Dragon Strike: The Millennium War

SEVEN

Throughout the day, Sea Harriers and Merlins had continued to strafe and destroy any Chinese ship they found on patrols. They were loaded with a mixture of Sidewinder missiles, American-made air-to-ground AS-16 Kickback missiles, specially designed for attacks on ships, together with anti-submarine Stingray torpedoes and depth charges. They destroyed a Ming submarine and sank a Yukan class LST which was reported to be carrying up to 200 troops. Most drowned.

Shortly before dark another Romeo struck, this time hitting the Australian frigate HMAS Parramatta near the bow. Five servicemen died, including an officer. Although the damage was contained, the frigate had been put out of action. The captain took her out of the battle area. The task force commander agreed to let HMAS Rankin escort her. Five hours later HMS Triumph destroyed the submarine believed to have carried out the attack.

`We expected more attacks at night,' wrote the captain of the Ark Royal. `Strangely there was nothing. We sailed at half speed because the Montrose was under repair. There was very little moonlight. We scanned for periscopes like they would have done in the Second World War. I thought of them lying in wait, perhaps choosing not to fire in order to test our nerve. Our speed and our course were irrelevant. Our task lay in maintaining our presence in these contested waters, although in truth it was hard to see why British and Chinese servicemen were dying over such barren and remote landfalls. I must discipline my mind not to retreat down such a perilous path. What of those oft-quoted remarks after British campaigns in places long ago abandoned by us only to return to poverty and tribal killings: that such and such a battle was a good one to have on the CV? Perhaps 22 February 2001, the naval battle for the Spratly Islands, will also be good for our careers.'

The Vietnamese mission was to destroy China's ability to launch an attack. To complete the objective, Vietnam's own air force would be shredded. Casualties would be high. The international press would call it suicide. But it wasn't; this was how Vietnam had fought all its modern wars and won. The targets were the Chinese troops, artillery, and armour positions gathered along a 300 kilometre stretch of border; the Su-27 fighter base at Yulin on Hainan Island; the nearby submarine base at Sanya; and a return sortie to the headquarters of the Chinese South Sea Fleet, the Zhanjiang Naval Base. This forward command post for Dragonstrike was located on the east side of the Luichow Peninsula, which formed the dividing line between the South China Sea and the Gulf of Tonking.

The attackers did not expect to find any significant Chinese naval assets in port — they were either at the bottom of the South China Sea or patrolling parts of that great waterway beyond the control of the American, Japanese, and British navies. No. Their objective was the fuel dumps to the north of the dock and what had become known as the `Russian quarter'. This was a group of low-rise buildings on the east side of the dock which housed Russian technical advisers (and families) and equipment.

Overnight, aircraft had been flown back from their refuges in Cambodia and Laos to military airstrips near Hanoi. The task of attacking Zhanjiang went to the pilots of a single squadron of twelve MiG-21 fighters. They headed due east, flying at 45 metres, too low to show up on Chinese radar. They would not be identified until they managed to make Chinese landfall: but the Chinese were expected to deploy their Su-27s and the MiGs would need to use all their countermeasures. The cover of night would help. Vietnamese pilots were more experienced fliers than their Chinese counterparts, who spent most of their training practising daytime missions.

The Vietnamese battle plan called for the squadron to divide into two parts. The first, consisting of five aircraft, would take out the oil installation. The resultant fire, it was calculated, would be helpful for the second part of the mission — the attack on the Russian quarter. The MiG-21s made landfall at 2114 and were immediately subjected to anti-aircraft fire in a continuous curtain from fixed installations along the coast to the naval base. But it was not aimed fire and the aircraft got through. Within minutes a squadron of Su-27s intercepted them before they began their bombing run on the oil installation. But this was where the Vietnamese showed their mettle. Also they were wearing night-vision intensification goggles and the Chinese were not. Flying at night can be a nerve-racking business at the best of times, but when you're making sharp turns while at the same time diving or climbing or rolling figuring out which way is up is often difficult. Two Chinese pilots lost their lives that night as they slammed their aircraft into hills after becoming disoriented and losing ground reference. The MiGs also hit three other Su-27s, but not before one of the MiGs was also hit.

They began the bomb run, seeing at night through the intensification goggles. The oil bunkers were close to the waterfront and extended over a large area. A direct hit on any one of the ten massive tanks might ignite the rest. The first MiG-21 to attempt an attack just exploded under a hail of well-aimed radar-directed ground fire. The second was hit badly, but at least the pilot had time to eject. The third aircraft scored a direct hit on an oil tank. The fireball that resulted shot 150 metres into the air, and adjacent tanks started to catch fire. All around, massive explosion followed massive explosion. The silhouette of the Shell New World could be seen against a wall of flame. The four remaining MiGs turned to complete their mission.

The attack on the oil bunker had lasted not quite five minutes, but that was enough time for the Russian technicians and scientists to look for cover. Except there was none. The MiGs — each equipped with a high-explosive bomb set to burst in the air, as well as air-to-ground missiles, and cannon — turned to begin their run. An Su-27, flying straight towards them, launched two air-to-air missiles. The pilot of the lead MiG did not even have time to press his ejector seat button before he was hit. His comrades kept to their course. The three of them managed to drop their bombs. These were not laser-guided smart bombs, but they did their work. The Russian quarter was reduced to rubble as the buildings collapsed. Eighty-five Russians lost their lives — mostly women and children. The mission was a success — both targets had been hit and the Vietnamese air force had five MiGs left.

The airbase at Yulin was deserted. All available Chinese aircraft were deployed over the South China Sea or in defence of Zhanjiang. Vietnam sent its own small Su-27 squadron into the main Chinese forward base for Dragonstrike. They flew fast and low through anti-aircraft fire, cratering the runway, and destroying the control tower, three IL-76 refuelling aircraft, and radar installations. Returning Chinese aircraft had to be diverted to the civilian airfield at Haikou, where there were no engineers or ordnance to turn them round for another attack. The Vietnamese attack on Yulin crippled the Chinese fighter force for long enough to give them clear skies for their two remaining targets. Climbing straight up from the attack on Yulin, the Vietnamese pilots hit the Sanya submarine base. With rockets and cannon fire they cut communications and started a series of small fires. One Romeo class submarine was destroyed and sunk. Another was hit. Just as swiftly, the squadron, still without casualties, pulled away and headed back across the border to Hanoi. At the same time thirty-four Vietnamese fighters, bombers, and attack aircraft struck at Chinese positions on the border. Amid scenes reminiscent of American carpet bombing during the Vietnam War, the whole stretch of border lit up as airbursts and cluster bomblets combed the jungle where the Chinese artillery and troops were hidden. It was only on the second run that the Chinese guns jumped to defend the tens of thousands of troops massed there. The Vietnamese aircraft took casualties, losing twelve in the second run before the anti-aircraft artillery had been damaged, and another five in the third when fewer guns were firing. But as they pulled up and flew away the Chinese positions were in chaos, and command and discipline had broken down. The full extent of the casualties was never known. China said 600 men had been killed or wounded. Military satellite photographs suggested that the figure could have been as high as 4,000. There was no real cover.

