Dragonfire (42 page)

‘Why, Vlad? Why on earth are you doing this?’

‘You’ve got to learn to balance power again, John. The Russian people feel you have walked all over them since the end of the Cold War. Vulnerable people who have lost their pride
are dangerous. I am anticipating a way forward. If Tao is telling me the truth, India will decide her next actions, not Russia and not America.’

The Situation Room, The White House, Washington, DC

Local time: 0215 Tuesday 8 May 2007
GMT: 0715 Tuesday 8 May 2007

‘He could be
bluffing,’ said Bloodworth.

‘If he’s not . . .’ said Alvin Jebb.

Bloodworth pulled up a map of Russia’s nuclear facilities and projected them onto a screen in the meeting room. ‘Let’s assume for a few minutes that we can do something. We
could take out 12th Main Directorate offices here in Moscow with a conventional cruise missile strike. We could shut down the Tatishchevo launch base at 51° 40' N, 45° 34' E – again
with a conventional strike. We could use tactical nuclear weapons against the Krasnoarmeyskoye storage facility south of Saratov, 51° 12' N, 46° 02' E. Only nuclear warheads would get into
the ravined area which protects the bunkers. We would need tactical nuclear warheads against Malaya Sazanka, just south of Svobodnyl in the Far East, 51° 15' N, 128° 1' E. This is one of
the older storage facilities, but it’s still active. Again, we would need a nuclear strike against Mozhaysk, which is the closest storage bunker to Moscow at 55° 26' N, 35° 46' E. The
satellite photograph, here, shows the soccer field within the perimeter fence, indicating the size of the facility we would be destroying. We could get away with a conventional strike at Nizhnyaya
Tura on both the storage facility at 58° 37' N, 59° 45' E and the nuclear weapons production plant there. We might have to be careful because Nizhnyaya Tura works together with
Sverdlovsk-45, the biological weapons research facility, which could release something like smallpox into the air when a missile smashes into it.’ Bloodworth looked around the room.
‘That is just a fraction of what my computer has thrown up.’

‘We can’t do anything, you mean?’ said Hastings quietly.

‘If we knocked out all of that and twice as much again, he could still do more damage to America and our allies than we could absorb.’

Xia
-class type 92 strategic missile submarine, Bay of Bengal

Local time: 1300 Tuesday 8 May 2007
GMT: 0730 Tuesday 8 May 2007

The swell of
the sea around the submarine was identified by an alert analyst in Washington from a satellite transmission. Seconds after the swell, a generation of white
water spread from the area as the submarine’s missile doors opened. The sea began heaving violently, then it pitched and rolled as if a storm was whipping up. Outside the area of launch the
sea was flat as it only could be shortly before a tropical monsoon. The water sprayed and frothed, and the satellite picked up fire, leaping from the sea, then when the missile cleared the surface,
its thrusters took it skywards beyond the earth’s atmosphere, before turning it to come down minutes later on its target.

BBC Wood Norton, Evesham, UK

Local time: 0730 Tuesday 8 May 2007

On instructions from
the Prime Minister, John Stopping by-passed the Home Office and called directly to Robin Sutcliffe in the broadcasting bunker at Wood Norton. He
identified himself with a pre-arranged code. ‘When can you begin broadcasts from Wood Norton?’ said Stopping.

It was the morning peak time. Although the Taiwan conflict was high on the agenda, the bulletins were focusing on the sudden resignation of the Foreign Minister, Christopher Baker. He had been
arrested for being drunk and disorderly in Pall Mall only a few hours earlier. He had been alone and carrying a briefcase of classified documents, which luckily had been kept safe and unopened by
the police. India was ranking third in the running order. Shortly before going on air at 0600, the government in Delhi had shut down satellite broadcasts out of the country. Full censorship had
been imposed. Journalists were banned from the front line in Arunachal Pradesh and the issues of conflict between China and India were considered obscure, given what else was around.

‘We can switch any time at ninety seconds’ notice,’ said Sutcliffe. ‘We are running simultaneous dummy programmes.’

‘We would like you to wait until the 0730 news headlines are out the way and then switch. Say it is because of technical problems.’

