Chimera

“Very well, Captain,” Surakshan replied. “I will give you and your crew exactly thirty minutes to abandon ship and get to a safe distance. After that I will hit your ships with missiles. This is your only warning!”

“Unfortunately I cannot do that, sir,” Bingde said calmly. “I repeat again: I am an unarmed merchant ship and in international waters. I will not submit my ship and my crew to your blatant hostility!”

“Captain,” Surakshan replied dispassionately, “all I can say to you is that your ten minutes started thirty seconds ago.”

The channel clicked off.

Bingde looked around and saw the fear on the faces of his bridge crew. He could not order the abandoning of this ship. But he also could not sacrifice his crew in good conscience. The Indians were going beyond the rules now on the high seas and there wasn’t much his own navy could do about it. He realized that his options were very limited. He picked up the speaker for the ship’s intercom:

“All hands, this is your Captain speaking. I order you all to abandon ship right now. I say again: abandon ship! Get as far away from the ship as you can. Go!”

He put the speaker down and looked at the bridge crew: “You all need to leave as well! Go! Now!”

“What about you, sir?” the radio-operator said. Bingde smiled.

“I belong on the bridge. I would rather meet my end here than in a labor camp somewhere. Now please leave!”

Fifteen minutes later the four remaining ships of the convoy were floating dead in the water with a dozen motor-lifeboats streaming away from them.

Bingde watched from the abandoned bridge as the small lifeboats moved away. He picked up his binoculars and walked out on the observation deck. He had tied a make-shift sling for his broken left arm in this time. He checked his watch and realized it was more than half-an-hour since his radio conversation with the Admiral. The Indian commander was giving him more time than he had promised. He held on to the railing as the first rays of sunlight illuminated the deck of the ship and the skies above became light blue.

A glorious day out on the high seas…

He just about saw the incoming missiles when they hit his ship near the stern, ripping the rails from his hands in a jerk and sent him flying into the air and into the waters below. By the time he came back up to the surface, trying to stay afloat with just one hand, he saw the hull of the Yuankou buckling and flexing after having taken high power hits from several Indian missiles. He saw large holes on the side of the ship from which black smoke was spewing out into the blue skies above. The cargo containers on the top deck broke loose under the strain and splashed into the waters. He had just enough time to look around the roiling waters to see the other three ships also on fire before one of the loose containers from the deck broke loose and fell right over him…

CHINESE STRATEGIC AIR CENTER

KASHGAR

CHINA

DAY 9 + 0800 HRS

The smoke was still rising into the cold morning sky. Feng coughed as some of it reached his lungs as he stepped out of the staff car. Once he cleared his bout of cough, he took the protective goggles Major Li handed him. He put it on and looked around to see the aftermath of the devastating strike that had taken place here.

From where he stood near the exit of his underground command center, he could see a tower of flames in the distance from what had been the buried fuel-farm for the airbase. He could see hundreds of PLA soldiers now at the base assisting the beleaguered PLAAF personnel and civilian fire-fighters as they attempted to make the airbase operational again.

That is going to take time!

One look at the devastation at the airbase had convinced Feng that Kashgar was now out of this war.

While the runway could be made operational in a few hours, it would take more time to replace all the personnel, equipment and vehicles destroyed by the sensor-fused weapons. Many of the unexploded bomb-lets dispersed by the fleeing Jaguars were severely hindering clean-up operations.

Feng could also see the crashed wreckage of three J-7s from the resident 17TH Air Regiment that had returned to the airbase after their fight with the Indian Su-30s over Hotien only to find the runway cratered and their airbase on fire. The pilots had no choice but to eject from their aircraft outside the base perimeter once they ran out of fuel.

The 17TH Air Regiment is gone!

Kashgar airbase is gone!

And a precious airborne aircraft as well as six J-11s are gone!

Feng fumed with rage at the devastation and saw Major Li removing his bags from the car and taking it to the parked Mi-17s that had flown in from Aksu-Wensu airbase to the northeast. That was the nearest airbase with an operational runway at this point.