“Our weapons are few in number and crude, Mr. President. For us to use nuclear weapons against such a powerful foe as India would surely result in our total destruction. No, the best we can hope for, should war come, is a stalemate in conventional warfare. Barring that, we hope the conquerors will be generous in their victory and our defeat. We do not wish to cease to exist as a nation.”
What the ambassador was thinking was, You have no idea with what and how our friends, the Chinese, have supplied us. They will come to our aid as they promised to eliminate the common enemy. India will be beaten back into the age of the Mughals.” Ambassador Perchay did not know just how very well China had supplied them. Only General Chang and his staff knew.
Ambassador Perchay smiled and set down his teacup. He thought to himself, Straight from the hip, up front and direct. No political nuances here. This old boy must be a Texas cowboy at heart. Instead, he said, “Mr. President, I am sure your CIA operatives have informed you of every move Pakistan makes in the nuclear weapons field. You know the size and location of every nuclear device in our arsenal, its status, its design and how it will be deployed, if it ever is. I must add that they will be deployed only in defense of our territory. Only to save ourselves from being overrun will such weapons come into use. We know full well that India would respond in kind, and that they have many more, and theirs are better developed than ours.”
Thornton smiled. “Mr. Ambassador, I only wish our CIA was as effective as you credit it to be. Let us hope that Pakistan and its neighbor quickly and quietly settle the current unpleasantness before it gets out of hand. If the United States can be of any service, as a negotiator, arbiter, or go-between, we will most certainly and gladly do so.”
“Mr. President, I thank you for your kind offer on behalf of my country. I will immediately convey your concerns and offer to Islamabad. If there is any opportunity to settle the current distress amicably, Pakistan will assuredly do so.”
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Ambassador.”
“The pleasure is all mine, Mr. President. I have enjoyed the opportunity to see my old friend, Mr. Tremble. Good day to you all.” With that, Ambassador Perchay was escorted out of the room by Johnny Withers.
“Well, Mr. Tremble, what do you read of your ‘old friend?’”
“He either has the best façade I have ever seen, or he is overconfident, Mr. President. Either he is holding an ace or two he thinks we don’t know about or he is confident that the matter will soon be over.”
“What kind of aces do you think Pakistan might be holding, Mr. Tremble?”
“If the Pakistanis are as farsighted as I consider them, their intelligence service might have already planted nuclear devices in a number of strategic locations within India. Of course, the same holds true for India planting them in Pakistan. Or, they might have other weapons of mass destruction, such as biologicals, about which I have no information; or peace talks might already be under way; or Pakistan might have something up its sleeve that we have no knowledge or even guessed about. Don’t ask me what.”
“Marge, what is your reading on all this?”
“Mr. President, I haven’t any. I don’t know what to make of Mr. Perchay other than he is extremely charming. I don’t have information from my folks on their weaponry. I sent a secret telex two hours ago to Ambassador Brown for an update but haven’t received a response.”
“Mr. Tremble, you are the voice of experience here, what is your gut feeling?”
“I don’t like it, Mr. President. I don’t like it at all. It scares me.”
Thornton scratched his bald spot, sighed, and said, “Thanks to both of you for coming.”
Indian forces began to martial from twenty to fifty miles behind the Pakistani border. Armored and mounted infantry regiments martialled twenty-five kilometers inside the Great Indian Desert. Should general war be declared, four heavy divisions had as their axis of advance a drive through Moro and Dadu to cross the Indus River and on to Sonmiana Bay with the objective of cutting off the rectangular area that contains Karachi.
Indian brigades of mountain infantry loaded in trucks began to advance out of Srinagar. Trained for infantry operations at high altitude and in intense cold, they moved towards the Line of Control. Mountain infantry, some with pack animals, crossed the Line of Control in Kashmir and initiated combat with Pakistani outposts. The little village of Chakoti, on the apex of a salient, was the first to feel the weight of the Indian attack.
