Third World War Read Online Free PDF Page B

roof of a Manila hotel. 'The Philippine military has lost contact with its bases on Basilan, Jolo and Tawitawi. In Zamboanga City, General Fidel Ocampo is being held hostage, and all assaults on guerrilla positions there have been suspended.'
    'John, thank you,' said the presenter in London. 'Before we let you go, could you give us a picture of what is behind all this, and whether this has any wider political implications?'
    The screen dipped back to the reporter, forehead creased and eyes squinting against an overhead sun. 'Susannah, one theory, and I stress this is only a theory, is that there was an attack by the Philippine military on a rebel Muslim camp. The rebels decided to hit back with a vengeance. But there is a question of coordination and planning. An operation like this must have been ready to go for some time. Something happened last night that made them unleash their forces.'
    'And, John, is it linked to the assassination of the Pakistani President?'
    'Conspiracy or coincidence, Susannah. No one yet knows.'
    Brock muted the television. 'Whenever we think Asia is a model of development it blows up in our damn faces.'
    West pointed at the maps. 'Let's send the Kitty Hawk,' he said. 'We got involved down there in 2001. If it's unfinished business, let's see to it.'
    Brock nodded. 'No harm in it. She's in the South China Sea at the moment. She could be off the coast of Mindanao in a couple of days.'
    The door opened without a knock. Caroline stepped in first, but behind her was Mary Newman, freshly fallen snowflakes on her coat, which was unbuttoned. She pointed to the television set. 'Has it been on yet?' she said, short of breath.
    'The Philippines?' said Brock, turning up the volume again.
    'No,' said Newman, loosening her Paisley-patterned silk scarf and putting on her glasses. 'Worse. Much worse.'
    ****
    Yokata airbase, Japan*
    Thousands of miles away, a few minutes earlier, massive engines had blasted into the reinforced-concrete base hewn into a mountain side. A North Korean medium-range, three-stage, solid-fuel Taepodong-2 missile had roared into the morning sky. While West and Brock had been discussing the turbulence in South-East Asia, every satellite camera and listening post in the region had picked up the launch and traced it to Manchon County, North Korea, 500 miles from the western Japanese coastline and 700 miles from Tokyo.
    Just outside Tokyo, in an aircraft hangar at the US Yokata airbase, maintenance engineers and their families were having morning coffee together to bid some colleagues goodbye. Friends were reading out goodwill emails from those who could not be at the party. There was cheering, laughter and not a lot of concentration on what was going on around them. It was a tight cluster of people, a cross-section of American family life and ethnicity, including children who had been given a special late start to school for the event.
    The Yokata US military airbase had a responsibility for forward projection and crisis response. It would be the primary supply base for troops fighting a war on the Korean peninsula. As many as 14,000 people lived there at any one time, and, most symbolically, it was less than thirty miles from downtown Tokyo - the military installation closest to the metropolitan area.
    The missile flew over the glittering Tokyo skyline and across the northern Kanto Plain at the foothills of the Okutama Mountains before smashing through the roof of the aircraft hangar.
    The roof split in two and the head of the missile crashed into the fuselage of a transport C-130 Hercules plane undergoing routine maintenance. The fin snapped on impact and flipped over on to the wing of a C-21 Learjet with such force that the wing broke off, letting vapourous aviation fuel into the atmosphere.
    They were gathered at one end of the hangar near a stack of oxyacetylene welding tanks when the missile struck.
    The electrical systems on the two aircraft shorted, throwing out sparks which ignited