usual Indian patrol zones.
Kalvari sunk by a U.S. frigate! Why had the American opened fire? Why?
The admiral crumpled the message in his fist, then stood at his desk. It seemed plain enough. The Americans were coming to the aid of their Moslem ally after all. The Indian Parliament might have something to say about that. The war fever gripping the entire nation was like nothing he had ever seen before.
And Rear Admiral Ajay Ramesh would win his vengeance for the death of Joshi, his son.
CHAPTER 4
The sun had set moments before, leaving the sky a glory of yellow, pink, and blue. General Abdul Ali Hakim was less interested in the sky than in a spindly tower silhouetted against the sunset some twenty kilometers west of the bunker.
The Great Thar Desert stretched from the swamps of the Rann of Kutch in the south clear to Haryana State and the Punjab, straddling more than eight hundred kilometers of Indian-Pakistani border. Until this day it had been a barren waste of sand and gravel with but one significance to Pakistani military strategy: more than once the Thar had proved to be a superb barrier against the Indian army. Now it was going to have a second significance, one arguably far more vital than the first.
“One minute, General,” an aide said at his side.
Hakim grunted in reply. His mind was on the border, some fifty kilometers further to the southeast. A hostile border, now that the Indians had finally stopped rattling their sabers and actually drawn them.
Not that the New Delhi regime’s army was anywhere that close. As always, the Tharparkar, as Hakim thought of it, was a natural barrier more formidable than endless fortifications, mine-fields, and interlocking fields of fire. While there were rumors of enemy armor massing near the Jodhpur-Hyderabad Road far to the south, the nearest Indian troops were probably at the Rajasthan Canal, fully a hundred kilometers from this lonely outpost on Pakistan’s frontier.
It was a pity, Hakim thought with a rare flash of humor, that the pigs weren’t closer. Much closer.
“It’s been a long road, Abdul.”
Hakim turned to face the speaker. General Mushahid ul Shapur was a powerful man, a member of Pakistan’s ruling military clique and Hakim’s own patron at Islamabad.
“It has indeed, sir.”
“But a worthwhile one. Today, the nations of Islam take their rightful place with the superpowers of this world. No longer will the kafir of India seek to dominate us by force of arms!”
“Inshallah,” Hakim said softly. “As God wills.”
Shapur looked at him with hawk’s eyes, then turned back to the viewing slit in the bunker wall without another word. Hakim himself was surprised at his response to the general’s observation. Moslem by birth and upbringing, he nonetheless had always resisted the insidious Islamic lure of allowing Allah to take the blame for everything, good or ill.
Surely, a man bore some responsibility for the deeds of his own hands.
“Twenty seconds,” a technician behind him in the bunker said.
“Sir,” the aide said. “Your goggles.”
“Of course.” He lowered the binoculars, then slid the dark-lensed goggles he wore under his high-peaked army cap down over his eyes.
Around him in the bunker, aides, officers, and politicians likewise settled their goggles into place, shielding their eyes.
“Five,” a young Pakistani technician intoned from his console farther back in the bunker. “Four … three … two … one … detonate!”
Daylight returned to the empty desert, first as a pinprick of unutterably brilliant blue-white radiance, then as an expanding ring of white flame burning through the protective layers of the goggles. The desert lit up with stroboscopic clarity, with each pebble, each chunk of gravel and depression in the lifeless ground throwing ink-black shadows across the sand.
Hakim was surprised at the complete absence of sound, even though he’d known what to expect. Every man within the bunker seemed to be holding his breath. The silence stretched on and on and on as that first blindingly intense light faded, replaced by the angry yellow-orange glare from the rising fireball. The shock wave became visible, a blurring against the growing pillar of light. Ground wave and sound reached the bunker at the same moment, almost a full minute after the first searing flash. Suddenly, Hakim was leaning into a windstorm, sand and grit burning the unprotected skin of his face. The thunder of the detonation was muted by the roar of the wind.
Pandemonium broke loose within the claustrophobic confines of the bunker. At his elbow, Shapur was dancing and clapping his hands, a look of triumph on his face, but Hakim could hear nothing but the shout of God Himself, rolling on and on and on … And this, Hakim thought, this was only a five-kiloton tactical device, with an explosive force of a quarter of the weapon exploded by the Americans over Hiroshima!
The blinding light faded, and Hakim removed his goggles. In the desert, a roiling cloud of sand and debris boiled skyward, spreading near the top into the familiar, flattened mushroom shape, its upper reaches high enough now that it caught the rays of the sun from beyond the horizon and reflected them, blood-red and ominous.
Surely it was a sign from God, a holy sign … but was it blessing or curse for his country, his people? Hakim could not be sure.
He watched the cloud continue to crawl toward heaven in blood-red splendor.
The room was wood-paneled and richly furnished, dominated by a large conference table and an array of executive-style leather chairs. One wall could open at the touch of a button to reveal display screens or maps. That wall was closed now, however, flanked by the flag of the United States and the Presidential Seal. The room, one of many, was located some dozens of feet beneath the Executive Building within the network of underground corridors that connected with the White House basement.
The men waiting around the table stood as Phillip Buchalter entered the room. “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said in a brisk voice. “Thank you for coming on such short notice. We seem to have a situation here.”
As National Security Advisor, Buchalter was responsible for the day-to-day operation of the National Security Council.
In 1989, President Bush had organized the NSC into three subgroups.
Senior of these was the Principals Committee. It was currently chaired by Buchalter, and its members included Ronald Hemminger, the Secretary of Defense; James A. Schellenberg, the Secretary of State; General Amos C. Caldwell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs; Victor Marlowe, Director of Central Intelligence and head of the NSA and the rest of the U.S. intelligence network; and George Hall, White House Chief of Staff.
There were others in the room, aides and secretaries for the most part.
The ID card pinned to the breast pocket of one elderly man identified him as Dr. Walter Montrose of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Buchalter stood at the end of the table, hands braced on the wooden surface. “Gentlemen, we are facing a NUCFLASH crisis.”
There was an uneasy stir around the table, followed by an absolute and unnerving silence. NUCFLASH was the flag-word on an OPREP-3 PINNACLE message which indicated that a serious risk of nuclear war existed.
Normally, the coded alert was concerned with accidents, launchings, overflights, or malfunctions that could lead to war with the Soviet Union. A NUCFLASH alert could also apply, however, to any unauthorized or unexplained nuclear detonation.
“Just over two hours ago, several of our NDDS orbital packages detected a nuclear explosion in the Pakistan desert near Derawar Fort, about three hundred fifty miles northeast of Karachi. We calculate the yield at about five kilotons.”
