No Return

Part 1

One after another the aircrafts lumbered down the runway of a secret air base on the northwest border of Pakistan. As The four PAF single-pilot F-16A Falcons burdened with the maximum allowable combat weight of twenty-five thousands pounds, mostly fuel, tore through a curtain of low-hanging clouds into the golden rays of the rising sun, they glued in a tight formation, and, hugging the Afghan border, headed south.

About the author

Nishith Vasvada migrated to the United States in 1985 and attended Texas A&M University. He currently lives in Texas and works with a multinational chemical company as an environmental engineer. When not working, and when not busy raising his two children, and not chasing the hone do errands for his wife, he sits at his Mac Performa 630 and dreams up stories. Contact Nishith Vasavada at vnish@worldnet.att.net with your comments.

Their kamikaze attack was neither authorized by Pakistan's government, nor did it reflect the collective will of her people. The mission wasn't just daring, it was a deception of the greatest magnitude. Even the four pilots, hand-picked for this one-way trip to hell, were no exception. They were handed cleverly forged orders, signed supposedly by the Prime Minister, thirty minutes before they took off.

Later, much later, their mission called for a sharp turn to the east.

For now, they flew under complete radio silence. "You will ignore any and all orders to abort the mission. There is no turning back," Captain Abbas Masood had ended the pre-flight briefing with a stern warning.

Captain Abbas Masood, a former Pakistan Air Force ace fighter pilot and now the head of its secret Inter Service Intelligence, sat at a desk and pensively held a Marlboro between his nicotine-stained fingers. Oblivious of the grunting airconditioning machine, he waited in the damp, dark confines of the control tower. Now relaxed and introspective, he was a nervous wreck when he flagged the Falcons off, not perturbed by the sheer guilt of the genocide he was about to commit--that particular aspect never crossed his mind. The source of his agitation was the fear, ironically enough, of death. His own death. At any moment he had expected to be discovered. And shot on the spot. But he was alive so far, and happy to be. If he could get this far, he figured, perhaps he could actually live through the whole event. So he lit up a cigarette, propped his feet on the desk and waited.

In the underground hangar of the secret air base built with American aid and technology during the height of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a helicopter waited for him. Masood had planned a last-resort escape to Afghanistan, an escape, he now felt, was no longer necessary. He had just set in motion a nuclear attack, and now he waited in the anticipation of that moment when the fighters would turn on their radios for the final approval, his approval, and pounce at twice the speed of sound on their targets in India.

Wings flared for a majestic landing, the F-14D Tomcat approached USS Abraham Lincoln's angled deck. Lt. Sandy Appleton was returning from a surveillance flight over the Strait of Hormuz where the Iranians had mounted Chinese-made antiship missiles on Hegu speedcrafts.

The U. S. Central Command had deployed the Fifth fleet in the Persian Gulf for over two years now--a forward deployed, mobile, and potent force that could strike anywhere within a thousand-mile radius. Led by the Nimitz Class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, the Fifth was essentially a carrier battle group and an amphibious ready group with Marines on board.

The aircraft-carrier-based Navy fighters patrolled the shallow Strait of Hormuz through which one fifth of world's oil supply passed. For the last few days the U. S. Navy fighter planes had failed to spot the Iranian Hegu boats with missiles. Either they were back on the mainland, or they were shrouded in the camouflaged structures on the Iranian islands. Today, however, Sandy's patience had been rewarded. Instead of the Hegus, she spotted what appeared to be a Silkworm missile on a barge just off the Iranian coast. This was a new trick, no doubt about it. What was going on? Sandy would've died for a closer look. But orders were orders, she had completed her mission and it was time to turn back.

