‘The Antonov has engine problems,’ said Ninan, ushering the Home Minister towards the door. ‘We are taking a helicopter, also with wounded. The weather is becoming problematic. But if we take off in twenty minutes we should be clear of the mountains before it closes in.’
Saeed hid in the thick undergrowth of the Ningali forests 500 metres south-east of the helipad. He recognized the scent of wild briar roses and nearby there was the rush of water from a fast-running stream. The boys from the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi carried the three Stingers and took up positions around him, ensuring he could concentrate on the job. They communicated using sign language and stepped quietly through the undergrowth. The spot, near the stream, had been chosen to cover any noise from the assembly of the weapons.
He unclipped the metal case and bought out the sections: the missile, the disposable launch tube, the detachable grip stock and the integral Identification Friend or Foe system which made up the sixteen kilograms of weapon they had been carrying. Saeed loved the lightweight cool black metal of the missile which had avenged the misery the Soviets had brought to Afghanistan. It was designed to be used against high-speed, low-level, ground-attack aircraft, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t go for a lumbering Mi-26.
In the United States Marine Corps the Stinger is a certified round of ammunition, a use-and-throw-away weapon, which is what Saeed would do, so that India would have no doubt about what had shot down its aircraft. He checked that Hamid Khan had given him the best type of Stinger they had. It was fitted with a Rosette Scan Pattern image-scanning technique, which would allow the missile to distinguish between the target and the Mi-26’s counter-measures, decoys such as flares, chaff or background clutter. The system also had the Target Adaptive Guidance, which would steer the missile towards the most vulnerable part of the aircraft. He would set it for a fire-and-forget heat-seeking capability. One missile even winging the aircraft would almost certainly bring it down.
What worried Saeed was his range. He expected the aircraft to pass overhead, flying south. If it went in any other direction, moving low and fast, he would have problems with the trajectory. The Stinger’s range was just over four kilometres. He would have to act quickly.
General Ninan saw Bagchi up into the helicopter with his private secretary, and a crew-member showed them into the four-seat passenger compartment just aft of the flight deck. At the back Bagchi could see six stretchers, two with blankets over the faces of the dead, four with the wounded and two on drips secured to the bulkhead of the fuselage – victims of the low-intensity conflict which took place every day in Kashmir. They would be treated at the 92 Base Hospital, often referred to as the Advanced Command Hospital. A doctor looked impatiently at his watch and adjusted the flow to a drip. Ten commandos boarded, followed by Ninan and his ADC, who joined Bagchi in the compartment.
Bagchi put on his headphone and switched on the intercom to listen to the cockpit communication. He watched through the window as another dozen commandos took up new positions around the aircraft. The engine shuddered and the huge eight-bladed rotor began to turn. The helicopter lurched upwards and settled back, and one by one the commandos boarded, the last one jumping up as the aircraft was moving forward, seconds from lifting off.
‘The control tower is reporting fighting five hundred metres outside the perimeter fence,’ said the pilot through the intercom. ‘Should we continue?’
The Mi-26 shook as the pilot held the aircraft back, its wheels settling down again. Ninan looked at Bagchi: ‘Did you hear that?’
‘Your call,’ said Bagchi.
The major in charge of the commando unit made the decision: ‘We should go now, sir,’ he said. ‘Fly north, then double back and we will be clear of the fighting.’
It was a routine Indian patrol. There was no tip-off or betrayal. The Indian soldiers were moving through the plantation towards the stream, pausing to joke with each other, unaware that they were under threat. The fighters of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi opened fire first. Three Indians were hit before the others could return fire, and the guerrillas went on the offensive to try and flush them out and keep the protection around Saeed. They failed to hit the radio operator in time. He sent out an alert as soon as he heard the first burst of machine-gun fire.
Saeed had his back to the fighting. It was like the war all over again: Soviet troops on the ground. Soon a helicopter gunship was overhead. His experience took over. He had missed the tension, and as he raised the launcher to his shoulder, keeping his eye on the fence, waiting for the helicopter, he felt good, glad that Hamid had called on him to come here.
Still the boys didn’t talk. He could sense them running behind him, changing positions, the controlled fire of two of three rounds at a time. He heard a grenade and knew the boys were getting hit, dying as the enemy fire got closer. Then he saw the rotor blades of the Mi-26 rise above the trees, its nose down, the shimmering wave of heat around the engine casing. It turned on itself, but not flying south towards them as it should, picking up speed, keeping low, perhaps two kilometres away already, with a trajectory which made the Stinger like an anti-tank weapon, near-horizontal fire. The missile had an impact force of Mach 2.0, hit-to-kill accuracy.
A boy was right beside him with a second missile, in case the first one missed. He had stayed at his post, not fighting, watching his friends fall, doing what he was told to do. But he pointed up, and a second helicopter was coming towards them, smaller, the Mi-25, with a 30mm cannon in its nose. Saeed knew it. He had shot it down before.
He lined up the launcher’s sights towards the airstrip, judging that the Mi-26 was at 500 feet and he fired, turned and took the second Stinger from the boy just as the cannon rounds cut up the ground around them. The boy fell first, then Saeed was hit, the Stinger hurled out of his hand and his torso was torn apart by two cannon shells.
