Third World War

  THE THIRD WORLD WAR

  A Terrifying Novel of Global Conflict

  HUMPHREY HAWKSLEY

  To my family

  May It Never Happen

  ****

  Delhi, India*

  Meenakshi Mehta, dressed in denim jeans, trainers and a bright-red shirt, was talking on the phone when her father emerged from his shower, ready to go to Parliament. He dropped a file on his daughter's lap. 'What do you think?' he asked, pulling out a chair. He sat down, poured himself a coffee and pulled a slice of brown toast out of the rack on the table.

  Knowing her father's habit of interrupting, Meenakshi put her finger to her lips for him to be quiet.

  'No, Lizzie, we're not going to be gassed,' she laughed into the phone, moving the file from her lap on to the table and glancing at the title. 'But father's heading off for work now, so I had better see him away in a manner that befits a prime minister.' She tapped her napkin at her cheek to indicate that her father had a speck of marmalade on his lip. Vasant Mehta wiped it off.

  'I don't think so, but I'll ask.' She took the phone away from her ear, but did not cover the mouthpiece. 'Lizzie West says do you want a word with her dad?'

  Mehta checked the antique clock on the dining-room wall, calculating that it would be coming up to 11 p.m. in Washington. He had no wish of word getting out that the hour before his historic address to both houses of Parliament he had been on the phone to the President of the United States.

  ''I'd love to,' he said reaching for his coffee. 'But another time. Jim will understand.'

  'And Lizzie's offering to send over special suits that will protect us from all the nasties the Pakistanis can send over.'

  Mehta shook his head. 'Tell her, thanks but we're fine,' he said. The coffee was hotter than he expected. He coughed slightly as it caught in his throat. He was a slight man, two inches short of six feet, his tousled hair receding but showing no sign of thinning. His carefully groomed and slightly greying moustache disguised the prominence of his cheekbones and his chin. The press hailed him as the most charismatic Indian prime minister in decades, but his eyes, dulled by trials in his personal life, were no longer bursting with either ambition or vision. Mehta saw the world as a place where survival was paramount. Anything beyond that would be an unexpected luxury.

  'I have to make a statement on Pakistan,' explained Mehta, reaching for the marmalade.

  'Why bother?' responded Meenakshi dryly. 'It hasn't changed for sixty years. We're on the brink of war, surely? Always have been. Always will be.' She picked up a rubber band she had left on the table, pushed back her hair, tied it up and began reading.

  'Surely not,' said Mehta, falling silent and watching his daughter read.

  'You like Khan, don't you?' She looked at him curiously. 'I can tell, by what you've put in your speech. No Indian politician would be seen dead praising a Pakistani president like that.'

  'Nothing wrong with liking a good man,' said Mehta.

  Meenakshi closed the file. 'Your daughter, fortunately, is not a politician, and now has to get back to her paper on government and poverty in the developing world.' She teasingly grimaced and furrowed her brow. 'I'm on the warpath. So prime ministers, wherever you are, take note.'

  Six months earlier, Meenakshi had gone through a difficult divorce and she had come to spend more and more time at Race Course Road. The security and fanfare surrounding her father irritated her, but it was also a luxury to be waited on hand and foot and a relaxation from her work as a doctor in some of the poorest areas of India.

  She wiped her lips with her napkin, then folded it and slid it into its silver ring. Mehta got up, walked over, kissed her on the forehead and put his hands on her shoulders. 'Is there any chance you could spare the morning for your father?' he asked with a smile.

  Meenakshi frowned. 'You want me to come to the zoo with you?'

  'If that's what you call the Lok Sabha, the debating chamber of the world's biggest democracy, then yes. If the animals attack, my daughter's face in the crowd would soothe me.'

  'Father,' she said suspiciously. 'Are you being tricky with me? I'm a doctor. I work in the slums. I'm not one of your political intellectual elite.'

  'And that's precisely why I want you there.'

  'Dressed like this?' she asked, pulling down the shoulder of her shirt to straighten it.

  'Most of my cabinet seem to dress like you,' answered Mehta with a shrug.

  'All right then,' agreed Meenashki, throwing back her head with a chuckle. It was one of those rare moments when Mehta admitted he needed his daughters after his tumultuous separation from Geeta. Meenakshi made the house seem less empty and gave him the family company that he needed.

  Mehta opened the door for her and they walked through the library, where the walls shimmered with different hues of sunlight. Beyond the library was a small ante-room and outside that door were the public areas of his residence. Two bodyguards snapped to attention. A servant opened the double doors to the hallway where Mehta's bespectacled and awkward private secretary, Ashish Uddin, jumped up from a chair. Another servant opened the front door and two more bodyguards stood by the doors on each side of the white Ambassador car in the driveway.

  The specially built vehicle had a bulletproof chassis and glass, with communication aerials embedded in the back window for both radio and satellite telephones. The number plates were changed daily to confuse attackers. Uddin followed in a replica white Ambassador. Three security cars pulled out with them. An ambulance was directly behind, with a vehicle following to scan against missile attacks. Special forces vehicles were at the front and the back of the convoy.

