Fenix (33 page)

              But even he didn’t believe in that. What would
he
do if he were in the Indian shoes right now? If
he
was in a position of such a decisive victory, would he stop and let the enemy recover? Never! He would drive on until they had vanquished the enemy once and for all. And that was what he expected the Indians to do as well. For that matter, considering the stakes, wasn’t it his duty to do
everything
in his power to prevent the Indians from succeeding?

              His face contorted as he finally came to terms with what
had
to be done. Instantly, the hope that Hussein would call this off, became irrelevant. He chastised himself for being so defeatist in the face of this decisive jihad against the Indians. Now it didn’t matter. Hussein may call or he may not. Pakistan could now hope to win this war only if it went nuclear. And if it required sacrificing a half abandoned city to make it look like Indians had used nuclear weapons first, then so be it. He could rely on Hussein and the civilian government and even the Indian media to spread the doubt of culpability on New-Delhi. And then the pressure would be on the Indians to put a stop to this madness…

              And a nuclear war was one Pakistan
could
hope to win. Haider was sure of this. It was the
only
option now standing in between them and yet another humiliating defeat.

             
No!
This defeat had to be staved off. N
ow!

“A
hh!”

Grewal squinted as the flash of light blossomed over the eastern part of Lahore. It rapidly expanded and enveloped three-quarters of the city. The brightness was intense enough to completely blind and disorient Grewal and Ramesh. Their fighters rocked back and forth as both pilots instinctively jerked their controls.

              By the time Grewal had reached for his helmet-mounted visor and snapped it over his eyes, the expanding ball of fire and light had turned into a white mushroom cloud with a base of hellish orange-yellow. It was so intensely bright that the visor didn’t help much. He tried to bring his arm up to shield his eyes…

              Grewal knew that a massive shockwave was heading towards them an invisible stone wall. He went for the comms, not realizing that they were of no use “dagger-two! Get the fuck out of here! We are about to…”

              The shockwave struck the tiny
LCA
like a tsunami, despite it being highly dissipated by the time it reached their altitude. But it was enough to knock the aircraft aside like a piece of paper in the wind. The
LCA
was swept aside and the port wing sections sheared off, causing an uncontrolled roll at a phenomenal rate as it plummeted from the sky.

              Inside the cockpit, all possible alarms and warnings were blaring and screeching. Grewal tried some controls and found that they were non-responsive. The engine had flamed out. No hope of relighting it under these conditions. There wasn’t much to do.

              It was time to leave.

              Grewal pulled himself into his seat as best as he could do under the centrifugal conditions and pulled the ejection handle. The physical forces exerted on his body under such conditions were massive. He was knocked out instantly and everything turned black.

M
alhotra leapt up from his seat inside the operations-center as the screen from one of the radar-imaging satellites over Pakistan registered a color-filtration flicker and then a blip appeared over the overlay marked:
LAHORE
.

              A deadpan background voice from a speaker confirmed it: “warning: possible nuclear event registered at the following coordinates…”

              Someone muttered a “good god”, but Malhotra was zoned out already. He reached for the phone to call StratForCom operations and confirm what he had just seen…

──── 36
────

G
rewal woke to find his parachute tugging and dragging him with the wind. He tried to get his bearings and then snapped open the harness, causing the parachute to drift away with the dusty winds. He looked around and saw that he was half-immersed into the waters of a filthy lake. Two-dozen meters of drag marks in the mud followed away from his feet along the lake perimeter. His flightsuit was ripped in several places and he had bruises all over. But his sidearm was still nearby. He grabbed it urgently and checked the pistol. It had a full ammo clip and it cocked with the right amount of
click
. That made him feel a little better, even if it were mostly psychological. A pistol with a single clip wasn’t going to prove much help in the midst of enemy territory if he were found…

              And then it hit him. He scampered around a full circle and finally spotted it. The massive mushroom cloud to the east was rising peacefully into the blue skies. The clouds nearby had been parted into a clean circle by the shockwave. The smoke and dust was gradually shifting into the winds, oblivious to the terror unleashed to those it had touched.

              Grewal knew he needed a radio to get in touch with friendly forces. He also needed to get away as soon as he could. If his parachute had been spotted descending into this area, the enemy would be out looking to skin him alive.

