Chimera

Once at the top, Adesara quickly moved behind some boulders for cover. He looked back to the see the airstrip being pummeled into the earth by the might of the Chinese artillery. To his south he saw the frozen waters of the Chip-Chap River and directly over the boulders to his east he saw the moving dust columns approaching his position.

Adesara picked up the binoculars hanging from his neck. Colonel Sudarshan did the same. In this region of Ladakh, the terrain was flat enough that incoming columns of vehicles were visible over long distances. They were seeing the dust clouds emerging behind the first prominent hills on the Chinese side of the LAC. So the enemy was still over ten kilometers away. Adesara and Sudarshan were quickly focusing their binoculars on the nearest of the approaching vehicles…

“What do you think?” Adesara asked without looking away from his binoculars. Sudarshan did not look away either.

“Looks like a max level effort on vehicles. That’s… fifteen or sixteen T-99s in that first wave and another twelve in the second!” Sudarshan shouted above the noise of the exploding artillery on the airstrip behind them.

“And add another two dozen ZBDs to that! About ten clicks out,” Adesara added. Then he looked at his radioman who handed him a radio speaker…

“Blue-Lima-One to Blue-Lima-Command, we are seeing regiment level Chinese armored forces approaching our position. They are currently ten clicks from me now! We need digital eyes on target! Over!”

“Roger. Digital eyeball approaching A-O,” was the immediate reply from Divisional-HQ. They had a Nishant UAV overhead for the past few hours once the alert had gone up all along the Sino-Indian border. The feed from that drone was being passed down.

Adesara looked over to his signals officer who had come along with them. He now opened a battlefield computer on the rocky surface behind the rocks. An NCO from his team placed a small tripod nearby and flicked a control switch. This opened up a small circular net over the tripod around a central receiver. He then connected the cables with the computer and powered on the system. The satellite uplink hardware was deployed. Next he activated the computer and a few seconds later the first visuals of the large moving dust clouds as seen from two thousand feet above the ground were available on screen. Adesara and Sudarshan slid along the gravel and came up behind the young officer to share the view. Sudarshan was quick to spot the terrain on the screen, looked around and oriented himself.

“Okay, here we are,” He pointed to a speck of rock visible on the infrared views on the screen. “They are here and moving along this axis! That would bring them along this axis towards our first defensive lines here!”

Adesara quickly nodded his agreement.

“All right Ravi, this is your dance! Give me your plan!” Adesara and the signals officer looked at Sudarshan, who wasted no time:

“The Chinese first and second armor waves are all moving along the northern bank of the river towards the airstrip. My tanks are deployed along the northern banks. My T-72 platoon is in hull down positions here,” he jabbed on the screen. “They will engage the Chinese first wave along with support from your anti-tank boys! I am taking my BMP force across the river and then east!”

Adesara nodded again as he considered the tactic. But he had a word of caution:

“Just remember that your T-72 boys are outnumbered four-to-one against the Chinese armor. And those are their shiny new T-99s they are driving. Even with my support, don’t expect to be able to hold them for too long. So don’t wander off! When you hit the Chinese, I will pull back to my second line of defenses further west and reengage. That’s your cue to fall back west as well. The only way we are going to survive this day is with maneuver warfare, not frontal attacks. Hit and move! You follow me?”

“Crystal clear!”

“Okay, then. I…” Adesara was stopped midsentence.

“Holy shit! Incoming fire!”

The single shell slammed into the eastern face of the hill and sent a fireball rising into the sky. Dust and gravel rained down on the hunkered group of men on the top. Adesara looked around and then spat out the gravel in his mouth as he saw the others dusting themselves off.

“What the hell was that?!!” the signals officer shouted.

“A ranging shot! They know where we are and are trying to knock us out. Next will be the barrage. Time for us to go!” Sudarshan shouted as the ringing in his ear stopped.

Adesara and the others were already packing up and moving out. A few moments later they were again moving down the gravel slopes of the citadel on the west side of the slope…

“How on earth did they know exactly where we were?” Sudarshan shouted to Adesara as he balanced himself against the shifting gravel.

“We are not the only ones using unmanned drones today, Colonel…”

NORTHERN INDIA

DAY 2 + 0700 HRS

“So they pulled them back?”