Fenix

by Vivek Ahuja

  God! Was it really just two days ago? He asked himself as he sat down on the bed. It felt like it was months!

  He fell back on his back on to the mattress and instantly fell asleep.

  “Sir!” There was a knock on the door.

  Haider muttered some choice Urdu expletives and then composed himself: “go away! I told you to leave me alone!”

  But the knock persisted. “Sir! Please open the door!”

  Haider picked up his sidearm from the bed and then walked up to the door. He opened it to find one of his radiomen standing there, holding a phone-speaker: “sir, incoming call from army headquarters! For you!”

  Haider scowled and then took the phone from the man, extending its coiled cable as he walked into the room.

  “General Haider, here.”

  “General, please hold for the army commander!” A bland voice replied.

  Haider cocked an eyebrow. He wondered what Hussein wanted now…

  “You still alive?” Haider recognized Hussein’s gruff voice. And also his tone. Haider’s facial expression contorted, but he kept his voice calm.

  “Alive and fighting,” he managed to say without anger seeping in. “No thanks to you, though.”

  “Where are you now?”

  Haider let out a deep breath: “commanding units north of Lahore. The 6TH Armored in particular. The Indians decapitated its leadership just as it moved into the line. I was in the area and took over.”

  “Good!” Hussein replied. Haider noted the change in tone. The man sounded genuine on that one. “Had you not stepped in, it would have been chaos and the Indians could have penetrated deep into our defenses. I was told that the 6TH Armored was fighting hard. I should have guessed you had something to do with adding steel to its spine.”

  “I appreciate that,” Haider sat down on the mattress bed. “How bad is it?”

  He heard what could only be a long sigh. Haider knew that well enough: Hussein wasn’t sure what to do. That sigh had always been his placeholder whenever he wanted advice but didn’t want to ask for it.

  Haider looked at the floor: “that bad, eh?”

  “Did you hear about the debacle near Rahim Yar Khan this evening?”

  “I heard some rumors,” Haider lied. He knew a great deal more about that failed counterattack from his ISI commanders, but he wanted Hussein to say it the way he saw it. Because that was more important…

  “The Indians routed us from there, plain and simple.” Hussein said, surprising Haider with his uncharacteristic bout of honesty. Pakistani generals never admit defeat as a matter of principle. They couldn’t. Doing so meant public humiliation and ridicule and the termination of any further prospects in Pakistan. They hadn’t admitted a defeat even when ninety-thousand soldiers had surrendered to India in East Pakistan in 1971. They even celebrated the loss of land in 1965 to India as “victory day”. And the humiliation of Kargil and Siachen were ignored altogether. Under such a culture, it was highly surprising when the top general admitted a defeat in candor such as this.

  Hussein continued: “they have taken the entire stretch of land from the border all the way to the Indus river. The 1ST Armored Division has been destroyed. So have several Infantry divisions. They have chopped our control of the country into several pieces. The northern forces are now fighting independently of the southern ones. And units west of the river are being funneled, thanks to the river obstacle!”

  “But we can still move forces across the river.” Haider added. His mind was working in overdrive now: “and the concentration of our forces in the north means that we do not have to worry about the Rahim Yar Khan capture as being overly strategic in…”

  “Isn’t it, though?” Hussein interrupted. “Do you know that the Balochis are using this as the time to launch their own drive for independence? How are we to move forces into the area when the Indians are making strategic movement impossible?”

  “Right,” Haider said after a couple seconds.

  “Our control on the country is hanging by a thread, Haider.” Hussein said flatly. And once again, he sounded genuine. That scared Haider to his core. Haider was a master of conversations, but he felt even a lieutenant out of basic training could see where this conversation as going. Once the country’s fate had been invoked, there were no limits on what methods they could use to defend themselves…

  “And the Indians haven’t stopped,” Hussein continued. “If Lahore wasn’t a clear enough sign for them about our seriousness, then nothing else will. Perhaps the Mumbai atta…”

  “Let me stop you right there,” Haider interrupted his commander. There was only so much he would be caught speaking over a phone. He wasn’t about to hand the Indians any evidence. Not now. “The country’s fate is hanging in the balance, sir. We need to pull ourselves together and do what has to be done!” He let that emphasis sink in, before continuing calmly: “and you need to get out Rawalpindi.”

  After a very long minute of silence, he got his response:

  “Yes.”

  It was the most chilling one word reply Haider had ever heard. In it carried the acceptance of fate. His own fate and that of his country. Acceptance of his past actions. And a determination to see it through. All summed up in one word.

  Both men knew what had to happen now.

  The link cut off. Haider looked at his phone as though it had offended him in a deep way. But really it was his reflexes kicking in while the mind processed what his immediate next steps needed to be.

  “Sir?” The radioman said as Haider handed him the phone. But Haider was already in self-preservation mode. He grabbed his helmet, sidearm holster and pushed the scared radioman aside as he walked out the door.

  ──── 45 ────

  Malhotra sipped what must have been his sixteenth cup of coffee for the past two days. He sipped from the steaming cup and took warmth from the cup, wrapping his wrists around it. He always felt cold inside the operations center no matter how much climate-control they did in there.

