Chimera

But that was not to say that lessons had not been learned in the tense half hour. One of the things that had alarmed him was the speed of the Indian response. Within minutes of the missiles being fired, his radar controllers had detected multiple flights of Su-30s entering the airspace against his four on-station Su-27s. The Indians had laid claim to these skies, and it worried Feng that those sitting at the Junwei-Kong-Jun did not realize the level of the threat this kind of force posed to the PLAAF units in the region. He realized that the only way he was going to be able to accomplish the task of reasserting the PLAAF presence in these skies would be when he had a much larger force at his disposal.

He sighed at that prospect. He knew exactly what General Jinping was going to say. Worse, Major-General Zhigao would exude supreme yet naïve confidence when presented with the question of reinforcements for his 6TH Fighter Division. Small man that he was, he would make it a case for his personal ego and honor. And in doing so he would cripple any efforts by Chen and Feng to streamline the PLAAF combat units in the region. The Su-27UBKs and the J-11s in Lanzhou region were deployed under Zhigao for now. And he held very little regard in Lieutenant-General Chen’s and Senior-Colonel Feng’s eyes for his competence.

Zhigao was a man typical of the many senior officers in the PLAAF who lacked the competence required of good, competent leaders and who had instead spent the majority of their careers milking the vast military-industrial complex in China for personal gains. Corruption within the Chinese military was not new. Neither was the knowledge that none of these older commanders had ever faced combat against a professional enemy. The Indian Air-Force was formidable and flexible. Feng wondered whether his own forces would ever get the opportunity to do the same.

MINISTRY OF DEFENCE (MOD)

NEW-DELHI, INDIA

MAY 16, 0810 HRS

“Well, I think it is safe to say that this is typical snafu,” Basu remarked dryly. He looked around and saw the other three men in the room nod their heads in agreement. He walked over and took his seat on the cushioned sofa and sank in. As Ops-Director for the RAW, he was not having a particularly good last few days.

“That about sums it up. Was that a regular PLA Battalion?” Vinesh Chakri, the Indian Defense-Minister, asked from where he sat, watching the tape on the television screen showing the IR view of the Heron over Shiquanhe.

“Not the first one. That was a police battalion from the Chinese 38TH Police Division. They got ambushed and mauled during the day’s fighting with the Tibetans. That’s when they called in their PLA buddies who, in all their genius, rolled in with armor and heavy guns and neutralized the whole damn village. No question of civilian losses. You see that? There on the left? That’s a complete block of civilian houses demolished by Chinese heavy artillery. Those guys fight insurgency with a heavy hand. And bottom line is that it works. Out Tibetan friends lost a good chunk of their men in this region in just one day’s fighting,” Lieutenant-Colonel Ansari said and paused the tape.

“So much for our chances of coordination and control. Their poor tactics are taking them towards self-destruction. This insurgency is going to be over before we can even make the Chinese bleed enough to care!” Basu said from where he sat.

“What about Gephel and his teams?” Chakri asked Ansari, ignoring Basu’s defeatist attitude for the moment.

“He and his men were down there in these hills you see on the top-left corner of the screen. Our UAV was to the south of the village while the team was northeast. They made good on their escape. All intercepts of Chinese comms revealed no suspicion of the team’s existence. But for all intents and purposes their mission was over before it began.”

“True. Damn idiots, those Tibetans. Couldn’t they have held off the temptation to attack that police convoy for just this once? Now what?”

“We wait until we hear from the Tibetan resistance again on a new contact place,” Basu said as he leaned forward and sat upright on the sofa.

“If they haven’t been compromised by the Chinese already! We could just evac Gephel and his teams out entirely given the haphazard and uncoordinated way the Tibetans are running this thing. Last thing we want to do is get ourselves implicated in all this if they get caught. Especially considering what happened yesterday night in the skies above Ladakh,” the SOCOM officer offered. Chakri shook his head in dismissal: