‘If the Chinese know that we know they have the Xia in the Bay of Bengal,’ said Joan Holden, ‘shouldn’t we quit playing diplomatic cat and mouse, call President Tao and ask him what he’s playing at?’
Hastings shook his head. ‘A bad idea, I think. It would give him so much more leverage if I make the call. Let’s try and find it first. I can’t see any motive whatsoever for Tao to launch a nuclear strike against India. If he’s posturing, let him posture for a while.’
Zhongnanhai, Beijing, China
The Indian ceasefire was open-ended and unilateral. President Tao had finished yet another conversation with the Russian President, whose peace brokering had become bogged down in detail.
‘Hari Dixit will not hold on for ever,’ warned Gorbunov. ‘You will have to give him something.’
‘Han Chinese are being slaughtered in Lhasa, Shigaze, Gyangze and Rutog. Those are just the places we know about. The Tibetans are getting their arms from India. They are going into Chinese areas, killing people and burning their houses. If you want, Vlad, send a Russian television crew in to show the world the atrocities that these so-called innocent Tibetans are committing. Do you remember Kosovo, how the Albanians drove out the Serbs after NATO had won their war for them? Well, the Chinese people feel the same about Tibet. We have done more to raise the quality of life for Tibetans than any other nation and we are being repaid with an orgy of killing. As the leader of China, I cannot agree peace with India until that stops. It would be impossible.’
Tao now looked out on the Central Sea from one of his offices, the smaller room which he used for thinking and which was decorated with some of his very personal momentos. It would take perhaps an hour at the most for Gorbunov to talk to Hari Dixit, who would have to call an end to the ceasefire. Just as Tao could not surrender in Arunachal Pradesh while the Tibetan uprising continued, the Indian Prime Minister could not move against the Tibetan fighters while Chinese troops were in Arunachal Pradesh. Both men had painted themselves into a corner, and neither’s bluff had yet been called.
Briefly, Tao wondered whether he could have acted in any other way, but concluded he could not. Ultimately, India was to blame. Had it disbanded the Special Frontier Force years ago, the Tibetans would never have had the resources to stage an uprising. The question now was not to look back, but to devise a way that China could win.
The People’s Liberation Army had grown up on the doctrine of yilie shengyou, pitting the inferior against the superior. Despite the move towards missiles, submarines and high-technology warfare, that doctrine was very much in place. It assumed that China would opt to fight wars which other powers might not. It would take the risk of going into battle when it was not quite ready and win on courage and imagination. Without yilie shengyou, the Communist Party would never have defeated the Nationalists in 1949. After that, the Chinese Communist Party adopted another doctrine, of self-defence counter-attack, meaning that when it thought war was inevitable it should be fought on enemy and not Chinese territory. This was the pattern in the Korean War of 1950, against India in 1962 and against Vietnam in 1979. In China it was known ‘to attack outside the door’ or ‘to strike beyond the gates’. The policy was loosely known as xianfa zhiren, which also meant that China would make the first strike and gain the initiative. But the psychology remained unchanged. China saw itself not as an expansionist power, but an inward-looking nation under threat, merely trying to protect itself.
With that doctrine in mind and Russian President Gorbunov’s initiative stalled, Tao was considering at what level a strike should be made in order to achieve his goal. He needed a quick end to the conflict, preferably one which would bring the international community back on side. It was known as yizhan ershang, winning a victory with one strike. The question facing Tao was where should he deliver that blow.
Kilo-class submarine 0821, type 877EKM, Bay of Bengal
The sonar operator on the Chinese Kilo-class submarine picked up the signature of a Delhi-class destroyer, but could not determine its exact identification as the Bombay. At 0207, the submarine came close enough to the surface to raise the satellite communication (SATCOM) mast, timed to catch signals from the Dong Feng Hong 6 Chinese military satellite passing overhead. The satellite was beaming down a constant brief message which was picked up by all Chinese military shipping and at the Menwith Hill Station in Britain and Pine Gap in Australia. Both were American-controlled facilities, run by the highly secretive National Security Agency (NSA), which eavesdropped on communications throughout the world. The order came as just one two-syllable word, Houzi, translating as ‘monkey’.
Almost a thousand people worked at Pine Gap, near Alice Springs, intercepting telephone, radio and data links as well as satellite communications. The computer room alone was 5,600 square metres and there were more than twenty other service and support buildings. Yet when the Chinese satellite instruction made its debut in the massive Western listening station machine, there was nothing anyone could do to know what it meant. Only the senior Chinese army staff knew, together with the submarine commanders. Not even the communications officers who sent the message from the northern naval headquarters in Tsing Tao were aware of the significance of the signal.
It was luck more than anything that submarine 0821 had to surface to pick up the twice-daily signal less than an hour after identifying the Delhi-class destroyer. It meant the Chinese could track the Indian warship for a minimum amount of time, lessening the risk of detection. The commander took the submarine just below the surface again, but within periscope depth. He verified the destroyer’s position on the sonar and headed for the kill. Because it was dark and visibility was low, he decided to confirm the target with Electronic Surveillance Measures. He surfaced again using the ESM mast to absorb the electronic spectrum of the ship, taking in the destroyer’s navigation radar, encrypted tactical communications and satellite communications. The data was cross-checked on the Kilo’s tactical weapons systems computer, giving the commander a near certain classification of the target. He verified that no unique signature had ever been taken of the Indian Delhi-class destroyers Bangalore and Mysore, deducing that his target must be one of those two ships.
She was sailing south-west on a course towards the Andaman Islands, her speed just under 20 knots, probably slowed because of the unsettled weather. There would be about four hundred men on board the ship, which was part of the cream of India’s fleet. Unlike the Indian-designed and built Arjun battle tank or Light Combat indigenous fighter aircraft, the Delhi was considered a world-class warship and she sailed like a dream.
When he was 440 metres from the target, the submarine commander opted to go for an ‘eyes only’ attack using the periscope. Unlike the Americans, the Indians’ skills at antisubmarine warfare were limited. The Kilo had been tracking the destroyer for more than an hour undetected. The two Westland Sea King helicopters remained strapped to the deck, indicating that the crew was not even suspecting an enemy presence.