Third World War

by Unknown

  Briefly the sniper's dot left Qureshi's chest, flitted to the gravel and returned, signalling Campbell to switch channels to the Central Command in Florida. 'Army truck approaching three miles away, heading in your direction.'

  Campbell flicked the channel back to the White House. He looked slightly to his left and picked out the moving shadow of Burrows.

  'To be frank, I'm a little short on rhetoric today,' said West, 'and I'm not in a mood to make deals with dictators. I need you to mothball your nuclear weapons facilities. All terrorists must be pulled in. A complete dragnet against them. You do that, and I'll do my damnedest to help you. You have my word on that. If you don't, I can't guarantee the future of your nation. Mehta will destroy you. That's your choice, Qureshi. That's why I've chosen to speak to you like this. Either Pakistan gets taken over by India, or you mothball your nuclear arsenal.'

  Campbell switched over to Central Command, so he could listen to the data sent down from the Global Hawk, together with Qureshi's reply.

  '. . . identified as one armoured personnel carrier and one troop carrier truck - maybe a company of men.'

  Qureshi looked down and shuffled his feet on the gravel. In the dim light thrown off from the house, Campbell identified something uneasy in his face. He switched channels.

  'There are troops on the way to your house. Did you order them in?' said West.

  Qureshi looked up. His face had settled now. There was a curious stillness in it which suddenly transformed him into a threat. 'Yes, Mr President. I did.'

  '. . . two miles, and slowing. Curves in the road. They should be with you in three to five minutes. I suggest you get the hell out of there.'

  Campbell's eyes didn't leave Qureshi's. He was trying to read the man's face. First he detected smugness; then indecision. Qureshi met Campbell's stare and shrugged: he couldn't stop them if he wanted to.

  'Why don't you put your policy to the United Nations, Mr President? Get a resolution passed against us,' said Qureshi with a sigh. 'I cannot and will not make a decision on the future of Pakistan in the cross-hairs of a sniper's rifle.' He brushed his hand across the red spot in disdain.

  The silence around the house was broken by the throb of a helicopter engine. It swooped in and turned sharply on itself. The green glow of the pilot's night-vision goggles was relayed back to Florida, where commanders saw what he saw - a clear patch on which to bring the aircraft down.

  Campbell was on dual channel now. 'Evacuate,' came the order, cutting through the President's conversation. Burrows broke cover, running fast and clear across the courtyard to the helicopter. From the undergrowth, down from the roof and out from behind the carport shelter came the Ghurkas.

  Dust blown up by the rotor blades flew into their faces. A hand moved back a curtain in Qureshi's house. Campbell alerted a sniper. Tasneem would be looking at the Ghurkas, but in the dark, and with their Asian complexions and their familiar uniforms, she would not know who they were unless her husband told her. They ran across the compound to where the helicopter skids were just brushing the flat, dry landing spot. Burrows was first there, holding on to the metal, as if he was keeping the aircraft down. He counted all twelve Ghurkas in and gave a thumbs-up to the pilot. As it lifted off, just a few feet off the ground, before heading into the gloom, Burrows ran back to the house and kicked open the door. Tasneem Qureshi managed a spurt of a scream before he silenced her.

  'Take them out,' said Campbell into his mouthpiece.

  Far above, unseen by anyone on the ground, the Global Hawk made a graceful curve. From underneath its sail-like wings two air-to-surface missiles sped off towards the ground, leaving a silver trail through the sky. Seconds before they reached their target, they separated to hit the armoured personnel carrier and the truck with armour-piercing high explosives. A ball of fire shot up through the night, lighting up the sparseness of the area around it. Burning debris set light to scrubland and sent cattle scampering away.

  Qureshi turned first to the door hanging open in his house and the sight of his wife, held by Burrows with one hand over her mouth. Then he spun back as the roar of the two explosions rippled across to him. He lowered his eyes, checking and confirming that the red dot had gone. He put his hand against the earpiece, glaring incomprehensibly at Campbell. 'You poor fool,' he muttered. 'You don't understand.'

