Dragonfire (2 page)

Milton Ashdown – Ambassador to Moscow

Ennio Barber – Presidential adviser

Tom Bloodworth – National Security Advisor

David Booth – Head of CIA

John Hastings – President

Joan Holden – Secretary of State

Stuart Hollingworth – Commerce Secretary

Alvin Jebb – Defense Secretary

Charles Nugent – White House Chief of Staff

Reece Overhalt – Ambassador to Beijing

Arthur Watkins – Ambassador to Islamabad

In a perfect
world, communities aspiring to development should not go to war. But time and time again common sense is turned on its head. Even societies whose standards
of living are rising rapidly use the excitement of nationalism to balance either the treadmill of economic growth or the weakness of corrupt leadership. Yugoslavia, Iraq and swathes of Africa at
once come to mind and danger signals are now flashing in Pakistan, India and China.

In May 1998, both India and Pakistan carried out nuclear tests, elevating hostilities to a new, more menacing level. Asia, still wracked with poverty and conflict, now has three declared
nuclear-weapons powers.

India and Pakistan have been in conflict for half a century. Pakistan and China have a long-standing military alliance. India and China have already fought one war and disagree on how to handle
restless nationalism in Tibet.

But a far more forceful momentum is also sweeping across those two enormous countries, a sense that as empires come and empires go, at some stage the power of the United States will wane and
another great power will rise up to move into the vacuum. This ambition, and an impatience to force events, has made Asia an unpredictable and dangerous place for all of us.

China’s naval advances into the Indian Ocean and occupation of islands in the South China Sea are evidence that it is willing to anger its neighbours in order to test its military reach.
India’s determination to press ahead with its nuclear programme and name China as its main long-term threat suggests a deeper degree of hostility than at first realized.

Both countries have weak conventional military systems and only minimal nuclear forces. But that is no guarantee that either country will not make a military bid for regional leadership in the
years to come.

In
Dragon Strike: The Millennium War
(Sidgwick & Jackson 1997), Simon Holberton and I described a scenario in which China takes control of the South China Sea. It attacks its
long-standing enemy, Vietnam, occupies the Spratly and Paracel groups of islands, and deploys submarines in the sea lanes to the Indian Ocean. When the United States intervenes by sending a warship
into the area, it is sunk by a Chinese submarine with heavy loss of life.

Pacifist Japan reacts by carrying out a nuclear test, uncertain that it can continue to count on American military protection. Much of South East Asia, looking to the long-term future, gives
tacit support to China.

American, British, Australian and New Zealand warships fight their way into the South China Sea. As China’s fleet faces destruction, American satellite imagery shows nuclear missiles being
prepared for launch.

The prospect of a nuclear attack on an American city is enough to force a rethink in Washington about how to deal with China.

Simon Holberton and I described
Dragon Strike
as a future history.
Dragon Fire
is even more so. Developments in Asia are moving so fast that on several occasions my writing was
overtaken by events. What was fiction one day became historical fact the next.

The characters of the novel are more the individual countries than the people who run them. Loyalties, betrayals, aspirations and scars of history are played out on a political and military
stage through the eyes of India, Pakistan, China and others.

If China and India’s security aspirations for Asia converge with each other and with those of the United States and Japan, there is no cause for alarm. That, however, would be an ambitious
formula. If either China’s or India’s intentions are being underestimated and the danger signs are swept under the carpet, the impact on world peace could be the most catastrophic since
the end of the Second World War.

Briefing

Tibet

Tibet forms a strategic buffer between India and China, and Beijing is uncompromising about policies there. Chinese troops invaded Tibet in October 1950, a year after the Communist
Party victory. In 1959 Tibet’s spiritual and political ruler, the Dalai Lama, was forced into exile during an uprising against Chinese occupation. Since then, he has lived in India. The
international community recognizes Chinese suzerainty – or control – over Tibet. Although Tibetan nationalism has won great sympathy in the West, the Dalai Lama’s campaign of
non-violence has failed to deliver back the homeland. Many of the younger generation have become frustrated and have proposed a more confrontational approach against China. Little known to the
outside world, the Indian army maintains a unit of Tibetan commandos, specifically trained to operate in Tibet behind Chinese lines. It is known as the Special Frontier Force.