All the attention had been on a ground assault into Vietnam and the Military Committee had decreed that the enemy air force had been eliminated. They were taken by surprise by the weight and accuracy of the attack. The airbursts and cluster bomblets killed any exposed personnel and damaged everything but heavily armoured vehicles. President Wang himself ordered the attack on Vietnam halted.

`Certainly nobody in this country has taken civil defence seriously for God knows how long, for twenty-five years, at least. It was recognized by most people that civil defence was kind of a silly idea, given the kind of thing it was supposed to protect against.' The broadcast was live from the University of Michigan in Chicago. The deep baritone voice was that of Edward Stone, the sixty-one-year-old veteran editor of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. In the past day the hands of the magazine's fabled Atomic Clock had moved from nineteen minutes to just one minute to midnight, exactly the same spot it had been during the Cuban missile crisis with the Soviet Union in the sixties. Midnight signified the hour of the holocaust.

`It seemed possible to protect people in cities to some degree in fallout shelters,' Stone continued, `by taking simple measures like ducking under tables or desks if you saw a flash, or ducking behind a tree or into a ditch if you were outside. But it was only when the possibility became dozens of nuclear weapons used against the US that things changed drastically. An all-out nuclear war as then planned by Moscow and Washington involved the exchange of thousands of nuclear weapons. It became pretty clear to most sensible people that civil defence against that kind of an onslaught would do no good. If you're in a city, and you're hit by a nuclear weapon, you're either going to be suffocated or burnt up or killed by the blast. Firestorms use up all the oxygen — you can't breathe. And the fallout itself doesn't go away after two weeks. You can't just magically get up out of your shelter and everything is fine and you go to the store and get some milk and resume your normal life. It just doesn't work that way.'

The anchor turned to Colonel David Blakeny of the Illinois National Guard. He had 10,000 troops under his command and spoke in clipped military sentences. `As far as nuclear attack goes, any military unit, through their normal training procedures, would have only a limited capability of reacting to that threat,' he said. `We can provide security, help with evacuation or rebuilding. We maintain a very low level of readiness. But through our day-to-day activities, and training, we could respond to that.'

`Respond, fine, Colonel,' pressed the presenter. `But how effective would that response be? Have your men been trained for a nuclear attack?'

`Negative. No drills for nuclear war preparedness have been performed by the Guard for years. There are three reasons. We did not want to scare the populace. Acting out a simulated attack would be expensive. And thirdly, during the Cold War, preparation of a nuclear strike was considered a hostile act by the enemy.'

The anchor interrupted: `You're telling me America is totally, I mean totally unprepared for this. Edward Stone, is this right?'

`We would respond in the same way as we do to any disaster. In the 1950s and 1960s the arms race ran out of control. We tried to stabilize it with the SALT 1 and ABM treaties in the seventies. The idea was to accept the concept of nuclear parity. Instead of one side always trying to get ahead of the other we would accept a situation, and they would accept a situation, where both sides had roughly equal forces. Each side could effectively destroy the other side, even if the other side struck first. In order to make Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD, work, you had to make sure that neither side could protect its people or its forces. So from that perspective truly aggressive civil defence programmes would be seen as provocative. If the other side really began digging big, deep shelters and really equipping them, and acting like they were seriously beginning to protect their people, that would be seen as a provocation. It would be taken as evidence that they were planning something.'

The programme shifted to a live insert showing a street lined with palm trees in the Californian capital, Sacramento. Delia Murphy from the Department of Emergency Operations was waiting to go on air. The anchor explained how her department had responded to earthquakes, mud slides, floods, waste spills, race riots, and other disasters in recent years, but not nuclear attack.

`Until today, this hadn't weighed heavily on our minds,' said Murphy. `We did have air-raid shelters in the fifties and sixties, but they've been abandoned. None of the county shelters have been stocked. If we are hit by a nuclear missile, a lot of people will die from the first hit. There's no preparation for that kind of situation. Through the sixties the shelters were stocked with crackers, candies, and sanitation kits. But in 1984 we sold all that stuff off to the Third World countries. The last time people got worried was during the Gulf War in 1991. They would ask where the nearest shelter was. I had to joke with them. I recommended that they go to a McDonald's, because they store food in the basement.'

`What are the signs of panic where you are, Delia?' asked the anchor.

`There's been some looting. But pretty much, I think people are staying calm, listening to announcements, and looking after their families.'

`We have a response now from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA,' said the anchor. `They are very busy today preparing for something which we all hope will never happen. They are just confirming what we've all discovered in the past few minutes. Their federal initiatives and training programmes to assist American people during a nuclear holocaust were cut because of lack of funding. No one thought it would happen. Edward Stone, let me turn to you. I have a declassified intelligence document issued by Richard N. Cooper, Chairman of the National Intelligence Council. He says, and I quote: "China plans to update its ICBM force with new missiles and, unlike the Russians, to increase the number of missiles deployed. A possible future improvement is to include a mobile ICBM" d he says: "Many of China's long-range systems are probably aimed at the United States."

`Edward Stone, if we knew this was happening why didn't we do something about it?'

`Clearly we misjudged China's intentions and resolve. Until two days ago, I didn't know anybody outside of the wacko hard right who really believed that the Chinese would launch a missile attack against CONUS.'

`Excuse me, CONUS?'

`Continental United States. Sure we know China has the capability of hitting one or two west coast cities. They couldn't hit Chicago or Washington. But they could do some real damage in California. That makes us conscious about the Chinese. We would never go to war with them. What President wants to lose San Francisco or Los Angeles? So that makes us a little cautious. That's the way deterrence works. Our policy toward China seems to be pretty fragmented. But it is some sort of constructive engagement. China has a very small nuclear arsenal, of 400 to 500 missiles. Meantime, the US has more than 20,000 such weapons. But if you're asking me to point out the flaws in our intelligence policy, I would have to say that we concentrated too much on the rogue states, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Korea, and always hoped that China would remain at least militarily neutral. Not so.'

`I would just like to add,' said Colonel Blakeny, `there would be millions injured in a nuclear attack. They won't be able to receive proper medical treatment immediately. There are only a few hundred intensive care hospital beds in the entire country, not enough to handle the horrendous influx of burn and radiation victims after a nuclear blast. I tell you now, if the leaders of China and America are unable to unwind this confrontation, there is nothing the National Guard of Illinois can do. We are heading towards a situation where the survivors would envy the dead.'

