“I have lock,” Three reported. Wind Two and Four would hold back, in reserve. “Northern target.”
“Targets breaking off,” Ramadutta snapped. “Launch!”
His thumb caressed the trigger on the Fulcrum’s stick, and he felt the bump as the AA-7 cleared the launch rail and arrowed toward the target on the end of a streaming plume of white smoke. The F-16s were veering sharply toward the south. Whether they’d identified the intruders somehow or were simply changing course for the next leg of their patrol was immaterial now. At better than Mach 1, the Apex homers would reach the targets in a little more than a minute.
The dazzling blue of a canal exploded beneath Ramadutta’s MiG. He glimpsed blurred details on the ground that might have been grazing cattle. The thought struck him with unexpected force. Such a peaceful scene . . . and the war has already begun.
War! Somehow, Munir Ramadutta had given little thought to the reality of that word. He’d thought his training—and the long expectation of war’s coming—would have braced him for this moment. They had not.
Since Pakistan had separated from India in 1947, there had been four major wars between the countries and almost continuous sniping and artillery duels in the barren and
4
Keith Dougtess
ruggedly mountainous districts of Jammu and Kashmir in the far north. The most serious clash had been in 1971, when a Pakistani attack led to the Indian conquest of East Pakistan and the subsequent creation of a new nation, Bangladesh.
The 1971 war had proved that India was now the preeminent military power of the region, with an air force, navy, and army that dwarfed anything Pakistan could bring against her. But still, Pakistan had continued the skirmishing and the border incidents, railing against India for her silence during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, steadfast in her refusal to allow the Moslem separatist movements of the Kashmir to settle their long-standing dispute with New Delhi. Lately, Pakistan’s jingoistic tirades had taken oa a new and ominous tone; of all the Islamic nations of the world, Pakistan was perhaps the most technically advanced . . . and the closest to the development of a working nuclear device.
India already had the bomb, of course, but that was scant comfort when facing a nation of ninety million Moslem fanatics. Kashmir was the flashpoint for this war . . . and the war’s excuse, but the New Delhi government had already decided to settle things now, before India’s troublesome western neighbor became too dangerous to deal with, before the anti-Indian rioting and violence in the Sindh, the Pakistani agitation and terrorism in the norm went out of control.
Operation West Wind would end the Pakistani threat once and for all.
He picked out the tracings of the AA-7s on his radar screen. The gap between targets and missiles narrowed. . . .
Far ahead, through the transparency of his canopy, he glimpsed a telltale flash, and the northernmost blip on the screen seemed to expand, then broke into pieces. “Hit!” Green Wind Three exalted. “Kill!”
A moment later, Ramadutta’s missile merged with the southern target. A second tiny flash announced the explosion of a forty-kilogram warhead. He lost the blip when it merged with the ground return.
“Two kills!” Wind Three called over the radio. “Our first two kills of the day!” ,
“There will be more, my friend,” Ramadutta reminded him. “We have aircraft airborne now over Kotri. Range . . . fift^ kilometers.”
ARMAGEDDON MODE 5
“This is Red Wind Leader,” a new voice said. Red Wind was the MiG-27 squadron. Their first target was the air base at Kotri. Their second was a munitions factory north of Hyderabad. “Breaking off for target run.”
“Roger,” Ramadutta replied. He was surprised at how easily the words came. “Good hunting.”
The Pakistanis were rising now like hornets from a nest prodded by a small boy’s stick. It didn’t matter. Their destroyers were upon them. Fleet as Indra ‘s heavenly steed . . .
As the silver arrowhead shapes of Pakistani Falcons and IAF MiGs clashed, swirled, and loosed their deadly payloads, Ramadutta thought briefly of the Americans. They had been much in the news of late, with their aircraft carrier battle group in the Arabian Sea off the west coast of India. The Americans had been trying to interfere with Indian interests in Kashmir, or so the news reports had claimed, and there were rumors mat the Americans had threatened to attack India if their Pakistani allies were invaded.