Dehra Dun, Uttar Pradesh, India

Local time: 0200 Thursday 3 May 2007
GMT: 2030 Wednesday 2 May 2007

The Antonov-32 transport
plane was parked at the end of the runway, half hidden from view by a camouflaged screen. The airstrip at Dehra Dun, in the foothills of the
Himalayas, was mainly for civilian use and was guarded by only unarmed policemen. Although a cantonment town, steeped in military tradition, Dehra Dun was not like a town in Kashmir or the Punjab,
considered to be under any serious threat of attack from terrorism.

Fifteen minutes before take-off, a company of men secured the Dehra Dun airstrip. They tied up the police guards, held them in the civilian waiting area, and made radio contact from the control
tower, giving an all-clear for take-off. The Antonov taxied onto the runway, laden with thirty men and equipment, weighing in at 24,000 kilograms. The pilot let the aircraft cover 2,000 feet of
runway before lifting off.

It climbed sharply to 25,000 feet and turned. The winter had been mild this year. Much of the snow had melted already on the lower ground, and the night was dark and clear as only the air
sweeping through the Himalayas could be. For those in the Antonov, the awesome, inhospitable and magical mountains were home, land they should have fought harder for long ago and land worth dying
for. Instead of flying due east, the pilot took the longer route over Nepal, because there was no effective radar or air-defence system to cover it. They would be briefly vulnerable over the Indian
state of Sikkim, then move into the airspace of the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, where the pilot would take the plane down to the lowest altitude possible among the mountain peaks.

The man leading the operation, Major Gendun Choedrak of the Special Frontier Force (SFF), had been lucky to get his hands on an AN-32. It first went into operation in 1986 and was chosen by the
Indian forces over its British, Canadian and Italian rivals. Its capability over the treacherous wastelands of the Siachen Glacier was second to none. The cargo ramp was superb and enabled loads to
be dropped by drag parachutes. It handled excellently at high airstrip altitudes, being able to take off from bases as high as 14,500 feet, and it had set new standards on payload-to-height ratio
and for sustaining altitude.

The men were equipped with AK-47 assault rifles, MP-5 sub-machine guns and 9mm Uzis, all more suited to close-quarter engagements than the standard commando issue of 7.62mm assault rifles and
Sterling Mk 4 sub-machine guns. Thirty paratroopers were on the plane, four of them qualified marksmen, using the 7.62mm SGG-2000 sniper rifle. The commandos had discarded their uniforms for
civilian clothes. Most carried cyanide capsules first used by the Tibetan fighters during the uprising. Many had photographs of the Dalai Lama in the top pocket of their shirts. The Indian
air-force livery on the plane had been replaced by Chinese military markings. Chinese charts and books had been put in the aircraft to be found among the wreckage in case of a crash.

Seven days earlier, Choedrak had infiltrated two hundred men across the border in units of four and five. They were disguised as herdsmen and lightly armed, although many units carried mortars
and anti-tank weapons. Sixty were to go to the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, even travelling with livestock and, when suitable, making themselves known at Chinese military checkpoints in the hope they
would be recognized and let through on the way back. The others were to lay up to help with the escape. They were equipped with tiny, frequency-hopping radios, and Choedrak had heard nothing from
them so assumed they were now in position and safe.

Using GPS satellite positions, the Antonov navigator programmed a course through the valleys to avoid detection by Chinese radar. The plan would only work if the weather held and the
paratroopers could drop from as little as 1,000 feet. The men expected 10 per cent casualties. The injured would be on their own until the operation was over. The pilot’s speed was just over
480 k.p.h. He announced they had reached their cruising altitude, and the men settled down for a two-hour journey.

They were commanded by his immediate deputy, Captain Tsangpo Jamyang. Choedrak himself was not on the plane.

Choedrak would be flying in by helicopter. He was thirty-seven years old and a member of the Khampas, a warrior race from eastern Tibet, which had led the 1959 resistance against Chinese
occupation. His father had joined the Special Frontier Force on 14 November 1962, the day it was set up, when India had just been defeated in a border war. The SFF was based in Chakrata, 60
kilometres from the Himalayan city of Dehra Dun and 300 kilometres south-west of the Tibetan border. It started with twelve thousand men who were trained specifically to conduct covert operations
behind Chinese lines. It became a tested rapid-deployment force, skilled in rock climbing, sabotage, airborne operations, spy photography, surveillance and guerrilla warfare. Choedrak remembered
the SFF fighting in Bangladesh, Kashmir, on the Siachen Glacier and during the Kargil war of 1999. But he had never had the chance to go into action against the Chinese in his own country.

