“
Oui,
” said a groggy voice with a French accent. It was Pierre Toloph, Islamabad bureau chief for
Le Monde
. “
Qu’est-ce que c’est?
”
“Mr. Toloph, this is Deputy Inspector General Sahi from Capital Police. Can you answer me a question?”
“What time is it?” asked Toloph in a thick French accent. “Do I need counsel? Jesus, it’s four thirty in the morning!”
“You don’t need a lawyer and you can go back to sleep,” said Sahi, “if you answer me one question.”
“Yes, yes, ask your question, Inspector.”
“Who is Jean Milan?”
“Jean Milan? Why do you ask this? How should I know?”
“You don’t have a correspondent working for you named Jean Milan?”
Toloph was silent for several seconds, then hung up the phone.
DRASS
INDIA-CONTROLLED KASHMIR
The air was cooler in the Mushkoh Valley than in Rawalpindi. They were more than twelve thousand feet above sea level now.
Through a night vision monocular, Millar studied the Pakistani supply line in the distance. Then they moved.
The air was thin and they ran at a good trail pace, seven-minute miles, one by one behind Iverheart, negotiating the boulders and cracks in the ground. They stopped on a bluff just above the supply line.
In the distance, the sound of a truck could be heard coming toward the front.
Millar stared through the monocular.
“Fuel truck,” he said as he studied the eighteen-wheeler rumbling toward them in the distance.
Dewey looked at his watch: 4:55
A.M.
They moved down from the ridge above the road as the truck approached.
“You’re shooter,” Dewey said to Iverheart. “We’ll fall in after you take out the driver from here.”
Iverheart swung the rifle from across his back to his front, then lay on the ground, unfolding the DTA SRS. He got down on his stomach, setting the rifle on the ground. He turned on the Renegade thermal sight.
On the hill, in pitch-black, Iverheart adjusted his ATN goggles. Through the goggles, the truck was illuminated in glowing shades of green. Iverheart, on his stomach now, placed his finger on the trigger of the sniper rifle, and flipped his goggles up, then looked through the Zeiss optic on top of the rifle aligning the truck’s path. He would have to hit a target moving at more than thirty miles per hour.
Dewey and Millar lay on their stomachs a few feet off the road.
The fuel truck rumbled closer, its engine louder, its headlights increasingly large as it approached, oblivious to the coming ambush.
A low crack whipped through the air as Iverheart fired from the hill. The round passed ten feet above Dewey and Millar as they waited on the cold ground. The slug hit the young driver in the skull, spraying blood across the back window of the cab. The truck jerked off the road, then slowed to a stop.
Dewey ran to the truck and opened the cab door on the driver’s side. He reached up, pulled the dead Pakistani soldier from the cab, and dragged the corpse to the side of the road, more than a hundred feet, out of sight.
Iverheart arrived, sniper rifle slung over his shoulder.
Back in the truck, Dewey and Millar brushed broken glass from the seat, then took an old rag and wiped blood and brains from the seat and windows of the truck.
“We got company,” said Iverheart from the ground next to the truck.
The lights of an approaching troop carrier flickered less than a quarter mile behind them.
Dewey took the wheel. Millar climbed into the passenger seat and moved to the middle. Iverheart climbed into the cab next to Millar. Dewey hit the gas and the large truck began to move. He steered it back to the supply road.
The truck gathered speed and was soon moving quickly down the supply road toward the war front. Dewey steered a straight path east for more than five miles. The sound of mortar fire grew louder as they closed in on the front. The pace of the bombing seemed to uptick as dawn neared.
When the sky was dark, the lights of the truck illuminated little more than the road in front of them. But the fires revealed an altogether different scene; a violent, chaotic beauty, composed of red and orange, framed by the ridgelines of the Ladakh Range, far in the distance behind the Indian front.
Dewey kept moving toward the front, down the supply road. They passed several departing Pakistani Army vehicles—empty troop carriers, flatbeds, a few fuel trucks.
“Dewey, it’s Van,” came the voice in Dewey’s COMM bud. “UAV says you want to break right as soon as you can now.”
