Fenix (4 page)

              “Well,” one of the other senior people replied, “Muzammil is already talking to the media from his hiding hole outside of Lahore and bragging about it. Like he did last time.”

The man on couch grunted: “Those bastards are like
leeches
, taking credit for the kind of shit that others don’t
want
to take responsibility for!”

              Basu continued to puff his cigarette as he watched the conversation flow in front of him.

              “I take it that none of the actual operatives lived to tell the tale?” The man on the couch said again. Basu nodded agreement: “The bastards took down one of our coast-guard aircraft and a patrol vessel that attempted to stop them from reaching Mumbai. The crew of that vessel sacrificed themselves to save the citizens of the city!”

              “Shot down an aircraft?” The old man interjected.

              “One of the coast-guard patrol aircraft,” the analyst noted from the papers in front of him. “Let’s see…ah, okay. One of the Dornier-228 type aircraft. Coastal-security had vectored them to the inbound vessel to investigate. The aircraft made contact and ordered the vessel to stop its approach. The crew notified their command that the vessel was highly suspicious and asked a coast-guard ship to be deployed to assist in verification. The crew spent fifteen minutes buzzing the boat and collecting video before they were shot down by an onboard shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile…”

              “Wait,” the man on the couch said as he leaned forward. “We have the video of the ship firing the missile?”

              “They were streaming it to coastal-security ops-center at the time. They have the audio and video of it at naval headquarters at the moment,” the analyst noted and then cleared his throat. “Poignant stuff, the last few moments of that audio.”

              “I bet,” Basu noted neutrally. “Continue.”

              “Well, the coast-guard ship made it to the vessel while it was still about two-dozen kilometers away from Mumbai harbor. Shots were fired and they disabled the Pakistani boat’s engine, causing it to become dead in the water…”

              “And then the cornered
LET
bastards blew up their cargo prematurely.” Basu concluded and extinguished the cigarette in the tray before continuing: “Gentlemen, the use of the surface-to-air missile gives away the game, if you ask me. There is no way that that Makki or Muzammil could have managed these resources without the support of our usual suspects in the Inter-Services-Intelligence. The question is why the escalation to nuclear weapons? Knowing the ‘who’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ is important, but also the ‘why’. When we find that out, we can get ahead of the enemy’s future plans.”

              The old man on the couch nodded agreement: “Tell the navy and coast-guard brass to keep a tight lid on that audio and video. If the enemy doesn’t know we have the evidence, we can get them to make predetermined moves on their original plan.”

              “Agreed,” Basu added. “But bear in mind that the planners for this strike in Pakistan probably know already that their original plan has failed. The detonation of the weapon so far out at sea has still gotten them damage to Mumbai, but not nearly on the scale it would have if they had succeeded as planned. So they will know that we know something about it. Expect the litany of denials and references to the supposed non-state actors to follow.”

              “South Block and the Prime Minister’s office is going to be asking us questions very soon,” the man on the couch noted. Basu leaned back in his chair as he thought that over.

              “I know…” he added absent mindedly, “…that they are going to want some action plans for us. Let’s look into that as well. Nuclear terrorism is not your usual run of the mill stuff. The government will want to take action on this one. If we have to get Makki’s head on a platter for it, we should have a plan to do that. Let’s get started on that one
before
we are asked for it.”

              “Military options?” the old man asked soberly.

              “Why not?” Basu replied, now sitting straighter. “Let’s be prepared for that as well. If we can solidify Rawalpindi’s and Haider’s involvement in this, there is every possibility of an open war.”

              The man in the couch grunted: “At least that will make our action plans doable! If we have active military support in our operations, that will remove Makki’s protection cover which he currently enjoys.”

              “We will see,” Basu noted neutrally. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves! This government hasn’t really followed up on any past provocations either. So I won’t be betting money this time either.”

              “
Except,” Basu’s colleague added, “the nuclear threshold has been crossed this time. We will have to act or stand to invite further such strikes! There has to
some
line in the sand, no?

              Basu terminated the meeting shortly afterwards. He made a mental note to meet again after his meeting with the Prime Minister. He was still lost in his thoughts, trying to figure out a game, the rules of which he did not yet comprehend…

Was this a new game?

Or just the old one with different rules?

He needed some advice on matters his department did not specialize in. Especially when it involved the military. Fortunately, he knew a man who did. An old friend with whom Basu and others had worked closely three years ago. He walked outside his office and asked his assistant to get him Lt-colonel Ansari at
SOCOM
.

