“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.”
The 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 43RD and 75TH 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…
Malhotra 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 alclass="underline" there was no holding it back now.
46
“We 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!”