Chimera

“You have a different suggestion, General?” Peng asked.

“Yes. I do.” Liu answered confidently. “I think it is time we faced facts here. The Highland Division in Bhutan has been lost and the 55TH and 11TH Divisions in the Chumbi valley are about to collapse as well. And the 15TH Airborne Corps is being mauled even before it reaches the battlefield!”

“You have a point?” Peng asked as he rubbed his eyes on hearing the painful truths.

“Yes!” Liu said loudly. “My Corps is ready to deploy! It has the most proven weapons in our arsenals ready for action. With launch sites in northern Tibet I can order the brigade commanders to fire our medium-range missiles with nuclear warheads and terminate the Indian Corps in the Chumbi valley along with all other major northern airbases and command centers!”

“Are you insane?!” Yongju shouted back, slamming his pen back on his bunch of papers. “In doing this you will destroy our men along with the Indians in the valley!”

“Would you rather handle defeat instead?” Liu asked rhetorically.

“Are those our only choices?” Peng asked soberly.

“No! There is a third option!” Yongju replied. “End this war now! The Russians are awaiting a response from us on negotiations. We have been stalling them endlessly but we can initiate talks now while those two Divisions are still alive and fighting. The Indians haven’t won anything as long as they are still fighting!”

Liu exhaled loudly and slumped back in his chair:

“Now that is utterly insane, Yongju. And you should know better! If we negotiate now we will do so from a position of weakness. The Indians will know that the only reason we want to talk is because our forces in the valley are surrounded and on the verge of defeat!”

“So?” Yongju shouted back. “It’s true! And the sooner we accept it the sooner we save ourselves the even bigger embarrassment of two Divisions surrendering to the Indians! Our people will not accept such a defeat!”

“And which is exactly why I say we must use nuclear weapons in the valley now!” Liu said, beginning to show frustration. “It is better for us to lose two Divisions in exchange for an entire Indian Army Corps than for us to lose them as prisoners of war! You want the Indians to march them through their streets like they did with the Pakistanis in 1971 or the Russians did with the Germans? Can you imagine the national shame?”

“Don’t try to confuse this with national shame!” Yongju replied. “You cannot simply extinguish the lives of my men with arguments based on empty rhetoric. Negotiations are different from surrendering. We are far from surrendering. And the Indians know it!”

“Liu,” Peng said, “our men deserve better from us than this. And Yongju is right: as long as the two Divisions hold ground, we have not really lost anything substantial.”

“Except Bhutan,” Liu said quietly, but caught Peng’s ear.

“Yes, Bhutan is lost. But we never meant to capture Bhutan in its entirety, did we? It served to bog down Indian troops in the hopes of detracting what has unfortunately still come to pass in the Chumbi valley.”

“I hope,” Liu said menacingly, “you realize that if you go ahead with this negotiated surrender, our people will not forgive us in a thousand years!”

“They will learn to, Liu. But only in time.” Peng said and leaned forward to press the phone intercom on the table.

“Get me Minister Bogdanov at the Russian Foreign Ministry.”

GURUCUN

NORTH OF THE CHUMBI VALLEY

DAY 14 + 1500 HRS

The Chomolhari peak stood majestically on the eastern end of the valley, its snowcapped slopes shining in the afternoon sunlight. Small puffs of white clouds broke over its ridges against the blue sky with perfect serenity…

Colonel Thomas sat on the ground, his back resting on his backpack as it lay on the gravel. He stared in silence at the beauty of the Himalayas east of the valley. The clouds were drifting over the Chomolhari as a dark speck in the blue sky glistened in the sunlight and darted north. It flew across Thomas’s vision silently but he recognized it for what it was: a jet fighter streaking over Bhutan.

Then he saw more specks glistening in the sky, this time heading south and others heading north as they merged into each other. It was all so utterly silent from where he was. There were a couple of small puffs of spiral clouds dropped by some of the jets.

Flares!

Thomas realized he was now a mute witness to yet another desperate aerial battle being fought between the two sides of this war…