Chimera

“Doesn’t matter now. Colonel Malik is dead and Brigade and Divisional CPs are non-responsive. If somebody up the ladder wants to object, we will deal with it later. For now I am the senior officer present. Contact the battery commander and inform him of our situation. Then contact our sister battalions and ask them what they need in terms of support. I am pretty sure they are in a similar situation as us. Go!”

The Major ran along the trench to the other NCOs from the signals group at the command center and got to work. The company commander whose men were guarding this headquarters ran over to Nath and both men cowered as several shells slammed nearby and shredded tree trunks near the roots, causing large branches to fall above the trenches. When he pulled himself up from the floor of the trench, Nath spat out some dirt that had entered his mouth. He pulled the Captain nearby to his feet as well.

“What do you need boy?”

“Orders, sir?” the young man said as he wiped the dirt from his face and the underside of his helmet. Nath grunted amusedly.

“Did something make you think that our plans have changed? The orders stand. We will hold our ground! Help is on the way!”

EASTERN BANK OF THE LOHIT RIVER

SOUTHEAST OF WALONG

ARUNACHAL PRADESH

DAY 1 + 0825 HRS

North of Walong, the valley down from the border was more or less a straight line. The morning rays of sunlight had yet to penetrate the valley, but the tips of the snowcapped Himalayas were now glowing under the morning sun. Inside the valleys, the fog was still persistent. And where there should have been serenity, there was now manmade thunder. The first morning of the war had started in earnest after a night of chaos and confusion…

Lieutenant-Colonel Mohan jumped out of his AXE utility vehicle he had drove in on along the single lane road from Walong. He walked down to the edge of the rocky banks of the Lohit River and stared north. Behind him three Tatra Kolos launcher vehicles were rumbling over lose gravel and towards a flat patch of ground to the east. Further north, a single Weapon Locating Radar or WLR system was silently and actively monitoring the Chinese artillery and rocket fire. With each falling shell and each rocket being launched in that sector, Mohan’s WLR crew managed a better fix on the origin of those trajectories. And at the base of those trajectories had to be the Chinese field guns and MBRL vehicles.

While the WLR crew estimated and fixed the Chinese artillery units, Mohan’s battery command and control teams were at work inside several camouflaged trailers that had been placed among the thick foliage of the region south of Walong.

As the ground under his feet shook and vibrated, Mohan appreciated the sheer firepower the Chinese 13TH Group Army was throwing at the Indian defenses at the moment.

They tried to take me out too…

It had been obvious to him and the 2ND Mountain Division commander that the enemy would try to put his unit of commission as soon as any ground conflagration started. And the Chinese had indeed tried their best to try and catch the MBRL Group off guard alongside the rest of their cruise-missile targets.

But Mohan was no fool. He knew the Chinese had been monitoring the location and movement of his unit’s vehicles for weeks before the actual attack a few hours ago. They had probably been using everything down from local informers in the region to high tech satellites to get an accurate description of the disposition of his unit.

And so the simple solution had been to move the vehicles of his battery every hour to a new location. And it had delivered according to his expectations. When the cruise-missile aimed for his unit slammed into an empty patch of land, two kilometers north, Mohan and his staff had shared a brief moment of glee in an otherwise miserable night.

And now it’s our turn…

Mohan heard his radioman shout out to him from the back of his parked vehicle. He turned back to see the three Pinaka launch vehicles now dispersed and deployed out on the large field, silent and deadly. He walked over to the radioman to receive the call from his staff that had been coordinating with Lieutenant-Colonel Nath. Mohan had enough confidence in the professional ability of his men to know when he was not needed around.

But now he was needed to take the next steps…

He nodded at his signals NCO sitting inside the vehicle. The NCO switched radio frequencies until all vehicle crews in his command could listen in. When he got the all-clear from his NCO, Mohan picked up the radio speaker and brought it near his mouth.