The Fourth War (4 page)

“Climb to eighteen,” the lead pilot replied.

The military controller studied his flight schedule. Kama checked out. The flight of two F-16s were scheduled for a CAP, or combat air patrol, over the disputed territory of Kashmir. The Indians, the enemy, were at it again. For the past several days, the monkeys had raised their ugly heads and were shelling the Pakistani forward positions, just like they did every fall. It was an annual tradition both sides looked forward to, a final opportunity to kill each other before winter set in.

Inside the lead aircraft, the commander reached down and turned the numbers on his transponder code, dialing in 4113 as he had been instructed, then hit the coolie hat (a small four-way switch) on his control stick to bounce out a quick signal to the radar controller. The air-traffic controller picked up the hit as a momentary green flash on his radar display. The numbers 4113 illuminated under the hit.

“Bengal, radar contact,” the control then said. “Expect a climb to thirty-thousand in twenty miles.”

In front of the F-16s, a hundred miles in the distance, Mount Nanga Parbat loomed up to its height of 26,650 feet. The Himalayan and Zaskar mountain ranges ran on both sides of Mount Nanga Parbat, a line of hostile and barren mountains that extended east to the heart of Kashmir. The fighters would have to climb over the mountains to get to their combat area. Below the fighters there was only darkness, no indication of human life at all. As far as the pilot could see there was nothing but sheer granite walls, barren rock, and valleys so narrow a donkey couldn't make its way through. To avoid hitting the mountains, the fighters would have to soon begin to climb to get above thirty thousand feet.

Nudging gently on his stick, the commander turned northeast, setting a course toward Kama, the handoff point where he would switch over to the combat controllers. His wingman stayed carefully tucked off his wing, three feet and slightly aft, using the commander's formation lights as a reference to remain in position. Throughout the sortie, the pilot in the number two aircraft would mimic his leader in every way. Even his transponder was in standby, so as not to radiate a radar hit, thus allowing ATC to view the two fighters as one entity, which for practical purposes was exactly what they were.

The two F-16s climbed easily into the night sky. Even with a full combat load, it only took a few minutes to level off at eighteen thousand feet. The lead pilot then waggled his wings, commanding a trail position. His wingman backed into a position behind his leader, allowing space for the two pilots to complete their combat checklist. The wing commander went through his checklist very quickly, turning off his exterior lights, arming his weapons, tuning his radar to an air-to-air mode, then setting the correct combat codes into his Identification Friend or Foe so that he would be properly identified.

“Buddy Spike,” he heard over his radio. His threat-warning receiver momentarily buzzed as his wingman threw a beam of radar energy over his plane. Now two miles behind him, the young flight lieutenant was checking his radar by tracking his leader.

“Buddy Lock,” his wingman said as he locked up his lead. The commander's threat receiver became still. His wingman had completed his radar check.

“Bengal, go secure,” the commander commanded over the strike radio.

Reaching down, the commander synched up his secure radio, ensuring the Indian combat controllers would not be able to intercept their radio conversations. Keying the mike, he muttered in Urdu, “Two, take the lead for a Buddy Spike check.”

“Wilco. Say airspeed.”

“Three hundred fifty knots.”

“I have you at my twelve o'clock. I'll be on your right side.”

The commander waited. The moon was less than a quarter and it was very dark. He saw a quick shadow pass beside him as his wingman passed fifty feet off his right. Glancing through his HUD, he watched the second Pakistani jet move out before him. He checked his airspeed and adjusted his altitude, then slew his radar to the right, moving the disk to look for the other F-16. As the second fighter passed through the seventy-degree arc, the APG-68 radar began to track its position, the little fighter showing very clearly on his multifunction display.

“Tally,” the commander announced. “Two, you have the lead.”

“Bengal flight, check,” the new flight leader replied.

“Two,” the commander answered. He was now the wingman.

