Chimera

“Few. None that I have seen personally but some of the men claimed to see a few transport helicopters operating on their side.”

Dutt’s operations officer nodded on hearing that:

“That sounds about right, sir. Just like us, they have very few dedicated Z-10s flying as of now and that bird can barely fly at these altitudes. And this sector is not the right place for adapted gunships like FFAR armed Mi-17s.”

“Well then, that gives us the advantage, doesn’t it?” Dutt smiled.

LOHEGAON AIRBASE

PUNE, INDIA

DAY 4 + 1600 HRS

Chakri stepped off the stairs and onto the concrete tarmac at the military side of the airbase amidst hectic activity. The smell of aviation fuel was in the air as aircraft engines spooled down. The Prime-Minister was already on his way to the secure base-operations facility. From there he would begin interacting with other government heads as needed. Everybody on the PM’s cabinet agreed that New-Delhi was not safe until the war was over.

Chakri and the home-minister disagreed.

Perhaps during first two days the national capital had not been safe. But that assessment no longer applied. By now the IAF had secured a level of superiority over southern Tibet and were beating back the PLAAF attacks in the northeast. In Tibet, only the S-300 batteries prevented the IAF from practically wrenching total control of the skies.

If the Chinese launched a cruise-missile from anywhere now, the IAF could and would detect it in time.

Chakri looked around and saw another Embraer ERJ-135 jet parked near their B-737 from the IAF Communications Flight. The crew of this aircraft would be taking him and the home-minister back to New-Delhi while the Prime Minister and other officials stayed in the secure facilities in Pune.

Fifteen minutes later they were both aboard and a young Flight-Lieutenant closed the doors of the Embraer from the inside. The flight-crew up in the cockpit throttled up the engines and the small jet began rolling towards the runway.

DAULAT BEG OLDI

LADAKH

DAY 4 + 1700 HRS

Brigadier Adesara walked inside the bunkers west of the destroyed airstrip. Once inside, he heard the chaos amongst the staff officers as everybody was trying to complete their tasks at the same time. They were supposed to have dedicated command trailers for this kind of work on the modern battlefield but the Chinese UAVs in the skies above had rendered that possibility suicidal.

They had been trying to locate and terminate Adesara and his staff for days now. Their tactic was simple: if they spotted anything that remotely looked like his command post, he could expect an artillery strike on it within minutes. The Chinese had been doing that for days.

Till they had been able to, that is!

The Smerch counter-battery launchers near Saser had effectively neutralized the field guns and short-range rocket launchers within the two Divisions facing Adesara’s defenses. That had brought a welcome respite to Adesara’s besieged staff. Still, he insisted on maintaining headquarters security.

“So how is the deployment taking shape?” Adesara asked Colonel Sudarshan.

The two mauled Chinese Divisions were digging in while they awaited the arrival of reinforcements. Once they had replaced their losses, the assault against DBO was expected to be restarted.

“Moving ahead. 10TH Mechanized is deployed and ready for operations. General Gupta has arranged for the arrival of two more Mechanized Battalions as well,” Sudarshan said as he stood alongside the map table with Adesara.

“So good news then?” Adesara queried.

“That’s not all. We also heard that the first two attack helicopters arrived at Saser a couple hours ago!”

Adesara whistled at that.

“Pretty soon we should have enough to push the Chinese on their side of the LAC and then some!”

“Agreed.”

“So what’s the bad news?” Adesara braced himself for the inevitable.

“We lost one Heron UAV an hour ago after it was detected by one of the surviving Big-Bird radars operating near the Qara-tagh-La. The air-force has called off all long-range UAV flights in that sector until they are able to take that threat down. So DIA is now pushing for priority satellite Intel on the PLA inbound forces. But given requirements over Sikkim, Tibet and the northeast, there are not enough assets to go around. However, we do know that at least two fresh PLA armored battalions are beginning to arrive east of us,” Sudarshan said. His voice was laced with concern. Adesara noted that.

“Okay. So if we sit on our hands we inadvertently let the fresh Chinese Division slide into the pre-prepared positions left by the first two Divisions we fought off. Once that happens they have a prepared base of fire against our defenses. Again! No way are we letting that happen again. We stop that from happening by acting right now!”