Dewey moved his night vision goggles down over his eyes. He reached in front of the steering wheel and shut the headlights off. He turned right and eased the tanker truck off the dirt supply road. He kept the gas pedal floored, moving at the same pace, in darkness, across flat terrain, avoiding the occasional bush or boulder. They drove for several miles, parallel to the battle front at their left.
“You’re approaching the reservoir beneath the village,” said Bradstreet over the COMM. “You’re good on foot from there.”
Dewey downshifted, then eased the truck to a gradual stop. They climbed out of the truck. To the left was a large pond with a small shack at its edge. Dewey surveyed the hill above with the monocular. In the distance, the sharp incline of a mountain base sprang vertically skyward. Several hundred yards up was a village.
“Why hasn’t India razed it yet?” asked Dewey, tapping the bud in his ear.
“They think it’s abandoned,” said Bradstreet. “They don’t want to destroy the town if they don’t have to. Remember, this is Indian soil.”
Dewey glanced at his watch: 5:25
A.M.
* * *
The sky was stunning; the stars looked as if you could reach up and touch them. To the east, the horizon was turning gray as dawn approached. The light illuminated the mountain village; white cement and mortar flashing like an aerie above the fray of the battle.
Millar led a fast-paced run toward Drass. As advertised, he was in excellent shape, and it showed. The twenty-four-year-old kept them running, even in the thin, high elevation air, at a grueling six-minute pace. Dewey brought up the rear, behind Millar and Iverheart. The air burned his lungs. The steady pounding of mortar cannons filled the air. They stopped to catch their breaths at the base of the mountain, a few hundred yards below where Bolin and his commanders were overseeing the battle. Despite the temperatures, now in the forties, they were all sweating profusely.
Dewey adjusted the settings at the side of his ATN PS15-4s. The village of Drass sprouted in low, square buildings up the side of the mountain. The village was dark. A terrace jutted out from the hill above them. He saw movement on the terrace.
“Ten o’clock,” said Iverheart.
“I see it,” said Dewey. “You guys see the building?”
“Yeah, I got it,” said Millar.
“We’re counting fifteen to eighteen people,” said Bradstreet. “No one below the building but there is a guard posted at the front door.”
“I’ll torch one of the buildings below the terrace,” said Dewey, pointing. He looked at Iverheart. “You come with me. We’ll assault from the terrace. Alex, when you hear the bomb, move in hard from the front.”
Dewey reached into his back pocket and removed a photograph. He flipped on a low light on the underside of his MP7, and aimed it at a black-and-white head shot of a Pakistani man, longish hair, dark, slightly overweight, a mustache.
“That’s Bolin,” said Dewey. “Whatever you do, don’t kill him.”
They moved up the hill, through a quarter mile of walnut trees and flat grazing plots carved onto steppes. They split up beneath the terrace. Dewey and Iverheart moved to the side of the house and hid beneath the eastern precipice of the terrace. Millar went around the other side of the house and crouched at the corner of the building, just out of sight from a soldier guarding the front door.
The sky was rapidly growing light as sunrise approached. Dewey could clearly see now, for the first time, the Ladakh Range across the valley. For as far as he could see in either direction, the dusty plain was interrupted by a sporadic line of vehicles, tents, and men, thousands of small clusters spread out for miles. Orange and red bursts lit up the line every few seconds. For the first time, Dewey could also clearly make out the front of the Indian line, its presence indicated by the dotted red of mortar rounds, fired toward Pakistan.
“Here we go,” said Dewey, speaking into his COMM bud.
“Ready here,” said Millar.
Dewey took a grenade from a pocket on his vest. He pulled the pin then hurled the grenade at a wood and stone hut down the hill below the terrace. The blast ripped the hut. The sound was thunderous as the cloud of smoke and debris plumed. The building was incinerated; fire and flames engulfed the small structure.
Shouting came from the terrace as soldiers ran to see what had happened.
Dewey kicked in the door that led to the terrace.
In front of him stood five soldiers. Dewey registered the faces, recognized no one. Then he triggered his MP7, cutting down a man who was clutching an UZI.
Iverheart entered behind Dewey, shooting a second soldier.
Dewey pumped a cartridge into the chest of a tall, overweight soldier, while in the same moment Iverheart killed the remaining pair of soldiers.
