‘The United States is concerned that your statement was not clear enough, General,’ said Watkins.
‘I want to discuss it personally with President Hastings,’ said Khan curtly.
‘The President won’t be taking your call, General. You talk to me or no one at all.’
‘I made my statement and now America must support our call for peace.’
‘The statement was premised on India’s declaration of a ceasefire. We need it to be a stand-alone announcement, not conditional on any other action.’
‘I have done that on nuclear strikes. I cannot make a unilateral ceasefire on Kashmir.’
‘In which case I am authorized to tell you that the United States will throw its diplomatic support behind the democratically elected government in India.’
‘You have thought of the consequences?’
‘That is what I am paid to do, General. And if it’s any help, that is my personal view as well.’
‘The Chinese will never allow it.’
‘I don’t think the Chinese have the authority to make American policy. The President will not be making his statement for another thirty minutes or so. You have time to think about it.’
As soon as Khan had finished the call, Masood said: ‘They are waiting for your instructions, General.’
Two Chinese M-11 medium-range missiles, known locally as the Shaheen 1, were on mobile launchers, erected at 60 degrees, 800 metres apart, in cleared wooded area outside the town of Kagan. The border with Pakistani-controlled Kashmir was 13 kilometres to the east. Islamabad was 120 kilometres to the south. The target was the heart of the Kashmir Valley, the headquarters of XV Corps at the Badami Bagh Cantonment, which was set back on the other side of a hill from the busy area around Dal Lake and the market. Each missile was meant to have a conventional single 500 kilogram warhead.
National Command Centre, Karwana, Haryana, India
‘Missile launch from Pakistan!’ shouted Unni Khrishnan.
‘Target?’ snapped back Hari Dixit.
‘Uncertain, sir. We won’t know until re-entry.’
‘Warhead?’
‘Not known.’
‘Time to impact?’
‘Estimated three minutes. Do we launch?’
‘Launch site?’
‘Kagan. Northern Pakistan. 34 degrees 47 North. 73 degrees 36 East.’
Dixit was silent, his eyes darting between his watch and the television screen. This was the moment of horrific farce about which so much had been talked and nothing had been done. Nine years since the nuclear tests and all they had were two defunct hotlines which no one ever answered. No system of checks had been set up. No negotiations to stop a false nuclear launch. Nothing to stop mistakes. When it had all started, he was a health minister in a far-away state and knew nothing at all about war.
‘Get me Hamid Khan.’
‘They’re not picking up, sir,’ said an aide-de-camp.
‘Permission to counter-strike, sir,’ said a voice which Dixit didn’t even recognize.
‘Confirm the number of enemy missiles?’
‘Two, sir.’
‘Time to impact two minutes twenty-eight seconds.’
‘Waiting your instructions, sir.’
Except for the whirring of the air conditioning, there was complete quiet in the hot, claustrophobic bunker. The nuclear doctrine used in Asia, such as it existed, was one of revenge. There was no carefully balanced Mutually Assured Destruction, as in the Cold War, in which the United States and the Soviet Union would be deterred from attacking each other because nothing would be left of their countries once it was over. Nor were there checks on each other’s nuclear arsenals. India and Pakistan were as the Cold War was in the 1950s, not in the 1980s. Within two minutes, an Indian city could be destroyed by a nuclear weapon, in which case Hari Dixit would unleash enough fire-power to eradicate Pakistan as a nation.
‘Missiles on re-entry. Rajendra [phased-array radar] switched on. Akash [long-range surface-to-air missile] launched. One… Two… Three and Four.’ India had deployed one of its six Russian-built integrated theatre-defence systems in Srinagar, throwing a 500-square kilometre protective umbrella around the city. The other five expanded the umbrella to cover the whole of northern Indian, threatened by Pakistan. The radar could detect an incoming ballistic missile 65 kilometres away, and the defending missile could hit descending targets 24 kilometres high, with an in-built active control mechanism which would guide it precisely onto the incoming Pakistani Shaheen. The system was meant to be able to track sixty-four targets simultaneously.
‘Shaheen hit and destroyed.’
‘One or two?’
‘One, sir.’
‘Chandra Reddy on the line.’
Many key Indian defence officials had remained outside the bunker, running operations on a war footing, but not protected from nuclear strike. Chandra Reddy, the Head of External Intelligence, and the Foreign Minister Prabhu Purie were still working from South Block.
‘I’m not responding,’ said Dixit.
‘Good. He wants you to retaliate,’ said Reddy. ‘We should do nothing.’
‘Enemy missile ten seconds from impact, veering. It looks out of control.’
‘Stay on the line,’ said Dixit to Reddy.
‘Impact, sir.’
‘Where?’
‘Military HQ. Unconfirmed. Yes. Military HQ. My God. No. Four impacts. Multiple warheads.’
‘One has gone on the other side of the hill. Impact on Dal Lake market,’ said Reddy. ‘My God, thousands of people are there.’
Srinagar, Kashmir, India
The fireball swept off the lawn of the Badami Bagh Cantonment with the wind, down towards the lake and into the market, sucking everything into its wake. The blasts of explosions from two separate warheads crushed together like the confluence of rivers. Barely anything survived in the first few seconds. Those on the outer fringes who did miraculously live spoke of the roaring winds of hell and the searing inferno which engulfed their loved ones in death. The flimsy buildings in central Srinagar caught light. Gas cylinders and fuel tanks blew up, as if smaller bombs had been planted in the most crowded streets. The victims tried to push their way out to open spaces. The weak were trampled to death. Stampedes took hold and panic swept through the city. Flames leapt into the sky, and after the enormous noise of explosions died down, screams for help could be heard, desperate, weak and sometimes horribly short and solitary until death took over. With their clothes in flames, many jumped into the cold waters of the Dal Lake only to be dragged down, or caught up in weeds and drowned there. The emergency services could do little. They could barely get into the streets, and had no equipment or medical services to deal with such a tragedy.
A single artillery shell or mortar landing in a crowded market place can do appalling damage. The destruction of a conventional missile warhead is unimaginable. The market was not a big one, nor was it buried within the warren of streets of old Srinagar, where the casualties would have been far higher. But it was by the Dal Lake, where traders set up stalls around the bus station, a place of transit, meeting, talking and buying, the first flavour of Kashmir which many visitors saw when they arrived.
More than two hundred soldiers died at the military headquarters, including the corps commander. By noon, it was clear that the missile strike had killed at least seven hundred Kashmiris in central Srinagar. Many more were expected to die, and by the end of the day the dreadful pictures of the aftermath of the attack were formulating the international policy which would last for generations.