Chimera

Feng grunted. Of course the war wasn’t going well. But that was very different from saying that the war was lost…

No! The war is not lost!

Not while we still have Fighter Divisions available for combat!

Feng had just been briefed by the senior meteorological officer that weather conditions over Tibet were expected to improve in the next few hours and so operation Punitive-Dragon would proceed as planned.

Right at that moment pilots and ground-crews were preparing their J-11s for combat at Korla, Urumqi and Wulumuqi airbases in northwestern China. The 19TH Division’s entire 55TH Regiment was involved. So were the 26TH Air Division’s remaining special-mission aircraft from Korla and tanker support from the 36TH Bomber Division at Wugong airbase.

Feng noticed on the wall screen that Golmud was not active today. That base was still down and would not be operative again until tomorrow, two whole days after it had been struck by the Indian missiles. That attack still rankled Feng. The embarrassment of that attack had been hard to bear.

And Punitive-Dragon was payback for it.

KORLA

NORTHWESTERN CHINA

DAY 12 + 1450 HRS

The four jet engines of the KJ-2000 roared to life as the aircraft thundered down the runway trailing exhaust smoke from all four engines. After several hundred meters of roll, the nose of the aircraft rotated above the concrete and the aircraft lifted into the air. The undercarriage rolled into their bays as the aircraft picked up altitude from the base, watched by hundreds of ground crews. The blue skies above were covered with dozens of white contrail pairs heading south as forty-two J-11s of the 55TH Fighter Regiment/19TH Fighter Division gathering in the skies before heading south into Tibet…

OVER SOUTHERN TIBET

DAY 12 + 1610 HRS

“Inbound! Inbound! We have forty-two bandits charging in from the north!”

The radar operators on board the CABS AEW aircraft were the first Indian military personnel to learn what Punitive-Dragon had in store. As the systems crew on board the small modified Embraer aircraft started sending urgent information to the Indian Eastern and Central Air Commands, the skies over southern Tibet become contested once again after two days of virtual IAF dominance…

“Forty-two?!” Group-Captain Roy shouted and ran over behind the console operator.

“Roger! Didn’t think the reds had that many Su-27s left!” the operator replied as he categorized the inbound threats.

“E-S-M is picking up enemy airborne-radar emissions behind the inbounds! They just went active!” the electronic-warfare officer shouted from another console.

“What the hell are they…” Roy realized the answer midway through that question. Oh shit!

He ran over to the cockpit and poked his head through the cockpit cabin door, startling the two pilots sitting there.

“What the hell is going on?” the pilot blurted out.

“Get us out of here! Now!” Roy shouted, his voice cracking under the stress. “We have forty-two Flankers inbound with airborne-radar support heading straight for us!”

“Good god! That many? Okay, we are leaving!” the pilot said as both him and the co-pilot immediately began pulling the aircraft out of auto-pilot.

The pilot put his right hand on the throttles and pushed them forward to the maximum. The engines whined at a higher pitch and the aircraft engine noise instantly increased. The systems operators in the cabin felt themselves pushed into their seats a bit as the aircraft accelerated and then banked. The pilots pulled the aircraft out of its race-track patrol location south of Lhasa and back towards the south.

Roy walked back behind the operators and checked the screen. Sure enough, the Chinese Flankers were heading inbound straight towards the Indian AEW aircraft under guidance from the KJ-2000 crew. The PLAAF was attempting to do exactly what the Western Air Command had done a few days ago over the Taklimakan desert against the 26TH Air Division’s KJ-2000 cover.

Well, we will see about that!

Roy keyed his intercom so that he could talk above the engine noise outside:

“Okay, people. Listen up. We are now egressing this bird back into Bhutanese airspace until this threat subsides. I want every friendly fighter that has any, air-to-air weaponry on board to head in right now! I want to negate as much of the enemy’s numerical advantage as we can!”

* * *

Outside the aircraft, the four Su-30 escorts immediately punched afterburners, throwing out a glowing cone of flame behind the engine nozzles and accelerated. Six other Su-30s over Sikkim on BARCAP duty also moved north and joined the four escorts to put themselves between the escaping AEW aircraft and the Chinese attackers.