He picked himself up and staggered towards the shrubs nearby. His mind was running on hyper speed:
maybe they might be distracted by the nuke enough to…
 

              The nearby waters of the lake rippled under the impact of rifle bullets and the distinctive
whump
noises of supersonic rifle rounds passing by told him that his hopes for evasion were already dashed. The distant crackle of rifle fire showed him where the threat was. He saw a several civilians and soldiers approaching him from the other side of the lake. The civilians were armed with what looked like knives and machete-like weapons. The soldiers were advancing towards him and taking shots.

              He ran faster than he had in his entire life, despite his injuries. Fear gave him wings. He had no illusion of what would happen if he was caught by this frenzied mob looking for a scapegoat for what had just transpired in Lahore.

It was easier said than done. He was on an open field near the lake and the nearest trees were a hundred meters away up a gentle climb. Maybe if he got into the trees, there was a chance. But run up that slope and he would be easy target practice.

Anything
was better than sitting here, however. He was about to make a run for it when a rifle bullet sliced through his thigh and another through his left arm almost simultaneously. He heard the distinctive crushing noise of bullets shattering his thigh bones. A split second later he was smack on the ground and tasting mud. His vision blurred.

              He tried to crawl away, but it was no use. He changed his orientation and saw the mob running up to him, frothing in anger, waiting to tear him limb by limb with their knives…

              “Like
hell!
”

              He pulled out his pistol and took aim with his right arm and pulled the trigger. The two soldiers closest to him were taken by surprise by what they thought was a dying prey. The lead soldier took two rounds straight in his chest and fell on his back, splattering blood on the civilians behind. The other soldier took one round straight to the cheek, flipped and fell into the water of the lake with a splash. The others ran for cover and took up firing positions.

              Grewal knew the end was near. He prepared for the impact of heavy rifle bullets. Horror gripped his soul.

              The massive series of
whumps
caught everyone by surprise. The civilians charging up to Grewal were the first to receive multiple bullet hits. They went down like a sack of coal around Grewal’s prone body. One went down on top of him because of his forward momentum, causing Grewal to moan in pain.

              The Pakistani soldiers nearby immediately turned their attention to the other side of the lake. Two of them went down before ever being able to identify their foe in the trees. The flash of gunfire and the rifle rounds slicing through their bodies with wet
thumps
was music to Grewal’s ears. The Pakistanis returned fire. Branches and leaves fell from that, but the shadows obscured their enemies. In their haste to capture  the cornered Indian pilot, they had run across the very same open field that had exposed Grewal. And now
they
were being hunted, with no place to hide.

              Several more bursts of fire and the last of the Pakistani soldiers was silenced. For several minutes, Grewal struggled to get the body of the dead civilian in salwar-kameez off of him. But it wasn’t easy with only one good arm. He groaned and moaned in his efforts but the dead body wouldn’t budge.

              He heard the clearest sounds in Hindi that he would forever remember from that day on. It was
then
that he knew he was in the presence of friendlies. A few moments later he saw the camouflaged face of an Indian special-forces trooper hovering over him. The soldier lifted the dead Pakistani and tossed his body aside. Grewal could not control his tears as the soldier offered his gloved hand to help him up:

              “Come on, sir. Time to get you out of here.”

              Grewal took the offered hand and got up, hobbling on his one good leg. He scrutinized the special-forces team members around him but could not spot any national markings or insignia on their uniforms. But the Indian-made rifles and comms gear were clear enough. As was their chatter in Hindi and English as they walked around the dead Pakistani soldiers, firing pistol rounds into whoever had survived, civilian or otherwise.

              “Who are you?” Grewal asked sheepishly.

              The medic tending to him did not reply. But one of the taller soldiers walked over, wearing his boonie hat. His face was camouflaged in streaks of green and brown just like the others, but he seemed to be carrying gear meant for a team-leader. His posture confirmed this assumption: “you are in the company of friendlies, sir. And you are
extremely
lucky that we happened to be in the neighborhood. We saw the explosion and your chute descending about the same time as these bastards did,” he kicked the dead Pakistani on the ground next to his feet. “Looks like we got here just in time now, didn’t we?”

              Grewal breathed a sigh of relief. His heart was still pounding away in his chest and despite the cold weather, he was sweating: “I owe you my life! If you had been a few seconds late…”

              Pathanya nodded and smiled sympathetically. He had no illusions about the barbarians they were dealing with here.

