Читать книгу China Rising - Alexander Scipio - Страница 14

West of Quetta, Pakistan

Thursday, 11 April, 11:57 hours GMT (16:57 Local)

Reclining on one elbow next to a small fire, the Arab looked across the narrow canyon toward the missiles for which he had paid so much money. That money had come from his Saudi family fortune and from all over the world, collected in madrassas, in mosques, and in charities located mostly in colleges in America and Europe. They would learn only when it was too late for them and their families. He smiled briefly to himself as the thought passed through his mind.

Five hours earlier the seven trucks before him had turned north and west onto a dirt track from N50, the road linking Quetta, Pakistan, with the Karakorum Highway, the primary road link between China and Pakistan. The trucks now sat on the sand and gravel floor of one of hundreds of deep canyons in this wasteland where Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan merge on maps.

Six of the trucks were missile trucks, road-mobile Medium Range Ballistic Missile launchers, each carrying an armed Chinese DF-21 MRBM.

The seventh truck carried a reinforced Squad of DPRK Special Forces.

Originally developed by the People’s Republic of China for their Second Artillery Corps in the mid-1960s, the DF-21 “East Wind” was a two-stage, solid-fuel missile. It had been finally deployed by China in 1987.

When newer technology displaced the missile system in the forces of the PRC, the remaining DF-21s were transferred to the Rocket Forces of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The six missiles carried on these trucks had been purchased from, and now were being delivered to the customer by that country. China had upgraded the navigation system of each missile as a part of the deal. And added a thermonuclear payload.

At only 800 pounds, the Chinese knockoff of the American W88 thermonuclear warhead mated to each of the DF-21s was well within its payload capacity of 1320 pounds. The light weight of the W88 would not hamper the ability of the missiles to deliver them to their targets at the missile’s maximum range of approximately 2,100 miles. Once over its target, each missile’s upgraded accuracy of under 100 meters of Circular Error Probability, or CEP, from the aim point ensured the absolute obliteration of that target.

The American-designed W88 device packs into a very small container a blast capacity of .475 megatons, nearly half-a-million tons of TNT, or approximately 25 times more explosive yield than the weapons used against Japan to end the Second World War in the Pacific.

The W88 is a miniaturized, tapered thermonuclear warhead, the most sophisticated strategic weapon in the arsenal of the United Sates – and the world. Its two-point detonation, non-spherical atomic fission primary trigger and final thermonuclear fusion of a lithium secondary combine to deliver a large amount of explosive yield from a small and lightweight package, and to create thermal and radiation signatures unique among thermonuclear weapons.

These warheads had been provided by the People’s Republic of China for the simple reason that small, lightweight thermonuclear devices were beyond the technical reach of the DPRK. Absent successful espionage against the United States in the mid-1990s, this warhead also would have been beyond the capability of the PRC.

China’s using a uniquely American warhead presented them with several obvious advantages.

To ensure that the goal was reached of putting the warheads on the several targets at coordinated times, and because the Chinese leadership was too smart to teach terrorists, or their erstwhile allies in the DPRK, how to target the missiles, Colonel Li had been provided from the Second Artillery Corps to perform the final guidance and targeting tasks.

The North Korean dictator had been pleased to do his large friends to the north a favor. When China asked if they could be of assistance in helping him sell six of his missiles by providing nuclear warheads and up-rated guidance systems, and a customer, the DPRK dictator was more than happy to oblige. He needed the cash, and the warheads simply increased the price he could charge.