Behind the Arab his men slowly returned to their small campfires.
Stacked by the cliff wall, absently carried in hardened hands, or looped over the chests and shoulders of the men were weapons of all sizes and kinds, and crates and bandoleer of ammunition for them. Mortars, machine guns, RPGs, AK-47s, hand grenades.
Colonel Li, a former Special Forces Operator, had become a Guidance and Targeting officer in Rocket Forces of the People’s Army of the People’s Republic of China. Because of his language skills, as well as his experience in both Special Forces and missile targeting, his superiors had assigned him to lead this team and ensure the successful completion of the mission.
Li thought for a moment, calculating the time necessary to run the targeting programs on six missiles as well as the schedule of the American Air Force Airborne Warning And Control Systems aircraft orbiting around Kandahar, Afghanistan, 250 kilometers to the north.
At its operational altitude of 20,000 meters, the AWACS had a horizon of 500 kilometers. Its orbit required 90 minutes to complete. He had to ensure the aircraft and its extremely capable radar systems were in the northern half of its track in order for his team to exfiltrate un-noticed. It was nice, he thought in passing, that the Americans were so predictable in their schedules. Evidently the calm that had returned to Afghanistan after the American hand-off to local security forces had led the local Air Force commander to believe he could be as regular as clockwork and still understand events on the ground. Fool.
“One hour,” Li replied.
The Arab looked at Li and thought: One hour. “Begin,” he ordered.
Colonel Li nodded, turned and calmly walked toward the truck-mounted missiles and his task. Passing his Second-in Command, he reached for and was handed a small black bag, the kind used to hold a laptop computer. As Li took the bag he nodded to his communications sergeant.
The sergeant looked at his radio and pressed the transmit button, immediately sending a one-word, pre-stored burst transmission to a Chinese communications satellite 37,000 kilometers overhead in geostationary orbit. The satellite immediately re-transmitted the word to the headquarters of the PLA and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China: “Initiate.”
On the Chinese side of the Pakistan-China border, a helicopter spooled-up and prepared to lift off.
Opening the bag as he reached the first missile, Li removed the laptop and a thin two-meter communications cable. He connected the computer to the communications port at the base of the first of the six missiles, sat down on the ground, booted the system and began.
The North Korean Special Forces operators waited patiently, oblivious to the time and coming darkness. They were focused only on the possible threat represented to the missiles behind them by the armed men they faced.
Waiting for the targeting program to load, Li re-read the coordinates handed him by the Arab and thought, nice targets, but not for these missiles.
10
Kandahar Air Force Base, Afghanistan
Thursday, 11 April, 11:53 hours GMT (16:23 Local)
Colonel Paul Sullivan, USAF, pre-flighted the Boeing AWACS. He wanted to get off the ground now. Today was his first day as Commander of the several Airborne Warning And Control Systems aircraft stationed in Afghanistan and he was making changes.
For months the flights had conformed to a specific timetable laid out by a his predecessor. The three AWACS aircraft based in Kandahar had orbited the same locations at the same times for way too long in Sullivan’s opinion.
That was going to change.
Sullivan finished his pre-flight and boarded the modified Boeing 707 aircraft. Reaching the cockpit, he sat down and strapped in and commenced running the take-off checklist with his copilot. Behind in the main cabin operators of the various radar and signals intelligence systems settled in, strapped in, warmed up their systems and got to work.
On assuming command he had instituted a new schedule – a random one. If terrorists, excuse me, he thought, freedom fighters, wanted to be able to plan on when he was looking and when he was not, he was not going to help them. They’d learn soon, very soon, that times had changed and that they no longer could count on regular flights from which to hide, coming out later with 90 minutes before the next flight over them to prepare and execute their next attack on American forces.
He looked at his watch again. Right on-time. Good. They’d offset the old time by exactly the 25 minutes he’d planned.
Sullivan reached out to start the first of the four big jet engines.
11
West of Quetta, Pakistan
Thursday, 11 April, 11:57 hours GMT (16:57 Local)
Reclining on one elbow next to a small fire, the Arab looked across the narrow canyon toward the missiles for which he had paid so much money. That money had come from his Saudi family fortune and from all over the world, collected in madrassas, in mosques, and in charities located mostly in colleges in America and Europe. They would learn only when it was too late for them and their families. He smiled briefly to himself as the thought passed through his mind.
Five hours earlier the seven trucks before him had turned north and west onto a dirt track from N50, the road linking Quetta, Pakistan, with the Karakorum Highway, the primary road link between China and Pakistan. The trucks now sat on the sand and gravel floor of one of hundreds of deep canyons in this wasteland where Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan merge on maps.
Six of the trucks were missile trucks, road-mobile Medium Range Ballistic Missile launchers, each carrying an armed Chinese DF-21 MRBM.
The seventh truck carried a reinforced Squad of DPRK Special Forces.
Originally developed by the People’s Republic of China for their Second Artillery Corps in the mid-1960s, the DF-21 “East Wind” was a two-stage, solid-fuel missile. It had been finally deployed by China in 1987.
When newer technology displaced the missile system in the forces of the PRC, the remaining DF-21s were transferred to the Rocket Forces of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The six missiles carried on these trucks had been purchased from, and now were being delivered to the customer by that country. China had upgraded the navigation system of each missile as a part of the deal. And added a thermonuclear payload.
At only 800 pounds, the Chinese knockoff of the American W88 thermonuclear warhead mated to each of the DF-21s was well within its payload capacity of 1320 pounds. The light weight of the W88 would not hamper the ability of the missiles to deliver them to their targets at the missile’s maximum range of approximately 2,100 miles. Once over its target, each missile’s upgraded accuracy of under 100 meters of Circular Error Probability, or CEP, from the aim point ensured the absolute obliteration of that target.
The American-designed W88 device packs into a very small container a blast capacity of .475 megatons, nearly half-a-million tons of TNT, or approximately 25 times more explosive yield than the weapons used against Japan to end the Second World War in the Pacific.
The W88 is a miniaturized, tapered thermonuclear warhead, the most sophisticated strategic weapon in the arsenal of the United Sates – and the world. Its two-point detonation, non-spherical atomic fission primary trigger and final thermonuclear fusion of a lithium secondary combine to deliver a large amount of explosive yield from a small and lightweight package, and to create thermal and radiation signatures unique among thermonuclear weapons.