Choedrak sensed that several Tibetans in the Special Frontier Force suspected his operation, but were keeping their mouths shut. Commandeering aircrew and mechanics could only be done under
limited secrecy. When he told his Tibetan colonel that he wanted to take 150 men on a training mission to the Siliguri corridor just south of Darjeeling, permission was given without question.

As the Antonov climbed on the first stages of its journey towards Lhasa, Choedrak was more than 1,600 kilometres away in another aircraft, an Mi-26 helicopter with sixty SFF commandos. It was
ungainly, noisy and for weeks he had tried to get something more suited to the operation ahead. With eight thirty-five-metre rotor blades, the Mi-26 was the world’s most powerful helicopter,
but it was purely a logistics aircraft, not designed for fast manoeuvres or offensive action. Its armaments were defensive. The sealed flight deck and passenger compartment directly behind were
armoured, and the crew had state-of-the-art night-flying instruments, including an active interference system against heat-seeking missiles.

Thirty minutes earlier, the Mi-26 had landed to refuel at an SFF Wing Headquarters outside the town of Rabangla in the mountain state of Sikkim, just fifty kilometres from the Tibetan border.
With auxiliary fuel tanks the Mi-26 had a range of 2,000 kilometres. Choedrak planned to go in with full tanks just in case there was a chance to fulfil the mission and fly back out again.

Getting hold of the Mi-26 had been one of the most complex tasks of the mission. Choedrak had commandeered it from the Indian air force’s 126 Helicopter Unit, based in Chandigarh, claiming
it was needed for a counter-insurgency training exercise operation (COIN) near Darjeeling. This was the area where India’s tense north-eastern states were joined to the rest of the country by
a narrow strip of territory only 110 kilometres wide. Nepal lay to the west and Bangladesh to the east. Over the past ten years, insurgencies had spread from the east and the region was wracked
with separatist violence. For Choedrak it was a perfect cover.

He identified a Tibetan pilot willing to fly and faked an intricate set of orders, originating at the helicopter base in Chandigarh. The aircraft was flown to the SFF headquarters in Chakrata,
110 kilometres to the east, where it landed under the cover of darkness. Once there, all Indian markings were removed and the helicopter was painted in desert/snow camouflage colours, with streaks
of green and small Chinese military markings on the fuselage. From Chakrata it flew at low level, barely 250 feet above the ground across Nepali airspace, into Sikkim 1,200 kilometres away.

The tiny military base had received a message from Chandigarh that the aircraft was on a classified special forces mission and needed refuelling. Faced with a commando unit of blackened faces
and Choedrak’s forged order papers, the base commander gave the SFF what they wanted.

The weather was clear when the pilot lifted the aircraft off from Rabangla. The stars over the plateau were more brilliant than he had ever seen them before. With its cruising speed of 250
k.p.h., Choedrak expected to be over Lhasa in two hours and probably dead an hour after that. He had not told his family. A letter was to be sent to them from Chakrata. Choedrak turned to the
pilot, who gave him the thumbs-up signal, and pointed the helicopter through the mountains to rendezvous with the Antonov and the guerrilla fighters who should be on the outskirts of Lhasa waiting
for them.

Drapchi Prison, Lhasa, Tibet

Local time: 0700 Thursday 3 May 2007
GMT: 2300 Wednesday 2 May 2007

In the past
week the beatings had started again, just like when he had first arrived at the prison sixteen years before. They had forgotten about his good behaviour and
his proclaimed loyalty to the Communist Party as if they had never happened. Six days earlier, shortly after 0500, they had hauled him out of the cell alone. Outside the temperature hovered just
above freezing. They hadn’t let him put on his shoes and his skin was torn on cold, hard ground as they dragged him across the yard. They kicked him and hit him behind the knees with a metal
rod so that he stumbled. Once in the interrogation room, they said they were going to kill him. Then they tied him up to the wall and gave him electric shocks.