  'Mother called last night,' said Meenakshi, tapping the thick glass window and looking out on to Raisana Hill which led up to the elegant government buildings. 'Don't treat her too harshly, Dad.'

  'What did she want?' asked Mehta, his pen hovering over a paragraph of his speech.

  'I think she wanted to talk to you. To be friends.' Meenakshi clasped her hands together and looked round sharply at her father. 'I'm sorry. Your mind's on more important things.'

  Mehta finished his correction and smiled. 'Not at all. That is why I asked you to be with me.'

  'What - to remind you of your dysfunctional family?' Meenakshi laughed.

  'No different from the dysfunctional family of the Indian subcontinent,' said Mehta. 'Next time she calls, I'll talk pleasantly to her.' He cast his eyes down the rest of the page and spotted something else he wanted to change. 'Always, when she's between boyfriends, she wants to speak to her ex-husband,' he said, scratching out a word and putting another in its place. 'Or if she's with a man, it's when her ex-husband gets his name in the newspapers.' He shot her a sideways glance, which was met by Meenakshi's own firm expression.

  'She's weak, Dad. She's not bad.'

  'That's what they tell me about Pakistan.' Mehta's eyes went back to his speech. As the car passed the pink Rajasthan sandstone of India Gate, the winter sun caught the government buildings making them shimmer. Freshly mown grass stretched out on both sides of the road which rose and fell like a sweep of land carrying with it armadas of motorcycles, cars, bicyclists and the movement of people through the heart of a great city.

  The prime minister's car turned left towards the imposing circular building of the Indian Parliament, the seat of the world's biggest, yet most fractious democracy. The convoy was waved through the security cordon and the gate in the sandstone wall of the Parliament House estate, where it pulled up outside the vast circular building.

  The Prime Minister got out of the right-hand door. Then just as Meenakshi was climbing out of the left, Mehta heard the distinctive and familiar ripple of an explosive blast not far away.

  'Get down,' he shouted, jump
ing over the bonnet of the car, and pulling his daughter to the ground. Commandos leapt out of their own cars and formed a protective ring. More troops sealed off the entrances to the compound and the doors to the buildings.

  Then, strangely, as if life had only paused for a couple of beats, nothing else happened. The brisk activity outside the parliament building stalled and slowly took up again. The balcony which ringed the building just above the debating chamber filled with people, craning over to see what had happened.

  Mehta unfurled himself from his daughter and began standing up. But he was ordered back down by a bodyguard. 'Stay down, sir,' he said firmly.

  Meenakshi wriggled out and started uncoiling. 'You, too, ma'am,' added the captain. 'The area is not yet secure.'

  All Mehta could see were the feet, legs and black-uniformed backsides of his bodyguards. The captain's radio crackled into life, the reception so distorted that Mehta could not make out what was being said. 'What was it?' he asked.

  'Sounds like a suicide bomber, sir,' said the captain. 'Near India Gate.'

  Mehta shuddered. How long since India had been victim of a suicide terror attack? And what coincidence that it should happen now, as he was about to make a parliamentary statement on the power vacuum in Pakistan.

  He arranged himself so that he was squatting more comfortably. 'Are you all right?' he checked with his daughter. Meenakshi sat cross-legged on the ground

  'I'm fine,' she replied, brushing dirt off her jeans. She addressed the captain with the instincts of a doctor. 'Is anyone hurt?'

  'Yes. But we don't know--'

  Sharply, his fingers tightened around his weapon and his head jerked round with the sound of a second explosion, also some way away and from the direction of Connaught Place. He shot a look back at his principals to ensure they remained protected. Meenakshi began scrambling to her feet, but her father grabbed her wrists to get her back down. 'If this were one of your patients, how would you diagnose the attack?' he asked calmly.

  'Mild, Father, mild,' said Meenakshi, 'if you are talking about the nation. For the victims it's a bloody disaster.'

  Then, before she had finished her sentence, a white Ambassador car, parked just outside Gate 12, erupted into a fireball. Seconds later, another car exploded outside Gate 9. In the initial confusion, as debris still rained down, men dressed in a mix of olive-green fatigues and the black uniforms of the Special Protection Unit ran through the gates.

  Once inside the compound, the attackers separated. They did not open fire immediately, waiting until they were dispersed among the crowds. Watching through a gap in his own circle of protection, Mehta recognized their professionalism, the footwork of trained men. It was barely possible to detect friend from foe.

  The attackers spread around the massive circular edifice of the building, a third of a mile round. They kept away from the openness of the ornamental gardens and stayed close to the building where people were running to seek protection.

  There was a sharp burst of machine-gun fire, sudden, loud and unexpected, despite the chaos of violence around them. It came from the captain's weapon. Meenakshi screamed, but quickly recovered herself, her eyes darting round to check on her father.

  Up ahead, three men in black uniforms ran towards them. One plucked a grenade from his tunic and lobbed it.