Like the City of London a few hours before, Wall Street was pervaded by an eerie emptiness. Few employees had bothered to turn up for work. New York's subway system had ground to a halt, as had the train service from Grand Central Station that connected Manhattan to the dormitory suburbs in New Jersey and Connecticut. Those traders who had managed to get to work found financial markets in paralysis. Earlier the Bank of England, in conjunction with the main London based commercial banks, had announced a cessation of currency trading in the City. Special arrangements would be made, the Bank said, for the settlement of transactions due for Thursday and Friday. Without explanation it added that it was `hopeful' that the crisis gripping the world would be resolved to such an extent that normal operations could resume the following Monday. Nothing like this had ever confronted the world's monetary authorities. The modern currency market had no way of preparing, or coping, for it. Since the 1980s a group of US, Japanese, and European banks had dominated currency market trading and had developed systems to enable them to trade around the clock. An electronic record of all the trades executed own as the `book' s passed from Tokyo to London and from London to New York and from New York back again to Tokyo, where the whole process started again. No one had ever expected the clock to stop. So when the handful of dealers who managed to get to work in London arrived at their offices they found they were holding a book of deals which they could not trade with any confidence. Soon afterwards the Bank of England had issued a statement.

Due to the unprecedented events in East Asia, the Bank, in consultation with the major banks, bullion dealers, and discount houses, announces that until further notice all screen-based currency market dealing in the London market will be suspended. The Bank will offer assistance to any London bank which is placed in difficulty by this decision. The Bank is hopeful that the current crisis will be resolved in the next day or so and is cooperating with monetary authorities elsewhere to stabilize financial markets.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York — the arm of America's federal central bank which conducted market operations — issued a similar statement at the opening of trading in New York. Although there was little legal underpinning for the Bank's statement, there was none for the New York Fed. But that was as maybe. As with London, the Fed could not stop two parties agreeing a price between themselves, if they wanted to take that risk. But as there was no professional market to speak of — the `book' had stopped in London — the Fed's calling a halt to trading was merely academic.

Jamie Song's Mercedes turned off Fuyou Street into the east gate of Zhongnanhai. Either side of the double gates was a PLA soldier and as Song's car slowed down they drew to attention. The road beyond the gate narrowed appreciably and the Mercedes proceeded at a snail's crawl. Low-rise concrete-block buildings jostled with formal highly decorated pavilions where the leadership gathered for important meetings. And it was at the steps to such a pavilion, built at the turn of the nineteenth century, that his driver deposited him. He got out. The air was cold and dry. The moon was trying to break through clouds that had lent a grim, grey aspect to the whole day. He got out and stretched his legs. Beyond the pavilion was a clump of trees and beyond them the Zhong Hai Lake. The entrance to the pavilion, at the side, was unprepossessing, just a sliding glass door in a wooden frame. The space immediately beyond it was equally unimpressive. More wood and glass, but the glass covered this time with an olive-green curtain. Song was led past this and into the room proper. A set of sixteen or so armchairs had been arranged in a U around a large conference table.

President Wang and the senior PLA and intelligence staff were waiting for him. The Foreign Minister took his seat at the end of the table, facing the President, who was flanked by the commanders of the navy and air force. Wang Feng opened the meeting by quoting from China's long-standing nuclear policy: `Our aim since 1964 has been to have a limited but strategic nuclear arsenal as a shield to keep the more aggressive superpowers from attempting global hegemony. Today, our policy is being put to the test. Unfortunately, the United States has chosen to show that it can defeat us in a conventional naval battle. If we do not resort to our nuclear strength, we will lose our territories in the South China Sea. I am sure all the comrades here agree that that is an unacceptable prospect.' Wang paused and then asked for a military assessment.

The senior PLA General said that China had more than 500 nuclear warheads. About 120 missiles were ground based. Some were hidden in caves and could be transported to launch sites under the cover of darkness. There were 120 aircraft, capable of delivering another 250 warheads, but these would only be effective against Vietnam and Taiwan. They might reach Japan without being shot down. The main Chinese strength was its submarines. There were now two submarines within nuclear striking distance of the American mainland, with no signs yet that they had been detected. The new version of the Kilo class diesel-electric attack submarine was now off the coast of California. Before the 1996 Taiwan incident she was due only to be commissioned in 2001, but the timetable had been revised and the Russian Rubin Design Bureau had agreed to help. The submarine was carrying Russian-made sea-launched cruise missiles with 200 kiloton nuclear warheads, which could travel almost 3,000 kilometres into America. The cities at its furthest range were Minneapolis, Kansas City, Little Rock, and Houston. Those due for targeting were Denver, Salt Lake City, and Phoenix.

President Wang asked why military installations were not to be hit. The General replied that due to the limited number of nuclear warheads it would be far more effective to destroy population centres and instil panic throughout America. `The American military machine cannot be defeated, but the nation can be defeated by its own people. Already they are frightened and have begun looting.'

`Then why not Los Angeles or San Francisco? They are more symbolic cities,' continued Wang.

`We want to retain the sympathy of the large Chinese populations there and of the other Asian immigrants. They are a significant economic force of investment into our country and they may become a powerful political force in America itself.'

Wang nodded. The General continued: `But also 3,000 kilometres off the coast in the eastern Pacific is our updated version of the Xia strategic missile submarine. The Xia we sacrificed carried the JL1 ICBM with a range of only 2,700 kilometres. The new version is armed with the JL2, which can travel 8,000 kilometres. It means, comrade, that the destruction of Washington is in our reach. The Americans have no idea the submarine is so close. She left the North Sea Fleet headquarters at Qingdao some weeks ago, sailing in the wake of a freighter, which made her almost impossible to detect.'

`Are we going to declare the submarines?' asked Jamie Song.

`The Americans describe us as a deterred state,' said Wang. `They believe that by threatening us with nuclear attack we will surrender. We have been set apart from Iran, Iraq, and Libya, which they regard as uncontrollable and undeterred. If we can convince President Bradlay that China, too, will not be cowed and that unlike in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries we will risk our own destruction to protect our sovereignty, then we will win the war. So by declaring one submarine we can avoid the mutual destruction of two great countries. And we will keep one secret to ensure that if the Americans are stubborn China will not be the only victim. I am quite prepared to destroy a city, although I can't see how it benefits either side. That, Comrade Song, will be your message to Mr Overhalt.'

The wireless transmission mast of the Chinese Kilo class submarine was spotted by the captain of an American fishing trawler 25 kilometres off the coast of Crescent City, California. The two vessels nearly collided as the submarine came to periscope depth to receive a radio message. The skipper alerted the Coastguard, which sent a boat from Crescent City and a helicopter from Humboldt Bay, 125 kilometres away. Before it reached the area, the Kilo had gone deep and sonar operators monitoring microphones anchored to the sea bottom along the coastline had failed to pick up her acoustic signature. The Los Angeles class attack submarines USS Asheville and USS Jefferson City were diverted from their northern coastal patrols to find the vessel. But it seemed the Chinese vessel was quieter than the background noises of the ocean herself. The American commanders increased their own exposure to enemy attack by using active sonar transmissions which might reveal an echo of the Kilo's position. They found nothing. Helicopters dropped patterns of sonobuoys. Surveillance ships deployed towed arrays and a long string of hydrophones in the hope of finding the Chinese submarine.

