Chimera (79 page)

For the past few days the long-range, long-endurance Herons of the IAF had been flying lonely, isolated missions over central Tibet in support of the SFC. They were filling coverage gaps and helping maintain a minimal level visual contact on the enemy.

When the RISAT-2 satellite was smashed in orbit above the 823
RD
Brigade launchers, the loss in video-feed at the SFC had been partial, unlike in Bangalore. The nearest Heron had been diverted on orders from Air-Marshal Iyer and had arrived on station, far-south of the battery and outside the range of its medium-range SAMs in order to maintain long, oblique visual angles for its EO systems. That way, it stayed out of harm’s way while still able to monitor activities at the southernmost battery of the Brigade. The Chinese had no knowledge of this bird and so when they began rolling out the DF-21C launchers from their camouflaged locations for pre-launch preparations, they had no intelligence that Iyer and his staff at the SFC had a clear view of the Chinese intentions…

OPERATIONS CENTER

STRATEGIC FORCES COMMAND

INDIA

DAY 15 + 0520 HRS

“Oh my
god!
Are you serious?” the Prime-Minister’s voice came over the conference view on the wall.

“I
wish
I wasn’t!” Iyer replied urgently. “It’s clear as day, sir! We can
see
them preparing the launchers. The nettings are gone and the vehicles are preparing to move to their launch positions!”

“What targets are we expecting them to aim for?” Chakri asked as he joined the conversation. “I mean, we are talking about their DF-21s, right?”

“We are.” Iyer agreed. “The ‘C’ models to be exact. From where they are between Korla and Golmud, they can hit any target within an arc of fifteen-hundred kilometers. To give you an idea, we are talking about all states from Ladakh, down to Delhi, Uttar-Pradesh, Bihar, Sikkim, Assam and most other eastern states. But we don’t see any activity at their DF-31 sites. The 31s are what they would need in order to hit our southern cities such as Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and so on.”

“So it’s possible they are going for a battlefield use at this time? Not our cities?” the PM asked, his voice cracking under the fear.

“It
is
possible,” Iyer said. “But they
can
hit Delhi, as I mentioned earlier!”   

“Iyer, are we talking nuclear warheads here?” Chakri asked. “I want to be clear on this!” Just then the NSA and other military officials joined the video feed and the screen split into smaller sections to accommodate them.

“Yes sir,” Iyer continued as Vice-Admiral Valhotra coordinated with the other officers in the operations center. “We are almost certain that their DF-21Cs are nuclear-tipped. Their short-range missiles are not. Many of these units were hit and destroyed on the ground by our air-force strikes once we established control of the skies over southern Tibet. Beijing pulled the surviving launchers to the north where we can’t touch them. But it also means that unless we start driving deep into Tibet, those shorter-range missiles are not our primary concern at this point. The DF-21s, however, are very much
the
weapon of choice for Beijing right now.”

“
Oh my god!
” the PM added as he rubbed his eyes.

“
Why
are they doing this?” Ravoof asked, completely lost on Chinese intentions. “We
just
initiated conversations with Beijing to negotiate an end to the war! Where did this threat suddenly come from?”

“I will tell you where it came from,” Chakri sighed. “One of their Divisions in the Chumbi valley just surrendered to us! The other one there isn’t far behind. And General Potgam and his Joint-Force-Bhutan just killed the Highland Division headquarters in northern Bhutan.”

“So this whole thing is a loss-of-face issue for Beijing?” the PM asked.

“It would very much be in their character,” Chakri replied.

“So what the hell do we do now?” Ravoof asked as he absorbed the severity of the situation.

“Air-Marshal Iyer? Our options?” Chakri asked the SFC commander.

OVER NORTHERN TIBET

DAY 15 + 0600 HRS

“Come
on!
Hurry!”

The operators watching the feed from the Heron’s electro-optical pod could hear their hearts beating in their chests as they watched the infra-red view of a DF-21C missile launcher elevating its deadly cannisterized cargo. Their view showed white-coloration regions near the engine and the hydraulic pumps of the launcher as they glowed hot in the IR spectrum. Other sections of the vehicle were lighter shades of gray and the freezing grounds nearby were dark gray or black.

The top cover of the large-diameter tube opened up. The UAV operators saw the crews clearing out. The body language of the Chinese crews around that launcher suggested they knew they had time.

They didn’t.

The Heron’s EO screen showed a small black cone swipe across the screen and slam into the ground a few dozen meters away from the vehicle. The screen flared white and the post-processing software at the Heron’s flight-control center adjusted coloration to show a white ball of flame expanding over that location and lifting off the ground as it disappeared. It left behind a small mushroom-shaped cloud expanding over that location even as the destroyed launcher vehicle rolled on the smoke-filled terrain shedding large chunks of its body…

“
Kaboom!
” the EO operator shouted.

“More flare-outs to the east!” the Heron pilot shouted as his own flight-control screen flickered. “
God damn it!
Bring your eyeball over east!”

“Yeah, Wilco!” the EO operator replied.

As the EO pod rotated about two axes under the Heron and the view changed, they could see more smoke clouds rising into the sky all over the region as Indian Agni-I and Agni-II ballistic-missiles slammed in quick sequences into the Chinese DF-21C launch sites. All of it was so silent and serene on the screens of the Heron as they zoomed back the EO view to show the entire region from forty-thousand feet…

The same view was being shared at the SFC operations center. There also, the view was being watched in silence by all those present. Iyer crossed his arms and let out a deep breath as they overheard the operators of the Heron talking to each other in fear-induced excitement as more and more Agni warheads dived into the DF-21C brigade locations.

