‘Joan, tell us about American citizens,’ said Hastings.
‘None killed or injured that we know of,’ said Holden. ‘A task force has been set up and we’re getting a lot of calls. We are advising all American citizens to leave both India and Pakistan.’
‘Isn’t that a bit panicky?’ said Barber.
‘The launch to impact time between Delhi and Islamabad is eleven minutes. It would be irresponsible not to get them out. In fact, we’re asking the airlines to lay on airlifts from major cities so that any American citizen who wants to leave, can. The Ambassadors in Islamabad and Delhi have made personal appeals to both Hamid Khan and Hari Dixit to have a nuclear ceasefire until this has happened. Dixit, as we know, has gone to ground. The message has been passed through the Indian Ambassador to the United Nations and here in Washington. Khan has responded. He has pledged not to strike again. But he’s asked us to get India to pull back and stop threatening the existence of Pakistan.’
‘He thinks he can nuclear strike his way to an international negotiating table,’ said Hastings. ‘Alvin, I don’t want you involved in this, but tell me what you’ve got.’
‘A carrier group is off the southern coast of Sri Lanka,’ said Jebb. ‘I suggest we send it right up into the Indian Ocean. We have a smaller group from the Fifth Fleet led by the USS John C. Stennis in the Gulf of Oman which we can get into the Arabian Sea and up towards the Pakistani coast. Power projection from both groups is well over seven hundred miles, so there would be little risk of radiation if there is a full nuclear exchange.’
‘How would that leave our forces in the Gulf?’ said Hastings.
‘We would move in a group behind the John C. Stennis from the Third Fleet in the Mediterranean. We have a cruiser, the USS Lake Erie, in the Persian Gulf, with the USS Bataan, which is an amphibious assault ship, a couple of destroyers and attack submarines. If Iraq or Iran doesn’t choose to exploit the crisis, and if the regime in Saudi Arabia is toppled in an Islamic coup, we should be all right.’
Hastings turned to David Booth, the head of the CIA. ‘Check that none of that is about to happen,’ he said. ‘The Ronald Reagan should go into the Indian Ocean anyway and we’ll make that the focus of our military announcement. I’ve just spoken to the British Prime Minister. He is making HMS Ocean and her support vessels available, and they have the advantage of being much closer to the action, helping with the Bangladesh cyclone.’
‘Working under whose command?’ said Jebb.
‘Britain’s for the moment. Should the crisis escalate, Pincher is happy to put his ships under our command, as I’m sure Australia and New Zealand will. The Malaysians, who also have a ship there, will probably back-pedal off.’
‘China,’ said Bloodworth. ‘We must examine Chinese involvement.’
‘I think the nuclear issue is more important than a border skirmish,’ said Holden.
‘The nuclear weapons were given to Pakistan by China,’ said Bloodworth. ‘I have just been telephoned by General Shigehiko Ogawa, head of Japanese intelligence. Some of you might know that they have an agent within Zhongnanhai. An interpreter. Ogawa told me that China has begun a long-term military and political plan of which its alliance with Pakistan and hostilities with India is all a part. They’ve called it Operation Dragon Fire.’
‘You believe him?’ said Holden.
‘Yes, Joan, I do. I sense that this will not end by us slapping down India and Pakistan. The stakes are much bigger, our involvement far more precarious. I think China is willing to sacrifice Pakistan in order to win regional power over India. It gave it nuclear strike power, precisely because it believed Hamid Khan would use it.’
‘Apart from China, who has leverage with Pakistan?’
‘Saudi Arabia,’ said Joan Holden.
‘Talk to them, Joan. Deploy our carrier groups as discussed. Get me Reece Overhalt on the phone in Beijing and keep trying for Hari Dixit.’
‘Mr President,’ said Jebb, ‘without boring you with new technologies, there is a simple interim measure we could take if there is a hint of escalation.’
The President’s Personal Secretary working next to the Oval Office rang through on the open intercom, interrupting the conversation. ‘Sir, the Joint Chiefs are reporting Indian missile launches against Pakistan.’
