Authors: James Barrington
The moment the three Seersuckers had vanished, heading for their targets in South Korea, the
technicians swarmed out of the hardened shelters and towed away the cruise missile trailers. And, because Pyongyang had made it clear that time was of the essence, in less than a minute the
first of the mobile Scud TELs, or Transporter-Erector-Launchers, drove out of one of the shelters and across to the launch pad.
Chiha-ri had been the obvious choice for this phase of the operation. Not only did it host a
resident Scud brigade, but it was also the principal technical support headquarters for all of North Korea’s Scud missile units. And, crucially, it was a mere fifty miles north of the
Demilitarized Zone, close enough to ensure that their targets south of the DMZ would get the least possible warning of the attack. If the weapons carried by the Seersuckers did their job
adequately, there might be no warning at all.
Within five minutes the six Scud launchers were in position and their technicians were making
last-minute checks, all of them wearing full NBCD suits and breathing equipment because of the contents of the warheads. Once the weapons were ready, they would be launched without further
reference to anyone. The orders from Pyongyang had been most specific.
The cruise missile’s unexpected manoeuvre had cost Richter ground, and he estimated he
was now nearly a mile behind it. And, if his guess had been right, the warhead could detonate at any moment.
The growl in his earphones intensified and then the broken circle in the HUD solidified as the
Sidewinder locked on to the target. Richter didn’t wait any longer: he fired the weapon. The solid-propellant rocket motor ignited and it streaked towards the HY-2. Just in case, he
selected the starboard Sidewinder and made sure it also locked on.
The HY-2’s radar altimeter sent a further signal to the computer at five thousand
metres, and the three-second detonation sequence began. The North Korean technicians had based their calculations on a missile velocity of three hundred and twenty metres a second, actually a
little faster than the Seersucker was travelling.
The detonation sequence had less than one second to go when the ‘winder impacted with the
rear of the cruise missile. The annular blast fragmentation warhead, containing over twenty pounds of high explosive, then detonated. The blast shattered the rear section of the HY-2,
instantly destroying its rocket motor, and less than a tenth of a second later the remaining liquid fuel in its tanks exploded in a massive ball of fire.
The detonation wasn’t powerful enough to destroy the warhead, but that didn’t
matter. It ripped the computer to pieces, wrecked the battery and fused the connections. The final signal never reached the nuclear device. Instead, it was torn from its mountings and began
tumbling to the ground nearly twenty thousand feet below.
Richter deselected his second Sidewinder, pulled his Harrier into a steep diving turn to keep
out of the blast radius and pressed his transmit button.
‘Cobra Two, one Sidewinder expended. Splash one cruise missile. Break, break. Alpha
Three, what’s the status of those bogies now?’
‘Still inbound, Cobra Two. No, wait. Now they’re turning back onto north. It looks
like they’re in a holding pattern. I’ll keep you advised.’
‘Roger. Break. Cobra Lead – what’s your status?’
‘Standby. Right. Two Sidewinders used and the missile is down. I’m turning away.
Break. Viper One, sitrep.’
‘We just—’
But whatever Charlie Forbes was going to say was lost for ever as a colossal explosion tore
through the sky.
Richard Muldoon actually ran through the outer office, and barely even paused at the closed
door. Walter Hicks looked up in surprise as it slammed open. The two men had got back to Langley only a few minutes earlier.
‘Richard?’
Muldoon slowed to a trot and tossed a couple of photographs onto Hicks’s desk, then
leant forward, resting his hands on the edge of the tooled leather.
‘NORAD’s just reported another nuke, Walter, less than two minutes ago. This one
was over South Korea.’
‘Oh, fuck.’