  There was a light knock on the door. Malhotra knew who that was: “come on in!” He took another sip.

  Sinha walked into his office with his own cup and a smile. Noting the cup in Malhotra’s hands, he raised his own cup in a sign of “misery loves company” and then took the seat opposite the desk.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” Sinha asked as he glanced at the blanket and pillows on the small couch in the office.

  “Could you?” Malhotra replied. “What with all this going on? My body wouldn’t let me sleep. Hell. We don’t need sleep to see nightmares, my friend. We are living through them these days!”

  Sinha nodded: “a shrewd summary of our woes!”

  Malhotra smiled faintly, but even that gesture seemed to be against his body’s seemingly-perpetual inertia to scowl. After all, what was there to smile about?

  “How’s the analysis on the Lahore detonation looking like?” He asked, getting back to business.

  “Pakistani warhead as far as we can tell,” Sinha replied. “No inbound missile or aircraft delivery. That thing was driven over to the city and detonated on the ground. All according to our initial assumptions. Our young civilian experts from the DRDO are putting the numbers together.”

  “So the bastards did it to themselves,” Malhotra stared at the desk. And then shook his head. “Maybe they were offering us a way out?”

  “Or maybe they were showing us how serious they are,” Sinha said grimly. “A message perhaps. Plus it halted our offensive on the city, so they gained something out of it.”

  “I still can’t believe it though,” Malhotra replied. “The Chinese tried doing it to us when they were about to lose the war. We were lucky that we detected that when we did. And Pakistan is no China, sure, but a week? Two, if you include our strikes in Kashmir? That’s how low their threshold is?”

  “Remember,” Sinha said as he lowered his cup, “that their urban centers are far closer to the front lines than what the Chinese had. All China
had to lose was face and perhaps some desolate land in the faraway mountains. But the Pakistanis are having their entire country split thanks to this war. So yeah, their threshold is lower.”

  Malhotra nodded. “You know, I…”

  The office door slammed open as one of the air-force wing-commanders from the operations center ran in: “sir! Trouble. One of our radar birds just detected the launch of two ballistic missiles from one of the Pak army StratForCom locations near Mianwali!”

  “My god!” Malhotra said as he pushed back his chair and moved around the desk. All three men ran out into the operations center. The giant screen in the center of the room was centered around the monochrome image of a dissipating white smoke cloud on the ground. The indents on the side of the screen showed that the feed was live and also showed coordinates of the location as well as the orbital parameters of the satellite involved.

  Malhotra turned to the operations staff: “who all have been notified?”

  “Our Phalcon aircraft over Punjab detected the object as it climbed above horizon. StratForCom has been notified and they have sent out a threat warning to all commanders and the government!”

  “Where the hell is it going?” Sinha asked. Malhotra turned back at the screen and saw the orientation of the arcing column relative to the compass.

  “South!” He said louder than he realized. “South of Mianwali. What the heck is south of there? Mumbai? Some city in Gujarat?”

  “StratForCom thinks it is a short-ranged Shaheen-I missile, sir.” The wing-commander replied. “It doesn’t have the range for Mumbai or any city in Gujarat for that matter.”

  “Rajasthan?” Sinha wondered. “But why only two missiles? Why aren’t they just launching their primary strike across the board?”

  “Shit!” Malhotra said as he realized what the intended target was: “Rahim Yar Khan.”

  The engineers from the EME whistled as they climbed aboard the Arjun to inspect the battle damage Kulkarni and his crew had suffered. It was also the first time Kulkarni and his fellow crewmembers were seeing what the outside of their tank looked like. And he had to admire the vehicle for not only being able to move, but also be operational.

  He could see the scorch marks and dents to the armor plating on the turret. The point of impact where the sabot round from the enemy Al-Zarrar tank had hit the composite armor plate was completely blackened. A crater had been gouged out within the plate. The turret was a mess of broken antennae, bent machine-gun, damaged and blackened optics and equipment. The rest of the chassis was covered in grime and soot. The original desert-brown camo paint was scorched off at several points. A lot of dents from impacts of debris, shrapnel and small arms rounds…

  Kulkarni ran his hand through his hair as it all sank in. He felt he owed this vehicle his life many times over. The other three damaged tanks parked in a column behind him fared no better. The infantry men were already calling it the “the Sardargarh ambush” for the location where Kulkarni’s tanks had mingled with the enemy columns north of the highway. And word had spread of what the combined 43RD and 75TH Armored regiments had accomplished on Pakistani soil during the last week.

  “So how does it look?” Kulkarni asked as the engineering officer jumped off the chassis and on to the road.

  The man glanced at the tank and shook his head: “sir, I don’t know what to tell you. This baby here is out of the fight. The main gun and the co-ax machinegun are operational, but I would not recommend taking this vehicle back into the line.”

