Foxbat

desk. Of all the instruments in his office, that was the one least used. It connected directly to the private office of the ‘Dear Leader’ himself.

Kim had no need to dial a number or press a button. Within five seconds a familiar voice spoke in his ear. ‘Yes, Comrade Kim?’

‘We are ready,’ he said simply.

Chapter Seventeen

Sunday

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

It was the first time Richard Muldoon had ever been inside the White House. Walter Hicks, on the other hand, was very familiar with the security and routine. His meeting with the DNI had been brief, and his discussion with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff even briefer. Inside two hours, he and Muldoon had been sitting in the back of an unmarked Agency car heading for Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Oval Office wasn’t designed for discussions involving a large number of participants, so only seven people had assembled there. The President and the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Director of National Intelligence were in attendance, as well as Hicks and Muldoon themselves.

‘How certain are you of this?’ the President demanded as his opening gambit.

‘Right now, we’re not certain of anything, Mr President. The photo interpreters at N-PIC believe the latest images show four nuclear weapon transport vehicles, and they’ve traced one of these back to the vicinity of the nuclear plant at Yongbyon. That proves a truck probably adapted to carry a nuclear warhead was driven to a missile launch site, but it doesn’t prove the truck was ever at Yongbyon, nor that there was ever a missile warhead in it. It’s inevitable that there are always gaps in our satellite surveillance programme, but one picture shot at Mayang does apparently show a warhead attached to the top of the No-dong located on the pad.’

‘And what’s your take on this, Don?’

General Donald Sterling shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Mr President. I don’t doubt that the North Koreans are up to something, but I still find the idea of them threatening a first strike against Japan difficult to believe. And it wouldn’t necessarily work anyway, since we’ve positioned Patriot PAC-3 missiles at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, and those should be able to take out most incoming weapons.’

‘“Most” isn’t “all”, General,’ Walter Hicks pointed out.

‘Agreed, though they’d probably take account of eighty to ninety per cent of any first strike. But my feeling is that a threat against Japan seems altogether too complex and convoluted. The North Koreans aren’t interested in Japan: they want to grab control of the southern part of the peninsula. So why don’t they just go ahead and invade?’

‘Two reasons, General,’ Muldoon broke in sharply. ‘First, they know the contents of Oplan 5027 just as well as we do. They know that if they just mount up and head south, they’ll easily smash through the DMZ and the defences behind it, and maybe even take Seoul. But they also know that we’ll land reinforcements within a couple of weeks, and do our best to push them right back where they came from. And that then our intention will be to take Pyongyang and occupy their nation. That’s indisputable, so if they do want to invade South Korea, and get to stay on there, they’re going to have to be clever and sneaky about it.

‘That’s the first reason. The second is that if they do target Japan with nuclear weapons, the Japanese will scream so loudly under threat that we’ll have no option but to back off, to save them from worse. The moment we do that, there’s nothing at all to stop North Korea taking the South, and the missile threat will remain even after they’ve occupied the entire peninsula. If this plan comes off, we could lose South Korea and Japan without a shot being fired in anger, and without being able to do a single thing about it.’

‘Of course we can do something about it,’ Sterling snapped. He wasn’t used to being lectured by a civilian – far less a civilian who worked for the fucking CIA – in front of the President of the United States of America. ‘We could take out their missile sites, right now.’

‘With what, General?’ Hicks asked. ‘If I recall correctly, the diplomatic moves that we tried earlier didn’t get us anywhere, and the only definite response from Pyongyang was that if they were attacked either by the US or the South Koreans, they would consider it an act of war and respond accordingly. If you send in a strike force from south of the DMZ, or use our own silo-based missiles or bombers, that’s most definitely an act of war against North Korea.

‘Unless you can guarantee to eliminate every single missile and aircraft the DPRK owns, before the dust has settled Pyongyang will have launched whatever they’ve got left – nuclear, chemical, biological or otherwise – straight at Seoul and killed half the population of South Korea. And in the eyes of the world it would be our fault for launching an unprovoked attack. We’d be censured by every nation on Earth, and the reparations we’d be forced to pay could bankrupt us.’

The silence that followed was broken finally by the President himself. ‘Well, General? I think the Agency has made a valid point. Could you actually guarantee to destroy every single North Korean missile and aircraft?’

‘Obviously not,’ Sterling muttered, fuming.

‘Right,’ the President said crisply, ‘so let’s look at our other options. If a first strike is out, what can we do, apart from just standing by and watching? Mr Hicks?’

The ADD had expected this question, but hadn’t anticipated that he himself would be the one it was directed at. ‘I’m an intelligence professional, Mr President, not a military officer. Therefore I’m not the best-qualified person to answer you.’

‘No, but I’d still be grateful for your input.’

Hicks ran through the options in his head. ‘Well, I think we should maintain our present high state of alert. That means keeping the bombers in the air and the missiles at short notice for release, and we should tell Pyongyang that we’re doing so. I think that’s important because it will show them that we’re not going to let them get away with any offensive actions. I’d also suggest sending a couple of Aegis cruisers to the Sea of Japan as soon as possible, to engage any missiles the North Koreans do decide to launch.’

Sterling interrupted him. ‘The Enterprise Carrier Battle Group includes the Leyte and McFaul, both Aegis guided-missile destroyers. But the Japanese have four Kongo-class destroyers, a modified version of our Arleigh Burke design with the same system on board, and they’re currently a lot closer.’

The President shook his head. ‘Sorry, Don, I’ve already talked to the Japanese Prime Minister, and he’s not prepared to commit any of his own forces at the moment. He doesn’t want to risk provoking Pyongyang, and he thinks stationing a couple of Japanese destroyers close enough to the east coast of North Korea to intercept missile launches would be seen as provocative. I might not agree with his position on this, but I can’t argue with that reasoning. Anything else, Walter?’

‘We’ll also need the military ready to roll in case the North Koreans do decide to cross the DMZ. I presume you’ve already organized reinforcement troops, General?’

Sterling nodded. ‘Of course, but the logistics of the situation mean it will still be several more days before the first ships are ready to sail, and then they obviously have to make a lengthy transit.’

‘How long?’ the President demanded. ‘The last briefing I received suggested two weeks in total.’

‘We can probably improve slightly on that, sir. The latest estimate is ten days from today to the first of our reinforcement troops landing in South Korea.’

‘So if Pyongyang decided to mount a conventional invasion and troops crossed the DMZ tomorrow, say, there’d be nothing we could do to stop them, and we wouldn’t have enough reinforcements on the peninsula to start pushing them back for nearly two weeks. We’d expect our subsequent campaign to occupy North Korea to last a minimum of a month, assuming, of course, that neither side resorted to the use of nuclear weapons or other WMD. And that’s presuming we could manage to dig the North Korean forces