Sargodha Airbase, Pakistan: 32° 03' N, 72° 39' E
Local time: 0720 Monday 7 May 2007
GMT: 0220 Monday 7 May 2007
Wreckage of buildings and planes was still smouldering from the air attacks on the huge airbase. It was as if the facility was already destroyed and deserved nothing like the blistering salvo it was seconds away from receiving. Hours earlier the Prithvi missiles had been primed for launch by engineers from India’s 333rd Artillery Group located with XI Corps at Jullunder. Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Lahore, Sargodha and Multan were all within missile range. Although the Prithvi was capable of carrying either nuclear or conventional warheads, India chose to limit its retaliation to a conventional strike.
The surviving Pakistani radar, already crippled by Indian strikes, did pick up the Prithvi missiles as they re-entered the atmosphere. The command and control system operated from the bunker deep underneath the airbase activated what little was left of the air-defence system. The most effective should have been the KS-1 short-range ground-based theatre-defence missile, recently flown in from China. But the Chinese technicians had fled the day before, and the equipment was too new for the Pakistanis to operate it efficiently. The KS-1 was hidden in nearby wooded land. But by the time the trucks and launchers were made ready, the missiles had struck. As soon as one of the phased-array radar-guidance stations was switched on, Indian pilots took it out with air-to-surface missiles and laser-guided bombs.
More than a hundred assembled M-11 missiles with a range of 320 kilometres were in storage around Sargodha, shipped in years earlier from China. Indian intelligence believed they were in the Central Ammunition Depot in a hillside set away from the base. To make an impact on the bunkers four Prithvi strikes used 1,000 kilogram fuel-air explosive warheads, which created enough over-pressure to do significant damage. Seconds after the missiles struck, wave after wave of aircraft flew in using both laser-guided and free-fall bombs: No. 23 squadron with MiG-21s and No. 5 Squadron with Jaguars out of Ambala, No. 21 Squadron with MiG-21s out of Chandigarh, No. 221 squadron with MiG-23s out of Halwara and No. 3 Squadron out of Pathankot. Two aircraft failed to return. It’s thought they were shot down by hand-held Stinger missiles. The onslaught of missiles and aircraft was designed to seal off the bunker exits with so much rubble that the missiles would never get out. On the way back the Indian pilots blasted targets on the Kirana Hills near Lahore where the missiles were also being stored.
A. Q. Khan Laboratory, Kahuta, Pakistan: 33° 54' N, 74° 06' E
Local time: 0725 Monday 7 May 2007
GMT: 0225 Monday 7 May 2007
The town of Kahuta, thirty kilometres south-east of Islamabad, was a closed, military area. Anyone who travelled there without a permit was arrested on suspicion of espionage. It was the site of a uranium mine, which also contained Pakistan’s main nuclear weapons laboratory, named after A. Q. Khan, the physicist who pioneered the country’s nuclear programme. In the early eighties, Chinese technicians were involved in working on Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) and production began in 1986. It’s thought Pakistan began to build weapons shortly after that. The HEU hexafluoride was made into uranium metal which was then machined into weapon pits. Kahuta was able to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for three to six weapons a year. China’s involvement came to light again in 1996 when it sold five thousand ring magnets, enabling Pakistan to double its capacity to enrich uranium.
India suspected that Pakistan had alternative reprocessing laboratories and at least one more within the vicinity of Islamabad. In the late nineties, a heavy-water reactor went critical at Khushab, 160 kilometres south-west of Islamabad, giving Pakistan the ability to make plutoniu
m. This was the nuclear material of choice for missile warheads, because they could be lighter and therefore give the missile more stability. About half the amount of plutonium was needed, making it possible to create a nuclear weapon the size of a grapefruit. Although the success Pakistan had had in creating plutonium was not yet clear, Khushab (32° 16' N, 72° 18' E) was part of the same airstrike operation as Kahuta.