──── 3
────

T
he crowd of civilians waiting to be airlifted out of northern Mumbai were pushed away by the wall of dust moved up by the approach of an air-force Mi-26 helicopter. People held on to their belongings as the dust cloud enveloped the grassy fields and the blades of the massive helicopter threatened to uproot trees and people from their feet. One member of the forward-deployed ground teams, dressed in a protective
NBC
suit down, brought his hands up above his head and made a cross as the helicopter’s wheels touched into the grass and hard terrain and compressed under the massive weight.

              The loud whine of the massive turbine engines began to lower. The ground crews moved up and began walking towards the ramp of the helicopter which was now opening. One of the army officers dressed in his NBC suit also ran up to the side of the helicopter just as the crew-chief opened the side door. The army captain was to the point as he spoke through his suit’s mask:

              “Can you take some of these civilians out of here on your return flight?”

              The crew-chief waved for him to hold and ran up to the cockpit where the pilot and co-pilot were seated. The pilot unstrapped himself and walked back to the side door. He saw that other army personnel were already unstrapping the
BMP
vehicle that they had airlifted in the cavernous interiors of the helicopter.

              “What’s the problem here?” he asked the army officer as he jumped on to the flattened grass. He was taken aback by the sight of the mask-wearing army officer in front of him. A voice in his head asked him: has it gone
that
bad here?   

              “Sir,” the army man replied, “we have civilians caught out here and no mode of transport for them to be evacuated on! The roads are all clogged with water or traffic! Can you take some of them with you on the flight to Pune?”

              The pilot, was the commanding officer of the air-force’s “Featherweights” squadron that operated these massive helicopters. Over the decades, the attrition on the handful of available helicopters had been significant. Of the four available birds, one had been lost during operations in Bhutan and two others had been removed from the roster for no longer being airworthy; a result of heavy operations.

              The pilot looked back at the helicopter. This was his last bird available. It would not survive this hazardous operation. But under the circumstances, he was at a loss to find a better way for the last bird of his squadron to go…

              “Get them aboard as soon as the
NBC
recon vehicle has been offloaded and mobilized!” He then turned to his crew-chief: “Get the civilians on board. As many as you can! And as fast as you can! No mad dashes! In double file and up from the ramp!”

              The crew-chief nodded in the affirmative so the pilot nodded to the army officer. The latter man turned and ran to his men guarding the perimeter around the mass of civilians. Once back in the cockpit, the pilot looked at his co-pilot and sighed:

              “Call up Pune and tell them we have landed with the cargo and are disgorging. Also tell them to be prepared with
DE-CON
teams pending our return. We are taking as many civvies out of here as we can!”

              As the co-pilot began speaking on the comms, the pilot went back into the cargo cabin behind him and saw the armored
NBC
recon vehicle based roll off the ramp, leaving the helicopter’s fuselage visibly relaxed. A few moments later the first of the civilians began lining up at the back of the helicopter to begin boarding. The relief was visible on their faces and in their eyes. It was a tragic sight to see so many people being displaced from their homes this day…

              “Sir,” the co-pilot said, causing the pilot to turn around.

              “What?”

              “Ops wants to know how many civilians can we get out of here and how many more will need evac!”

             
Thousands, probably!
The pilot let out a muffled curse. He finally recollected his composure: “tell them we will need to make dozens of trips if we are to get all these people to the safe zones before the fallout hits this area!”

G
oddamn it!

Air-Commodore Verma vented his frustration as he overheard the communications from the Mi-26 crew on the ground near the fallout areas. He turned away from the banks of radios lining his operations center at the air-force base in Pune. It wasn’t the first time he felt out of place during his tenure at command.

You know what you look like? A fifty-three year old man well past his prime still wearing his green flight-suit and standing alongside men and women half his age as they run about making your orders into reality
.
Time to act like it, old boy!

Verma sighed and resigned himself to the operations at hand. He had ordered pilots to their near-certain deaths during the war against the Chinese air-force. Back then he had done so from the operations cabin of a Phalcon airborne-warning-and-control aircraft. Although those decisions had been difficult to bear afterwards, at the time they had presented a clear option to him to achieve his goals.

This job today, was far more insidious.

The enemy here was unfathomable: nuclear fallout. He could not go out and touch it, or kill it. The only option was to get out of its way. But without resources in hand, would he be forced to give the order he knew his pilots expected him to?

His basic problem was the lack of helicopters to airlift so many people out of isolated areas in northern Mumbai within a few hours. That was when the first of the radiation fallout was predicted to start getting to dangerous levels. It was a simple problem of numbers: X number of helicopters needed for Y number of people to be airlifted out in Z hours. Since he could not provide X, so he had to give up on either Y or Z.

