The two men travelled down together in the lift. It was approaching midnight. As they stood on the hotel forecourt the activity of night-time Beijing glittered in front of them as if nothing was untoward at all. Limousines drew up. They heard the horns of traffic along the Avenue of Eternal Peace. The smoke from fires warming the homeless under the flyovers was lit up by the street lights. Overhalt realized with irony that the band was singing a very bad version of `Rocket Man', by Elton John. `See, Reece,' said Jamie Song. `While America burns, China is tranquil. We are in control of our people and our culture. Why don't you ask Bradlay whether he is in control of the American dream?'
After speaking directly to Reece Overhalt from the Embassy, President Bradlay ordered a unilateral ceasefire among Allied forces in the South China Sea. All aircraft except surveillance aircraft were to be grounded. There would be no firing of weapons unless fired upon. National Security Adviser Martin Weinstein said that the Chinese might well be bluffing, but it was a risk America could not afford to take: `Gentlemen, we must assume we are two hours away from a nuclear strike,' he said.
For some minutes there was confusion over the number of Chinese submarines deployed in the Pacific. Military intelligence had a near certain identification of a Kilo class attack submarine off the Californian coast near Crescent City. Its present position was unknown, although there was a good chance that either the USS Asheville or the USS Jefferson City would be tracking it within the next few hours. At the time it was sighted, Jamie Song was with Reece Overhalt in the China World Hotel. It was probable that Song was unaware of its detection. He had declared a totally different type of submarine, the strategic missile Xia class, as still being several thousand kilometres out in the Pacific.
`Let us get all this absolutely clear,' said the President. `We are threatened by two submarines. The Chinese have declared one. We know about the other. Right now, either of them could launch an attack on the American people. Are there any more submarines?'
`We don't think so, sir. But we don't know.'
`They could take out an American city and there's not a damn thing we can do about it.'
`We could pick a missile up on launch, but that would be only minutes before it hit the target,' said Arnold Kuhnert. `The chances of us stopping it are not good.'
`And to stop it happening we have to surrender our right to the South China Sea.'
`That's about it, sir.'
`Or we could wipe out China, and lose Washington and a few other cities. How many dead — one or two million, maybe? The question in front of us, gentlemen, is whether it is worth sacrificing those lives in order to retain our leadership in global affairs.'
Throughout the previous evening events were being chronicled by students linked into the Internet. While the official state-run media continued to lambast American and Japanese aggression, there was no mention of the imminent nuclear threat. Since the beginning of Dragonstrike students had been holding informal salons to discuss the implications. The highly secret group of twelve young men and women of the New Communist Movement were now deciding at what stage the crisis should be exploited to force a change of government. A short-wave radio, tuned to the BBC World Service, was perched on a window sill with an aerial hanging outside because of the bad reception. The leader of the group, a twenty-one-year-old economics student, believed the movement had two duties. Reeling off a list of names including Mao Zedong, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela, he argued that to win victory for China they must be prepared to sacrifice their freedom and possibly their lives. But in reality the time was not right for demonstration. With the United States about to launch a nuclear attack it was the duty of the New Communists to give warnings to people to protect themselves. Over the past hours messages had gone out over the Internet to the movement's cells in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Taipei, Lanzhou, and other major cities. Secret radio stations in Hong Kong and Taiwan were ready to begin broadcasts. There was another in Lhasa and the cell in Shanghai said it too was setting up transmission equipment. Every cell had made posters advising nuclear survivors what action to take. The students had downloaded whole nuclear Web pages from the Internet and photocopied them. The leader of the Beijing cell said that in half an hour New Communists all over China would begin their announcements. Cars were waiting outside the university campus and the posters would be distributed around tenement blocks. After that, people would be warned through loud hailers. The leader made it clear that this was not a political action of any sort. The purpose was to save lives. Therefore, no posters would be put up in and around Tiananmen Square and other sensitive areas, nor would there be any announcements there.
As the meeting broke up, the Public Security Bureau moved into their dormitory, arrested the students, and confiscated the radio and computer equipment. The leader wriggled free and ran down the corridor attempting to escape. He was shot dead, in the back. PSB officials closed in on three cars parked on opposite sides of the streets 300 metres away from the university main gate. Two drivers were picked up. The third drove off at speed, but was met at the first junction by a hail of automatic weapons fire. The Volkswagen Santana turned over and smashed into a lamp-post. The driver died. The few witnesses who saw the killing were taken into custody. It became clear that China's massive security apparatus had been monitoring the activities of the New Communists for months and as the students were about to show their hand, they chose now to close in. At least eighteen others were shot dead, one in Xiamen, two in Wuhan, three in Lanzhou, one in Guangdong, three in Chengdu, five in Lhasa, and three in Shanghai, where police opened fire as soon as they burst into the room where radio transmissions were being made. The machine-gun fire was heard by the few listeners before the signal ended. The New Communist radio station in Hong Kong was on the air for twelve minutes before police found it. Signals from Taipei were jammed.
The commander of the attack submarine USS Asheville reported that he had a near certain acoustic identification of the Chinese Kilo class 10 kilometres south of where it was first sighted. His orders were to keep with the vessel, but not to destroy it yet because there was a temporary ceasefire. Trailing a VLF wire, he placed his submarine behind the Chinese and waited. The sea microphones were now picking up the same signature. An AWACS surveillance aircraft was dedicated to tracking it. Satellite photographs came back of the trail it was leaving. The commander of the USS Asheville waited. His sonar operators, picking up the mechanical sounds emitted by the Chinese submarine, reported that the launch procedures for the cruise missiles on board had not yet begun. They had not yet detected the torpedo tube doors being opened in preparation for firing.
While efforts to shield the civilian population had ended decades before, plans to rescue the nation's leaders, its heirlooms, and national documents remained in place, and key government personnel, together with the President and Congress, had nuclear shelters to go to. Time magazine, in a special four-sheet edition, claimed that the government was resurrecting a plan first drawn up in the 1950s to take the President out of danger of a nuclear blast. In Outpost Mission, as it was called, a helicopter was on standby. The pilots carried dark visors to shield their eyes from the atomic flash and wore 9 kilograms of protective clothing to block out radiation. It was supplied with decontamination kits and radiation suits for the President and the First Family, and even carried equipment to dig White House staff out of the rubble, if the bomb hit first. It would fly to the heavily reinforced communications ship the USS Northampton, off the Atlantic Coast, or to one of several hollowed-out mountain sites, although Time, which had written extensively about nuclear protection in the 1990s, speculated that the only facility still operational was Mount Weather, a bunker 80 kilometres from the capital.