Chimera (13 page)

Despite Colonel Malik’s statement about the emergency relocation of their attached air-force UAV squadron, they had lost all contact with that unit minutes after the missiles had struck. There was no way for Krishnan and his men to know that a large portion of men in that squadron now lay dead or wounded after having taken a direct hit on their small airbase to the south.  

The problem was that the need for the UAV support was at its peak at the moment. Every Indian field commander wanted news of what was going on north of the border with the PLA, and there just weren’t enough assets to go around now…

To make matters worse, the loss in communications meant that not only was there no contact with anybody up the chain of command, there was also no hope of indirect support should they make contact with the Chinese. The local tube artillery batteries under the 2
ND
Mountain Division Artillery Brigade had taken a mauling at the hands of the Chinese missiles. And with the air-force also reeling from the attacks, the possibility of close air support was low, to say the least.

It was a bleak picture from Krishnan’s standpoint. But that was to be expected following such a heavy attack, and things would improve as the Indian military shifted into war mode at both the mental and physical levels, something which would take at least a day, if not more. So for the time being, local field commanders like Krishnan had to improvise…

“They are coming south all right. The question is when,” one of Krishnan’s company commanders said as he joined the Major. Krishnan offered the Captain one of his cigarettes, which the latter gladly accepted. He offered the younger man a light, shielded from the cold winds by his hand. A few puffs of smoke later, the Captain continued: 

“And they are going to try and take as much advantage of this mess they have created on our side. Sir, what is our plan of action if we make contact with the Chinese before we re-establish contact with Battalion or Brigade HQ?”

Krishnan turned to head the northern Himalayan peaks and gestured to them with his fingers holding the cigarette:

“At the moment we are electronically blind, deaf and speechless. We have no support of any kind and cannot make contact with anybody else higher up on the chain of command. So what do we do? What are we
supposed
to do?”

Krishnan smiled.

“We stand and fight!”   

EASTERN ARMY HEADQUARTERS

KOLKATA, INDIA

DAY 1 + 0500 HRS

“How are you getting on with our reply?” Yadav asked the Eastern Army commander over the radio.

“862 Missile Regiment is on point for this one. They are getting ready. We will hit them in the Lhasa region which is about the farthest we can go anyway. The plan is to decimate the PLA’s 13
TH
Group Army’s ability to get off their staging areas. We will have to wait and see how that turns out though,” Lieutenant-General Suman said from his new operations center near Kolkata.

He relished the idea of taking the war to the Chinese using the Brahmos missile groups under his command. It seemed fitting to respond in kind.

He had a paper lying in front of him at the moment which detailed the preliminary report of the damage done by the Chinese missiles to the infrastructure and deployed equipment of IV Corps under his command. He was supposed to hold off the Chinese with what remained of his artillery and UAV support. And he had to fight through a disrupted chain of command caused by dead or displaced commanders.

It is only fair that they get a taste of their own medicine…

“Good. What do you need from my side?” Yadav asked. Suman shook his head to clear it and then focused on the problem at hand.

“Okay, first I need real-time intelligence on what’s happening across the border. My UAV squadrons are starting to come back on line now, but I could use additional support. They have taken quite a battering. Especially the longer range Searcher-II force out near Walong under IV Corps. Lieutenant-General Chatterjee has been begging me for reinforcements in artillery and unmanned aircraft. Artillery I can do, but not with the unmanned aircraft,” Suman replied.

The reply was immediate and clear:

“Consider it done. I will direct the air-force to transport one of our UAV units from the western border to replace your losses. They should be there as soon as I can arrange it. And we should be getting the latest update on the Chinese 13
TH
Group Army movements north of the border from the Aerospace Command boys soon enough. What else?” Yadav asked.

“I am going to request emergency transfer of additional artillery units to this sector to replace my losses there but only after I can get a full assessment done. It will take a few hours. Most of the other stuff is housecleaning on my end. I will get back to you with the strike plans and an ETA from the 862 Missile Regiment once I have the target list completed. For now I need to go. I have a hundred fires to fight over here,” Suman responded. Yadav decided to get out of his way. 

“Very well. Suman, we will not have a repeat of 1962 this time around. Get your army ready to fight. I want that Chinese Army stopped at the border and for our boys to take the offensive into Tibet just as soon as you can arrange it!”

LEH AIRBASE

LADAKH

DAY 1 + 0600 HRS

The small puffs of smoke left the rolling rubber as Khurana’s Mig-29 touched down on the main runway and rolled down its length before slowing down. Half a minute later the aircraft was rolling onto the taxiway to the hardened shelters. Khurana looked left and right through the cockpit glass as he followed the small Gypsy utility vehicle with striped yellow-black stripes on it that was guiding him and his aircraft through the section of the taxiway cleared of debris. The view on either side was not pretty...