This was the unseen enemy, moving through the darkness of the sea. In modern warfare there is nothing so deadly. As far back as the eighties, the Pentagon was faced with the harsh evidence that America's high-technology national defence system could be defeated by a single submarine. During American-Japanese war manoeuvres in the Pacific seven submarines tracked down three aircraft carriers. With anti-submarine warfare surveillance constantly operational, and cruisers, destroyers, and frigates hunting for the submarines, two of the carriers and eight other warships were sunk at the cost of four enemy submarines. The debate on how to proceed with naval defence was never settled. Futuristic schemes were put forward on how to tackle the threat of quieter and quieter submarines. Questions were asked as to whether so much emphasis should be put on carrier groups, the centrepiece of American defence, when they had proved to be so vulnerable. There was disagreement over funding priority, particularly for the Star Wars space defence system, which few scientists believed would ever work. Efforts were made to move submarine detection away from its reliance on acoustics. Special radar was tested on satellites to recognize anomalies on the sea's surface and compare them, like a signature, to computer-generated images. Submarines would create tiny variations in height and roughness of surface waves. The surrounding sea water would change temperature. Marine organisms would be disturbed. The vessel would leave behind tiny particles. All this would show up on satellite pictures to reveal the wake, which was far longer but far more difficult to see than the wake of a surface ship.

There had been a fierce argument within the Chinese navy over whether to send a diesel or nuclear-powered submarine. The argument was won by those who favoured the low-technology Romeo and Ming tactics in the South China Sea battle. They believed the American navy, with its emphasis on NATO defence, was not trained to handle the sort of threat presented by the Kilo.

From all over America reports were coming in of looting, murders, fires, and mob violence. Correspondents in Los Angeles, New Orleans, Washington, New York, Chicago, Dallas, and the farmlands of Middle America told similar dark and bloody stories of a people in a selfish panic to survive. Thousands of properties were broken in to. In the early stages the police blamed gang warfare, but it soon emerged that respectable middle-class families were also loading up their cars with stolen food. They armed themselves and killed to get their supplies. By midmorning supermarket chains were closing down. The staff and their families were allowed to stay inside until the crisis was over. In Memphis, looters backed a pick-up truck into a restaurant. When the forty-two-year-old proprietor tried to stop them, his chest was blown away with both barrels of a shotgun. In Albuquerque, hundreds of people besieged a supermarket just before the steel rollers were pulled down for it to close. Two cars smashed into the front glass to wedge the rollers up. The crowd poured into the store, taking all the fresh and canned food and jamming it into sacks, boxes, trolleys, and anything they could find. The staff locked themselves into the store room. As the looting spread, more vicious methods were adopted; arson, petrol bombs, even grenades and flame-throwers. In New Orleans, fifteen people died when they were trapped in a basement bar and petrol bombs were thrown down the stairs. In Los Angeles, parts of the city were taken over by organized looting teams which engaged the police in firefights. An armed motorcycle gang devastated Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills before moving into the wealthy suburban areas where the National Guard set up a cordon of water cannon, backed up by armoured cars and military helicopters. In most American cities conditions deteriorated. The air was filled with wailing sirens of ambulances and fire engines and gunfire. Some of the worst-hit areas were the Chinatowns, which were attacked by mobs simply trying to vent their anger. The police and National Guard, already over-stretched, and with their own families threatened in the war, saw no reason to protect these ethnic communities. In Chicago, the husband and wife owners of the East Lake Restaurant hung a sign on the door in English saying: `Please come in and help yourself.' They left through the back door with a suitcase just as their grandparents had done in Shanghai fifty years before. Most of the Chinese in Chicago and many other cities chose not to protect their properties, or to argue their innocence. They had learned about racism in America. They also knew how determined Chinese rulers were from time to time to destroy their country. With remarkable patience, thousands abandoned their life's work that day. Most ended up in queues outside European and Latin American consulates claiming to be refugees from political repression. In San Francisco seven were killed in a drive-by shooting while queuing up at the Brazilian Consulate.

Within a seven-block radius of the East Lake in Chicago were at least twenty other Asian restaurants and stores. Graffiti was sprayed on buildings all around them with the insignia of black street gangs which held territory just a few blocks south. The Vietnamese and Korean communities were less restrained than the Chinese. As the gangs moved in, they defended themselves with a ferocity which reminded Americans why they had failed to beat these nationals in two separate wars. The Asians lured the badly commanded black youths into ambushes. They engaged them in hand-to-hand fighting, killing with lethal kicks and chops. After a bloody firefight in which the bodies of gang members as young as twelve were left on the streets, the Vietnamese advanced south into the territory of a gang which had attacked their supermarket. They besieged a bar. Under covering fire, the Vietnamese exploded two barrels of fuel outside the windows, threw in hand grenades, shot the survivors as they stumbled out, and then escaped. One television commentator began speculating that tens of thousands of Chinese patriots were rising up on American streets at the command of the Communist Party.

In the countryside, where food was more plentiful, people organized themselves into self-defensive communes. There was a run on gun and ammunition shops. Farms were turned into self-sufficient stockades. As one sheriff in Wyoming said: `No one seems to be breaking the law much. But there's a lot more guns around than there were twelve hours ago.' Car dealers also reported the buying up of four-wheel-drive vehicles, trucks, and station wagons. `Some people are coming in with their money in sacks and buckets, taking a car, and driving off with it,' said a dealer in Kansas City. `They don't take no papers and don't wait for me to count it. They're paying all right. Sometimes too much. Nuclear war sure is good for business as long as it never happens.'

State governors and finally the President went on network television to appeal for calm, but their appearances only seemed to increase the panic.

The driver of the Lincoln Continental navigated through the back streets of the diplomatic district to get to the China World Hotel, where the Embassy had booked a suite on the Horizon Floor. Half-burnt effigies lay in the roads. The military newspaper Liberation Army Daily, which many of the students had been carrying, blew around in the streets. Posters had been pasted up on embassy walls proclaiming the glory of President Wang. They only saw three cars on the short journey; taxis with foreign fares. The bicycle lanes were empty. These roads had been commandeered by the Party. They were off limits to the Chinese people. No one would dare venture in. A quiet hung over this part of Beijing, a sanitized section of China where the battle against Imperialism had been played out for a few hours and then just as quickly abandoned. Soon the car was in the China World Trade Complex, lit up and busy. The doorman, rugged up in a red coat, showed Overhalt in.

Music from a chamber orchestra on his right wafted across the lobby. He heard the beat of a Filipino rock and roll band from a darkened bar on his left. The staff kept an elevator waiting for him. The carpet inside said: `Have a nice Thursday.' On the twenty-first floor Jamie Song's guards met him and took him straight to the suite at the end of the corridor. The Foreign Minister was already there and had mixed himself a vodka and tonic from the minibar.

`Reece, how good to see you,' he said in English.

