Dragon Fire

Downing Street, London

There was a second set of photographs from the Cocos Islands raid which was classified for even the highest officials in the New Zealand government. Ever since New Zealand banned nuclear-armed warships from its waters in the eighties, it had been cut out of much of the intelligence loop. ‘It appears this could be more serious than the capture of Michael Hall,’ said Pincher, examining the picture taken with the infrared vision camera of the submarine surfaced next to the Great Cocos Island jetty.

‘It dived as soon as firing broke out,’ said John Stopping. ‘According to naval intelligence, its permanent home is at Tsing Tao, the headquarters of the North Sea Fleet. In December last year it sailed down to Zhejiang, South Sea Fleet base, and was tracked by the USS Hampton, an American Los Angeles-class submarine. As far as we were aware, it was still at Zhejiang, but — to the embarrassment of the Americans more than anyone — it slipped out and no one knows when.’

‘How?’ said David Guinness, the Defence Secretary.

‘Another Los Angeles-class submarine was redeployed from gate-keeping duties on Zhejiang because of budget cuts in February. The Xia must have gone out some time after that. The Malacca Straits are too shallow to send a submarine through submerged. It probably went through at night under cloud cover in the wake of a Chinese freighter to conceal its signature. Or it might have taken the longer route through the Sunda Straits, which divide Java and Sumatra. Either way it has got into the Indian Ocean theatre undetected.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Christopher Baker to John Stopping. ‘I don’t see how one Chinese submarine changes the situation as dramatically as you make out. We knew the Chinese maintain naval bases in Burma.’

Defence Secretary David Guinness had never rated the Foreign Secretary’s intelligence highly. ‘This is a photograph of a Chinese Xia-class type 92 strategic missile submarine from the 9th Submarine Fleet,’ he told Baker bluntly. ‘John Stopping has circulated the brief, of which you must have a copy. In peacetime, the Xia comes under the command of the People’s Liberation Army — Navy. In wartime, it is commanded through the Central Military Commission, of which President Tao is the chairman. We presume the Xia is now under wartime command. It could be armed with the JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missile. JL stands for Ju Lang, meaning Giant Wave, and its land-based equivalent is the DF-31 — DF meaning Dong Fang or East Wind. NATO knows it as the CSS-NX-4 with a range of 5,000 miles. It would either be kitted with three or four multiple re-entry warheads of up to 90 kilotons each, or a single warhead of 250 kilotons. This is a new SLBM system which was fitted in 1999, and if it works it would be comparable to our three-stage solid fuel submarine-launched Trident C-4.

‘Up until now the Xia-class submarine has never been known to sail outside of the South China Sea. It is not clear whether this was because of operational difficulties or whether the Chinese, aware of Western and Russian antisubmarine warfare capabilities in the Pacific theatre, chose to keep their powder dry. In 1985, shortly after the first missile test from a submerged Xia, there was an intelligence report through Japan that the vessel had been lost, but this was found out to be misinformation planted by the Chinese. The type 094 photographed at the Great Cocos base was first deployed in 2003. The JL-2 was successfully tested in February 2004.

‘It is possible that the Xia could be carrying the shorter range two-stage solid-propellant missile the JL-1, for which Nato’s specification is CSS-NX-3. It had its first successful test in April 1982, from a Golf-class submarine, followed by a launch from the Xia in 1985, when we were told the vessel had been lost. The first successful Xia launch was September 1988. It is possible that the Chinese don’t trust the bigger missile. The JL-1’s range is just over 1,000 miles, which would give it a good range into southern and central India.’

‘This is a nuclear missile?’ the Prime Minister confirmed.

‘Correct. Or at least the option is there. What this picture shows is that China has moved its nuclear threat from land-based to sea-based and added an extra theatre of war to its inventory.’

‘And the situation right now is that we don’t know where this submarine is.’