Chimera (23 page)

LEH

LADAKH

DAY 2 + 1205 HRS

The screen lit up with eight lines of bright tracer fire heading east just as other lines of tracers headed west.

“Holy shit!” one of the Lieutenants exclaimed. The senior officers in the room ignored the young man.

There were several flashes of light as the camera zoomed out and adjusted thermal color contrast to show three flaming ZBDs staggering to a halt in the east while two BMPs lit up in flames. Now tracers were flying in all directions as both sides engaged in a desperate battle for supremacy…

“Which unit is this?” Gupta asked his operations chief.

“Elements of the 10
TH
Mechanized-Infantry Battalion, sir.”

“Sudarshan’s chaps?”

“Yes. Sudarshan is out there at DBO along with his HQ group and three BMP troop formations that made up his advance element. The rest of the 10
TH
Mechanized Battalion is still driving up from Saser and approaching Daulat-beg-oldi, but they are taking fire from Chinese artillery.”

“How on earth are they targeting our boys with artillery so precisely?”

“The same way we are: under directions of their UAVs. We think they have several of these flying over the LAC watching our movements as we are watching theirs,” The Major-General replied and then crossed his arms as he continued to watch the feed from the Divisional headquarters. Gupta was not pleased to hear what he had just heard:

“Damn those buggers. Haven’t the air-force chaps been able to nail those Chinese drones yet?”

“Not yet, sir. They say they are working on it. Seems these smaller UAVs are too small for radar detection and there are not enough fighters to try and do a visual search all over Ladakh. The liaison says they are planning to try something new later today that might work.”

“
Oh that’s bloody wonderful!
Our boys are getting hammered out there even before they get to the frontlines thanks to those commie drones and the air-force is twiddling their thumbs at us. Whatever it is they want to try, we better hope it works. Otherwise Adesara and his boys are going to have to fight an uneven battle because his reinforcements won’t be able to make their way to him intact. Any good news?” Gupta asked

“Yes sir. The Chinese artillery is taking a beating. Our counter-artillery units are making a killing. So far anyway. It won’t be long before the Chinese bring in their own counter systems, but at least we are knocking out a good number of Chinese field batteries,” the Major-General noted.

This time Gupta did not answer as both men stared at the UAV thermal optics feed.

The four remaining BMPs under Sudarshan’s command were deploying smoke and reversing out of their positions while continuing to exchange fire with the seven Chinese ZBDs now less than a kilometer away from them. The unit was under threat of being flanked by other ZBD groups that were charging in from the north and Sudarshan had seen the threat approaching. He was denying the Chinese commander a vulnerable flank by initiating a fighting withdrawal.

As he did so he was also buying time for his Battalion anti-tank platoon two kilometers behind him to reload their Nag missile load-out. It was now a desperate running battle between gunners from both sides at near point blank ranges...

Within only a few minutes the first Chinese ZBDs raced over the gravel wall and slammed through the positions vacated by the Indians. They quickly bypassed the burning hulks of the BMPs destroyed by their gunfire. All through the way the turrets were still blazing away at the remaining four BMPs… 

Gupta looked over to his operations chief:

“We are losing this battle. Sudarshan is getting overrun and Adesara is fighting off waves of tanks with Infantry and a handful of light armor vehicles. Get over to the air-force guys and tell them that Chinese S-300 threat or not, we need priority air-support over at DBO or else we are going to lose the Karakoram pass by the end of the day today!”

SOUTHEAST OF DAULAT-BEG-OLDI

DAY 2 + 1245 HRS

“Driver! Stop!”

The NAMICA chassis shuddered to an abrupt stop and the dust trailing behind caught up, enveloping the vehicle. The platoon-commander looked through his sights and passed the confirmation to the other vehicles in the troop.

They were sufficiently covered by the boulders ahead, but the turret and the Nag launch canisters were above the rocks and had a clear line of sight all the way to the east. From here the crew could see the three remaining BMPs under Colonel Sudarshan reversing towards them in a weaving pattern even as they fought off the hard charging Chinese ZBDs. It was a poignant sight to see the desperate battle being fought by the surviving BMP-II crews trying to stave off being overrun by a numerically superior enemy force.

Of course, that’s where we come in!

The platoon-commander thought as he brought up his comms mouthpiece and maneuvered the other three NAMICAs into position. His force of hour vehicles had been able to reload a new cache of ready-to-fire missiles after having successfully disengaged from the earlier battle.

He peered through his vehicle optics to see another BMP-II to his east taking serious number of cannon hits. Sparks were flying in all directions from that vehicle under the impacts before its engines died and it staggered to a halt.

The turret of the incapacitated vehicle flung open and two crew members staggered out, obviously hurt. No sooner had they stepped out that flames and smoke erupted from inside the turret hatch. They were jumping off the chassis and trying to make sense of the confused, smoke-filled battle situation around them when a Chinese ZBD gunner opened up with his vehicle’s cannon and a small cloud of red mist erupted around the two crew members as both men took hits from the heavy rounds. Their shattered and lifeless bodies fell into the snow.

The suddenness of the brutal attack caught the NAMICA crews off-guard. That surprise gave way to anger. The platoon-commander zoomed in on the guilty ZBD…

It was within range.

“Gunner! Tell me you have visual on that bastard!”

“I have visual! He’s mine!” the gunner replied.

“Take the fucking shot! Fire!”

As the vehicle shuddered, a Nag missile leapt from its canister and slashed across the skies, the platoon-commander switched frequencies:

“Fiery-One to Fiery Platoon!
Engage! Engage!
Take those bastards out!”

