James Barrington - Foxbat

The North Koreans had modified several aspects of the missile’s operation because of their unique ‘underground’ military strategy. The launch process for a standard Scud B takes about one hour, and there wasn’t a great deal they could do to reduce this. But what they had done was to rejig the sequence of actions so that almost all of the preparations for launch took place before the missile was raised in its cradle into the vertical firing position. This meant they could prepare the weapon in the safety of their hardened shelters and only expose it to danger in the open air immediately before launch.

All the preparations had paid off. The Scud missiles had passed their pre-flight checks with no major problems. Twelve minutes after the last missile had been driven out of the shelter and lifted into the vertical position by the two hydraulic rams on the TEL – this phase of the operation itself taking almost five minutes – the technicians began leaving the area.

In the control bunker, the commanding officer watched the last man walk off the launch pad and waited impatiently for the call from the chief technician. When the phone rang, he snatched it up before the first ring had completed.

‘Yes?’

‘All missiles are fully checked and prepared, sir.’

‘Good. We will commence firing preparations immediately.’

He replaced the receiver and nodded to his assistant. ‘Begin the countdown,’ he ordered. ‘Launch at thirty-second intervals, targets as designated.’

Cobra formation, over North Korea

Richter’s aircraft hadn’t even reached the southern side of the Demilitarized Zone before his Radar Warning Receiver began screaming. It was picking up multiple transmissions from almost all around him. The ‘frying pan’ on the HUD was showing over a dozen lines.

‘I’m detecting Spoon Rest and Fan Song radars,’ Dick Long reported on their discrete radio frequency, ‘and that means SA-2s. No problem at this altitude.’

The two Harriers were in battle pair formation, keeping low and fast, no more than five hundred above the ground. The SA-2 surface-to-air missile, NATO reporting name Guideline but known as the S-75 Dvina inside Russia, is optimized to attack high-level aircraft. It was originally designed by the Soviets to counter American B-52 bombers, and is essentially powerless to intercept targets below about three thousand feet, because of constraints in the radar and guidance systems.

Knowing that was one thing, but believing it another. The HUD in Richter’s GR9 kept identifying even more fire-control radars as the two aircraft swept across the four-kilometre-wide DMZ.

The boundary between the two countries is marked not by customs posts or duty-free shops, but by a narrow strip of temperate wilderness, seeded with an uncountable number of landmines, that’s been virtually untouched for over half a century. Running precisely down the middle of the Demilitarized Zone is the Military Demarcation Line, which marks the frontline that existed when the ceasefire was agreed between the warring states in 1953.

The moment they crossed it, North Korean anti-aircraft gun batteries opened up, and the air in front of the Harriers was suddenly filled with puffs of black debris as the shells began exploding. Both men knew that the chances of being hit by a round from these unsophisticated weapons was very slight. Their worry was SAMs – not the cumbersome SA-2s, but the possibility that some North Korean soldier on the ground below them might be carrying a Stinger or the locally manufactured and equally deadly equivalent, the wha-sung . The best defence against short-range weapons like those was speed, so they pushed the Harriers as fast as they dared.

The terrain they were overflying meant they couldn’t relax for a moment. The ground was deeply fissured, steep-sided valleys running in all directions, many from east to west. That meant they were continually climbing up over the tops of hills and dropping down into valleys on the other side as they headed north. That required absolute concentration, but it gave surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns very little time to lock on to them.

That didn’t stop missiles being fired, however. Several times both Richter and Long saw the unmistakable smoke trails of SAMs arcing up towards them, but on each occasion either the Zeus worked its magic or they outran the missiles.

The Harrier GR9’s Zeus ECM system’s Radar Warning Receiver can identify over a thousand different radar emitters and automatically configure the self-defence jammer to meet the identified threat. Zeus also includes a MAW, or Missile Approach Warning, component that’s designed to detect a missile launch and activate the Bofors BOL chaff dispensers without the pilot’s intervention. It impressed the hell out of Richter.

As they headed deeper into North Korea, the Hawkeye used the Harriers’ discrete frequency to relay information the CIA and N-PIC had gleaned from the Keyhole images, data that was being flashed to the Enterprise in a steady stream via a communications satellite.

‘There’s a small residential development at Chiha-ri, but the launch pads are separated and up to the north. The grid reference I passed you is for the launch complex, and it’s set in the hills north of the workers’ houses, and just south of a small mountain lake. The obvious approach is along the valley from the south-east, but that would take you right over the residential area and alert the air defence batteries, so command is suggesting you come in from due south. There’s a range of hills, with tops at around fourteen hundred feet, that runs north–south, and the valley to the west of that is uninhabited. Copied so far?’

‘All copied, Cobra One.’

‘Roger. That approach will bring you into the Chiha-ri valley at its widest point, but north of most of the houses. Your waypoint there is thirty-eight degrees thirty-seven decimal two four north, one two six degrees forty-one decimal zero five east, ground elevation nine hundred fifty feet. When you pass that you’ll see the valley in front of you dropping down to around eight hundred feet. Then you’ll have a short transit of one decimal four three miles on a heading of three five six true to the southern launch pads. The hills surrounding the pads top out at sixteen hundred fifty feet. Your suggested escape vector is to maintain a northerly heading, then turn hard left once you’re over the lake and continue the turn onto south. That will keep those hills between you and Chiha-ri, and hopefully below the acquisition threshold of their air defence radars.’

‘Any details of SAM types, Alpha Three?’

‘Stand by, we’re checking. OK, the data’s inconclusive, but it looks like sierra alpha type three, with the launchers located on the periphery of the complex. They’ve probably got radar-controlled anti-aircraft guns on the hills above the valley, but we can’t confirm that.’

MiG-25 Foxbat, callsign Zero Six, over North Korea

‘Zero Six, Chunghwa. Message from command. No reports of CFC aircraft getting airborne, but two low-level high-speed contacts are reported tracking north towards Chiha-ri. They may be attempting to attack the missile complex. You are ordered to detach one combat group to intercept them. Initial heading will be one nine zero. Report when separated and in descent to three thousand five hundred metres.’

Gennadi Malakov decided his group of seven aircraft would handle the incursion, since nothing much else seemed to be happening.

‘Zero Six, acknowledged. Combat Group One, descend now to three thousand five hundred metres and turn left onto one nine zero.’

Malakov glanced left and right as he pushed his control column forwards, checking that the other pilots had begun simultaneous descents. The remaining fourteen MiG-25s would hold at altitude until required for another interception, or for recovery to refuel.