              “What’s your name?” Grewal asked. “
SOCOM
?” 

              “Can’t share any details, sir. And we need to get out of here right now, but I am Major Pathanya. And these are my men. Welcome to the pathfinders!”  

H
aider walked past the soldiers sitting in the stairwell of the house and on to the roof. He found several of his guards as well as some of the staff officers perched there with their binoculars. They were staring silently as the brown-grey mushroom cloud dissipated into the winds.

              This rooftop was a clear vantage point for the area, being the highest one around. Some of his communications troops had already set up
VHF
antennae here to allow them to talk securely with the 6
TH
Armored Division unit north and east of here. Haider found Akram and Saadat kneeling besides some battlefield computers that they had set up on the terrace.

              “Well?” Haider asked as he walked up behind them.

              “Comms established with the 6
TH
Armored,” Akram said without looking away, “and they are patching us through to corps command links. We should be online shortly.”

              Haider crossed his arms. His next moves weren’t exactly clear at this time. When he had been tasked to hold Lahore,
that
had been a clear objective which he had hoped to keep on until the end of the war. Now, that order had been superseded by the one he had just executed. And
that
had left him without a clear purpose. He had just terminated the lives of thousands of jihadists, civilians and enemy soldiers and had flattened and irradiated one of the most culturally symbolic cities of his country. But he was purposeless, and left hoping that the plan would work.

              If it
didn’t
work, he would be left sitting here in the dust covered villages while the full-scale nuclear war raged. As the commander who once led the
ISI
, he was not a passive man. He needed to control the flow of events. Sitting here in a random village and cut out of Hussein’s inner loop was a bit too much of a reversal in his fortunes for his liking.

              The problem was that he couldn’t just get on the phone with Hussein and ask him “what next?”. Plausible deniability was the name of the game now. The news outlets and world media were already reporting the nuclear detonation in Lahore. And it was clear that nobody could claim decisively on who carried out the attack. Both sides were already blaming each other. And until a forensic analysis was done to determine that the fissile fuel used in the detonation came from Pakistan, the charade would continue. Now the Indians would have to respond either by declaring a ceasefire to prevent a worse outcome, taking the destruction of Lahore as retribution for Mumbai, or they would continue the fight. If they did the latter, Hussein could claim nuclear provocation and strike. The international community would be too busy demanding both sides to back down to actually do anything. After all, he was only
defending
his country against a massive invasion by its much larger neighbor.

              But what it meant for Haider was what he wanted to know. He wasn’t going to allow Hussein to leave him hanging out to dry when all this went down. Maybe he had wanted Haider to die in the explosion instead of pulling his units out. After all, it would have been more convincing if Pakistani civilians and military defenders had died in the explosion, no?

              Knowing what he knew, both about the strike on Mumbai as well as the detonation inside Lahore, Hussein clearly expected him to martyr himself, ensuring that his secrets would never make it into Indian or western hands.

But Haider had other plans. He wasn’t about to martyr himself for Hussein or for anyone else. The only question was: how would Hussein react when he found out?

“A
ll units, this net: this is steel-central! Condition red! Condition red! Nuclear warfare conditions are declared. All taskforces report
N-B-C
red-con status! Over!”

              Kulkarni’s heart missed a beat. At first he thought it was a mistake. It
had
to be! But this was no mistake.

They were now in a nuclear war.

              All sorts of questions raced through his mind overriding the combat enveloping his forces at that moment. Had the Pakistanis nuked Indian cities? Or Indian forces? How bad was it? Or was it just a warning for what was
about
to happen?

              The metallic
clang
outside his turret and the recoil of his main gun reminded him that this warning would have to wait. The battle for Rahim Yar Khan was in full force. And nuclear warfare or not, Kulkarni’s biggest threats were the hand-launched anti-tank missiles and the lurking T-80s inside the town. He
did
check that
ABAMS
showed all of his tanks were reporting “buttoned-down-and-sealed”. He pulled his comms speaker just as the shadow of an Apache helicopter momentarily covered his sights and the
whump-whump-whump
of its rotors dissipated away: “rhino-actual to steel-central: reporting
N-B-C
red-con active across the board. Over.”

              That message caused his gunner and loader to share looks before they went back to fighting. Whatever it was that had caused the nuclear conditions to be declared, it would have to wait. The enemy inside Rahim Yar Khan had to be crushed first.