‘Why is it?’

‘I am afraid I can’t divulge. You can run your programmes as normal, but we might have to take over editorial control at any time under the terms of the charter.’

Many listeners, tuned into 5 Live, were unaware of the change because those channels kept operating. The
Today Programme
presenters had less of a problem in explaining the sudden change
of broadcast venue than the two presenters fronting
Breakfast News
. They were replaced by a lone and less famous presenter with a bland corporate backdrop. The programmes schedules were
maintained on the computer line, with the new presenters reading the same scripts as had been prepared in London. Sutcliffe decided that the packages at Television Centre should be used in
preference to the lower-quality material which had been cobbled together at Wood Norton.

What remained a secret was that the BBC’s programmes were going out from a nuclear bunker because British territory had been threatened with a strike from Russia.

Faced with a news blackout in Delhi, the BBC’s Asia Correspondent, Martin Cartwright, had got straight on a plane to Bombay. On landing, he and his cameraman, Darren Scott, had taken a
tortuous taxi journey to the financial district in the Fort area. If he could not report from the war zone or the seat of government, he planned to spin a story from India’s economic centre,
transmitting it illegally on a satellite telephone. Bombay was as restless, dirty and unmanageable as he had ever seen it, oblivious to the global conflict going on around. Cartwright and Scott had
hardly slept in forty-eight hours, frustrated at the restrictions put on their reporting, made worse with their story being hi-jacked by the conflict over Taiwan. Cartwright was even more furious
because Sutcliffe had overruled his plan to fly straight back to Taiwan. He was told it was already being covered by a more junior correspondent.

It was Scott who eventually came up with the idea of just the two of them taking off to Bombay with a video-capable portable sat phone and the miniature SX edit pack. Scott said he could get
Cartwright up for a two-way into the morning radio bulletins. They could then check into the Taj Hotel and have plenty of time to cut a piece of the
Nine O’Clock News
. If any pictures
did come from Delhi or Arunachal Pradesh, they could drop them into the piece in London. As Cartwright and Scott inched through the streets in their taxi, beggars everywhere tapping on the windows,
Scott checked out locations for pre-recorded two-ways in visions, which they could feed through the sat phone. He decided that the esplanade looking onto the Sea of Arabia outside the Taj Hotel
would be as good as anywhere. The bustle of street-sleepers, traders and grubby children as a backdrop would show up India for what it really was. Cartwright liked it because he could contrast it
with Shanghai. He would ask rhetorically why China’s economic centre had built a beautiful waterside promenade where people went out to enjoy themselves, roller-blading, kite flying, taking
pictures, buying ice-cream, living a life, yet the same in Bombay was a wretched place of poverty, where not even a drop of wealth had seeped through to the streets. He noted down the thought.

The waterfront was also a good spot for radio, giving a clear line to the Indian Ocean satellite, and close enough to the banking district and Stock Exchange for Cartwright to say he was
reporting from the area. It was also near to Horniman Circle where the Town Hall had been the target of a Pakistani bomb just two days earlier. The area was still cordoned off, yet the stock
exchange had only dipped by a few percentage points because of the war. Disappointedly, Cartwright decided his story would have to be about Indian resilience ploughing on in an atmosphere of
business as usual. This was hardly a community living in panic.

Scott got through to Traffic, the BBC’s communications centre, and was patched through to the radio studio in Wood Norton. The programme editor came on the line, asking if Cartwright could
begin in fifteen seconds. They wanted an Indian reaction to the resignation of Christopher Baker. Cartwright was halfway through his objection that Baker was definitely not the story, when he heard
the presenter’s voice in the earpiece.

Presenter
: We have finally got line to India, where our Asia Correspondent, Martin Cartwright, has managed to get to us from Bombay, or Mumbai as it is known locally.
Before we talk about the situation there, Martin, can you tell us the impact Christopher Baker’s suddenly leaving office will have on Britain’s relations with India during this critical
time?

