Chimera

Golmud airbase was not deserted, however. Aircraft from the 26TH Air Division continued to operate from there along with a detachment of J-11 air-superiority fighters on airbase defense duty. Golmud now represented one of the last untouched PLAAF airbases in Tibet on account of its long distance away from the Indian border. No other airbase south of Golmud was now accessible to the Chinese. Lhasa and Shigatse were included in the no-go list as an indicator of how desperate the situation was for the PLAAF over Tibet.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. And scorched-earth policy was now in play…

Within thirty minutes, the three launch vehicles rolled off the tarmac on to the gravel and drove off to a clearing near the end of the runway, a kilometer from the base of the snow-capped mountains around them.

Once there, the TELs lowered their hydraulic supports and elevated the vehicle so that the entire chassis was stabilized. Minutes of silence passed before the three-tube launcher bases rotated to their sides and locked into position.

When the commanding officer of the 821ST Brigade confirmed his detachment’s readiness to Feng, he ordered the launch.

The Golmud valley reverberated as a barrage of nine CJ-10 GLCMs headed into the blue morning sky above. The trails of smoke extended in near parabolic trajectories to the south before fading away.

AIRSPACE OVER SOUTHERN TIBET

DAY 10 + 0930 HRS

The nine cruise-missiles stabilized in forward flight soon after clearing the peaks and lowered to terrain-mapping mode.

Unlike the vast majority of the other Chinese cruise-missiles, ground or air-launched, the Long-Swords were state-of-the-art. They were very new and very limited in quantity given the recent initiation of full scale production. Currently only the 821ST Brigade was armed with these missiles. They represented the next generation of Chinese cruise-missile technology. Carrying a significant payload over very long distances, the Long-Sword was in essence the counterpart to the decommissioned strategic versions of the US Tomahawk missiles. They also carried the very best navigation and guidance technology that China had to offer. It allowed these missiles to fly close to the ground and reach their targets under the enemy’s radar coverage.

The terrain against which they masked themselves was jagged, wavy and difficult to spot on. The missiles were not flying high above the ground and not in a straight line either. With shorter physical range to their target, the missiles could also take a convoluted approach to their targets.

As such they escaped Indian detection all the way until they climbed to altitude above the Greater Himalayan Range south of the destroyed Chinese airbase at Nyingchi Kang Ko on the Arunachal Pradesh border. The only warning for the Indians came from the sole surviving aerostat tethered-radar system near Chabua airbase when the missiles flew south-west before crossing into Assam. As the first Indian Su-30s dived to engage, the missiles were already on final approach to their targets…

The first CJ-10 detonated a thousand-pound warhead five-hundred feet above the runway at Tezpur airbase. It sent out a massive ball of expanding shock-waves that hit the ground below and dug deep into it as a crater of mud erupted. The reflected shockwaves collided before sweeping over the tarmac.

Another two missiles detonated in the air directly above the entrance to a pair of hardened aircraft shelters, utterly demolishing them into the ground in a wall of mud, concrete and fire along with three Su-30s inside. The shockwaves travelled as they became weaker but still rippled through all of the base buildings as well as shattering all windows within a kilometer radius around the base. When the thunderous roars subsided, the craters were surrounded by columns of thick black smoke rising into the skies above.

Similar hits were absorbed by Jorhat airbase to the east.

The Su-30s on patrol that had dived to intercept managed to destroy two of the remaining three missiles over Arunachal Pradesh as they headed towards the Se-La. The last surviving missiles dived into the center of Tawang and detonated a thousand-pound unitary warhead directly above the town made up of ramshackle civilian houses and old Buddhist monasteries…

Two hours later, Feng was shown the latest satellite images of the decimated Indian airfields at Tezpur and Jorhat. He finally smiled and glanced at the officers of the PLAAF around him:

“Gentlemen, our comrades at Kashgar have been avenged!”

TAWANG

WESTERN ARUNACHAL PRADESH

INDIA

DAY 10 + 1700 HRS

The western slopes of the Himalayas were illuminated in the reddish sunset as yet another day in the war ended.

But for the people of Tawang, the ordeals knew no end.