Chimera

“To the Indian field commander, we hereby accept your offer to surrender honorably under the following conditions. Firstly, my officers and soldiers are to be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. Secondly, my wounded are to be provided medical attention and our medical convoys are to be allowed passage. If these conditions are met, then given the incapacitated state of the division commander, I am authorized to surrender what remains of my force within the valley. This channel may be used to communicate with me and my staff directly. -deputy commander, 55TH Division, People’s Liberation Army”

Suman grunted and then looked up at the smiling officers in the room around him.

“Well then, I think we should tell our boys to go ahead to accept the good General’s offer right away, don’t you think?”

MINISTRY OF NATIONAL DEFENSE BUILDING

BEIJING

DAY 14 + 2330 HRS

“They did what?” General Liu thundered and stood up from his chair hard enough to trip it over behind him. As the chair fell with a thud, it froze everybody in the room while Dianrong moved to pick it up. General Yongju, who had just announced to the room what he had heard from his Chengdu region commander regarding the surrender of the 55TH Division, stood where he was with the paper in his hand. He was visibly shaken by Liu’s thunderous response.

“General Liu,” Peng started to say, but Liu cut him off:

“They surrendered? They surrendered to the Indians? How dare they?!”

“The deputy-commander did what was in the interest of saving the lives of the men still alive,” Yongju replied,

“That was not his call to make!” Liu shouted loud enough so that the room echoed his voice a bit. “He has singlehandedly brought shame to this country through his actions!”

To that Liu received silence in the room and as he looked around, none of the army commanders met his gaze. He saw defeat in their eyes and in his own stomach he felt a pit of rage…

“We need to negotiate an end to this war as soon as possible!” the Foreign-Minister added urgently.

“No!” Liu shouted. “We will do what we should have done a long time back!” He looked over to Dianrong, standing by the wall behind his seat.

“Colonel Dianrong! Get me the commanders for the Tibet based DF-21 Brigades right now!”

“General, what are you doing?” Peng shouted at Liu as Dianrong picked up the phone on a table nearby. Liu turned away from the Colonel to look Peng straight in the face:

“Making sure that the Indians are not able to enjoy this moment of glory that you all have handed them on a silver platter! I will finish what you all could not!”

DAY 15

BANGALORE

INDIA

DAY 15 + 0430 HRS

“What the hell?” the Group-Captain said as the live-SAR feed of a Chinese DF-21C medium-range ballistic-missile battery in northern Tibet on the wall screens was replaced with flickering static.

Air-Vice-Marshal Malhotra looked up from the papers he was reviewing inside the glass-walled conference room. He didn’t hear the Group-Captain as the glass was sound-proofed, but he did see the sudden loss in video feed. He opened the glass door of the room and the low-volume conversations between the operators reached his ears.

“What happened?” he asked the Group-Captain.

“Not sure, sir,” the officer replied. “We just lost RISAT-2 feed over 823RD Brigade A-O.”

“Checked with ground-control?” Malhotra asked as he watched the wall-screen static replaced with a 2D map projection of the globe with orbits of various Indian and Chinese satellites marked over it.

“Doing that now,” the Group-Captain said as he picked up the phone near where he was standing.

Malhotra knew what this was even as he waited for confirmation.