Cartwright
: Very little, I expect. India is in the middle of a serious border dispute with China. We’ve just learned since getting here that India has carried out a
major missile attack on Chinese bases with the aim of pushing Chinese forces out of Burma – or Myanmar – and its naval forces out of the Bay of Bengal. I can’t see Christopher
Baker having much influence—

Presenter
: I’m sorry to interrupt, but Mr Baker’s supporters are saying that he was carrying out highly influential behind-the-scenes negotiations to try to
bring about peace in South Asia, that he is a crucial player.

Cartwright
: Well if he was, it didn’t work because there’s war. India is not a place where diplomatic secrets are easily kept, and no British or Indian
journalist or diplomat has ever mentioned Christopher Baker as being a player. The only interest he ignited was about his mistresses.

Presenter
: All right, very briefly, now, Martin, because we’re running out of time, what is the atmosphere like in Bombay? We’ve had unconfirmed reports of
mass panic in some areas.

Cartwright
: The city centre itself is very much business as usual—

After that, the line went dead, but the tape was played over and over again; the explosion, the roaring air and then the silence were terribly and clearly audible – no
more than five seconds of radio, painting a picture of sound for the first nuclear catastrophe of the twenty-first century.

Bombay/Mumbai, India

Local time: 1315 Tuesday 8 May 2007
GMT: 0745 Tuesday 8 May 2007

The temperature was
36°C, the day was clear with visibility of more than twenty-five kilometres and a light wind blew in from the south at 8.33 k.p.h. It was one of
the hottest days of the year and many workers had stayed inside their air-conditioned offices for lunch away from the heat and humidity.

Those outside who instinctively looked towards the flash had their eyes burnt out. The ones who survived – and not many did – were blinded with third-degree burns to their eyes. The
breeze whipped up into erratic gales which flung pedestrians at more than 160 k.p.h. to their deaths. Within about 0.1 milliseconds after the explosion, the radius of the fireball was about 14
metres. The ground at the centre exploded with heat. Tiles, granite, glass within a radius of 1,500 metres melted. Fires leapt out of wherever there were flammable materials, so that just about
every building was alight, even four or five kilometres from where the warhead went off, forcing millions out onto the streets. Their clothes burst into flames as well, and afterwards bodies were
found with clothing patterns etched onto their skins. The first thought of most was to head for water and thousands sought refuge on the sweeping beach along Marine Drive, or Sasoon Dock near the
Gateway of India. The explosion had set off tremors in the ground like an earthquake and the sea swelled angrily around like water in an unsteady bowl. The sand exploded like popcorn, burning their
feet and driving them towards the water. As they swam out, the fires proved to be faster and stronger. The victims were eventually incinerated by leaping fireballs which seemed to bounce out to sea
in all directions killing everything in their paths. One moment the beaches were filled with the sound of shouting and crying. The next they were quiet apart from the roars of conflicting winds
created by the nuclear explosion. Then, people would appear again chasing sanctuary until the next fireball engulfed them.

The citizens of Bombay were being killed by three direct impacts from the explosion: blast or shock, thermal radiation and prompt nuclear radiation. On top of this, there were the effects of the
electromagnetic pulse in which they felt as if they were being smashed in the back by a hammer, then immediately hurled into boiling water or an inferno. Thousands more were cut up and killed by
flying glass and debris or in secondary explosions of cars, motor-scooters and domestic gas cylinders.

Within twenty minutes of the explosion a circle of three kilometres radius from the blast was ravaged by the same type of firestorms as ripped through Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo following the
incendiary attacks during the Second World War, and of course, through Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the nuclear attack. The temperatures were 300°, 400°, no one ever knew. Those who did not
flee their buildings were suffocated with carbon monoxide poisoning and died where they hid.

The fires created a massive vortex which sucked in air from the areas around it, building up yet more unpredictable winds, drawing in oxygen to feed the inferno at speeds of up to 80 k.p.h. At
that stage, no one could survive.

It was then, almost half an hour after the missile struck, that satellite pictures picked up the first formation of the mushroom cloud. As the winds brought in fresh oxygen, the heat was pushed
upwards, taking with it vaporized debris which became lethal, highly radioactive dust. Water droplets from the sea also condensed around radioactive particles and hours later fell to earth again,
many kilometres away, as black rain.