`You too, Jamie,' replied Overhalt. Song told his aides to leave the room, but Overhalt spoke knowing that every word was being taped, translated at the Ministry of State Security technical surveillance post just behind the hotel, and fed straight to the Central Committee in Zhongnanhai. Overhalt believed all this would be an advantage. `After you called me on Wednesday,' he continued, `I spoke to the President. It was on his urging that I am here tonight. Your demonstrators, I fear, may have cost us time and raised the risk of a nuclear exchange.'

The Foreign Minister looked directly at Overhalt with a passive expression. `There is nothing the Party can do against the people who wish to express spontaneous anti-imperialistic feelings.'

Overhalt ignored the remark and swiftly brought the conversation round to Dragonstrike. `Anyway I am here now. This crisis, a crisis of your making, has got out of hand. So I will be quick and blunt. I told you earlier today we had missiles with firing solutions ready to go. I am now authorized by the President to tell you this: if China fires a missile we will launch a retaliatory strike. There are no ifs, no buts. We don't just mean Beijing. We mean Dalian, Qingdao, Shanghai, Wuhan, Chengdu. Your cities will become radioactive rubble. Your infrastructure will be broken concrete and twisted metal. Your country will no longer work.'

Jamie Song interrupted: `Reece, hold back, hold back. Who's talking nuclear war?'

Overhalt was not sure whether his friend was genuinely unaware of how much the PLA had increased the stakes of the war. `You have primed your land-based ICBMs for launch. You have abandoned your no-first-strike policy. Yet your naval forces are being slaughtered. If we wish we will destroy what's left of your air force. If that happens the PLA will be publicly humiliated. The Party will crumble. Your dream of the economic superpower within the authoritarian state will never happen. Is that what you want, Jamie? For China to lose, like the Soviet Union? Is that your aim?'

`China will never again be humiliated into slavery,' said Song after a pause. `We are a very old civilization. You may bomb our whole country, but we will recover, even if it takes a thousand years. Yet if we turn just one suburb of one city into what you call radioactive rubble, what will happen to America?'

`We can handle it.'

`Can you? Look at the television. Look how America panics as soon as its own country is threatened like ours has been so many times.'

Overhalt didn't answer.

`Why don't you compare us to an African-American gang in Los Angeles?' said Song. `They're tearing around in their trucks shooting everything and getting shot back. Kids aged eleven, twelve, thirteen are being torn apart by automatic weapons. But they're still doing it. They expect to die. It's part of the gang life. If American citizens go out and destroy themselves, why is it so impossible for you to comprehend that China won't?'

`This whole conversation is putting a bitter taste in my mouth, Jamie,' said Overhalt. `We've put a lot of time, money, and loyalty into your country, believing that you really did want to modernize and reform. But I'll tell you this, and make no mistake, America and Boeing would survive. India is already giving you guys a run for your money; Latin America is growing rapidly. Russia and Eastern Europe are queuing up for our technology and building skills. The days are gone when developing countries cry victim and get away with it. There are big markets out there that are much easier to get into than here. There are democratic leaders who have real plans to let their countries develop. China isn't special any more, and if you don't have us you won't have the European Union either. If Boeing goes, Airbus goes. You throw out Ford and Chrysler, Citroe¨n and Mercedes pack their bags as well. You ban AT&T and Motorola, you won't get Nokia and Siemens. We'll all cut our losses and go. The people you are threatening with nuclear attack are the best builders of infrastructure in the world.'

At this stage, Jamie Song stood up and walked to the window. `I've been authorized to tell you that our Xia nuclear missile submarine is in the Pacific with the new JL2 intercontinental ballistic missile. From where it is now, it can hit Washington.'

`We sank it,' snapped Overhalt. `You sank the older Xia carrying the JL1. The commander of the Xia 407 is awaiting orders to launch. I have to return to Zhongnanhai and report our meeting. Why don't you talk to President Bradlay on the secure line from the Embassy, and we can meet back here in say two hours? You can tell Bradlay we won't launch until after our next meeting. You have my word on that.'

The two men travelled down together in the lift. It was approaching midnight. As they stood on the hotel forecourt the activity of night-time Beijing glittered in front of them as if nothing was untoward at all. Limousines drew up. They heard the horns of traffic along the Avenue of Eternal Peace. The smoke from fires warming the homeless under the flyovers was lit up by the street lights. Overhalt realized with irony that the band was singing a very bad version of `Rocket Man', by Elton John. `See, Reece,' said Jamie Song. `While America burns, China is tranquil. We are in control of our people and our culture. Why don't you ask Bradlay whether he is in control of the American dream?'

After speaking directly to Reece Overhalt from the Embassy, President Bradlay ordered a unilateral ceasefire among Allied forces in the South China Sea. All aircraft except surveillance aircraft were to be grounded. There would be no firing of weapons unless fired upon. National Security Adviser Martin Weinstein said that the Chinese might well be bluffing, but it was a risk America could not afford to take: `Gentlemen, we must assume we are two hours away from a nuclear strike,' he said.

For some minutes there was confusion over the number of Chinese submarines deployed in the Pacific. Military intelligence had a near certain identification of a Kilo class attack submarine off the Californian coast near Crescent City. Its present position was unknown, although there was a good chance that either the USS Asheville or the USS Jefferson City would be tracking it within the next few hours. At the time it was sighted, Jamie Song was with Reece Overhalt in the China World Hotel. It was probable that Song was unaware of its detection. He had declared a totally different type of submarine, the strategic missile Xia class, as still being several thousand kilometres out in the Pacific.

`Let us get all this absolutely clear,' said the President. `We are threatened by two submarines. The Chinese have declared one. We know about the other. Right now, either of them could launch an attack on the American people. Are there any more submarines?'

`We don't think so, sir. But we don't know.'

`They could take out an American city and there's not a damn thing we can do about it.'

`We could pick a missile up on launch, but that would be only minutes before it hit the target,' said Arnold Kuhnert. `The chances of us stopping it are not good.'

`And to stop it happening we have to surrender our right to the South China Sea.'

`That's about it, sir.'

`Or we could wipe out China, and lose Washington and a few other cities. How many dead — one or two million, maybe? The question in front of us, gentlemen, is whether it is worth sacrificing those lives in order to retain our leadership in global affairs.'

Throughout the previous evening events were being chronicled by students linked into the Internet. While the official state-run media continued to lambast American and Japanese aggression, there was no mention of the imminent nuclear threat. Since the beginning of Dragonstrike students had been holding informal salons to discuss the implications. The highly secret group of twelve young men and women of the New Communist Movement were now deciding at what stage the crisis should be exploited to force a change of government. A short-wave radio, tuned to the BBC World Service, was perched on a window sill with an aerial hanging outside because of the bad reception. The leader of the group, a twenty-one-year-old economics student, believed the movement had two duties. Reeling off a list of names including Mao Zedong, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela, he argued that to win victory for China they must be prepared to sacrifice their freedom and possibly their lives. But in reality the time was not right for demonstration. With the United States about to launch a nuclear attack it was the duty of the New Communists to give warnings to people to protect themselves. Over the past hours messages had gone out over the Internet to the movement's cells in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Taipei, Lanzhou, and other major cities. Secret radio stations in Hong Kong and Taiwan were ready to begin broadcasts. There was another in Lhasa and the cell in Shanghai said it too was setting up transmission equipment. Every cell had made posters advising nuclear survivors what action to take. The students had downloaded whole nuclear Web pages from the Internet and photocopied them. The leader of the Beijing cell said that in half an hour New Communists all over China would begin their announcements. Cars were waiting outside the university campus and the posters would be distributed around tenement blocks. After that, people would be warned through loud hailers. The leader made it clear that this was not a political action of any sort. The purpose was to save lives. Therefore, no posters would be put up in and around Tiananmen Square and other sensitive areas, nor would there be any announcements there.