‘It was pretty low-yield, definitely under twenty kilotons, and seems to have been an
air-burst. The delivery vehicle was one of the Seersuckers out of Chiha-ri. They fired three, but two didn’t detonate, and we don’t know why. Maybe some kind of defect, or perhaps
the Patriots got them, but I’ve seen nothing from the CFC so far. But this,’ he finished, ‘is what’s scaring the shit out of me. These are straight from N-PIC, and
that’s the launch pad at Chiha-ri. As soon as the Seersuckers had been fired, they drove out these TELs.
‘According to the analysts, they’re Scud missiles, probably type B, and there are
six of them. The TELs aren’t the same as the old Russian MAZ 543 launch vehicles, but they’re very similar. They’re being prepped ready for launch, so if the nuke
that’s just gone off was the first strike, these are probably the second. The technicians on the pads are all wearing NBCD suits, which means these Scuds are carrying biological or
chemical weapons. My guess is that the nuke was designed to deliver an EMP, and these are the follow-up weapons now that the Patriots batteries have probably lost their radar
systems.’
‘Aimed where? Seoul?’
‘Almost certainly, and we’ve got nothing in the area that can take them out. They
could launch all six of these before we could target a cruise missile or prep an air raid.’
‘Fuck,’ Hicks said again. ‘Wait a minute – what about those British
Harriers? The ones that were supposed to hit the east coast missile sites. Are they still airborne?’
‘No idea,’ Muldoon said, turning to leave. ‘I’ll go find out. The
Hawkeye off the
Enterprise
was talking to them, I think.’
‘Richard,’ Hicks called to his colleague’s retreating figure, ‘if those
aircraft are still in the area, don’t wait for official sanction. Just tell them to get in there and toast the base with whatever weapons they’ve got. We’ll sort out the
legalities later.’
Richter was looking north when the warhead of the third Seersucker cruise missile exploded,
but snapped his head around to the left the moment he saw the flash. Even from a distance – and he guessed he was at least thirty miles from the detonation – he knew at once that
it wasn’t just the fuel in the HY-2’s tanks exploding.
A confused babble of voices burst onto the radio as the AEW Sea King bagman and the American
Hawkeye controller transmitted simultaneously, but Richter ignored them.
He was far enough away that he hoped the EMP wouldn’t have much, if any, effect on his
avionics, but he still turned his Harrier away from the blast and opened the throttle to put a few more precious miles between his aircraft and the nuclear explosion. He remembered from his
basic NBCD lectures that the intensity of a nuclear blast diminishes more or less with the square of the distance from ground zero, but he had no way of knowing the yield of the weapon, nor
how powerful the blast wave was now likely to be.
Then it hit him what seemed like only seconds later.
‘Jesus H,’ Richter muttered, and then his sole concern was to try to stop his
aircraft being blown out of the sky. The Harrier slammed sideways and downwards as the blast wave hit it, the wings losing lift immediately as the aircraft stalled, then spun out of
control.
Despite the harness, the violent manoeuvre bounced Richter around in the cockpit, his flying
helmet crashing into the back of the ejection
seat. Buffeted and dazed, he reacted instinctively, removing his feet from the rudder pedals and pushing the control column
forward. The spin stopped in less than two turns and, the moment he was sure he’d unstalled the wings, he pulled back to start regaining height.
As he climbed away he looked at his altimeter, realizing he’d lost over eight thousand
feet. Then he swiftly checked everything else, but as far as he could tell the Harrier was undamaged.
‘Cobra Leader from Two. You still with me?’
‘Affirmative, just about. Break, break. Viper One, Cobra One.’ Nothing.
‘Viper Two, Cobra One. Radio check.’ Nothing.
‘I don’t think they’re still around,’ Richter said. ‘They were
both chasing that cruise missile, and I guess their ‘winders hadn’t reached it when the warhead detonated. At best, their electrics are probably fried.’ He didn’t need
to explain the worst-case scenario – that the two Harriers might have been caught within the fireball itself when the weapon detonated.
‘Cobra One, November Alpha. Request sitrep.’