  'Grenade,' yelled the captain, dropping on to his knees, about to cover Mehta. But he was shot in the face, collapsing back, his head a mess of blood. Within seconds two other bodyguards died as well, both hit with shots deliberately placed above the neckline to avoid their flak jackets. Mehta's circle of protection was broken. The grenade rolled along the ground. Mehta now had a clear sight of the bedlam around him: bodies on the ground, people running for cover, firefights in at least three places; the flaming wreckage of one of the car bombs, charred sandstone and fallen debris blackening the lawn. Right next to it, through the churning chaos, he saw three men putting up a mortar.

  'Under the car,' he yelled. 'Hands over your head.' He dragged Meenakshi, rolling her in front of him. She squeezed underneath the chassis. He grabbed the fallen captain's weapon - a 9mm Uzi - and wedged himself in next to his daughter, then turned and, in the split second before the grenade exploded, snatched four spare magazines from the dead man's tunic.

  The car shook. The chassis shook, but held its ground. The exhaust pipe tore Mehta's clothes and a slice of metal cut his forearm which he had over Meenakshi's back to protect her. In the lull that followed, he saw a solitary gunman running towards them, unclasping another grenade. Mehta shot wildly. He had no firing position, but he knew the weapon well, and hit the attacker in the legs. The attacker fell; the grenade bounced beside him, the pin unplucked.

  He heard the whoosh of a mortar, a soft but powerful swell of sound distinct from the cries and gunfire around. The car would protect them from high-velocity weapon fire and grenade shrapnel but not from a direct mortar hit. From years of experience in the low-intensity war with Pakistan, Mehta recognized the threat immediately. He clasped Meenakshi, covered her as best as he could, although he knew it might be useless. He had a view from the ground and he saw the flash of the mortar as it crashed into the roof of the building and exploded.

  'Out,' he yelled, scrambling clear, his right hand holding the Uzi, his left hand pulling his daughter free, stepping out, running with her towards the building, up the steps, as automatic gunfire cut into a sandstone balustrade inches away from them. Meenakshi spun round, but Mehta kept going, yanking her along with him until they were inside the door, where troops were taking cover.

  They leant against the inside wall, getting their breath. Meenakshi examined a cut on her arm and took her father's hands to check him in the same way. He was unscathed. She dropped them on the second undulation of mortar sound. Mehta brought his daughter's head into his chest and waited for the explosion. They hadn't changed the trajectory. The shell fell through the roof of the building. But what carnage would it cause inside, where at least five hundred people would have been gathered for his speech? God only knew.

  'You,' snapped Mehta, pointing to the officer in charge. 'That mortar - neutralize it now. The closest unit. Prime Minister's orders. Now.'

  He spotted three men, crouched against an outer balustrade, the closest to the car, and ran down to them. 'Corporal,' he ordered. 'Take your men and retrieve that terrorist alive.' He pointed to the man he had shot minutes earlier in the leg and now bleeding to death where he had fallen.

  Mehta spotted a movement in shadows in the curve of the building. Two men ran out, one in black, one in olive green. Their objective was the wounded assailant. They wanted him dead as much as Mehta needed him alive. He expected a grenade, but they kept running. 'Target, two o'clock,' he shouted, letting off a burst of fire from the Uzi. The corporal took it as his signal and sprinted out, with Mehta covering him. One guard was hit, but Mehta found the source immediately and returned fire. It came from the first-floor verandah - the attackers had penetrated that far.

  The two surviving attackers kept going. They would get their colleague in a few minutes. The wounded attacker was unconscious. A bodyguard, there first, lifted him on to his shoulders while the other kept watch. But after Mehta's exchange of fire a sudden silence descended around the building. Group by group, politicians and staff caught in the onslaught were making it inside. Police armoured vehicles broke through into the grounds cutting up the grass and the driveway with their hard tracks. Troops spilled out. Sirens of approaching ambulances echoed from the roads outside. Overhead, fighter planes roared.

  The wounded attacker was brought just inside the building. They laid him down on the concrete floor. Meenakshi checked his pulse, and pupils. She took a quick look at his legs, took off her shirt and ripped it in two. 'Help me,' she said, to no one in particular. Two solders knelt down with her and followed her instructions as she applied tight tourniquets to both legs.

  Mehta was on his mobile phone. 'I want the first ambulance round here. No exc
uses,' he said. 'I don't care. We have a man, alive, who will talk and give evidence. Nothing is more important.'

  Then, as he was listening to the reply, his ear tilted to one side, checking that the ambulance whose siren he could hear was heading in his direction, there was overhead another sound familiar from his days of aircraft training in the Himalaya. It was the vibrating pitch of the engine of a light aircraft. He ran outside to look up. Not one but three were approaching. Far in the distance was the vapour trail of a turning fighter. Small-arms and heavy machine-gun fire broke out from the ground, creating a cordon of lead through which the aircraft would have to fly. One aircraft was hit, turning into a ferocious fireball, an explosion far greater than if just fuel tanks were going off. Its force created a charred circle on the grass and set light to the trees around it as the debris fell, scattering and flaming to the ground. Caught up in the trail, the pilot of the second aircraft turned sharply, but got caught in a secondary blast. He lost control and at such low altitude clipped a tree, somersaulted and crashed. The explosives on board did not detonate until the aircraft broke up on the ground. It sent out a withering heat wave of destruction which wrecked everything in its path.