Pakistan responded with an intense artillery barrage against invading Indian units. Man-portable trajectory plotting radars identified the location of the Pakistani batteries, revealing some in new positions. Within minutes, Indian Mig-24Ds, purchased from Russia in the opening years of the new century, placed improved conventional munitions on the firing batteries, followed by Geneva Convention-outlawed two-hundred-kilogram napalm bombs to ensure their complete destruction. Twenty minutes after the Mig-24Ds departed, Pakistani FC-1 Dragons attacked the Indian infantry with napalm. The losses on both sides were substantial. Several companies of Indian infantry and two batteries of Pakistani artillery were lost. Most died of burns.
Twenty-four hours later, car bombs loaded with explosives went off outside government buildings in a dozen Indian cities. Each car was packed with a thousand pounds of dynamite and did considerable damage. They were detonated by remote control in periods of rush hour traffic to maximize casualties. News of the bombings dominated television networks throughout the world, but especially in India.
Forty-eight hours later, similar car bombs were detonated in Karachi, Multan, Bahawalpur, Sukkur, and Shikarpur, Pakistan. Civilian casualties were again very heavy.
Pakistan, already on yellow alert, ordered general mobilization. Four hours later, a Chinese agent received a seemingly innocuous signal in the guise of a radio commercial played for the first time on a particular station. Located near the center of the city, the timer was set for a four-hour delay to give the agent sufficient time to escape. When he threw the switch to turn the timer on, the explosion was instantaneous. A five-kiloton weapon detonated, destroying most of Sargodha, Pakistan. A second blast of similar size destroyed Mardan, Pakistan a few minutes later.
The explosions were reported to the Indian Prime Minister in New Dehli within minutes. He immediately called the Minister of Defense Sivaji, who denied all knowledge of the origins of the explosions. Sivaji denied having given any such order, nor to his knowledge, had any of the Indian military commanders. Nuclear weapons had not been released from their arsenals.
“Call together the Cabinet, immediately,” he ordered his secretary. “We must avert nuclear war. We will meet in the shielded bunker.” His next call was to Islamabad, to the leader of the junta.
“General, I understand that two nuclear detonations occurred just minutes ago in your country. Did you have nuclear accidents? I want to assure you that India had nothing to do with such disasters!”
“Prime Minister, we have had no nuclear accidents. We did not have any nuclear devices of any nature anywhere near either Sargodha or Mardan. Surely you do not think we are naive enough to believe this is not the handiwork of India? Since no aircraft or missiles were observed entering our country, you must have had agents in our midst who planted the bombs.”
“General, most assuredly, India had nothing to do with these explosions. I have no explanation for them. Our objective was to push Muslims out of Kashmir with conventional forces. We have no wish to engage in nuclear war. The world has already seen far too many nuclear bombs. Both of our countries are already in jeopardy from such explosions. We cannot afford any more catastrophes. In such a circumstance, there are no winners, only losers.”
“In that, I agree with you, Mr. Prime Minister. If Pakistan will cease to exist, so will India as you know it.” With that, the line went dead.
Before the Cabinet members arrived, Pakistan launched six intermediate range ballistic missiles and a dozen short range ballistic missiles. Their flight times to their targets varied from five to fifteen minutes. Indian AWACS and other monitoring systems observed their launch. The warning simultaneously went out to New Dehli and various military installations. Among them were all the bases which housed nuclear weapons. Judging from the early stages of their trajectories, the AWACS crew predicted the targets were Bangalore, Nagpur, Ahmadabad, Madras, Kanpur, and Kota. The smallest weapon detonated was twenty kilotons, the largest, fifty kilotons. None were particularly clean weapons, and most were detonated three hundred meters above the surface of their respective targets to maximize the effects of heat, blast and radiation. Little attention was given to the effects of their electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, which magnetizes motors, overloads some electrical equipment and computer circuits and thus destroys virtually all communications equipment which was in operation.
One minute after the multiple Pakistani launch, Indian electronic warfare officers whose equipment still functioned picked up a communication sent in the clear to all Pakistani units that nuclear war had been initiated. The message read, “Nuclear war has been initiated. All forces, conventional and special units alike, are to fight independently for as long as possible. Your objective is the destruction of any and all things Indian.”
When the message was read by the Indian Prime Minister, he sat down at his desk and put his hands on his head. He knew the outcome. He picked up the phone and called Minister of Defense Sivaji. When Sivaji answered, he simply said, “Do what you must to save India,” and hung up.