Another soldier burst through the terrace entrance, his hands gripping a Kalashnikov. He aimed it at Dewey, who was sideways to him, oblivious to his entrance.
* * *
Millar heard the explosion in the same moment he felt the ground tremor beneath his feet. He moved around the front of the building. A soldier at the door turned, but Millar fired his MP7, hitting him in the chest, dropping him.
He opened the front door. The room was filled with mattresses pushed to the side and stacked. He burst through the room to another door. Shouting came from the room, then gunfire from the deck. He stopped at the door, flipped his goggles off his head, then booted the door in.
He entered a large brightly lit room. The haze of cigarette smoke hovered like a cloud. A wooden table was surrounded by more than a dozen men in military uniforms. The soldiers were staring at the door to the deck, their eyes following one of their soldiers, charging toward the deck, Kalashnikov in hand.
At the sight of Millar, confusion swept over the men at the table. They swiveled between the terrace door, and him, now standing at the opposite end of the room. Eyes moved between Millar and the black steel of the submachine gun in his hands, now aimed at their heads, and the Pakistani gunman running toward the terrace.
* * *
On the terrace, Iverheart was momentarily stunned by the approaching soldier, whose Kalashnikov was now trained on Dewey. Recovering, Iverheart fired his MP7, swinging it around, trying to intercept the soldier. His bullets blew a line of dusty holes in the stucco next to the doorway just as the gunman began firing at Dewey. A slug struck the gunman in his chest, sending him crashing to the floor against the doorjamb.
* * *
Inside, the commanders watched as their soldier was blown backward in a hail of bullets.
At the far side of the table, one of the generals grabbed a pistol from his belt holster, but Millar cut him down with a quick burst from the MP7 before he could fire, throwing him back against the wall to the shock of his colleagues.
Millar trained his silenced submachine gun at the table of military commanders. Wearing a blank expression on his blackened face, he covered the table slowly with the end of the suppressor; every man in the room knew what the price would be if they tried to move.
Iverheart moved in through the terrace door, stepping over the dead gunman now lying in a contorted pile on the ground. He took up position to Millar’s left, weapon trained on the generals.
The war hierarchy stood in silence, unable to move.
Only one man remained seated. He was a large man, his hair slightly long, with a bushy mustache. He wore a khaki green military uniform, the chest and shoulders a medley of green, red, blue, and gold tabs. He held a cigarette in his hand. He had a big, bushy mustache. The man stared at Iverheart, then at Millar, impassive and calm, despite the intrusion. His eyes shot to the terrace door.
Dewey stepped over the blood-soaked corpse of the dead soldier.
Dewey’s face, what was visible of it beneath the dark beard and long, sweat-soaked brown hair, was black with war paint. Only his blue eyes stood out in the light of the room.
Dewey stepped slowly into the room, his demeanor calm, his confidence clear to every man in the room. At the center of the room, Dewey stopped. His silenced MP7 was aimed menacingly in front of him. His face was expressionless.
Dewey’s eyes focused, along with the tip of the silencer, solely on the man seated directly in front of him, the man with the mustache, Field Marshal Xavier Bolin.
After several moments, Dewey spoke.
“We don’t have a lot of time, Field Marshal Bolin,” he said.
Bolin took a drag on his cigarette, then moved it away from his lips. His hands tremored as he ashed on the table.
“What do you mean?” Bolin asked, his voice calm but trembling slightly.
“India will launch a retaliatory nuclear strike on Pakistan,” said Dewey. “This strike has but one purpose: wipe Pakistan off the map. Three quarters of India’s nuclear stockpile is either in the air or launch ready at the border as we speak. Karachi, Islamabad, Peshawar, Lahore, Rawalpindi; every other city and town in this country: gone.”
Bolin moved his cigarette to his mouth, his hand shaking slightly. He took a long puff, then exhaled.
“What do you want me to do about it?” asked Bolin.
“With America’s help, you become the next president of Pakistan,” said Dewey. “Today. Right now. India stands down. You make peace.”
“What about General Karreff?”
“He’s dead.”
“El-Khayab?”
Dewey said nothing. He didn’t have to.
Bolin finished his cigarette, then stubbed it out on the wooden table. He cleared his throat. He looked around the table at the other generals and military men. To a man, their faces remained blank, part fear, part shock.