  By which time Campbell had a pistol levelled at his chest. 'Then why don't we go in so you can explain it to me?' he said calmly.

  Inside the house, Tasneem sat, arms folded, in an armchair. Burrows had taped over her mouth. Three servants, the female cook, and two male housekeepers, lay prostrate on the floor with their hands tied behind their backs.

  Campbell and Qureshi watched the ebbing glow of the burning military vehicles. Burrows locked the door and drew the curtains. Unlike Campbell's, Burrows's face was blacked, his dark uniform hung with weapons and ammunition. He stayed by the window, while Campbell moved to the centre of the room.

  'Call the General Command at Chaklala and tell them everything is under control,' said Campbell.

  Without hesitation, Qureshi drew a mobile phone from his pocket and made the call in English. As far as Campbell could tell, it was straightforward, with no hidden code. Qureshi then sat on an armchair opposite his wife. 'Tasneem, darling, they will remove the tape from your mouth. If they do not, I will not cooperate with them,' he said, looking harshly at Burrows. 'But you must not say a word. Do you understand?'

  Tasneem nodded. Burrows glanced over at Campbell. 'All right,' agreed Campbell hesitantly. Burrows stepped over to her. 'You must understand, madam, if I take this off and you utter a sound, I will shoot you. Indicate that you understand.'

  Tasneem, her eyes both wrathful and confused, nodded. Burrows tore the tape, screwed it into a ball and dropped it into a waste-paper basket under a bamboo table by the door.

  'Is the President still listening in?' asked Qureshi.

  'Do you want him to?' replied Campbell.

  Qureshi took off his earpiece. 'He can listen to me. But I won't listen to him. What I have to say, I will say to you. Then, if you want to stay alive, call back your helicopter. They will send reinforcements. They will get through and they will not appreciate stumbling over the bodies of their slain colleagues.'

  'How long?' said Burrows, walking across the room to the back window.

  'Thirty minutes. Maybe fifteen. It's impossible to say.' A sullenness took over Qureshi's face. He had the look of a strong man in despair. A few minutes earlier, Qureshi had used the word fool, as if Campbell had no idea of what he was dealing with, as if he was meddling in something too complicated, and for a moment Campbell wondered whether Qureshi knew the workings of his own agonized brain.

  'John, go check on the driver. He should be coming round,' said Campbell. With Burrows gone, he sat back in his seat, crossed his legs, and balanced his gun hand on his knee with the weapon pointed at Qureshi. 'A few hours ago, I was at a meeting in Washington between Vasant Mehta and the President,' he said. 'Mehta has thrown down an ultimatum. Your conversation with the President was cut short. So I'm going to fill you in with what was missing. The choice is that either we, the United States, take responsibility for your nuclear arsenal or Mehta is going to ask China to do it. If neither of us agrees, he will come in himself. Whether it was you, Air Vice-Marshal, whether it was Najeeb Hussain or any of the others on your junta who ordered the attack on his house, I don't know, but it has solidified Mehta's resolve to rid India of Pakistan altogether. The President wants a way out of this. He wants you to give us that responsibility. So that's your choice: the United States, the devil you know; China, a completely unknown quantity; or India, which would end any semblance of independence and be as good as a military and political defeat.'

  Qureshi ran a hand through his hair, and when he spoke it was with his head turned partly away. 'There is always another way. You westerners don't realize how grave the situation in Pakistan has become and how determined we are to make sure w
e come through it with our culture and sovereignty intact. Every year India is more bellicose towards us. Islamic terror is firmly planted within our society. Law and order has broken down. Our economy is in acute recession. Seventy million live below the poverty line.' He turned towards Campbell and smiled out of the corner of his face, just for an instant, to show Campbell a fraction of the power he still retained. 'Do you seriously believe that either China or India wants to take us on at the precise time they are competing to become the superpower within Asia?' He shook his head in feigned disbelief. 'You might want to move in further. But we won't accept you. Not any more. India wants a guarantee that conflict will stop. I can deliver that to them. You can't.' There was a sympathetic look in his eyes, and he shrugged. Perhaps he wanted to gain Campbell's trust. Perhaps he was being patronizing. Campbell couldn't tell.

  The door opened. Burrows pushed the driver inside.

  'He's fine,' said Burrows, stepping inside himself and closing the door.

  'You will drive us down to Islamabad, avoiding the wreckage,' said Campbell, standing up.

  'To where?' said Qureshi, staying in his seat.

  'The US embassy.'

  'Am I your hostage?'

  'No. We need to talk more, but we also need to get out of here. If you have another way, tell me.'

  Qureshi got to his feet and took charge. 'Start the car and bring it round to the front door,' he said to the driver, adding to Burrows: 'Let him go. Don't worry, we do not speak in secret codes.' He moved over to Tasneem and kissed her on the forehead. 'I will be back soon. Not a word to anybody about this. Not a word.' He squeezed her hands, looked up at Burrows, then back at his wife. 'Darling, go to my room and get this man a shirt, some trousers and a pair of my sandals.' He indicated to the washroom by the door. 'You can clean up your face in there. That is, if you are coming to Islamabad with us.'

  As Burrows was changing, Tasneem Qureshi gave the driver, still groggy from the tranquillizer, tea from a Thermos.

  'Let's go, then,' said Burrows, emerging. Outside in the chill of the night, Qureshi hesitated before getting into the car.

  'Back seat,' said Burrows, letting Campbell through and shutting the door.

  'Yes, I know,' said Qureshi. 'But I was wondering why, if you didn't kill my driver, you had to kill my guards.' He shook his head. 'It seemed so unnecessary.'

  Neither Burrows nor Campbell answered. Qureshi, the airman, might not have known that millisecond between the success and failure of a military operation, made more acute when trained men on both sides are in conflict. In the lull after action, there is often doubt, and perhaps Qureshi wanted to exploit it. The turn of his head towards Campbell was weary, but his eyes flared with anger as he climbed into the back seat of the Mercedes.

  Tasneem pulled back the curtain to watch, and a beam of wavering light from the room fell on the bonnet. The car turned on the gravel, and took the left-hand fork outside the gate away from the main road where the troops had been stopped. The surface deteriorated and the driver shifted from automatic to a low gear. Rocks on the road scraped the underbelly of the chassis. Qureshi was in the back with Campbell, Burrows in the front with his weapon on the driver.

  Far above, the cameras of the Global Hawk predator locked on to heat from the exhaust of the vehicle and sent back pictures of its journey to Islamabad. President West, with only John Kozerski in the Oval Office, watched. Like Campbell, he still had no idea whether the mission was going to be a success or a disaster.

  'Tell President West that nations do not change their character, and that is why Pakistan is as it is,' said Qureshi, his head turned away, looking out of the window and the dark, shadowless land. 'Washington has always preferred working more with one-man dictatorships than the divided authority and debate that accompanies democratic decision-making. If it did not, Pakistani dictators would not have survived for so long. You must concentrate on restraining Vasant Mehta. I will bring Pakistan into line.' The road dipped and curved towards a hillside, where the headlights picked out a formation of rocks. Beside it were two boys, sleeping next to a herd of goats. Burrows raised his weapon. One boy stirred, putting his hand to his eyes, then rolled over to sleep again.

  'Tell West,' said Qureshi, 'that if forced, we will not hesitate to use our nuclear arsenal to protect our national sovereignty.'

  'And if China withdraws its support?' pressed Campbell.

  'It is more complicated than that.'