As she brought her Tomcat in perfect line with the skewed runway, Sandy shuddered at the thought of slamming the aircraft on the deck instead of easing it down with a breathtaking flare. From the day she got her first view of an aircraft carrier from behind the stick of a T-45 on the way to making her first carrier landing attempt, Sandy had hated the experience. Landing a Tomcat on a moving, heaving, runway that an aircraft carrier is, requires a whole new set of tactic. "Land her like you're gonna take-off again, Sandy. Bang her hard on the deck. You've got to have the power to take off again in case you miss the arresting cables." The instructor's drawling voice haunted her now, as it did whenever she approached the deck.

The radio clicked.

"Watchdog 15, the deck's clear. Safe landing."

With a puff of gray smoke the tires hit the oil-smeared metal deck. Every bone in Sandy's body shook with the impact, she fell forward, then snapped back as the hydraulic cable caught a steel hook on the F-14 Tomcat's belly. The aircraft yielded to the pull of the steel cable, and, like a fearsome hound subdued with a jerk on his leash, roared to an abrupt stop.

For the millionth time Masood justified in his own mind what he called the "preemptive nuclear attack." His was not some foolish plan hatched with haste and emotion. Quite the contrary, he had worked on it for several months, alone, and written up a fiftypage document and proposed this daring attack to the care-taker Prime Minister of Pakistan. The elected government was disbanded under a flurry of corruption charges. The weak man who ruled the temporary government could be easily persuaded, even overpowered if necessary. At least that was Masood's logic.

In that fateful meeting Masood had rolled out a stunning presentation in front of the dazzled Prime Minister Hyder Baksh and his not-so-dazzled Chief of Staff General Zafar Khan: India was modernizing her military at an alarming rate, Masood told the two men. The Indians were no longer satisfied with a state of the art main battle tank. Now they were working on spy satellites, encrypted communication, stealth fighter planes. And a lot more.

"Our agent in New Delhi tells me that Hindustan is planning a nuclear attack that will wipe Pakistan from the face of this earth." Masood concluded mournfully.

"This is a naked lie, cleverly mixed with sound intelligence," Zafar Khan leaned back in his chair and scorned. "Hindustan's military edge worries me too. As for the nuclear threat, ISI has cried about it for fifteen years without presenting any hard evidence. Your mole in New Delhi must deliver some data we can trust, Masood."

"You just said Hindustan has overwhelmed us with technology. What options do we have for other than a preemptive strike? Nothing," Masood replied.

"Not true. We have the Chinese M-11 short range missiles-" The General got up from his chair.

"Excuse me," Masood said turning to the Prime Minister, "Sir, but we don't even have a deliverable nuclear warhead."

Hyder Baksh was perplexed. "What's a deliverable warhead?" "A nuclear warhead small yet powerful enough to fit on the Chinese-made M-11 missile."

The Prime Minister lit up a cheroot and exhaled at leisure.

"Quite true. The United States stopped the construction of that missile plant."

"Not to mention of the arms we paid for and they haven't sold us, Sir." Masood gently reminded Hyder Baksh. "Today, we need arms worth five billion dollars just to catch up."

Hyder Baksh remained quiet. Then he turned to Zafar Khan and said, "This arms race will bankrupt Pakistan."

Masood sensed an opening. "We should destroy Hundustan's nuclear capability or live under the threat forever.".

"What about the international ramifications? Have you even thought about that?" Zafar Khan moved close to Masood, almost touching him, peering into his eyes. "What about our own people? Will they permit such attack?"

"What is grand is necessarily obscure to the weak minds." Masood replied leaning back in his chair.

"You mean weak men, not minds. If you quote William Blake at least quote verbatim," Zafar Khan said, flicking imaginary dirt off Masood's crisp tunic.

"Let him finish," the Prime Minister told Zafar Khan. Masood was cornered in his chair. He curled away from the General's imposing frame and said, "We already have a plan: Operation Strike Hard. PAF has secretly modified several F-16 Falcons to carry nuclear bombs."

Hyder Baksh: "How deep inside Hindustan can you deliver the bombs?"

Masood: "With an additional 300-gallon jet fuel droptank under its belly, the F-16s can strike as far as Bombay."