As the meeting broke up, the Public Security Bureau moved into their dormitory, arrested the students, and confiscated the radio and computer equipment. The leader wriggled free and ran down the corridor attempting to escape. He was shot dead, in the back. PSB officials closed in on three cars parked on opposite sides of the streets 300 metres away from the university main gate. Two drivers were picked up. The third drove off at speed, but was met at the first junction by a hail of automatic weapons fire. The Volkswagen Santana turned over and smashed into a lamp-post. The driver died. The few witnesses who saw the killing were taken into custody. It became clear that China's massive security apparatus had been monitoring the activities of the New Communists for months and as the students were about to show their hand, they chose now to close in. At least eighteen others were shot dead, one in Xiamen, two in Wuhan, three in Lanzhou, one in Guangdong, three in Chengdu, five in Lhasa, and three in Shanghai, where police opened fire as soon as they burst into the room where radio transmissions were being made. The machine-gun fire was heard by the few listeners before the signal ended. The New Communist radio station in Hong Kong was on the air for twelve minutes before police found it. Signals from Taipei were jammed.

The commander of the attack submarine USS Asheville reported that he had a near certain acoustic identification of the Chinese Kilo class 10 kilometres south of where it was first sighted. His orders were to keep with the vessel, but not to destroy it yet because there was a temporary ceasefire. Trailing a VLF wire, he placed his submarine behind the Chinese and waited. The sea microphones were now picking up the same signature. An AWACS surveillance aircraft was dedicated to tracking it. Satellite photographs came back of the trail it was leaving. The commander of the USS Asheville waited. His sonar operators, picking up the mechanical sounds emitted by the Chinese submarine, reported that the launch procedures for the cruise missiles on board had not yet begun. They had not yet detected the torpedo tube doors being opened in preparation for firing.

While efforts to shield the civilian population had ended decades before, plans to rescue the nation's leaders, its heirlooms, and national documents remained in place, and key government personnel, together with the President and Congress, had nuclear shelters to go to. Time magazine, in a special four-sheet edition, claimed that the government was resurrecting a plan first drawn up in the 1950s to take the President out of danger of a nuclear blast. In Outpost Mission, as it was called, a helicopter was on standby. The pilots carried dark visors to shield their eyes from the atomic flash and wore 9 kilograms of protective clothing to block out radiation. It was supplied with decontamination kits and radiation suits for the President and the First Family, and even carried equipment to dig White House staff out of the rubble, if the bomb hit first. It would fly to the heavily reinforced communications ship the USS Northampton, off the Atlantic Coast, or to one of several hollowed-out mountain sites, although Time, which had written extensively about nuclear protection in the 1990s, speculated that the only facility still operational was Mount Weather, a bunker 80 kilometres from the capital.

Time was accurate. The underground shelter hewn out of Mount Weather was a forty-three-year-old complex. Officially it had never existed and was referred to only as the Special Facility, operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The complex was tucked into a heavily wooded mountain ridge, and surrounded by a 3 metre high chain-link fence with six strands of barbed wire on top. Inside there were manicured lawns and buildings with antennas and microwave relay systems. The hard rock face was reinforced with 2.5 to 3 metre iron bolts. Underneath there was a giant disaster co-ordination complex, covering 18,500 square metres, with a blast-proof steel door at the tunnel entrance. Offices were reinforced with steel and concrete. Drinking water was kept in an underground pond. There was a massive computer network and a television and radio studio from which to address the nation, together with a hospital, a cafeteria supplied with enough food for several weeks, a power plant, and dormitories. The most senior administration officials carried special cards, ranking them in order of importance for evacuation. They included Cabinet Secretaries and the heads or seconds-in-command of government departments and agencies. Private quarters were set aside for the President, Cabinet Secretaries, and Supreme Court Justices. Officials would be checked for radiation and those exposed would be decontaminated with showers and medicated soap. Their clothes would be burnt. They would be issued with military overalls. Electric golf carts would ferry the injured to hospital.

At the same time, Congress could seek refuge at the West Virginian resort of Greenbriar in White Sulphur Springs. The bunker was codenamed Project Greek Island, built under the hotel complex and equipped like Mount Weather, but with less luxury, to enable Congress to function for sixty days after a nuclear attack. The aim was to ensure that democracy did not collapse and give way to a military dictatorship. There were 1,000 bunk beds in eighteen dormitories, with communal toilets and all the character of a penal institution.

`What they envisioned during the Cold War, and are probably envisioning today,' wrote Time, `is an America darkened not only by nuclear war but also by the imposition of martial law, food rationing, censorship, and the suspension of many civil liberties. It would be the end of society as we know it.'

While the government continued its no comment policy, previous plans on how American would salvage its heritage from nuclear holocaust were discussed. The original documents of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were to be flown from the National Archives, seven blocks from the White House, to Mount Weather. If there was time other documents such as a Gutenberg Bible, the Gettysburg Address, and the papers of James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and George Mason would be taken there by truck. The National Gallery chose the works to save not by painting but by the size of the canvas. They included Leonardo da Vinci's Ginevra de' Benci, Raphael's Alba Madonna, and Rogier van der Weyden's St George and the Dragon, which was just the size of a post card. They were packed in lightweight metal containers where the humidity in the air was stabilized by bags of chemicals.

The Federal Reserve Board would make its own arrangements. It maintained a 13,000 square metre bunker with enough cash inside to bankroll a nuclear-blasted America. Wads of bills were stacked in polythene packets against a wall on wooden pallets which would be moved out by a fork-lift truck. Standard Oil's senior management was withdrawing to an emergency operating centre 100 metres underground, near Hudson, New York. Their job was to ensure a continuation of energy supplies. The Department of Agriculture had published a food-rationing programme, allowing survivors between 2,000 and 2,500 calories a day, including seven pints of milk and six eggs a week.

Government officials spoke the single code word FLASH to notify others that the operation had begun.

