Wang nodded. The General continued: `But also 3,000 kilometres off the coast in the eastern Pacific is our updated version of the Xia strategic missile submarine. The Xia we sacrificed carried the JL1 ICBM with a range of only 2,700 kilometres. The new version is armed with the JL2, which can travel 8,000 kilometres. It means, comrade, that the destruction of Washington is in our reach. The Americans have no idea the submarine is so close. She left the North Sea Fleet headquarters at Qingdao some weeks ago, sailing in the wake of a freighter, which made her almost impossible to detect.'
`Are we going to declare the submarines?' asked Jamie Song.
`The Americans describe us as a deterred state,' said Wang. `They believe that by threatening us with nuclear attack we will surrender. We have been set apart from Iran, Iraq, and Libya, which they regard as uncontrollable and undeterred. If we can convince President Bradlay that China, too, will not be cowed and that unlike in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries we will risk our own destruction to protect our sovereignty, then we will win the war. So by declaring one submarine we can avoid the mutual destruction of two great countries. And we will keep one secret to ensure that if the Americans are stubborn China will not be the only victim. I am quite prepared to destroy a city, although I can't see how it benefits either side. That, Comrade Song, will be your message to Mr Overhalt.'
The wireless transmission mast of the Chinese Kilo class submarine was spotted by the captain of an American fishing trawler 25 kilometres off the coast of Crescent City, California. The two vessels nearly collided as the submarine came to periscope depth to receive a radio message. The skipper alerted the Coastguard, which sent a boat from Crescent City and a helicopter from Humboldt Bay, 125 kilometres away. Before it reached the area, the Kilo had gone deep and sonar operators monitoring microphones anchored to the sea bottom along the coastline had failed to pick up her acoustic signature. The Los Angeles class attack submarines USS Asheville and USS Jefferson City were diverted from their northern coastal patrols to find the vessel. But it seemed the Chinese vessel was quieter than the background noises of the ocean herself. The American commanders increased their own exposure to enemy attack by using active sonar transmissions which might reveal an echo of the Kilo's position. They found nothing. Helicopters dropped patterns of sonobuoys. Surveillance ships deployed towed arrays and a long string of hydrophones in the hope of finding the Chinese submarine.
This was the unseen enemy, moving through the darkness of the sea. In modern warfare there is nothing so deadly. As far back as the eighties, the Pentagon was faced with the harsh evidence that America's high-technology national defence system could be defeated by a single submarine. During American-Japanese war manoeuvres in the Pacific seven submarines tracked down three aircraft carriers. With anti-submarine warfare surveillance constantly operational, and cruisers, destroyers, and frigates hunting for the submarines, two of the carriers and eight other warships were sunk at the cost of four enemy submarines. The debate on how to proceed with naval defence was never settled. Futuristic schemes were put forward on how to tackle the threat of quieter and quieter submarines. Questions were asked as to whether so much emphasis should be put on carrier groups, the centrepiece of American defence, when they had proved to be so vulnerable. There was disagreement over funding priority, particularly for the Star Wars space defence system, which few scientists believed would ever work. Efforts were made to move submarine detection away from its reliance on acoustics. Special radar was tested on satellites to recognize anomalies on the sea's surface and compare them, like a signature, to computer-generated images. Submarines would create tiny variations in height and roughness of surface waves. The surrounding sea water would change temperature. Marine organisms would be disturbed. The vessel would leave behind tiny particles. All this would show up on satellite pictures to reveal the wake, which was far longer but far more difficult to see than the wake of a surface ship.
There had been a fierce argument within the Chinese navy over whether to send a diesel or nuclear-powered submarine. The argument was won by those who favoured the low-technology Romeo and Ming tactics in the South China Sea battle. They believed the American navy, with its emphasis on NATO defence, was not trained to handle the sort of threat presented by the Kilo.
From all over America reports were coming in of looting, murders, fires, and mob violence. Correspondents in Los Angeles, New Orleans, Washington, New York, Chicago, Dallas, and the farmlands of Middle America told similar dark and bloody stories of a people in a selfish panic to survive. Thousands of properties were broken in to. In the early stages the police blamed gang warfare, but it soon emerged that respectable middle-class families were also loading up their cars with stolen food. They armed themselves and killed to get their supplies. By midmorning supermarket chains were closing down. The staff and their families were allowed to stay inside until the crisis was over. In Memphis, looters backed a pick-up truck into a restaurant. When the forty-two-year-old proprietor tried to stop them, his chest was blown away with both barrels of a shotgun. In Albuquerque, hundreds of people besieged a supermarket just before the steel rollers were pulled down for it to close. Two cars smashed into the front glass to wedge the rollers up. The crowd poured into the store, taking all the fresh and canned food and jamming it into sacks, boxes, trolleys, and anything they could find. The staff locked themselves into the store room. As the looting spread, more vicious methods were adopted; arson, petrol bombs, even grenades and flame-throwers. In New Orleans, fifteen people died when they were trapped in a basement bar and petrol bombs were thrown down the stairs. In Los Angeles, parts of the city were taken over by organized looting teams which engaged the police in firefights. An armed motorcycle gang devastated Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills before moving into the wealthy suburban areas where the National Guard set up a cordon of water cannon, backed up by armoured cars and military helicopters. In most American cities conditions deteriorated. The air was filled with wailing sirens of ambulances and fire engines and gunfire. Some of the worst-hit areas were the Chinatowns, which were attacked by mobs simply trying to vent their anger. The police and National Guard, already over-stretched, and with their own families threatened in the war, saw no reason to protect these ethnic communities. In Chicago, the husband and wife owners of the East Lake Restaurant hung a sign on the door in English saying: `Please come in and help yourself.' They left through the back door with a suitcase just as their grandparents had done in Shanghai fifty years before. Most of the Chinese in Chicago and many other cities chose not to protect their properties, or to argue their innocence. They had learned about racism in America. They also knew how determined Chinese rulers were from time to time to destroy their country. With remarkable patience, thousands abandoned their life's work that day. Most ended up in queues outside European and Latin American consulates claiming to be refugees from political repression. In San Francisco seven were killed in a drive-by shooting while queuing up at the Brazilian Consulate.
Within a seven-block radius of the East Lake in Chicago were at least twenty other Asian restaurants and stores. Graffiti was sprayed on buildings all around them with the insignia of black street gangs which held territory just a few blocks south. The Vietnamese and Korean communities were less restrained than the Chinese. As the gangs moved in, they defended themselves with a ferocity which reminded Americans why they had failed to beat these nationals in two separate wars. The Asians lured the badly commanded black youths into ambushes. They engaged them in hand-to-hand fighting, killing with lethal kicks and chops. After a bloody firefight in which the bodies of gang members as young as twelve were left on the streets, the Vietnamese advanced south into the territory of a gang which had attacked their supermarket. They besieged a bar. Under covering fire, the Vietnamese exploded two barrels of fuel outside the windows, threw in hand grenades, shot the survivors as they stumbled out, and then escaped. One television commentator began speculating that tens of thousands of Chinese patriots were rising up on American streets at the command of the Communist Party.