Chapter 22
Manish Naipaul had three hours left to complete his flight controller shift at the Dubai World Central Airport, when he got the call from the Air India flight from Mumbai. The superjumbo asked for clearance to begin the final approach, which Manish promptly granted. It was followed by three other Indian flights, so Manish ordered them to land in parallel, on the runways of the airport's west side.
He was watching the flight routes on the screen, and preparing to manage the incoming wave of Emirates flights from Europe, when his supervisor, an Australian named Ian McDermott, dropped by the control room.
"Hi Manish, how come we have all the Indian flights landing at once today? And why did you put them all on the west side runways?"
"It's the usual late departures, Sir, you know how my country works, or doesn’t work, actually," Manish shyly replied, "usually they end up mixing with the Emirates flights from Europe, but today for some reason they arrived more or less at the same time. That's why I decided to pack them all on the terminal’s west side, to minimize the interference with the European flow."
The supervisor thought the approach chosen by Manish made sense.
"Alright, then land them quickly. I do not want to interfere with Indian delays the operations of Emirates."
Ian then turned to the TV screen, which was showing the Al Jazeera, English edition. It was a talk show where one of the guests, a leading Shia priest from Iran, was triumphantly mentioning the news of the US secession referendum results.
"This is the manifest power of God, that finally managed to break the Great Satan from within," Ian heard him saying while he was checking the planes taxying on the runways, "this impious nation, that inflicted suffering and grief on millions of Muslims, eventually succumbed to the will of the Almighty, and.."
Ian was considering to tweet his irritation to the Al Jazeera account, when he saw a flash coming from the starboard side of the Indian superjumbo, which had just docked to the West terminal concourse. An explosion immediately followed on the airplane parked next to it, a Lufthansa 747. He rushed for the surveillance camera control center, and saw that scores of armed personnel were unloading from the cargo bays of the Indian jumbos.
"What the hell..Manish, quick, call security..."
He was about to hit the emergency icon on the touchscreen, when somebody from behind grabbed his right arm, pulled it back until it cracked and left him in excruciating pain on the floor.
"We will not do anything of the sort, Sir," Manish quietly answered from behind, "We have to secure the landing of the rest of the brigade."
Ian was still figuring out what was going on when he saw the four other South Asian flight controllers attack the rest of the landing crew, and mercilessly kill them all with their bare hands. He looked again at Manish, who preceded his question.
"I have spared your life for two reasons. First, if anyone calls the flight control center, you have to confirm everything is all right. Second, I’ve really appreciated the way you have treated me in the past five years, unlike many others who treat me like dirt."
"Five years," Ian said, "Manish, you mean you have been planning this for..."
"For a long time. You can call me with my real name now, that is Narendra Patel. I am an officer of the Indian special forces, and like the rest of the team here we have been under cover for several years. Do not worry too much about your arm, it is barely broken. We will treat you as soon as we complete the occupation of the airport. If you cooperate, of course. In the meantime, you have to make do with this."
The Indian officer recomposed the fracture, sending another wave of pain through Ian's body.
"Manish, um, Narendra," Ian said when he recovered, "How can you think you will get away with this? The Emirati Armed Forces will wipe you out. "
"I beg to disagree, Ian. Look at what's going on."
Narendra turned to the television screen. The Iranian priest was pointing his finger to the sky, taking a deep breath before beginning his next sentence, when the talk show was interrupted by the ‘Breaking News’ headline.
Pakistan was reported to have launched a ground offensive on Iran, pointing to the city of Bandar Abbas, on the Strait of Hormuz. Violent fighting was reported in the Fujairah harbor area, on the Arabic Sea, where Indian cargoes used to moor. In other key places, like Dubai and Abu Dhabi airports, the situation still seemed calm, with flights taking place regularly.
Narendra chuckled, "Seemingly, our cyberattack team has managed to stop all the video uploads from here,"
Ian looked at the charts and maps that were proliferating on the screens.
"You are choking the world's oil supply...."
"Well, yes and no," Narendra said. "To be more precise, we are redirecting it to make sure South Asia gets a fair share to secure our future. We are indeed choking some other things, in the meantime."
Narendra handed over to Ian his smartphone, that was tuned into a Saudi radio news feed. The translation software managed to convey all the anxiety of the speaker, who was urging the population of Dammam and Riyadh not to panic. The authorities had identified the problems that had knocked down the water and electric grid, and the supply of fresh water would be quickly re-established in a matter of hours.
Narendra smiled at Ian: "I do not know how you guys think Down Under, but in India we would not believe this kind of press."
