`I see that our old friend has been in contact,' the President said. `I've just been watching a recording of that son-of-a-bitch on the television. He hasn't changed a bit. Smooth and slippery as eel and with a bite to match.'
`Jamie was on the phone to me an hour ago. He came on with the "old friend of China" line and wants me to fly over and see him. In very non-specific terms he hinted at a solution. I can tell you I need this like a hole in the head. Someone is screwing around with my stock price and my investors do not like it. Anyway, what do you think? Can I be of service?'
`Reece, I think it would be a very good idea for you to go to Beijing. Events, I can tell you, are moving very quickly. Between us, I'm not quite sure where they are going to end. But we may need someone like you — trusted by both sides, but in the employ of neither. I want you to go to Beijing. Our Embassy there will extend to you all the help you need.'
During the night, French pilots shot down two more IL-76 refuelling tankers. Ten Su-27s were destroyed in a Vietnamese attack on Hainan Island. A joint force of British, Australian, and New Zealand special units paralysed the defence systems on Terumbi Layang-layang. They infiltrated the inadequate perimeter fence and destroyed the radar equipment before they were discovered making their escape along the runway. Chinese troops engaged them in a firefight, but explosive experts managed to lay charges on seven aircraft. The blasts threw the Chinese troops into confusion, allowing the Allied forces to slip away. The British suffered two wounded and one dead. There were no casualties among the Australian and New Zealanders. The casualties among the Chinese were unknown. The bulk of the Su-27 advanced fighter squadron was destroyed. As the commandos made their escape, the Chinese base was rendered useless by American Hornets with air cover from Tomcats and British Sea Harriers from the Ark Royal. A second raid sank the Luda III class destroyer Zhuhai and two escort vessels which had been patrolling around the base. In all China lost twelve of the more than forty surface vessels which made up its South China Sea task force, as wave after wave of aircraft from three carriers continued their attacks. By dawn, the Chinese military command had ordered all ships to head north to areas where they would have more air cover. The exception was the new Russian-built Sovremenny class frigate, the Vazhny, renamed the Liu Huaqing, which slipped out of the headquarters of the southern fleet. There was thick cloud overhead and it entered the South China Sea undetected by military satellites and spy aircraft.
SIX
President Kim telephoned James Bradlay, who said immediately that he was happy for South Korea to commit its own military forces to the war with the North. Bradlay had a far larger crisis on his hands and was thankful that South Korea would handle its own problems. The United States, however, would provide the technology and advisers and it was they who primed and guided the first launch of the McDonnell Douglas Sea Slam surface-to-surface missiles from the three South Korean Ulsan class frigates Chung-ju, Che-ju, and Masan. All the South Korean naval officers had done extensive training and exercises with the American navy for such an operation. The missiles had never before been used with such pinpoint accuracy, skimming over the sea then the rugged terrain around the Demilitarized Zone and finally cutting in to fly straight into the underground bunkers which hid the military machine threatening Seoul.
American and South Korean troops abandoned the DMZ, drawing back from their unprotected positions in Panmunjon and right along the demarcation line. The watchtowers and the truce village were unmanned. The huts where demarcation disputes had been negotiated over the years were empty. The most heavily fortified front line in the world went on the highest alert. A skeleton defence force of men and women from the US Second Infantry Division was deployed at Camp Greaves, the closest position to the DMZ. Each wore the motto of their unit on the uniform, saying "in front of them all".
The first South Korean missile smashed into a rockface just metres from a tunnel entrance. Another flew straight over the hilltop and skidded into a field without exploding. The third, however, was successful and slammed into a row of concealed tanks. The explosion, made more powerful in the confined space, ignited both fuel and ammunition supplies. The tanks closest to the entrance were crippled. The mangled armour blocked the exit so those behind were rendered useless. Over the next forty-five minutes computer-guided missiles negotiated their paths inside many of the hidden places. Others missed and exploded harmlessly in the countryside around, but the attack had the desired result of forcing the North Koreans to show their hand: as their equipment was threatened, they moved it out into the open so it could be used more effectively. The roads around the border suddenly filled with armour, artillery, and supply vehicles. More vehicles appeared on the Kim Il-Sung highway, which ran all the way from Pyongyang to Panmunjon and was built to take both fighter aircraft and tanks. As the data was processed through the South Korean surveillance system squadron after squadron of F-16s, F-5s, and F-4s screamed across runways throughout the south, became airborne, and headed north to the Demilitarized Zone. The pilots' orders were to destroy everything they saw above ground.
President Kim knew he had taken one of the riskiest decisions in modern military history. In the face of almost certain destruction, the North would have no choice but to launch a land and missile offensive on Seoul, and that attack had to be stopped. Yet if his defence planners had misjudged, it could be only a matter of hours before a North Korean tank was on the streets of Seoul. Already, enemy aircraft had penetrated the airspace. A mixture of advanced tactical warplanes, MiG-23s and MiG-29s, together with the mainstay fighter wing of MiG-19s andMiG-21s, flew towards the Southern capital. Most were engaged by South Korean aircraft and it quickly became clear that with its bad maintenance and poor training schedules the North Korean Air Force would soon be beaten. Plane after plane was shot down by surface-to-air missiles and the air-to-air missiles carried by the South Korean interceptors, but among such a wave of thirty or forty aircraft several made it to Seoul. They had no specific targets and they unleashed their bombs and rockets into civilian areas. Then some turned their aircraft towards the ground in suicide dives, each one careening into a highrise building and exploding into a devastating fireball. Thousands died. In the 63 Building, built like two hands in prayer, more than 500 people died, many trapped in stairwells and lifts which had shut down as the air raid began. Sirens wailed and millions sought refuge in the subways and basements of their buildings. The hospitals overflowed with victims. The rescue services, which for decades had been prepared for this moment, were immediately overstretched, with hundreds being left to die in the streets and buildings abandoned to burn unchecked.
Icy winds of the past week had swept away the layers of pollution which hung over Beijing for most of the winter. The sun broke through the cold and cast a glitter over Tiananmen Square. The roads around it were closed off to the public and bedecked with bright red bunting. Schoolchildren, packed ten deep, lined the pavements, each holding the national flag and raising it high above their head on the command from their cheerleader. Loudspeakers, attached to lamp-posts, broadcast the national anthem and Chinese songs of liberation from its past of foreign control. Communist Party officials had been summoned to Beijing from every province. They watched events from the steps of the Great Hall of the People to the west and from outside the Museums of Chinese Revolution and History to the east. Camera crews from China Central Television roamed freely around the square. Throughout the morning, the national network showed films about China's suffering during the occupation by foreign forces. The British were criticized for the nineteenth-century Opium Wars and for seizing Hong Kong. The Americans stood condemned for their support for the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek in the 1940s and his rebel armies which had taken Taiwan. Film of the Korean War in the 1950s told how Chinese troops defeated British, American, and other imperialist forces. Speckled black and white footage showed slaughtered troops and survivors, emaciated, cold, and dejected. The Japanese were described as guilty people for all millennia. They had treated their fellow Asians with more humiliation and suffering than any Western power. Japanese soldiers were shown massacring Chinese civilians in summary executions, beheadings, and beatings. One Chinese peasant was tied to a lamp-post, his head hanging down. Japanese soldiers skinned him until he died from shock and loss of blood.