The commander pulled back his throttles and slipped to a half-mile trail. The lieutenant, the new leader, moved out ahead. “Buddy Spike,” the commander said as he threw a tacking beam on his leader. He watched the lead aircraft for a moment, then flipped a switch on his throttle to arm up a missile.

“Buddy Lock,” he said as he locked onto the target. A warble emitted in his headset as a tracking pipper locked up the target on his Heads-Up Display. The computer-generated tracking box remained frozen over the lead F-16. The target flew straight and level. From this position, the commander could use either his missiles or guns. He thought for a moment, then flipped the switch to select his M-61 20 mm cannon. The tracking box shifted momentarily as the new computer software kicked in, then settled over the target as firm as a rock. It was too dark to see his target visually, but the commander didn't mind. The radar guided his actions, telling him where to fire the gun.

The fire-control computer emitted a buzzing growl in his ears. The pilot moved his finger, resting it on the trigger. His hands were sweaty, though within he was calm.

For a moment he paused. The young lieutenant was his friend. He had a wife and four children. He was a good man. But he couldn't be trusted, so what choice did he have?

The commander held his breath and pressed the trigger on his cannon, letting off a three-second burst. His F-16 shuddered as the cannon fired almost two hundred shells. The left side of his aircraft emitted a tiny cloud of acidic smoke that was washed away in the slipstream and sucked up by the night. The tracers glowed before him, a stream of dull orange and red, snakelike, alive, reaching for the oblivious F-16. The pilot fired again, putting out another two-second burst to shatter the air.

He peered through his canopy, watching the trail of light, the thin, snarling line of 20mm shells. As he watched, time seemed to compress—temporal distortion, they called it. Every second took a minute and every thought came with piercing clarity.

The target F-16 flew evenly through the night. Inside the cockpit, the lieutenant was looking down, studying his charts and his navigational display. The only indication he had of his oncoming demise was a brief reflection of the tracers against his canopy glass. He looked up very quickly, but it was already too late.

Between fifty and sixty shells impacted the jet. The aft engine bay was the first thing to go, the engine exploding into a thousand pieces of burning debris, igniting the fuel that sloshed in the blended-wing tanks. Eight thousand pounds of jet fuel went up in flames. Pieces of wreckage shot out from the center of the fire as the F-16 shattered into a thousand smoldering pieces. The fireball grew and illuminated the sky, smoky and thick. Chunks of wing and fuselage tumbled in every direction, colliding together with incredible force. Mixed in the debris were the pilot's remains. The torso and legs were still strapped to the ejection seat, though the head and the shoulders were now tumbling somewhere else. The pieces of wreckage twisted as they fell, then settled into an elliptical pattern, which scattered over the mountains for ten miles.

 

The commander watched the fireball with very little emotion. Reaching down, he checked his switches, then pushed the jet over into a very steep dive.

“Mayday! Mayday!” he began to scream in his mask. “Bengal is going down.” He paused for effect. “Bengal…midair collision! My wingman is gone!” Reaching down, the commander turned off his transponder to make his aircraft disappear from the controller's radar display.

“Bengal!” the controller called out in a panic.

“Mayday!”
the commander shouted. “Midair collision, I've lost everything!” He paused once again. “Bengal's going down. I've got to eject!” The commander released the broadcast switch on the radio.

That was enough to keep them guessing for the next hour or two. And all he needed was a few minutes before this thing was through.

Switching his avionics over to air-to-ground mode, he pulled up the FLIR and ground-mapping radar to check his position against the rising terrain. He pushed the aircraft over into a fifteen-degree dive, watching carefully as the terrain screamed up to meet him. If there was danger in this mission, it was during this phase, as the commander flew at a low level to avoid the radar sites on the mountains north of Islamabad. Though he peered through the night, it didn't do any good. It was too dark. He was going to have to rely on his machine.

Turning sharply, he settled at an altitude of ten thousand feet, then slowly made his way down to terrain flying altitude. The aircraft screamed along at three hundred feet, following a narrow valley that led to the plains, then lurched suddenly, pushing the pilot up in his seat, as a bubble of turbulence threw the little fighter around. His forward-looking infrared turned night into day, showing the way, giving him a picture of the terrain that was falling before him. The pilot concentrated on the flying; night operations were difficult and he wasn't well trained. But it wouldn't be long before he climbed again.

