James Barrington - Foxbat

A minute later, as the helicopter finally reached the taxiway, its engine note rose to a shrill scream audible even through the muffling effect of the headset. The Merlin lifted straight up into the air, then adopted a nose-down attitude as it began climbing and accelerating, heading west away from the airfield.

In minutes they were ‘feet-wet’ – over the sea – and established at five hundred feet and, Richter guessed, travelling at around a hundred and twenty knots, a ground-speed of nearly one hundred and forty miles an hour.

‘How far to Mother?’ Richter asked.

‘About fifty miles,’ responded the pilot, Lieutenant Craig Howe. ‘We’ll be there in around thirty minutes. So you’re Royal Navy, I gather? No civilian would say “Mother”.’

‘Ex,’ Richter confirmed. ‘I used to fly Sea Harriers for the Queen.’

‘Oh, God, not another fucking stovie,’ Howe muttered.

Richter merely grinned at that, leant back in the seat and closed his eyes.

United States Strategic Command (USStratCom) Command Center

The Underground Complex, Offutt Air Force Base, Omaha, Nebraska

General Winchester glanced around the Senior Battle Staff Area situated on the lowest level of the Command Center. Each senior officer sat at a workstation console which provided him or her with access to state-of-the-art data management systems and integrated secure and non-secure voice communication facilities. Video monitors located at each console displayed mission-critical information that allowed the proper control and management of the command’s missile and aircraft assets.

Lower-ranking staff officers were working simultaneously in the Support Battle Staff Area on the upper floor. These terminals differed from those of the senior staff in displaying more detailed data, rather than the global picture necessary for overall situation assessment.

The principal system used for storing and processing information is the Automated Command Control System, which stores data regarding everything from the current and forecast weather to tactical information about force movements and submarine, aircraft and missile status and availability.

Like the NORAD complex located inside Cheyenne Mountain, the USStratCom Command Center taps into a number of different surveillance systems designed to detect the launch and subsequent trajectory of both ICBMs and SLBMs.

Data is simultaneously transmitted to USStratCom, NORAD, the NMCC in the Pentagon and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Pennsylvania. At USStratCom, the data collected is fed into a high-speed computer for processing, and is then displayed on the Command Center’s eight large wall screens at the same time as it’s shown on video monitors positioned in front of CINCSTRAT, the senior battle staff and the Warning Systems Controller.

Data on the trajectory and predicted target area undergo a one-minute ‘confidence rating’ check, and once it’s clear that the missile is real – that is, not resulting from some form of computer-induced glitch or bad data – CINCSTRAT can launch additional aircraft for national survival and pass on advisory and preparatory information to his strategic assets. The order to retaliate with a strategic nuclear strike has to be issued by the President himself, to be relayed then by USStratCom. CINCSTRAT alone cannot make that decision.

‘OK, everything looks fine from here.’ General Winchester returned his gaze to his console, while speaking into his headset microphone. ‘Senior Controller, call the roll.’

For the third time that afternoon, Lieutenant-General Virgil Neuberger moved the trackball and sent the cursor spinning across the screen. He selected ‘Strategic Assets’, clicked ‘OK’ and began to read the figures into the command group intercom.

‘Submarines, first. We have eleven SSBNs on patrol, with two more preparing to sail within the next twelve hours – one from Kings Bay, Georgia, the other from Bangor, Washington. All have been passed coordinates for their targets in North Korea if this thing does turn to rat-shit. The other five SSBNs are in maintenance or deep refit, and so can’t be deployed within the time available.

‘Land-based missile forces are fully briefed and their alert status has been increased from ninety minutes’ notice to sixty minutes’ for launch. Of the five hundred Minuteman Three missiles, only twenty-three have been reported as unserviceable. Eighteen of these have minor software or other faults, which have been assessed as capable of rectification within six hours. Five have major faults, which would take over thirty hours to fix.’

‘That’s not a bad turnout,’ Winchester interrupted. ‘Where are those missiles with major faults located?’

Neuberger paused for barely a second before replying. ‘One each at F E Warren and Minot, and three at Malmstrom in Montana. Interestingly,’ he added, ‘the minor faults are similarly spread – three at F E Warren, five at Minot and the other ten at Malmstrom.’

‘OK, we’ll make a note of that. It sounds like somebody at Malmstrom’s falling down on the job, so maybe I’ll send a few no-notice inspection teams over to Montana once this party’s over. What about the bombers?’

‘Barksdale is reporting four per cent of their B-52s unserviceable, and Minot has three per cent out of action. Whiteman reports only one B-2 unserviceable. On Guam, which is probably where our immediate response would originate if the North Koreans do decide to cross the line, Andersen reports all aircraft serviceable.’

‘So, in summary, we’re in pretty good shape,’ Winchester concluded. ‘Let’s hope we don’t have to take this all the way to the wire.’

MV Kang San 3 , North Pacific Ocean

It had been, by any standards, an unusual voyage.

The two three-thousand-ton cargo ships – the Kang San 5 was in company – had sailed from Wonsan over a month earlier. They’d each had their normal complement embarked, but both were additionally crewed by ten soldiers, all under the command of a chung-yong , or lieutenant-colonel, on the Kang San 3 . All the military personnel had been armed, and the ships’ captains had been visited at Wonsan by a senior government official and been instructed to obey their orders without question.

A week before the ships sailed, an armed convoy had appeared at the Wonsan dockyard and a large crate had been loaded into the forward hold of the Kang San 3 . The hold had then been locked, and a relay of soldiers posted on guard outside.

The ships had headed south into the East China Sea, passed east of the island of Taiwan, and continued south to Legaspi in the Philippines. They’d taken on maximum fuel and off-loaded most of their cargo of cement, embarked several hundred bales of cloth destined for merchants in Papua New Guinea, and sailed again.

Their next port of call had been Lae, on the east coast of that island. Once the cloth had been unloaded and they’d again filled their bunkers, the two ships had set off without embarking any fresh cargo. They’d steamed north-east through Micronesia, past the Marshall Islands and on across the open expanse of the Pacific Ocean to Honolulu. After refuelling, they sailed again, heading east-north-east in the general direction of Los Angeles. They kept well clear of all the main shipping routes, because that was the way the planners in Pyongyang wanted it.

When they reached a position about fifteen hundred nautical miles north-east of Hawaii, the captain of the Kang San 3 was handed a sealed envelope by the chung-yong .

‘I don’t understand,’ he said, as he read the orders a second time.