Chimera

A few seconds later the flight crew on the Tu-154 were shaken in their seats as the first Indian missile slammed into the port wing flaps and detonated. The cabin to the rear was instantly shredded with shrapnel. This killed a good number of the operators where they sat. The port wing broke away from the fuselage and the large aircraft rolled over uncontrollably just as the cabin suddenly depressurized and broke into pieces.

When the second R-77 slammed into what remained of the aircraft fuselage, the Tu-154 disintegrated midair…

The extremely small speck of white light in the night sky amplified by the NVGs was cue for the Indian pilots that their job was done. Their radar display said the same thing. By now their RWRs were screaming of inbound threats all around them, they had no weapons to release other than cannon rounds and fuel was low. There was every motivation for the two Indian pilots to break flight, dive for the deck, throw chaff and flares all over the sky and begin praying that their fuel would last the extended low level flight back to Indian airspace…

LEH AIRBASE

LADAKH

DAY 3 + 1930 HRS

It needed to be done quickly.

The airbase was still under threat from almost regular Chinese cruise-missile attacks and it only took one shot to make it lethal for a target as large as the Il-76 parked on an open tarmac. It was therefore no surprise to Wing-Commander Dutt that it had taken so long for his airlift to take place. What had been planned for the morning had taken till nightfall…

The Chinese are scoring high on that account with their cruise-missiles!

Dutt walked down the open ramp of the Il-76 and stepped on the cold concrete tarmac of Leh.

He watched as the first of the two LCH helicopters were manhandled out of the belly of the Il-76 by the ground crews. Other crewmen were removing containers holding equipment and maintenance supplies required to operate these helicopters. Another pair of airmen was holding the long blades on both end and walking out of the aircraft with them. The CO of the resident Cheetah helicopter unit, the 119HU ‘Siachen Pioneers’, was standing alongside Dutt as his men helped the newly inducted 199HU to get oriented with the base, weather and terrain.

Dutt looked around. The base was a scene of hectic activity. Cheetah, Dhruv and Mi-17 helicopters were continuously landing or lifting off the airbase. Soldiers from the army were busy offloading stretchers with wounded soldiers on those helicopters as they flew in. Already as the Il-76 that Dutt had flown in on was being emptied, lines of stretchers with injured soldiers were being put down on the tarmac nearby to be loaded aboard as the large transport aircraft would be converted into an ambulance on its way out of Leh.

Every inch of the tarmac on the other side of the airbase was occupied by lines of An-32s, Il-76s, C-17s and C-130Js that were flying in rapidly needed supplies and fresh units to join the battle for Ladakh. It was a high tech scene that was also strangely reminiscent of the 62 war.

History repeated itself in concept if not in details…

By now the first LCH had already been moved to a cleared section of the tarmac and the ground crewmen along with the HAL volunteers who had come along in the Il-76 were busy installing the main rotor blades on the helicopters while others were already refueling the fuel tanks. All the while the former test pilots from Bangalore were collaborating with the operational pilots of 109HU and 119HU over maps lit by hand held flashlights alongside the parked LCH…

By the time the base CO and some other senior officers at Leh drove up to the tarmac to talk to Dutt about future unit employment, the first two LCHs were already getting ready for war.

WESTERN TIBET-BHUTAN BORDER

DAY 3 + 2200 HRS

Major Kwatra sat silently in the rear seat along with the Royal Bhutanese Army Lieutenant-Colonel Iyonpo. Their three jeep convoy drove by the frozen waters of the large high-altitude lakes near the Chomolhari peaks. The ride was bumpy and uneven as they drove on the fair-weather road that had been recently constructed to support the RBA units stationed on border security duty.

The reason why Kwatra, posted to the Indian-Military-Training-Team, or IMTRAT, was here was because of the precarious nature of this section of the Tibet-Bhutan border. Sitting between the majestic Chomolhari peaks to the south and other sister peaks to the north, the border along this sector jutted into Tibetan territory beyond the foothills of the peaks. To get here, the RBA units had to cross the ridges and peaks behind them.