Humphrey Hawksley
Dragon Fire
For my father and my mother
LIST OF CHARACTERS
Keith Backhurst — Defence Minister
Malcolm Smith — Prime Minister
Kang Suyin — Ambassador to Moscow
Leung Liyin, General — Defence Minister
Tao Jian — President
Tang Siju — Second Deputy, Chief of the General Staff
Tashi — Chinese agent in India
Teng Guo Feng — Ambassador to Islamabad
Jamie Song — Foreign Minister
Lhundrub Togden — jailed Tibetan Buddhist monk
Indrajit Bagchi — Home Minister
Colonel Neelan Chidambaram — commander,
Baghla (Wool) sector
Major Gendun Choedrak — Leader of Special Frontier
Force operation
Amrit Dhal — Group Captain, No. 24 Squadron
‘Hunting Hawks’
Hari Dixit — Prime Minister
Captain Tsangpo Jamyang — Second in charge of SFF operation
Corporal Vasant Kaul — Singh’s tank driver
Unni Khrishnan — Chief of Army Staff and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Mani Naidu — Director of the Intelligence Bureau
General Prabhu Ninan — Western army commander
Lieutenant General Gurjit Singh — Commander, XXI
Armoured Corps
Prabhu Purie — Foreign Minister
Chandra Reddy — Special Secretary, Research and Analysis Wing
Shanti Tirthankara — anti-nuclear activist
General Shigehiko Ogawa — Director, Defence
Intelligence Headquarters
Shigeto Wada — Prime Minister
Michael Hall — SBS Royal Marines sniper
Harriet Sheehan — Prime Minister
Benjamin Leigh — Defence Minister
Mullah al-Bishri — Islamic leader
General Sadek Hussein — Special Defence Attaché to Beijing
Javed Jabbar — Ambassador to Beijing
Yasin Kalapur — Air Marshal and coup leader
Dr Malik Khalid — missile physicist
General Mohamed Hamid Khan — Chief of Army Staff and coup leader
Ahmed Magam — deposed Deputy Finance Minister
Captain Mohammed Masood — Khan’s
aide-de-camp
Saeed — Stinger marksman
Nikolai Baltin — Ambassador to Beijing
Vladimir Gorbunov — President
John Chiu — Prime Minister
Lin Chung-ling — President
Christopher Baker — Foreign Secretary
Martin Cartwright — BBC Asia Correspondent
Martin Evans — Head of South Asian Department
Eileen Glenny — Press secretary, Prime Minister’s office
David Guinness — Defence Secretary
General (Rtd) Sir Peter Hanman — BBC television commentator
Max Harding — BBC television presenter
Sir Malcolm Parton — Permanent Under-Secretary, Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Anthony Pincher — Prime Minister
Darren Scott — BBC Asia cameraman
John Stopping — Chairman, Joint Intelligence Committee
Robin Sutcliffe — Head of News Gathering, BBC
Lord Mani Thapar — Indian businessman
Milton Ashdown — Ambassador to Moscow
Ennio Barber — Presidential adviser
Tom Bloodworth — National Security Advisor
David Booth — Head of CIA
John Hastings — President
Joan Holden — Secretary of State
Stuart Hollingworth — Commerce Secretary
Alvin Jebb — Defense Secretary
Charles Nugent — White House Chief of Staff
Reece Overhalt — Ambassador to Beijing
Arthur Watkins — Ambassador to Islamabad
PROLOGUE
In a perfect world, communities aspiring to development should not go to war. But time and time again common sense is turned on its head. Even societies whose standards of living are rising rapidly use the excitement of nationalism to balance either the treadmill of economic growth or the weakness of corrupt leadership. Yugoslavia, Iraq and swathes of Africa at once come to mind and danger signals are now flashing in Pakistan, India and China.
In May 1998, both India and Pakistan carried out nuclear tests, elevating hostilities to a new, more menacing level. Asia, still wracked with poverty and conflict, now has three declared nuclear-weapons powers.
India and Pakistan have been in conflict for half a century. Pakistan and China have a long-standing military alliance. India and China have already fought one war and disagree on how to handle restless nationalism in Tibet.
But a far more forceful momentum is also sweeping across those two enormous countries, a sense that as empires come and empires go, at some stage the power of the United States will wane and another great power will rise up to move into the vacuum. This ambition, and an impatience to force events, has made Asia an unpredictable and dangerous place for all of us.
China’s naval advances into the Indian Ocean and occupation of islands in the South China Sea are evidence that it is willing to anger its neighbours in order to test its military reach. India’s determination to press ahead with its nuclear programme and name China as its main long-term threat suggests a deeper degree of hostility than at first realized.
Both countries have weak conventional military systems and only minimal nuclear forces. But that is no guarantee that either country will not make a military bid for regional leadership in the years to come.
In Dragon Strike: The Millennium War (Sidgwick & Jackson 1997), Simon Holberton and I described a scenario in which China takes control of the South China Sea. It attacks its long-standing enemy, Vietnam, occupies the Spratly and Paracel groups of islands, and deploys submarines in the sea lanes to the Indian Ocean. When the United States intervenes by sending a warship into the area, it is sunk by a Chinese submarine with heavy loss of life.
Pacifist Japan reacts by carrying out a nuclear test, uncertain that it can continue to count on American military protection. Much of South East Asia, looking to the long-term future, gives tacit support to China.
American, British, Australian and New Zealand warships fight their way into the South China Sea. As China’s fleet faces destruction, American satellite imagery shows nuclear missiles being prepared for launch.
The prospect of a nuclear attack on an American city is enough to force a rethink in Washington about how to deal with China.
Simon Holberton and I described Dragon Strike as a future history. Dragon Fire is even more so. Developments in Asia are moving so fast that on several occasions my writing was overtaken by events. What was fiction one day became historical fact the next.
The characters of the novel are more the individual countries than the people who run them. Loyalties, betrayals, aspirations and scars of history are played out on a political and military stage through the eyes of India, Pakistan, China and others.
If China and India’s security aspirations for Asia converge with each other and with those of the United States and Japan, there is no cause for alarm. That, however, would be an ambitious formula. If either China’s or India’s intentions are being underestimated and the danger signs are swept under the carpet, the impact on world peace could be the most catastrophic since the end of the Second World War.