Chapter Twenty-One: The Boiling Line

The air in Srinagar was thin with cold and war.

On the Line of Control, snow concealed movement, but not intent. Satellite imagery fed directly to Nigerian and Indian joint-intercept servers told the real story—Pakistani troop concentrations along Gurez, strange radio chatter near Uri, and thermal signatures that suggested more than routine patrols. The Himalayas were whispering violence.

Michael stood in a forward operations center beneath a mountainside Indian base, the floor vibrating with the hum of high-powered data relays. Around him, Indian intelligence officers whispered in Hindi and Punjabi, occasionally glancing at him as though he were a ghost out of place—Nigerian, suited, quiet—but never questioned.

He had earned his place here.

His operations had crippled Baloch rebel pipelines, disrupted ISI's false flag ops in Kandahar, and funneled vital intel into RAW's darkest vaults. He wasn't an ally anymore. He was their knife in the dark.

"Their mechanized units in Muzaffarabad are repositioning," said a RAW colonel beside him. "We believe they're planning a cross-border incursion disguised as retaliation."

Michael's gaze remained fixed on the 3D map as he replied, "Then we feed them something real enough to justify a warning strike—but false enough to trap them when they respond."

The colonel paused. "You're suggesting an information operation?"

"I'm suggesting," Michael said calmly, "we engineer the reason they think they need to fire first."

In Islamabad, the ISI scrambled to make sense of the chaos. Their Lahore network was in tatters. Their sleeper cells were being picked off in Dhaka and Kabul. And now, someone had leaked internal military communiqués to Al Jazeera suggesting the Pakistani army was planning an incursion into Indian territory.

The Prime Minister raged behind closed doors. Accusations flew. Fingers pointed at India. Others whispered about Nigeria's growing shadow.

One voice—deep within ISI's counterintel wing—finally broke the silence: "Find the Nigerian."

But Michael was already gone.

At the Nigerian embassy in New Delhi, Michael met with India's National Security Advisor behind three layers of encrypted shielding.

"They'll retaliate," the NSA said, pouring scotch with a shaking hand. "This game of shadows has gone too far."

"They always retaliate," Michael replied, sipping calmly. "But this time, they'll do it on our terms."

The NSA studied him. "And Nigeria? What do you want out of this?"

Michael's eyes never left the swirling amber in his glass.

"A seat at the table when the world is redrawn. A say in the balance of chaos."

The Indian gave a slow nod. He knew what that meant. Leverage. Military contracts. Satellites repositioned. Border intelligence in exchange for oil futures and cyber support. Nigeria was no longer just helping—it was deciding.

By dawn, Pakistani shells had landed near Poonch. India responded with air sorties along the LOC. Neither side declared war—but they didn't need to. The world knew it anyway.

CNN called it "The Himalayan Flashpoint." BBC warned of "South Asia on the Brink."

And in Abuja, inside the newly fortified IIS nerve center, Emeka Kalu watched the reports with a quiet smirk.

"Your boy's turned South Asia into a chessboard," he said aloud.

Behind him, Musa Aliyu stepped forward, arms folded.

"Not a chessboard," Musa said. "A proving ground."

And far away, beneath Himalayan sky and the thunder of jets, Michael whispered into a secure handset:

"Let them fight. We'll supply the battlefield."