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  “Ansari! You made it!”

  Colonel Ansari looked up from his papers and smiled, removing his reading glasses. “Of course I made it!” He got up and shook Basu’s outstretched hand.

  “Damn good to see you, old friend.” Basu said with a genuine smile on his face, and then looked around to see Ansari’s belongings set up on the chairs outside.

  “But why the hell are you sitting here? Didn’t my assistant meet you here?” Basu asked as Ansari picked up his coat and papers from the chair.

  “He had some family emergency to deal with, so I told him not to worry about me,” Ansari said as he removed his glasses and folded them before putting them in his coat pocket. “You don’t look too well either,” he added. “But I guess that goes for everybody around here tonight, eh?”

  Basu’s face lost the smile as he motioned for Ansari to come into his office. Once there, Basu hung up his coat and walked behind the desk while Ansari took his seat at the couch, looking it over as though having met after so much time. Which was true. The last time he had been here had been before and during the China war, to brief Basu, Chakri and other senior intelligence officials about his covert special-warfare teams deep inside Tibet. He had sat on this very couch and talked about deaths of Chinese soldiers, destruction of Chinese military equipment and losses encountered by the Tibetan rebels as well as his teams. He had also shown them videos here, taken by specially deployed aerial-drone crews over southern and southwestern Tibet.

  There used to be a small television set on the wall…Ansari looked around…and there it is!

  “Everything as you remember it?” Basu said with a smile from across the desk, accurately judging his friend’s thoughts and feelings.

  “Indeed it is.” Ansari said with a amused grunt as Basu fished in his desk drawer for his regular cigarette. As he found one and began looking for a match to light it, Ansari made himself comfortable on the couch.

  “Small talk aside,” Ansari said just as Basu scratched the matches and lit his cigarette, “I take it you aren’t hosting a social gathering tonight. At least not under the circumstances we find ourselves in.”

  Basu moved the cigarette to the edge of his mouth and let out a puff of smoke as he leaned back in his leather seat. “I wouldn’t be so harsh, Ansari!”

  “Considering all that has happened since all of us were present in this room here,” Ansari said as he glanced around the room, “I didn’t think it was a good idea for us to ever meet again in public. Heck, had it not been for the official call I got from your assistant today, I would have been right about that statement for three years running. I was done with the work we did here when we closed out Gephel and his Pathfinders. I have even gotten to like being a regular guy at SOCOM!”

  “You like it there?” Basu said, dropping the cigarette ash into the tray on his table.

  “It has its moments,” Ansari said guardedly. Basu smiled at that.

  “Oh come on, Ansari! You are not a ‘regular’ guy. Never had been.”

  “No, you better believe it!” Ansari tried to counter, but then gave up and sighed.

  “I thought so.” Basu replied magnanimously.

  “So what are we doing about today’s attack on Mumbai?” Ansari said with a grim tone. Basu lost his smile as well: “I can’t go into the details. You understand?”

  “Of course.” Ansari replied and meant it. Basu looked at the man straight and then leaned forward on his seat, resting his arms on the desk.

  “If I gave you the location of a high-value target behind enemy lines, could you and your guys go and grab him?”

  Ansari didn’t reply for several seconds, considering the question. Then his eyes lit up: “What kind of high-value…”

  “A man.” Basu interjected.

  “Do we know where he is?” Ansari asked next, his mind racing ahead.

  “We will.” Basu added confidently. Ansari leaned forward: “And you are talking to me…why? Surely there is enough brass at SOCOM headquarters to answer this question? Why the cloak and dagger stuff?”

  Basu let out the cigarette smoke and crushed the cigarette in the tray, extinguishing it in the process: “Because our incompetent suck-ups in South-Block have a different play in mind. One that is loud, clear and ultimately pointless and unrewarding. And your bosses at SOCOM are going to be caught up in the mix of it for show-and-tell purposes soon enough. What I have, however, is a plan that is surgical and painful to those who carried out today’s strike on Mumbai.”

