Dragon Fire

The Kremlin, Moscow, Russia

The Cold War years of President Gorbunov’s early career had centred on the few seconds that a nuclear exchange might become real. For decades the Soviet Union was on a constant exercise when conflict could suddenly break out from existing manoeuvres. The aim had been to exhaust and confuse, such that a decoy deployment staged for the enemy satellites could within seconds become a genuine step towards attack. For years in Moscow and finally as Pacific Fleet commander Gorbunov had lived and breathed it like a ritual. He could still recite weapons codes and coordinates. He knew without notes the sites which would be used for first strike and the surviving sites which would handle the second strikes. Even now, as President, he insisted on having the daily positions put on his desk of the Typhoon-class strategic missile submarines patrolling under the ice of the Arctic Circle. He had even insisted on changing the lax practice of not reconfirming the area known as the polynya every twelve hours. This was a patch of clear water, surrounded by ice, through which the missile could be launched. Gorbunov wanted the submarines no further than fifteen minutes from the nearest polynya.

Like China and America, Russia’s intelligence-gathering machine picked up the Chinese missile launch. But unlike President Hastings, Gorbunov had arranged for a line to be kept open between his office and the Chinese operational command in the Western Hills. He was, after all, the main supplier of China’s military hardware. On a separate telephone, he had a line to Hari Dixit, now back in the Prime Minister’s office in Delhi’s South Block. Neither party knew Gorbunov had direct access. More than any of the other two leaders, Gorbunov knew the split-second decision-making needed in nuclear warfare, and he had no intention of being called in at the fifty-ninth second, when a missile was midair and about to strike.

‘Is it nuclear?’ he said to his aide-de-camp, who checked on the line to the Western Hills.

‘A conventional strike against missile sites at the Eastern Air Command in Shillong,’ came back the reply. Gorbunov immediately repeated the message to Hari Dixit, then was on another line to John Hastings in the White House.

‘What about Okinawa?’ said the American President.

‘I have nothing on that,’ said Gorbunov.

‘Well, if you’re in touch with General Leung, tell him that if one piece of ordnance hurts one American, I will destroy his goddamn war machine for the next five thousand years.’

Gorbunov didn’t pass on the message, but it confirmed very much what he feared. The orders which he personally would give over the next few minutes would also set back Russian — American relations for more than a decade. Ever since the end of the Cold War, however, the relationship had been one-sided, driven by the whims of Western money and Western democracies and caring little for the feelings of the Russian people. It was not an honourable position for the Motherland. Gorbunov was about to risk a change for the better.

The cornerstone of Russia’s strategic force was the intercontinental ballistic missile, the SS-27 Topol-M. Because of funding problems, the Moscow Institute of Heat Engineering State Enterprise (MIT) — the sole Topol factory — could only produce ten to fifteen missiles a year. Russia had in service far fewer than the 450 missile level needed to maintain parity with the United States under the START II treaty. For the purposes of conflict, however, the figures were largely cosmetic. Gorbunov had about 150 missiles, enough to shift substantially the global balance of power.

The 45-tonne missile had had more than a dozen successful test flights since 1995. In December 1997, the first two Topol-M systems were put on alert for a trial period in the Taman Division at Tatischevo in the Saratov region, 725 kilometres south-east of Moscow near the border with Kazakhstan. Since then Russia had converted about a hundred silos of the defunct RS-20 missiles for use by the Topol-M. The plan was to have an equal number of silos and mobile launchers, which could be driven both on and off the road. Since coming to power, Gorbunov had insisted on a programme of constant exercises with the Topol-M mobile launch system. Tests in 1998 showed that the Topol-M could be converted to carry at least four manoeuvrable warheads and it could be launched with a short engine-burn time helping it to escape satellite detection.

By 2005, the Topol-M was deployed at Saratov, at Valday, 770 kilometres north of Moscow, in the silos in the southern Urals and Altay in Siberia. Gorbunov had also maintained a conflict launch capability at the Plesetsk test site, 800 kilometres north of Moscow, and at Kamchatka in the Far East.

He planned to use the Strategic Rocket Forces to the full, three hundred thousand troops divided into six separate armies, each comprising three to five divisions. The soldiers looked after security, transportation and above-ground maintenance. Officers manned launch stations and command posts underground. In total, Russia had three hundred launch control centres and twenty-eight missile bases, although some had been mothballed in the past ten years because of arms reduction. While the SS-27 Topol-M was the cream of the force, the SS-25s were better tested for road mobility and the SS-24 was the missile transported by rail. Two-thirds of the mobile missile force was deployed in the west of Russia to be used against Western Europe and one-third was still east of the Ural mountains for use against China. Either sector could strike the United States. All were in constant combat readiness with Gorbunov receiving daily reports of any maintenance problems which depleted his nuclear capability. Right now he had 4,486 nuclear devices at stationary, railway and mobile launch complexes and 672 launchers ready to be used. Before he gave his orders he set up quick response system between the Sixth Directorate of the Headquarters, Strategic Rocket Forces and the Twelfth Directorate of the Ministry of Defence, which represented the nuclear weapons line of command, with open lines from his office to both directorates.

Then he instructed overt activity at several nuclear storage and launch sites. Missiles were moved around by road and rail. They were brought out into clearings and elevated for launch. It was a crisp clear day over large areas of Russia and the American satellites were passing overhead.