Dragonfire (27 page)

‘I’m sorry, Mr President,’
said Tom Bloodworth, ‘we have no idea how the Indians will respond. Prime Minister Dixit is not taking calls, nor is
any member of his cabinet. I have even failed to get through to Chandra Reddy, whom I consider to be a personal friend. They seemed to have shut down the Operational Directorate in South Block. We
have picked up a new burst of highly encrypted SIGINT from near the village of Karwana about a hundred miles north of Delhi.’

‘Meaning what?’ said John Hastings.

‘If it means anything it is that the Indians have a war bunker out there, probably dug underneath a farmhouse or something. The signals have never been used before, so we would have no way
of knowing before now. There is heavy cloud cover over much of India so it is impossible to check on any preparations for a nuclear or conventional response. As yet, we have not deciphered the code
being used from Karwana, but we expect to have something within a few hours.’

‘By which time Pakistan could be one big nuclear wasteland.’

The Situation Room where the Principals’ Committee had gathered was in the basement of the West Wing of the White House, a small wood-panelled room able to accommodate only about two dozen
people. The key conference area was protected by bullet-proof glass. The Committee, led by the President of the United States, met in times of crisis and usually comprised the secretaries of
Defense, Commerce, State and Treasury, together with the heads of the CIA, FBI and any other Federal agency involved. For this session, the FBI and the Treasury had not been brought in. But Ennio
Barber, the President’s personal adviser, was there.

‘Joan, tell us about American citizens,’ said Hastings.

‘None killed or injured that we know of,’ said Holden. ‘A task force has been set up and we’re getting a lot of calls. We are advising all American citizens to leave both
India and Pakistan.’

‘Isn’t that a bit panicky?’ said Barber.

‘The launch to impact time between Delhi and Islamabad is eleven minutes. It would be irresponsible not to get them out. In fact, we’re asking the airlines to lay on airlifts from
major cities so that any American citizen who wants to leave, can. The Ambassadors in Islamabad and Delhi have made personal appeals to both Hamid Khan and Hari Dixit to have a nuclear ceasefire
until this has happened. Dixit, as we know, has gone to ground. The message has been passed through the Indian Ambassador to the United Nations and here in Washington. Khan has responded. He has
pledged not to strike again. But he’s asked us to get India to pull back and stop threatening the existence of Pakistan.’

‘He thinks he can nuclear strike his way to an international negotiating table,’ said Hastings. ‘Alvin, I don’t want you involved in this, but tell me what you’ve
got.’

‘A carrier group is off the southern coast of Sri Lanka,’ said Jebb. ‘I suggest we send it right up into the Indian Ocean. We have a smaller group from the Fifth Fleet led by
the USS
John C. Stennis
in the Gulf of Oman which we can get into the Arabian Sea and up towards the Pakistani coast. Power projection from both groups is well over seven hundred miles, so
there would be little risk of radiation if there is a full nuclear exchange.’

‘How would that leave our forces in the Gulf?’ said Hastings.

‘We would move in a group behind the
John C. Stennis
from the Third Fleet in the Mediterranean. We have a cruiser, the USS
Lake Erie
, in the Persian Gulf, with the USS
Bataan
, which is an amphibious assault ship, a couple of destroyers and attack submarines. If Iraq or Iran doesn’t choose to exploit the crisis, and if the regime in Saudi Arabia is
toppled in an Islamic coup, we should be all right.’

Hastings turned to David Booth, the head of the CIA. ‘Check that none of that is about to happen,’ he said. ‘The
Ronald Reagan
should go into the Indian Ocean anyway and
we’ll make that the focus of our military announcement. I’ve just spoken to the British Prime Minister. He is making HMS
Ocean
and her support vessels available, and they have
the advantage of being much closer to the action, helping with the Bangladesh cyclone.’

‘Working under whose command?’ said Jebb.

‘Britain’s for the moment. Should the crisis escalate, Pincher is happy to put his ships under our command, as I’m sure Australia and New Zealand will. The Malaysians, who also
have a ship there, will probably back-pedal off.’

‘China,’ said Bloodworth. ‘We must examine Chinese involvement.’

‘I think the nuclear issue is more important than a border skirmish,’ said Holden.