  “A covert operation?” Ansari asked dryly, and Basu gave him a slight tilt of his head which could be interpreted either way. Ansari shook his head and got up from the couch and began to pace the room. After several seconds he turned to face Basu: “You never learn, do you? We barely got away with our lives carrying out the Pathfinder missions! Now you want to do it again? For what?”

  “Quite simple, really,” Basu said and leaned back once again in his chair. “If we don’t do this, the bastards who pulled off the attack on Mumbai will live to strike another day. The government does not realize it, but when they do what they want to do, we will be left looking quite toothless to our neighbors who, by the way, will only be too glad to help us in our endeavor.”

  Ansari stopped pacing and looked at Basu, understanding the meaning of his words. “What kind of support will I have? I can’t do this alone!”

  “Oh, I don’t want you doing anything alone!” Basu replied with a smile. “I just want to know if you will lead it. Then I can make it happen for you to get your pick of men and equipment.”

  “The hell!” Ansari snapped. “How are you going to arrange any of this? You don’t exactly head up SOCOM, buddy. The army does!”

  “Let’s just say I am not alone in thinking the way I do about our upcoming military response to today’s attack,” Basu noted dryly. Ansari saw the fire in the man’s eyes and knew it was no bluff. The decision was clearly in his hands and if he knew Basu at all, the man probably wanted a decision in this room, right now…

  “When will this take place? What’s the timeline on this?” Ansari asked after several seconds of thought. His mind was already made up. And his words let Basu know his decision without actually saying it.

  “The government will probably begin the show-and-tell operations within two weeks,” Basu speculated.

  “That’s not much time,” Ansari noted.

  “No, it is not.” Basu conceded. “But isn’t it what you and your boys plan for, all the time?” The statement was delivered with a wicked smile. It’s response generated the same as Ansari picked up his coat and papers:

  “I will get back to you.”

  ──── 5 ────

  “You son of a bitch! What the hell have you done?”

  General Shakril Hussein looked up from his papers as the Pakistani Prime-Minister walked into his office. The door to his office slammed shut on its own momentum as the civilian man’s large hand shoved it. Hussein said nothing as he removed his glasses and put them on the papers laying on his desk. His composure further irritated the man purportedly his superior…

  “I take it you mean the attack on Mumbai?” Hussein said with a trace of condescension lacing his tone.

  “Of course!” the PM shouted back, “Are you trying to get us all killed?”

  “What makes you think we did it?” Hussein said as he leaned back.

  “Don’t you dare play games with me!” the PM thundered. “The whole world knows it’s us! I am getting calls from every head-of-state threatening everything from sanctions to war! And for what? What the hell are you playing at over here?”

  Hussein got up from his seat with a suddenness that shook the Pakistani PM, who moved a step back. Hussein rested his knuckled fist on the wooden desk and leaned forward: “I am doing my job. My job is to bring our enemies down and protect Pakistan. If I have to destroy the powerful economy of my enemies through direct action, I won’t hesitate. The Indians won’t dare attack us. Not now.
Not while we have nuclear weapons. Not while their conventional forces are still recovering from their bloody war with our Chinese allies…”

  “Now was not the time, Shakril!” the PM interjected.

  “Now was exactly the time!” Hussein thundered back with his fist pounding the desk with a loud thud. “The Indians are militarily weak. Afghanistan is almost fallen and the Americans have finally withdrawn from the region. The Chinese did most of the work for us! They so conveniently brought themselves and the Indians to their knees, perfectly placed for a swipe of our sword to cut off the Indian head! Their military is weakened, demoralized and will be occupied with the cleanup in Mumbai for weeks. Their economy, on the other hand, will never recover from this strike. Watch how all western investment within India disappears over the next year fearing another nuclear attack from the faithful mujahedeen! Mumbai is finished. And so is India for that matter.”

