Bagchi put on his headphone and switched on the intercom to listen to the cockpit communication. He watched through the window as another dozen commandos took up new positions around the aircraft. The engine shuddered and the huge eight-bladed rotor began to turn. The helicopter lurched upwards and settled back, and one by one the commandos boarded, the last one jumping up as the aircraft was moving forward, seconds from lifting off.
‘The control tower is reporting fighting five hundred metres outside the perimeter fence,’ said the pilot through the intercom. ‘Should we continue?’
The Mi-26 shook as the pilot held the aircraft back, its wheels settling down again. Ninan looked at Bagchi: ‘Did you hear that?’
‘Your call,’ said Bagchi.
The major in charge of the commando unit made the decision: ‘We should go now, sir,’ he said. ‘Fly north, then double back and we will be clear of the fighting.’
It was a routine Indian patrol. There was no tip-off or betrayal. The Indian soldiers were moving through the plantation towards the stream, pausing to joke with each other, unaware that they were under threat. The fighters of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi opened fire first. Three Indians were hit before the others could return fire, and the guerrillas went on the offensive to try and flush them out and keep the protection around Saeed. They failed to hit the radio operator in time. He sent out an alert as soon as he heard the first burst of machine-gun fire.
Saeed had his back to the fighting. It was like the war all over again: Soviet troops on the ground. Soon a helicopter gunship was overhead. His experience took over. He had missed the tension, and as he raised the launcher to his shoulder, keeping his eye on the fence, waiting for the helicopter, he felt good, glad that Hamid had called on him to come here.
Still the boys didn’t talk. He could sense them running behind him, changing positions, the controlled fire of two of three rounds at a time. He heard a grenade and knew the boys were getting hit, dying as the enemy fire got closer. Then he saw the rotor blades of the Mi-26 rise above the trees, its nose down, the shimmering wave of heat around the engine casing. It turned on itself, but not flying south towards them as it should, picking up speed, keeping low, perhaps two kilometres away already, with a trajectory which made the Stinger like an anti-tank weapon, near-horizontal fire. The missile had an impact force of Mach 2.0, hit-to-kill accuracy.
A boy was right beside him with a second missile, in case the first one missed. He had stayed at his post, not fighting, watching his friends fall, doing what he was told to do. But he pointed up, and a second helicopter was coming towards them, smaller, the Mi-25, with a 30mm cannon in its nose. Saeed knew it. He had shot it down before.
He lined up the launcher’s sights towards the airstrip, judging that the Mi-26 was at 500 feet and he fired, turned and took the second Stinger from the boy just as the cannon rounds cut up the ground around them. The boy fell first, then Saeed was hit, the Stinger hurled out of his hand and his torso was torn apart by two cannon shells.
The pilot tried to attain height over the helipad itself, hoping to get to at least 1,000 feet before adopting its flight path. But before that, Bagchi lurched against the bulkhead as the missile smashed into the engine cowling of the helicopter. It exploded instantaneously, tearing off rotor blades and sending the aircraft hurtling back to the ground where it exploded in a ball of fire.
Prime Minister’s Office, South Block, New Delhi, India
‘Ring them on the hotline,’ said the Indian Prime Minister.
‘Ring them and say what?’ asked the RAW Special Secretary, Chandra Reddy. ‘The weekly conversation was only at noon yesterday.’
‘That was yesterday.’ Hari Dixit pulled his head out of his hands and re-read the message, which confirmed that his Northern army commander and his Home Minister were both dead, together with twenty-two Black Cat commandos, two nurses, a doctor and four wounded soldiers. A second message sent an hour later said that the launcher for a Stinger missile had been found 500 metres south of the airport, where Indian forces had been engaging Kashmiri insurgents in a firefight.
Two direct lines had been established between India and Pakistan in an attempt to stop skirmishes spilling over into war. The first was set up in the wake of the 1971 war, when the Simla Agreement was signed between the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan. The line ran between the two offices of the director-generals of military operations. There was at least one weekly scheduled conversation, every Tuesday, and more if cross-border activities intensified. In the late eighties, a second line was created between the two Prime Ministers’ offices. Pakistan had feared an Indian invasion from the Operation Brass Tacks military exercises, and there was ongoing nuclear concern by both countries.
Dixit stood up and put his glasses back on. ‘We’ll go in gently. Tell them that Ninan and Bagchi have been killed and we want an assurance that they had nothing to do with it.’
Reddy gave the instruction and the two men waited while the call was being put through.
‘They’re not answering,’ said Reddy.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Dixit.
‘They’re playing games. It’s what we did to them during Brass Tacks in 1986. They thought we were going to invade and we didn’t pick up the hotline.’
‘Meaning…?’
‘It’s not the Prime Minister,’ said Reddy. ‘It’s Hamid Khan. He’s testing our resolve.’
Briefing
Pakistan was created on 14 August 1947 with the partition of India, and the Islamic republic was proclaimed on 23 March 1956. During the Cold War it was regarded as a staunch ally of the West, but since then wove a chaotic tapestry of Islam, Western-style democracy and military dictatorship. Forever feeling threatened by India and ruled by dishonest leaders from within, Pakistan had not yet developed into the Islamic success envisioned by its founders. It was getting poorer and more violent. At the turn of the century, it had recently proclaimed itself a nuclear power and a military government had been installed. Under constant international pressure, Pakistan embarked upon another experiment with democracy, but it failed to pull the country out of its morass. Once again, the army and Islam emerged as attractive alternatives.
General Headquarters, Rawalpindi, Pakistan
‘Don’t answer it,’ said General Mohammed Hamid Khan.
‘It’s the Prime Minister’s hotline,’ said Captain Mohammed Masood, his aide de camp.
‘I have instructed the Prime Minister’s office to let it ring.’
Khan paced up and down in front of a large map on the wall of the underground bunker which he had made his permanent office in Chaklala, the cantonment area of Rawalpindi. Right now, the whims of a dishonest Prime Minister were the least of his concerns. There were more powerful forces moulding Pakistan’s future that Khan planned to bring to bear over the next few days, forces which would end the decades of corruption which had kept his country in the Dark Ages.
‘Get me General Tang Siju in Beijing,’ Khan ordered, and when the call came through the brief conversation gave him all he wanted.
‘Your support is a mark of friendship to the People’s Republic of China,’ said Tang.
Khan then ordered Masood to drive him through the evening traffic to the run-down tenements of Aabpara District in Rawalpindi. For dangerous journeys Masood often doubled up as Khan’s driver. He needed a man whom he could trust completely and who, like him, came from a military family of long standing.