National Guard units had been called out in all American cities. The President had declared a national emergency. Some of the worst rioting was now breaking out in Washington itself as rumours spread after the television networks began to speculate whether the President, his Cabinet, and senior officials would be airlifted to the Mount Weather bunker. `We never discuss security arrangements for the President,' said a White House spokesman. The Marine Corps threw up a cordon around Capitol Hill and the White House. Like the enemy in Zhongnanhai, American leaders were travelling back and forth through a warren of underground tunnels and railways, too afraid to show their faces to their constituents. Members of Congress were reportedly preparing to go to the Greenbriar shelter, 400 kilometres away, built under a luxury hotel complex. `We can neither confirm nor deny whether this facility is still in use,' said a spokesman. One Marine was shot dead in the neck by a sniper in the crowd. A rocket-propelled grenade was fired over the head of the Marines into a window of a Congress building. Helicopters dispersed the crowd with tear gas. Troops moved in with water cannon and rubber bullets.

The spectre of a nuclear holocaust could not be kept from the public, fear of an imminent nuclear strike had swept through the United States, and ignorance about what to do was shared between officials and members of the public. All had families to protect, children to be accounted for, supplies to be bought. The National Guard, army, and Marines had taken over most city centres. Looting gangs controlled many other parts. Many people saw the countryside as a safer place to be and headed out in their cars: the roads became clogged and fights broke out. The public transport systems halted. Airlines abandoned their schedules and flew their aircraft south to Latin America or north to Canada. Newspapers put out extra editions with instructions on how to handle a nuclear holocaust. Television news stations, which were now devoting all their programming to the Dragonstrike crisis, speculated on the Chinese nuclear threat while their commercial breaks concentrated on packed foods and survival kits. A New York Times opinion poll found that 64 per cent of Americans believed the government did have defences against missile strikes. The Washington Post estimated that two million Americans could die and two hundred thousand could be injured from just two Chinese missiles. It drew comparisons with data compiled during the Soviet threat, when twenty million people would have been killed and five million injured. Each 550 kiloton bomb would destroy all people and buildings within a 5.6 kilometre radius. Fires would damage areas almost twice that size, where about half the population would be killed and half would be injured.

The CNN Beijing bureau, quoting Foreign Ministry sources, was the first to report that a Chinese Xia class submarine had been declared in the Pacific. The announcement interrupted a discussion about Mount Weather to point out that the helicopter flight time from Washington to the shelter was about twenty minutes. The submarine's missiles could strike ten to fifteen minutes after launch.

A retired helicopter pilot, once assigned to rescuing the First Family, was interviewed on ABC News. `Through the years, we always reacted like we could handle an all-out nuclear attack. I don't think people — then our top people in government — have any idea of what a multi-megaton nuclear weapon attack on the US would do. We'd be back in the Stone Age. It's unthinkable.'

In the White House, President Bradlay told his inner cabinet: `The American people are scared. They may become hysterical. After an attack we are going to have to be prepared to operate with people who are uncontrollably mad and frightened.'

There was a silence and the remarks of a relief worker being interviewed on television dominated the meeting for a moment. `It is sham for me to tell people I can help them. We've gone beyond that. I cannot give people confidence that there is a system in place that will work, when in my heart of hearts, in the dark of night, I doubt it will work.'

Those remarks were followed by those of a former director of the Mount Weather complex: `I would be breaking the law if I told you whether that facility is ready to receive President Bradlay and his administration. I will say only that our policy after the collapse of the Soviet Union was we shouldn't shut the damn doors yet. Remember what Plato said: "Only the dead have seen the end of war."'

`President Bradlay has asked whether China can meet the international conditions laid down to end the conflict,' began Reece Overhalt as the two men settled back into the suite at the China World Hotel. `He also wants you to note the unilateral ceasefire in the South China Sea by Allied forces while we try to get this mess untangled. At the same time, British and American Trident submarines are ready to launch at any time. We have B2 stealth bombers in Okinawa and on Guam and the Peacekeeper and Minuteman missile silos have been prepared. The twin keys have been taken out of their boxes. Each officer at each launch station is on readiness to use them once the President makes his command.'

Jamie Song took a sheet of paper from his briefcase and laid it on the coffee table. He said, reading from it: `President Wang will stand down our nuclear weapons on guarantees that the United States will withdraw its military forces from the South China Sea. If you do that, we will guarantee free passage of all non-military shipping, and we will allow limited Japanese naval patrols. After a decent interval of cooling off, American and Allied warships will be allowed in on a case by case basis, if for example you want to visit Hong Kong or Shanghai, or the British want to go to Brunei again. You will recognize there is a legitimate regional dispute over the Spratly and Paracel Islands and leave it up to the region to sort it out.' At this stage, he looked up. `What we're saying, Reece, is leave Asia to solve Asia's problems. Draw back from where you're not needed any more and don't get involved in another war here which will kill thousands of Americans. Your Ambassador and I will sign a Memorandum of Understanding tonight. It will be followed up by a more detailed document to be negotiated by officials over the next few months. After that there should be an exchange of presidential visits and everything will get back to normal. President Wang also wanted to give his personal guarantee that trade will not be affected. We understand that we need your technology and investment to develop. He hopes that our trade privileges will also continue.'

Reece Overhalt returned to the Embassy to talk to President Bradlay. China gave America three further hours to reach a decision.

A SIGINT report from Hawaii had picked up a frequency hopping encrypted exchange of signals, which analysts said could have been between the Qingdao naval base and the Xia submarine. Aircraft had been put up to try and find it. The nearest American submarine was 250 nautical miles away from the very rough position where the submarine could be. The President was told it was still like looking for a needle in a haystack. The British Prime Minister telephoned to offer continuing military support. He offered sympathy for the breakdown of civil society in the United States. Luckily Britain, having experienced the bombing of its cities before, remained more under control. He was also concerned about the closure of newspapers and radio and television stations in Hong Kong. The editor of the South China Morning Post had been gaoled. Both the BBC and CNN had been reporting mass arrests of suspected subversives. The Legislative Council had been suspended and the Chief Executive had announced emergency measures. The Japanese Prime Minister called on President Bradlay to pull back from a larger battle which neither America nor China would win. He said that Japan could live with Chinese sovereignty over the South China Sea as long as it remained an international trade route. But this was not an issue over which to launch thermonuclear war. The German Chancellor said he saw no good that could come of it. The French President said he was standing his forces down for the time being: he had no intention of getting into a nuclear exchange with China. Defense Secretary Matt Collins said confirmed reports were coming in of further mass troop movements on the Vietnamese border. The Guangzhou and Kunming military districts were still declared war zones. Satellite pictures showed artillery being moved back from its forward border positions. But there was no certainty that Vietnam was safe from Chinese attack. Some of the most powerful guns were in the Pingxiang area only 150 kilometres from Hanoi. Analysts were still working on photographs indicating imminent launches of the M11 missile, which could hit the outskirts of Hanoi. On Hainan Island there were signs that the M9 was being prepared. With a 600 kilometre range, the missiles could hit Da Nang and Hue. The Indian Prime Minister telephoned to say that he was getting reports of uprisings throughout Tibet. Troops had opened fire in Lhasa, Xigaze, and Gyangze. Hundreds had died. India was setting up refugee camps for Tibetans who tried to escape. Troops were being flown in to reinforce the border. The White House press office urged the President to confirm he would not be leaving the building. Both the National Guard and the Marine Corps anticipated even more dangerous riots if there was an evacuation. Mexican border police opened fire on Americans trying to flee into Tijuana and Nogales south of Tucson. There had also been trouble at other border posts. Canada had simply opened the border and let people drive in, urging them to keep going north to ease congestion.