‘Cobra One and Two are still flying but we’ve lost contact with both Vipers. We shot
down two of the cruise missiles but the third detonated. It was a small nuclear air burst and it’s possible Vipers were caught in the blast.’
‘Roger. I’ll relay that to Mother. Intentions?’
‘Unless you’ve any better ideas, we’ll RTB.’
‘Flash signal, sir.’
Rodgers thanked the yeoman and scanned the text. Then he stood up and walked across the CIC to
the officer who was controlling the E2-C AEW aircraft.
‘Where’s the Hawkeye?’
‘Here, sir.’
‘Right, tell him to call those British aircraft – on Guard if necessary – and
pass this message.’ Rodgers took a ballpoint pen from his pocket and rapidly wrote a few lines on a sheet of paper. ‘Then tell him to send the
Prowlers and
Hornets directly to this position’ – he wrote down the geographical coordinates of the Chiha-ri base – ‘the Prowlers going in first to clear the path. They’re to
render whatever assistance the British aircraft need. On my orders, they can engage any target, and respond to any attack against themselves or the Harriers with whatever force they feel is
necessary. As from this moment, North Korea is a free-fire zone.’
Rodgers turned away and walked out of the CIC for a quick visit to the officers’ heads.
The next few minutes were going to be very interesting, and he didn’t want to miss a moment of it.
‘Cobra One, Alpha Three on Guard. Do you read?’
‘Loud and clear. Go ahead.’
‘I’ve a message for you from Langley, relayed by Starbase. Understand?’
‘Alpha Three, this is Cobra Two. Understood. Go ahead.’
‘Message reads: “Chiha-ri base at coordinates thirty-eight degrees thirty-eight
decimal two five north; one two six degrees forty decimal forty-eight east preparing to launch six times Scud missile with chemical or biological warheads. Can you attack?” Message
ends.’
‘That’s about fifty miles north of the DMZ, boss,’ Richter said, ‘and
it’s what we came out to do in the first place.’
‘Agreed. And we owe these bastards for Charlie and Roger. Break. Alpha Three from Cobra
One, that’s affirmative. Turning starboard now.’
The Scud B missile dates from 1962, and is an improved and enhanced version of the type A,
itself essentially a scaled-down copy of the German V2. Designed from the first to be fully mobile, the Scud is normally fired from a purpose-designed Transporter-Erector-Launcher, a
four-axle, eight-wheel road vehicle that tips the scales at thirty-seven tons when fully loaded. The tactic envisaged for the weapon was that it would be fired, and the TEL itself would then
be driven some distance away, reloaded from a trailer carrying additional missiles, and launch a second Scud.
The North Koreans had modified several aspects of the missile’s operation because of
their unique ‘underground’ military strategy. The launch process for a standard Scud B takes about one hour, and there wasn’t a great deal they could do to reduce this. But
what they had done was to rejig the sequence of actions so that almost all of the preparations for launch took place before the missile was raised in its cradle into the vertical firing
position. This meant they could prepare the weapon in the safety of their hardened shelters and only expose it to danger in the open air immediately before launch.
All the preparations had paid off. The Scud missiles had passed their pre-flight checks with no
major problems. Twelve minutes after the last missile had been driven out of the shelter and lifted into the vertical position by the two hydraulic rams on the TEL – this phase of the
operation itself taking almost five minutes – the technicians began leaving the area.
In the control bunker, the commanding officer watched the last man walk off the launch pad and
waited impatiently for the call from the
chief technician. When the phone rang, he snatched it up before the first ring had completed.
‘Yes?’
‘All missiles are fully checked and prepared, sir.’
‘Good. We will commence firing preparations immediately.’
He replaced the receiver and nodded to his assistant. ‘Begin the countdown,’ he
ordered. ‘Launch at thirty-second intervals, targets as designated.’
Richter’s aircraft hadn’t even reached the southern side of the Demilitarized
Zone before his Radar Warning Receiver began screaming. It was picking up multiple transmissions from almost all around him. The ‘frying pan’ on the HUD was showing over a dozen
lines.
