topics: |  fiction | thriller | india | pakistan | military

This thriller unravels a three-sided nuclear war — India versus China and
Pakistan.  Humphrey Hawksley uses his years as a BBC journalist covering
South Asia to forge the basics of this confrontation.

for a similar international terrorism thriller, see Mukul Deva's Blowback (2010)

The confrontation begins with an attack on Lhasa's Drapchi prison which
frees Lhundrub Togden, the seniormost Tibetan monk advocating armed
insurgency against the Chinese.  The attack is coordinated by Gendun
Choedrak, a Tibetan exile from Khampas, a Tibetan tribe with a warrior
tradition.  The entire mission is hidden from the Indians, but China accuses
India of co-ordinating it.

Hari Dixit, the ex-doctor Prime Minister of India, comes into confrontation
against Tao Jian, the hardline president of China.  The renegade general of
Pakistan, Hamid Khan, launches a military coup backed by China.  The
Chinese also transfer a number of nuclear missiles to Pakistan, in return for
help with containing the islamist rebellion in Xinjiang.  Hamid Khan drops
two neutron bombs on the Southern military command in India ... and launches
a nuclear showdown.  Unni Khrishnan [sic] launches a series of retaliatory
missile attacks (conventional), taking out most of Pakistan's air bases,
and eventually most of Pakistani infrastructure.

The story develops through snippets describing the highest echelons of
power, interspersed with the activities of insurgents on various terrorist
missions.

A Stinger missile by a Lashkar-e-Jhangvi operatives, backed by ISI, kills
the Indian home minister.  India launches an air attack on Pakistan
territory, killing mostly villagers.
Meanwhile the Taiwanese president declares independence as a separate
nation.  The Chinese retaliate with open war, capturing Taiwan...

In the apocalyptic storyline, China launches all-out war against India,
occupies Taiwan, and nuclear missiles fall on mumbai and delhi, and on
Chengdu in China.

Excerpt

[Tang Siju, Second Deputy Chief of General Staff, to president Tao Jian and
Harvard graduate, Foreign Minister Jamie Song: ]
    Tibet is an internal matter.  The incursion by India has given us an
    opportunity to act.  We should not lose it.  p.23

"Goddam basket case" President of the US, John Hastings, about Pakistan.
   [Throughout the book, most of the US establishment takes a hands-off
    approach towards events in India and Pakistan. ]  59

Other reviews

The road to war : review by John Elliott

review from the New Statesman

 Indian diplomats and politicians, who usually strut ineffectually on the
 world stage, are here surprisingly succinct and effective.

Dragon Fire starts with a raid on Lhasa, Tibet's capital, by Tibetan
independence activists based in India, who free a political prisoner from
Lhasa's Drapchi prison. This is, perhaps, the most unlikely part of the
plot, but it neatly triggers a crisis in which China accuses India of
assisting with the raid and launches a grenade attack on the Dalai Lama's
parliament-in-exile, in the northern Indian town of Dharamsala.

Pakistan then links up with China, its long-term ally and protector, to
squeeze India, and shoots down an Indian helicopter carrying the home
affairs minister. He is killed. India responds by shooting up Pakistani
villages. China sends troops into north-east India and further escalates
the confrontation by giving a neutron bomb to Pakistan, which then raises
its flag on Indian soil in Kashmir. This six-day crisis gradually envelops
most of the world.

He reveals, too, the existence of India's secret Special Frontier Force,
which has handled Tibetan issues since the 1962 Indo-China war. This group
stages the attack on Lhasa.