Ian could not help showing his disgust, "You are cutting off the power supply of Riyadh and Dammam? We're right in the middle of August, you are leaving millions under scorching heat...it will create panic,"
"Yes, that's exactly what we want to do. The government will have to make a priority call between trying to re-establish order and taking care of their thirsty population or rather, focusing on countering the military threat. In any case, people are already choking the roads to try to escape the trap.."
Narendra swiped on one of the screens, tuning to the Riyadh traffic webcam system. Highways were already packed with vehicles, all trying to flee the city towards Jeddah and the Red Sea. Fires could be seen throughout the horizon. Narendra continued to comment on the images, without waiting for Ian’s questions.
"Those fires are either the result of panic, or targeted sabotage actions that our attack teams are now carrying out to increase havoc and prevent security forces to gain back control. We have infiltrated about a thousand highly specialized commandos in the last five years. They entered the country mostly as legal immigrants. Some of them have been detected and, um, terminated by the Saudi services. But many more have survived and are now carrying out their mission. In some cases the mission is as simple as setting gas stations on fire. In other cases, they are ordered to attack the police to get weapons and set up armed urban guerilla forces. I also heard that a few teams have been able to build their own weapons via 3D printing."
Not hearing any response from Ian, Narendra turned in his direction. His prisoner was lying asleep on the ground, overwhelmed by the pain and the tension. Narendra moved him gently aside the computer desk, so that his team members in the control tower might not stumble over him, and then he focused on directing flight operations.
When Ian woke up, the daylight was flooding into the tower. He looked at his watch. It was 3 PM, meaning he had slept for more than ten hours. His right arm was still hurting, but he noticed that he had been given a cast and tied to one of the chairs. He looked around and saw there were many more people in the room now, all of whom wore uniforms. All the bodies of the rest of the staff had been moved away.
It took him a few minutes to recognize Narendra, who was now wearing a combat uniform and looked visibly worried. As soon as the Indian officer realized that Ian was awake, he moved towards him.
“Hi Ian, hope you are doing well. This is the best we could do for you for now,” Narendra said, nodding to Ian’s arm, “however, in the next few days we will put you on a flight to India. From there you will be able to get back to Australia, hopefully.”
“Yeah, hopefully. I guess there will hundreds of thousands of expats who want to get back home, away from the war zone,” Ian whispered, wondering if he would even have a chance to get back to his apartments to pack his stuff. It wasn’t bad enough already, he imagined what it would be like if he had a family to care for. “How is your war going?”
“Worse than expected, as all wars go,” Narendra said, calmly, handing over a tablet to Ian, who grabbed it with his left arm, and looked at the device. The browser was open on the site of Al Arabiya, which was reporting on the massive wave of refugees fleeing from Riyadh and Dammam. There was a picture of tens of thousands of cars jammed along the highways. Ian then moved his eyes to the “Most Viewed” sidebar in the upper right corner, and froze. The preview icons that appeared all showed the unmistakable shape of nuclear explosions. He moved to the page, and started reading the news, it had happened both in Iran and Al Ain, not far from Dubai. He had barely read through the first paragraph lines when Narendra spoke.
“This was not our intention from the beginning; we were forced into it,” he said, almost apologetically, “our plan called for the use of nuclear weapons only in case the enemy had resorted to the usage of chemical weapons, which we thought they would not do. We were wrong.”
“Fuck, what did you expect, Manish, um, sorry, Narendra?” Ian said slowly, appalled, “You expected they would hand their country over to you without putting up a fight?”
“We do not want their country, just control over oil assets. After all, it’s what it was like with the United States for the past one-hundred years. We were aware of the dangers of escalation, it just happened much faster than expected, so now we have to bring in more troops, as the first wave has suffered heavy losses.”
Ian kept reading through the news reports. Both BBC and Deutsche Welle were estimating at least several hundred thousand casualties on both fronts, with numbers going to rise due to the nuclear fallout. The only good news was, that no major city had been targeted yet, the weapons of mass destruction had been used just on the battlefront.
“Narendra, do you plan to use the bomb also on main cities? Won’t it escalate further?”
“I do not know, Ian,” Narendra replied, “one thing is sure, we cannot give up.”
A soldier joined them, he saluted Narendra and then stood at attention, a few feet away from Ian. The officer looked at the private and nodded. It was time to go, so he spoke to Ian for the last time.
“We will now send you to a camp about twenty miles from here. It is in Sharjah, where we are concentrating all expats. In due time you will be moved to India, then from there, to your home country. It will take a while, as you can imagine. Thanks for all the years we worked together, you have been a good boss.” Narendra extended his arm to shake Ian’s left hand. The Australian slowly shook his hand, and whispered,
“Thanks to you for sparing my life, Narendra. Good luck, we both need a lot of it.”
He then looked at the soldier, who handcuffed him and walked him through the exit.
The Last Enemy - Parts 1,2 & 3 - 1934-2054 Page 68
