Rehan had devised Operation Saker’s fallback plan some months back. From the very beginning he had known that there were only two ways to ensure that the government of Pakistan would fall. If a stolen Pakistani nuclear device was detonated, anywhere on earth, there was no question that the prime minister and his cabinet would be forced from power in disgrace.
And if a shooting war with India broke out, there was no question that the Army would declare martial law, push out the prime minister and his cabinet, and then quietly sue for peace.
The first event, that Safronov and his militants blew up a bomb, was, of course, preferable, but the second event meant war, nuclear war. It would leave Rehan and the Army in power, but facing the possibility that they would rule only over nuclear ash.
Safronov had failed, so Operation Saker was possible now only with war. Detonating a nuke in Lahore in the midst of the current crisis would start this war. It was a pity, but Rehan knew that Allah would forgive him. Those good Muslims who died here would die a martyr’s death, as they had helped to create the Islamic caliphate.
That said, Rehan himself wasn’t planning on going out in a mushroom cloud. He looked at his watch as the thumping of the helicopter rotors filled the sky. His Mi-8 was here to pick him and his men up. He, Saddiq Khan, and the four other JIM men with him would leave via air, they would race to the north, and they would be safe from the blast in plenty of time. From there they would continue on to Islamabad, where Army units were already amassing in the streets.
The general thought it likely a military coup could be under way by daybreak tomorrow.
The helicopter landed outside, and Rehan ordered the PAEC doctors to initiate the detonation sequence.
Nishtar and Noon were honored to be the ones who cleared the pathway to the caliphate.
With a press of a button Noon said, “It is done, General.”
The twelve LeT men knew their role, as well. They would remain behind to guard the weapon, and in so doing they would be
The ISI men walked quickly toward the door, with Rehan the nucleus of the entourage. The thumping of the rotors just outside was nearly deafening as the Mi-8 landed in the parking lot. Colonel Khan pulled the metal door open and stepped out into the night. He beckoned the rest of the group forward, but his eyes shifted up quickly at the shouting of an alarm from one of the Lashkar operatives in the second-floor window. He spun back toward the rail yard in front of him, and he saw what had drawn the guard’s attention. Two dark green pickup trucks bearing the logo of Pakistan Railways raced across the access road of the tracks, approaching the helicopters.
Khan turned to Rehan. “Get in the helicopter. I will get rid of them.”
The trucks stopped just twenty-five yards shy of the chopper and fifty yards from the front loading dock of the warehouse. They parked next to a pair of full coal carrier cars left parked on a spur of track at the edge of the access road, and several men climbed out of the trucks. Khan could not see how many, since their bright lights were in his eyes. He just waved to the men, motioned for them to turn around and go away, and he pulled his ISI credentials out and held them up to the light.
A man stepped in front of the beams and walked closer. Khan squinted, tried to make him out. He gave up, just reached out his hand with his ISI credentials, and told the man to turn around and forget what he saw here.
He never did see the man’s face, and he never did recognize Mohammed al Darkur, and he never did see the pistol in the major’s hand.
He saw a flash, he felt the ripping in his chest, and he knew he’d been shot. He fell backward, and as he fell, al Darkur’s second shot caught him under the chin and blew out his brains from below.
As soon as al Darkur killed Colonel Khan, Caruso and Ryan, both having just climbed onto the coal carrier next to the trucks, opened fire on the windscreen of the helicopter with their booming G3 rifles.
While they fired at the helo, Mohammed’s two officers flanked to the right. They ran to the corner of a small switching station on the edge of the tracks. Here they opened fire on the men in the windows of the warehouse.
The LeT gunman quickly had al Darkur’s men sighted, and one of the two officers was killed with an AK blast across his legs and pelvis. But the second officer took out the sentries, and when al Darkur made it over to his position and picked up his fallen comrade’s G3, they suppressed the men firing at the loading door to the warehouse.
Ryan and Caruso’s heavy gunfire killed the pilot and copilot of the Mi-8 almost immediately. Their bullets — each man fired a full thirty-round magazine through the aircraft — also tore through the cabin, killing and injuring several of the ISI guards who had already boarded. Rehan himself was at the chopper’s door, and the gunfire, just barely heard above the sounds of the Mi-8’s engine and rotors, made him dive to the parking lot, and then roll away from the helo. His men returned fire on the gunmen on the coal carrier, five ISI men against two attackers, but the ISI men were armed with only pistols, and Jack and Dom picked them off one at a time.
Rehan climbed to his feet, ran behind the helicopter, and raced down an alleyway to the west of the warehouse. A surviving member of his protection detail ran behind him.
Caruso and Ryan dropped from the coal container. Jack said, “You and the others go for the warehouse. I’m going after Rehan!” The two Americans ran off in separate directions.
82
Jack turned down three darkened alleyways before he caught sight of the fleeing general and his bodyguard. Rehan was in good condition, as evidenced by the way he ran, and the way he knocked others to the ground as he did so. Sporadic groups of civilians, laden with family possessions, rushed through all parts of the railway station, looking for conveyance out of the embattled city. Rehan and his younger goon pushed past them or barreled over them.
Jack dumped the big cumbersome rifle in favor of the Beretta pistol, and he sprinted with it, alternately finding and then losing and then finding Rehan in a warren of outbuildings and warehouses and disconnected rail cars across the tracks from the busy train station.
Jack turned back to the west; other than the light of a sliver of moon it was completely dark here, and he jogged between two sets of parked and dormant passenger trains. He’d made it no more than fifty feet between the trains when he sensed movement ahead. In the dark a lone man leaned out from between two cars.
Jack knew what was coming; he dove headfirst to the ground and rolled on his shoulder just as the crack of a pistol shot filled the air. Ryan continued his roll, came out of it on his knees, and he returned fire twice. He heard a grunt and a thud, and the darkened figure fell to the ground.
Jack shot the still man a third time before moving forward, warily, to check the body.
Only when he got close enough to roll the man over on his back was he able to tell that this was the bodyguard and not General Rehan.
“Shit,” Jack said. And then he ran on.
Ryan saw Rehan in the distance a moment later, then he lost him again as a long passenger train lumbered past, but when it continued on he saw the big general moving one hundred yards on, toward the crowded train station.
Jack stopped, raised the Beretta, and aimed it at the distant figure in the dark.
With his finger on the trigger, he stopped. A hundred-yard shot for a pistol was optimistic, especially now that Jack was breathing heavy from the run. And a miss could send a round right into a building chock-full of hundreds of civilians.
Ryan lowered the handgun and sprinted on as trains approached in both directions.
