Chimera

“I am going to request emergency transfer of additional artillery units to this sector to replace my losses there but only after I can get a full assessment done. It will take a few hours. Most of the other stuff is housecleaning on my end. I will get back to you with the strike plans and an ETA from the 862 Missile Regiment once I have the target list completed. For now I need to go. I have a hundred fires to fight over here,” Suman responded. Yadav decided to get out of his way.

“Very well. Suman, we will not have a repeat of 1962 this time around. Get your army ready to fight. I want that Chinese Army stopped at the border and for our boys to take the offensive into Tibet just as soon as you can arrange it!”

LEH AIRBASE

LADAKH

DAY 1 + 0600 HRS

The small puffs of smoke left the rolling rubber as Khurana’s Mig-29 touched down on the main runway and rolled down its length before slowing down. Half a minute later the aircraft was rolling onto the taxiway to the hardened shelters. Khurana looked left and right through the cockpit glass as he followed the small Gypsy utility vehicle with striped yellow-black stripes on it that was guiding him and his aircraft through the section of the taxiway cleared of debris. The view on either side was not pretty…

The base was in full blackout mode, but he could see the flames leaping out of the various smoldering buildings near the main tarmac. His was the first of three Fulcrums to be returning back to Leh from Avantipur after the missile attacks. The rest of No. 28 Squadron was to stay at Avantipur for the time being. But Leh needed its own cover. Besides, the “The First Supersonics” Squadron had no intention of staying at Avantipur for a minute longer than necessary.

The Mig-29 was not exactly a high endurance fighter compared with the Su-30. Despite the upgrades over the years that had increased range for the aircraft, there was no way that a decent sized patrol could be maintained constantly over Ladakh if they were based as far away as Avantipur. Bottom line was that Leh airbase needed to be recovered from the smoke and fire and returned to service when the first offensive Indian airstrikes of the war began in the morning…

This first flight of three aircraft was here to determine the level of the damage to the airfield and its ability to launch fighter operations. Khurana and the squadron commander were among the pilots returning now. Khurana saw from his cockpit glass the second Mig-29 touching down behind him while the third circled overhead. Several thousand feet above them, the first Barrier-Combat-Air-Patrol, or BARCAP, was forming up. Made up of three Fulcrums from the same squadron, they were now taking position as the air-force began returning to the skies throughout the region.

But all of that didn’t change the reality on the ground as Khurana saw it. He realized that this first landing had been directed under the control of an ad-hoc ATC since the original ATC building was now smoldering rubble. That was bad news as it affected the ability of large number of larger aircrafts to operate effectively from the airbase.

A few minutes later Khurana was shutting down the engines as the aircraft came to a stop inside one of the undamaged hardened shelters. He was happy to see that most of the airmen around him from his original ground-crew had survived the attacks. He did notice however, that some faces were missing from the group. He and the squadron commander had been notified by the base commander of the losses in personnel and the list of names was not exactly short. Additionally, the No. 114 “Siachen Pioneers” helicopter squadron based on the same base had lost two of its Cheetah helicopters on the ground during the attack. These two helicopters had been down for maintenance at the time and could not have been evacuated.

As Khurana jumped off the cockpit and walked out of the shelter, he felt the bitter cold winds blowing outside. He decided to zip up the winter jacket he was now wearing over his flight-suit. A few minutes later the base commander pulled up near the shelter. He had picked up Khurana’s squadron commander beforehand and the trio drove away towards the base operations center. Within the hour, planning began for the squadron’s role in the large offensive air campaign scheduled to begin in a few hours’ time.

The mission now had a code name: Operation Phoenix.

CHENGDU

CENTRAL CHINA

DAY 1 + 0700 HRS

The Chinese weren’t sitting around, either. Feng was back where he thought he belonged, commanding operationally deployed units at war. It had taken them the better part of two months to do it, but they had achieved the bureaucratically impossible: the Lanzhou-Chengdu unified MRAF was operational.