  Kulkarni crossed his arms: “so what the hell do you recommend we do, major? Have it towed back to our side of the border? Is there a replacement tank hiding behind your trucks I should know about?” Kulkarni let the engineering major stand there for several seconds with the rhetorical question. He then winced as the pain spiked from the emergency stitches to his forehead gash. He turned back to the engineering team a few seconds later: “just fix what you can. Especially the ABAMS equipment. After that we are taking the vehicle back to the highway.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” Kulkarni clambered up the chassis to go pick up his rifle and some food he had laying on his seat inside the turret. From the top of this sixty-ton machine, plus his own six feet of height, he could see a long distance. He was also a perfect target for a sniper right then. But he couldn’t care less. He reminded himself that perhaps the war was making him complacent…

  The massive white flashes caught them all by surprise.

  The entire night sky was replaced with the light of two manmade suns. The blackness of the night was instantly transformed into what felt like bright daylight…

  Kulkarni spotted the flashes to his east and west. The balls of light and flame were rising into the skies. His mind processed the explosions and he knew that the Pakistanis had struck with a nuclear warhead on the highway blockade point north and west of where he was. They had also struck the breach point on the border.

  His first thought was for his men in and around the city. But his second thought pertained to the expanding shockwaves approaching him. He turned to face the crew and saw that they were already clambering aboard the tank. The engineers were running for their vehicles too. But there was no time.

  Kulkarni jumped into his hatch and closed the top just as the shockwaves ran through the clearing on the road like an invisible rock wall travelling at high speed. The thunderclap was ear-shattering and it rolled over all the parked vehicles and slammed the hatch shut with an unnatural force. The blackness enveloped him and his crew as the world outside sounded like a cacophony of thunder, clanging noises and the howling noise of dust traveling at high speeds…

  Malhotra put his arm behind his head as the entire staff at the operations center watched the two mushroom clouds erupting east and west of Rahim Yar Khan. Unlike Kulkarni, the men and women in the operations room of the aerospace-command in Bangalore had a silent, clinically detached view of the whole event. They watched as the two nuclear detonations announced the death of a Pakistani town and hundreds, perhaps thousands of Indian and Pakistani soldiers. The detonations also announced to the world the end of the Indian conventional military offensive in the Pakistani desert. And the start of the nuclear one.

  Malhotra shared a look with Sinha and his eyes said it all: there was no holding it back now.

  ──── 46 ────

  “We have objects climbing above the horizon!”

  That grim shout caused Verma to turn away from the comms console he had been monitoring. He ran over to the radar operators and bent down to look over the shoulders. The operators quickly glanced at who was behind them and then pointed to intermittent radar tracks on screen.

  “Radar caught these objects as they climbed high into the atmosphere and came up above our horizon,” the lead operator said. Verma knew what this was.

  “Pass the intercept information to StratForCom operations. Now!” He patted the operator on the back before turning to the comms console: “get a flash warning out to all the usual suspects! We have a Pakistani primary nuclear strike underway! We have missiles leaving the atmosphere and heading to targets!”

  He also muttered a “god help us” when no one was looking.

  “Oh my god!”

  Ravoof ignored the prime-minister’s reflex response as he pushed back his chair and ran over to a phone on the side of the room. He knew the number he was dialing. After several seconds, he heard a familiar voice:

  “Basu here.”

  “You need to get of New-Delhi! Now!” Ravoof said loud enough for everyone in the room to turn their heads.

  “That’s not happening, my friend,” Basu replied calmly. “I can’t just run and leave my people here. You know that.”

  Ravoof rubbed his hand against his forehead, but he understood. Even so, his instinct to save his loyal friend was overriding his logical reasoning…

  “Besides,” Basu continued, “we have our anti-ballistic missile-defenses around the city waiting to knock th
e enemy missiles out of the skies. We will be fine. Just you watch!”

  Ravoof could only admire the man for his calmness in the face of immediate danger: “you do know that the defenses might not be enough,” Ravoof said in a voice that was beginning to crack. “The Pakistanis have focused a good portion of their missiles against…”

  “If they do get through,” Basu interrupted, “then so be it. Just make sure to finish what they started. Don’t let them get away with this. And you need to be there to help guide the others. Don’t worry about on old man who has lived his life to the fullest. Worry about the ones whose entire future hangs in the balance…” he paused a second for emphasis, “and in the decisions you will now have to take.”

  “Goodbye, old friend.” Ravoof said with whatever courage he could muster. “I will see you when this is all over!”

  “Absolutely.” The line clicked off.

  Ravoof turned to see the room in chaos. The military commanders on the screens began the solemn process of walking the civilian leadership through the retaliatory nuclear strike scenario. A target list showed up on the screen with the type and number of missiles that will be targeted against them. Ravoof saw the list include every major city, town, airbase and port in Pakistan listed in there. He also saw the type and size of nuclear warheads that would be detonated over them. Once this was completed, there would be no Pakistan left to speak of…

  He walked back to his chair absentmindedly, as though in a daze. For what was happening now, his input was hardly needed. The military commanders from the StratForCom were already walking the prime-minister and the senior service commanders on how this would play out. The only thing he heard amongst all of that was when the general commanding the StratForCom interrupted the nuclear counterstrike briefing: “the anti-missile batteries around New-Delhi have begun engaging targets!”