The pilot tried to attain height over the helipad itself, hoping to get to at least 1,000 feet before adopting its flight path. But before that, Bagchi lurched against the bulkhead as the missile smashed into the engine cowling of the helicopter. It exploded instantaneously, tearing off rotor blades and sending the aircraft hurtling back to the ground where it exploded in a ball of fire.
Prime Minister’s Office, South Block, New Delhi, India
Local time: 1700 Friday 4 May 2007
GMT: 1130 Friday 4 May 2007
‘Ring them on the hotline,’ said the Indian Prime Minister.
‘Ring them and say what?’ asked the RAW Special Secretary, Chandra Reddy. ‘The weekly conversation was only at noon yesterday.’
‘That was yesterday.’ Hari Dixit pulled his head out of his hands and re-read the message, which confirmed that his Northern army commander and his Home Minister were both dead, together with twenty-two Black Cat commandos, two nurses, a doctor and four wounded soldiers. A second message sent an hour later said that the launcher for a Stinger missile had been found 500 metres south of the airport, where Indian forces had been engaging Kashmiri insurgents in a firefight.
Two direct lines had been established between India and Pakistan in an attempt to stop skirmishes spilling over into war. The first was set up in the wake of the 1971 war, when the Simla Agreement was signed between the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan. The line ran between the two offices of the director-generals of military operations. There was at least one weekly scheduled conversation, every Tuesday, and more if cross-border activities intensified. In the late eighties, a second line was created between the two Prime Ministers’ offices. Pakistan had feared an Indian invasion from the Operation Brass Tacks military exercises, and there was ongoing nuclear concern by both countries.
Dixit stood up and put his glasses back on. ‘We’ll go in gently. Tell them that Ninan and Bagchi have been killed and we want an assurance that they had nothing to do with it.’
Reddy gave the instruction and the two men waited while the call was being put through.
‘They’re not answerin
g,’ said Reddy.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Dixit.
‘They’re playing games. It’s what we did to them during Brass Tacks in 1986. They thought we were going to invade and we didn’t pick up the hotline.’
‘Meaning . . . ?’
‘It’s not the Prime Minister,’ said Reddy. ‘It’s Hamid Khan. He’s testing our resolve.’
Briefing
Pakistan
Pakistan was created on 14 August 1947 with the partition of India, and the Islamic republic was proclaimed on 23 March 1956. During the Cold War it was regarded as a staunch ally of the West, but since then wove a chaotic tapestry of Islam, Western-style democracy and military dictatorship. Forever feeling threatened by India and ruled by dishonest leaders from within, Pakistan had not yet developed into the Islamic success envisioned by its founders. It was getting poorer and more violent. At the turn of the century, it had recently proclaimed itself a nuclear power and a military government had been installed. Under constant international pressure, Pakistan embarked upon another experiment with democracy, but it failed to pull the country out of its morass. Once again, the army and Islam emerged as attractive alternatives.
General Headquarters, Rawalpindi, Pakistan
Local time: 1645 Friday 4 May 2007
GMT: 1145 Friday 4 May 2007
‘Don’t answer it,’ said General Mohammed Hamid Khan.
‘It’s the Prime Minister’s hotline,’ said Captain Mohammed Masood, his aide de camp.
‘I have instructed the Prime Minister’s office to let it ring.’
Khan paced up and down in front of a large map on the wall of the underground bunker which he had made his permanent office in Chaklala, the cantonment area of Rawalpindi. Right now, the whims of a dishonest Prime Minister were the least of his concerns. There were more powerful forces moulding Pakistan’s future that Khan planned to bring to bear over the next few days, forces which would end the decades of corruption which had kept his country in the Dark Ages.
‘Get me General Tang Siju in Beijing,’ Khan ordered, and when the call came through the brief conversation gave him all he wanted.
‘Your support is a mark of friendship to the People’s Republic of China,’ said Tang.
Khan then ordered Masood to drive him through the evening traffic to the run-down tenements of Aabpara District in Rawalpindi. For dangerous journeys Masood often doubled up as Khan’s driver. He needed a man whom he could trust completely and who, like him, came from a military family of long standing.
The plain-clothed commandos from the Cherat Special Services Group fanned out on the narrow roads around Khan’s destination. Although their weapons were concealed and they dressed raggedly in an attempt to disguise themselves as the poor, their purposeful movements gave them away immediately as fighting men – but they were identified as mujahedin, whose breeding ground was in Aabpara, not as commandos from the Pakistan army.
Khan stayed in the car while Masood climbed the stairs of the decrepit building. The bodyguards of the Islamic cleric whom the general had come to see challenged Masood and ordered him to hand over his side-arm. Masood responded by drawing the weapon, removing the safety catch and levelling it at the head of one of the bodyguards. He was acting precisely on orders given by Khan.
Khan got out of the car and silently climbed the stairs behind Masood. Then everyone heard the unmistakable clatter of a Huey helicopter gunship overhead.
‘Tell Mullah al-Bishri to open the door,’ snapped Khan, ‘or the armed forces of Pakistan will burn down this street.’