Kahuta was the pride of Pakistan’s nuclear programme. It was also within a few minutes’ flying time from India, and barely had the aircraft crossed into Pakistani airspace than the laboratory was in flames. The weapons used for this operation had been carefully chosen so as to minimize the risk of nuclear leakage. No deep penetrations or free-fall bombs were used. Laser-guided bombs were the main weapons, targeted on the entrances and exits of the laboratory, with the view of sealing it rather than destroying it. Cluster bombs were dropped around the perimeter of the complex, sowing a path of smaller anti-personnel bomblets and tiny delayed-action mines, with the purpose of maiming staff working there and deterring others from going in. Fragmentation explosives damaged vehicles and light structures. By the end of the raid, the Kahuta laboratory might still have been in action. But its capacity to transfer enriched uranium to any warhead and missile had been crippled.
Samungli Airbase, near Quetta, Pakistan: 30° 14' N, 66° 55' E
Local time: 0725 Monday 7 May 2007
GMT: 0225 Monday 7 May 2007
Until now, PAF Samungli, base for the Pakistani Mirage fighters, had escaped attack. Now, however, it was a prime target because of its involvement in the Ghauri surface-to-surface missile project. In 1998, Pakistan carried out Ghauri’s first test flight. It was launched from Malute near the city of Jhelum (32° 58' N, 73° 45' E) in north-east Pakistan and landed within the grounds of the Samungli airbase, west of Quetta. Indian aircraft destroyed both the airbase and the Malute launch site.
Multan, Pakistan: 71° 30' N, 30° 15' E
Local time: 0725 Monday 7 May 2007
GMT: 0225 Monday 7 May 2007
Military sites around Multan were hit by both Prithvi missiles and aircraft. For civilians, Multan was a crossroads in central Pakistan of bazaars, mosques and beautifully designed tombs and shrines, crushingly arid in the summer heat. But the hills around the city were also suspected to be the site of one of Pakistan’s main command and control bunkers, built in the nineties and designed along the lines of the Chinese underground war headquarters in the Western Hills outside Beijing. The Pakistani M-11 missiles were stored at the air-force base in Multan, after being deployed ready for use from Sargodha. Indian aircraft began a steady bombing campaign around Multan, flying sortie after sortie, at first destroying the airbase, then keeping up the pressure on the suspected sites of the bunkers.
Other sites which were also attacked in the same air operation were at Gujranwala, Okhara, Jhang and Dera Nawab Shah, each suspected of housing missiles, communication terminals and launchers sent in from China.
Indian military HQ, Karwana, Haryana, India
Local time: 0830 Monday 7 May 2007
GMT: 0300 Monday 7 May 2007
The Karwana underground complex had been built in the late nineties after the Pokhran nuclear tests and the escalation of the conflict in Kashmir. The only noticeable landmark was a sprawling run-down farmhouse with outbuildings, three kilometres outside the village on a 120 hectare estate which had been taken over by the government. A high wall had been put up around one hectare of the property, within which the bunker had been built. It was neither spacious nor cavernous, unlike the one in China. The Prime Minister had his own quarters, but other members of the National Security Council shared rooms and the military personnel involved slept in dormitories. There was one canteen, common shower rooms and the operations room was just under 100 square metres. This was not designed for a prolonged war but precisely for the crisis which was occurring now. Either it would be over within forty-eight hours, or they would all be dead.
Signals were sent and received through antennas concealed in the roofs of the farmhouse building. Air-conditioning units were installed inside the outer buildings. A sewage system ran into an underground river. The bunker operated from a generator fitted into the complex. If that broke down, there were two emergency generators in the farmhouse.
Military staff, dressed up as farmers, had continued working the property throughout construction and the interim period during which it wasn’t used. Any satellite pictures or human agents passing the place would have seen a rich landowner’s property and nothing suspicious. No transmission, not even a test, had been sent from the site. The encrypted code had never been used before. Once signals began, the Karwana nuclear bunker would have up to two days before being located and an indefinite time before the code was cracked.
Most of the National Security Council flew out to Karwana by helicopter as soon as Pakistan carried out its tactical nuclear attack. The Prime Minister carried with him the nuclear codes and would have ordered a retaliatory strike if any missile launch had been detected from Pakistan while he was in the air. It had not. The Indian air force and 333rd Artillery Group had already drawn up plans for a wave of strikes intended to cripple the military government of Pakistan.
