Third World War (2 page)

He heard the whoosh of a mortar, a soft but powerful swell of sound distinct from the cries and gunfire around. The car would protect them from high-velocity weapon fire and grenade shrapnel but not from a direct mortar hit. From years of experience in the low-intensity war with Pakistan, Mehta recognized the threat immediately. He clasped Meenakshi, covered her as best as he could, although he knew it might be useless. He had a view from the ground and he saw the flash of the mortar as it crashed into the roof of the building and exploded.

'Out,' he yelled, scrambling clear, his right hand holding the Uzi, his left hand pulling his daughter free, stepping out, running with her towards the building, up the steps, as automatic gunfire cut into a sandstone balustrade inches away from them. Meenakshi spun round, but Mehta kept going, yanking her along with him until they were inside the door, where troops were taking cover.

They leant against the inside wall, getting their breath. Meenakshi examined a cut on her arm and took her father's hands to check him in the same way. He was unscathed. She dropped them on the second undulation of mortar sound. Mehta brought his daughter's head into his chest and waited for the explosion. They hadn't changed the trajectory. The shell fell through the roof of the building. But what carnage would it cause inside, where at least five hundred people would have been gathered for his speech? God only knew.

'You,' snapped Mehta, pointing to the officer in charge. 'That mortar - neutralize it now. The closest unit. Prime Minister's orders. Now.'

He spotted three men, crouched against an outer balustrade, the closest to the car, and ran down to them. 'Corporal,' he ordered. 'Take your men and retrieve that terrorist alive.' He pointed to the man he had shot minutes earlier in the leg and now bleeding to death where he had fallen.

Mehta spotted a movement in shadows in the curve of the building. Two men ran out, one in black, one in olive green. Their objective was the wounded assailant. They wanted him dead as much as Mehta needed him alive. He expected a grenade, but they kept running. 'Target, two o'clock,' he shouted, letting off a burst of fire from the Uzi. The corporal took it as his signal and sprinted out, with Mehta covering him. One guard was hit, but Mehta found the source immediately and returned fire. It came from the first-floor verandah - the attackers had penetrated that far.

The two surviving attackers kept going. They would get their colleague in a few minutes. The wounded attacker was unconscious. A bodyguard, there first, lifted him on to his shoulders while the other kept watch. But after Mehta's exchange of fire a sudden silence descended around the building. Group by group, politicians and staff caught in the onslaught were making it inside. Police armoured vehicles broke through into the grounds cutting up the grass and the driveway with their hard tracks. Troops spilled out. Sirens of approaching ambulances echoed from the roads outside. Overhead, fighter planes roared.

The wounded attacker was brought just inside the building. They laid him down on the concrete floor. Meenakshi checked his pulse, and pupils. She took a quick look at his legs, took off her shirt and ripped it in two. 'Help me,' she said, to no one in particular. Two solders knelt down with her and followed her instructions as she applied tight tourniquets to both legs.

Mehta was on his mobile phone. 'I want the first ambulance round here. No excuses,' he said. 'I don't care. We have a man, alive, who will talk and give evidence. Nothing is more important.'

Then, as he was listening to the reply, his ear tilted to one side, checking that the ambulance whose siren he could hear was heading in his direction, there was overhead another sound familiar from his days of aircraft training in the Himalaya. It was the vibrating pitch of the engine of a light aircraft. He ran outside to look up. Not one but three were approaching. Far in the distance was the vapour trail of a turning fighter. Small-arms and heavy machine-gun fire broke out from the ground, creating a cordon of lead through which the aircraft would have to fly. One aircraft was hit, turning into a ferocious fireball, an explosion far greater than if just fuel tanks were going off. Its force created a charred circle on the grass and set light to the trees around it as the debris fell, scattering and flaming to the ground. Caught up in the trail, the pilot of the second aircraft turned sharply, but got caught in a secondary blast. He lost control and at such low altitude clipped a tree, somersaulted and crashed. The explosives on board did not detonate until the aircraft broke up on the ground. It sent out a withering heat wave of destruction which wrecked everything in its path.