‘I’m detecting Spoon Rest and Fan Song radars,’ Dick Long reported on their
discrete radio frequency, ‘and that means SA-2s. No problem at this altitude.’
The two Harriers were in battle pair formation, keeping low and fast, no more than five
hundred above the ground. The SA-2 surface-to-air missile, NATO reporting name Guideline but known as the S-75 Dvina inside Russia, is optimized to attack high-level aircraft. It was
originally designed by the Soviets to counter American B-52 bombers, and is essentially powerless to intercept targets below about three thousand feet, because of constraints in the radar and
guidance systems.
Knowing that was one thing, but believing it another. The HUD in Richter’s GR9 kept
identifying even more fire-control radars as the two aircraft swept across the four-kilometre-wide DMZ.
The boundary between the two countries is marked not by customs posts or duty-free shops, but by
a narrow strip of temperate wilderness, seeded with an uncountable number of landmines, that’s been virtually untouched for over half a century. Running precisely down the middle of the
Demilitarized Zone is the Military Demarcation Line, which marks the frontline that existed when the ceasefire was agreed between the warring states in 1953.
The moment they crossed it, North Korean anti-aircraft gun batteries opened up, and the air in
front of the Harriers was suddenly filled with puffs of black debris as the shells began exploding. Both men knew that the chances of being hit by a round from these unsophisticated weapons
was very slight. Their worry was SAMs – not the cumbersome SA-2s, but the possibility that some North Korean soldier on the ground below them might be carrying a Stinger or the locally
manufactured and equally deadly equivalent, the
wha-sung
. The best defence against short-range weapons like those was speed, so they
pushed the Harriers as fast as they dared.
The terrain they were overflying meant they couldn’t relax for a moment. The ground was
deeply fissured, steep-sided valleys running in all directions, many from east to west. That meant they were continually climbing up over the tops of hills and dropping down into valleys on
the other side as they headed north. That required absolute concentration, but it gave surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns very little time to lock on to them.
That didn’t stop missiles being fired, however. Several times both Richter and Long saw
the unmistakable smoke trails of SAMs arcing up towards them, but on each occasion either the Zeus worked its magic or they outran the missiles.
The Harrier GR9’s Zeus ECM system’s Radar Warning Receiver can identify over a
thousand different radar emitters and automatically configure the self-defence jammer to meet the identified threat. Zeus also includes a MAW, or Missile Approach Warning, component
that’s designed to detect a missile launch and activate the Bofors BOL chaff dispensers without the pilot’s intervention. It impressed the hell out of Richter.
As they headed deeper into North Korea, the Hawkeye used the Harriers’ discrete
frequency to relay information the CIA and N-PIC had gleaned from the Keyhole images, data that was being flashed to the
Enterprise
in a steady stream via a communications satellite.
‘There’s a small residential development at Chiha-ri, but the launch pads are
separated and up to the north. The grid reference I passed you is for the launch complex, and it’s set in the hills north of the workers’ houses, and just south of a small
mountain lake. The obvious approach
is along the valley from the south-east, but that would take you right over the residential area and alert the air defence batteries,
so command is suggesting you come in from due south. There’s a range of hills, with tops at around fourteen hundred feet, that runs north–south, and the valley to the west of that
is uninhabited. Copied so far?’
‘All copied, Cobra One.’
‘Roger. That approach will bring you into the Chiha-ri valley at its widest point, but
north of most of the houses. Your waypoint there is thirty-eight degrees thirty-seven decimal two four north, one two six degrees forty-one decimal zero five east, ground elevation nine
hundred fifty feet. When you pass that you’ll see the valley in front of you dropping down to around eight hundred feet. Then you’ll have a short transit of one decimal four three
miles on a heading of three five six true to the southern launch pads. The hills surrounding the pads top out at sixteen hundred fifty feet. Your suggested escape vector is to maintain a
northerly heading, then turn hard left once you’re over the lake and continue the turn onto south. That will keep those hills between you and Chiha-ri, and hopefully below the
acquisition threshold of their air defence radars.’