India had almost a thousand combat aircraft. But while the SU30 was a state-of-the-art weapon which could take on anything used against it and the Light Combat Aircraft could hold its own, many other aircraft such as the old MiG-21s were close to obsolete and failed to perform well. For the first wave of attacks against Pakistan, the older aircraft were used, except for the offensive against Kahuta, which needed high-precision bombing.
Reports back from the pilots suggested that Pakistan’s air power had either collapsed or that aircraft had been flown to Afghanistan and Iran in order to stop them being destroyed. Dozens of Pakistani aircraft had been used in attacks against Indian airbases in the minutes before the tactical nuclear strike. They had limited success and early estimates were that Pakistan lost more than forty aircraft in that wave of sorties.
It was impossible to know the success of the Indian strikes on the Pakistani missile bunkers. Unni Khrishnan, India’s Chief of Army Staff, wanted to maintain strikes against them, but shift the emphasis to destroying the Pakistani airbases known to have nuclear-capable aircraft. At the same time, he was keeping back far more aircraft than he would prefer, in order to counter the threat from the east by China.
Meanwhile fighting in Kashmir, outside Lahore and around Sialkot had virtually stopped, indicating that Pakistan’s central command and control system was close to being paralysed. As soon as Khrishnan heard that the first wave of strikes were finished, he ordered the second attacks to begin.
One of Pakistan’s newest and most threatening nuclear-capable aircraft was the Fantan A-5M, recognized by the bubble canopy on its fuselage and pointed nose. It was a single-seater, twin-engine supersonic fighter developed by the Nanchang Aircraft Company of China. Its particular skill was at low-level flying and was designed as a support aircraft for ground troops and ships moving forward in an attack. The cannon on each wing were mounted close to the fuselage, leaving room for racks of spare fuel tanks, missiles or bombs – including a laser-guided nuclear bomb of up to 20 kilotons.
Very few of the American-made F-16 Fighting Falcons remained in service. This was the aircraft used in the tactical strike and three had been lost then to pursuing Indian aircraft. Pakistan had hoped to build up a substantive force of F-16s, but its difficult relationship with the United States had left them without a full supply of spares and unpredictable maintenance schedules. Of the forty originally acquired by Pakistan, only twenty-five remained, in three squadrons. In 1990, the air force had ordered another 71 F-16s, but they were never delivered because of Pakistan’s attempts to develop nuclear weapons. When it became clear that Pakistan was not going to stop its programme, Washington ended its military supply relationship. The money so far paid for the F-16s was returned. The aircraft was not the weap
on of choice for delivering a nuclear bomb, but, by improvising the electrical system, it could be used for a nuclear strike on visually acquired targets.
The third nuclear-capable aircraft was the French-made Mirage, a single-seater, ground-attack and fighter reconnaissance aircraft, which could carry two 20-kiloton nuclear bombs. Although Khrishnan had details on the whereabouts of the Fantans and F-16s, a squadron of Mirages had vanished in the overnight cloud cover and so far remained undetected. India’s counterforce attack planning was complicated by the thirty different airbases in Pakistan which were able to host the nuclear-capable aircraft. The ten Major Operational Bases (MOB) were the peacetime bases for the aircraft. Of those, only Sargodha and Samungli had been neutralized in the strikes on the missile bunkers. Chaklala, which was the main airbase of Rawalpindi, would be dealt with in a separate operation.
The other seven MOBs, Faisal and Masroor near Karachi, Mianwali north of Sargodha, Minhas/Kamra north of Islamabad, Peshawar in the north-west, Rafiqui/Shorkot north-east of Multan and Risalpur in the far north, would be targeted in the second major operation to start as soon as the missile-bunker sorties had ended.
Thirty minutes later, Khrishnan would launch a second wave of attacks against the Forward Operational Bases (FOBs), which only became fully operational during wartime. Lahore had been taken care of by Indian artillery on the outskirts of the city. Multan had been attacked as a missile base. The new targets were to be the southern bases of Mirpur Khas and Nawabshah, west of Karachi, Murid, south-west of Islamabad, Pasni on the southern coast, Risalewala and Vihari, south-west of Lahore, Shahbaz in the centre of the country and Sukkur to the south of Shahbaz.
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