‘The nuclear weapons were given to Pakistan by China,’ said Bloodworth. ‘I have just been telephoned by General Shigehiko Ogawa, head of Japanese intelligence. Some of you
might know that they have an agent within Zhongnanhai. An interpreter. Ogawa told me that China has begun a long-term military and political plan of which its alliance with Pakistan and hostilities
with India is all a part. They’ve called it Operation
Dragon Fire
.’

‘You believe him?’ said Holden.

‘Yes, Joan, I do. I sense that this will not end by us slapping down India and Pakistan. The stakes are much bigger, our involvement far more precarious. I think China is willing to
sacrifice Pakistan in order to win regional power over India. It gave it nuclear strike power, precisely because it believed Hamid Khan would use it.’

‘Apart from China, who has leverage with Pakistan?’

‘Saudi Arabia,’ said Joan Holden.

‘Talk to them, Joan. Deploy our carrier groups as discussed. Get me Reece Overhalt on the phone in Beijing and keep trying for Hari Dixit.’

‘Mr President,’ said Jebb, ‘without boring you with new technologies, there is a simple interim measure we could take if there is a hint of escalation.’

The President’s Personal Secretary working next to the Oval Office rang through on the open intercom, interrupting the conversation. ‘Sir, the Joint Chiefs are reporting Indian
missile launches against Pakistan.’

Sargodha Airbase, Pakistan: 32° 03' N, 72° 39' E

Local time: 0720 Monday 7 May 2007
GMT: 0220 Monday 7 May 2007

Wreckage of buildings
and planes was still smouldering from the air attacks on the huge airbase. It was as if the facility was already destroyed and deserved nothing
like the blistering salvo it was seconds away from receiving. Hours earlier the Prithvi missiles had been primed for launch by engineers from India’s 333rd Artillery Group located with XI
Corps at Jullunder. Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Lahore, Sargodha and Multan were all within missile range. Although the Prithvi was capable of carrying either nuclear or conventional
warheads, India chose to limit its retaliation to a conventional strike.

The surviving Pakistani radar, already crippled by Indian strikes, did pick up the Prithvi missiles as they re-entered the atmosphere. The command and control system operated from the bunker
deep underneath the airbase activated what little was left of the air-defence system. The most effective should have been the KS-1 short-range ground-based theatre-defence missile, recently flown
in from China. But the Chinese technicians had fled the day before, and the equipment was too new for the Pakistanis to operate it efficiently. The KS-1 was hidden in nearby wooded land. But by the
time the trucks and launchers were made ready, the missiles had struck. As soon as one of the phased-array radar-guidance stations was switched on, Indian pilots took it out with air-to-surface
missiles and laser-guided bombs.

More than a hundred assembled M-11 missiles with a range of 320 kilometres were in storage around Sargodha, shipped in years earlier from China. Indian intelligence believed they were in the
Central Ammunition Depot in a hillside set away from the base. To make an impact on the bunkers four Prithvi strikes used 1,000 kilogram fuel-air explosive warheads, which created enough
over-pressure to do significant damage. Seconds after the missiles struck, wave after wave of aircraft flew in using both laser-guided and free-fall bombs: No. 23 squadron with MiG-21s and No. 5
Squadron with Jaguars out of Ambala, No. 21 Squadron with MiG-21s out of Chandigarh, No. 221 squadron with MiG-23s out of Halwara and No. 3 Squadron out of Pathankot. Two aircraft failed to return.
It’s thought they were shot down by hand-held Stinger missiles. The onslaught of missiles and aircraft was designed to seal off the bunker exits with so much rubble that the missiles would
never get out. On the way back the Indian pilots blasted targets on the Kirana Hills near Lahore where the missiles were also being stored.

A. Q. Khan Laboratory, Kahuta, Pakistan: 33° 54' N, 74° 06' E

Local time: 0725 Monday 7 May 2007
GMT: 0225 Monday 7 May 2007

The town of
Kahuta, thirty kilometres south-east of Islamabad, was a closed, military area. Anyone who travelled there without a permit was arrested on suspicion of
espionage. It was the site of a uranium mine, which also contained Pakistan’s main nuclear weapons laboratory, named after A. Q. Khan, the physicist who pioneered the country’s nuclear
programme. In the early eighties, Chinese technicians were involved in working on Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) and production began in 1986. It’s thought Pakistan began to build weapons
shortly after that. The HEU hexafluoride was made into uranium metal which was then machined into weapon pits. Kahuta was able to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for three to six weapons a
year. China’s involvement came to light again in 1996 when it sold five thousand ring magnets, enabling Pakistan to double its capacity to enrich uranium.

