Foxbat

and there create huge underground spaces for their aircraft. They choose the north side because our bombs or missiles would have to be dropped or fired from the south, so the bulk of the mountain would be in the way. The rock above the tunnelled-out hangars is far too thick for bunker-busting bombs to penetrate. To be specific, our GBU-28 can cut through twenty feet of reinforced concrete: most of the North Korean bunkers are protected by around two hundred sixty feet of granite.

‘According to the latest estimate, North Korea has well over eight thousand individual underground sites linked by three hundred fifty miles of tunnels. That’s enough to shelter most of their air force from any attack we could launch using conventional weapons. There’s also nothing we could do to cut their lines of communication or to try to decimate their military command structure, because they’re underground as well. One report suggested that their bunkers hold over a million tons of food, one and a half million tons of fuel and nearly two million tons of ammunition and stores. In short, we could launch a massive bombardment of all known North Korean military facilities and achieve virtually nothing in terms of affecting their ability to wage war.

‘Defeating the Iraqis was easy: they had low morale and faced overwhelming odds. The battles took place on almost ideal terrain for our forces – wide open deserts – and we achieved virtually immediate air superiority. North Korea, however, is mountainous, and even if we did gain control of the skies – which is by no means certain – that probably wouldn’t help much. The battles there will be won or lost on the ground.

‘I mentioned their superiority in numbers of tanks. The North Koreans not only have more tanks than our combined forces can field, but most analysts believe they’re better vehicles as well. They’re faster, with thicker armour and more powerful main guns. They’ve also developed tanks specifically for fighting in the hills and valleys of their country. They’re designed to manage better on steep slopes, and they can ford the deepest rivers.

‘And that’s just one way in which the North Koreans have prepared for a war that they’re actually expecting to fight. They’ve also got the biggest special force in the world – about one hundred twenty thousand men. They’ve got twelve thousand anti-aircraft guns, fifteen thousand shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles, and about seven hundred high-speed patrol boats, most carrying surface-to-surface missiles, plus long-range anti-ship missiles.

‘Their fighter aircraft are mainly old and slow, but North Korea’s a very small country, and any air battles will be more like Second World War dogfights than the kind of combat our pilots are generally trained for. There just won’t be the opportunities for our guys to engage targets at long and medium range, because the North Korean aircraft will pop up from behind a mountain, fire a salvo and drop down again. The air war will be messy and fought at very close quarters, which is exactly how their pilots have been trained to fight.

‘The last point to remember is probably the most important: North Korea expects to fight a war. South Korea is seen as enemy territory, but is also regarded as merely a client state of America, and therefore of little real importance. America itself is and always has been North Korea’s main enemy, so their leadership believes that the war will ultimately be a contest between these two countries. Pyongyang does not expect China or Russia or anyone else to intercede on its behalf, or to offer any kind of assistance, and all its preparations are directed towards a fight to the death between them and us. If we attempt to invade them, Pyongyang will respond with all the forces at its disposal, including whatever weapons of mass destruction its scientists have been able to fabricate. It will do its very best to destroy the United States and kill as many of our citizens as possible. That is their leader’s philosophy, and that’s what really scares me.’

‘You’ve done a pretty good job of scaring me too,’ the President said. ‘So what response do you suggest?’

‘As you know, Mr President, we’re committed to developing a defence shield between the two Koreas, and we’ve allocated an eleven-billion-dollar budget to achieve that. The problem is that we’ve done almost nothing so far. We’ve withdrawn a lot of our troops from the area immediately south of the DMZ simply to reduce possible tension. And we’re also in the process of upgrading the Patriot missile systems we’ve positioned there from PAC-2 to PAC-3, but that’s about all.

‘What we can’t now do is reinforce our troops there very quickly, because of the logistics involved. This situation has blown up really quickly. The Joint Chiefs anticipate it will take a minimum of a week to assemble the men and supplies we’d need, and probably another week to ship them to the peninsula. If the invasion starts within the next few days, South Korea simply won’t have the ability to stop the advancing troops. The South can slow them up, but ultimately the North will just roll over the defenders.

‘The other problem is that right now we don’t have any surface assets that close. The Enterprise Carrier Battle Group is currently in the North Pacific, and they’ve been ordered to head towards Korea, but we’re still talking days before they get within striking distance.

‘The only options we’d then have would be to hit the attacking forces with bombs from our aircraft at Andersen on Guam, or use ICBMs from here in the States, or our boomers – missile-carrying nuclear submarines – but they wouldn’t be able to stop a ground assault.’

‘Why not?’

‘Numbers, Mr President, numbers. As I’ve said, the North Koreans can field over a million front-line troops and almost five million reservists. Unless we carpet-bombed or nuked the entire front, we’d have no hope of stopping them, and anyway tactics like that are considered politically unacceptable in the current international climate. If we did get involved, we’d be expected to use smart munitions and carry out precision attacks. Using those tactics against the sort of forces the North Koreans can field would be like a mosquito biting an elephant.’

‘So what’s your own recommendation?’

‘From what I witnessed at the United Nations, diplomacy isn’t going to work here. I think we should carry on with what we’re doing already. We prep Andersen and get the bombers moving, fly them towards the Korean Peninsula but hold them clear of territorial waters, just to let Pyongyang know we’ve got the capability to strike if they do launch an invasion. That’s one threat. Against the possibility of North Korea escalating this to a nuclear conflict, keep the ICBMs and the boomers at a high alert state, so that we can respond real fast if we have to.’

‘The missiles are holding at Alert Sixty now.’

‘It’s your decision, Mr President, but I suggest bringing them to Alert Thirty fairly soon, and I’ll make sure Pyongyang knows that we’ve done so. It may not stop them, but it’ll sure as hell make them stop and think.’

Chapter Fifteen

Saturday

Ok’pyong missile base, North Korea

They stopped the countdown at launch minus eight minutes, awaiting the executive order from Pyongyang that would either see the missile launched or force them to begin the complex process of reversing the actions they’d taken so far. Just under fifteen minutes later, the secure teleprinter spat out half a dozen lines of text, and almost immediately afterwards the direct line from Pyongyang rang. Two minutes after that, once the commanding officer was satisfied with the authenticity of the orders he’d been given, the countdown resumed.

A little after four-fifteen that afternoon, local time, those missile control staff who weren’t manning consoles watched through six-inch-thick armoured glass as an explosion of flames and smoke enveloped the pad. The first stage of the Taep’o-dong ignited with a roar that could be heard miles away, and the bunker shook and vibrated. Slowly, so slowly that it seemed it must fall back to earth, the pointed nose of the missile rose above the conflagration and accelerated steadily into the clear blue sky.

There was a smattering of applause once it became clear that the first stage was performing faultlessly, but the most critical part of the flight was still to come.

HMS Illustrious, Yellow Sea

‘Flash, flash, flash. Homer, Whisky Charlie with flash traffic. Missile launch detected from the east coast of North Korea in the vicinity of Ok’pyong at sixteen seventeen local time, zero one seventeen Zulu. Stand by for initial trajectory estimate.’