The third pilot took no evasive action, and flew rock steady through the fiery turbulence. Suddenly, Mehta understood the plan: the diversions, the suicidal firefights inside the grounds, the single repeated trajectory of the mortar to weaken the roof, while people were being brought inside the building to safety. He watched as the Cessna bucked. The pilot was alone, but all around him was what? God, if it was - Mehta thought. It could be nothing else but. A solitary, concentrated figure, with the other spare five seats of the single-engined plane stacked up with boxes. The luggage compartment as well would be laden with high explosives and detonators charged to go off on impact.

The plane adjusted its direction towards the gaping hole in the roof, and as Mehta saw the fuselage plunge in, flames leapt out, then a rumble, then a tearing, ghastly, roar, like the scream of a great animal in the first stages of slaughter, as it exploded halfway down the four storeys of the historic building, crammed with people who had fled there to safety.

*****

'I'm not taking any calls,' insisted Mehta. 'I'll call them when I'm ready. West, Nolan, Song, Kozlov and any of those simplistic humanitarians from the European Union. None of them, do you hear?' He sat down angrily as his private secretary melted away, closing the door and leaving him alone.

When the internal phone rang, Mehta's hand hovered over it before picking it up. Deepak Suri, the Chief of Defence Staff, was on the other end. 'It's Khan,' he said gently. 'I urge you, Prime Minister, if you talk to no one else today, talk to him.'

Mehta nodded and heard the click as Suri transferred the call, and he recognized the distinctive Punjabi accent of President Asif Latif Khan of Pakistan. 'Vasant, it is a tragedy,' said Khan. 'The pilot told me the news as we were coming in to land. I will do all I can--'

'You must, Asif. You must,' said Mehta. 'I don't want to have to fight you.'

'You won't,' replied Khan, but his wasn't a safe answer because both he and Mehta knew he might not have the power to keep his promise. Khan was his friend. Their parents had been educated at the same Karachi school. Mehta had photographs of them playing together as children - until Partition had separated them. The Muslim Khans stayed in Pakistan; the Hindu Mehtas went to India.

'I am offering my condolences to the whole nation, to the families of the victims, to you Vasantji, to Meenakshi and to your family.'

'Thank you,' said Mehta softly. 'Where are you?' he asked, guessing that Pakistan's intelligence agencies would be listening in to their president's call.

'We've just arrived in Malaysia. Should I return?'

'No,' said Mehta firmly. 'No. The less we respond, the less they win. This is character-building time for India and the whole of South Asia.' There was no more to say, unless Khan offered something. Mehta let a silence hang between them, although his temptation was to let fly his anger, to let his friend know the true wrath of the people he governed.

'We were in no way responsible,' Khan said, his voice faltering as if Mehta had made the direct accusation.

'Is that your word, Asif?' Mehta challenged. 'Or is it the word of your armed forces and intelligence agencies?' He knew Khan would never have ordered the attack, but the nation, its institutions, its agencies, its ideology had created the men who would carry it out. For generations, Pakistan had been a breeding ground for terror.

'Before I called you, I spoke to Islamabad. A full and transparent investigation has begun. On that you have my word.'

Mehta looked across at the television screen. The cameras were switching location. They were on the US President, Jim West, walking across the White House lawn from Marine One, the presidential helicopter. A reporter shouted a question about the attack and West, waving a hand, refused to comment. The screen then went live to the Indian home minister visiting the clear-up operation around the parliament building in Delhi.

'If you're serious - after Malaysia - come to Delhi,' said Mehta, upping the stakes. 'Meet me here. Announce it now. Visit the disaster. Pledge to punish. Make it real. Come here before you return to Islamabad.'

For a few seconds the line stayed quiet again, the Pakistani President genuine in intent but politically wrong-footed. The press releases ready to go from the propaganda machine in Islamabad second-guessed by the insistence of a peace summit in the victim country to get things sorted before the vultures overshadowed everything with talk of war.