India suspected that Pakistan had alternative reprocessing laboratories and at least one more within the vicinity of Islamabad. In the late nineties, a heavy-water reactor went critical at
Khushab, 160 kilometres south-west of Islamabad, giving Pakistan the ability to make plutonium. This was the nuclear material of choice for missile warheads, because they could be lighter and
therefore give the missile more stability. About half the amount of plutonium was needed, making it possible to create a nuclear weapon the size of a grapefruit. Although the success Pakistan had
had in creating plutonium was not yet clear, Khushab (32° 16' N, 72° 18' E) was part of the same airstrike operation as Kahuta.

Kahuta was the pride of Pakistan’s nuclear programme. It was also within a few minutes’ flying time from India, and barely had the aircraft crossed into Pakistani airspace than the
laboratory was in flames. The weapons used for this operation had been carefully chosen so as to minimize the risk of nuclear leakage. No deep penetrations or free-fall bombs were used.
Laser-guided bombs were the main weapons, targeted on the entrances and exits of the laboratory, with the view of sealing it rather than destroying it. Cluster bombs were dropped around the
perimeter of the complex, sowing a path of smaller anti-personnel bomblets and tiny delayed-action mines, with the purpose of maiming staff working there and deterring others from going in.
Fragmentation explosives damaged vehicles and light structures. By the end of the raid, the Kahuta laboratory might still have been in action. But its capacity to transfer enriched uranium to any
warhead and missile had been crippled.

Samungli Airbase, near Quetta, Pakistan: 30° 14' N, 66° 55' E

Local time: 0725 Monday 7 May 2007
GMT: 0225 Monday 7 May 2007

Until now, PAF
Samungli, base for the Pakistani Mirage fighters, had escaped attack. Now, however, it was a prime target because of its involvement in the Ghauri
surface-to-surface missile project. In 1998, Pakistan carried out Ghauri’s first test flight. It was launched from Malute near the city of Jhelum (32° 58' N, 73° 45' E) in north-east
Pakistan and landed within the grounds of the Samungli airbase, west of Quetta. Indian aircraft destroyed both the airbase and the Malute launch site.

Multan, Pakistan: 71° 30' N, 30° 15' E

Local time: 0725 Monday 7 May 2007
GMT: 0225 Monday 7 May 2007

Military sites around
Multan were hit by both Prithvi missiles and aircraft. For civilians, Multan was a crossroads in central Pakistan of bazaars, mosques and
beautifully designed tombs and shrines, crushingly arid in the summer heat. But the hills around the city were also suspected to be the site of one of Pakistan’s main command and control
bunkers, built in the nineties and designed along the lines of the Chinese underground war headquarters in the Western Hills outside Beijing. The Pakistani M-11 missiles were stored at the
air-force base in Multan, after being deployed ready for use from Sargodha. Indian aircraft began a steady bombing campaign around Multan, flying sortie after sortie, at first destroying the
airbase, then keeping up the pressure on the suspected sites of the bunkers.

Other sites which were also attacked in the same air operation were at Gujranwala, Okhara, Jhang and Dera Nawab Shah, each suspected of housing missiles, communication terminals and launchers
sent in from China.

Indian military HQ, Karwana, Haryana, India

Local time: 0830 Monday 7 May 2007
GMT: 0300 Monday 7 May 2007

The Karwana underground
complex had been built in the late nineties after the Pokhran nuclear tests and the escalation of the conflict in Kashmir. The only noticeable
landmark was a sprawling run-down farmhouse with outbuildings, three kilometres outside the village on a 120 hectare estate which had been taken over by the government. A high wall had been put up
around one hectare of the property, within which the bunker had been built. It was neither spacious nor cavernous, unlike the one in China. The Prime Minister had his own quarters, but other
members of the National Security Council shared rooms and the military personnel involved slept in dormitories. There was one canteen, common shower rooms and the operations room was just under 100
square metres. This was not designed for a prolonged war but precisely for the crisis which was occurring now. Either it would be over within forty-eight hours, or they would all be dead.