‘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
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
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 plutonium. 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.