Chimera

It seemed like an eternity had passed when Saxena opened his eyes. Smoke and dust filled his lungs. Broken glass and pieces of debris covered every inch of the ground, and large chunks of the building were collapsing around him. All of it was strangely quiet and it took him a second to realize that all he heard was painful ringing in his ears. He brought his hands up to his face to see the blood coming out of some minor wounds and a whole bunch of other scratches, but felt no pain. His brain was still catching up with the suddenness of the impact the body had taken. He got up to see his uniform covered in dust and small pieces of burning debris, which he shook off as he began to look around and see where he was.

Another member of his controller team ran up beside him and was literally dragging him away. Saxena’s mind had still not caught up to the events after the powerful blast had knocked him out.

Right now, all he could see was that his dust covered rifle was left behind where he had fallen. He could see his legs making their drag path through the dust covered floor while his colleague was pulling him away.

“My weapon! Damn you! It’s over there! My weapon’s on the ground over there! Don’t leave it there!”

His colleague however, had other things in mind as he heard the enemy jet engine noises overhead:

“Leave it! We have to get out of this building now! It’s going to get hit any second!”

“We are at the front, soldier! I need that rifle! I…” Saxena’s thoughts finally began catching up to him as the two men reached the other end of the building:

“… are they still overhead? Wait: what about the others? Wait!”

Before his colleague could respond, another jet screamed overhead and a series of blasts destroyed the area the two men had been just a minute ago. This time they were far closer to the explosions. The powerful shockwave swept like a moving wall of bricks through the entrance of the terminal building on the other side and sent both men and two of the Paratroopers flying into the air amidst a cloud of debris and dust. They fell close to each other on the road outside, about ten meters away, rolling into the road filled with overturned and burning cars…

It took several seconds of coughing before Saxena rolled over his back and used the open door of a nearby abandoned army truck to stand up, leaning on the vehicle as he did. He had been shielded by his colleague, who now lay on the ground motionless, a pool of blood nearby. Gupta saw another dust covered soldier also staggering over to his colleague, and several other air-force ground-crewmen rushing over to help him and the others screaming from pain. When he finally turned to face the airport, he could only watch in horror.

There was a massive gaping hole where the main terminal building had been. A pillar of black smoke was gushing into the air from it. The control tower was a pillar of blazing fire now. When he turned his head upwards at the sound of jet engines, he could only hear unfriendly ones. Two or three black specks were still flying over Paru against the starlit night sky, seemingly picking targets on the airbase below.

A shriek of pain from someone nearby brought focus to his brain despite the shock. He began getting his motor skills back in action and staggered over to the open ground where he saw some soldiers staggering away clumsily, their uniforms covered with dust. Saxena grabbed one of them by the shoulder:

“Don’t stay in the open, damn it! Get on the other side of the road and into cover! Go!”

He then ran over to a bleeding army radioman who had managed to escape the nightmarish cauldron inside the building and grabbed him by his radio harness:

“Look at me! Is your CNR working?” Saxena shouted.

He struggled to comprehend the question. The man was more shell-shocked than it appeared at first to Saxena. Saxena waved over a warrant-officer.

“Help me get this CNR set off this soldier! I need to get in touch with warlord-central!”

While both men removed the harness, Saxena continued talking: “Have you seen the other forward controllers? I cannot see them!”

“No sir! We lost sight of everybody right before the attack, I…” the warrant officer’s sentence was broken mid-sentence as another thunderous explosion rocked the airport perimeter to the west. Both men looked up to see a J-10 streak by in a blur. Soon the radio was back in Saxena’s hands. He turned to the airman:

“Okay, get him behind cover and keep him there. Go!”

He then switched the radio on as the other two men staggered away from the road and into cover. But as he attempted to figure out why the set was not working, a sudden explosion in the sky above caused him to jerk his head up…

A small fireball had just turned into smoke above the airport and an aircraft began falling out of the sky. The burning wreckage of what had been a Chinese J-10 smashed into the peaks north of the airbase…