'Yes. Yes,' said Khan with a sudden weariness in his voice. 'We must meet. I will be in contact with you shortly.' Mehta thought he was ending the call, but Khan continued. 'Vasant, you are my friend. For God's sake trust me. The consequences of not doing so are too serious.'

Before Mehta had replaced the receiver, Deepak Suri walked straight in without knocking. 'Vasantji, with all due respect, what on earth are you playing at? If Khan comes to Delhi, if he visits the parliament site, he'll be lynched. With the best will in the world, we cannot guarantee his safety.'

'He won't come,' said Mehta, distracted by the row of newspapers on his desk. Page after page of pictures of the carnage.

Some chose the intensity of the destruction, showing the inferno across a whole page. Others opted for the sequence of pictures leading to the attack. The tiny speck approaching the building, becoming recognizable as a single-engined plane, to a close-up of the pilot, determined, eyes fixed on his destiny, then the plane plummeting as a missile of high explosives through the roof. It was a chilling symbol of a lone and deadly mission. From inside came the carnage. Nothing was spared. Rows of bodies, draped in shared sheets, seeped with blood. Shocked survivors, dazed, wounded and without help. The mutilated symbols of India. Incongruously, the propeller of the aircraft had survived, twisted but intact. The photographer had framed it hanging from dislodged electrical wires in the Central Hall in front of a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi, the founding father of India, torn and splattered with fragments of war.

The pilot had not chosen his target at random. He would have known the layout of the building and would probably have sat in the public gallery to familiarize himself with the target. The Central Hall was decorated with twelve gilded emblems representing the original twelve provinces of India before independence. It was here that the transfer of power had taken place on 15 August 1947 - and it was here that parliamentarians had been gathering to hear Prime Minister Vasant Mehta deliver his address to a joint sitting of both houses. That was why the death toll had reached 476.

On the first-floor balustraded balcony, some of which had come through with barely a scratch, the attackers had daubed the name Laskar-e-Jannat. They had even translated it into English - Army of Paradise. One photograph showed pamphlets caught in a breeze and swirling about like leaves. Next to it was a close-up of one pamphlet. 'Why Are We Waging Jihad?' it asked. And the answer: 'To Restore Islamic Rule Over All Parts of India.'

Yet there was one picture that all newspapers ran prominently on their front pages. It was the one that would rally India through its darkest moments: it showed Mehta changing a magazine in the Uzi and shouting a command while his daughter, Meenakshi, stripped to her bra, applied a tourniquet to the wounded attacker. Both of them were framed between two bullet-chipped sandstone pillars of the parliament building. 'Attacked. Defending. Caring' ran one caption. 'The image of our great nation.'

'Has he talked yet?' asked Mehta, referring to the attacker whose life Meenakshi had saved.

'Not yet, Prime Minister.'

'Documents? Fingerprints?'

Suri put his hands on the desk and looked his friend straight in the eye. 'Fingerprints are being checked by Interpol, Europol and the FBI right now. We have identification of two of the dead, and if we want to trace them to Pakistan, we can. Who ordered them precisely to do what they did, we don't know yet.'

Mehta stood up. 'I need a strike plan by missiles and aircraft on the Pakistani missile bunkers at Sarghoda, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Karachi and Multan. One strike only. Whatever it takes. Prime the Agni for launch, both from silos, and deploy two on the rail launchers. Close the lines if necessary. And on your way out ask Ashish to get me Andrei Kozlov in Moscow.'

Suri left, but the phone rang again too quickly for it to be Moscow. Ashish Uddin had been working in the Prime Minister's South Block office since the attack. Never once had his diffident, but efficient, method of handling Mehta wavered, except now, when he began in a jumble of words, hesitant and apologetic. 'I didn't want to disturb you with this, Prime Minister, and I've already said no many times, and I understand it is the last thing--'