Chimera

Adesara watched as other soldiers ran over to help their wounded colleagues while still under withering machinegun fire from two T-99s sniping at them from long-range. But then again, the Gorkhas were known for their indifference to fear. He saw the Gorkhas take the arms of the two wounded missile-gunners around their neck and help them away from the position. In doing so one Gorkha got hit and went face down into the snow and gravel ground, his blood pooling around his body.

Adesara’s fists turned into balls of anger at his inability to provide his men the kind of superior firepower they needed against Chinese armor. But the Indian army had never seriously considered such high intensity armored battles in Ladakh and had never deployed larger forces there. The price for this was being paid for in blood today.

Adesara walked over to where his operations officer and the air-force forward-air-controller were arguing near the command post’s battlefield computers and other comms equipment.

“What the hell is going on here? And where the hell is my air-support?”

The Lt-Colonel who was the operations officer for Adesara looked at the FAC, who looked a much harried man…

“Sir, I can bring in two Jaguars with half loads within two minutes. They have hit their primary targets in the Galwan valley area but still have unused weapons hanging from their pylons. I am trying to scrounge any flights that have unused ammunition to support us here, but the entire Ladakh front has blown up in the last few hours. Every aircraft we have available is being used for support operations somewhere or the other. There are just not enough fighters to go around!”

Adesara lost his temper.

“God damn it! I was assured by the Division commander that we had priority over this sector! Somebody has screwed things up the line!”

Again! He didn’t add.

“All right, listen up. Clear out this mess! Both of you! You get any and every aircraft that you can find in the air that has weapons to spare. If they have napalm, get them! If they have cluster-munitions, get them! Even cannon rounds! I don’t care! Just get them here! Even the very presence of friendly aircraft overhead will help! We have to hold this ground. I am not handing over the Karakoram pass to the Chinese today!”

OVER SOUTHEASTERN LADAKH

DAY 2 + 1500 HRS

The valleys were already going under the long shadows of the mountains around Ladakh. At fifteen-thousand feet above ground level, the ARC Gulfstream-III aircraft was barely high enough to do its job properly. But given the altitude of the Ladakh region, it was still at thirty-thousand feet above sea-level. The aircraft tore through the rarefied freezing air as it approached the LAC.

“Standby for acquisition.”

The pilot said over the cockpit intercom to the mission-controller in the cabin behind him.

“Roger.”

Chinese electronic emissions were “visible” well within Indian Territory west of the LAC. These emanated from a KJ-2000 AWACS loitering over Hotien airbase in southwestern Tibet and the Big-Bird S-300 3D acquisition radars. By the same token the Indian electronic space extended a good two-hundred kilometers north of the LAC thanks to the Phalcon AWACS throwing out long wavelength radar emissions. For this ARC crew though, the battle began within Chinese electronic space, not the Indian one.

The flight-crew up front was monitoring airspace visually and they could see the snow-capped peaks of the Karakoram pass to their northeast. The onboard RWR was passively tracking the emissions of the KJ-2000 but the ARC aircraft had still not entered the latter’s detection radius. And the S-300 Big-Bird radars were similarly out of range.

Hopefully.

There was no real way of knowing just where the KJ-2000 would have picked them out. The same went for the S-300 radars. The first clue they would have of having been detected is when their RWR would tell them that an S-300 battery commander had switched on the guidance radars for his 48N6E2 missiles…

“Helios-One. You are approaching FDR in one-point-five minutes at current bearing,” Verma’s authoritative voice from the Phalcon rang out through the cockpit.

The single-burst SATCOM transmission allowed the flight-crew to immediately adjust the heading and bring the aircraft on a northwest heading so that they were flying just along the perimeter of the supposed FDR.

The threat was significant. But it was also their daily job. Except that a shooting war was happening all around them, this ARC crew tickling the Chinese defenses in Ladakh might well have been doing their daily job.

ABOVE DAULAT BEG OLDI

DAY 2 + 1600 HRS

The rising dust clouds from continuous movement of vehicles were visible from long distances. To the troops on the ground, the sun was nothing but a brown-yellow haze in the ever darkening skies…