Chimera

The view for the two Indian Jaguar pilots who streaked over the battlefield in their strike-jets was just as confused. Vehicles were moving around like ants and there were pillars of smoke and fire everywhere.

Target identification was impossible.

The only terrain features identifiable were the icy-waters of the Chip-Chap River cutting its way through the plain. And then there were the large mass of moving vehicles on north and south banks of the river. The pilots had been briefed carefully on this by the forward-air-controllers on the battlefield below.

There!

The flight-leader thought as he instantly adjusted his control-stick and aligned the aircraft towards the line of vehicles moving westwards. From this low altitude he could see the flashes of their main guns.

No question now: main battle tanks…

And they have to be Chinese. Sure as hell we don’t have any of ours left!

As he brought his aircraft thundering from the south near Saser, his wingman sidled alongside as well. Inside the cockpit the two pilots flipped the cover over the weapons release switch on the control-stick.

Within seconds their target group passed through the small diamond release zone on the HUD and both pilots pressed the release buttons, then pushed the throttle forward to afterburner and climbed up into the skies. The four cluster-bomb-units fell clean off their pylons, dispersed their deadly munitions into a spread pattern and fell clean. The rain of sub-munitions descended on the mass of Chinese ZBDs and T-99s below…

The concentrated cloud of sparks and dust raised by the impact of the munitions was interspersed with fireballs and secondary explosions as several ZBDs were destroyed.

The Indian defenses were instantly filled with shouts of joy from the besieged Indian troopers. The T-99s were made of sterner stuff and did not go up in fireballs. But their tracks lay shattered and several of them had their engine compartments penetrated by red-hot shrapnel. They were now nothing more than ticking time bombs; waiting to go off just as leaking fuel came in contact. The Chinese tank crews realized the danger and began jumping out of the turrets within view of the Indian Gorkhas to the west…

There was no mercy.

A large burst of rifle fire from more than two hundred Indian soldiers quickly claimed almost all of the Chinese tank crews within moments. As the dead bodies continued to be riddled with impacting bullets, company and platoon commanders had to manually go down the lines shouting “cease fire!” orders.

But the battle was not over yet.

Several Chinese ZBDs were still alive and kicking as the smoke and dust clouds from the cluster-munitions attack began to settle down. They began engaging the Indian infantry positions with cannon fire, sending the defenders diving and crashing for cover as the rounds again began to kick up dust around their positions. The Chinese gunners had also seen what the Gorkhas had done to their comrades just moments before.

Bitterness went both ways in the desperate battle for DBO.

Then there were more high-frequency thud noises and the fire on Indian positions from the Chinese vehicles abruptly stopped. Brigadier Adesara and his staff were sent ducking for cover as the two Indian Jaguars streaked overhead at suicidal low altitude as they recovered from their shallow strafing dive right above the trenches. As the dust settled, Adesara and his officers stumbled out of their bunker to see another three ZBDs dead in their tracks and spewing fire from their hatches. All three vehicles had large holes on their armor plating. The Jaguar cannon rounds were deadly against the thin armor skins…

And then it stopped.

As Adesara and his men watched, the few surviving ZBDs and the single T-99 remaining from the Chinese armor force began pulling back and deploying aerosol screens.

But the Chinese were far from beaten. Any thought that Brigadier Adesara might have had to advance back to the mangled remains of his citadel defensive lines were cut short as a number of Chinese artillery proximity-fused shells detonated above his trenches, burying some of them and killing several of his men. But despite the falling gravel and rocks, Adesara smiled, for he understood: the first Chinese ground offensive to capture Daulat-beg-oldi and the Karakoram pass had been broken.

SOUTHEAST OF DAULAT-BEG-OLDI

DAY 2 + 1635 HRS

The story was the same on the south banks.

Colonel Sudarshan slammed open the hatch of his battered BMP-II to see columns of rising smoke all along the northern horizon. But the Chinese were only down, not out. He brought up his binoculars to see several anti-air vehicles also moving into position behind the Chinese lines…