  As Hussein finished his tirade, the Pakistani PM stood in silence, stunned. For several seconds both men stared into the eyes of the other and silence filled the room.

  “Direct action?” the PM continued. “I fear you chose the wrong words there. You might as well have said unilateral action instead. You have left no doubt today about who runs this country. I should tender my resignation for all the good it will do. At least that way I won’t be judged by history when they review why Pakistan was turned into a radioactive wasteland for the follies of its leaders!”

  Hussein smirked and took his seat. The PM continued to stand, looking at the man before him.

  “Don’t be overdramatic, sir,” Hussein said with a voice bristling with condescension. “Your country still needs you to help it navigate out of this fearful mess. Caused by the war on terror, of course. Besides, your grateful acceptance of the Indian peace initiatives bestows you with an air of credibility as a man of peace. Use it and we will all come out of this with our heads still attached to our bodies…except the Indians of course!” Hussein smiled as he leaned back in his chair.

  “You,” the PM said, then held himself for a couple seconds as he struggled for words and attempted to contain his bursting anger. And then gave up in disgust, turning away from the desk and making for the door. At the door, he stopped and turned around:

  “Quite obviously, I am not aware of the inner working of these offices, General. But there is one aspect of all this you have not considered. Your plans are based on certain assumptions. I would not like to be present when they are proven wrong. For one thing, you assume the Indians are on their knees. Over the last several decades, many of your predecessors have assumed the same, sitting behind the very same desk as you do now. And they were wrong. To the last man. For their follies we paid with half our country, Kashmir, our Northwest Frontier provinces and our economy. And contrary to their pre-war plans, India grew big and powerful. I fear that this time we will have nothing but our lives with which to pay for your mistakes. There is nothing else left.”

  “You defeatism is noted, sir,” Hussein stated off-handedly. “But unless you have a point to make, I have things to do here! As you can imagine, the Indians are becoming very agitated along our western border. We will mobilize to remind them that such actions are foolish and ultimately worthless.”

  The PM let out a breath and looked at the floor before turning back to face the man clearly not interested in what he had to say: “The point, General, is that Mumbai isn’t Kargil and nuclear weapons are nuclear weapons. There is a threshold and it has been crossed. Now what happens is clearly beyond the hands of civilians leaders on either side. On our side you have shown me where my authority stands. But the Indians,” the PM waved his hands out of the eastward facing window, “…are not going to take this laying down. Once they find out where the trail of bread crumbs leads, they will come for us.”

  “Indeed?” Hussein said, half amused by what he considered as a civilian playing at things clearly above his head. “And how will they do that? Unlike 2008, the perpetrators for the strike on Mumbai are already dead. LET leaders have already staked the claim on the attack. Its yet another deadly terrorist attack and nothing more. They may lash out at us for action and you, my dear friend, will deliver on the back and forth between Islamabad and New-Delhi. But nothing will come off it. And Mumbai will still become deserted as an economic hub. And the rest of the Indian economy will follow soon enough. After that, the Indians will have far greater local worries to deal with as their country falters!”

  The PM grunted, amused at the confidence on display in front of him. “It’s all cut and dried, eh?”

  “Unlike you and your fellow politicians,” Hussein said as he put on his reading glasses, “my senior commanders and I work in actual deliverables, not promised ones to a raging mob. Our work is precise and surgical.”

  “Precise and surgical, General?” the PM said as he opened the door of the office while Hussein picked up the papers from his desk. “So was Kargil!” the PM slammed the door as he walked out.

  The Kargil war…Hussein thought. The PM was right on that score. Several factors had played into Pakistan’s defeat in 1999. Least of which was the underestimation of the Indian response to the occupation of the mountains around Kargil by Pakistan. Despite the overt Pakistani nuclear threat laid out by General Musharraf, New-Delhi had not stopped in its campaign to take back the peaks. Instead, it had counter-deployed its own nuclear-tipped missiles, forcing a nuclear standoff while the conventional war raged, ultimately to Pakistan’s defeat.