Neither of which appealed to him as an acceptable option. He wasn’t going to be the one leaving innocent people on the ground. At the same time, he could not willingly expose both the civilians and his pilots to get everybody out. Something had to give.

He walked over to the wooden table in the conference room of the operations center where dozens of large maps had been laid out. Most of them dealt with the geography of the Mumbai region. Other documents were satellite-based color-contour projections of current fallout patterns and projected ones at one-hour intervals. The room was abuzz with both army and air-force people running back and forth in near-chaos conditions. Lohegaon airbase in Pune was the obvious choice for running an operation of this magnitude. Pune because it housed the Army’s Southern Command which was responsible for the entire southern swathe of the Indian subcontinent, and Lohegaon because it was a large hub of air-force activity in the region alongside Nagpur airbase further west. Nagpur would have been Verma’s first choice but
that
location was where his superiors had made their “strategic” operations center. And as strange or even bizarre as that sounded, Pune was now the “forward” operations center.

Verma had his job full alongside his army and navy colleagues. The latter two were already heavily involved in the evacuation of people from northern Mumbai into safe sectors to the south. Verma shuddered at the very thought of the magnitude of that task. Anybody who had been to Mumbai could testify to the impossibility of a chaotic evacuation.

Out in the northeast of Mumbai, the air-force and army were working in close conjunction under nuclear conditions. The first of the army’s unmanned nuclear reconnaissance vehicles had just been airlifted into the northeastern sector by the “Featherweights” Mi-26 helicopter. Verma had also deployed several high-altitude Heron unmanned-aerial-drones to provide real time intelligence on the ground situation. Through the enhanced black-and-white view of the Heron’s electro-optical pods, they could see the Mi-26 parked on the ground with a mass of civilians flooding the rear of the helicopter. They could also see the “Muntra-N” nuclear recon vehicle beginning to roll under its own power with a puff of engine exhaust and a slight jerk forward…

“Looks like the
NBC
recon vehicle is operational and moving,” one of Verma’s staff members noted. Verma looked at the man: “fair enough. But how the hell do we get the civilians out from there in time? This recon vehicle is only going to confirm what we
already
expect to happen!”

“Sir!” Verma turned to see one of his operations people calling from his station outside the conference room. Verma left the room and walked over.

“What is it?”

“Sir, griffon-one-actual is asking permission to see if he can make a landing approach in sector two-bravo to evac civilians out of there.”

Verma raised an eyebrow: “What’s available in two-bravo to land on?”

The officer waved Verma over to the wall screen showing the drone feed from the Heron overhead. The view was centered on a straight stretch of tar road about three-quarters of a kilometer in length and about half kilometer away east of the parked Mi-26 on the ground. The road had apparently been scouted by the army folks there. He could see some of their trucks parked on the grassy fields nearby. Verma immediately understood the play his pilots were requesting for.

“Can he make it?” He asked and saw that his men have him a “
we-are-going-to-find-out”
shrug. Verma looked back at the screen and evaluated the width and flatness of the tar road. He then turned to face his operations officer:

“Do it!”

The officer nodded and brought his comms mouthpiece up to his mouth: “griffon-one-actual, this is guardian-operations. Guardian-one has authorized your request and wishes you best of luck! We have you on visual from guardian-angel’s eyes and will follow you in. Out!” 

              Verma heard the static-laced response from the flight-crew of the C-130J as they began their approach. He turned to see the wall screen along with everybody in the room and saw the black-and-white screen showing the flat-winged, multi-engine aircraft make its approach on the tar road. The video was without audio except from the incoming radio traffic from the pilots of the aircraft and the Heron operators overhead.

Several minutes later there was a large dust cloud behind the aircraft as it made contact with the field and began slowing down. The whitish cloud on the screen enveloped the aircraft for several seconds. The entire room held its breath as they scrutinized the video feed.

Seconds later the lumbering transport emerged from the dust cloud and began rolling forward. Verma let out a very loud breath along with several of his people around him. As they watched, a crowd of civilians were herded towards the waiting aircraft by soldiers. Verma turned to his people: “Scramble griffon-two and -three as well. Griffon-one has blazed a trail for us to follow! Tell them to get in as soon as Griffon-one is off the ground and keep doing it till we get all those civilians out!
Move!
”

As everybody around him scrambled to the task and the radios went alive with chatter, Verma turned to see the silent video of the parked C-130J on the road with a mass of people boarding it.

Damn heroes!

And yes, you will get a bottle of scotch from me for your actions today!