As Reece Overhalt spoke to the President, the first reports came in of China's invasion of the Taiwanese island of Peikan, just off the coast of Fujian. Twenty minutes later the better defended settlement of Matsu had fallen. Within five minutes of that confirmation, President Bradlay ordered the USS Asheville to destroy the Kilo class submarine off the Californian coast. Reece Overhalt was still on the secure line. The Defense Secretary, the National Security Adviser, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Secretary of State were included in the conference call. Reece Overhalt explained the Chinese policy of forcing America out of Asian affairs.

`Well, gentlemen, what do you suggest?' said the President.

`Mr President,' said the Defense Secretary, `why are we even thinking about condemning millions of our countrymen to death by nuclear weapons? I think the Chinese have offered us the makings of a deal, and I think we should grab it with both hands. Our decision to escalate to naval conflict was taken not in response to China's seizure of the South China Sea, but to their sinking of the Peleliu. The Peleliu's mission was to rescue oil workers being held hostage. I have been told in the last hour that those men have now been freed by Japanese naval forces and are safely on board a Japanese naval vessel. I would like you to join with me in offering our thanks to the Japanese government. Japan, which is our ally, has emerged as a global power, to which we can hand over confidently the mantle of leadership in Asia. If the trade routes are guaranteed, what is the point of risking nuclear war? Apart from the loss of life, the global economy could be set back decades. There will be a shift of alliances and power which will take years to settle. America itself will undergo an internal psychological upheaval from which it will not recover in generations. Just listen to the television. As a nation we are still licking our wounds from the defeat in Vietnam nearly thirty years ago. Yet not one shell in that war landed on our soil. How long will it take us to be cured of the trauma of nuclear attack? Even without firing a missile, the Chinese have turned this country into a mayhem of rioting and looting. I urge us to sign the Memorandum of Understanding, get the missiles stood down and Wall Street reopened, and let America return to normal life. Properly presented, this will not look as if we are being forced out of Asia, which we aren't. We will emerge as the saviours of Asia and of Europe.'

A call from the press office interrupted the discussion. The President instructed a statement to be issued saying that he and his advisers would not be evacuating the White House. However, no details were to be given of the nuclear bunker facilities being prepared. On Capitol Hill, members of Congress were only leaving their offices for their homes. Without revealing the security details, several told interviewers that there was no way they would go without taking their families with them. And there was no facility for that. Both the White House and the Congressional Buildings were, in effect, under siege from demonstrators. The security staff had given a warning of the danger of helicopter flight. Agents in the crowd had reported people with firearms, including high-powered automatic weapons which could shoot down aircraft.

The Secretary of State, Larry Gillchrest, took up the argument on the other side. `I don't think this is a time to take the easy option and cave in to China at the point of a gun,' he said. `Other non-democratic governments around the world would regard the United States as a paper tiger. If China succeeded in facing us down there would be no democratic government with both the will and ability to police global affairs. A China unchecked will invade Taiwan's already begun to. It will seek to control Korea and Indochina. The ethnic Chinese business communities of Asia will support it and undermine our own influence. The end result will be international chaos, Mr President, not only in the balance of power, but also in the economies and in the dozens if not hundreds of smaller wars which will be ignited. Inevitably, they will lead to wider conflict, probably beginning in the Middle East or Europe, into which we will be drawn, as we were drawn in the First and Second World War, into Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf, and Bosnia. If this discussion is about an option to escape conflict, then, gentlemen, we are living in dreamland. Men will die. Cities will be destroyed. The best option open to us is to retain control of the conflict throughout and emerge as the winners. If we do that, we will probably secure peace and the security of America for generations. If we don't, other men, or perhaps even we will be in this room in five years' time, threatened maybe by a nuclear alliance of China and Iran, or India and Russia, with better missiles and bigger warships which we would have difficulty defeating even in a conventional conflict. Is it that we can't win, Mr President? Or is it that the American soul is too vulnerable for the fight?'

`Marty,' said the President talking directly to his National Security Adviser. `Do we have any evidence at all that China will settle if we back off and that after a time the policy of constructive engagement will see in a group of more reform-minded leaders with whom we can deal?'

`I believe that is possible. But we don't know how much more turmoil we have to go through to get there. Constructive engagement, a policy of the nineties, led to the situation we are in now. If we strike a deal with them and continue that policy, then it could go either way. China launched Dragonstrike for three reasons. One was to lay claim to the oil and gas reserves of the South China Sea and prevent it from being so reliant on international markets. The second was to consolidate the power of the Communist Party within China. The third was to proceed along what the Chinese see as an inevitable course of history, a return to their role as the greatest and oldest civilization in the world.'

`Do they want to be it, Marty? Or be recognized for it?'

`I think they would be happy with the latter, Mr President. If we want to stop a nuclear conflict today, we back down. If we want to try to mould the future for the next hundred years, we can go either way. If we want to keep China in line for say twenty or thirty years we launch a nuclear strike. My gut feeling, Mr President, is to keep on with the civilizing power of trade and support the younger, more international leaders who will become the leaders of China.'

At this stage another intelligence message came in via both the SIGINT station on Maui and the Ocean Surveillance satellite system. There had been a positive identification of the Xia class submarine and she was being tracked by the Los Angeles class attack submarine USS Chicago on patrol out of San Diego. Sonar operators had detected movements in her launch mechanism, with near certain evidence that preparations were being made for the launch of a ballistic missile. Pentagon analysts had also just discovered a mobile missile in place at a launch site near Harbin in the north-east. A large road vehicle, thought to be carrying a DF-32 missile, had arrived there with signs that it, too, was being prepared for launch. The White House press office called again to urge the President to do something to disperse crowds which were now crammed in around federal buildings throughout the country. It was only a matter of time before the government lost control with devastating loss of life and property.

Within half an hour, all radio and television channels told people to stand by for an announcement from President Bradlay. Helicopters flew over crowds broadcasting the message by loudspeaker: `Go home. Go home. The President is about to address the nation. Go home and wait for his message.' A few did. But most stayed, although the crowds quietened. In Washington and New York, braving near-freezing temperatures, groups huddled around portable television sets. But they kept their people's cordon around the White House. In California, the crowds spread out. People sat on grass and parkland around the public buildings. In smaller towns, which had seen less upheaval, the authorities rigged up a public address system or erected large screens in the parks. In the Minuteman missile silos the officers were ordered to prepare for an imminent launch. On board the Allied Trident missile submarines the captains and executive officers authenticated their orders and the twin keys which each carried.