Fenix (40 page)

──── 45
────

M
alhotra 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.”

T
he 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 43
RD
and 75
TH
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…    

M
alhotra 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
────

“W
e 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.

“O
h 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 the 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!”

T
he first Pakistani missiles to arc over and dive down into the skies above India had been under track by the ballistic-missile defenses deployed around the major cities in India. A literal web of massive, ultra-long-range radars tracked dozens of inbound missiles diving into India.

These radars sent their information to a series of missile batteries that stored the kinetic-kill missiles designed to hit and destroy inbound enemy missiles in a direct collision. For the last five years, the Indian military had been placing increasing numbers of these missiles, launchers, radars and equipment for just such an eventuality as this. Even so, the numbers of missiles required for an effective defense of even a single city meant that the coverage was limited to the major cities. But as things stood, the worst case scenario for the requirement of this defense had been realized
far
before the defenses had been deployed countrywide…

As the first of the Pakistani Ghauri-II missiles entered Indian airspace above New-Delhi, several of them were shattered out of the skies in violent explosions. The exo-atmospheric counter-missile missiles went into action. Two of the warheads were skimmed by their intended bullets from below and sent off track, heading down, but not
on
the city.

For every one warhead that was being struck down or deflected, several more were making it past the defenses. Within seconds it was clear to the
StratForCom
commanders that the Pakistanis had launched a bulk of their long-range missiles against New-Delhi. It was a tactic of attempting to overwhelm the defenses by launching more missiles than the defenders could stop. In this case, the Pakistanis had launched
thirty-one
of their Ghauri-II missiles against New-Delhi. There was no way to tell whether
all
of them carried nuclear warheads or whether some were conventional meant to be decoys. Nuclear warheads are costlier than the missiles they are carried on.

On the other hand, Hussein and his commanders could not hope to have a lot of decoys in the off chance that
only
the decoys made it through. So a sizeable chunk of the inbound warheads
had
to be nuclear. Considering that the entire Pakistani arsenal of nuclear weapons was less than one hundred warheads, this was a sizeable chunk. On the Indian side, they had to treat
each
missile as nuclear. All in all, eight warheads were struck out of the sky by the first layer of exo-atmospheric defenses. 

As the remaining twenty-three Ghauri-II warheads began heating up within the atmosphere, the next layer of defenses went into play. The endo-atmospheric missiles slammed into twelve targets within seconds, littering the skies northwest of New-Delhi with flaming pieces of debris that glittered like stars in the night sky. The remaining interceptor missiles hit another seven targets a dozen kilometers above the city.

By this time it was too late to stop the others.

The last four warheads flew past the expended defenses and struck New-Delhi…

Further south, a similar game of destruction was under way above Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore. Twelve missiles each targeted against the three major metropolitan centers of India were considered enough by the Pakistani high command, given that the defenses around those cities were less intensive than the ones around New-Delhi. Added to that was the limited size of the Shaheen-II missile arsenal that the Pakistanis had to play with. Twelve missiles against each of those cities was all they could spare.

In a crude twist of irony, the defenses of Mumbai held up against the threat for which the city had been prepared, even though northern Mumbai lay abandoned after the terrorist strike. All twelve missiles targeted against the city were destroyed. The batteries around Pune managed to do the same. Bangalore eliminated
nine
of the missiles aimed at it. But as was the sad truth with nuclear warfare, even a
single
missile was one too many to pass through the defenses.

Other cities with no defenses at all had no chance. Most of the major cities in Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat were struck with one or more warheads and destroyed in a series of airborne detonations…

T
he Indian counter-response was
far
more devastating. Indian missiles had massive range and were stationed well
beyond
the reach of Pakistani missiles. And the Pakistanis had no defenses against such an attack. The Indians could strike virtually
any
target they wished. And right now their list included
every
location greater in size than a village.

As Indian Agni missiles left the ground for their targets, all Indian aircraft and helicopters vacated the skies over Pakistan. The Indian forces near potential targets were already evacuating under emergency conditions.

The Indian warheads flew a clear and unopposed trajectory to their targets. Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Karachi, Peshawar, Skardu, Multan and half a dozen other cities disappeared under nuclear detonations within the first strike. What was left of eastern Lahore was also struck again. The barrage of missiles struck all major military airbases and ports. By the time the third barrage hit tertiary targets, much of Pakistan was already dotted with dusty mushroom clouds. The entire country had been devastated in under an hour…

By that time, the Indian military was coordinating with the StratForCom commanders for the liberal use of tactical battlefield nuclear weapons. The price for their usage had been paid in the blood of a hundred million civilians on both sides. But General Potgam’s orders to his commanders were clear: they were to lay waste
any
clustering of military targets until none remained. There was to be no phoenix rising out of these ashes of Pakistan.