He got a unanimous “yes, sir!” from his men and so he moved on: “one other thing: these may very well be tanks and not sports-cars, as the Lt-colonel said. But I doubt you will get any closer to a sports-car out here!”
“Beyond those tents there?”
“Yes, sir. Take a left beyond the one here and it should be visible.”
“Thank you.” Captain Vikram “Vik” Taneja grabbed his rucksack from the back of the green-painted Gypsy vehicle and watched the driver head off again on the dirt track towards the main road. He looked around and saw a special operations unit getting ready for war. But it wasn’t just these men here. All through the drive from Amritsar, it had been a similar story. Vikram had seen the exodus of civilians fearing the worst, the massed convoys of army vehicles pouring in and the skies overhead shaking with the thunder of jets of all shapes and sizes. The country was holding its breath to see what happened next. And perhaps the world did as well. The news reports on television and radio were teeming with talks of frantic last-minute diplomacy as well as attempts to get both sides to back down.
But the war was taking another kind of toll on Vikram. Standing here with a rucksack over his shoulder, he had mixed feelings of what it all represented. The place looked similar to the earlier setup he had once seen in the northern hills in the state of Uttar-Pradesh, three years ago. Similar wartime environment. Similar staging areas for forces being prepped to enter Bhutan as part of what had then been the “Joint-Force-Bhutan” under Lt-general “Warlord” Potgam.
Hell, they even managed to match the gloominess and the fog here!
Vikram sighed. That operation had ended in disaster for him and his small team. Following two weeks of near-continuous combat and the Chinese nuclear-strike on Barshong, Vikram and the other team member had carried Pathanya down the frozen peaks to the south where they had been rescued after a few days.
They had managed to survive that war. But many others hadn’t. The Indian paratrooper community had paid a heavy price in Bhutan. And the scars were still there. For Vikram, it represented a baptism by fire, being a newly commissioned lieutenant at the time. Since the termination of hostilities, however, the psychological scars had begun to grow. When the King of Bhutan had pinned on him and his two colleagues, the royal ribbon of “The Thimpu Shield”, it had brought him to tears. A mental threshold had been broken and it had taken Vikram a year of counseling with the army’s psychologists to recover. And he had almost failed to clear their requirements to be allowed to serve again. In the time since, he had recovered to his original physical capabilities and more, but had left his enthusiasm for war alongside the graves of his colleagues on the icy slopes in Bhutan.
Vikram decided that it was time to get on with it. He walked past the tents where he recognized some of the operators from the SOCOM staff. He finally made it to the set of tents beyond a rather candidly marked wooden sign, stuck into the dirt track that said: “Warriors of 1ST Bat, Para”.
Home.
Vikram smiled and shook his head as he tried to figure out who was behind that signboard. One of his former classmates, he was sure. The tent in the center was marked as headquarters so he headed in, pushing the flap of the tent aside as he walked inside. He saw a tent filled with activity as soldiers and officers milled past. Banks of radios filled the side and maps stuck to boards filled the room. He saw a group of solidly-built paratroopers standing around a map board. He noticed a man from his past just as soon as that man noticed him…
“Vik!” Pathanya said as he put down the images he held in his hand and walked to greet his old friend. “You made it!”
Vikram took Pathanya’s outstretched hand after lowering his salute. Pathanya was beaming at the sight of his old friend. Vikram was struggling to keep up as he met the other team members. They all looked at him through the lens of his Bhutan accomplishments. Nobody could see Vikram as the human being he was now. Not within his peers here.
Pathanya led Vikram out of the tent just as the weak sunlight began to break through the dense fog.
“The new team looks sharp, sir.” Vikram noted neutrally.
Pathanya nodded. He understood. “We have to move on, Vik. The job requires it.”
“Fair enough, sir.”
“No,” Pathanya shook his head, “not fair. But life never is. I didn’t ask for this assignment but I did ask for you. Sorry.” He smiled faintly. Vikram left out a deep breath as though shedding his doubts.
“Where are we bunked?” He asked after a moment.
“Two tents down, on the left. Get yourself kitted out and head back here for a briefing on what we are up to.”
“Yes, sir. Any news on the overall situation?” Vik said as he hefted his rucksack over his shoulders.
“The balloon is about go up within hours.”
“God! This war feels like a continuation of the last one!”
Pathanya crossed his arms: “that’s because it is! The Pakis are like sharks sensing blood in the water. They think we are weak right now. And so they are pushing their luck. We will push them into their graves instead.”
“Oh. Before I forget,” Pathanya said as he stopped midway on his way back to the map-boards, “we are call-sign ‘pathfinder’ on this one.”
“Pathfinder it is, sir.” Vikram smiled and headed off.
Across the semi-arid plains west of Lahore, two-dozen launcher vehicles elevated their quad-missile tubes through the camouflage netting laid over them and pointed east, towards India. Each of the four tubes on every vehicle carried the subsonic “Babur” cruise-missiles. Essentially a clone of the American “Tomahawk” missile, the Babur was capable and lethal. The US government had disabled GPS coverage for both India and Pakistan to deter them from war. As a result, the Babur missiles were relegated to relatively inaccurate inertial guidance systems. But considering the short distance between the border and supposed targets inside India, the missiles were accurate enough. And that was all that mattered to the Pakistani army commanders. As the dust settled around the deployed launchers, the war now stood a button push away…
21
The darkness of the night was shattered with streaks of orange flashes as the Babur missiles left their launchers. Their rectangular flight wings snapped out of the fuselage and locked into place as the air-breathing engines roared to life, propelling them to half the speed-of-sound and…
For those in Lahore, the view was visible from the rooftops as small specks of yellow-light to the east. Most of the civilians still in the city were those that had been unable to leave for various reasons. The did not envy what they knew was to follow now. Many of the elders in town remembered when the Indian forces had reached the outskirts of this city the last time Islamabad went to war with India. And as they stared silently at the specks of light heading towards the Indian border. The streets below them filled with jubilation as thousands of jihadists cheered and fired their rifles into the air: their jihad had begun.