“Rumors speculating of changes in the upper echelons of the Central Military Commission and the Politburo were strongly denied by the committee representative, Lieutenant-General Chen. He explained that given the serious nature of the war, the committee had moved to its wartime locations as per protocol and will remain there until the blatant Indian nuclear aggression against the Chinese people and the peace loving people of the Kingdom of Bhutan is not silenced. General Chen notified the media that General Liu and President Peng was not available for answering questions at the time.
“General Chen also denounced Indian use of nuclear weapons and explained that the explosions in Bhutan were Indian nuclear warheads detonated by retreating Indian forces as our courageous soldiers advanced to rid the decades old Indian hegemony over the Bhutanese people. General Chen confirmed that thousands of Bhutanese civilians and hundreds of PLA soldiers from the elite high-altitude mountain troops were killed in these explosions. In spite of such losses, the People’s Army stands ready to offer help to the Bhutanese people in this time of distress.
“Earlier this morning, the Indians also attempted to disarm our missile forces by preemptively attacking locations in northern Tibet. This blatant aggression will not go unanswered! The people of China have a right to live in peace without fear of nuclear aggression and the Indian usage of nuclear weapons will not go unpunished. With Russia and the United States of America once again vetoing China’s demands in the UN Security Council yesterday for immediate sanctions against India, China must control the threat on its southern borders on its own. China has demanded an unconditional Indian termination of hostilities or India will find itself soaked in an ocean of blood of its own citizens!”
“Those bastards!” Wencang threw the phone speaker back to the wall mounted phone, causing everybody in the operations center to jerk their heads behind at the large bang noise behind them. Wencang had a menacing look on his face as he watched them staring at him in silence.
“That bad?” Chen asked.
“They just nuked Korla! Korla! And Uxxaktal!” Wencang shouted at Chen, releasing his rage on his old comrade.
“26TH Air Division,” Chen replied calmly as he evaluated their losses.
“And the 19TH Division,” Feng added as he walked into the room with some papers in his hand.
Wencang balled his fingers into fists, turned back to the wall phone and leaned down to grab the hanging speaker. He stood up after taking it and called up Dianrong at the NCC: “Get me 813TH Brigade commander on the line right now!”
Chen and Feng turned away from the papers in Feng’s hand as they heard Wencang talking.
“What are you doing?” Chen asked. Wencang ignored the question, his knuckles white from rage.
“General, what is your launch readiness?” he asked on the speaker.
“Wencang!” Chen shouted but dared not approach closer.
“Good,” Wencang continued on the phone. “Prepare strike package ‘Typhoon’ on my orders. Keep the activity hidden as much as you can. I want launch readiness within the hour. Report back to me when you are ready!”
As he slammed the phone back into its place, Wencang turned around to see Chen and Feng standing there in stunned silence.
“What on earth did you do?” Chen said more as a statement than a question. He knew exactly what nuclear strike package ‘Typhoon’ was.
“I gave the Indians what they were begging for,” Wencang replied as he fished into his pockets for a smoke using the cheap cigarettes he always had handy on him. It was a habit he had picked up from his years out at Korla all those years ago. He lit one up and turned to Feng:
“Get in touch with the Foreign-Minister and inform him that we are evacuating and moving to the N-C–C. I want him to call me to get a draft of a message I want sent to the Indians via Bogdanov. And this time let’s be more careful with the evacuation for all our sakes! We can’t afford any more carelessness like this morning! Go!”
“Sir!” Feng saluted and walked out. Wencang turned to Chen:
“Liu had a good idea in taking out the Indian satellite before the launches. Let’s see if we can’t blind them permanently this time before Typhoon wipes their miserable little existence from this planet!”
“You want to do this?” Chen asked calmly as Wencang took a long puff of the cigarette and released the smoke into the room.
“I did not bring them here,” Wencang replied, “but they forced my hand. Theirs is not the only country that has to worry about saving face! Our people will hang us, you and me, from this ceiling here if we sued for peace now. That opportunity is long gone.”
“But they struck us with only two warheads.” Chen continued. “Surely that is a message? Otherwise why just two warheads? They must know what will follow? And we launched the first strike here! They had to respond and they chose two far away airbases! Why?”
“You give them credit for intelligence,” Wencang replied. “I don’t!”
“Their actions thus far have indeed been intelligent, Wencang. Think about it! You and I know more about their intelligent military operations against us than anybody else in Beijing!”
Wencang thought about that as his cigarette smoke filled the room…
“So they got our message?” Ambassador Tiwari asked as he took the paper from Bogdanov.
“They did,” was the short answer to that question from the Russian Minister. “And they responded with this.” Bogdanov nodded to the paper in Tiwari’s hand as the latter removed his reading glasses and then glanced over the details quickly.
“They have to be joking!” Tiwari said with surprise.
“Indeed,” Bogdanov said with a grunt. “Going by the rhetoric that General Chen laid out for their state media two hours ago, I thought we might have been too late! The president ordered full readiness on our part in case Beijing began lashing out on other parties in the region as well.”
Tiwari grimaced as he folded that paper and put it back on the table between the two men.
“Don’t bet your money yet!” he replied to Bogdanov. “We are not out of the woods. We want to know what they have in mind before we commit to anything at this point!”
“Just get them to start talking, Tiwari!” Bogdanov stressed emphatically. “If they are talking, they are not lobbing nuclear warheads at each other. That is all there is to it at this point!”
“I agree.” Tiwari nodded.
“And if we are lucky,” Bogdanov continued, “we might all make it out of this mess in one piece…”
“You sure it will work?” Chen asked.
“It has to,” Wencang said as he leaned for the phone and pressed the speaker. He waited while the prearranged process took place from the foreign ministry office. It would take a minute.