by Vivek Ahuja
Haider shook his head and thanked Allah for his luck. It was every man for himself now as they abandoned Lahore. He leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes as the trucks finally pulled clear of the street and began rolling past the few civilians watching them from the roadside. Haider didn’t want to see their faces. Not now. It would only make more difficult what was to inevitably follow by his orders.
Grewal looked to the side of his cockpit and saw the city’s eastern and southern outskirts enveloped by pillars of smoke. Fireballs were erupting below. With his target-designation pod hanging underneath the belly of his LCA, he could see buildings collapsing under fire from Indian tanks.
But over the past twenty minutes, he had been seeing a dramatic turn of events. By all indications, it was clear that the Pakistani defenders were withdrawing. Under other circumstances it would have been joyous news to him. But it didn’t add up. The Pakistanis and their jihadi compatriots had been fiercly defending Lahore, inflicting heavy casualties on the Indian forces outside the city. And while it was true that the Indians had worked their way around the city, Lahore’s defenders had not been beaten. They could have kept this fight up for a few more days. So why were they withdrawing?
Grewal and Ramesh had been on station as escort for a flight of Mirage-2000s from No. 7 Squadron on bomb-truck duty. Two single-seat Mirages were dropping laser-guided-bombs under the guidance of a third two-seater Mirage with a laser-designation-pod, similar to the one he carried. Grewal and Ramesh were standing away from the area and were operating north of the city at high altitude, watching for PAF interceptors.
But the skies were clear. The radar confirmed that the PAF was not in the skies around Lahore this morning. Their capability to do so had been sapped by heavy-handed Indian counter-air operations. The aerial battle for Lahore had ended in India’s favor within the first few days of the war.
But Grewal had that feeling in the pit of his stomach telling him to expect the worst…
“Tinder-two: good hit. Switching designation to that northern building with the ack-ack battery on top. Tinder-three: you are up.”
“Confirm, Tinder-leader. I have the ball.”
The radio chatter was keeping Grewal aware of what the Mirage boys were up to. The morning sunlight was glimmering off the wings of the Mirages as they banked to the side, a thousand feet below him.
He moved the lens of the target designator on to a convoy of vehicles heading north. He confirmed that it was a convoy of ambulances based on the medical crosses painted on top of the trucks. He wasn’t going to strike an ambulance convoy. He wasn’t that desperate for ground targets.
“Any news?” Haider asked Akram as the latter sat with the radiomen in the back of the vehicle.
Akram shook his head in dismissal: “nothing yet.”
Haider’s heartbeats increased. He nodded and then looked forward to see the ambulances driving in front. They were driving through the northwestern outskirts and the sounds of the fighting had fallen behind. They were passing through roads being kept clear by the military-police. The civilians were being shuffled to the side in hordes to make way for the military vehicles to pass. Even so, the chaos and confusion on the faces of the civilians was palatable.
Haider wondered if they were far enough away yet. Technically, they were almost out of the lethal zone. But not out of the zone enough so that when the explosion did occur, the shockwave would rip through their convoy like a hot knife through butter. No, they had to drive further out of the city. Another few kilometers.
Which was just fine to him, of course. The more time they took to get away, the more time Hussein had to call off this monstrous order. Maybe the battle for Rahim Yar Khan and the last stand of the Pak army units there would be enough to finally sap the Indian momentum. Maybe this order will be rendered irrelevant by a call for a ceasefire.
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. Now!
“Ahh!”
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.
Malhotra 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 ────
Grewal 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 psycho
logical. 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!”
Haider 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 6TH 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 6TH 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 deto
nation 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?
“All 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.”