‘Any details of SAM types, Alpha Three?’
‘Stand by, we’re checking. OK, the data’s inconclusive, but it looks like
sierra alpha type three, with the launchers located on the periphery of the complex. They’ve probably got radar-controlled anti-aircraft guns on the hills above the valley, but we
can’t confirm that.’
‘Zero Six, Chunghwa. Message from command. No reports of CFC aircraft getting airborne,
but two low-level high-speed contacts are reported tracking north towards Chiha-ri. They may be attempting to attack the missile complex. You are ordered to detach one combat group to
intercept them. Initial heading will be one nine zero. Report when separated and in descent to three thousand five hundred metres.’
Gennadi Malakov decided his group of seven aircraft would handle the incursion, since nothing
much else seemed to be happening.
‘Zero Six, acknowledged. Combat Group One, descend now to three thousand five hundred
metres and turn left onto one nine zero.’
Malakov glanced left and right as he pushed his control column forwards, checking that the
other pilots had begun simultaneous descents. The remaining fourteen MiG-25s would hold at altitude until required for another interception, or for recovery to refuel.
‘Chunghwa, Zero Six. What aircraft type are the Americans?’
‘Unconfirmed, but probably not American aircraft. We believe they’re British Harrier
fighters.’
‘Understood. Zero Six group is in descent and accelerating.’
The fact that, according to the North Korean radar controllers, the aircraft Malakov would
encounter in a few minutes weren’t American but British didn’t bother him. A target was a target, and his training throughout almost his entire military career had been geared
towards air combat, a skill that he’d never, until now, been able to demonstrate for real. Unfortunately, pitting seven MiG-25s against two British Harriers was hardly fair –
Malakov knew his aircraft could easily destroy a Harrier in one-to-one combat. For a brief moment he thought about disobeying Chunghwa and telling five of the pilots to return to the
formation, just to make the contest slightly more even. Then he rejected this idea. He’d just make sure he personally shot down one of the attacking aircraft.
‘Ten miles to target. Prep the weapons.’
Richter clicked an acknowledgement and started preparing his two Mavericks. He was keenly aware
that, between them, the two Harriers had only four Mavericks and there were six targets to hit. He was hoping that they could ignite the fuel in one of the Scuds, and that might be enough to
take out a second missile. But if they were well separated – and that would be a normal precaution when handling highly volatile fuel and munitions – destroying more than one with
each weapon might prove impossible. If it was, they’d have to rely on the CRV7 rocket pods.
They were only two minutes from the end of the countdown for the first Scud launch when the
telephone link to Chunghwa shrilled. The sound it made was different to every other phone in the command bunker, apart from the direct line to Pyongyang, and the commanding officer ran across
to his desk to answer it.
‘This is Chiha-ri.’
‘What is your launch status?’
The colonel looked across at the digital display before answering. ‘Ninety-seven seconds
from first launch. As ordered, the remaining weapons will be fired at thirty-second intervals.’
‘Can you speed up the process?’
‘Negative, Chunghwa. We can pause or stop the countdown, but the launch sequence has to be
followed. Why?’
‘Because our radar reports that there are two enemy aircraft heading directly towards you
from the south, now about one minute away. Those missiles must be fired, Colonel.’
The commanding officer didn’t reply, simply dropped the telephone receiver on the desk,
selected area broadcast and reached for the microphone.
‘Air raid warning! Air raid warning! Two enemy aircraft approaching from the south. All
anti-aircraft crews stand by. Fire at will.’
