James Huston - Fallout

Luke put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “Why?” Luke demanded. “If his target is India, why go after us first? Why put a big, sharp stick in the eye of the one country that might actually help him win a war with India? I mean, we’ve given them a lot of their military gear. I just don’t get it.”

“Your mistake is understandable. You continue to think that he is working on behalf of Pakistan and that they simply refuse to acknowledge it. In fact, he is working on behalf of an elusive group whose goal is to see one Islamic country in South Asia, including Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, possibly Iran, possibly Bangladesh, and, of course, Kashmir. Attacking the U.S. undermines Pakistan and will almost certainly topple the current regime, which refuses to go to war over Kashmir and stands in the way of his great Islamic state.”

“You must have known all this when he came to the States,” Luke asked.

“Of course.”

“Why didn’t you tell us about him?” Luke demanded.

Sunil took an Indian cigarette from the pocket of his sharply pressed wool slacks, lit it, and inhaled deeply. His gold Rolex watch moved with each hand gesture. “What makes you think I didn’t?” he asked.

“You told them what you know about Khan?”

“I told them everything I could tell them without compromising my sources.”

“Before he attacked San Onofre?”

“Of course. I told them everything they needed to know. But frankly, I anticipated no danger. I had no idea he would do something to the United States. I always thought Pakistan and India were his targets.” He sucked on the cigarette and raised his eyebrows. “I assumed he was in Nevada for training. That is all.”

“What did they say?”

He smiled as he exhaled through his nose. “Your intelligence people did not believe me. But finally they believed your courageous agent, who sneaked onto the military base and identified him. She is, of course, now—and will be for a long time—in a Pakistani prison for her efforts.”

“What?” Luke said, horrified.

“It doesn’t matter. You must get on with your mission. It is up to you to stop Khan.”

Luke’s head was spinning. “You’ve been following this guy for years?”

“Frankly, even I did not anticipate the boldness of his moves.”

“You are with Indian intelligence, I take it.”

Sunil breathed in deeply from his cigarette. “Of course.”

“Do we have his target right?”

“I suppose we are about to find out. But I think almost without a doubt that is his target.”

“And it’s tonight?” Vlad interrupted.

“The airplanes are already loaded with bombs. I do not know what time they will take off, but I am virtually certain it will be tonight.”

Luke needed to plan. “Thanks for your help.”

“We are grateful that you came here to help us. You did not have to do that.” He stepped on the butt of his cigarette with his expensive loafers. He looked at Luke and Vlad. “If there’s anything I can do for you—anything at all—let me know. He must be stopped.”

“He will be.”

Luke and Vlad walked out of the hangar with Prekash, toward the squadron’s jets. They wore Indian flight suits and boots. Luke thought the Archers squadron patch on his flight suit was worthy of a MiG squadron, but he would have preferred to die with his NFWS flight suit and patch on, and the black star painted on the tail of his airplane.

The Indian MiG-29s were lined up on the tarmac in the bright sunshine. They were in beautiful shape, painted in a green-and-tan camouflage with Indian markings.

Vlad’s eyes took in the airplanes and the minutiae that only those who fly them can see. He spoke to Luke, who was walking beside him. “C models. Not much difference. All the latest electronic countermeasures. We should have no problem.”

“Sure hope you’re right.” Luke was too busy having an out-of-body experience, looking at himself walking toward an Indian MiG, wearing an Indian flight suit and boots, being led by an Indian Colonel and assisted by a Russian pilot. All to fly into combat in a Russian fighter in a soon-to-be war he didn’t care much about, to stop a lunatic Pakistani pilot. It was one of the more surreal moments in his life. Things were usually clear in Luke’s mind, but he found himself unable to recount how he’d gotten to where he now found himself. He could certainly trace the chronology well enough, but that didn’t seem to explain it. It was an inadequate way of looking at it. He was more in search of a “why” answer. He felt as Ulysses must have felt in his journey back from Troy to Penelope, when every event surpassed the previous in oddity or difficulty, every monster was bigger and meaner than the last, all calculated by the gods to prevent him from reaching his destination. All Luke had wanted was to fly fighters and start a family. Was that so much to ask? Had he been too greedy? Was there a God so mean-spirited that such a desire was to be met with destruction and death?

All around the base there was a hum of activity. It was clear to anyone watching that combat was imminent. Luke hoped that no such activity would be obvious to someone with a good vantage point to observe it and an inclination to tell Pakistan. He also hoped that if there was such a person, he didn’t have Raymond-size binoculars sufficient to identify Vlad and him. But it might not make much difference; Luke was convinced that Riaz Khan would go on his mission regardless of who was waiting for him. He was just afraid that knowing what they were up to might make Khan change something.

Luke stood at the top of the ladder and peered into the cockpit.

Vlad spoke to him from the bottom of the ladder, already having viewed the cockpit. “No problem, right? Just like we’re used to.”

Prekash walked over to them. “We have decided where you should base your airplanes.”

Luke was put out. “What’s the plan?”

“We think you should go now. We don’t know when he might launch. We should be ready.”

“I thought we were going to do a FAM hop first. Get used to your airplanes.”

“We don’t have time for a familiarization hop. We think you should be in place in case he goes now.”

“Okay,” Luke said, his uneasiness increasing. He hopped down the last step from the ladder. “When?”

“As soon as you can be ready.”

“Anything going on?”

Prekash nodded. “We have some signals intelligence. We have intercepted some communications from the ground.”

“I don’t see Khan talking on the radio before a strike.”

“Not him, others. Fuel trucks and other ground personnel.”

Luke nodded. “Where are you going to put us?”

“On a highway.”

Luke sat in his Indian MiG-29 beneath a large tree on the side of a two-lane highway. Vlad’s MiG was across the highway inside a large barn. There were a dozen Indian maintenance men around them to ensure that they got their jets started and that their takeoff was uneventful. They waited only for some word, some indication that Khan was actually going to try it.

Luke was uncomfortable with the idea of taking off from a dusty, poorly maintained highway. He’d never done anything even close to that, let alone in a jet. Vlad claimed to have done it several times, but Luke was beginning to wonder how many of Vlad’s amazing claims of experience were true. He’d never received any level of comfort on Vlad’s probably doctored flight records from Russia. But Luke had been impressed by Vlad’s tenacity against Khan at San Onofre. The man had nearly given his life to save an American nuclear plant. Still.

Luke had been sitting in the MiG cockpit so long his muscles ached. The afternoon had passed full of anticipation and excitement. Everyone was ready to launch, but nothing had happened. A telephone had been set up on a portable table for the critical communication. An order to launch would come through the phone, a landline that could not be intercepted by Pakistan’s signals intelligence. The plain black telephone looked stark against the high-tech gear all around—the testing equipment, a few spare parts, the hydraulic line charger, and the electric cart that provided nonstop power to the MiGs. Vlad had an identical setup across the road and down a hundred yards. The airplanes had been dispersed in case of attack. One attack couldn’t get more than one airplane at a time.