain as to what he
meant. He also knew exactly the unstoppable process under which Tao had decided to operate. Once under the surface again, the commander of the Xia could receive no messages from the outside world. He would now be working side by side with his weapons engineer, preparing for the launch. Each man held separate keys and codes to verify each other’s actions. When the missile was fired, there would be no doubt that it had been on the instructions of a legitimate government and that the men on the trigger were acting professionally and under orders.
Gorbunov telephoned John Hastings. ‘I have intelligence that the Chinese have initiated a nuclear strike against India,’ he said.
Hastings was silent for a long time. ‘Are you in contact with President Tao?’
‘I am.’
‘Tell him to stop.’
‘It is submarine-launched from the Bay of Bengal. Short of finding the vessel and destroying it, no one can revert the order.’
‘Is Tao sane?’
‘Perfectly. He sees it as a legitimate act of war. In discussions with him, he compared it to the American atomic bombing of Japan – necessary to bring about a decisive end to the conflict.’
‘Then tell him that if his nuclear missile does strike India, the United States will obliterate his nuclear arsenal and his government with it. There won’t be a China left to surrender.’
It was now Gorbunov’s turn to use the silent pause. ‘That is the main reason for my call,’ he said eventually. ‘Russia does not want American interference in this conflict. We understand your treaty obligations over Taiwan and Japan and have stayed silent at your conventional cruise missile strike on Xiamen. But if you threaten China with nuclear retaliation, Russia will have no alternative but to threaten the United States with a counter-strike.’
The conversation in English was being carried around the situation room on a speaker. The bustle of activity ended and the room became quiet.
‘I’m not sure what you are saying, Vlad.’
‘This is a conflict between India and China. Both you and I have tried to broker a peace and have failed. China has decided to use the nuclear option. India, so far, has not. You have yet to discuss this with your colleagues, but I suspect you will end up deciding not to risk losing an American city to save an Indian one. However, to posture and threaten will be dangerous for world peace. Therefore, see it as my doing you a favour, John. Should you make a statement threatening China, Russian missiles will be launched not against United States territory – I’ll leave that to the Chinese – but against the Menwith Hill listening station in Britain and the Pine Gap listening station near Alice Springs in Australia. As well as damaging your intelligence-gathering capabilities, it will knock out the European Relay Ground Station for the space-based infrared theatre missile-defence system. That will eliminate your early warning mechanism for a missile strike from Russia. It will also split Western political resolve. The Australians and the British might think twice about your policies. Should you not then reconsider, we will be back on a Cold War footing of what we used to call Mutually Assured Destruction.’
‘Why, Vlad? Why on earth are you doing this?’
‘You’ve got to learn to balance power again, John. The Russian people feel you have walked all over them since the end of the Cold War. Vulnerable people who have lost their pride are dangerous. I am anticipating a way forward. If Tao is telling me the truth, India will decide her next actions, not Russia and not America.’
The Situation Room, The White House, Washington, DC
Local time: 0215 Tuesday 8 May 2007
GMT: 0715 Tuesday 8 May 2007
‘He could be bluffing,’ said Bloodworth.
‘If he’s not . . .’ said Alvin Jebb.
Bloodworth pulled up a map of Russia’s nuclear facilities and projected them onto a screen in the meeting room. ‘Let’s assume for a few minutes that we can do something. We could take out 12th Main Directorate offices here in Moscow with a conventional cruise missile strike. We could shut down the Tatishchevo launch base at 51° 40' N, 45° 34' E – again with a conventional strike. We could use tactical nuclear weapons against the Krasnoarmeyskoye storage facility south of Saratov, 51° 12' N, 46° 02' E. Only nuclear warheads would get into the ravined area which protects the bunkers. We would need tactical nuclear warheads against Malaya Sazanka, just south of Svobodnyl in the Far East, 51° 15' N, 128° 1' E. This is one of the older storage facilities, but it’s still active. Again, we would need a nuclear strike against Mozhaysk, which is the closest storage bunker to Moscow at 55° 26' N, 35° 46' E. The satellite photograph, here, shows the soccer field within the perimeter fence, indicating the size of the facility we would be destroying. We could get away with a conventional strike at Nizhnyaya Tura on both the storage facility at 58° 37' N, 59° 45' E and the nuclear weapons production plant there. We might have to be careful because Nizhnyaya Tura works together with Sverdlovsk-45, the biological weapons research facility, which could release something like smallpox into the air when a missile smashes into it.’ Bloodworth looked around the room. ‘That is just a fraction of what my computer has thrown up.’
‘We can’t do anything, you mean?’ said Hastings quietly.