The base was in full blackout mode, but he could see the flames leaping out of the various smoldering buildings near the main tarmac. His was the first of three Fulcrums to be returning back to Leh from Avantipur after the missile attacks. The rest of No. 28 Squadron was to stay at Avantipur for the time being. But Leh needed its own cover. Besides, the “
The First Supersonics
” Squadron had no intention of staying at Avantipur for a minute longer than necessary.

The Mig-29 was not exactly a high endurance fighter compared with the Su-30. Despite the upgrades over the years that had increased range for the aircraft, there was no way that a decent sized patrol could be maintained constantly over Ladakh if they were based as far away as Avantipur. Bottom line was that Leh airbase needed to be recovered from the smoke and fire and returned to service when the first offensive Indian airstrikes of the war began in the morning...

This first flight of three aircraft was here to determine the level of the damage to the airfield and its ability to launch fighter operations.  Khurana and the squadron commander were among the pilots returning now. Khurana saw from his cockpit glass the second Mig-29 touching down behind him while the third circled overhead. Several thousand feet above them, the first Barrier-Combat-Air-Patrol, or BARCAP, was forming up. Made up of three Fulcrums from the same squadron, they were now taking position as the air-force began returning to the skies throughout the region.

But all of that didn’t change the reality on the ground as Khurana saw it. He realized that this first landing had been directed under the control of an ad-hoc ATC since the original ATC building was now smoldering rubble. That was bad news as it affected the ability of large number of larger aircrafts to operate effectively from the airbase. 

A few minutes later Khurana was shutting down the engines as the aircraft came to a stop inside one of the undamaged hardened shelters. He was happy to see that most of the airmen around him from his original ground-crew had survived the attacks. He did notice however, that some faces were missing from the group. He and the squadron commander had been notified by the base commander of the losses in personnel and the list of names was not exactly short. Additionally, the No. 114 “
Siachen Pioneers
” helicopter squadron based on the same base had lost two of its Cheetah helicopters on the ground during the attack. These two helicopters had been down for maintenance at the time and could not have been evacuated.

As Khurana jumped off the cockpit and walked out of the shelter, he felt the bitter cold winds blowing outside. He decided to zip up the winter jacket he was now wearing over his flight-suit. A few minutes later the base commander pulled up near the shelter. He had picked up Khurana’s squadron commander beforehand and the trio drove away towards the base operations center. Within the hour, planning began for the squadron’s role in the large offensive air campaign scheduled to begin in a few hours’ time.

The mission now had a code name: Operation Phoenix.

CHENGDU

CENTRAL CHINA

DAY 1 + 0700 HRS

The Chinese weren’t sitting around, either. Feng was back where he thought he belonged, commanding operationally deployed units at war. It had taken them the better part of two months to do it, but they had achieved the bureaucratically impossible: the Lanzhou-Chengdu unified MRAF was operational.     

Wencang had delivered as he had promised, and Jinping had signed off on it. So now Chen was commander of the unified MRAF for the ongoing operations. And Feng was his operations officer at Chengdu. Feng had brought down his staff from Lanzhou and merged them with the Chengdu staff for conformity during the last month and right now they were working fluidly.     

Feng had to oversee the deployment of units at the larger levels and leave the war-fighting aspect to the unit commanders. He wasn’t too comfortable with some of the commanders, but that was something Chen and Wencang had been unable to change in such a relatively short period of time. Most of the guilty ones were too politically well dug in. 

For now, Feng was more concerned with the strategic layout of the PLAAF against the IAF. And his main concern was the vulnerability of their Tibetan airbases to Indian attacks. His list of counter-measures to Wencang two months ago had covered this in detail. And Wencang had delivered on most of them. As a result, aircraft such as the Su-27/30 had not been deployed to the potentially vulnerable airbases in southern Tibet. Neither had the H-6 tankers and cruise-missile carrier aircraft done so. The only aircraft that were really forward deployed were the JH-7s, J-8IIs and a few J-10 detachments.

The war for the PLAAF had already begun. The cruise-missile barrage had done its job and now the manned fighters would do theirs. From all indications coming in, the cruise-missile attacks against Indian airfields had been a fraction of the success they were supposed to have been. The Indians had detected the launches and dispersed in time to take really serious damage. Feng had seen the report on the adjusted satellite orbits of the Indian Aerospace Command and put the picture together in his mind.

Bad luck...
he thought.

But luck was as much a reality in war as tanks and missiles, and good commanders learnt to plan for it as well. Feng had certainly done so.

