Carrier (1999) (63 page)

Roshan wanted the means to repair the damage he’d done. He needed the basics of life—food, water, medical supplies. What the Defense Minister needed—ammunition—he unfortunately had in abundance. Maybe they could use it to buy more time. Right now, India had none. What Roshan
really
needed was a solution to the problems he himself had created by authorizing the launch of nuclear missiles against Pakistan. Such a solution was even less likely to materialize.

The plantation was a hallowed place in Sri Lankan history. It was the former home of a celebrated scientist and science-fiction author who had spent his later years tapping out novels on a computer in the study, and then uploading them to his New York publisher via a personal satellite uplink in the courtyard. A literary shrine for tourists, it was closed today, ostensibly for cleaning and maintenance. Venkatesh Prasad, the Sinhalese Prime Minister, had come here in response to an E-mail he’d received the day before from his counterpart in the LTTE. The unofficial cease-fire between the government and the Tamil Tigers notwithstanding, Prasad was extremely suspicious of this meeting.

But Prasad’s suspicion rapidly gave way to astonishment when, a few minutes later, Arjuan Ranatunga arrived, accompanied only by a driver for his Land Rover. Prasad had spent a lifetime fighting the LTTE to preserve Sinhalese control of Sri Lanka. Now he was about to sit down for a private talk with his sworn enemy. About what? He had no idea. Maybe Arjuan would suggest that they settle everything in a nice, civilized way, perhaps with a cricket match. That thought made him smile thinly.

As the two men sat together in the former author’s study, the LTTE leader laid out an astonishing offer before Prasad. Arjuan proposed that they just stop fighting. Stop fighting, put down their weapons, and share the most valuable mineral strike in the history of mankind. It was a peace proposal so remarkably simple it was impossible to refuse. Both men could see clearly what would happen if they could just cooperate. Their little island would become the 21st century equivalent of OPEC, with all the wealth, power, advantages, and liabilities that would naturally ensue. They agreed on the need for support from outside, particularly from the Americans. Most of all, they decided that the existence and location of the platinum and scandium would remain secret, until the security of their new nation was assured. Otherwise, that knowledge would bring genocide on both their peoples.

The two Sri Lankan leaders had decided to let the British ambassador, rather than the Americans, convey their proposal to the Security Council. The old colonial ties with the British Empire would lend credibility to the proposal, and the American second would almost certainly assure its passage. By nightfall, the following resolution had been passed, with only two abstentions:

Prime Minister Gandhi was in the middle of another shouting match, this one involving his Defense Minister and the service chiefs. The mysterious union of the two warring factions on Sri Lanka into a single government was puzzling, but irrelevant. More important was the fact that the island was a de facto province of India, and the mainland population would see any attempt by the islanders to go their own way as a sign of weakness on the part of Gandhi’s government. But neither Gandhi nor the men around him could decide what to do about it. The Navy and Air Force chiefs were busily trying to explain the suicidal folly of trying to take Sri Lanka in the face of the previous day’s UN vote. After the war with Pakistan, the UN was looking for any excuse it could find to turn India into a null-power in South Asia. Within a matter of hours, American Army and Marine pre-position squadrons would sail from Diego Garcia. In just four days, they would unload in the harbors at Colombo and Trincomalee with enough equipment for a 25,000-man joint air/land task force to protect the small island. Already, there were reports of the American ARG beginning to head for Sri Lanka. As if to add to Roshan’s troubles, there were reports from the BBC and CNN that units of the 82nd Airborne Division were preparing to deploy to Sri Lanka from Fort Bragg. In less than a week, Sri Lanka would be as free of India’s rule as Antarctica.

Gandhi knew this turn of events would mean the end of his government, and he wanted it stopped. Since such an effort would involve amphibious and air operations, it would fall on these two chiefs to make it happen, and they did not want any part of it. Their forces had suffered in the short and bloody fight with Pakistan the previous winter, in humanitarian missions after the war, and in quelling the riots ever since. Both commanders, doing their utmost to hold what was left of their services for better causes, better days, were firmly opposed to Roshan’s decision. Predictably, the Defense Minister was in favor of the Sri Lankan expedition. He didn’t care about the preservation of the lives of the men in the armed forces; trained men could be replaced or bought.

After a time, further debate was useless. A decision had to be made. Roshan closed his eyes, thought for a moment, and ordered the expedition. It was another bad choice in a seemingly endless line of bad choices, dating from the very moment he’d sought to become Prime Minister.

“Well, Jack, I think we understand what is needed here. I’ll get the staff working on it,” Vice Admiral Connelly said into his video teleconferencing terminal. His satellite-assisted meeting with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had gone as expected, and the official orders from the UN and American National Command Authorities would be on their way via secure FAX in a matter of minutes. Now he could officially begin what he had privately started two days earlier when the chairman had told him of the probable UN resolution. Already, he had begun to concentrate his forces around Sri Lanka, and set up the wall of fire and sensors that would be needed to protect the island nation from what was considered the inevitable Indian response.