  The car bumped off the track on to a smoother road. The driver dipped the lights, waiting for three trucks to lumber past, ablaze with coloured lights and garish paintings on their side. Their wheels threw dust up to the Mercedes. Soapy water jets came up from the bonnet, and the windscreen wipers started up. Across the road, a single light bulb glowed above a stall selling drinks chilled inside a block of melting ice. As they joined the main road, Campbell knew he had all he would get. The impenetrable Qureshi wanted to do business, thought Campbell, but the reference to the dead security guards reminded him of the bad taste the mission had left in his mouth.

  'I know he's heard this before,' continued Qureshi, 'all politicians have. But there are people who want to act more quickly and with less flexibility than I do.' He wound down the window. The night air was warmer. He breathed it in and turned to face Campbell. 'Tomorrow, or next week, you might find you've been talking to the wrong man.'

  'I'll pass on your message,' whispered Campbell.

  'Thank you.' Qureshi leant out so that the airstream hit his face. Then he closed the window. 'I think we've said all we have to say. I will get the mess around my house cleared up. You will hear nothing of it. You have met me. I trust you to tell Jim West that I am a straightforward man who has inherited a conundrum, partly of his government's making.'

  His hand squeezed Campbell's shoulder, and he smiled. 'Now, without sounding bizarre, do you mind if I drop you at the Marriott Hotel, from where you can get a taxi to the embassy? The last thing I can afford to be seen doing right now is consorting with anything American.'

  As the Global Hawk tracked the vehicle back, the National Security Agency intercepted two calls each from a different telephone. The first lasted five minutes and was on an open line to Qureshi's daughter, Farrah, in Lahore. The second, lasting twenty-eight seconds, was to a satellite phone in Pyongyang, North Korea. Instead of going home to his wife, Qureshi's vehicle headed for the military cantonment area of Rawalpindi just a few miles away.

  ****

  38*

  ****

  Washington, DC, USA*

  'No, we don't know what was said,' said Brock. 'But we do know it's a number used exclusively by Park Ho. He travels with three satellite phones and that was one of them.'

  'In Pyongyang?' said Jim West slowly, allowing himself time to think. He sat back on the sofa, jacket off, with his feet up on the coffee table. Brock leant over the back of an armchair opposite, having just walked in from his office. Mary Newman stood quietly by the window looking at the melting snow.

  'John, how long have we got?' asked the President.

  'Toru Sato has arrived in Camp David,' said Kozerski, standing by the door. 'Mehta and Meenakshi are already there with Lizzie. Marine One should be back here any moment now to take us down. The helicopter will return from Camp David to pick up Andrei Kozlov and Stuart Nolan who are getting in within fifteen minutes of each other. They'll be choppered down together. Jamie Song won't be with us until tomorrow.'

  'Do you mind meeting him?' West asked Newman, swinging his feet off the coffee table and slipping on his shoes. Then, recognizing disapproval on Newman's face, he quickly added, 'I'll ask Lizzie to go with you as my personal emissary if that helps.'

  'That'll help, Mr President, thank you,' said Newman. 'I know it's informal, but the Chinese are very sensitive on protocol.'

  'Chris, where's Campbell?'

  'On his way back, Mr President,' said Pierce, putting his electronic organizer back into his jacket pocket. 'Qureshi must have thrown a
blanket right over the unexpected collateral damage we left behind. Not a squeak.'

  'He's keeping our options open,' said Brock, his hand on the door to open it.

  'Why blow everything because of a couple of military vehicles and a half-dozen security guards who didn't do their job properly,' said West putting on his jacket. 'The key element is that he must also have the support of the rest of his junta.'

  'You know what's really troubling me, Mr President?' said Newman. 'He made the call to North Korea before he got to the bunker in Chaklala.'

  'And that, apart from his daughter,' said Brock, 'contacting North Korea was uppermost in his mind.'

  Brock opened the door and let the others file through, with the President going through last. 'Scares the shit out of me, if you want an honest reaction,' said West.