The bodyguard knocked on the door. It opened, and Khan pushed his way through into the room. It had no furniture apart from a low coffee table against the far wall. A red carpet was spread all over, with smaller carpets thrown on top of it and hanging on the wall. The man sitting cross-legged by the coffee table was one of the world’s most powerful Islamic leaders. He didn’t get up, but waved his hand for Khan to sit down and join him. Masood and the bodyguards stayed outside and the door was closed.
‘Yahya was like a son to me,’ said the Mullah. ‘He was doing you no harm. He was fighting the Jihad and I’m told you gave orders for him to be killed.’
Khan did not answer.
‘He was killed in Egypt by a single gunshot wound to the head in the Upper Nile town of Asyut. The gunman came from the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency of Pakistan. I know because we caught him and he said it was you, General, who ordered the death of a freedom fighter.’
Mullah al-Bishri was the leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, one of the oldest and most deeply entrenched Islamic groups. In a way it was a loose umbrella group for the numerous groups which had based themselves in Pakistan. Jamaat-e-Islami had the biggest network, but others could prove to be equally important in balancing power. The Hizb-ul Mujahadeen was one of the oldest militant groups, made up mostly of Kashmiris. The Sunni Islamic Lashkar-e-Tayyaba represented some of the poorest areas of Pakistan. The Harkat-ul-Mujahedin was an international brigade of fighters, Afghans, Algerians, Egyptians and even guerrillas from Saudi Arabia, people who could pose more of a threat to the stability of the country than the Indian army. And increasingly Khan was seeing the defiant Tehrik-e-Jihad in operation, fighters who came to prominence in 1999 in the battle for Kargil.
He sensed that even Mullah al-Bishri was having trouble maintaining his authority. Al-Bishri had been an ally of Zia-ul-Haq and of Nawaz Sharif, the two Pakistani leaders who held greatest sway over the political arena in the last two decades of the twentieth century. But since then the political landscape had changed dramatically. Over the years, Al-Bishri’s own views had hardened, reflecting the country’s lurch from a moderate to a fundamentalist Islamic society. He now argued that there were no national frontiers for true believers and that, after the victory in Afghanistan, the next natural battlefield was Kashmir. He predicted that Kashmir would soon be won and had ordered the recruitment and training of young men to fight in the Central Asian republics and even take the Jihad across China’s western borders into Xinjiang. One intonation at Friday prayers or one command to his followers throughout Pakistan could bring millions out onto the streets. It was he, more than any other man, who could depose the civilian government, and it was Al-Bishri to whom Khan had to turn for support now.
But the balance of their relationship was delicate. While Khan was a military commander, Al-Bishri would always be an opposition force, a grass-roots activist, a criticizer, but never an achiever. Khan, acutely aware of the cleric’s power, also resented it. Al-Bishri’s ultimate aim was to form an Islamic combination of Central Asia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia to create a formidable global force. Yet Khan knew it would never happen. Saudi Arabia bought its cars and fridges from Japan, Europe and America, and its missiles from China. If Pakistan ever interfered either in China or in any oil-producing country in the Middle East it would be abandoned to the whims of a Hindu India. Khan accepted this. Al-Bishri did not.
When Khan was summoned to his run-down house in Aabpara, the message said he should be there within the hour, showing how out of touch al-Bishri was with the schedules of the outside world. The cleric was an academic, steeped in the Koran and in Islamic writings, far away from the world of satellite telephones, laser-guided missiles and the international banking system used by his fighters. He was their moral compass and their religious legitimacy.
‘I am told that the Prime Minister is about to declare himself Amir-ul-Momineen, leader of Muslims,’ said Al-Bishri. ‘They say that power has gone to his head.’
‘I have heard the same,’ said Khan.
‘But I hear also that you favour cancelling the Shariat law and bringing back a colonial-style judicial system.’
‘Yes,’ said Khan bluntly. ‘The Shariat will not encourage foreign investment in Pakistan.’
‘The Shariat is the law for the Islamic people of the world. We do not need their foreign investment.’
‘The Shariat is a law or
dained in the Koran and Sunnah, the words and deeds of the prophet. Whenever there is no precedent in either of the two sources, then jurists use independent thinking [ijtihad] to deliver their verdict, and this is variable from jurist to jurist. This is not understood or used by the West, and many Muslims consider it unsuitable for trade and business.
‘Sometimes, jurists have resorted to using either analogy [quias] or consensus [ijma] to arrive at a decision. Out of the 6,666 Koranic verses, only three hundred have any legal connection, meaning that Shariat jurists have a large scope for interpretation. The international banking system and long-term investors would not operate under such a legal system. Their money will only go where it feels safe, and unless it is protected by the rule of law it will go elsewhere. In order to modernize our country, we may have to compromise on some of its ideals.’
‘Saudi Arabia lives under the Shariat and is friendly with the West.’
‘Saudi Arabia has oil.’
Al-Bishri sipped his tea and was silent for some time. ‘You have studied your subject, General.’
‘Yes. I have thought a lot about it.’
‘And part of your thinking was the killing of Yahya?’
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