The pilot turned the aircraft to two hundred and fifty degrees, flying toward his next target. He adjusted his course a few degrees to the north, wanting to pass over the secret villa on the lake. Flying over the enormous lodge, a brown rock-and-log building nestled between the lake and a clear mountain stream, he hit his afterburner, sending a thirty-foot flame out his engine exhaust. He glanced down at the villa, which glistened in the moonlight, and wondered if the Pakistani Foreign Minister was already dead.

Shin Bet Auxiliary Outpost
Twelve Miles South of Tel Aviv

The American agents watched the multiple displays from KH-21. There was too much information, far more than the Israeli control room was able to show at one time. While Peter studied the control displays, Bradley was talking on two secure phones at once, his voice always calm, though his eyes were sober, sullen, and intense as a man walking his final steps on death row. Through one receiver, he talked to the control room at the NRO, through the other he spoke to the operations director at Langley.

“Anything at the military complex north of Islamabad?” Bradley asked into the phone in his right hand. He listened, glanced at Peter, and shook his head no.

“Have them check the storage facility at Sukkur!” Peter commanded. He knew where to look. He wanted to reach for the phone—this relaying through Bradley was driving him nuts. Bradley nodded impatiently at Peter and repeated what he said, then listened while hunching his shoulders anxiously. Peter took a step toward him. “The Sukkur military depot,” he tried to explain. “Sind Provence. Eastern Pakistan. Last report, that's were they were!”

Bradley spoke to the controller at the NRO, then turned to Peter and replied, “They've been there. Nothing happening in the vicinity. No activity of any kind.”

“Tell them to keep looking. They have to show their faces somewhere!”

Bradley shook his head as he listened, then covered the receiver with his chin. “The Killbird is going to move out of range in twelve minutes,” he said.

Peter swore. “They know when our birds fly overhead!”

“NRO says no. No way they know that! No way at all!”

“Yeah, it's just a coincidence,” Peter replied sarcastically.

Bradley shook his head. Peter turned away, pulling anxiously on his beard. He shook his head to brush back his hair, then reached for a cigarette. He hadn't smoked for ten years, not since his college days, but the habit died hard and his fingers fidgeted nervously. He turned again to the satellite display. The Killbird was hard at work; searching, listening, and probing from above. Other recon assets were also being monitored from the States, but the only download to Israel came through the Killbird KH-21. And the controllers at the National Reconnaissance Organization had cast a very wide net; monitoring all air traffic, ground military vehicles, military-traffic control broadcasts, as well as other intelligence or military communications over Southern Asia. There was so much information, there was no way to absorb it all. It would take days, even months to wade through.

And they didn't have days. They didn't even have hours.

Darkhorse was riding. They had no time at all.

Peter heard a quiet warning chirp emit from the air control screen. A lieutenant moved toward him and nudged him in the side. The room fell in silence as the Israeli military and intelligence officers stared in awe.

“What is it?” Peter asked.

“See the blue triangle,” the lieutenant explained.

Peter nodded quickly. “What is it?” he asked.

“A Pakistani F-16 out on military patrol.”

“Okay, so?”

The lieutenant glanced to Bradley. “Fifteen seconds ago, there were two fighters there.”

Peter watched a blue symbol on the enormous screen shift from deep blue to red. “You see that,” Peter said as he turned to Bradley again.

The colonel looked up and nodded. “You saw the F-16 go down?” he asked the controllers at NRO. He waited and grunted, then swore quietly. “That's our first rider! Keep your eye on that bird!”

