Free Darke Mission by Scott Caladon

it’s not weaponised as of the date of our satellite image, three days ago,” responded Carolyn.
    â€œHow can you tell?” asked Thornton. “Satellite images—”
    â€œCan’t go that deep,” finished Carolyn. “No they can’t Mr Thornton, but after the initial image we dug a little deeper and modelled a 3-D seismic cube, as petroleum geologists do when investigating the dimensions of oil wells. The unladen, un-crewed displacement of a Borei class sub is just over 14,700 long tons if surfaced. Our analysis was consistent with that with a +/- 1% margin of error. If the sub was weaponised it would have at least five Bulava RSM-56 ballistic missiles on board. That would have taken the estimated displacement of the submarine outside of our estimated +/- 1% margin of error with a 98% probability. No Sir,” Carolyn concluded, “this Borei is not weaponised… at the moment.”
    After that, there were no more questions regarding the content or accuracy of Reynolds’ and Eagles’ report. They had delivered well, answered any questions that had been forthcoming with precision and authority. The general agreement now in the meeting room was that North Korea had a nuclear powered Borei submarine at its Haeju naval base on the west coast of the mainland. Unanswered questions like how it got there, how was it paid for, what was Russia’s involvement, could wait for a later date. The only questions that mattered right this minute were what were Pyongyang’s intentions and what was the United States going to do about them?
    From the perspective of the American government and its people, in fact, the same perspective for much of the civilised world, North Korea was a secretive society with a crazy man as leader. It was easy enough to dismiss Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s supreme leader, as no more than a sabre rattler extraordinaire but, in the first half of 2013 his sabre rattling was extremely loud and clear. The People’s Democratic Republic withdrew from a non-aggression agreement with their southern neighbours, the North Korean army moved its Musudan missiles to their east coast, where they could threaten Japan and America’s Pacific military bases. Vast military rallies were ever more frequent and the thirty-one year old glorious leader himself was photographed brandishing guns and stirring up his troops to a frenzy. Who knew what was coming next?
    What was a known known as opposed to a known unknown, was that if North Korea’s recently acquired nuclear submarine became weaponised, the missiles did have the range and destructive capability to take out much of America’s eastern seaboard, with millions of lives lost and a degree of contamination that might not dissipate for twenty years.
    The remainder of the meeting that morning principally involved brainstorming as to military options for destroying the Borei. An air attack was entirely possible, but that would be highly visible and could trigger a North Korean response to attack the South, Japan or most likely the Pacific Coast of the United States.
    There was some discussion, mainly between McAllister and Thornton about undertaking a Navy SEALs operation. SEALs Teams 1, 5 and 7 had worldwide capabilities and were all headquartered in Coronado, California. Commander O’Neill kept his peace bar to confirm that these teams were indeed HQ’d in California. This discussion went on for about twenty minutes. Reynolds and Eagles didn’t have much to offer. While they had been trained in paramilitary skills and hand to hand combat they certainly didn’t have the need to put these skills to the test at the NGA, and they had no knowledge of the ins and outs of first strike options.
    Lieutenant McAllister, clearly keen to make an impact on the meeting after his initial feeble effort at suggesting the sub may be some type of skinny merchant vessel, broke up the side chats by announcing,