Day Two
Captain Matanga attempted a diving escape, but acceleration was not the Mirage's strength. Within seconds the missiles, guided by their own active radar, closed in. The captain deployed electronic countermeasures, dispensed several bundles of chaff, and barely evaded the first missile with a break exceeding 9.5g. The crushing overload pressed him into the seat and he very nearly blacked out. Then the second missile detonated, and the blast jolted him awake. He looked back and saw that the right wing, the one with the tiger painted on it, had been torn off. He pulled the ejection handle, jettisoned the canopy, and fired himself clear of the aircraft.
"Major, nicely done." Sami said. Song Ning did not answer.
"I have a suggestion. We could leave no one alive." The group captain seemed to be hinting that there were ways to kill the Indian pilots dangling from their parachutes.
"Absolutely not. You will not do that. I suggest you have the ground forces collect the prisoners of war. Everything can be explained after the war."
"Fine. I'll hand them over to an army patrol." Sami switched to the ground frequency and spent a moment relaying the approximate coordinates of the two landing sites. They were over a hundred kilometres from the border; the Indian pilots had essentially no chance of escape.
In the last light of the setting sun, the two aircraft flew toward Peshawar. For a long time the radio was silent. Song Ning's mood was black, and he did not want to talk. He had just scored his first combat kill, and it was quite possibly the first kill by a Chinese Air Force pilot in more than thirty years. But he felt no pride in it. The engagement could have been avoided entirely. Sami's aggression had dragged them into the fight, and Song Ning had been coerced into participating. Being coerced was the thing he hated most in the world.
"I'm glad you didn't hesitate in the end." Sami's voice slithered through the radio, trying to break the ice.
"Fuck your mother." Song Ning replied wearily, in Chinese. He was certain the group captain could not understand.
Sure enough, Sami was silent for a moment. He apparently took it for a pleasantry.
"You're too kind. We are brothers, always."
The first day of full-scale war ended in confusion and shock. On the surface, the Indian Air Force had achieved an overwhelming advantage. Pakistani air-war command had collapsed under the weight of the all-out assault. The sole blemish appeared late in the afternoon: a Mirage formation launched from Gwalior did not return to base. The flight had been beyond ground-radar coverage when it disappeared, and voice recordings were sparse, a consequence of having penetrated too deep. By late evening, Air Headquarters staff were behind closed doors reviewing what had gone wrong. The attack on Khushab's heavy-water plant had in fact been the day's single most important objective; many of the strikes on northern targets had been diversions. Yet most of the staff could see no reason why a target that deep merited the risk.
At dawn, Air Chief Marshal Bifrata left the review and flew from Gwalior to New Delhi for an emergency meeting at the Ministry of Defence. He was seething. The Khushab strike had never been part of Air Headquarters' plan. The target was too remote, and his staff had consistently judged it of marginal value. It had been a "political mission," imposed by Defence Minister Singh a week earlier. Now it had cost him dearly, and he did not intend to shoulder the blame.
Bifrata arrived at the Ministry and was led by a secretary into an office. Singh was in shirtsleeves, standing before a huge map, gesturing expansively. His staff were marking positions and planting coloured flags on the map with tremendous seriousness; evidently they had been at it all night. The scene struck Bifrata as absurd. Singh was apparently drafting a ground-offensive plan to replace the one being prepared by Pasad's Army Staff. The man could not seem to tell the difference between the Ministry of Defence and the armed forces' own chain of command. He had clearly never commanded anything larger than a regiment, yet here he was planning corps-level operations.
"Ah, Air Chief Marshal. Welcome." Singh came over, looking invigorated.
"I don't have much time, Minister. I need to get back to Gwalior to direct the 40th Wing's next cycle of operations."
"That's exactly why I asked you here. I know yesterday's Khushab strike failed, so we need to change our approach. I want the 40th Wing to try again."
"With respect, Minister, I do not believe this target is worth a second attempt. Khushab is 950 kilometres from Gwalior. No. 1 or No. 7 Squadron's Mirage 2000Hs cannot penetrate that far and then attack a heavily defended area."
"No, no. Things are more complicated than you think. Yesterday's failure had particular reasons."
"Particular reasons?"
"Yes. Come with me. I'd like to introduce you to some friends. They are Director Chaman's friends, actually, but they are eager to meet you."
"Meet me?"
Singh walked out and led the puzzled Air Chief Marshal upstairs into an elegant conference room. Three foreigners were already waiting. When Singh and Bifrata entered, they stood. They wore dark suits and ties; they looked neither like diplomats nor like pure technicians. Bifrata thought they looked like military men, and he immediately guessed they were Israeli.
"These are our Israeli friends. Major General Amos.1 He has been waiting here for fifteen minutes." Singh said.
The unsmiling Amos stepped forward and shook Bifrata's hand. The Air Chief Marshal's second guess followed swiftly: the Khushab strike was connected to these men.
Singh did not introduce the other two. He went straight into his argument: "Yesterday, Major General Amos and his people were at Southwest Air Command in Jaipur."
"Why was I not informed of this?" Bifrata asked, his tone openly accusatory.
"The Intelligence Bureau has the authority to place its personnel wherever necessary. Besides, things were urgent. Chaman reported only to me."
"Minister, since when do you run the Home Ministry?" Bifrata's sarcasm did not faze Singh, who waved it off and continued.
"When the Tiger flight went missing, Major General Amos's people, using their latest equipment, captured some information. Would you like to know what it is?"
"The Tiger flight was at low altitude throughout. Ground radar could not track them continuously, so we have very little useful data."
"Precisely, Air Chief Marshal. Radar did not track them." Amos spoke up.
"But we recorded the radio communications of the fighters in the area at the time. The Tigers', and the enemy's…" Amos spoke slowly, then turned and signalled to one of his subordinates. The man lifted a compact case from the floor, set it on the table, and opened it. Bifrata had seen enough to recognise the device: a signals-intelligence decryption unit. He kept his expression neutral and waited.
"We recorded a number of exchanges between pilots over the radio. The communications were encrypted, of course, but crudely. We broke the encryption in twenty minutes." The general nodded to his man, who pressed a button. The playback began.
"Major, do you know why Air Headquarters never bought your medium-range missile?"2 Sami's voice filled the room.
"How would I know? I don't do arms-trade negotiations." Song Ning's reply followed.
"Ha. Because the missile contains Israeli technology, and part of our funding comes from Saudi Arabia."
…
"What are you waiting for? Shoot down the wingman, now."
"No. I will not do that. It would be a grave breach of discipline."
The edited recording ended. Bifrata stood motionless.
1. Major General Amos (艾莫斯少将): A fictional Israeli intelligence and electronic-warfare officer. His presence at Southwest Air Command in Jaipur during the Khushab strike, unknown to the Indian Air Chief Marshal, establishes that Israel's involvement in the war predates the fighting. The novel treats Israel's interest as narrowly focused on preventing Pakistani nuclear materials from reaching other Muslim states or non-state actors. ↩
2. The intercepted recording: The Israelis have decoded the radio exchanges between Sami and Song Ning from Chapter 28 and Chapter 31. The conversation is conducted partly in English (Sami's side) and partly in Chinese (Song Ning's side), with the Chinese portions flagged. This is the mechanism by which India discovers Chinese involvement in the air war. The SD-10's Israeli technology connection, mentioned by Sami as a throwaway remark, now becomes evidence of Chinese weapons being used in combat. ↩