By previous secret mutual aid treaty, China agreed to come to the aid of Pakistan if war with India should break out. China willingly filled the void left by the retreating Americans. The previous administration of the United States called it disengagement due to corruption, military dominance over the entire society and culture, concern over human rights, and continued surreptitious support for Islamic extremists in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. In terms of the treaty, China agreed to respond with tactical nuclear weapons aimed at agreed upon designated targets in India if India initially deployed nuclear weapons against Pakistan, thus opening a two-front war for India. The devastation of the new nuclear war was expected to be horrific. It exceeded all expectations.
Ten minutes after the Pakistani message declaring all-out war was broadcast, a one megaton hydrogen bomb was detonated in Islamabad. For all practical purposes, this blast destroyed the government of Pakistan. There was no escape for most of the citizens of Islamabad. The blast affected both Pakistani and Indian troops and civilians alike in Jammu and Kashmir. The searing heat melted parts of many of the glaciers in the region. Troops of both countries saw the tremendous mushroom cloud, felt the heat and the tremendous machstem winds, exceeding two thousand miles per hour. All knowledgeable people knew what it meant, most of all, the Prime Minister of India. Now, there was no one left with whom to negotiate a truce. Pakistani missiles from various sites, including some mobile launchers, launched as soon as they were ready. All had pre-determined targets. Most had independent inertial guidance systems. They carried intermediate sized warheads, mostly in the ten to-fifteen kiloton range. Most were aimed at Indian cities. New Dehli, Bombay, Kakinda, Mysore, Haora, Calcutta and a score of others were all attacked. Over the next two hours, over thirty nuclear tipped missiles were exchanged. A few weapons of similar size were delivered by aircraft. Pakistan had far more nuclear weapons than anyone had surmised. Much of the Indian communications network was destroyed within the first four hours. Consequently, nuclear equipped forces on both sides continued to fire at pre-designated targets until they had no nuclear fires left to deliver.
By nightfall, it was as if Pakistan had been plunged back into the twelfth century. India suffered tremendous destruction in many of its major cities and ports. The mountainous areas were spared from the immediate effects of blast and heat more than the plains. The skies were darkened for the next six days as millions of tons of earth were sucked upwards and slowly returned to earth as radioactive dust particles. Alpha radiation was overwhelming, as none of the weapons were particularly “clean.” Dose-dependent deaths from radiation poisoning began in twenty-four hours and continued into the ensuing months. Floods washed away many small villages along riverbanks throughout the area as a result of the melting of glacial ice feeding some of the largest rivers in the world. The Monsoon winds and rains carried lesser amounts of fallout into Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Surface waters, livestock and crops were contaminated by the falling radioactive dust particles. Livestock and people suffered subsequent radiation poisoning from handling and consuming contaminated crops and forage. With depressed immune systems damaged by radiation, many began to weaken and die from infections which otherwise would have been inconsequential. Bacterial meningitis alone killed tens of thousands. Skin infections became life threatening and resulted in septicemia, or blood poisoning. Common colds resulted in fatal pneumonias. Bodies generally lay where they fell. Those still alive were too sick to gather and bury the dead.
Two weeks later, elements of the Chinese Second Army Front moved across the fifty-mile border with Jammu and Kashmir. The Chinese built north-south road across Aksai Chin proved its strategic value. Farther south, Chinese HIV battalions moved all along the border.
The Mexican prisoners were herded into a tent city surrounded by a twelve-foot cyclone fence topped with razor wire. A ten-meter fire zone of bare, plowed ground separated the cyclone fence and coils of intertwined razor and barbed wire. Sensors were at each corner that detected motion and sound. Laser beams oscillated between various heights every few seconds that would ensure no one could cross them without breaking the light beam. Low guard towers with a spotlight on a swivel were manned by two soldiers, each armed with a machine gun and a rifle.
Many of the prisoners’ hands were blue from lack of circulation. Their restraints had been removed once, when they were allowed one stop to relieve themselves, drink water, and then were re-cuffed with plastic ties and placed back on the trucks for an otherwise nonstop drive to their new home in a desert corner of Fort Bliss, far away from prying eyes.
President Thornton didn’t get the phone call from President of Mexico Enrico Bustamante until almost twenty-four hours after the raid.