His voice echoed around the firing complex from some thirty speakers. The air-defence systems
were already fully manned, and had been since well before first light that morning. The chief anti-aircraft weapon at Chiha-ri was a slightly modified Russian SA-3 SAM system. To provide
optimum defence against air attack, the North Koreans had installed eight permanent twin-missile turrets around the perimeter of the launch complex, making a total of sixteen Mach 3
missiles.
The SA-3 is controlled by three separate radars, all normally carried on vehicles, but at
Chiha-ri they had been mounted in fixed locations on the tallest hill within the firing complex. Initial target acquisition was handled by a P-15 ‘Flat Face’ long-range C-band
radar. The target’s height was determined by a PRV-11 E-band height finder known to the
West as ‘Side Net’, and a ‘Low Blow’ I/D-band fire
control radar provided initial guidance to the missiles.
Although an old design, the SA-3 is still very capable. In March 1999 a Yugoslav-modified
version of the weapon system – having been fitted with thermal-imaging equipment and a laser range-finder – was responsible for shooting down an American F-117 stealth fighter
over Kosovo. To date, that is the only recorded loss of this aircraft type as a result of ground fire.
The reason the North Koreans had located the radars at the top of the highest ground in the
vicinity was obvious – the terrain was so hilly that an aircraft even half a mile away might remain invisible in some valley. To have any chance of engaging a low-flying target, the
radar heads simply had to be mounted as high as possible.
The commanding officer’s broadcast was actually redundant. The SA-3 crews were fully
alert, scanning their radars constantly, but no contacts were yet being displayed. This was in part because radar coverage of the valley directly to the south of the firing complex was
slightly obscured by a hill whose peak was at about sixteen hundred feet, but mainly because the Harriers were still some three miles – or thirty seconds – away and below the
radar horizon.
Eighteen seconds later that all changed.
‘Cobras, Alpha Three. Flash message. Seven of the hostiles that have been holding north
of the DMZ have detached from the formation and are now heading south. They’ve increased speed to Mach two and we estimate they’re about four minutes away.’
‘Roger.’ There wasn’t much else Richter could say. But four minutes was a long
time in a Harrier, and, with any luck, they’d have completed their attack on the missile base and be on their way back towards the DMZ before the approaching aircraft caught up with
them. The fact that the enemy fighters were travelling at Mach 2 meant they were probably Foxbats, and he knew they weren’t easy to fly at low level. If the GR9s
stayed low and fast, they might be able to outmanoeuvre them, even if they could never outrun them.
The two Harriers were now flying in line astern, Richter about a quarter of a mile behind
Long’s aircraft. The sides of the valley seemed perilously close, and the floor closer still, but both men knew they had to stay as low as possible to avoid being detected by the
fire-control radars they knew would be waiting for them at the target.
At that point, they were a mere three hundred feet above the valley’s rocky floor, which
was now sloping upwards. Dick Long eased his Harrier left, following the curve of the valley, and started to climb. Richter could see a rocky ridge directly in front of them, the course of
the valley veering sharply to the left, and followed Long as he jinked around it, turning west, then almost immediately north.
Behind it was another ridge, the highest point – about sixteen hundred feet – lying
to the east, the top of it sloping gently westwards. They couldn’t go round it, so they’d have to fly over it, which would probably bring them within the coverage envelope of the
Chiha-ri radars, but there wasn’t any alternative.
Dick Long aimed for the lowest point, pulled his aircraft up and over the ridge with a bare
hundred feet clearance, then dropped down into the valley beyond. Richter was right behind him, and according to his INGPS at the crest of the ridge they were one and a third miles from the
waypoint the Hawkeye crew had given them, and a little under three miles from their target.
‘I’m picking up C-band radar, probably Flat Face. That means SA-3 Goa SAMs.’
Even over the radio, the tension in Long’s voice was palpable. ‘Watch out for the I/D-band Low Blow fire-control radar, but Zeus should handle it.’
‘I admire your confidence,’ Richter said, increasing speed to close up on the
other Harrier as the valley widened below them.