‘If we knocked out all of that and twice as much again, he could still do more damage to America and our allies than we could absorb.’
Xia-class type 92 strategic missile submarine, Bay of Bengal
Local time: 1300 Tuesday 8 May 2007
GMT: 0730 Tuesday 8 May 2007
The swell of the sea around the submarine was identified by an alert analyst in Washington from a satellite transmission. Seconds after the swell, a generation of white water spread from the area as the submarine’s missile doors opened. The sea began heaving violently, then it pitched and rolled as if a storm was whipping up. Outside the area of launch the sea was flat as it only could be shortly before a tropical monsoon. The water sprayed and frothed, and the satellite picked up fire, leaping from the sea, then when the missile cleared the surface, its thrusters took it skywards beyond the earth’s atmosphere, before turning it to come down minutes later on its target.
BBC Wood Norton, Evesham, UK
Local time: 0730 Tuesday 8 May 2007
On instructions from the Prime Minister, John Stopping by-passed the Home Office and called directly to Robin Sutcliffe in the broadcasting bunker at Wood Norton. He identified himself with a pre-arranged code. ‘When can you begin broadcasts from Wood Norton?’ said Stopping.
It was the morning peak time. Although the Taiwan conflict was high on the agenda, the bulletins were focusing on the sudden resignation of the Foreign Minister, Christopher Baker. He had been arrested for being drunk and disorderly in Pall Mall only a few hours earlier. He had been alone and carrying a briefcase of classified documents, which luckily had been kept safe and unopened by the police. India was ranking third in the running order. Shortly before going on air at 0600, the government in Delhi had shut down satellite broadcasts out of the country. Full censorship had been imposed. Journalists were banned from the front line in Arunachal Pradesh and the issues of conflict between China and India were considered obscure, given what else was around.
‘We can switch any time at ninety seconds’ notice,’ said Sutcliffe. ‘We are running simultaneous dummy programmes.’
‘We would like you to wait until the 0730 news headlines are out the way and then switch. Say it is because of technical problems.’
‘Why is it?’
‘I am afraid I can’t divulge. You can run your programmes as normal, but we might have to take over editorial control at any time under the terms of the charter.’
Many listeners, tuned into 5 Live, were unaware of the change because those channels kept operating. The Today Programme presenters had less of a problem in explaining the sudden change of broadcast venue than the two presenters fronting Breakfast News. They were replaced by a lone and less famous presenter with a bland corporate backdrop. The programmes schedules were maintained on the compu
ter line, with the new presenters reading the same scripts as had been prepared in London. Sutcliffe decided that the packages at Television Centre should be used in preference to the lower-quality material which had been cobbled together at Wood Norton.
What remained a secret was that the BBC’s programmes were going out from a nuclear bunker because British territory had been threatened with a strike from Russia.
Faced with a news blackout in Delhi, the BBC’s Asia Correspondent, Martin Cartwright, had got straight on a plane to Bombay. On landing, he and his cameraman, Darren Scott, had taken a tortuous taxi journey to the financial district in the Fort area. If he could not report from the war zone or the seat of government, he planned to spin a story from India’s economic centre, transmitting it illegally on a satellite telephone. Bombay was as restless, dirty and unmanageable as he had ever seen it, oblivious to the global conflict going on around. Cartwright and Scott had hardly slept in forty-eight hours, frustrated at the restrictions put on their reporting, made worse with their story being hi-jacked by the conflict over Taiwan. Cartwright was even more furious because Sutcliffe had overruled his plan to fly straight back to Taiwan. He was told it was already being covered by a more junior correspondent.
It was Scott who eventually came up with the idea of just the two of them taking off to Bombay with a video-capable portable sat phone and the miniature SX edit pack. Scott said he could get Cartwright up for a two-way into the morning radio bulletins. They could then check into the Taj Hotel and have plenty of time to cut a piece of the Nine O’Clock News. If any pictures did come from Delhi or Arunachal Pradesh, they could drop them into the piece in London. As Cartwright and Scott inched through the streets in their taxi, beggars everywhere tapping on the windows, Scott checked out locations for pre-recorded two-ways in visions, which they could feed through the sat phone. He decided that the esplanade looking onto the Sea of Arabia outside the Taj Hotel would be as good as anywhere. The bustle of street-sleepers, traders and grubby children as a backdrop would show up India for what it really was. Cartwright liked it because he could contrast it with Shanghai. He would ask rhetorically why China’s economic centre had built a beautiful waterside promenade where people went out to enjoy themselves, roller-blading, kite flying, taking pictures, buying ice-cream, living a life, yet the same in Bombay was a wretched place of poverty, where not even a drop of wealth had seeped through to the streets. He noted down the thought.
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