He also muttered a “god help us” when no one was looking.
“Oh 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!”
The 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…
The 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.