And to a certain extent, the missile attacks had done their job. The main idea had never been to destroy the IAF on the ground. And indeed, the idea itself was ridiculous. The main idea was to push the IAF further south of the border by destroying the infrastructure that gave them the advantage over the PLAAF in Tibet. Now both sides were far from the border and had almost similar aircraft types and numbers over the battlefield.

This is good.

Overall, senior PLAAF commanders down from Wencang to Chen and Feng knew very well that the terrain handed the IAF a clear advantage of operating close to the borders with near sea-level operating conditions. That meant that they could maintain a higher “aerial-density” over the battlefield. Now that this density had been reduced for a day or two, it gave the Chinese a fighting chance in the air war.

Feng also understood that if the PLAAF was going to keep the IAF from stopping the PLA logistics convoys dead in their tracks as they headed for the border, they would have to maintain this pressure on the IAF airbases using missiles and manned attacks. Actual destruction of Indian aircraft was secondary. If his pilots shot down Indian fighters and bombers while doing their primary jobs, then that was a bonus, but nothing more.

Feng looked at his watch. It was time to go. He put his papers away inside his briefcase and snapped it shut. Chen walked into his office as Feng was putting on his winter uniform coat.

“When do you leave?”

“In an hour. You sure you don’t want me here?” Feng asked again, hoping against hope that Chen would let him stay.

“Of course I want you here. You know that. But we have been over this before. The J-11s and Su-27s of the 6
TH
Fighter Division are going to prove a crucial element of the war in southwestern TAR. Zhigao is not up to the task on his own. I need you to take over his operations staff and be my eyes and ears out there. I can handle this sector without too much trouble. You know what to do,” Chen said. Feng finished buttoning his coat and picked up his briefcase from the table.

“Yes sir, I do understand.” Feng said finally and saluted. Chen returned the salute and patted Feng on the shoulder.

“Hopefully we will all make our way through this in one piece. Take care of yourself out there. And consider that one an order!” Chen smiled.

Feng returned the favor and both men walked out of Feng’s office, with Feng closing the door behind him after giving it a one final look. His personal baggage had already been loaded on to the Tu-154M transport aircraft waiting at the airfield to take him to Kashgar airbase in the Sinkiang region.

When he would arrive there, Feng would assist Major-General Zhigao maintain control of the PLAAF ground and air defenses covering the PLA forces in the Aksai Chin...

SOUTHEASTERN TIBET

DAY 1 + 0730 HRS

With their officers yelling out commands and passing orders, the Chinese soldiers picked up the first shells from the small ammunition dumps near each gun and loaded them inside the chamber. They did so in perfect unison that would have made any drill instructor proud. The gun azimuth and elevation was already set. The ammo dumps were ready to resupply with ready-to-fire shells. Further away, the Chinese flight-crews for the unmanned aerial drones had already entered Indian airspace to the south to conduct artillery target designations. With everything ready, time seemed to slow down and an eerie silence filled the mist-covered early morning skies…

A minute later it was disrupted by the shout from the battery commanders:

“Open fire!”

The grounds shook under the thunder of a thousand field guns all along the Arunachal Pradesh border while the skies were filled with rocket fire from dozens of Chinese MBRL systems.

To the south, Indian soldiers on the border, saw the Himalayan Mountains to their north silhouetted by orange-yellow glow. They then heard the screeching noise of rockets flying over their heads to the south just as inbound artillery started hammering into their positions. The PLA 13
TH
Group Army had just opened the ground offensive against India inside Arunachal Pradesh…

HILLS NORTH OF WALONG

ARUNACHAL PRADESH

DAY 1 + 0805 HRS

“Incoming fire! Take cover! Now!”

Krishnan shouted as he picked up his rifle and ran from where he had been standing towards the line of trenches nearby. His men had dug these out of the hillside and lined them with rocks and sandbags for protection above the riverbank.

As he ran, the line of hills north of the border was silhouetted against the continuous flash of lights while the sounds of the incoming shells sweeping down through the skies became louder. Krishnan and his men had barely jumped into their trenches when the ground shook violently and the dirt and smoke clouds enveloped the air around them in a massive show of light and thunder...

Krishnan was crouching inside his trench along with his radio operator as the latter was contacting the new battalion command post further south. Contact was made with the acting battalion commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Nath. Nath had taken over now that Colonel Malik was nowhere to be found and presumed dead. Brigade HQ had been hit badly as well. And 2
ND
Mountain Division HQ was still scrambling to make sense of what was happening. So Nath was the acting battalion commander until somebody senior came over to relieve him from that post…