  The way Hussein looked at it, the problem during that war was the very clear and direct involvement of Pakistan in the fighting. And nothing galvanized the Indian public more than the specter of Pakistan claiming Indian land through military action. In his view, Musharraf and his Generals had a reasonably laid out plan, but it’s fatal flaw was the direct involvement of Pakistani troops and general presence. Such a target was what the Indians could aim their guns at.

  But that error has been rectified, hasn’t it?

  If very clear ‘non-state’ actors were doing the dirty work, Islamabad could keep its hands clean and point to the mess with sympathy. After all, it was a victim of the war on terror too…

  Now the plan required a very visible ‘defensive’ mobilization of Pakistani military to thwart an ‘unnecessarily wanton and aggressive’ New-Delhi from pursuing foolish military plans. Hussein understood that the game was about time. A month or two and the initial Indian fury would lose steam, as it always did. If he and his men could weather the storm that was sure to follow in the days to come, they would come out ahead.

  And wouldn’t that be a damn nice change? Hussein thought as he removed his glasses and cleaned the lenses with a small cloth.

  ──── 6 ────

  Malhotra sat up on the couch and rolled his legs on to the floor, letting out a deep breath. He rolled his head up to see Sinha standing near the couch, his body silhouetted against the lights in the small break room of the operations center. But he did see the navy officer smiling.

  “Don’t you have better things to be doing than waking old men from their beloved sleep!” Malhotra said and then yawned. Sinha walked over to the small kitchen area in the room and picked up two cups of tea from the various kettles lined up there. Malhotra saw that unlike himself, his colleague was immaculately dressed in his crisply ironed navy coat down to the golden stripes rank insignia.

  Damn navy! He thought with a muffled grunt. Do they always have to be so stereotypically immaculate?

  He got up and grabbed his own coat lined up on the headrest of the couch as Sinha walked over with two cups.

  “Sorry to wake you up from your beauty sleep,” Sinha said with a crooked smile, “But things have been happening that need your attention rather quickly.”

  “Good or bad?” Malhotra sipped his tea. Sinha cocked his eyebrows: “Considering things, I am not sure what ‘good’ would mean or even look like.”

  So true…Malhotra thought as the hot drink began having its
effect, though his eyes probably would still be bloodshot from the long and extremely busy day.

  “Anyway,” Sinha walked over to the table where his papers were stacked. He put down the cup and removed a couple of files marked with red and black stripes along its borders. He handed it to Malhotra.

  “What’s this?” Malhotra opened the files and saw the title at the top of the page: OVERHEAD IMAGERY REQUESTS, AIR HEADQUARTERS, PRIORITY ZULU. He glanced further down to see that the request came directly from the top brass of the air-force. Further down the page were a list of latitude and longitude coordinates for about one dozen locations. From the rough grids memorized to Malhotra now from the China war, he recognized some of the locations…

  “Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir?” He said.

  Sinha nodded. “Sounds like the balloon is about to go up.” Malhotra re-read the tasking orders and timelines. “And it looks like your boys in Kashmir are going to go clean up the house across the line-of-control.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Malhotra said as he reached the last page of the file and then looked up: “Where’s the rest of this stuff?”

  “That’s all they deemed for us to know,” Sinha noted dryly. Malhotra sighed and made a mental note to try and call up Air-chief-marshal Bhosale to find out more about these locations. He tossed the closed file back on the table.

  “What’s our readiness for this?” Malhotra pointed to the file on the table. “Keeping our commitment to the disaster management teams in Mumbai?” Both men collected their files and papers and prepared to head back into the operations room.

  “Two birds,” Sinha noted. “RISATs.”

  “Okay,” Sinha said as he reached the door for the operations center and turned to wait for his colleague to catch up to him. “Send out tasking orders for the two birds and let’s find out what is at those coordinates.”