Lake Peshawar
Northwest of Islamabad, Pakistan

The Pakistani foreign minister, a fat, grumpy Christian with a bulbous nose and thick yellow hair, lay in his bed and sweated. He had heard the rumors. He knew that his time was near. And though the huge mountain villa seemed the best place to hide, still, he did not feel safe. His wife lay beside him, snoring, unaware of his fears. Down the hall, in the kitchen, the television was on, the announcer's voice drifting into the bedroom, the screen causing a flicker of light. A ceiling fan turned, gently stirring the air, creating a tiny breeze that tickled the hair on his arms.

The night air suddenly shattered as a military jet flew overhead. It was low and fast. He felt the walls of his villa shake. The sound rumbled in the darkness, then quickly died away.

The minister swallowed, trying to control the heartbeat in his chest. He stared up at the darkness, fighting dreadful thoughts. And though he was awake, though his eyes were adjusted to the dark, though his senses were wired and his mind near the edge, still, he didn't hear the assassin as he entered the room. He didn't see the shadow cross the window or feel the air stir. The man simply appeared suddenly at the foot of his bed, a shadow dressed in black, with bright slits for eyes.

The minister sat up with a start, his heart slamming into his chest. Grunting in fear, he almost heaved on his bed. His wife stirred beside him but didn't wake up. The assassin approached and breathed quietly. The minister rolled to the side, holding his hands in front of his face in a childlike gesture of fear. His wife woke with a start. She felt a hand on her knee and froze in cold fear.

The assassin moved quickly. Two slits of the six-inch razor and it was done. The blood pooled on the bed and soaked into the white sheets. The woman's foot kicked suddenly, though she was already dead.

Islamabad, Pakistan

The Pakistani chief of military staff had scheduled the meeting just a few hours before. His generals quietly filed into the brightly lit room and assembled themselves around the mahogany table. The command center was huge, with maps of Pakistan and the middle of Asia lining two walls. At the head of the table an electronic display showed the status of the military forces. A live feed from air-traffic-control radar showed the presidential aircraft inbound. The Pakistani president's 727 was a little over one hundred miles to the west.

The neon lights hummed as the generals filed into the room. The four-star chief of staff studied his commanders and swallowed the knot in his throat. Only six who were loyal! Out of his entire staff. Six generals he could count on. No, make that five.

They were just getting seated when there was a light tap on the door. A young major entered the room holding a small briefcase in his left hand. He glanced at the commanding general. “
Sayid,
I have been asked to bring this to you,” he said.

The chief of staff scowled and took a step toward the young officer. “What is it?” he snarled.

“A package from Gen. Hyidda' Mohar Astti. He said it was extremely important and that I was to deliver it immediately.”

The general narrowed his eyes. “Gen. Hyidda' Mohar Astti is in Afghanistan!”

“
Sayid,
he returned very early this morning.”

Without invitation, the major walked to the center of the room. The chief of staff watched him closely, a worried look on his face. Something was wrong, he could see it in the young major's eyes. As the young officer approached the huge table, the air force commander stood suddenly, pushing himself away from the table. “No,” he sneered to the major. “This isn't the time!” The major ignored him. “Fool!” the air force commander cried, staring wild-eyed at the briefcase in the major's hand.

And with that, the chief of staff knew. He took a step back, an empty look on his face. He moaned, his soul staggered, then he sucked in a breath.

Closing his eyes, the major muttered a prayer.
“Ashhadu anna la alaha illa Allah,”
he said in a low voice. “I testify that there is no god but Allah,” he prayed.

Releasing his grip on the briefcase, he let it fall to the floor, triggering the firing mechanism hidden inside. Eleven pounds of plastic explosives exploded in the room, blasting out the walls with an inferno of heat and pressure. The north side of the defense building was blown into the street, filling the night with dust and smoldering debris mixed with pieces of human flesh.

Eighteen Miles West of Islamabad, Pakistan

The F-16 pilot was flying east when the bright flash and fire lit up the night. He couldn't miss the explosion and rolling fireball, and it came exactly on time. He nodded in satisfaction as he glanced at his watch.

Turning his attention back inside the cockpit, he continued to fly though the night, following the contours of the rolling mountains toward the target ahead.