Hyder Baksh stroked the ferocious Doberman sprawled at his feet: "How many bombs per F-16?" "Four. Each twice as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima."

Zafar Khan, pressing closer, "Which squadron has these planes?"

"The 9th Squadron at Sargodha." Masood answered, looking at Hyder Baksh.

Zafar Khan had had enough. He grabbed Masood by his throat, jerked him out of the chair and pushed him to the wall. "If I even so much as hear about this nuclear attack, I will shoot you personally. Now get out and get lost, you evil genius."

Though he had chastised Masood, Zafar Khan knew better. Masood was not a successful spy for nothing; he wouldn't quit just because of a threat to his life. The very next day Zafar Khan invited the British ambassador, who happened to be his personal friend, for a quiet dinner. This arose no suspicion; they had dined together before. During a leisurely after-dinner stroll in the gardens of his sprawling estate where he was sure no electronic bugs were eavesdropping, Zafar Khan divulged the hideous secret to his British friend.

While the wheels of the governmental bureaucracy may be accused of turning at an excruciatingly slow pace, there are exceptions. Plans for an unprovoked nuclear attack on any nation is one of them. The British ambassador rushed back to his embassy and headed straight to the communications room. He woke up the British Prime Minister. It was just after four in the morning in London.

When the American President Don Preston recovered from the initial shock of what the British Prime Minister had told him, he called Pakistan's care-taker Prime Minister. Faced with the agitated American President, Hyder Baksh denied the existence of a plan in any form other than a "hypothetical exercise."

Zafar Khan was right. The threat to his life had not deterred Masood. His faith in his own role in shaping Pakistan's future was unshakable. He wanted peace with India --at his own terms. Since Pakistan's ignominious defeat in the 1971 war, he lived and dreamed for the day when the vanquished and humiliated India would sign a peace treaty with Pakistan. He would be there, of course, like the Indian General who had accepted the surrender of a defeated Pakistani army in Bangladesh.

The obsession that drove him to his goal so consumed Masood that the loss of human life never figured in his evil scheme. The genocide he justified to himself as an unfortunate and unavoidable consequence for a lasting peace, a footnote in the history book dwarfed by his stunning accomplishment.

In secret, Masood planned a nuclear attack on his own. This one no one would know about; there would be no briefings to Hyder Baksh. With his reach inside the bureaucracy, Masood forged approvals and transferred sixteen nuclear bombs from the nuclear plant in the hills of Kahuta, a few miles north of Islamabad, to the secret air base in northwest. With his access to the bureaucracy, he deceived the Pakistani Air Force into committing the planes and recruited the pilots for his mission.

If the doomed "Operation Strike Hard" was grand, the new venture, "Operation No Return" was grander still. For starters, Masood now had to deceive his own air defense system, not just India's, which meant the Falcons could not fly across Pakistan to India; that was too dangerous. His answer: The aircrafts would hug the sparsely patrolled western border of Pakistan all the way to the Persian Gulf. Only then would they turn east. Six-hundred miles of extra flying called for more fuel. Not a problem: In addition to a 300-gallon spare fuel tank on the centerline of the F-16As, he had installed two more droptanks under the wings for the additional fuel.

"The aircrafts weigh more than its maximum allowable weight," a PAF lieutenant informed Masood thirty minutes before the launch.

Masood ruthlessly solved this last-minute glitch: "Take off the medium and short range air-to-air missiles." He ordered.

"But without the missiles, sir, the Falcons have no air defence," the lieutenant protested nervously.

With his planning and tactics, Masood was confident, the PAF Falcons would not encounter the Indian Airforce MiGs until it was too late. He knew the surveillance schedules of the IAF aircrafts, but, of course, he couldn't share such secrets with the lowly soldier staring at him.

"The Falcons still have the 20-millimeter cannons," Masood replied and stormed off the underground hangar; the technicians looked at each other in disbelief.