The vehicle shuddered again as a second missile punched out of the canister. By this time the first missile was already streaking at supersonic speeds towards the doomed ZBD. The Nag slammed into the weak top armor of the Chinese vehicle and the vehicle was completely shredded into a thousand pieces of shrapnel and debris under the impact.

There was no question of survivors.

Within seconds three other ZBDs suffered similar fates as the NAMICA platoon began ripping the remaining Chinese light-armor force to shreds… 

EAST OF DAULAT-BEG-OLDI

DAY 2 + 1330 HRS

The Chinese armor force commander was acting as Adesara predicted. But predictions did him no good if there was nothing he could do to stop the oncoming threat.

Adesara lowered his binoculars and realized that the Chinese commander had done the smart thing and pushed his surviving armored vehicles from the initial assault wave to the north once he had brutally lost most of the vehicles in his southern edge of the advance. It also meant that more pressure could be applied against each of the three Battalions under Adesara individually.

This Chinese commander’s first instinct had been the correct one and more importantly he had paid heed to it.

That made him dangerous to Adesara.

On the Indian side Adesara had no more armored vehicles left with him. Even the 10
TH
Mechanized Battalion’s advance elements had been mauled. The last line of defense behind this one was around the airstrip. The only defensive line after that was all the way to the south near Saser.

But that last location meant that everything north of it would fall into Chinese hands. This included the Karakoram pass, DBO and all of the surrounding plains. It was not something that Adesara and his Brigade staff had enjoyed simulating in the months past. And yet those simulations were now becoming reality…

With a thundering crack a Milan anti-tank missile slammed into the left side panels of a Chinese T-99 and blew of the track and the steel wheels into the air, causing the tank to a stop as smoke began pouring out of the driver’s hatch. The return fire from a second T-99 exploded mere meters away from the two Indian soldiers manning the missile launcher. The explosion ripped through the ground and showered them both with a pile of gravel and rocks. But they staggered away from it with bleeding wounds and covered in dust.

Hurt, but alive.

Adesara watched as other soldiers ran over to help their wounded colleagues while still under withering machinegun fire from two T-99s sniping at them from long-range. But then again, the Gorkhas were known for their indifference to fear. He saw the Gorkhas take the arms of the two wounded missile-gunners around their neck and help them away from the position. In doing so one Gorkha got hit and went face down into the snow and gravel ground, his blood pooling around his body.  

Adesara’s fists turned into balls of anger at his inability to provide his men the kind of superior firepower they needed against Chinese armor. But the Indian army had never seriously considered such high intensity armored battles in Ladakh and had never deployed larger forces there. The price for this was being paid for in blood today.

Adesara walked over to where his operations officer and the air-force forward-air-controller were arguing near the command post’s battlefield computers and other comms equipment.

“What the
hell
is going on here? And
where
the hell is my air-support?”

The Lt-Colonel who was the operations officer for Adesara looked at the FAC, who looked a much harried man…

“Sir, I can bring in two Jaguars with half loads within two minutes. They have hit their primary targets in the Galwan valley area but still have unused weapons hanging from their pylons. I am trying to scrounge any flights that have unused ammunition to support us here, but the entire Ladakh front has blown up in the last few hours. Every aircraft we have available is being used for support operations somewhere or the other.
There are just not enough fighters to go around!
”

Adesara lost his temper.

“God damn it! I was assured by the Division commander that we had priority over this sector! Somebody has screwed things up the line!”

Again!
He didn’t add.

“All right, listen up. Clear out this mess! Both of you! You get any and every aircraft that you can find in the air that has weapons to spare. If they have napalm, get them! If they have cluster-munitions, get them! Even cannon rounds! I don’t care! Just get them here! Even the very presence of friendly aircraft overhead will help! We have to hold this ground. I am not handing over the Karakoram pass to the Chinese today!”

OVER SOUTHEASTERN LADAKH

DAY 2 + 1500 HRS

The valleys were already going under the long shadows of the mountains around Ladakh. At fifteen-thousand feet above ground level, the ARC Gulfstream-III aircraft was barely high enough to do its job properly. But given the altitude of the Ladakh region, it was still at thirty-thousand feet above sea-level. The aircraft tore through the rarefied freezing air as it approached the LAC.

“Standby for acquisition.”

The pilot said over the cockpit intercom to the mission-controller in the cabin behind him.

“Roger.”

Chinese electronic emissions were “visible” well within Indian Territory west of the LAC. These emanated from a KJ-2000 AWACS loitering over Hotien airbase in southwestern Tibet and the Big-Bird S-300 3D acquisition radars. By the same token the Indian electronic space extended a good two-hundred kilometers north of the LAC thanks to the Phalcon AWACS throwing out long wavelength radar emissions. For this ARC crew though, the battle began within Chinese electronic space, not the Indian one.

The flight-crew up front was monitoring airspace visually and they could see the snow-capped peaks of the Karakoram pass to their northeast. The onboard RWR was passively tracking the emissions of the KJ-2000 but the ARC aircraft had still not entered the latter’s detection radius. And the S-300 Big-Bird radars were similarly out of range.

Hopefully.

There was no real way of knowing just where the KJ-2000 would have picked them out. The same went for the S-300 radars. The first clue they would have of having been detected is when their RWR would tell them that an S-300 battery commander had switched on the guidance radars for his 48N6E2 missiles…

“Helios-One. You are approaching FDR in one-point-five minutes at current bearing,” Verma’s authoritative voice from the Phalcon rang out through the cockpit.