Shutting down the terminal, he walked back to his day cabin, pulled out a yellow legal pad and mechanical pencil, and began to sketch an outline of the plan for the defense of Sri Lanka. He knew using pencil and paper was so outdated it was laughable, but he also knew that he did his best thinking while he wrote the old-fashioned way. He smiled as he began, knowing his Fifth Fleet staff would probably take twice as long to argue over what he was about to write as he would to do so. That was after they’d laughed themselves sick over his method of encoding the data. Well, he thought, this
is how we did it on the old days before voice-recognition word processors and eye-controlled pointing devices. And it will work under any circumstances, even in a total power outage. I’d like to see them say that about their computers.
Thirty minutes later, he was finished.

The plan was quite simple, actually. The 26th MEU (SOC) would land on the island and establish coastal defenses to keep the Indians from crossing the Gulf of Mannar. Two brigades of the 82nd Airborne Division would begin arriving in thirty-six hours to back up the Marines. He would then create a series of “missile traps,” composed of pairs of Aegis ships and land-attack destroyers, to provide fire support and protect against air and ballistic missile attack. Finally, his command ship, the carrier, and the four remaining escorts would establish an operating area southeast of Sri Lanka to provide air cover and support for the ground and naval forces. When the MPS ships arrived in three days, he would land their cargo, and begin flying in the Army and Marine Corps personnel needed to make the island into a fortress. After that, UN peacekeeping personnel with their blue berets would arrive and take over, along with the inevitable multi-national air and Naval force to cover the island from attack. All he had to do was keep the Indians honest for the next few days.

Unfortunately, this particular Indian government was composed of a few irrational people with the ugly habit of launching nuclear weapons when they lost their temper. He was more than a little concerned about whether his Aegis ships and the battle staff at USSPACECOM in Colorado Springs were ready to play for all the marbles. The Indians were using serious firepower. Not modified SCUDs fired like shotgun shells, but IRBMs with nuclear weapons. He found himself wondering if American magic would be better than Indian magic.

After the destruction of Bombay, the major fleet units of the Indian Navy had made Goa their new fleet base. All told, over a dozen warships and a comparable number of submarines lay at anchor, surrounded by the merchant ships being taken up and loaded with men and equipment for the expedition to Sri Lanka. As he looked across the bay at his fleet, Admiral Ajay Jadeja, the Chief of the Indian Navy, contemplated the death ride that his fleet was about to take. He wondered how much he would personally sacrifice in the name of Indian honor, and how many young men on both sides he would have killed as he did so.

He had no doubt of the Americans’ ability to destroy his surface force before it rounded Cape Comorin at the southern tip of India. Right now, his most hopeful outcome was for the world to be so appalled by his losses that the UN might back away from their resolution to maintain a complete embargo against India. Meanwhile, since much of his submarine force had been destroyed when Bombay had been destroyed, he wanted to be careful with the handful of subs he still had. He was still hopeful that his submarines would get in a few lucky shots against the American ships, though nobody had had much luck on that score since the 1990’s.

But in his heart he feared a round of Indian nuclear missile launches against Sri Lanka would cause retaliation in kind against his country. Should that occur, he mused, India, the world’s largest democracy, might just have solved its population problems permanently. He was a man of no little integrity; and he had argued against this silly adventure to his superiors. It did no good. They’d simply told him to “be silent and lead your men in their duty.” He would follow his orders to the death, he supposed—anything but a glorious death. It would be a slaughter. On the other hand, if he resigned, his replacement would be indifferent to the fears that burned within him. Better to take his fleet to sea, and try to save what he could.

The first action between the American and Indian forces inevitably took place in the air. In the late afternoon, an Indian force of 24 Su-30 Flanker fighter-bombers armed with antiship missiles launched with a dozen old MiG-29 Fulcrums as escorts. Their targets were the two missile-trap ships on either side of the narrows between Sri Lanka and the Indian mainland. The Indian pilots had no idea they had been detected even before their aircraft had left the ground. Their takeoff was picked up by one of the new EV-22 surveillance aircraft. As they flew toward their destination, they were intercepted by eight F-25B stealth strike fighters from the
Colin Powell,
armed with the newest long-range version of the AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missile. Before the Indian fighters had even formed up, two thirds of their force was vaporized by the first salvo of American missiles. These were followed by a quartet of F-18E Super Hornets that finished off all but three of the survivors. Then came a salvo of standard surface-to-air missiles from one of the Aegis destroyers. When it was all over, only a single MiG-29 pilot made it home to tell about the massacre over the Gulf of Mannar. The Americans would later call it an “overmatch.” The Indians called it suicide.

Admiral Connelly had taken a helicopter over to the
Colin Powell
to congratulate the pilots on their intercept of the Indian fighters, and to confer with the captain and air wing commanders on what they would do the next morning when the Indian fleet came into range. They all agreed that what he had in mind was not going to be easy, and could become extremely difficult if the Indian fleet commander tried anything radical with his course or formations.

As things were then proceeding, this appeared unlikely. The Indian commander seemed bent on a death ride. Already, the Fifth Fleet staff analysts had decided that the Indians hoped to shame the Americans with the slaughter—as the Iraqis had done during Desert Storm by drawing media attention to what was falsely called the “Highway of Death.” More than one historian had noted that press coverage of that event had caused the war to be stopped at least a day or two earlier than it should have been. The price had been several decades of problems in the Persian Gulf. Connelly did not intend to repeat that mistake.