James Barrington - Foxbat

‘What about the first strike option?’

The Secretary of Defense shook his head firmly. ‘No, Mr President. On that subject I have to agree with the Agency’s recommendation. If we initiate a conflict, America will be reviled and there would be the most severe international repercussions. My view is that we should certainly be prepared to use whatever weapons we have, but only in response to an attack initiated by Pyongyang.’

‘So what do we do right now?’

‘I suggest, Mr President,’ said General Sterling, ‘we continue with our plans to reinforce the troops we already have stationed in South Korea. I also think we should ensure that Pyongyang is fully informed that we’re doing so. We should meanwhile keep our homeland ICBMs at a high alert state, and keep the bombers from Andersen airborne, with fighter support, and close enough to North Korea that they’re painting on their surveillance radars. And then we wait for the gooks to either finish this exercise they’re allegedly running, or begin whatever the hell else they’ve got in mind.’

Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) Complex, Malmstrom Air Force Base, Great Falls, Cascade County, Montana

As the alarm bell rang again in the missile control capsule, Major Richard Whitman reached out for the red telephone with some trepidation. The keys were inserted and turned to the ‘ready’ position, and the Emergency Action Message had been authenticated. The next logical step would be the launch itself.

Known as the ‘release’ message, the Nuclear Control Order is the last instruction given before actual firing of the missile, but is subject to additional verification. A second missile control crew in one of the squadron’s other four launch capsules must conduct the same sequence of checks on all the various messages received. Any crew in the squadron can thus delay the launch of a missile if they believe the order to be invalid.

This delay lasts only for a fairly short period, after which the veto is automatically cancelled, but it can be applied as many times as is desired, and a single crew could therefore effectively prevent the launch from taking place.

Finally, to release the missiles, the two officers have to turn their keys to the launch setting simultaneously and hold them there for at least five seconds. This is the reason for the wide separation of the two control positions, as the keys are simply too far apart for one man to turn them both at the same time.

‘Stand by for Nuclear Control Order,’ said the voice on the telephone. ‘Prepare to copy. Nuclear Control Order is code Foxtrot Lima Charlie Two Six Two Seven. Read back.’

‘Roger, Command,’ Whitman said. ‘I copy Nuclear Control Order code Foxtrot Lima Charlie Two Six Two Seven.’

‘Affirmative.’

Dave Fredericks already had the Emergency War Order folder open, and was running a stubby finger down the list of Nuclear Control Order codes – the so-called ‘Gold Codes’ – all of which have seven digits.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘Foxtrot Lima Charlie Two Six Two Seven decodes as “Bring all missiles to Alert Fifteen, and hold at fifteen minutes to launch”. At least we’re not at war yet,’ he added.

‘Not quite,’ Whitman replied, ‘but we’re sure as hell getting closer. OK, you heard the man. Start bringing them to the boil.’

Oval Office, White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC

The Secretary of Defense replaced the telephone handset and turned round. ‘Offutt reports our ICBMs are now at launch minus fifteen minutes, Mr President.’

‘Let’s hope they stay there, as I don’t much like this,’ the President said, to nobody in particular. ‘We seem to be waiting now on Pyongyang and, if the Agency’s right, when they do decide to jump, there might not be a lot we can do about it.’ He turned back to Walter Hicks, who was refilling his coffee cup from one of the silver pots the stewards had brought in fifteen minutes earlier. ‘We’ve looked at a nuclear blackmail attempt before, Walter, so how credible do you think this threat is against Japan? Does the Agency feel sure the North Koreans could possess warheads small enough to be carried by their short-range missiles?’

‘It’s credible enough to take seriously, Mr President. They’ve been working on their atomic weapons programme for a long time now. Back in the fall of ninety-eight two nuclear weapons were tested at Ras Koh and Wazir Khan Koh in the Kharan Desert in Pakistan. At that time, Pakistan couldn’t possibly have produced enough plutonium from its research reactor at Pinstech to create one nuclear device, let alone two. So we believe those tests were joint ventures between North Korea and Pakistan, with Pyongyang – or rather Yongbyon – supplying the fissionable material and most of the technology. That’s why we believed they had a credible nuclear capability even before that Pacific explosion, and that’s why we should take them seriously now.’

‘And you think their intention is genuinely to target Japan?’

‘I don’t know, sir.’ Hicks shook his head in a helpless gesture. ‘All I can tell you is that we think they must certainly have a fairly small nuclear arsenal. If they were going to fire weapons across the DMZ into South Korea, we would expect them to use their southerly missile bases, and shorter-range weapons like the Scud B or Hwasong 5 and 6. All three of those can reach the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula, and they’ve got maybe seven or eight hundred altogether, easily enough to ensure some would get past our Patriot batteries. They’d probably launch non-nuclear missiles to overwhelm the Patriots, and then fire their missiles armed with nuclear warheads towards the end of the barrage. And, of course, there’d be no way of our telling what each missile was carrying until it detonated.

‘Preparing to launch nuclear-tipped No-dong missiles from places like Mayang and Ok’pyong only makes sense if they’re planning to fire them in an easterly or south-easterly direction. And the only target that’s out there is Japan.’

‘You seem to be forgetting something, Mr Hicks,’ the Secretary of Defense interrupted. ‘The No-dong has a fairly limited range, and the shortest straight-line distance from North Korea to Japan – or at least to Kyūshū, on Japan’s south-west tip – is directly over the southern end of the Korean Peninsula. If Pyongyang was really trying to threaten Japan, they would be more likely to load the nuclear warheads on missiles at their southernmost bases, which lie just north of the DMZ.’

Hicks shook his head again. ‘I disagree, Mr Secretary. As I’ve just said, if they fired their missiles directly over South Korea, the Patriot batteries would certainly be able to take out some of them. Pyongyang knows we’ve got Patriots there, even if they don’t know their exact locations. To avoid that risk, if they are targeting Japan, launching their missiles on a south-easterly trajectory from bases well to the north of the DMZ is the only strategy that makes sense. That way they’d avoid the Patriots, and once they’re in the air we’ve got nothing that can stop them. I don’t have too much confidence in the effectiveness of the PAC-3 batteries on Okinawa, because the best time to intercept an ICBM is during the boost phase, not after the missile’s re-entry.’

‘And the reality of the situation is that if they do manage to detonate an atomic bomb, even a small one, on Japanese soil, we’re probably going to get involved in a nuclear exchange,’ the President said gloomily. ‘After all, we can hardly stand by and let them nuke one of our most important allies in the area. So how effective do you think these Russian aircraft – those Foxbats that the North Koreans have stolen – would be at intercepting our incoming missiles?’