`Mr Ambassador, I suggest you go back to your Embassy and tell President Wang to stand those missiles down. On the first sign of a launch, we will obliterate China.'
The commander of the Vanguard class strategic missile submarine HMS Vengeance received his orders to prepare for a nuclear launch from an extra-low-frequency radio message which penetrated the ice cap under which he was patrolling. Any target in the northern hemisphere was in range from these waters around the North Pole, where Soviet and NATO submarines used to gather in a crowded cat and mouse game during the Cold War. HMS Vengeance operated with the luxury of knowing that no Chinese submarine was there now. They had no ability to go under the ice and the submariners had no substantive cold-water training. HMS Vengeance was being guarded by the Trafalgar class attack submarine HMS Trenchant, whose sonar operators had been keeping watch on a Russian Typhoon class strategic missile submarine and an Akula class attack submarine. The Akula followed HMS Vengeance as it moved to prepare for the launch. In the control room, the computer automatically still listed Russian vessels as hostile.
Within an hour the commander had found the polynya or clear water surrounded by ice through which he could launch the Trident 11 (D5) missiles. Every action he took was verified with his Weapons Engineer: they held separate keys which would initiate the launch. Each missile had a three-stage solid-fuel rocket and carried eight MIRVs with 100 kiloton warheads. The launch could be detected by Chinese satellites fifteen seconds before it happened, with an increased swell and generation of white water around the submerged submarine as the torpedo chamber doors opened. At four seconds to launch the sea would begin heaving violently. Then a rumbling sound would begin as if there was a huge thunderclap. All around, the sea would turn into a turbulent pitch and roll, and in a mixture of spray, fire, and froth the missile would rise out of the sea and turn towards its target 5,000 kilometres away.
The first missile was programmed to hit Desired Ground Zero One in Beijing. During the Cold War, DGZ-1, the precise spot where the first nuclear warhead would explode, was Lenin's mausoleum in Red Square. In China, DGZ-1 was the mausoleum of Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square at the coordinates of 116g 23 35 East (longitude) and 39g 53 58 North (latitude). In the same salvo the south section of Zhongnanhai would be destroyed at 116g 22 40 North (longitude), and 39g 54 25 East (latitude); and the Party's secret grain supply on Tiancun Lu, west Beijing, 116g 14 50 North (longitude) and 39g 55 45 East (latitude).
The target coordinates had been programmed into the missile computers in code. Not even the men who pressed the launch buttons knew where they were heading.
To keep the Russian submarine at a safe distance, the commander of HMS Trenchant made clear the British presence by cycling his main vents and blowing out his sewage tanks. The Akula commander replied by sending out a ripple transmission through his Shark Gill sonar. Russia was watching but not interfering. Close to the surface, HMS Vengeance trailed a very-low-frequency wire. The crew waited for orders to fire.
Signals from every available strategic recce and intelligence satellite were drawn into the US Space Command Center. Sensors were monitored in the NAVSTAR nuclear detonation detection system satellites. Data from ballistic-missile early-warning systems at Thule in Greenland and Fylingdales Moor in the United Kingdom was watched second by second. Radar crews were put on high alert in stations in Turkey, Italy, Diego Garcia, and across the United States. The special Pave Paws phased-array radar in Massachusetts, Georgia, Texas, and California tracked objects more than 5,000 kilometres away. Other detection and tracking radars were in operation on Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific, British Ascension Island in the Atlantic, Antigua in the Caribbean, and at the Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Like HMS Vengeance, commanders of the American strategic missile submarines of the Ohio class USS Nebraska and USS Louisiana in the northern and southern Pacific and the USS Rhode Island under the polar ice cap were given orders to prepare for a Trident launch. In Turkey, Italy, Guam, and Japan, American B2 Stealth bombers were being fitted with guided nuclear bombs. In the two American carrier groups, Tomahawk cruise missiles, mostly with 200 kiloton warheads, were being prepared for firing. In the deserts of central America, technicians made ready the Peacekeeper and Minuteman III intercontinental missiles in their 25 metre deep concrete and steel silos, capped with retractable steel covers. The silos were at least 6 kilometres apart to minimize the damage of a direct hit. The regional control centre was 18 kilometres away and the crew of the National Emergency Air-Borne Command Post patrolled the skies in case it had to take over. Both the Minutemen and Peacekeepers carried 331 kiloton W-78 nuclear warheads and could hit targets nearly 12,000 kilometres away. The Peacekeeper, with ten individual warheads and a computer system which could make two million simultaneous calculations a second, had taken over from the Minuteman as the ICBM programme's first-line defence. As America and Europe braced for a nuclear war with China, missiles were programmed to hit the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Dalian, Chengdu, Harbin, and Shenyang. Guangdong was not targeted because of possible fallout onto Hong Kong. Xiamen and Fuzhou escaped because of their proximity to Taiwan. The North Sea Fleet headquarters at Qingdao, the East Sea Fleet at Ningbo, and the South Sea Fleet at Zhanjiang were to be destroyed together with the air and submarine bases on Hainan Island. Other specific targets were the naval academies at Dalian and Qingdao, the Engineering College at Wuhan, and the Nanjing Naval Staff College.
The aim of the strike was to destroy the People's Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party.
Japanese television channels illustrated the tests with colourful graphics. Clusters of people gathered around the windows of television shops on their way back from work. The huge screens in the airport and bus and underground stations showed the firing of four medium-range ballistic missiles from Okinawa and four Chinese made Tomahawk-style terrain-following cruise missiles from the Kongou class destroyers Myoko and Kirishima which were 1,000 kilometres further south in the South China Sea. Two cruise and two ballistic missiles landed 3 kilometres off the Chinese coast at Tianjin, the port city only 120 kilometres from Beijing. Another ballistic missile hit the sea just outside the southern naval base of Zhanjiang and the fourth fell at the mouth of the Yangtse River near Shanghai. A cruise missile landed off the coast near the Yulin airbase on Hainan Island and the final one was targeted on waters around Xiamen, the thriving port city across the straits from Taiwan. None carried warheads. Television commentators aided by more graphics explained how the missile tests coupled with the nuclear explosion confirmed that Japan was now a global military power. The sheer numbers of warheads Japan was able to fire against the enemy meant that some would get through and there would be no protection. People all over Japan celebrated through the day. There was no criticism of the tests by Western powers.