The Prime Minister's Reprisal
When Singh reached the Prime Minister's office, Kahan was on the phone with Petrov, President of the Russian Federation. The Prime Minister was angrily demanding that Russia do everything possible to stop China from passing Su-27 fighters and long-range missiles to Pakistan. Petrov said, with regret, that this was unlikely to be possible, since China had been licence-producing the entire family of aircraft for years. Even if a decade-old government agreement were dredged up, it appeared no instrument was available to prevent China from transferring its own production. As for the Russian-pattern long-range missiles, Russia would also struggle to interfere; many weapons contracts contained strict third-party transfer prohibitions, but the medium-range missiles in question were very likely manufactured in Ukraine. At the end of the call, Petrov suggested Kahan could halt Indian imports of T-90 tank spares from Ukraine as a punitive measure.1
The disappointing call ended. The secretary came in to advise that Singh had been waiting outside for some time. Kahan reckoned Singh might bring him some new approach. He sensed in advance that whatever Singh had thought of would be very hard-edged. It seemed worth at least listening to. He had the secretary admit the Defence Minister.
Singh had long since predicted that approaches to Russia would be like playing music to a cow. Just as it had been impossible, in earlier years, to stop China from putting Russian engines on the Thunder, Russian diplomacy always followed the immediate ledger. They watched every coin that might appear on the battlefield. If a longer war meant India consuming more aircraft and other ordnance, Petrov was unquestionably content to see it. Within two months the greedy Rosoboronexport would find another excuse to push another round of price increases. Petrov's calculation now was probably to put a few million dollars' worth of Russian engines on those very Chinese aircraft going to Pakistan.
"We cannot rely on a country with no principles. The only one we can rely on now is ourselves." Singh's opening line went straight at the matter. Kahan was roused.
"Chaman came by this morning. New intelligence: China has transferred ten of their copy Sukhoi fighters to Pakistan's Special Flying Squadron, the Air Force Combat Training Squadron. An elite training unit. They have replaced the No. 5 Squadron's losses without breaking a sweat."
"Director Chaman is always slow with his news. He spends too much money in Hong Kong. He never anticipated that Pakistani pilots could adapt to these heavy fighters as quickly as they have. Which says a great deal: for years, the Chinese and Pakistani air forces have been flying each other's aircraft."
"Spare me the post-mortem. Have you brought me anything useful, my friend?"
"Yes, sir. I think it is time to make the Chinese pay a price. If we do not move decisively against their support for Pakistan, their next steps will be more brazen still."
"Mm. Let me hear it."
"I think we can teach them a small lesson at sea. There is nothing they can do in that direction."
"You mean to intercept their merchant ships?"
"Yes. Under international law, our navy is permitted to conduct certain necessary inspections of their merchantmen."
"On the high seas?"
"In the Indian Ocean." Singh quietly amended his tutor's phrasing. He had always felt that the Indian Ocean was not the high seas.2
"Go on." Kahan hesitated, then encouraged him to continue.
"Helicopters and a warship; a boarding inspection of one of their cargo ships, then release. I think the warning would be sufficient."
"I am afraid the opposite. A direct boarding will only inflame China. Particularly while our trade with them has not stopped."
"Then, under the cover of a naval exercise, force a Chinese convoy off its course. Or fire a few rounds across the bow of one of their freighters." Singh went on. His suggestions were drifting further and further from the bearing a senior official ought to keep.
"Let me think… I need to think." the Prime Minister said. The Defence Minister's blunt instrument did not quite suit him.
The next evening, the destroyer INS Mumbai,3 on station 400 nautical miles southwest of the Maldives, suddenly received new orders. Suspend the routine anti-submarine patrol. Plot a new course for a designated area. Intercept a Chinese-flagged bulk carrier, the Jin Wang, due to pass through. Do not board. Use warnings to compel her to leave her transit lane. Do not allow her to enter Karachi.
Captain Kirish4 was somewhat startled when he read the signal. His ship had until then been sweeping for any Pakistani diesel-electric boats that might have slipped through. Nobody had told him he was about to intercept a civilian vessel. Orders were orders. Mumbai turned at once for the designated area. With a ruler and dividers Kirish worked the chart. By tomorrow noon he could intercept the elderly Chinese bulker, only days out of the Strait of Malacca. Car Nicobar in the Andaman Sea was India's easternmost reconnaissance base, and the Indian Air Force station there had been monitoring all shipping traffic in and out of the Strait. From these accurate reports, the captain knew exactly how long the freighter would need to reach her destination port.