Even now, missiles were launching from Assam and Uttar Pradesh as more Agni-IIs were taking to the air. The warheads were all conventional-unitary high-explosive. The PM had not allowed Iyer to use nuclear-weapons in a preemptive strike. Had these warheads been nuclear, Iyer could have eliminated these Brigades in northern Tibet with
far
few missiles and greater certainty of annihilation.

Luckily for him, the Chinese had not deployed their launchers in single-launcher batteries. They were grouped between four and five launchers per group and that meant that for sixty-five launchers, there were fifteen targets. But each target had its own set of dispersal and launch areas, and there was only one Heron in play here, watching only the southernmost battery and watching the region from far away. There was no way to know exactly which of the three or four pre-determined launch locations were being used by the other launchers in the region. So each had to be struck independently to ensure a high probability of destruction. Iyer had been forced to expend sixty Agni-Is and –IIs in the conventional strike role. A high number by any consideration. And he knew it.

The use of conventional warheads brought a host of other problems as well. The biggest was that they could not be certain whether all of the targets had been eliminated or not. All Indian missiles were striking their targets as predicted, but that didn’t mean their targets were destroyed…

“Oh
shit!
What the hell is
that?
” The Heron pilot shouted and Iyer looked away from the floor and his thoughts and back to the wall screen.

“Where?” The EO operator asked.

“Eleven-position!” The pilot exclaimed. “Bring your eyeball to my eleven, damn it!”

“Hold
on!
The pod has a fixed omega-rate! It doesn’t go faster!” The EO operator shouted, forgetting that they were over open comms with the SFC operations center. Iyer looked at Valhotra and shook his head. He knew what this was.

The wall screen view rotated and showed two long, thin pillars of white-gray smoke rising away from one of the distant smoke clouds. A white region of hot gas at the tip of the rising pillar…

Iyer opened his arms and turned to Valhotra:

“Send out the warning order! We have two DF-21s in the air with nuclear warheads!”  

UPPER ATMOSPHERE OVER SOUTHERN TIBET

DAY 15 + 0630 HRS

There was no ordered process to any of this.

When the Indian ballistic-missiles had taken the DF-21C brigades by surprise, it had also eliminated any semblance of an organized strike from the Chinese against Indian military targets. There had been no time to re-task surviving launchers as others were being taken out in quick successions. As a result, there was no chance to re-task to a higher priority target when the launcher for that target had gone up in flames and thunder.

For the surviving launchers, it was time to use them or lose them. The two launchers than
had
launched their missiles had done so on their original tasking. These two warheads arced south and began diving into their targets. The warheads heated while detached shocks formed around their small blunted-ogive noses. They parted the white clouds in the lower atmosphere above the targets and flashed them away.  Several seconds later they dived into their targets in Bhutan without any hope of intercept…

PARU VALLEY

BHUTAN

DAY 15 + 0632 HRS

As the sudden brilliant flash of light overhead paled the early morning sun to the east, Squadron-Leader Saxena jerked his head upwards and saw the expanding ball of light a thousand feet above the town to his west.

North of the town, Lieutenant-Colonel Fernandez also brought his arm in front of his face as ball expanded and then smashed into the town to his south. It was the last thing both men ever saw.

The one-hundred-fifty kiloton nuclear-warhead exploded over the town and the ball of flash and flame expanded radially over the town, instantly enveloping thousands of unfortunate citizens. It flashed over Paru airport like a brick wall of flame and debris that swept aside the two parked An-32s on the ground and smashed past the bombed-out remains of the terminal buildings as well as dozens of army trucks and other vehicles.

North of the town, it wiped out the forest and ate up the convoy of resupply trucks that were moving to Fernandez’s unit. A second later it swept past the Pinaka launchers, rolling them into the wall of debris and flame along with all of Paratroopers from the 12
TH
Battalion posted there…

BARSHONG

NORTHERN BHUTAN

DAY 15 + 0632 HRS

Pathanya, Vikram and the other members of Spear team dived for cover. They were six kilometers west of the village occupied by the 11
TH
Para Battalion, when they saw the flash of light over the ridges to their east.

The snow on all peaks around Barshong instantly flashed away under the intense heat and revealed the brown rocky layers underneath. Vikram saw the pressure wave rapidly approaching them as it engulfed the valley and the village and he covered his head with his hands behind the boulders a few seconds before the shockwave swept past them… 

NORTH OF BAGHDOGRA AIRBASE

INDIA

DAY 15 + 0635 HRS

There
was
one unique strategic aspect to the nuclear chaos.

When Chakri had been told that the Heron UAVs had provided them with
the
most crucial piece of real-time intelligence of this war, he had also recognized that it had given them an advantage not shared by Beijing.

They
knew
that China intended to use nuclear weapons
before
they actually used them. And so while the launchers in Tibet were being readied for launch, perhaps the Chinese high command was as well?

Chakri had ordered Iyer to confirm via Malhotra and his RISAT-1 satellite what the status was at a particular location west of Beijing. Following that, he had given Iyer the one special order aside from the preemptive strike against the DF-21C launchers. That order now went into play just as the explosions ripped the Bhutanese mountains apart.

The citizens of Baghdogra were once again witnesses to yet another Indian ballistic-missile launch as a massive Agni-III ICBM lifted off from its canister north of the town and climbed into the early morning sky with a loud, thundering rumble. It climbed slowly, gathering speed as it accelerated into the low hanging clouds, its hot exhaust parting them like god’s hand…