In truth Kirish was not entirely clear what he was supposed to do. If he could not board, how was he to drive a Chinese freighter off? That was a question. The signal seemed deliberately silent on whether he could use any specific means or weapons. And if the other vessel did not stop, what then? He felt as though he had been turned into a stick poked into an international quarrel. If matters drifted in a direction the government did not want, would the government make him the scapegoat? He had to keep one eye open. He had to think of the upside as well: he could use the tasking to drill the crew.
The destroyer had been in service over a decade and a number of awkward problems remained. Too much electromagnetic equipment had been crammed into too small a space, with no sound scheme to manage the interference. In service, the surface-search radar in the 3-centimetre band caused electromagnetic compatibility problems with the Plank Shave fire-control radar.5 The result was false targets on the radar display, which made the surface-search radar and the SS-N-25 missile incompatible in simultaneous operation.6 For ten years the navy had not seriously studied a fix; it seemed shutting the surface-search radar off during live exercises was an acceptable workaround. With a major war on, that kind of slip might be fatal. Shifting the surface-search radar to the 5-centimetre or 10-centimetre band was the quickest option, though that would unquestionably interfere with the 100-millimetre gun's Kite Screech fire-control radar.7 The compromise of running them on alternating cycles was workable. All such hypotheses, for the moment, lived only in the captain's head. He needed a real exercise. A 19,000-tonne freighter was a fair target for one.
At dawn the next morning, Mumbai's embarked Sea King helicopter lifted off to search. Within an hour it had picked up the Jin Wang 140 kilometres out, plodding along.
1. Petrov, Russian arms exports, and the Ukraine workaround: A reference to the long-running issue of whether Russian end-use clauses on the Su-27 family bind China's licence-built variants. The novel's position, voiced through Singh's reasoning, is that they do not in practice. The reference to Ukrainian missile production is also pointed: the SS-N-25/Kh-35 family has historically been associated with Ukrainian production lines under the Zorya-Mashproekt and related industrial chain. Petrov's barbed suggestion that Kahan retaliate by cutting T-90 spares purchases from Ukraine is the same Petrov who, in C17N2, was identified as the Russian fighter pilot Sami had shot down over Afghanistan in 1988. The personal antipathy is no longer hypothetical. ↩
2. "In the Indian Ocean": Singh's substitution of "在印度洋上" for the prepared "在公海上" (on the high seas) is a small but characteristic moment. The Indian Ocean is, in international law, simply that part of the high seas; Singh's phrasing erases the legal category and asserts a notional Indian sphere of authority over the basin. The Chinese narration flags it directly: "he had always felt that the Indian Ocean was not the high seas." The thought is not new in Indian strategic writing of the period, but voicing it out loud to the Prime Minister is. ↩
3. INS Mumbai: A real Indian Navy destroyer of the Delhi class (Project 15), commissioned in 2001 as the third of three. Displacement around 6,200 tonnes, equipped with the Sea King utility helicopter, two 100-millimetre AK-100 main guns and the SS-N-25/Kh-35 Uran anti-ship missile. The Chinese names the ship 孟买号. ↩
4. Captain Kirish: New character; commanding officer of INS Mumbai. The Chinese 基里什 admits several plausible Indian-name back-readings (Krishan, Kishore, Girish among them); Kirish is retained here as the closest direct phonetic. ↩
5. Plank Shave (薄板): NATO reporting name for the 3Ts-25E Garpun-Bal target-designation radar associated with the SS-N-25 surface-launched anti-ship missile. The Chinese 薄板 ("thin plank") is a direct rendering of the NATO codeword. ↩
6. SS-N-25: The NATO designation for the 3M24/Kh-35 anti-ship missile family (Russian: Switchblade), a subsonic sea-skimmer roughly comparable in concept to the American Harpoon. The Delhi class carries 16 of them in two quad-cell launchers per side. ↩
7. Kite Screech (鸢鸣): The NATO reporting name for the MR-145 fire-control radar associated with the 100-millimetre AK-100 naval gun. The Chinese 鸢鸣 ("kite cry") again tracks the NATO codeword directly. The captain's working compromise of running surface-search and gun-direction radars on alternating cycles is the kind of pragmatic fix the novel keeps quietly noting on every side: the wartime patches are everyone's, not just one navy's. ↩